User Reviews

Okay, maybe the woman was just a girl, but she was older than Sandy. My favorite part of this episode is when she kisses Sandy's cheek and he falls into the water - classic!

So, this episode is about a missing sea lion who wonders away while Sandy is flirting with the "older woman." Sandy quickly sends Flipper home so the girl doesn't get any madder than she already is. After all, the girl thinks the mess is all Flipper's fault. So, Flipper brings the sea lion home to Bud who just happens to have gotten a stern lecture from his father for bringing in strays and not doing his homework. Since Bud can't keep the sea lion, he tells Flipper to take the Sea Lion to a cove nearby. He'd go visit the sea lion the following morning before school.

Meanwhile, Sandy promises his 'girl' he'd come back early in the morning to help her search for the sea lion.

Bring in no communication between the brothers, both getting up early the next morning to sneak off, and an alligator sending two people of a tree and you have a pretty good drama going on here. Though the alligator tale was a bit unbelievable, I enjoyed the way Sandy jumped in the water, risking his life to save Bud.

This episode features the first appearance of Cheryl Miller as Bonnie McCoy. She was to appear in a 3 part series later in Season 1 and of course became one of the key stars in Daktari. She arrives with her floating animal zoo right in the middle of Sandy fishing alone. With Miller being 4 years older than Luke Halpin there's no getting around the fact that the script writers wrote a plot line with 16 year Sandy falling for an older woman (19-21 depend on the age they casted for her). Given how chaste the Flipper series is, it was an unusual story line. It does however yield some genuinely funny scenes: love smitten Sandy day dreams at dinner with his t-shirt on inside out and when Bonnie kisses him on the cheek, he walks backwards and then tumbles from the skiff into the lagoon.

The core story is the loss of the McCoy's seal called Sparky. Bud meets Sparky while doing homework on the dock and he becomes Bud and Flipper's new best friend while Sandy takes Bonnie on a quest to find Sparky. Hilariously both boys arise at dawn and sneak out of bed on secret missions they will neither disclose to Porter or each other: Sandy to take Bonnie on a Sparky search mission and Bud to find the same animal! After diving for a while unsuccessfully, Sandy and Bonnie try looking in inlets and find what they think are seal tracks when its really an alligator - the alligator traps them both up a tree just as Bud paddles up on his board also searching for Sparky. At first Sandy is a bit wimpy in his attempts to get rid of the alligator yelling "beat it" but when he sees Bud paddling into danger, he dives into the water despite the alligator going in there. Flipper of course comes to the rescue and nose butts the alligator to death! I'm not sure if such a thing actually happens in real life but the underwater filming of Flipper's attacks on dangerous critters is one of the stand out features of the Flipper series. The episodes ends with Sandy blushing after Bonnie calls him her knight in shining armor!