Max is pointing a rifle almost at the camera when this one begins, with 99 at his side, sort of coaching him on how to hit his target. He fires a few times and misses, then the camera pulls back and we see the pair are at a carnival shooting gallery. Max tells 99 a supposed quotation from Genghis Khan and suddenly the shooting gallery operator hands 99 a rifle and tells her to fire away for free. She hits a few targets and the man gives them a kewpie doll, overcoming Max's pleas for a pillow that says "Mother." He gives the doll to 99 and they leave.
A moment later another man comes up and says the same line, befuddling the operator who then figures out that he gave the doll to the wrong man. He goes off to find our heroes, but instead of taking a different doll, or the pillow as well, and just coming up with some reason for the switch, he just tries to shoot Max-missing but wiping out the hot dog he had just purchased.
We viewers next see the shooting gallery guy at the House of Horrors telling a Mr. Waxman about the mistake, how he simply gave the doll, as instructed, to the man who said the coded phrase. We learn that it was a pickup site for dolls with some plutonium inside. Waxman doesn't accept any excuses, and orders his henchmen to seize the man, who will become a new part of his electric chair exhibit.
Waxman makes one phone call and orders the whole amusement park to be shut down immediately. Meanwhile, Max is trying to avoid going into the Tunnel of Love with 99, even insisting on separate cars-although he doesn't move when she joins him in the one he chose. As they ride along, several attempts are made on their lives, all just missing. Finally our agents figure out someone is after them, and when they get back out to the park they see it is all emptied out. (I think it amazing that a huge park could be completely cleared of customers and almost all workers during the time it takes one car to go through the Tunnel of Love.) The two character seen trying to catch Max and 99 are made up like Dracula and Frankenstein's monster. Nothing they did was funny in the least, and nothing related to their characters.
Other than a short call to the Chief who promises to come quickly, but who never shows up, Max and 99 spend almost the entire rest of the episode going through the park and dodging bullets fired from any of several KAOS agents. The Chief was able to figure out why the doll was so important and tells 86 & 99 about the plutonium.
Now I am spoiling the climactic scene, so don't read on if you want to watch the show first.
Eventually our people are caught by the bad guys and face death. 99 is tied in a chair and Max is locked into the head and arm holes of a guillotine, as Waxman tells him the blade is real and he is about to feel it. Then 99 will get hers.
We see Max speaking to Waxman with his head sticking out through the hole and his arms all locked away from his body. He cannot squeeze hands or head back through the holes without unlocking the large wooden portions of the device. Waxman orders the blade to be dropped and as 99 screams we see no head sticking through. An extra large body emerges from the other side. Waxman and his henchmen all take many swings, including with an ax at the area where the head should be, but they just swing through it. The figure overcomes the KAOS agents and then he suddenly lowers his coat and shoulders revealing that Max is alive and well and was just using the "old inflatable head in the cloak trick." His head was under the clothing (presumably with eyeholes nobody could see) a bit below where the creature's neck appeared to be.
The reason why I wanted to reveal it is because it was a phony way out. Those heavy wooden portions (on a real guillotine), once locked, cannot simply be squeezed out of without unlocking and raising the wood. Max could not have slid out of the device to be able to not have his head and hands cut off when the blade descended. Waxman did not leave him alone, and there was no time for his escape anyhow. The extra-tall character with no apparent head they saw later, I had no trouble with, but there was no way for Max to get to that point.
Furthermore, if a very tall man who appeared to have no head was coming toward me in a threatening manner, like Max did, I would swing my ax, shoot my gun, swing my club-whatever, at some part of his actual body, not at the place where the head should be. All of the attacks they made on the headless creature were solely directed toward the space above the body.
Our heroes did almost no searching for KAOS anything/anyone here. They spent most of the show running around the empty amusement park wondering why they were being chased. The only ingenuity was the impossible trick Max pulled off at the end. Because they were running from danger so much, there were almost no places to put in any funny actions or lines.
I don't know if I laughed twice during this episode. There was little written in to it that was supposed to be funny and some of that was, well, stupid. Like Smart refusing to hide in one building, using a line he used on a recent show, "There are gollywoggles in there!"
Smart was annoyingly dumb in his reluctance to ride in the Tunnel of Love in the same car as 99. I understand he's supposed to be very shy with her-even though he is portrayed as a real ladies' man with other women. But saying he doesn't want to ride in the same car as she does makes him seem like a 7-year-old boy afraid of being teased by his friends if he does anything with a girl.
That bit where the shooting gallery guy tried to kill Smart when it appeared he had just happened to say the line that was the code, instead of just working some sort of trade for the important doll with an innocent visitor to the park made no sense whatsoever. After he killed Max was he going to shoot 99 too and then take the doll? Two murders when for all he knew (and he was correct) they knew nothing about the value of the doll and would likely have traded it if he just gave them some sort of pretext.
To sum up: Almost nothing to laugh at, with almost every action by the bad guys totally illogical, and a climactic escape scene that physically could not have been done by Max even if he had more time than what was shown. I'm being kind in giving it a 4, due to it getting them on location at the old Santa Monica Pier amusement park, making for a different look than most episodes.
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