A true waste of a potential great cast. I have to blame the writers here. This sitcom seemed to have weekly shows minus its two chief attractions: Dean Jones and Jack Mullaney. There were several episodes that didn't even have the cast in them, just the guest star. One almost has the feeling that the cast were all waiting for their real shows to turn up. Maybe the writers sensed that and decided not to bother about scripts. Unfortunately, while most of the cast had careers, no one really made super star status. Dean Jones cranked out some Disney films but never had that one role. If anyone came close it was probably Beau Bridges. Among several service comedies, Ensign O'Toole found itself just another casualty. The show was in good company. Hennessey with Jackie Cooper, Abby Dalton, and Roscoe Karns was probably the success. Broadside with Kathleen Nolan, Mr. Roberts with Roger Smith, and Operation Petticoat with John Astin, Jamie Lee Curtis, and Jim Varney ( Hi there Vern)-just sank. A few out there might recall C.P.O. Sharkey with Mr. Warmth himself, Don Rickles only set sail for two seasons. Maybe Navy comedies aren't right or write for TV. You might catch Ensign O'Toole sailing the shores of MeTV or Cozi or Decades for a few episodes and be able to try and figure out what might have been.

The only episode I can remember involved a little runaway girl who stowed away on the ship. Dean Jones sang (not bad really!) "Thank Heaven For Little Girls" to her.Great supporting cast with Jack Albertson as the captain, Harvey Lembeck, Jay C. Flippen, and even Beau Bridges (I knew I'd seen him somewhere before). :-)

Ensign O' Toole ran on NBC for only 32 episodes during the 1962-63 season with reruns continuing through September 1964. It aired Sundays at 7:00 p.m. opposite CBS' "Lassie" and reruns of ABC's "Father Knows Best". The show was based on the books "All the Ships at Sea" and "Ensign O'Toole and Me" both by William Lederer, who served as a consultant on the series. The action took place on the fictitious "USS Appleby". The ship was portrayed by the real-life U.S. Navy destroyer USS Frank E. Evans (DD-754), which was commissioned on February 3, 1945. Tragically, a few years after the series, the ship was cut in half in a collision with the Royal Australian Navy aircraft carrier HMAS Melbourne on June 3, 1969. Her bow sank almost immediately, and her stern was sunk as a target in Subic Bay in the Philippines. 74 of the crew perished. Following the series, star Dean Jones went on to be a top Disney star from 1965-77.Reflecting upon the series, "Ensign O'Toole" had a talented cast of character actors but a star ill-suited for comedy. When the star of a sitcom isn't very involved in the laughs, it's hard to be successful. Nevertheless, there are a number of comical, enjoyable episodes found within the series. Some of the best, in my view, are in order of broadcast: "Operation Benefit", "Operation: Impersonation", "Operation: Souvenir", possibly the funniest scene in the series in wrecking Stoner's den at home in "Operation Re-enlist", and "Operation: Arctic". If you sit down with the series without high expectations that other military sitcoms of the era present, it's an enjoyable show.

I do remember the Stubby Kaye episode, but I think my favorite was the "destroyer syndrome" story.IIRC, a martinet transferred in from a carrier and immediately started upsetting the natural order of the ship with his demands for excessive military order and discipline. The crew, even O'Toole, decided he had to go and they immediately started going to great lengths to convince him that spaces in a destroyer were actually much smaller than they really are, in the hope that he would request transfer back to carrier service. Of course it worked.