McHale emerges from a tooth extraction at the dentist's laughing uncontrollably. It had nitrous oxide (laughing gas) to ease his pain. What he tells the boys is that his mouth hurts terribly, but he can't stop laughing. Of course, this wears off in a short while.
Parker is piloting the boat back to their own island and paying little attention to what he is doing. Thus he rams the captain's gig, with him and Carpenter on board. This leads the captain to calling for a fitness review for Parker.
McHale gets the idea that if they could spray Binghamton with some of that laughing gas, he might drop the fitness review. They maneuver him next to his office window, where just outside his crew is supposedly on a detail to get rid of bugs. Gruber sprays the captain a few times and he suddenly stops being grumpy, starts laughing, and before you know it, he is joking with his friend, Chuck, and directs Elroy to cancel the fitness review that is scheduled for tomorrow.
Just a couple of minutes later, the gas has worn off (he didn't get as much as McHale did) and he again wants the fitness review. He is going over to the radio shack to reinstate the review. Before he can get his jeep going, the men spray him again-this time with Parker sprawled on the hood holding the spray container. So Binghamton switches again.
This time, he goes to the officer's club, chasing a nurse, laughing all the way. The admiral that is to oversee the fitness review comes in a day early, and he sees Binghamton chasing the nurse outside, and when they go inside, he wants to see what is going on.
Inside the club, Binghamton and the nurse are literally dancing on a small round table, Binghamton with a lampshade on his head. About the time the admiral gets him down, the gas wears off again.
Suddenly there's an air raid. Trying to hide what was going on from the admiral, Chuck wound up inside a trash can WITH the nitrous oxide squirting out, so he got a good dosage. He doesn't go to the air raid shelter with the others. Instead, he's wandering around while bombs are going off all over the place, laughing it up like he hasn't a care in the world.
With the admiral and others watching from the steps to the shelter, Chuck stumbles on a machine gun and wildly shoots off a lot of rounds, sending one of the planes to crash into the sea. The other planes all head for home.
The admiral thinks Chuck is cool under fire, but now wants the fitness review to determine Binghamton's fitness, not Chuck's.
So, according to the show, laughing gas either 1) makes you laugh even though you are totally aware of what's going on, and still feel the pain of an injury/dental treatment, or 2) makes you suddenly like someone you can't stand and want to do him a big favor even though he nearly killed you through an act of total stupidity, or 3) makes you oblivious to the dangerous surroundings you face, laughing about them as though you are invincible.
I cannot believe this gas can affect people so differently. But even if it did/does, this was still a stupid plot. McHale should have realized that even if Binghamton would drop the charges against Chuck while under the spell of the gas, as soon as it wore off, he'd want the fitness board as he did before. And they couldn't keep him permanently high on the laughing gas, so giving him a dose or two wasn't going to do them any good in the long run.
Even if Chuck shot down an enemy plane, the admiral seeing him wandering around the compound laughing while bombs are going off all around him certainly should have prompted the admiral to wanting a fitness board for Chuck. A real sailor doing that likely would be deemed mentally ill in some way.
The gas should just make you laugh about nothing and minimize any pain you feel. It would not transform all your actions into doing things you don't want to do, or behaving in a way totally inconsistent with what you normally do. Binghamton should not have wanted to drop charges against Parker, just chuckled as he pressed the charges. He would not suddenly be chasing or dancing with nurses-he wasn't drunk.
I also have a problem with Chuck piloting the boat but not paying any attention. Nothing earth shattering was happening to distract him. He shouldn't be piloting an 80-foot boat if he's not diligently watching where he's going. Chuck clumsily backing into a tree or bush is fine, and can be funny. But dangerously steering a large boat just is not funny, not any more than it would be to portray some person being totally drunk driving a car into another vehicle and nearly killing someone.
Once again I agree with kfo's review of six years ago-this was a painful episode to watch. I will agree with his rating of 3.
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