Hawaii Five-O (1968-80) — Season 6 Episode Reviews

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RETURN TO THE SITE'S MAIN PAGE • COMPREHENSIVE INDEX

SEASON SIX (1973-1974) - QUICK INDEX

The numbering system below uses Season/Episode numbers, i.e., S01E01 = Season One, Episode One. It also includes the numbering system found in Karen Rhodes' Booking Hawaii Five-O. These are the numbers in (parentheses).

S06E01 (121) - Hookman (Jay J. Armes)
S06E02 (122) - Draw Me A Killer (Elliott Street, Audrey Totter, Susan Foster, Nora Marlowe, Tom Hatten)
S06E03 (123) - Charter For Death (Nehemiah Persoff, Bert Convy)
S06E04 (124) - One Big Happy Family (Slim Pickens, Barbara Baxley, Bo Hopkins, Robyn Millan)
S06E05 (125) - The Sunday Torch (Lyle Bettger, Tom Simcox, Kwan Hi Lim, Michael Anderson, Jr.)
S06E06 (126) - Murder Is A Taxing Affair (Don Porter, Sally Kirkland, Jack Dodson, Jenny Sullivan)
S06E07 (127) - Tricks Are Not Treats (Glynn Turman, Gregory Sierra, Ron Glass, Pat Morita)
S06E08 (128) - Why Wait Till Uncle Kevin Dies? (Lawrence Pressman, Lee Stetson, Murray Matheson)
S06E09 (129) - Flash Of Color, Flash Of Death (Don Knight, Al Avalon)
S06E10 (130) - A Bullet For El Diablo (A Martinez, Richard Yniguez, Richard Angarola)
S06E11 (131) - The Finishing Touch (George Voskovec, Lynn Carlin)
S06E12 (132) - Anybody Can Build A Bomb (Lew Ayres, Richard Angarola)
S06E13 (133) - Try To Die On Time (Louise Sorel, Fred Beir, Jack Carter)
S06E14 (134) - The $100,000 Nickel (Hildy Brooks, Eugene Troobnick, Victor Buono)
S06E15 (135) - The Flip Side Is Death (Peter Haskell, Don Stroud, Frank Liu)
S06E16 (136) - The Banzai Pipeline (Perry King, Rudy Diaz, Nicholas Hammond)
S06E17 (137) - One Born Every Minute (Ed Flanders, Michael Strong, Lynette Mettey)
S06E18 (138) - Secret Witness (Mark Jenkins, Mark Gordon, Mark Lenard, Cindy Williams)
S06E19 (139) - Death With Father (Andrew Duggan, Peter Strauss)
S06E20 (140) - Murder With A Golden Touch (Peter Donat, John Orchard, James Davidson, John Mamo, Haunani Minn, James J. Sloyan)
S06E21 (141) - Nightmare in Blue (John Beck, Katherine Justice, Alan Fudge)
S06E22 (142) - Mother's Deadly Helper (Anthony Zerbe, Frank Cady)
S06E23 (143) - Killer at Sea (John Byner, Keene Curtis, William Devane, Peter Leeds, Gail Strickland)
S06E24 (144) - 30,000 Rooms And I Have A Key (David Wayne)

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121. (S06E01) “Hookman” ★★★★

QUICK PLOT:

A man who lost his arms in an explosion at a bank robbery is out for revenge against the cops who he feels responsible for his predicament, including Steve McGarrett.

Click here to read Full Plot. Thanks to Bobbi for her help with the plots in this season!

REVIEW:

If there was no "Nine Dragons," this would be my favorite Five-O episode. It's a show that many people who viewed it when it was first broadcast still remember.

Kurt Stoner is one of the nastiest of Five-O's villains. He is played by real-life armless detective Jay J. Armes, who "cracked headline-making cases for Marlon Brando, Howard Hughes, Elizabeth Taylor, Yoko Ono and Elvis Presley", according to the cover of his 1976 autobiography. Many of the things Stoner does in the show seem designed to highlight Armes' considerable abilities with his hook hands.

Stoner's beef is with McGarrett and three other cops who confronted him years before during a bank robbery when he accidentally blew up his hands with explosives he was using to threaten the bank employees.

At the beginning of the show, Stoner kills Keoki, one of these four cops, who has part-time work accompanying funerals on Saturdays. Following this, we see Stoner clipping a newspaper headline from the Honolulu Advertiser which identifies him as a "roofstop sniper," and McGarrett later asks "How did the rifle end up on a rooftop?" But Stoner, when he shot Keoki, was actually on top of a hill, close to a cemetery. (The crosshairs of his rifle seem to be everywhere but on the target prior to the shooting.) The date on this newspaper is Tuesday, October 9, 1973 — a month after the show was originally broadcast.

McGarrett snaps his fingers more times than normal at the resulting first crime scene (at least 12 times) ... obviously he is very pissed!

After this, Donald (later Billy) Roessler briefly appears as McKinney, who engages in a wild gun battle with the cops, calling them "pigs" and Danno "big mouth" when the latter uses a bullhorn to try and persuade him to surrender.

Another cop from the bank robbery, Ookala, gets shot and killed during the confrontation with McKinney. He is played by Samuel Alama, who gives an excellent performance during his brief scene with McGarrett in the Five-O office earlier in the show.

Chin Ho later says McKinney, suspected of being connected to Keoki's murder, was on drugs, which "scrambled his brains," and since he just got out of jail, he is not the one who knocked off the two cops so far.

Stoner lures McGarrett and Danno to a pawnshop operated by Norm (Ben Whitehurst) where the two from Five-O are trying to track down where Stoner bought metal plates he affixes to rifles used for the killings with the officers' names stamped on them.

After Stoner takes shots from a building above, missing both men, McGarrett chases Stoner, who is driving a green Mustang, at speeds up to 90 miles an hour. Stoner and his car end up in the harbor. When the car is later recovered by a dive team, McGarrett sees one of Stoner's prosthetic arms which is still inside it and figures out what is going on.

He immediately puts in a call to the one remaining cop from the robbery detail, Larry Thompson. Central Dispatch says Thompson is "off duty," but when Danno appears a minute later, he tells McGarrett that Thompson, who we saw earlier at the McKinney shootout, is dead. It strikes me odd that Central Dispatch would not have known this.

Collectors of classic cars may be upset at seeing Stoner's Mustang being hauled out of the harbor. However, as Carl Walter points out: "The Mustang pulled from the water is a completely different car from the one used in the chase. Stoner drives a 1968 model, and the harbor car is from 1964 or 1965 — similar, but a different design, and likely a cheaper used car to dump in the water from a TV production standpoint."

The opening scene from the funeral procession with the casket falling out of the hearse is brilliant. Rod Baker, who co-wrote this episode, e-mailed me years ago: "The director didn't plan that shot. My writing partner, Glen Olson, and I watched the filming of the fish-tailing of the hearse. When they were ready to move to another location, Glen and I looked at each other and said something to the effect of 'why don't they film the coffin pitching out of the hearse.' Luckily, [executive producer] Leonard Freeman was on the set and overheard us. He said it was a great idea and wanted the shot. The director, Allan Reisner, complied and was not upset with our 'meddling'." Stuntman Beau Van Den Ecker is the driver of the hearse.

This episode has outstanding photography and Morton Stevens' best score for the series, which won an Emmy. All end credits from this one to the end of the series begin with "Starring Jack Lord."

EPISODE PROMO:

Click here to see the promo. Use the back key in your browser to return to this screen.

CASUALTY LIST:

Thanks to Bobbi for help with the Casualty Lists in this season. Where someone is injured seriously and they are not confirmed dead, a "best guess" may be made that they died from their injuries.

Death: HPD Officer Keoki shot dead by Kurt Stoner.
Death: McKinney shot multiple times by HPD and Five-O.
Death: HPD Officer Wayne Ookala sniped by Stoner.
Death: Painter's spinal cord is severed by Stoner after he inadvertently stumbles onto Stoner's perch where he is waiting for McGarrett.
Death: HPD Officer Larry Thompson shot in the head by Stoner.
Death: Stoner shot dead by Danno.

MORE TRIVIA:

• During the opening funeral procession, the "grieving widow" is seen sitting by the window on the driver's side of the hearse, but after the coffin flies out of it after the shooting, she is on the passenger side of the car.
• Why does Stoner have a key to the room which is located above Norm's store?
• When McGarrett is in Stoner's room near the end of the show, the picture on the wall showing Hookman with hands is one supplied by Armes himself where he was wearing cosmetic arms and hands for his real-life detective work.
• When Stoner returns to his fleabag apartment after his car ends up in the drink, he has serious injuries and bleeding on his face. But at the end of the show, when we see him climbing up the ladder to the top of a building, there is no sign of these injuries.
• McGarrett wants Che Fong to do a "Magnaflux" on Stoner's rifle that is used to kill Keoki, the first victim. This is a process by which metals are inspected for cracks or other defects using magnetic materials.
• Two headlines that Stoner pins to his wall are from the Honolulu Star-Advertiser. Unlike the one from the first killing, neither of these headlines has a date. While the name of the newspaper was bogus at the time the show was filmed, in 2010 it became a reality when the Honolulu Star-Bulletin and Honolulu Advertiser newspapers merged. Another newspaper from years before with the headline "Bank robber's hands blown off" is also from the Star-Advertiser. A headline from the top of this earlier paper reads "Solons revise welfare legislation."
• McGarrett wants a special bulletin made up regarding the metal plates that Stoner attaches to the rifles: "Send a copy to every jewelry store, trophy company, hardware and department store in the islands."
• Stoner's mug shot has the number 38956 and the date 6 73.
• A phone number of 589850 is seen hanging from above some store when Five-O is checking out the low-rent district to locate Stoner.
• When McGarrett and Danno are in Norm's store, at one point the time on a clock on the wall is around 8:42, but only a few minutes later, the time is 9:05. McGarrett later says that Stoner's car went "off that pier last night," but the car chase seems to take place in the daytime. Prior to McGarrett chasing Stoner, there is a crowd of people outside Norm's store, perhaps watching the filming. During the chase, McGarrett radios, saying that Stoner is "heading ewa [westward] on King Street," but the word "ewa" is missing from the subtitles.
• Stoner gets killed when he is on top of the Y. Anin Ltd. Building. There is currently an address of 1149 Maunakea Street in Honolulu for this location. A company called Minatoya Sukiyaki is also seen nearby, and it is located at 1152 Maunakea St. McGarrett and Danno are seen interviewing some guy at the corner of 1100 Maunakea St. and 100 North Hotel St.
• When Stoner engraves Ookala's name on the metal plate, he spells it "OoKALA." Ditto for McGARRETT later. The number of letters in his stamping kit is 27, one more than the normal alphabet, not enough to include upper and lower case characters.
• This show was remade during the third season of the new Five-0, using the original story by Baker and Olson as its basis. On the DVD containing this episode, there is a commentary by these two writers as well as Joe Halpin, who wrote the teleplay for the remake, and its director Peter Weller. There are some discrepancies in this commentary:
  ○ It is said that in the scene near the end of the original show where McGarrett breaks into Stoner's apartment, Jack Lord is carrying a nickel-plated .38 revolver given to him by Elvis Presley. The producers attempted to make this less obvious by spraying the shiny gun with hair spray. Presley gave Lord a gold-plated Walther PPK with ivory grips, not the sub-nosed .38 that McGarrett used in this scene. Here is the original gun license issued from the state of Hawaii.
  ○ A suitable cemetery for opening scene could not be found in Hawaii, so this sequence was filmed at the Signal Hill Cemetery in Long Beach, California. This was reportedly filmed at the O‘ahu Cemetery in Honolulu. If this was filmed in California, it is unlikely that "Filmed entirely on location in Hawaii" would have appeared at the end of the show.
  ○ When questions are raised about why McGarrett isn't at the shootout with McKinney, Danno says that he is with the Governor. In real life, this is because this sequence was filmed on Saturday, a day when Jack Lord did not work on the show. I was told that Jack Lord typically worked six days a week during filming of the show (Monday through Saturday). This does not preclude him not working on this particular day, though, assuming it was a Saturday.
  ○ Resident experts for the new show said that the Hawaiian-sounding name of "Ookala" does not exist. Baker and Olson suggested they got the name out of the Hawaiian phone book, or maybe inspired by the Florida town called Opa-Locka.
• Unlike the episode titles for the new shows, which are in Hawaiian and not seen during the program, not only was the title "Hookman" seen in the rebooted version, but the font used for this and the credits at the beginning of the show were similar to that on the old Five-O.
• Terry Plunkett, who appeared in 16 episodes of the original show, has a small part in the remake as the manager of a mailbox store.
• Peter Weller, who directed the new show's remake, said that this was one of his favorite episodes from the original series.

MUSIC:

Score by Morton Stevens (winner of Emmy Award).

The two times at the beginning of each line in the list below are when the cue appears in the show and the length of the cue. Click the arrow in the player to hear a suite containing these cues. To finish before the end, click the stop (‖‖) button. The number in red is the approximate time you will hear the cue in the suite.

#1, 00:59, 04:33, 00:00, Kurt Stoner walks across a cemetery, climbs a hill and knocks off HPD motorcycle cop Keoki, who leads a funeral procession; the hearse goes out of control and crashes into a car; Stoner flees the scene.
#2, 12:37, 02:02, 04:33, Stoner is seen engraving a plate for HPD officer Ookala to be affixed to the rifle used to kill him.
#3, 20:04, 01:03, 06:35, McGarrett and Danno go to roof of a building used by Stoner when he killed Ookala; leads to "Wave."
#4, 21:10, 00:11, 07:38, Beginning of Act Two; Forensics dusts the rifle used to kill Ookala; McGarrett is pissed.
#5, 23:40, 00:30, 07:50, Stoner engraves a plate with McGarrett's name on it.
#6, 25:05, 03:26, 08:19, Stoner is waiting when McGarrett and Danno come to a pawnshop, but he is interrupted by someone, who he kills; when the Five-O duo emerge from the store, Stoner shoots at them; leads to "Wave."
#7, 28:33, 00:50, 11:46, McGarrett is almost run over by the escaping Stoner, who he then pursues, but loses him.
#8, 35:31, 00:55, 12:36, McGarrett realizes that Stoner is the one behind the killings, wants to warn Larry Thompson, but Danno arrives to say that Thompson is now dead; leads to "Wave."
#9, 36:26, 00:18, 13:31, McGarrett explains about Stoner to the Governor.
#10, 38:44, 02:10, 13:49, The Five-O team scour the low-budget district trying to locate Stoner; McGarrett finally figures out where Stoner's apartment is.
#11, 45:05, 01:05, 15:59, When McGarrett goes to Stoner's room, Stoner taunts him over the phone and takes a shot at him.
#12, 48:35, 00:49, 17:04, McGarrett draws Stoner's attention, allowing Danno to kill him.

HOOKMAN SUITE — from demo tape

Part 1 • Part 2 •  Part 3

GALLERY:

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122. (S06E02) “Draw Me A Killer” ★★★�

QUICK PLOT:

A series of apparently motiveless slayings that occur at six-week intervals lead Five-O to the comic section of the daily newspaper.

Click here to read Full Plot.

REVIEW:

Arthur (Elliott Street) is very creepy — he's a "schizo" who is obsessed with Judy Moon, a comic strip heroine. He refers to himself as Judy's "guardian angel." Arthur goes around knocking off people in real life similar to those threatening Judy in the daily paper. The size of the comic strips in the paper he reads seem to be unusually large — there are only 5 strips per page.

Arthur works for Verna's Dog Grooming Parlor and drives the company truck, a Chevy van with the ubiquitous 732-5577 phone number on the side. The motto of this company is "Dogs are people too." The soundtrack has a thumping heartbeat-like noise whenever Arthur encounters people equivalent to those in the comics.

