Max: "Well, Chief, everything went off perfectly without a hitch. We left CONTROL, got into the armored truck, and went through a car wash three times in case anyone was following us -" Larabee: "The truck was dirty anyway, Chief." Max: "- and here we are." Larabee: "With a clean truck."
The Chief and Larabee are accidentally locked in a bank vault and it is up to Max and 99 to get them out before their air supply runs out.
Synopsis[]
Max and the Chief are in a library, looking for a top secret book the Chief has compiled containing information about all the agents of CONTROL. After a short battle with a KAOS agent, the Chief and Max find the book.
Back at CONTROL HQ, in the Chief's office, Max and 99 are told by the Chief that the book must be kept safe at all costs. 99 suggests a safe deposit box in a bank so Max and Larabee take the book in an armored truck to the bank where they put it in a vault. While the Chief and Larabee are inside, Max accidentally closes and locks the vault door when he leans on it. The manager explains that the time lock will only open the door next Tuesday, and there is not enough air to keep the Chief and Larabee alive until then.
The Chief sends Max and 99 to the prison for Baffles, a world famous safecracker. However, they are too late (Baffles is being executed) and return with Freddie the Forger instead. Freddie injects ink from a fountain pen into the vault's timing mechanism causing it to advance to a point equivalent to "next Tuesday" and thus opening.
The Chief and Larabee are freed but Larabee is locked in again when he reenters to get the book and the manager unknowingly closes the vault on him.
The stakeout sequence includes footage recycled from Episode #117: "The Treasure of C. Errol Madre" which came over six months before on October 24 1969 and with contemporary viewers having short memories they probably would not have remembered having seen this before. The recycling of this footage meant that Max saw people he hadn't seen before for the first time for the second time!
When Max accidentally locked the Chief and Larrabee into a vault the Chief sent Max and 99 to get the help of Baffles, a safe cracker who was serving time in prison. However when Max and 99 got to the prison they found that Baffles had apparently been executed and got the help of Freddy the Forger instead. It is now easy to reflect that if Max had successfully learnt how to be a safe cracker back in Episode #35: "Maxwell Smart, Alias Jimmy Ballantine", he could have gotten the Chief and Larrabee out of the vault himself, a vault he himself locked them into!
In fact due to the stand alone nature of these episodes and the short memories of contemporary viewers everyone seems to have forgotten Ballantine. Surely it would have been simpler to get the help of Ballantine, now a freed man than getting Baffles out of prison.
Baffles, in addition to being a safe cracker, must have committed a heinous crime for him to be executed as it seems somewhat improbable for him to be executed for his safe cracking skills.
