User Reviews

This episode features a really inventive plot line. A lone diver gets the bends, radios for help to the Coast Guard but carelessly tips over a can of solvent that ignites as it drains to the engine. The woozy diver has just enough time to put on a life jacket and put his puppy in a bucket before fire consumes his boat.

Porter and Sandy arrive to the scene of floating wreckage and a very sick diver who they drag aboard. Porter Ricks must've spent half his working days in a wet uniform due to the number of times he dives into water fully clothed! Flipper knows the puppy is still out there and since Sandy ignored him, he goes looking for Bud.

The next scene is hilarious. Sandy is rigging a sail boat in the company of a gorgeous girl who he clearly wants to impress. She asks him if he's ever kissed a girl and he replies "are you kidding" and moves in for a kiss only to be interrupted by Bud searching for Flipper. Sandy is suitably annoyed but Bud just can't take the hint and keeps helping Sandy with the sails. Even after Sandy says "Bud don't you have something to do?" he still doesn't get it and when he finally does, he compounds the awkwardness with a typical younger teen brother comment "Oh NOW I know what's going on". A scene that must be replicated many times over in the real world. Sandy makes a comment about how he brings girls into his outdoorsy world at Coral Key Park all the time - something that in an interview the real Luke Halpin admitted was his preferred date activity!

Bud finds Flipper - Flipper finds the puppy and just as the diver (now released from the hospital decompression chamber) comes by to thank Porter and Sandy, Bud pulls up on his surfboard towed by Flipper with the puppy and he's reunited with his owner! No screw ups by Bud and there was some really cool footage where they found a way to have the camera on the surface of the water right in front of Bud as he surfed across the bay - an affect easily done today with smaller cameras but likely a bit tricky back in 1966 necessitating a surfboard or skiff mounted camera running very close to Bud's board.