Ho Toy, the first person killed by Arthur in the show on October 2nd, is a pawnbroker whose shop is close to the 1100 block of Nuuanu Avenue. Born in Hilo 49 years ago, he is a known associate of criminals with twelve arrests, nine misdemeanors, three felonies, and one conviction for receiving stolen goods, but to Five-O, this doesn't qualify as a big deal. Like all of Arthur's victims, Ho is shot dead with three bullets at point blank range. He resembles the character of Ling Po, loan shark in the Judy Moon comic who is extorting money from Judy's grandmother. This story ran August 22nd to September 30th.

This is the third such killing in Honolulu recently, all of which were committed with the same gun, an automatic.

The first killing on July 8 was of a wholesome sailor named Loris Buchanan, who was serving on the USS Moulton and seeing Honolulu for the first time. He looked like a narcotics dealer in the comic who tried to get Judy Moon into trouble. That sequence ran May 30th to July 8th. The second death was of William King Royce, a respected and law-abiding bank vice-president, shot on August 19th. He was similar to Seth Hopkins, a crooked banker, who embezzled bank funds and tried to implicate Judy in a story which ran from July 9 to August 21st.

Five-O is totally stumped trying to make connections between these three victims. The only link is that the killings all took place about 6 weeks apart. Danno says they seem the work of "a weirdo."

Chin Ho finds that Royce's widow's name is mentioned in Ho Toy's ledger concerning a jade-and-diamond brooch, which prompts a visit by McGarrett and Ben to her house. She is a middle-aged bag with a blond-haired beach boy stud lying in a hammock beside her. The actress playing this role, Audrey Totter, was formerly a film noir blond bombshell in the 1940s. When the stud gets up to leave, she says "Go back to improving your mind, Bunny." She tells McGarrett she didn't pawn the brooch, which was stolen by her maid. She paid $400 to recover it. After enduring her sarcastic tone, McGarrett says "Thank you for your courtesy" and leaves.

Mrs. Royce's house is located at 4401 Kahala Avenue, today worth over $8 million. There is a fountain in front of the house, and the roof is exactly the same today as it is in the show with the semi-circular section protruding out (thanks to Fred Helfing).

There is soon another victim of Arthur's obsession, a lawyer named John Gerald Lott (George Kennedy, not the actor from Cool Hand Luke and the Airport and Naked Gun movies). With his beard, he resembles the comic-strip character Van Raennseler [sic], a shady lawyer who tries to cheat Judy Moon out of a $10,000 inheritance, and who refers to Judy as a "stupid girl."

Perhaps motivated by the fact that Arthur left a newspaper containing comic strips at Lott's murder scene under the lawyer's body, McGarrett has a major brainstorm in Robert Witthans' barber shop and realizes the "gimmick" behind the killings. He phones up Eddie Sherman to get back issues of the Judy Moon strip from the Honolulu Advertiser, which confirm his theory after the comic characters are compared to the real life people who were knocked off.

Five-O asks psychiatrist Dr. Bishop (Jean Tarrant) to produce a profile of the killer. She says the "paranoid schizophrenic" killer has "never been able to make it with a real live girl." According to her, this individual is "fantasizing life, living his out in the comic strip," and that he has "retreated from the real world because he felt it was against him. But he feels safe with Judy Moon. ... Like a powerful father figure, who takes care of her by killing her enemies. We find that schizos have been neglected or ignored as children. They've learned very early not to trust their parents. And, as they grow up, they trust no one."

When McGarrett condescendingly tells her "Doctor. Please, this isn't freshman psychiatry. Give me a description," she tells him, "He's probably young, slovenly, physically unimpressive. Maybe even ugly. Definitely no friends. And when you do find him, it'll be in the poorest section of town in some menial job. ... [And] unless you stop him, he'll probably kill again."

Five-O decides to lay a trap for Arthur. They fly in the artist who creates the Judy Moon strip, Tom Hatten (Lowell Palmer), who creates a new story with a character resembling Danno named "Officer Danny." Danno tells a very lame joke about how his character should be written into the strip's plot: "How about this cop who steals apples from an all-night market and mails the cores to Judy Moon?" Fortunately, Hatton is able to resist this idea, instead making the character a crooked cop with gang connections who is the gang's pipeline into police headquarters. When Judy finds out about this, she's got to be permanently shut up.

Once Officer Danny appears in the strip, Arthur starts hanging around HPD headquarters, and sees Danno on the day he is outfitted in a cop's uniform. Arthur has also previously spotted Mary Ellen Farmer (Susan Foster), a woman who resembles the object of his obsession, and has hassled her on the street, much to her annoyance. When she shows up at the cop shop, likely to complain about this, Arthur tries to prevent her from entering and she starts screaming, just as Danno and some other policemen are nearby. They chase after Arthur, but lose him.

Later, Danno is on patrol in the downtown area, followed closely by the other members of Five-O and Duke. Checking an alley, Danno is taunted by Arthur who insists that Officer Danny is up to no good. Arthur shoots seven times and misses Danno, who ducks down behind a box, but McGarrett plugs Arthur in the leg. As they wait for the ambulance, Arthur whines, "Who'll take care of Judy now?"

This is a very entertaining episode, and definitely something different. However, it has a very high number of "don't think too hard about this" moments. It is extremely unlikely that there would be characters in Hawaii in real life who are virtual duplicates of villains in a comic strip which is created on the mainland, even considering the fact that Arthur is just plain nuts and probably has the time to ferret out these people.

As well, there is something else to consider: Each "story" in the comic takes about 6 weeks to complete, and Judy Moon is constantly being put in these "Perils of Pauline" type situations. What happens at the end of these? Does Judy herself resolve whatever dilemma she is in? Or does someone else help her?

During a brainstorming session in the Five-O office, it is said there were 42 days between the sailor Buchanan's murder and that of the banker Royce, and another 42 days between Royce's and that of Ho Toy. But Chin Ho corrects Danno, saying, "Forty-three days, Danny. August the 19th to October the 2nd." But this is actually 44 days, 45 if you include the last day in the total.

There seem to be gaps in the episode's story line, because the lawyer's Lott's killing is "right on schedule," in other words, 42 days since the last murder. But then Hatten, the cartoonist, is brought in from the mainland and he is asked to start a new comic with "Officer Danny" which will only last for three weeks.

Usually a cartoon strip would be drawn out a long time in advance, so was there already a story started after the lawyer's murder? Did Hatten then incorporate the "Officer Danny" story line into a story which had already started? And where did Hatten create this strip, was it in Hawaii or back on the mainland? If it was in Hawaii, this would cause issues with how the artist's master copies of the strip would be sent to the office of the newspaper syndicate which distributes the cartoon, which would probably be in some place like New York or Chicago.

Questions ... questions!

WHAT DOES THE TITLE MEAN?

McGarrett tells Judy Moon artist Tom Hatten, "You're drawing us a killing." Strictly speaking, this is not correct, it is more like "Your drawing will provoke a killing, but we will (hopefully) catch the killer first."

EPISODE PROMO:

Click here to see the promo. Use the back key in your browser to return to this screen.

CASUALTY LIST:

Death: Ho Toy shot three times on October 2nd by Arthur becoming Victim #3.
Death: William King Royce shot three times by Arthur on August 19th, Victim #2 (not seen by us).
Death: Loris Buchanan shot three times by Arthur on July 8th, Victim #1 (not seen by us).
Death: John Gerald Lott shot three times by Arthur.
Injury: Arthur shot in the leg by McGarrett.

MORE TRIVIA:

• Buchanan's ship the USS Moulton is not a real vessel; its name pops up in Herman Wouk's novel The Caine Mutiny and also in the world of Star Trek.
• Two evidence photos showing the slugs removed from Ho Toy have the date of 6/7/73. But he was shot on October 2nd.
• Fred e-mails: "Ho Toy's shop is definitely on Hotel, but Google Maps don't go down Hotel. This is the closest I can get. Ho Toy's shop would be on the right of this block. We're essentially looking the same way that Arthur walks in the opening of the show. In a subsequent scene, Arthur drives his van down Maunakea, into this driveway, which is now sealed with a gate (KC Wong Building). The greenish blue thin bricks on the corner of the building are still the same color! The confrontation which Arthur has with Judy on the street is near Kalakaua and Young. There's a shot of a store called Shiseido which is some sort of cosmetic place in the background. That no longer exists, but it was located at 1516 King Street, which is at King and Kalakaua, just one short block down from Young."
• Where does Arthur get the large blowup of Judy on his wall? Did he draw it by hand himself? There are other comics pinned to his wall, including A Day at the Fair by "Rafael" and there is a strip from Andy Capp (a real comic). The first frame in A Day at the Fair which is pinned to the wall is also seen below the Judy Moon strip in the paper which Arthur leaves under Lott's body. Below that is another comic, the name of which ends with "and Runty." When McGarrett is in the barber shop, he grabs a newspaper, which is also from September 30th, the same issue found under Lott's body where the comic above Judy Moon is Captain Smith (no author indicated). The style of lettering in the bogus comics is often inconsistent from one panel to the next.
• Frustrated by the lack of progress with the case, McGarrett suggests Che Fong can add it to a book he is writing called "Famous Cases Five-O Never Solved."
• One of the Honolulu Advertiser newspapers containing the comic strips that Arthur reads has the headline "probe on Justice Dept." (with the word "probe" in lower case letters).
• When Arthur is looking for a lawyer who resembles the one in the comic strip, he tears out a section of the Yellow Pages where three lawyers' listings are seen: Peter A. Aduja, Agmata & Ing and Victor Agmata Junior. These are actual Honolulu lawyers. Peter Aduja was the first Filipino to hold a major elected office in the U.S. The phone numbers for these lawyers are not displayed, though their addresses are. Arthur visits two legal offices trying to find someone who looks like the villain in the strip: Gibson, Nickelson and Rush; and Tanaka, Chun and Hori. At the courthouse, he checks out two trials in progress: Ahuna vs. Anthony and State vs. Doris Hartley. In the second, the judge is D.F. Knight and Lott is the defense attorney.
• The music by Richard Shores uses some peculiar sounding instrument like an electric harpsichord.
• This show uses a shot of garbage being dumped from S04E02, "No Bottles...No Cans...No People."
• There is a sign at HPD headquarters with info about an "On-line Police Information System" ... presumably connected with the "Iron Brain." This system deals with things like stolen cars, wanted persons, activity reporting for manpower deployment, criminal history files, motor vehicle registration, driver licensing and NCIC information.
• When he is pursuing Arthur, Danno almost gets run over by a car, but the length of this guy's hair on the back is much longer than James MacArthur's.
• The police artist is identified as "Joe Donner," played by James Severson, who is uncredited in his first of three appearances on the show. He uses what looks like an Identi-Kit which has various suggestions for facial features, but he draws the picture manually. A thousand copies of this picture are circulated, but I don't think it is ever really used in the show.
• A good McGarrett quote: "Static is a way of life around here, Danno."
• The cop who handles the computer during the discussion with Dr. Bishop is "Walt" (Walter Yoshimitsu).
• Tom Hatten, who plays Palmer, the cartoonist, has his own Wikipedia page. He was an L.A. television host who hosted Popeye cartoons. In between the episodes, he would do interviews and give out Popeye trivia in addition to drawing Popeye cartoons, like he did with the Judy Bloom series. Hatten was left-handed.
• Near the end of the show in the background the Pantheon Bar can be seen which has a sign on its window saying that it is the "oldest bar in Honolulu," established in 1883. The top of the building has another date from when it was constructed, 1911. The narrow alley where "Officer Danny" has the confrontation with Arthur is right across from this bar.
• Danny's badge number in his hat is 1219.
• There is a stock shot of McGarrett driving from right to left beside the Ala Wai Canal. After he and Ben leave Mrs. Royce, McGarrett is filmed behind a fountain, something which upset Jack Lord during S11E19, "A Very Personal Matter."
• When McGarrett and Ben arrive at Mrs. Royce's, McGarrett knocks on the door and the maid opens the door almost immediately, as if she was standing right behind it, waiting for them.
• When Arthur is spying on "Judy" from the top of a building, you can see the famous revolving restaurant in the background.
• The show "Computer Killer" (S07E15) suggests that Arthur's last name is "Gish."
• As Danno is walking down the street, some guy, who is likely an informer, asks him if he wants to know about the location of a cockfight, but Danno cannot deal with this right then. The guy asking about this knows Danno's last name is Williams. Does this mean that Danno was actually a beat cop who dealt with this guy before joining Five-O? It's unlikely that Danno in his current position would be dealing with informers; that is more the job of people like Chin, Kono or Ben.
• During a discussion about the case with the other members of the team in the Five-O office, McGarrett is eating noodles.
• McGarrett is seen snapping his fingers three times.
• At the scene of Lott's murder, a large crowd is in the background watching the filming. Lott's body is out on the street, specifically where is not indicated. Did Arthur really shooth him dead in a public place like this?
• Chin smokes a pipe when he picks Hatton up from the airport.
• Mary Ellen Farmer works at the Guthrie Insurance Agency in the International Savings Building (Hotel and Bishop Streets). The street number of the building is 1022.
• There is an additional lame joke, in addition to Danno's about the apple cores. When the Five-O team are discussing the sailor Buchanan, it is remarked that he has "been drinking beer at Long John's Bar and Grill." Ben comments, "Grill? The only thing that's ever been cooked in that place is a toasted cheese-sandwich, dating back to Pearl Harbor." When McGarrett asks, "What were you doing in that place, Ben?", Ben replies, "I was testing the grill."

MUSIC:

Score by Richard Shores.

The two times at the beginning of each line in the list below are when the cue appears in the show and the length of the cue. Click the arrow in the player to hear a suite containing these cues. To finish before the end, click the stop (‖‖) button. The number in red is the approximate time you will hear the cue in the suite.

#1, 01:14, 02:34, 00:00, Arthur shoots Ho Toy dead, thinking he is Ling Po, who is "being mean" to comic strip character Judy Moon, then drives his company truck to dog grooming place where he works.
#2, 04:13, 04:46, 02:34 Arthur tells Judy in the comics she is now safe, crosses out Ling Po in a strip on his wall with an orange pencil.
#3, 07:19, 00:39, 07:20, McGarrett and Ben go to see Mrs. Royce, who they think has some connection to the killings.
#4, 10:33, 00:40, 07:59, McGarrett and Ben leave Mrs. Royce's; Arthur arrives late at his job.
#5, 12:25, 04:18, 08:39, Arthur reads current Judy Moon comic out loud; while at work, he stops for lunch, he sees a woman that looks exactly like Judy Moon (Mary Ellen Farmer); he follows her to her office; leads to "Wave."
#6, 17:49, 00:27, 12:57, Arthur hugs a pillow, talking to it like it is Judy Moon.
#7, 20:06, 03:37, 13:24, Arthur steals a telephone book and rips out page with lawyers; he goes to several legal offices, but gets frustrated; he then goes to court and sees a lawyer who is a dead ringer for the current comic strip villain; leads to "Wave."
#8, 23:45, 01:34, 17:01, Arthur follows lawyer to his office; the suggestion is that Arthur shoots the lawyer dead.
#9, 25:33, 00:21, 18:34, Arthur tells Judy she doesn't have to worry about the lawyer any more; McGarrett and Danno arrive at the murder scene with the lawyer's body.
#10, 28:05, 01:08, 18:55, McGarrett has a brainstorm in his barber shop; he phones Eddie Sherman to request back issues of the paper with the Judy Moon comic strip in them.
#11, 33:55, 00:08, 20:04, "Wave," end of Act 3.
#12, 35:41, 02:37, 20:11, Tom Hatten draws new Judy Moon story featuring "Officer Danny"; Arthur reads the strips out loud, then goes to HPD, looking for "Danny"; Danno is being outfitted as a cop.
#13, 38:35, 00:11, 22:49, Heartbeat as Arthur searches at HPD, a cop asks if he is looking for someone.
#14, 39:18, 00:23, 23:00, Arthur sees "Officer Danny" in uniform.
#15, 39:58, 02:19, 23:23, When Arthur sees Mary Ellen going towards HPD, he tries to stop her; she screams, alerting Danno and cops, but he escapes; Mary Ellen goes to H50 office.
#16, 42:42, 00:28, 25:42, Mary Ellen looks through mug books, with no luck.
#17, 43:46, 00:40, 26:10, Police artist Joe Donner constructs a sketch of Arthur.
#18, 44:50, 02:10, 26:50, H50 team follows Danno as he walks a beat.
#19, 48:07, 01:24, 29:00, Arthur attracts Danno's attention and shoots at him; McGarrett shoots Arthur in the leg.

