Review of Flipper — Flipper and the Mermaid
Note: I decided to go into this blind, not having watched an episode of Flipper in about 40 years.
If you’re unfamiliar with the show, it’s about a preternaturally intelligent dolphin given the stupid yet addictive name “Flipper” whose main role in life is to help humans out of jams caused by their own stupidity.
Original airdate: September 18, 1965 — (S02E01)
The show’s “cold open” (to use modern terminology) is a bunch of underwater footage, in color. I truly forgot just how revolutionary it was to see such lush marine landscapes for the first time on television, Jacques Cousteau basically having singlehandedly perfected the underwater camera just a few years earlier.
Alas, the lighting lets you know that the cold open is just stock footage of some random coral reef complete with fish swimming by lazily. For a few minutes, though, you might think you were just watching a nature documentary.
The “mermaid” is then revealed as a woman wearing a pink bathing suit and wearing a ruffled pink bathing cap swimming around and using a hammer to tap on rocks. She then spies a group of scary looking fish and recoils, banging her head.
Flipper then shows up, and she grabs onto his dorsal fin to get a ride out of underwater Dodge.
