They Call Him...

Can we talk about Flipper for a second? I'm gonna come straight out and say that I don't believe that he really was faster than lightening. Pretty quick? Sure, especially in his watery domain, but not faster than lightning certainly.

We started talking about Flipper at work here for some reason that I'm not really at liberty to explain. I know I watched it - kids with a park ranger dad and a dolphin (it's got hit all over hit) - but I honestly could not remember what the damn show was about save for that 9 word synopsis. Jennifer swears up and down that Flipper help solved crimes, which I find ludicrous. These so called crimes would all have to be water crimes would they not? I mean Flipper's not foiling bank robbers with his tail dancing and jumping for mackerel. No, no, Flipper's apparently busy stopping manatee poachers and pirates, nosing the occasional shark in the gills.

Jennifer said Flipper once stopped a boat by jumping all around it. I call bullshit. If you're a hardened water criminal, there's no way a frolicking dolphin is going to stop you.

I think the show creator's missed a golden opportunity here, follow me. Flipper is actually a military research dolphin that has escaped captivity only to be found by this well-meaning park ranger and his motherless sons. Flipper is hyper intelligent, as it says in the song, "no one you see, is smarter than he." Of course the song also says that he's faster than lightning. But wait! What if he actually was faster than lightning due to military experiments.

Flipper eventually figures out how to walk on land, and then how to use rudimentary tools. Then he learns how to design and build his own tools using the forge, lathe and oxy-acetylene welding torch in the ranger's garage. He's still out there solving the occasional crimes, but he makes it look like the kids actually foiled the bank robbers, or drug dealers, or eco terrorists. Occasionally, Flipper gets confused – what between his super intelligence and the military brain washing – and lures a pretty, naked chick out to the water only to drown her.

But Flipper’s crime fighting ways are beginning to garner attention from shadowy military figures still on the lookout for their missing dolphin project ZX-2119 and the chase is on.

Flipper is working on his eventual escape from his former tormentors, and from the ragingly stupid family he's ended up with. There will of course need to be a hostage situation where Flipper is forced to use the younger kid as a shield against his gun waiving old trainer who will scream, "he's been trained to find wonders under, under the sea! If we let him go he'll take over the world! It needs to end right here!"

I'm not going to ruin the ending for you.

Except to tell you that the older brother is forced to stab Flipper, with the very stabbing tool Flipper himself made and presented to the boy for a birthday present, in order to save his younger brother. The shadowy military figures slowly disappear with vague whispers of other projects involving sea otters. The two boys and their ranger dad lay Flipper to rest out in the sea and as the bloody body sinks to the bottom, we see the Son of Flipper cavorting with the corpse before leaping to the surface with a hellish dolphin squeal.


Song Stuck In My Head Right Now: The theme from Flipper. It’s my own fault really.