GALLERY:

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123. (S06E03) “Charter For Death” ★★★★

QUICK PLOT:

A gangster, his daughter and son-in-law arrive in Hawaii infected with bubonic plague, which results in the Governor sealing off the island.

Click here to read Full Plot.

REVIEW:

This episode seems particularly topical around the time I am re-viewing it in 2020. On the day I watched the show, China announced a herdsman in the Chinese region of Inner Mongolia was confirmed to be infected with bubonic plague. And then there is the coronavirus raging havoc all around the world with particular circumstances in Hawaii, where the islands are under strict quarantine.

The show begins with McGarrett on board the Cape Corwin, his hair tossed around something fierce, investigating an abandoned yacht called the Marie C�line floating adrift in Honolulu harbor. Jumping on to this boat with Lieutenant Talbot (Norman Dupont), McGarrett discovers three crew members who have been killed as well as a lot of rats, some of which are also dead. McGarrett recognizes symptoms of bubonic plague which he encountered in Korea in at least one of the dead crew.

There is a lot of movement in this episode, which is directed by Five-O stalwart Michael O'Herlihy. After checking out the yacht, McGarrett is flown by helicopter to the US Department of Health at a nearby naval base. The dead rats are analyzed and a doctor tells McGarrett that yersinia pestis, the bacteria that causes the plague, were found in every one of them: "We have to assume that the entire ship was swarming with fleas carrying the plague bacillus and that you and Talbot were infected. And one flea bite, just one, would be enough. That means isolation. The incubation period is two to six days."

McGarrett winds up in a hastily-organized command center, directing the investigation not only of the murders of the three crew members, but also the disappearance of three passengers who left articles of clothing behind on the Marie C�line.

Meanwhile, Danno leads the other members of the team, including Che Fong, who determine that the boat's voyage originated in Papeete, Tahiti and its logs are all phony, indicating "it's [sic in the subtitles] cruise was to be entirely in Tahitian waters." Fingerprints taken from a belaying pin used to club one of the crew are those of Leo Paoli, a French citizen born in Corsica who was underboss for the Midwest syndicate operating out of Youngstown, Ohio, and who was deported back to Corsica after he was convicted of income tax evasion in 1969. Paoli's only family is his daughter Teresa, 26, who is married to Thomas Brown, reputed to be a syndicate accountant in Youngstown where the two of them still live.

Paoli (Nehemiah Persoff), Teresa (Jeannine Brown) and Thomas (Bert Convy) have all come ashore, and are staying in a low-budget motel, The Royal Palm, described as "a crummy joint." Teresa is deathly ill with pneumonic plague, which her husband dismisses as "just a cold � a touch of the flu from being in that lifeboat." He has booked a flight for them back to the mainland on United Airlines at 2:30 p.m. the next day, but Paoli says, "She ain't going on no airplane tomorrow, I can tell you that." He tells Brown to get a doctor, which his son-in-law dismisses because they will then be exposed to the cops. Failing that, Paoli tells Brown to use his "connection on this stinking island," a guy named Jiro Tamaki (Nephi Hannemann).

After making some phone calls, Danno quickly figures out what is going on — Paoli, Teresa and Thomas all left for Tahiti the same day from Corsica and Youngstown respectively, with the intention of chartering a boat in Papeete and coming to Hawaii where the three of them would return to the mainland, acting like tourists returning from a trip.

After two kids, not including Rene Abellira, find the abandoned lifeboat that the three used to come ashore and spend some time rowing around in it, they are noticed by a Navy helicopter who quickly take the kids away to be isolated and the boat to be disinfected, since it contains dead rats.

Confirmation that the three fugitives came ashore is bad vibes for the Governor, who goes on TV to announce:

"My fellow citizens, yesterday an abandoned sailing vessel was sighted off the shores of Oahu. Upon being boarded, it was discovered that the captain and two crew members had been murdered. It was also discovered that the ship carried bubonic plague. Now, the vessel was immediately decontaminated and of itself, no longer represents a danger. However, further investigation indicates that three survivors have landed on Oahu. And these people do present a danger to all of us.

"A few words about the nature of bubonic plague are in order. In medical terms, the disease is called a zoonosis, meaning one primarily of rodents. It is transmitted from animal to animal by certain types of fleas � The danger lies in the distinct possibility that the survivors from the ship have been bitten and infected by germ-laden fleas. If so, and if the survivors remain untreated, the infectious organism could reach their lungs and develop into pneumonic plague. And I am advised by public health authorities � pneumonic plague does not need the flea as a carrier. It can be passed from person to person by infectious droplets or sputum.

"In spite of the seriousness of this situation � visitors to the island [should] remain calm. Panic is as much our enemy as the disease itself. Antibiotics can prevent the disease and inoculation centers are already being established throughout the island �

"Therefore I have ordered a total quarantine of the island of Oahu. All airline traffic is immediately canceled. Inbound flights are being diverted to other islands. All private aircraft are grounded. All ships, including private pleasure craft, will remain in port. And under no circumstances is anyone permitted to leave the island of Oahu."

Some of this speech is overheard in the usual coincidental manner by Paoli and Brown at the motel.

In another fast-moving scene, Five-O and HPD do a blitz of houses on the beach near the place where the kids found the lifeboat. Chin talks in Chinese to a woman who encountered Brown earlier and recognizes his photo. She gave Brown the name of her favorite cab company.

While this has been going on, Thomas has been tracking down his pal Tamaki, trying to arrange transportation off Oahu, where the flights have been cancelled, meeting Tamaki outside the Oceania Floating Restaurant. He figures maybe they can be taken to one of the other islands, which are not under quarantine. Tamaki wants at least $25,000 to arrange something; Brown has nowhere near this amount, but pleads with Tamaki that he will pay him back later and put in a good word for him with the mainland Mob. Brown also has been to one of the inoculation centers that have been set up where he gets a shot and steals a couple of needles with vaccine.

However, when Brown returns to the motel, Teresa has passed away in a particularly gruesome scene and her father is distraught. Paoli says that Brown killed his daughter because he couldn't get her a doctor and accuses Brown of intending to knock him off as well after they get to the States and recover the $5 million that was left from before he was deported. Brown offers to give Paoli one of the needles with tetracycline in it in exchange for the keys to the safety deposit box containing the money which Paoli has on a chain around his neck. When Paoli pulls a knife on Brown, Brown shoots him. Before he drops dead, Paoli spits all over Brown. (If you do a freeze frame at this point, it looks like Paoli really does spit all over him.)

Five-O manage to track down the motel via the cab driver that took the three there, but Brown has already fled the scene. He later meets Tamaki at an "all-night grindhouse" showing porno movies. Tamaki has arranged for Brown to be picked up by a helicopter at Makapuu Point.

Ben has already tailed Tamaki to the theatre, Five-O having figured out that he is Brown's "man" locally. Danno and HPD soon follow. Brown, seeing the commotion outside as Tamaki leaves and is cornered on the street, goes out the theater's back door and grabs a cab. Tamaki acts dumb, but when Danno suggests that Tamaki may now be infected himself, he changes his tune.

Five-O hurries to Makapuu Point, via the usual single-lane road, where the helicopter arrives to pick up Brown. There is a brief exchange of gunfire between Danno and Brown where Brown is hit and clings to the helicopter's skid. Some guy inside the copter grabs Brown's jacket, but as they fly out over the ocean, Brown's sleeve rips and he plunges to his death in the water below.

The acting by Convy, Persoff and Jeannine Brown is first-rate. As well, Don Ray's score for the show is excellent. Ray uses mandolins to suggest Paoli's Corsican background, a nice touch. The music at the beginning where we see the rats on the yacht is creepy. There is a very cool section which accompanies Ben's pursuit of Tamaki's car. Click here to hear this, and other music from the end of the show. (1:42 - Cops and H50 hassle Tamaki, Brown escapes; 2:25 - Tamaki says Brown has gone to Makapu'u, the scene switches there; 3:10 - Brown tries to escape, falls into ocean, Danno calls McGarrett who calls the Governor.)

CASUALTY LIST:

Death (x3): Charter crew killed on boat — two shot, the third clubbed to death.
Death: Teresa Brown falls ill after being on the Marie Celine, she later dies of pneumonic plague.
Death: Leo Paoli shot twice by Thomas Brown.
Injury: Paoli spits on Brown to give him bubonic/pneumonic plague.
Death: Brown shot by Danno while on helicopter skid, falls into the Pacific.

MORE TRIVIA:

• There is no promo for this episode on the sixth season DVD set. Whether one actually exists is not known.
• The Rose Theatre on Maunakea Street where Tamaki meets Brown shows "Films direct from Denmark," including Dirty Lovers. The poster for this film says "The French they are a funny race." Admission to the theater is $3.00. The film which is playing as Brown waits in the theatre has banal dialogue including the expression "Dismount native" and mediocre music. Some of the other posters for movies on the outside of the theatre, all X-rated, are for Running With The Devil, Black Love, Gun Runner and Super Salesman. Opposite the theater is a sign indicating 1161 Maunakea.
• In the subtitles on the DVD set at the beginning of the show, Talbot says "I'll check the foxhole," meaning the ship's forecastle (upper desk) or foc's'le. There is another goof where Danno is talking to Chin and says "Paoli left Paris for Tahiti the same day Brown and his wife left Youngstown for Papeete," but the subtitles say "They only left Paris the same day...," suggesting all three of them left the French city, which is not correct.
• Keith Bailey points out in the public inoculation scene, "The nurse places the used needles right next to the unused needles! No nurse would do that — she would immediately put the used needle into a medical waste container."
• The HPD computer is seen, once with the usual stock shots, another where the computer technician is punching in data to show photos of gangsters.
• When Danno asks Che Fong,"How's your French?," Che replies, "About as good as your Chinese."
• The Manoa Cab Company has the usual default phone number: 732-5577.
• Tamaki uses the expression "lying son of a b...", cutting off at the last second. Tamaki's car with the license number 8E-8198, is seen in the previous episode driven by the lawyer who gets shot by Arthur, the lead character.
• It looks like Beau Vanden Ecker is behind Convy when the latter is firing a gun from the outside of the helicopter that picks up his character at Makapuu Point (see Gallery picture #12 below).
• The Governor has a blue "batphone."
• At the beginning of the show, you can see the corpse of the crew member taken from the yacht breathing when it's on a slab at the morgue.
• In the room where McGarrett is quarantined, the clock is made by General Electric. McGarrett refers to Brown as "a rat in a cage," an ironic comment.
• The intercom connected to a phone that Danno and Ben are using in the Five-O office is made by some company which ends with "Telecommunications." The actual company name is covered by a piece of tape.
• When Steve and the Coast Guard enter the boat's cabin, the "rats" are little brown field mice, yet when their "corpses" are dumped out of the toolbox they are full size rats (thanks to Annette).
• If McGarrett suspected bubonic plague on the yacht, I wonder why he gets inside the helicopter after he is lifted up to it with the basket. Surely the people in the helicopter would then be exposed to the disease. When the copter lands at the naval base, there are several guys escorting McGarrett who have protective masks and so forth, but the doctor accompanying them has no such protection.
• As the cops and Five-O arrive at the beach before canvassing the residents about the arrival of the three from the yacht, you can see the shadow of the camera equipment in the sand (around 27:28). The Chinese lady that Chin Ho talks to was been seen two episodes earlier where she was also asked about a suspect (Hookman).

MUSIC:

Score by Don B. Ray.

The two times at the beginning of each line in the list below are when the cue appears in the show and the length of the cue. Click the arrow in the player to hear a suite containing these cues. To finish before the end, click the stop (‖‖) button. The number in red is the approximate time you will hear the cue in the suite.

#1, 01:54, 02:01, 00:00, McGarrett and Lt. Talbot board the Marie C�line to find murdered crew members and a lot of rats.
#2, 05:21, 00:57, 02:01, A rat falls from a shelf; outside, McGarrett recognizes the symptoms of bubonic plague.
#3, 08:23, 00:57, 02:58, Rats are dumped in a sink; the ship is disinfected.
#4, 09:55, 00:35, 03:54, Members of the Five-O team and Che Fong start investigating.
#5, 11:36, 00:15, 04:29, The investigation continues, Danno talks to Doc.
#6, 13:50, 00:31, 04:45, Experts on the weather and tides are consulted.
#7, 14:54, 00:14, 05:16, McGarrett contacts the Governor with "bad news."
#8, 15:43, 00:17, 05:30, If the infected people aren't recovered by the next day, Oahu will have to be sealed off; leads to "Wave."
#9, 17:36, 00:56, 05:47, Danno updates McGarrett on presence of Leo Paoli and Thomas Brown.
#10, 19:20, 01:29, 06:43, Paoli, Brown and Teresa in motel; Teresa is very sick.
#11, 21:39, 00:09, 08:12, Kids find lifeboat used to get from yacht to Oahu, there is a dead rat in the boat.
#12, 23:53, 00:09, 08:21, McGarrett talks to Governor again; leads to "Wave."
#13, 24:03, 00:13, 08:31, Governor goes on TV to announce quarantine; Brown and Paoli hear this announcement; Paoli tells him to go and get a doctor.
#14, 27:07, 00:48, 08:44, Cops and H50 go to beach area where Paoli, Brown and Teresa came ashore; Brown goes to inoculation center.
#15, 30:32, 00:29, 09:32, Brown meets Tamaki at the floating restaurant, he wants to get off the island.
#16, 33:50, 00:35, 10:01, At the motel, Teresa dies; Paoli is distraught.
#17, 35:16, 00:53, 10:36, Brown returns to the motel with medicine, but it is too late; Paoli accuses Brown of being after his money.
#18, 36:43, 00:25, 11:29, Paoli is showing symptoms of the plague, Brown tells him he is a dead man; Brown shoots Paoli.
#19, 37:24, 00:39, 11:54, Brown takes keys from Paoli's body for safety deposit box on mainland; leads to "Wave."
#20, 40:21, 01:19, 12:33, Banal music from movie in grind house.
#21, 42:55, 01:42, 13:52, Ben tails Tamaki (one of my favorite cues!); Tamaki arrives at grind house.
#22, 44:43, 01:02, 15:34, Banal music from film as Brown gives Tamaki cash; cops and H50 hassle Tamaki outside theater; Brown escapes.
#23, 46:46, 02:49, 16:36, Brown gets to Makapuu; helicopter arrives and he attempts to board it, but is shot by Danno; Brown falls into ocean; Danno calls McGarrett who calls Governor, saying it's OK to open up Oahu again.

GALLERY:

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124. (S06E04) “One Big Happy Family” ★★★★  BOOK THEM 

QUICK PLOT:

A serial killer family, having left a trail of death on the mainland, start a new wave of terror when they reach Hawaii.

Click here to read Full Plot.

REVIEW:

This is a very creepy episode about the white trash serial killer Ferguson family who arrive in Hawaii after murdering 125 people and stealing $40,000 in 24 states during the last three years on the mainland. They are constantly moving from place to place, and, incredibly, their fingerprints are not on file anywhere like a motor vehicle license bureau, or with the military or police.

Five-O character actor William Bigelow as Nomana, front desk man at the Royal Hawaiian Hotel where the family first stays after they come to Honolulu, tells McGarrett near the end of the episode, "They're not normal people."

To keep themselves in cash, their MO is to get mundane jobs and, after a few days, murder co-workers and rob the money on hand. The family consists of paterfamilias Sam (Slim Pickens), matriarch Sadie, who is the real manager of their crime sprees (Barbara Baxley), their son Jeb (Bo Hopkins), Jeb's slutty blonde wife Rosalie (Robyn Millan) and their "slow" daughter Monica (Lynette Kim, in her only acting role). All of them play their parts to perfection.

Rosalie's libidinous father-in-law Sam refers to her as "nudie girl." While she is wearing a $56 bikini which Sam says "must figure out to about $10.50 a square inch," he grabs her and kisses her in front of his wife, saying this is OK, because they are "not blood kin." Rosalie tells him that he should brush his teeth. Some of the camera angles of Rosalie suggest she is almost naked. Jeb later calls her "sexpot." She calls him "H-bomb."

While the family eats lunch at the Royal Hawaiian, Sadie is shocked at a couple behind them: "She's eatin' with an Oriental — that white woman ... got no shame at all!" She tells her husband, "Next place we get to, I want you to make sure first it's for white folks only."

The family's first venture into crime on Oahu is after Sam takes a job at the Malabar Cafe as a dishwasher. The place's owner and his cook are brutally murdered with their throats slit and the take is estimated at $250. Following this, Jeb takes a job in a gas station where he bludgeons the owner with a wrench and steals what Five-O later describes as "nickels and dimes."

The family relocates to Hilo on the Big Island, where Rosalie applies to work at a hairdressing salon. Its owner is Ren� (Ric Marlow). He is stunned by the sight of Rosalie in short pants. When she asks him, "Wanna try me?" he replies, "You know I do, baby ... you're coolsville, baby." Ren�, who was a pimp before he took a job in the "cockamamie barbershop," wants her to work for him, offering her "the slickest car you've ever seen." When the amount of money Rosalie brings home from her new job isn't what Sam expects, he gets Monica to spy on her, which results in him and Jeb confronting Ren�, who gets stabbed to death.

Artists' sketches of Jeb and Rosalie produce results from the mainland, where they are wanted in connection with a coin laundry robbery in Dubuque, Iowa along with the rest of the family for "third-grade robberies and first-class murders" in numerous other states. By this time, the five are on Maui, where they decide to head back to the mainland after Jeb sees some cops snooping around, asking questions and showing pictures to local people. However, this is not before Rosalie hustles a tourist named Harry Bronson (Alan Krassner), telling him she needs a thousand dollars "awful bad." Bronson ends up dead with his wife in their hotel room with their throats cut after Jeb confronts him.

McGarrett gets the Five-O team to distribute copies of the sketches to personnel at the airports and harbor. When the Fergusons return to Oahu on their way home, they are nabbed because an inspector finds the plastic cover of a phonebook which Monica stole from the Royal Hawaiian in her suitcase.

Brought to the Five-O offices, Rosalie spills the beans on the rest of the family, telling them "I had a chance to make it big twice and you ruined it, and I'm gonna get you for it!" Sadie starts to physically attack Rosalie, telling Jeb, "I told you you shouldn't have married her. She's trash. Always was trash. And disloyal to the folks that took her in."

McGarrett asks the family if the fact they are being charged with over 150 murders has any effect on them. He is appalled when Sadie says, "They wasn't kin ... they was all strangers ... it don't count with strangers.... It ain't stealing when they was dead first."

The outstanding score by Stevens features a dissonant, sinister solo violin reminiscent of Stravinsky's Histoire du Soldat where this instrument is associated with the devil. It also brings to mind Jerry Goldsmith's classic score to the Twilight Zone episode "The Invaders," which also featured an angular solo violin.

It is very likely that this show was based on a real case. The episode admits as much during its promo where Jack Lord describes it as "an extraordinary fact-fiction Five-O that will strike terror." Click here to read an excerpt that comes from a book about a murder spree in the 1970s by the McCrary family of Athens, Texas whose victims numbered somewhere between 12 and 24. Their crimes mostly involved robberies of donut shops, along with kidnapping and rape. In the show, McGarrett says the number of murders was over 150 by its finale, though this doesn't add up, because they had killed an estimated 125 by the time they came to Hawaii and only killed 6 more during the episode that we are aware of.

EPISODE PROMO:

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CASUALTY LIST:

Death (x2): George Wing Lu and the cook at Seaside Inn murdered, their throats cut.
Death: Gas station manager killed, hit on head with a wrench by "Jeb Connery".
Death: Ren� killed by Jeb with a knife.
Death (x2): Mr. and Mrs. Harry Bronson throats cut by Jeb at Royal Wailuku Hotel on Maui.

MORE TRIVIA:

• Danno made notes on the victims of the first murder, which he gives to McGarrett. The owner of the restaurant was Wing Lu, the cook was B. Oseransky, same as Bernard, the show's unit production manager.
• A teletype sends information about the family from the mainland. The report starts with "1970," but the subtitles on the DVD set, because this word said by Danno is hard to hear, instead say "1870."
• Ric Marlow's beauty parlor is supposedly located on the island of Hawaii, but when Rosalie comes through the front door to inquire about a job, you can see Toyo's Superette in the background. This was a local landmark located at East Manoa Road and Keama Place in Honolulu (you can see the Keama Place road sign as well) which closed in the late 1990's. On "Hawaii" and "Maui," HPD cop cars are seen. There are a lot of spectators watching the filming at some of the crime scenes.
• When the family is about to get on a plane for the mainland at the end of the show, they have to pass through a luggage security check, which is how they get caught, and walk through a gate. According to Wikipedia, "[I]n late 1972, the Federal Aviation Administration required that all airlines begin screening passengers and their carry-on baggage by January 5, 1973."
• Sam, Sadie and Rosalie smoke.
• When Rosalie thinks about Ren�'s offer, there is minor damage on the print on the right which is noticeable in both the original TV broadcasts and the season six DVD set.

MUSIC:

Score by Morton Stevens.

The two times at the beginning of each line in the list below are when the cue appears in the show and the length of the cue. Click the arrow in the player to hear a suite containing these cues. To finish before the end, click the stop (‖‖) button. The number in red is the approximate time you will hear the cue in the suite.

#1, 01:01, 00:10, 00:00, Lobby of the Royal Hawaiian Hotel.
#2, 04:29, 00:56, 00:10, Sam gets a job as a dishwasher.
#3, 06:13, 01:19, 01:05, Danno, Ben and Chin at the first murder scene.
#4, 12:20, 02:18, 02:24, Background Hawaiian music as the Fergusons eat lunch, commenting on the "Oriental" guy nearby.
#5, 15:11, 00:28, 04:42, Jeb kills owner of gas station where he has gotten a job; Wave at end of Act One.
#6, 17:26, 00:40, 05:10, Monica steals a phone book cover.
#7, 18:43, 00:18, 05:50, The Fergusons move to the Big Island.
#8, 20:08, 00:48, 06:07, Sam and Jeb scope out Ren�'s Beauty Shop; Rosalie goes to get a job there.
#9, 28:09, 00:33, 06:55, Monica spies on Rosalie at her new "job."
#10, 30:37, 00:18, 07:28, Sam and Jeb murder Ren�; Wave at end of Act Two.
#11, 30:58, 00:15, 07:46, Aftermath of another murder scene.
#12, 32:30, 00:18, 08:01, The Fergusons go to Maui.
#13, 35:15, 00:34, 08:19, Jeb works on the docks; a telex comes to the Five-O office.
#14, 36:44, 00:53, 08:53, Jeb works on the docks, cops nearby are checking.
#15, 39:03, 03:03, 09:46, Rosalie hustles some guy; Jeb takes the guy at knife point to his room to kill him; Wave at end of Act Three.
#16, 42:07, 00:10, 12:49, Nomana from the Royal Hawaiian calls McGarrett: "They're not normal people."
#17, 46:14, 00:43, 12:59, The Fergusons are nabbed at the Honolulu Airport as they return.
#18, 48:40, 00:55, 13:42, Final scene in the Five-O office, "It ain't stealing when they was dead first."

GALLERY:

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125. (S06E05) “The Sunday Torch” ★★�

QUICK PLOT:

A young man who fits the classic profile of a pyromaniac is carefully set up in what appears to be a foolproof frame.

Click here to read Full Plot.

REVIEW:

This show has a convoluted plot which gives some of those on the Five-Zero reboot a run for the money.

Otis Klepper (Lyle Bettger) owns a pharmaceutical company where a government inspection of his plant is pending over some drugs manufactured for the military which caused more than 25 cases of hepatitis because of substandard materials and cheap production methods.

To cover this up, Klepper hires a pyromaniac, Anthony Porter (Tom Simcox), to start a series of fires on Sundays and then film spectators who show up at them on the assumption, perhaps based on the theory that "it takes one to know one," that these people get their kicks out of watching burning buildings. (There is no indication as to how Klepper, "one of the most successful businessmen on the islands," knew how to hire Porter.)

From the films he makes, Porter does notice one such person, Ray Stokely (Michael Anderson Jr.), a young man from the mainland with a troubled past, who is seen at several of the fires. How Porter manages to find out details about Stokely's background is a good question, because when McGarrett wants similar information from psychiatrist Dr. Bishop (Jean Tarrant, seen in the same role in "Draw Me A Killer"), he has to apply for a court order to get them.

Once Klepper has decided to use Stokely as a patsy for the soon-to-happen fire which will destroy his warehouse and the defective drugs, he gets his wife Helen (Jo Pruden) to don a blonde wig and encounter Ray at the local unemployment office, since they also know somehow that he is desperate for work and unlikely to get hired because of his past. Helen pretends to be "Carolyn Rogers, special caseworker," who directs Ray to her husband's company, where he is quickly hired in the shipping department. However, not long after this, Ray is accused of stealing drugs when his car trunk is found to contain $200 worth of product that he has ripped off from the assembly line. Ray is highly agitated by this.

Helen, again pretending to be the concerned Rogers, meets Ray later — on a Sunday! — saying, "I'm just furious at those people for blaming you without giving you a fair hearing. Anyway, something else has come up, but we'll have to move fast. The employer has a boat concession on the Ala Wai, and he'd like you there for an interview." She drives him to the docks and lets him into a shack, where she locks him inside.

Around this time, Porter is preparing to set Klepper's warehouse on fire, but there is a serious complication. Alfred Johnson, a security guard (stuntman Chuck Couch), is alerted by some noise and while investigating, is knocked out by Porter. Johnson is trapped in the building after the fire is ignited and escapes, but he is horribly burned and later dies of his injuries.

Five-O has been investigating the Sunday fires. When they ask Klepper who might have set his warehouse on fire, he is hard-pressed to think of anyone, then suddenly realizes that it might be Stokley, who he recently fired. When Five-O go to Stokley's place, they find several cans of Teffrin paint thinner which were delivered the day before. This is the same liquid which was used to start the warehouse fire.

Ray is released from the waterfront shack by Helen, but he is soon picked up by the cops. The films that Porter made of the fires where Ray is plainly visible have been dropped off at one of the local newspapers; no one seems to find this suspicious or peculiar at all. When these films are shown to Ray in the Five-O office, he cannot deny his interest in the blazes. On his way to Detention from McGarrett's office, Ray notices a newspaper which has a picture of Klepper and his wife without her blonde wig. There is no logical reason why this newspaper just happens to be there, or why the couple's picture seems to be prominently featured.

When McGarrett finds out about the contaminated medicine, he invites the Kleppers to his office to view the films, and Otis identifies Ray easily. McGarrett brings up the medicine, based on information he received from the military, and mentions the investigation which will no longer happen because of the fire. Klepper pooh-poohs all this, saying "You can't prove a thing against me." He reacts differently when McGarrett tells him that Johnson has died, so the charge connected with the fire is no longer arson, but murder.

McGarrett pulls a blonde wig out of a box, similar to the one that Helen wore in her role as Rogers. She refuses to put it on, but when Ray comes in the room, he confronts her with the wig and realizes who she is. Klepper, finally realizing his best deal is to turn state's evidence regarding the firebug he hired, spills the beans.

The end of the show is ridiculous in terms of time-compression. Despite the fact that Porter is on his way to the airport, McGarrett manages to set up a scam fire which is just off the road leading there, knowing that Porter cannot resist taking a look. Porter pulls off the freeway, and McGarrett appears out of mist generated by a couple of cops with smoke machines, telling him, "What's the rush, Mr. Porter? Where's the fire?" It is amazing that McGarrett knew exactly which road Porter was taking.

In their quest to find out who is behind the fires, Five-O has help from Marty Portobas (Kwan Hi Lim, in almost a guest-star role) as well as numerous cops who monitor the downtown of Honolulu on Sundays from vantage points. Portobas, a fire investigator who carries a gun in one scene, tells McGarrett that the most likely person starting the fires is someone who is "transient, unemployed, product of broken homes, often sexually confused � sometimes the fire, or even thinking about it, can give them the only sexual satisfaction they can achieve." As Danno and Portobas are out on a Sunday expecting to find another fire, and are suddenly alerted to one, they do an incredible U-turn in the middle of the street in Portobas' Chevrolet Impala.

There are plenty of stock shots of fires and firemen in the show, and it looks like the producers used almost every stock shot of cop cars that ever appeared on Five-O including the one turning the corner by the church, which appeared in another Sunday-themed show, "Savage Sunday."

McGarrett is very uncompromising in the episode, acting as if the case against Ray is totally closed. He has no luck getting Dr. Bishop, who is counselling Ray, to voluntarily open Ray's files to him, even after suggesting that "a Sunday school full of kids [or a] hospital with non-ambulatory patients" might be wiped out by an upcoming conflagration. Bishop continues to fight for Ray's rights, telling McGarrett that she thinks her patient is innocent based on his current treatment.

McGarrett's grilling of Ray really approaches the proverbial third degree. But he reverts to his usual self when Bishop challenges him to read Ray's files (which he now has thanks to his court order) to show that he is not guilty, and when Che Fong finds Ray's fingerprints all over the inside of the shack, proving that he might not have been at the warehouse when the fire was started, which we know to be the case.

EPISODE PROMO:

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CASUALTY LIST:

Death: Guard Alfred Johnson badly burned in Klepper Pharmaceutical warehouse fire, later dies of his injuries.

MORE TRIVIA:

• Around 10:52 on the DVDs when McGarrett is in Bishop's office, there is some peculiar framing on the left side of the screen.
• After the drugs are found in Ray's car's trunk, he is escorted off the company's property through a gate. What happens to his car? He is never seen driving it again in the show.
• Ray's address is 2301-A1 Ohia Street.
• On the front page of The Honolulu Advertiser with the picture of the Kleppers, there are a couple of headlines: "Council votes itself a raise — 20 per cent increase starts January 1977" and "Panel kills divorce residency."
• In one scene, McGarrett wears a green sweater with a crest on it that looks like it is from a high school or college.
• Lippy Espinda plays a fire suspect who is actually the janitor of a school who sneaks into a building via a window because he forgot his key.
• The music is by Ray; the violin theme is heard, normally and in a slow arrangement near the show's end. The Five-O theme is also heard briefly near the end.
• Is it stuntman Couch who does the scene where the guard emerges from the building on fire? This is only about five seconds long.

GALLERY:

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126. (S06E06) “Murder Is A Taxing Affair” ★★★

QUICK PLOT:

A corrupt IRS investigator, pursuing a criminal under indictment for federal tax evasion, kills the fugitive for $600,000 in hot money, then loses it.

Click here to read Full Plot.

REVIEW:

Five-O gets a teletype message from the San Francisco IRS office that Jason T. Adams (Wydell W. Hughes), under indictment for federal income tax evasion, is en route to Honolulu, travelling under the name of Garrison and carrying a large amount of cash, later revealed to be $600,000.

At the San Francisco airport, Adams declines to carry-on his small suitcase containing the money because of anti-hijacking regulations that came into force around the time of the show. Adams' copy of the check for this small bag, which shows 19-56-01, is stapled to his ticket by the clerk at the Global American Airlines desk, but earlier, a tag ending with "01" was seen being attached to his second, larger bag. There is no sign of the tag for the larger bag stapled to the ticket.

IRS investigator Jonathan Cavel (Don Porter), travelling under the alias of Henry Marsh, is tailing Adams to Hawaii. Cavel sports a beard, kind of a mediocre imitation of the disguises utilized by Lewis Avery Filer. When they arrive in Honolulu, Adams is found strangled in the plane washroom after everyone has deboarded. Both Adams and Marsh, who were sitting in first class, were seen heading in the direction of the washroom prior to the plane landing. You would expect that Adams would have put up a fight as he was being murdered, but no one heard or noticed a thing.

In the terminal, Cavel grabs what he thinks is Adams' suitcase with the money from the baggage carousel, but when he opens it in the washroom, he finds that it belongs to someone else whose initials are "W.R.", seen on a shaving kit. The tag on this bag is 19-56-03. Cavel obviously picked up the wrong bag based on its appearance, having seen it at the airport in San Francisco. It is odd that Cavel has not been more careful, especially because the luggage tag for this bag was torn off Adams' ticket by Cavel after he killed Adams in the airplane washroom. (No one seems to think of having the ticket analyzed for fingerprints as well, which might have made a connection to Cavel.)

Cavel freaks out and asks some employee in the airport "Have you seen a bag that looks like this?" which is a needle-in-a-haystack question. Getting no for an answer, and avoiding Danno, who has showed up there, Cavel returns to the washroom where he goes into one of the stalls without locking the door. He peels off his beard and manages to restore his dyed hair to its original white color using some kind of liquid that he has in a bottle in his pocket. This is kind of far-fetched.

Cavel, identifying himself as being from the IRS and the person who sent the teletype about Adams, shows up at the Five-O offices, where McGarrett uses the obscure expression "welcome to our bailiwick." As Cavel arrives, Alma Saunders (Jenny Sullivan), the stewardess on the plane, is helping the police artist (James Severson) construct an image of Marsh with his beard and sunglasses. She does not recognize that Marsh and Cavel are the same person, even when he stands in front of her and talks to her.

Cavel offers to help Five-O investigate the case, and he is given a list of first class passengers. One of them is named Walter Robinson (i.e., "W.R.") and Cavel breaks into his Ilikai Hotel room using lock picking tools. He tosses the place in an unsuccessful attempt to find the case with the money and is interrupted by the returning Robinson (Dick Fair) and his wife (Joan Chapman). Cavel escapes from the room by climbing outside on the hotel balcony where he moves across to the balcony for the next room. A view looking down is high up, similar to this shot, taken from the famous Ilikai penthouse balcony seen at the beginning of the show. But when viewed from below, Cavel is obviously on one of the lower floors of the hotel, now the Hawaiian Regent Hotel, and in a subsequent scene, Five-O arrives not at the Ilikai to investigate the room's trashing, but the Hawaiian Regent. It should be noted that as Cavel is messing up the Robinsons' room, he leaves fingerprints all over the place.

As McGarrett and Ben are checking out the Robinsons' room, Cavel suddenly appears at the door. Hanging around, he "finds" a matchbook from the International Inn in Hawaii, suggesting that Marsh left this while he was there earlier, which really makes no sense. Why would Marsh have dropped this book of matches? It also seems very curious why Marsh thought that Robinson was the one who might have the money; after all, unlike Cavel, Marsh would not have had access to the passenger list.

Ben is just about to go to the airport to investigate whether an "other" suitcase of Adams showed up, but McGarrett decides that he and Ben will go to check out the International Inn, and let Cavel go to the airport. At the International Inn, they find that Cavel himself has been staying there via registration slip #21104, and are curious as to why he never mentioned this. It seems strange that if the highly-motivated Cavel suddenly thinks that Marsh is at this motel, he wouldn't immediately go back there himself and possibly encounter and/or arrest Marsh rather than go to the airport.

Meanwhile, a tourist couple Will and Betty Rowan (note the husband is also "W.R.") discover that they are the ones who have the suitcase full of cash. The husband (Jack Dodson) at first wants to just keep the money, but after Danno and a cop, following up with the passenger list, visit them with some questions, the wife (Sally Kirkland) realizes "That money belongs to a killer." Will decides that they should go the airport lost and found to ask about their own missing bag, otherwise their behavior will look suspicious.

While there, the lost and found clerk (Gary Kau) calls Saunders from the "stewardess lounge," because he thinks the crew might have found the Rowans' case. It seems odd to me she is in the lounge after having been at Five-O headquarters, because we later see that she has an apartment in Honolulu. Saunders seems to know a lot about the suitcase which contained the $600,000, because when she meets the Rowans, she figures out that they have it and offers to take it from them and get it back to the cops with no questions asked, actually intending to keep it for herself. When they decline her assistance, she threatens to report them, and they quickly change their mind. She goes with the Rowans to their apartment.

Cavel goes to the airport to check on whether Adams' second bag has shown up, and finding out that the Rowans and Saunders were already there, goes to the personnel office and finds out where Saunders lives. (Despite Cavel being a "federal agent" with a badge, would they typically have given him her address information?) He confronts her at her apartment after she arrives there, saying he is a "federal officer." Saunders suggests they should run away together and "have a wonderful time," but Cavel coldly tells her, "The commodity you're selling, Miss, is not very rare ... about $10 on the average American street" — in other words, she is a cheap whore!

Cavel gives Saunders a big speech about how he has suffered for 32 years at his miserable job, adding, "I've seen them all. The cheats, the sneaks, the rich ones with their loophole and their lawyers. I went back to a furnished room with three suits in the closet and 4,200 bucks in the bank. No, miss, I'm not buying what you're selling. Because from now on, I take."

When Saunders tries to escape from him, she runs into her apartment bathroom and locks the door, not a good idea, because Cavel takes the belt from his pants, breaks the door down and strangles her as "crappy rock music" plays loudly on a radio where Cavel has increased the volume. However, when Cavel opens up the suitcase with the money, he finds it contains telephone books. Which makes me wonder: when Saunders went with the Rowans to their hotel room, when did they switch the cash for the phone books? And why wouldn't Saunders have wanted to open the case there to see the money?

Cavel knows that someone else on the plane likely has the money, so he goes back to Five-O. However, McGarrett has had a brainstorm, figuring there is something mighty fishy about Cavel, having taken a picture of Cavel received from the IRS San Francisco office and adding Marsh's sunglasses and a beard to it. There is a cool scene where McGarrett is flipping the International Inn matchbook in his hand as he walks in front of the other Five-O team members.

Knowing that Cavel didn't have access to the list of economy passengers on the plane, McGarrett, saying they have already checked those people out, intentionally puts this list in his desk, making a big deal about doing it and then leaves Cavel, who ostensibly wants to make a long distance call to San Francisco, alone in the office. Of course, Cavel looks at the list and the Five-O team witness this, having sneaked around on the Iolani Palace balcony.

There is something peculiar about this sequence. McGarrett on his desk had the artist's sketch of Marsh beside Cavel's picture to which he added the beard and sunglasses beside the economy passenger list. We see him put the artist's sketch and the passenger list in his desk (which Cavel takes out and uses to find the Rowans' name and their hotel information) ... but where is the sketch to which McGarrett added artistic touches? Didn't he leave it on the desk in front of Cavel where he could see it?

Cavel then leaves the Five-O office. McGarrett and Danno tail him, and there is a rare (for Five-O) process shot showing this. How much closer can McGarrett and Danno get, judging by Cavel's rear view mirror? It looks like they are in the rear seat of Cavel's car! Cavel switches cars at the Holiday Inn, but an employee there has the license number of the car which he steals, and an APB is put out for this vehicle.

Cavel tracks down the Rowans to their motel, where it looks like they are tryng to take a cab to the airport. He forces them into his car, again threatening to use his "federal" powers and drives them out to the middle of nowhere on the usual Five-O single-lane middle-of-nowhere road. Despite the fact that Cavel has never seen the Rowans before, he knows exactly who they are.

An HPD helicopter spots Cavel's car and within seconds, heavily-armed cops as well as McGarrett and Danno in the helicopter appear out of nowhere, just as Cavel, having gotten the $600,000, is threatening to force the Rowans to get in the car and drive to their death off a nearby cliff. (But how will he get back to civilization from this location?) Will Rowan tries to tackle Cavel as he runs towards the cliff, but Cavel breaks free and jumps over the edge, committing suicide. The sight of his body bouncing off the rocks below is gruesomely realistic.

This episode should be called "What greed does to people," a line which Cavel gives the Rowans as he is driving them to what they think is their doom while ridiculing them for being "respectable folks" back home. All the major characters in this episode — Cavel, Saunders and the two Rowans — are just so damn greedy and single-minded about the money!

The music is by Ray, and makes ample use of the "trombone interval" theme.

EPISODE PROMO:

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CASUALTY LIST:

Death: Jason T. Adams strangled by Jonathan Cavel.
Death: Alma Saunders strangled by Cavel.
Death: Cavel commits suicide by jumping off cliff.

MORE TRIVIA:

• McGarrett wears a hat when he confronts Cavel at the end (see below). It's difficult to understand how they can hear each other over the noise of the helicopter. When Cavel wants to make a deal — "My freedom for their lives!" — McGarrett tells him "No deals, no way out." As Cavel tries to escape, he rolls down a hill as Will Rowan tackles him, but it looks like Beau Van Den Ecker is playing Cavel, wearing a white wig similar to what he did in "The Reunion," and especially where Cavel leaps over the cliff.
• An "Ernie's Cab" (not "Bernie's") is seen with the company name and the 732-5577 phone number pasted over the usual sign on the top of the taxi.
• The IRS office that Cavel wants to phone in San Francisco has the number 415-392-9069.
• The Rowans have been married for 8 years.
• McGarrett tells Cavel, "Funny thing. I've been in Hawaii for 12 years and that's the first time that I've been in that place [the International Inn]." This is indeed funny, because the show has been going on for 5 years from 1968, and McGarrett said in a previous episode the Governor appointed him to run Five-O in 1959, a total of 14 years!
• At the Five-O offices, Saunders makes a big deal out of the fact that Cavel (as Marsh) had a "habit of cleaning his silverware, wiping it like he was afraid of germs or something." At her apartment later he is seen cleaning a knife in a similar fashion, to make a connection to Saunders that the two men are the same. But this is just a gimmick in the script. Why would a knife be lying around in the apartment where Cavel suddenly got the urge to clean it in a fetishistic manner? Saunders' apartment is number 366, by the way.
• Some people in the list of economy passengers: Mr. & Mrs. Paul Hartley, Sea Life Park, Makapuu Point, Waimanalo; Mr. Clifford Fenneman, Dept. Land & Natural Resources, P.O. Box 621, Honolulu; Capt. Gunter A. Koppe, Salvation Army 845-22nd Ave., Honolulu; Miss Vivienne S. Bluett, Kapiolani Hotel, Honolulu; Mrs. Gloria T. Bedard, 1101 Auahi St., Honolulu; Mr. & Mrs. Raymond Walker, 1240 Ala Moana Blvd., Honolulu; Professor Victoria McLaren, University of Hawaii, 2444 Dole St., Honolulu; Mr. & Mrs. Will Rowen [sic], Kapiolani Hotel, 2221 Kalakaua Ave., Honolulu.
• There's a stock shot of McGarrett and Danno running down the Palace steps.
• As mentioned by Karen Rhodes in her book on Five-O, "Ken Pettus," story consultant for the show, is paged in the Honolulu airport terminal building at the beginning of the show, but the subtitles on the DVD translate this as "Ken Bennett."

GALLERY:

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127. (S06E07) “Tricks Are Not Treats” ★★★  BOOK HIM 

QUICK PLOT:

The assassination of one of Honolulu's most active pimps threatens to start an all-out gang war.

Click here to read Full Plot.

REVIEW:

This episode is a jump on the blaxploitation bandwagon which was in vogue in the early 1970s. However, you have to wonder why this is the only Classic Five-O show out of 278 which deals in a major way with black pimps in Honolulu who hang out on Hotel Street with their "hos." It focuses on "Trick City," though this is a generic area near Hotel and Smith Streets where disreputable types congregate.

The pimps in the show are not only black, but also Hawaiian — Moe Keale, playing the stereotypically dressed, like most of the other pimps, Wunton — and Asian — Rudolfo Aquino, whose character is "Scholar" in the end credits, nowhere in the show itself. There is at least one pimp who looks kind of white.

The episode's bad guy, Lolo Kensei (Gregory Sierra), who extorts the "macks" as McGarrett calls them (a word meaning pimp) to pay 30 to 50 percent of their take is not black! The actor, who passed away in early 2021 just before this review was written, is categorized by Wikipedia as "American," though down the page of his entry it says that he was of "Puerto Rican descent." He played a lot of racially ambiguous characters during his career, including a Jewish radical, a Puerto Rican in Sanford and Son, a Latin American revolutionary and an Iraqi patrol boat captain, among other parts. Lolo's henchmen include Kuji (Seth Sakai, Japanese) and Plumber (Gerry Waialae, Hawaiian).

The man who becomes head of the "producers," Harley Dartson (Glynn Thurman), is black. He assumes this role after J. Paul (Ron Glass), also black, is assassinated on the street when his massive Cadillac Coupe DeVille with a custom license plate of "MR P" is stopped at a light not far from the pimps' hangout of Phoebe's Place where the bartender and owner, incongruously named "Phoebe" is Pat Morita, Mr. Miyagi from The Karate Kid. (Right next door to Phoebe's is "Bob's Place — Soul Food.")

J. Paul is knocked off about four minutes into the show. He had previously been talking to Lolo, whom he described as a "popcorn shucker." Despite J. Paul's negotiating efforts, the "tax" is going to be 35 percent, and telling Lolo "You let me know when you get ready to talk qualified business" did not go over too well. J. Paul's killer, John Sui (uncredited actor), one of Lolo's stooges, is himself killed later.

Of course, McGarrett is not happy with what has transpired. He goes to see Lolo and tells him, "The loansharking business hasn't been too profitable lately, has it? So you're depending on your slice of the body work in Trick City to take up the slack. ... You really must be desperate to risk a war � I'm not gonna stand by and watch this thing explode. You understand? So I'm warning you, I'm gonna nail you to the wall. Murder one." Lolo dismisses the idea that he wants a war with "those little pimples." (I am sure that I read somewhere that the term "pimp" was not allowed to be used by CBS's Standards and Practices department at the time the show was broadcast, though I cannot track this rumor down.) Despite this, Lolo tells Plumber to remind the "marshmallows" that the new tax is effective as of now.

Plumber goes to Phoebe's where a wake of sorts for J. Paul is in progress. When Plumber refers to J. Paul's killing as "one less pimple," Wunton goes berserk and causes major damage to the bar and some of Lolo's gang accompanying Plumber, breaking one guy's back. He attempts to strangle Plumber, but is shot by one of two cops who come into the place to stop the fight. (Later Wunton is described as "dying" in hospital.)

Dartson organizes a council-like meeting at his house where he and his fellow pimps discuss what to do about Lolo. While this is going on, we get an interesting look at his family life. Harley's blonde white wife Semantha (Lynne Ellen Hollinger), using a Rolodex, acts as his answering service and takes calls for girls while their two bi-racial kids are playing nearby, arguing about typical kid things like watching TV, eating their vegetables and doing their homework.

Semantha talks on the phone in a coded language, for example: "You've got a 50-cent trick at the Koloko Hotel. Room 202. Desk clerk gets a nickel tip." Presumably this means $50 and $5 respectively. To another girl she says, "You just better shake that money maker over to Suite 1225 before Harley puts the coat hangers to your beautiful bod."

McGarrett phones and talks to Harley, telling him to "just keep that lid on," but the members of the council decide to hire a hitman from Detroit at a cost of $20,000 to $25,000. Semantha tries to change Harley's mind, saying, "I'd rather go back on the street than have you call Detroit," but he will not listen. In desperation, unknown to him, she makes an anonymous call to Five-O, telling McGarrett "There's a Detroit hit man coming to get Lolo."

McGarrett orders his men, "Get me a list of all long-distance calls to Detroit within the last 24 hours, including all long-distance calls from the macks' phones." Then he goes back to see Lolo again. Sitting on Lolo's desk, he tells him, "The macks aren't bringing in a farm hand, Lolo. The word is, he's a major leaguer from Detroit." Lolo replies, "I'm impressed. At least they care enough to send the very best," which is the familiar motto of Hallmark Cards.

McGarrett is not in a mood to listen to crap: "Now, listen to me. And hear me. If that Detroit gun gets to you before I get to him, this is the last warning you'll ever hear. Now, if I could be sure that no one else would get hurt and that you'd be the end of it, I'd be tempted to let that hitter take you. But I can't. So you know what I'm gonna do? I'm gonna give you a choice. You've got a yacht, get on it right now and put a lot of open water between you and this rock. Or I lock you up. I've had a cell reserved for you for a long time, Lolo. Lots of laws on those books. We'll find one. One hour, Lolo, one hour. You be on your yacht, or I'll be back."

Checking phone numbers to Detroit from various places pays off. The hitter from Detroit is "Alex Gargossa, alias Smart Alex, alias George Alexander, alias Ron Pratt, alias Royal Robbins, alias Larry Reynolds, alias Russ McLean" with 12 hits to his credit. He arrives, and, rather than bring his own rifle, which could cause problems with the airline baggage inspection, he gets a local guy named Peter Chou to buy him an AR-15 through one of the local gun shops.

Gargossa has been tipped off to be outside the Cockleshell Restaurant at 9:00 p.m. to take care of Lolo, who is having a meeting there. He does this, but he himself is knocked off as he attempts to shoot Lolo, who emerges from the place. Kuji also has a rifle to give the impression that he is the one who killed Gargossa, but this is a ruse. It was someone else who did the job. Both Gargossa's rifle and the other shooter's scopes have sight lines, something unusual in the show.

McGarrett speculates that Lolo hired the second hitman which will make sure that no one attempts any further assassination attempts on him in the future. Lolo, confident that he is untouchable, is going to show up at Phoebe's and give the "macks" a "lecture on the high cost of living." But then we see Kuji getting together with Dartson, and we find out that they have conspired on a plan which will see Lolo being killed and Kuji taking over. Kuji tells Harley, "The tax will revert to 25 percent, as agreed. There will be no shucking, as you say, of you or me. When I take over, I'll control fairly but thoroughly."

Lolo comes to Phoebe's where all the pimps are again hanging out. He tells the "Girl Scouts" that the tax is now forty percent, with the exception of Harley, whose payment will be fifty. Lolo leaves, laughing. Five-O is outside, however, having figured out the business with the two hitmen. When Lolo emerges from Phoebe's, McGarrett tells him at gunpoint, "I'm trying to save your slimy life. Get back inside." Lolo just laughs and comes out of the door and is shot dead by the second hitman, who is from Hong Kong.

HPD cops and the men from Five-O chase this shooter across rooftops. Although he is supposedly a super professional, he suddenly can't hit the side of a barn door. He is shot and rolls down a roof where it can be seen that he is not Asian, therefore a stunt man and plunges off the building down to an awning and then to the street.

All the pimps are hustled out of Phoebe's. Harley tells McGarrett, "Man, you really think anybody would call the wasting of Lolo a crime, huh?" McGarrett responds: "Well-executed plan. Very well executed. Too well, as a matter of fact. Book them. All of them." But it looks like another case which will be very difficult to prove in court!

If you can get past the exaggerated stereotyping in the show and the twist at the end, this episode is not that bad, though you can't really ignore the fact that there are very few episodes of Five-O which contain black characters in any roles, let alone featured roles (large type in the end credits), including this one. This includes S01E13, "King Of The Hill" (Yaphet Kotto), S03E02, "Trouble In Mind" (Nancy Wilson), S04E12, "Nine, Ten — You're Dead" (Moses Gunn) and S07E13, "Hara-Kiri: Murder" (Ossie Davis).

Black actors playing minor parts are also few and far between. There is a Superfly-like pimp at the beginning of S07E20, "The Horse Jumped Over The Moon" and two actors who play mob boss Tony Alika's right hand man Billy Swan in S11E12, "Number One With A Bullet," and S11E17, "Stringer" (Jerry Boyd and Vic Malo respectively). Johnny Walker, who was racially abused by Danno in S11E06, "A Distant Thunder" appeared as a sergeant in S10E01, "Up The Rebels" and two other episodes.

The script and the acting both try a bit too hard to push things. There are a couple of eye-opening scenes: near the beginning of the show, there's a rear shot of a topless dancer and on the wall in Lolo's office is a painting featuring topless native women.

The music by George Romanis is pretty sleazy. When McGarrett goes to the Hotel Hawaii where Gargossa is holed up (and they just miss him), there is a brief reference to the Five-O main theme.

WHAT DOES THE TITLE MEAN?

Seems like a play on words of sorts with the expression used at Hallowe'en, "trick or treat."

EPISODE PROMO:

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CASUALTY LIST:

Death: J. Paul shot in the head in his car at stoplight by Lolo Kensi's thug, John Sui.
Injury (x4): Wunton starts fight with Plumber and two of Lolo's thugs; they tackle each other. Wunton throws one thug over the bar. Wunton punches the other thug.
Death?: Second thug has back broken by Wunton.
Injury: Wunton hit with sap by HPD officer responding to fight.
Injury: Wunton shot by second HPD officer responding to fight. (Semantha says Wunton is "dying" later in the episode.)
Death: John Sui "killed within one hour of J. Paul."
Death: Alex Gargossa shot by Hong Kong hitman using starlight scope.
Death: Lolo shot by Hong Kong hitman using starlight scope in daylight.
Death: Hong Kong hitman shot multiple times by Danno, Ben and Duke.

MORE TRIVIA:

• When one of Dartson's hookers is seen leaving with a customer, going to his hotel room with "a $48 view of the Pacific Ocean," their taxi has a phone number of 941-5055 on top.
• When J. Paul is shot in the head, it looks like Sui, the shooter, is inside the car, because the driver's side door opens and Sui gets out. But this doesn't make any sense. Why would he have to open the door to shoot J. Paul? The window on the driver's side was already open.
• The HPD cop who looks at J. Paul's body after the shooting has badge number 1209. He tells McGarrett that Sui's Volkswagen was "a red Bug with stinger pipes, mag wheels and racing slicks, no plates." But this is not correct; it did have plates starting with "68."
• J. Paul's body is taken away in a Physicians Ambulance.
• Dartson, at the beginning of the wake for J. Paul says, "Y'all remember that time that harlot said she wants a...," but he does not say the word "harlot." The Spanish subtitles translate this word as "ramera," which means "harlot," whereas the Portuguese subtitles don't translate it all; it should be "prostituta."
• John Sui's body is seen at the morgue, an evidence tag on his toe says his case is 84971.
• Duke says "The 'hos' are back on the stroll" during a phone call to McGarrett. McGarrett's phone has extensions 32 to 35, plus 19 to 22; he chooses 19 when he is talking to Duke.
• The phone at Dartson's place doesn't have a number on the dial, but Ext. (as in "Extension"), 213. Does this mean that he has multiple lines in the house for his "business"?
• A Lincoln Continental seen in this episode with the license plate number 8E-5800 is used in several other shows this season: "Flash Of Color, Flash Of Death," "A Bullet For El Diablo," "Try To Die On Time," "The $100,000 Nickel," "The Banzai Pipeline," and "Mother's Deadly Helper."
• Ben gets propositioned by a hooker while he is on the job.
• The expression "baby" is heard 24 times during the show.
• A mug shot picture of Gargossa, the contract killer, is photofaxed to Five-O from Detroit; his booking number is 397568. A paper, perhaps of passengers from the airline company for the flight which brought Gargossa to Hawaii, shows one of his aliases, Ron Pratt, has an address of 213 No. Lake Street, Detroit. There are a couple of in-jokes in this list. One of the characters lives on "2643 Stoner [as in Kurt, Hookman] Avenue" in Los Angeles. Mr. John T. Pinkerton lives on "2571 Harrington [as in Al, Ben] Avenue," also in Los Angeles.
• As usual, McGarrett rubs it in with the Detroit police chief regarding the weather in Hawaii.
• After Lolo is killed, there are suddenly a lot of people on the street watching the action (and the filming).

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128. (S06E08) “Why Wait Till Uncle Kevin Dies?” ★★★  BOOK THEM 

QUICK PLOT:

McGarrett enlists the aid of a man from the mainland to work undercover and expose a pay-before-death inheritance scheme.

Click here to read Full Plot.

REVIEW:

This is another "don't-think-about-it-too-hard" episode dealing with an �ber-organization, Reversions, Inc. This inheritance discount firm's racket is to provide money to heirs before their rich benefactors die. The heirs sign over the inheritance to the company and the company collects on the benefactor's death, taking a few bucks from the beneficiary in advance for their services, or the possibility of "occasional losses" like the beneficiary being disinherited.

The company is run by the suave but slimy Englishman Zachary Talbot (Murray Matheson) and employs several local people including Luke Foster (Lee Stetson), who does most of their dirty work. They are in the process of relocating from Hawaii to Zurich ("out of Five-O's jurisdiction, as far as subpoenas go") because they find Hawaii "a little remote, now that our operations are expanding."

At the beginning of the show, we see Foster at the Aki Noa Marina arming a bomb on a yacht owned by Charles Privit. Foster is pretending to be a security guard at the marina, which is odd, because only a few seconds before, we saw another guard played by the "mysterious actor," Walter Omori. Foster's setting up the bomb is witnessed by a couple of punk kids, one of whom, of course, is Rene Abellira. They have snuck into the marina by swimming there and have ripped off a clock, binoculars, silverware and a radio from this yacht. (I kept thinking, how are they going to leave with all this stuff, taking it underwater?) Later, the kids are asked to ID the guard setting up the bomb, who they saw briefly, and can only come up with Omori's character, who has been with the marina for 15 years. There is no indication how these junior thieves were eventually caught.

The next morning, after HPD detective Peheni (Doug Mossman in a different persona than usual) talks to Privit (Bill Bigelow) the boat blows up after it leaves the dock, with special effects that are more mediocre than usual. Five-O is subsequently suspicious because the coroner's report of Privit's death suggests it was an "Accidental explosion [when an] electrical spark ignited boat fuel." The report says that Privit had two addresses: 914 Ookala (his residence, same name as a police officer killed in "Hookman") and 805 Raft Street (his business) and that the explosion was at 9:45 a.m. on 7/5/73.

Charles Privit's ne'er-do-well brother Jeremy ("Brains, six years of college, and still out of work."), played by Fred Ball, is his only heir. He tells Danno and Chin Ho, "I spent my inheritance months ago." When asked how he did that, he says, "It was managed for me," obviously by Reversions. There must been some money from his brother's inheritance left, because later we see Jeremy taking a ride in a helicopter, which explodes (again, mediocre special effects) as Foster watches.

Five-O goes to the Reversions offices and talks to Talbot (Murray Matheson), who monopolizes the conversation. Armed with a list, Five-O checks out some of the company's recent clients.

Ben talks to some blonde dame who took "a portion" of her inheritance because she wanted to travel around the world and she wanted to meet a boyfriend. Then, two weeks ago, her father had an "accident," which consists of him falling from the upper floor of a building in a typical Five-O stock shot of a suicide.

Danno gets the cream of the interview crop, interviewing a busty babe named Ambrose on a yacht. She is wearing a revealing white bikini and he has difficulty in keeping his eyes on her face! Her father "loved racing cars," and two months after she got paid off, he died in a fiery crash which is the same car as seen in the show's main titles �- we can see its number, which is "96."

Chin talks to some guitar-strumming hippie who says that his grandfather got run over on the street by a car a month after the money was received. The flashback to this incident is of George Wong in S05E05, "The Jinn Who Clears The Way."

What is peculiar later is when McGarrett is discussing the interviewees — Blackerman, Ambrose, Kuan Loo, Privit and Shibato, two of them have Asian names, whereas these three people interviewed plus Privit were all white.

Reversions' operation has suddenly become very fishy to Five-O: "Five extremely wealthy men. All died by accident, all within six months of each other, and each with an heir who received his inheritance in advance from Reversions Incorporated." The odds of this happening are a thousand to one, maybe a million or even 10 million. DA Manicote has checked the company, which has been in business 35 years, "49 ways � their operation is legal." However, Talbot and his board of directors are all new, having bought in to the company only 9 months before. Danno points out that of all the people interviewed, all of their wills were held by the Ala Moana Bank in Honolulu as "as co-trustee and executor," so, as Chin points out, " Someone inside the bank [could be] a conspirator in murder."

All of this "evidence" is not enough for Manicote, however, so Five-O decides to set a trap for Reversions. They need some guy to play a convincing "benefactor," and Manicote has "someone who is new on the island, not necessarily a cop, but able to function like one � somebody who is smart, able to pass himself off as a rich man's heir, and take care of himself in a squeeze." That man is Calvin Cutler (Lawrence Pressman), an assistant DA from the mainland who is in Hawaii on a research project. Manicote warns McGarrett: "He's got a very unusual personality."

Cutler is agreeable to participate in this scheme, becoming Edgar Anthony Baines, whose uncle Kevin is "super-rich, super-stingy and invalid." Calvin spends a lot of time memorizing facts about his and his uncle's past. A local lawyer named Frank Mualana (Tommy Fujiwara), co-operating with Five-O, takes an updated copy of Uncle Kevin's will to the Ala Moana Bank and Ben later tracks Natalie Harper, one of their employees who deals with wills, to a meeting with Foster at the Beach Walk Broiler � Ben radios back to the office: "Bulls-eye!"

Meanwhile, Edgar frequents businesses and bars in Honolulu where he appears to be living beyond his means, unable to pay for anything or make his rent, but driving a Jaguar XK-E. Eventually he runs into Foster at a bar, who, hearing that Edgar's businesses include "investments [and] promotion" invites him to drop into Reversions' offices.

Reversions is already bugging Edgar's apartment telephone, overhearing a conversation he makes to McGarrett with a coded message to tell him that he has made contact with the company. McGarrett answers the call in a hoarse voice like he uses as Professor Raintree in the series finale, "Woe To Wo Fat." (A good thing that at this point in time, the technology did not allow the bad guys to see what number Edgar was calling!)

Edgar is a most likely candidate for Reversions' attention, and they do a thorough check of both Edgar and Kevin, but don't find much about the latter. They focus on local information, sending "Professor Tomkins," one of Reversions' board of directors pretending to be an author doing research on local millionaires, to the Honolulu Advertiser where Five-O has inserted pages into bound copies of the newspaper with articles about Uncle Kevin that have headlines like "Baines Bars Press From Hawaiian Retreat" (from Monday, July 2, 1973), "Kevin Baines Arrives in Hawaii" (an article by June Watanabe) and "Mystery Millionaire Buys Kahala Beach House." (This part of the back story verges on the absurd.) Dave from the newspaper (Winston Char), also working in cahoots with Five-O, selected these articles for Tomkins to see, though they are all in a binder labelled May 1971. Reversions' research determines that Uncle Kevin's net worth is in the range of $12 million.

At the Reversions office, Edgar signs the agreement to receive his inheritance, but at the last minute is also asked to sign another paper, an "Application for accident insurance." Talbot explains: "Suppose something should happen to you before your uncle dies. We could be out our investment, couldn't we?" Edgar signs that too.

When Five-O hear about the insurance, they are concerned, but they way they deal with the situation is quite clever. The next morning, Foster shows up at Uncle Kevin's place with a delivery of propane, which he sets up in a room with a bomb and a timer. However, all the doors to the house are suddenly locked, so Foster cannot get out. McGarrett is outside with a bullhorn and he says that if Foster wants to get out, he has to agree to turn states evidence against Reversions, which Foster is only too glad to do, even though he is soon told the bomb has been disarmed.

Cutler has been taken prisoner in his apartment at the Ilikai Hotel by the hulking Wolfman Jack-Like Edward Shonk, another of Reversions' stooges, with the intention of having an "accident" in the event everything does not go off as Reversions expected. But Danno busts into Cutler's apartment and Chin, Ben and McGarrett raid Reversions' office, just as the latter are preparing to leave for the airport where a charter plane to Zurich awaits them. (It has only taken about 20 minutes for McGarrett and Chin to get there from Uncle Kevin's.)

Talbot, who uttered a literary quote to Edgar earlier, "Hope springs eternal in the human breast...," which was finished by Edgar, "Man never is, but always to be blest...," now blurts out, "Who sees with equal eye, as God of all, A hero perish, or a sparrow fall, Atoms or systems into ruin hurl'd�" McGarrett is only too glad to finish this for him: "And now a bubble burst, and now a world." (These quotes are from Alexander Pope's Essay on Man, thanks to Kurt Tappe.) McGarrett adds, "Book them."

WHAT DOES THE TITLE MEAN?

When Reversions determines that Edgar truly is a candidate for their services, their boss, Talbot tells Edgar, "You do have a choice � between golden age and golden youth. In short, Mr. Baines, why wait till Uncle Kevin dies? "

EPISODE PROMO:

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CASUALTY LIST:

Death: Death: Charles Privit dies when his boat explodes.
Death (x2): Jeremy Privit and pilot killed in helicopter explosion.
Death: Blonde woman's father leaps or falls from building (seen in flashback).
Death: Ms. Ambrose's father killed in racing car accident (seen in flashback).
Death: Guitar playing dude's father run over by car on street (seen in flashback).

MORE TRIVIA:

• Lawrence Pressman (Cutler/Edgar) also appeared in S10E20, one of the last shows of the Five-O reboot, broadcast March 13, 2020. He is probably best known for appearing in 97 episodes of the show Doogie Howser, M.D., from 1989-1993.
• The coroner's report shows Privit has two addresses: 914 Ookala (his business, same name as a police officer killed in "Hookman") and 805 Raft Street (his residence). The explosion was at 9:45 a.m. on 7/5/73.
• The shot of the helicopter containing Jeremy Privit blowing up was previously seen in S05E01, "Death is a Company Policy."
• Cutler is listening to crappy rock music when he is first encountered by McGarrett and Danno at the beach. He offers them a glass of wine or a cup of herb tea.
• When Chin Ho tails Henjo Tokada from the Ala Moana Bank's department which handles wills, Tokada ends up at a restaurant calls Mike's Broil Your Own, but Chin says that it is the "Barefoot Bar." On its marquee, this place advertises "Dinners served from 5-10 PM, Dancing 10:30 PM 4 AM with the Red Fox."
• Foster has two phone numbers on his business card: 732-2144 and 923-5944. Reversions' address is 405 Kapiolani Blvd, Suite 204 (this is the "Shea Trust Building"). Near the end of the show, Foster drives a truck for the "Gas Propane" company with the 732-5577 phone number on the side.
• Terry Plunkett appears as a bartender who Edgar tries to stiff.
• A couple of headlines on papers that Tomkins peruses at the Honolulu Advertiser office: Prison strike ends peacefully and Chinese party marks 52 years.
• At the show's end, McGarrett uses a portable phone with a large battery pack to talk to Foster, who is trapped inside Uncle Kevin's. One of the guys who Foster murdered was named Shibato, but McGarrett pronounces this "Shibata" (the subtitles still say "Shibato"). Foster tells McGarrett his home address is 2801A Coconut Avenue.
• Talbot dials a phone near the end of the show, calling Edgar's apartment, but he only dials 6 digits.
• There is some speculation, based on information from an Amazon streaming site, that Natalie Harper, the blonde-haired woman in the bank, is Gretchen Corbett, uncredited. This error is perpetuated in the IMDb cast listing.

GALLERY:

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129. (S06E09) “Flash Of Color, Flash Of Death” ★★★  BOOK HIM 

QUICK PLOT:

When a courier for opals has jewels he is smuggling into Hawaii stolen from him, he takes the law into his own hands to recover them and take care of the robbers.

Click here to read Full Plot.

REVIEW:

Don Knight stars as the Australian opal courier Jeffrey Hobbs. He winds up in a mess of trouble when the highly-regulated shipment of stones worth $150,000 he is bringing to Hawaii along with some unauthorized ones worth half a million that he has spent the last 10 years accumulating gets stolen almost as soon as he steps off the plane.

Hobbs is showing the stones to a jeweler named Haggai (Kenneth Ing) in the back room of his store when one of two robbers who suddenly show up steals everything. When Haggai moves to step on an alarm, he is shot dead and Hobbs gets a nasty blow on the head after ripping off the robber's stocking mask. Woozy, Hobbs manages to get to the door of the store where he sees the robbers escaping in a car.

When Five-0 arrives on the scene, Hobbs plays dumb, especially as far as his smuggled opals are concerned. Later at Five-O headquarters he looks through mug books and says he doesn't find anything, though he does express more interest than might be expected in one particular character named Lee Franks (Raul Rojas), an ex-boxer and auto mechanic, who is the guy whose mask was torn off. (Hobbs doesn't identify Franks as such.)

Hobbs tracks down Franks to the Tristar Auto Clinic, which has the ubiquitous 732-5577 phone number and also has a sign which advertises regular gas at 36.8 cents a gallon and 41.3 cents for premium. With info from one of the employees there, Hobbs goes to Franks' place and confronts him. When Franks puts up a fight, he is shot dead with a gun Hobbs found lying around the place. Franks has some opals on his person, but they are not the ones which were stolen.

There is some connection between Franks' boss, Jake Willis (Robert Basso) and the other robber Hal Webber (Al Avalon), which is not really developed, though Hobbs later tails Willis to the apartment building where Webber lives. When he confronts Willis in the basement parking lot, Willis runs outside and gets run over by a dump truck on the street.

This is the fourth robbery of a jewellery importer in a month, but Che Fong demonstrates guns used in the most recent and the earlier ones are different. Later, he shows that the gun used to kill Haggai and Franks' gun which Hobbs used to kill Franks are the same. Che also finds a piece of an opal in the dead Franks' pocket which corresponds to one of the registered ones which were stolen. The characteristics of these stones are "almost like fingerprints, and just as individual." This seems kind of far-fetched.

It's pretty obvious that Hobbs has been double-crossed by someone in the jewelry store, and it turns out to be Haggai's assistant Miyoshi Akura, played by the sexy E. Lynne Kimoto. Hobbs goes to see Akura, and gets pretty nasty, accusing her of having "other business on the side" with her boss.

McGarrett gets Hobbs to come to the Five-O office again, where he grills him, mentioning it's a strange coincidence that Franks, who was killed with the gun used to murder Haggai and was the only person in the mug books that Hobbs expressed any interest in, is dead. Hobbs doesn't take too kindly to this line of questioning, saying, "I don't have to explain a bloody thing," and "I'm not a man that takes kindly to being called a liar."

After Hobbs leaves the office, Ben tails him back to Webber's building where Willis went previously. Hobbs makes a connection to Webber when he sees the car used in the jewelry store robbery, which had a damaged rear fender, in Webber's parking space. Hobbs goes to Webber's apartment and breaks in, just missing Akura and Webber, who are in cahoots with each other.

These two go to see Hoffmeyer (George Herman), an antiques dealer and fence, about disposing of the stolen goods. When Hoffmeyer balks at the amount of cash they want, he goes back to his office and checks police hot lists and determines the jewels are unregistered. Hobbs is still at Webber's place and answers a call from Hoffmeyer (thinking he is Webber) to meet about buying the jewels. Because the building is surrounded by cops from H.P.D. as per a request from Ben, Hobbs escapes from the building by "scrounging" down in the back seat of a Lincoln Continental chauffeur-driven by James (Kimo) Kahoano, Jr. on the pretext that Hobbs' wife knows he is playing around with some woman who lives in the building and is waiting for him outside.

Hobbs meets Hoffmeyer at a pre-arranged location as per their phone call where he was pretending to be Webber. Hobbs forces him to go to Haggai's store where he confronts Akura and Webber. Webber is shot dead when he makes a move for his gun and Akura is locked in the safe after she gives Hobbs the jewels. Akura surreptitiously pushed an alarm button when she was opening the safe, so Five-O is quick to arrive on the scene at the store, where Hobbs is busted.

This show is not bad, but there are some things that don't make sense.

While Hobbs is in Webber's apartment, Ben and Duke are snooping in Miyoshi's place at the same time Danno and Chin are looking in Hobbs' hotel room over protestations of Hobbs' landlord, played by Arthur Hee. In his scene, Duke has a good line as he is examining a stuffed teddy bear: "Dames keep more junk!" There is no explanation as to why Ben is there with Duke, since the last time we saw Ben he was sitting outside Webber's apartment building where Hobbs had gone inside, and Ben had not received any instructions from McGarrett to abandon his watch.

When Duke throws the teddy bear to Ben, Ben realizes that it contains opals. But later on, when Hobbs confronts Akura and Webber in the jewelry store and forces Akura to get all the opals from the vault where she has hidden them, there is the suggestion that these are all the opals that were stolen earlier. So what is the point of the scene with Ben and the doll? Is this not the first time Akura has been involved in stealing opals?

There are also continuity problems with the scene where Jake Willis gets run over by the truck. Prior to this, Willis just misses getting hit by a green car, but if you look carefully at the previous scene where the truck is approaching, it is debatable whether this car was behind the truck and passed it very quickly. As well, as you see Willis almost in front of the truck's radiator from the truck driver's point of view, the green car is very close to the front of the truck — it looks like it is parked on the street!

Despite these problems, this episode is enjoyable to watch Don Knight as Hobbs carrying on "like a Aussie" using words like "mate," "love," and "darling" as well as going through various stages of rage over the loss of his jewels.

WHAT DOES THE TITLE MEAN?

According to Wikipedia, "Precious opal displays play-of-color, common opal does not. Play-of-color is defined as 'a pseudochromatic optical effect resulting in flashes of colored light from certain minerals, as they are turned in white light.' The internal structure of precious opal causes it to diffract light, resulting in play-of-color. Depending on the conditions in which it formed, opal may be transparent, translucent or opaque and the background color may be white, black or nearly any color of the visual spectrum. Black opal is considered to be the rarest, whereas white, gray and green are the most common.

EPISODE PROMO:

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CASUALTY LIST:

Death: Haggai shot twice by Lee Franks during robbery.
Injury: Jeff Hobbs hit in the head by Lee Franks during robbery.
Death: Franks shot by Hobbs.
Death: Jake Willis hit by truck.
Injury: Miyoshi Akura choked by Hobbs.
Injury: Hoffmeyer hit in head by Hobbs.
Death: Hal Webber shot by Hobbs.

MORE TRIVIA:

• Akura tells Hoffmeyer that Hobbs' unregistered opals are comparable to the Flame Queen, 4-5 cm in width, and The Burning of Troy, a now-lost opal associated with Napoleon which was 700 carats in size. Both of these are larger than anything we see in the show.
• There is a long wait for the opening credits, 5 minutes and 9 seconds after the beginning of Act One. As the main titles play, there is a cool view of McGarrett coming down the real Iolani Palace stairway and walking right into the camera.
• As Chin and Duke are interviewing Willis, there is a package of Quick Quaker Oats which cooks in 1 minute behind him. Chin smokes a pipe during this interview.
• At the beginning of the show, Hobbs whips out a cigarette and starts smoking when he is going through Customs.
• During the episode promo, there are two pictures which look like what Che Fong sees when looking at the opals with his electron microscope. Only one of these pictures is actually seen in the show.
• Ben tails Hobbs in the usual obvious way, and later tells McGarrett, "Hobbs must've spotted the tail." What is seen through Hobbs' front window at one point during this pursuit doesn't match up with what he sees in his rear view mirror.
• As Hobbs follows Willis, we can see the McKesson and Robbins building in the distance.
• There are stock shots of the HPD computer.
• A street sign at the corner of the 560 block of Paikau and 3900 Diamond Head Road is seen.
• The trombone interval theme is heard combined with the violin theme.
• The license plate "borrowed" by the robbers, N3-625, belongs to a car owned by James Kulaani, 570 Halekauwila Street, Honolulu. This show was made in the days when you could presumably still get someone's personal information (name, address, etc.) by inquiring at the Department of Motor Vehicles if you knew what the person's license plate number was.

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130. (S06E10) “A Bullet for El Diablo” ★★  BOOK THEM 

QUICK PLOT:

A dictator is murdered by a look-alike for his daughter.

Click here to read Full Plot.

REVIEW:

This episode recycles tropes as well as locations and footage from earlier shows.

It begins with the kidnapping of Maria (Edith Diaz), daughter of Emilio Ramos (Richard Angarola), evil dictator of some unnamed country who is known internationally as "El Diablo" (The Devil). Maria is grabbed by two radical types, Pepe Olivares (A Martinez) and Carlos Rojas (Richard Yniguez), who are in cahoots with Rita (also Edith Diaz), the illegitimate daughter of Ramos by his mistress, Teresa Salazar.

Rita, who is a look-alike for Maria, is out for revenge because Ramos loved her mother until Rita was born May 12, 1949, after which Teresa "became a liability � something to get rid of." Rita says that "like all the rest of his problems," Ramos "bought [her mother] off for a few dollars and a plane ticket." Rita, whose mother died a few years before, has been living in Hawaii from a very early age, and, like many other people from her father's country in Hawaii, has developed an intense hatred for him. She has been arrested twice in connection with demonstrations "for disturbing the peace [and] assaulting a police officer."

On the University of Hawaii Manoa Campus where Maria is attending school, she is ordered at gunpoint into a "minibus" by Olivares which is witnessed by Renee Okawa, a classmate of hers who lives in the same dormitory complex. All Okawa can remember later is that this vehicle was colored blue � not that it was a Volkswagen "hippie van/bus," which to me seems a pretty well-known make during that era. The VW is soon swapped for a car, which is driven to the radicals' hideout, the same mountaintop one used by Wo Fat in S03E18 & S03E19, "F.O.B. Honolulu."

Within only a few hours, Ramos arrives in Hawaii to deal with matters. He clashes with McGarrett as soon as he gets off the plane, wondering why the kidnappers haven't already been arrested. McGarrett, who has been ordered by the Governor to treat Ramos with kid gloves, straightens him out by explaining what Five-O and all the cops on the island are doing to locate Maria, including "running down every known and suspected rapist." This seems like an extreme comment, because there was no indication that a "rapist" was involved in the kidnapping.

Maria is forced to make a taped plea to her father for $250,000 ransom in the usual unmarked bills, which he is more than glad to pay despite McGarrett's warning that this will not guarantee that his daughter will not be harmed. The ransom is paid by throwing it off a bridge into a motorboat driven by Rojas as it passes underneath.

A call is soon received by the cops from Maria that she has been freed and Five-O is sent to pick her up. However, it is not Maria they deliver to her father but Rita, who, with the help of some makeup, looks exactly like her sister as we might expect, considering the same actress is playing both parts, including some Patty Duke Show-like split-screen sequences similar to those which we saw in S04E16 & S04E17, "The Ninety-Second War."

After a brief tearful reunion with Ramos who orders Five-O, HPD and his own retinue out of his Ilikai hotel room, Rita pulls out a gun and shoots her father dead, saying "That was for Teresa." Rita then locks the hotel room door and goes over the balcony with rope which she has in her purse to one of the rooms on a floor below where Olivares is waiting for her. Despite the fact that people below are suntanning and swimming in a pool where they are likely looking up, no one sees her. The two of them change their clothes so they look like tourists and leave the hotel property.

Predictably, McGarrett is horrified at what happened. He listens to a tape he made of an interview with Maria when they were driving from the place they picked her up to the hotel, and starts to notice little things that bother him, in conjunction with other evidence like the lack of any fingerprints from Maria in Ramos' hotel room and makeup on his jacket from when she hugged him. (After Che Fong mentions the makeup, Danno suddenly blurts out that Maria's roommate said "she never used makeup," as if they would have asked her about this!)

When McGarrett proclaims "Suppose, just suppose, there were two Marias," this is the sign that a major brainstorm is coming, and he gets Che Fong to run a voice comparison between two different samples of "Maria's" voice which they have received. Surprise, surprise (NOT) � it turns out they are two different people, and McGarrett punches his hand in the air in triumph. Danno also has a brainstorm saying that considering Maria is no longer of any use to the kidnappers, they will likely kill her, making it look like she was remorseful about shooting her father and committed suicide � which is actually being discussed by the kidnappers back at their hideout.

McGarrett decides to throw a monkey wrench into the works by releasing news that they know that it was not Maria who murdered Ramos. This is broadcast on the radio which, of course, the kidnappers just happen to hear. Oliveras' tune changes to a request for a plane to leave the country. Things suddenly come to a head with a ridiculous speed considering there are only a few hours before this plane is supposed to be made available.

From Rojas' old girlfriend they manage to locate the "cabin" on top of the mountain, and Danno flies there in a helicopter using footage taken from S04E06, "...And I Want Some Candy And A Gun That Shoots" and S05E20, "Little Girl Blue."

After they arrive, McGarrett and Ben are in trouble when they corner Olivares and his hostage Maria on the mountaintop platform high above the ocean which we saw in the Wo Fat episode mentioned above, but the kidnapper is soon put out of action thanks to an HPD sharpshooter who is nearby. Rojas and Rita are busted.

We have seen this kind of story before in S02E11, "Leopard on the Rock," where Utomo Jhakal, another evil despot known as the "Asiatic Hitler," is forced to land in Hawaii with plane trouble. In that episode, the radicalized granddaughter of Jhakal, inveigles her way into his hotel room and tries to unsuccessfully assassinate him.

While Diaz does do a good job portraying both daughters — Maria is whiny and wimpy, while Rita is forceful and ruthless — what really taxes credibility in this episode is the exact similarity of the two women, which does not make sense, because they are half-sisters. Rita uses makeup to cover a mole on her cheek — just like the one which Maria is hiding with makeup as well. (They really do look a bit too much alike...)

This show's plot would make more sense if it was like the following (written by me), which is something you might have seen on the show's 2010 reboot, where such wacky happenings were often easily explained:

Ramos has twins by his mistress Teresa. But she is going to blab about their relationship, which will tarnish his reputation in his country where people "marry for life," to quote his stooge Felipe (Bryan de Silva from the classic show), so he has her knocked off. But he can't bear to also knock off the kids, so he gets one of his maids named Octavia to "adopt" the one named Rita, and relocates Octavia to Hawaii, where the kid will be brought up, all at Ramos' expense. This maid keeps her trap shut, since she knows what happened to Teresa. The years go by and Rita grows up, but Octavia develops a fatal disease and doesn't have long to live. Before she croaks, she blabs away to her "daughter" about what really happened, which of course incenses Rita, who hates her father with a passion from then on. When Rita finds out that her twin sister Maria is also in Hawaii going to university, she gets together with Pepe and Carlos and plots revenge, which is where the classic Five-O episode begins.

One thing that is really good in "A Bullet for El Diablo" is the music by Morton Stevens, often sounding like it was left over from the "Hookman" sessions. A look at a list of composers for the series suggests that Stevens, aside from being music supervisor, was able to pick and choose episodes he was particularly interested in, aside from the first of each season, other than the eleventh, when Stevens didn't do any scores at all. Some of the score for this show has a military as well as a "Spanish" tinge. After McGarrett gets 3 hours to provide a plane for the kidnappers, there is a brief guitar tremolo and as McGarrett drives up to the Ilikai, there is a brief but brassy version of the Five-O theme.

EPISODE PROMO:

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CASUALTY LIST:

Death: President Emilio Ramos shot twice by Rita Salazar.
Injury: Maria slapped by Rita.
Injury: Carlos Rojas punched by Pepe Olivares.
Injury: Olivares sniped by HPD Officer.

MORE TRIVIA:

• McGarrett should listen to the Governor at the beginning of the show who gives the plot away when he says, "We've got a double problem." He actually means, "You've got to find that girl, and see that nothing happens to Ramos while he's here." It is disturbing the way the Governor says, without any explanation, "Washington says we're going to have to cooperate with Ramos to every extent possible. The message from Washington is loud and clear. [McGarrett: If El Diablo, el presidente, says something, we...] We listen ... and listen hard." Were the writers of the show trying to make a statement about how the U.S. government cozied up to bad guys like the Philippines' Marcos and other rulers in Central American countries?
• The name of the actor who plays Olivares is Adolfo Larrue Mart�nez, better known as just A Martinez — there is no period in his first name.
• A sign at the beginning of the show says the University of Hawaii Manoa Campus was founded in 1864, but according to Wikipedia, it was founded in 1907.
• While Olivares is in the Volkswagen with Rojas before he gets out and forces Maria into it, he makes the sign of the cross.
• Che Fong is shown using a Uher tape recorder to compare the voices of the two daughters, though the Uher brand name is obscured. When McGarrett uses a Uher 4000 Portable in the car to interview Rita in disguise as Maria after the ransom is paid, the brand name is not obscured. However, at the start of this interview, McGarrett pushes the "START" (or "PLAY") button on the recorder, not the "RECORD" one which is one to the left of the rightmost key. The keys, from the left, are Reverse, Start, Pause, Stop, Record, and Fast-Forward.
• What looks like the HPD "Iron Brain" is used to track down Rita and her mother from immigration records. As usual, computer punch cards are sorted by the machine, ending up with a single card which reveals everything.
• An issue of the Honolulu Advertiser is seen with a huge banner headline: "Dictator Assassinated By Own Daughter." There are other headlines on the page: Sunday Talks On Pensions Being Mulled; Oratorical Contest Winner to Compete Again Sunday; 2 Travel Study UB Tours Set: European, World; Eight Judges Selected For Brotherhood; Planners Outline Zoning Purposes; Improvements Complete At Post Offices; Transit Problems Given Airing At Convention.
• Olivares' HPD mug shot from 2-8-73 has the number 93458. Rojas' from 9-2-73 has the number 36954.
• McGarrett wears cool sunglasses when he is meeting Ramos at the airport. When he says that Ramos' men won't be allowed to keep their weapons while on Hawaiian soil, Ramos, after quick deliberation, tells his retinue "Entrega los armas."
• The bridge where the money is dropped into the speed boat is in approximately the 6900 block of the Kalaniana'ole Highway in Hawaii Kai. The pay phone where Rita (pretending to be Maria) makes the call to the police is located in Fort Ruger Park. A telephone booth is still there as of July 2019. (The number of the phone in the show is 768-2300.) The intersection behind this is Kahala Avenue and Paikau Street. Thanks to Fred Helfing.
• Scotch brand reel-to-reel tape is used for the ransom message the kidnappers force Maria to make.
• When we first see Rita, she seems to be smoking a cigarillo. If you look carefully, it looks like she drops it on the floor and puts it out with her foot after she stands up.
• The music at the beginning of the episode promo is from "Hookman."
• Five-O director Charles Dubin (not for this episode) appears as the seedy-looking manager of the building where Rita has an apartment.
• At the end, Maria tries to escape, but she is running in these shoes with huge high heels. It doesn't take long for Olivares, who has been acting like he has hot pants for her, to catch up. Olivares was described by Rojas' old girlfriend (uncredited actress) as a "creep."

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131. (S06E11) “The Finishing Touch” ★★★  BOOK HIM 

QUICK PLOT:

McGarrett becomes suspicious of a documents expert he enlists to help investigate forgeries of government securities.

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REVIEW:

Norman Cargill (George Voskovec), a documents expert, the top man in his field, is going blind, a "severe handicap" for someone in his profession. As a result, he has fashioned a complicated scam with his girlfriend Maxine Taylor (Lynn Carlin).

Taylor "purchased" a Metropolitan Water District bond 16 months before — which was actually a bond Cargill had forged — and two months later, she went to the Bank of Honolulu and used this bond as collateral for a $1,500 loan which she applied as a down payment for a new car.

Near the beginning of the episode, Taylor goes back to the bank and pays off the loan and wants her bond back. When she sees it, she says it is not the same: "My bond had a tear right here at the top of the page where I tried to scrape some candle wax off of it and a piece of tape that I used to mend it." This is all a lie, but the bank has no way to counter what she is saying. Since something is obviously amiss, the cops, meaning Five-O, are called.

Che Fong analyzes Taylor's "new" bond, and determines that it is a phony. He does this by comparing it against an "authentic sister bond furnished by the state treasurer's office." This bond is virtually the same, even down to Taylor's signature on it. However, there is no such thing as a "sister bond" in real life, and this is just something that the writer for this episode made up in order to advance the plot in a certain direction.

When the Governor hears about a counterfeit bond being found at the bank, he freaks out, because bonds like this are as negotiable as cash. He tells McGarrett, "If we have to pay off on both principal [spelled "principle" in the subtitles] and interest on a flood of counterfeits, it could bankrupt every government agency in this state."

To help their investigation, McGarrett calls on Cargill, of whom he says, "We've used him a couple of times before." The Bank of Honolulu pulls all the bonds they have stored in their safe and sends them over to Cargill's office where he will examine them. For security purposes, there are two HPD cops accompanying Cargill at all times.

Cargill pretends to be checking the bonds, but he is actually forging duplicates of them. He has all the tools necessary to do this, including some gizmo to do the serial numbers. The phony duplicates are then returned to the bank. He keeps the real bonds, mailing them to himself at PO Box 10136, Honolulu, intending to cash them in later. There is a question here about how he could do that if the owners' signatures on the bonds are not his (if that is necessary), but considering Cargill's expertise, it is quite likely he could manufacture some kind of bogus ID to help him do that.

To make these duplicate bonds, Cargill got Raymond Sakai, a printer, to produce the bond forms, promising him a share of "millions" of dollars. At the beginning of the show, we see Cargill picking up these forms at Sakai's shop: 60 for the Division of Highways, 65 Municipal Issue and 65 for the Honolulu Water District. After taking receipt of this paperwork, Cargill poisons Sakai, offering him a celebratory drink of Glen-Murry Scotch which is laced with cyanide. There are other questions about how Sakai could have gotten the paper to make these bonds, which is probably not something you could buy at a store like Staples, but perhaps it was Cargill himself who supplied this paper, which he probably would have had access to.

Five-O begins an investigation while Cargill is checking the bonds. Danno goes to visit Taylor, who gets very nervous and phones her boyfriend who assures her that everything is OK, even though he rolls his eyes as he tells her "I love you."

To throw the cops off the case, Cargill left an unsigned suicide note with the dead Sakai and also murders Olivia Hillis (Linda Ryan), one of the Honolulu Bank's employees who had access to the bonds, planting a pair of men's pyjamas at Hillis's place which are traced to Sakai, thus suggesting Sakai was in cahoots with her. (I find it hard to believe that any woman would have been interested in a romantic relationship with Sakai, since as seen in the show, he was a total slob who was desperately in need of a shave.)

Cargill then gets Taylor to dress up like Hillis, complete with a blonde wig, and go to another bank where she takes out all of her savings ($19,608.00) which are in the name of "Oretha Hoover" (note the initial similarity between the two names), obviously something which Cargill also set up ahead of time, and then go to Los Angeles and effectively make this character disappear, with Taylor returning to Hawaii as herself. All of this is to try and throw the cops off even more.

Cargill reveals to Five-O that he has found four more counterfeit bonds during his search. Once again, he is keeping the real ones to cash in later, though you would expect that whoever issued them, after hearing of the phony ones, would have sent a list of the names connected with these bonds to banks which might cash them in.

Working hard, Che Fong has found that the writing in Sakai's suicide note is the same as that on "Hoover's" savings account application, and some similarities to Willis's handwriting. Che has also found something very fishy, because all the counterfeit bonds that Cargill discovered have fingerprints on them — but only Cargill's, not anyone from the bank who might have handled and/or substituted them for the real bonds.

A brainstorm from McGarrett is imminent, because it is obvious that there were no other fingerprints on the phony bonds because "The counterfeits were completed after the good bonds were delivered to Cargill for examination." He continues, "I realize that there are lots of holes, that there are lots of unanswered questions, but let's stop talking about them and try plugging some of them." He orders high-tech surveillance equipment to be installed above Cargill's office desk.

The next morning, Cargill comes to work, but he is disturbed to find dust on a magnifying glass on his desk. This dust came down from the ceiling when the camera above was installed the previous evening. Although Cargill doesn't look up to see this equipment, he calls McGarrett and goes to visit him to express his anger that he was being "spied on."

Telling Cargill, "I'm gonna lay it on you," McGarrett outlines his theory of the scam which Cargill was trying to pull off, which, of course, is exactly what happened. However, McGarrett has no proof of any connection between Cargill and Taylor's participation in the scheme. In fact, Cargill says, "This Mrs. Taylor, this alleged accomplice of mine, is a total stranger to me."

After Cargill leaves, he calls Taylor and tells her to pack and get ready to leave town because obviously the jig is up for the two of them. Meanwhile, McGarrett and Danno check out the brief video footage which was obtained from the equipment before Cargill figured out he was being observed. This reveals him dialling 355-4991 on his phone, which is Taylor's number.

The scene switches to a place where Cargill is picking up Taylor to flee. However, Five-O and HPD quickly surround them on the street and the two of them are taken into custody.

Cargill, who has been pretty chummy with McGarrett up to this point, now totally incriminates himself, blabbing away that Hillis's body is "buried in the rain forest off Old Pali Road." If he had shut up and Taylor had kept her mouth shut too, they might have gotten off with relatively minor charges compared to murder. In a very oily move, Cargill extends his hands to McGarrett, saying "I spoke hastily in your office, Stephen. I still value our past relationship. Surely we can part friends?" McGarrett will have none of this nonsense, saying "Book him, murder one."

This episode contains the first Five-O score by Bruce Broughton, who went on to score Silverado, among other things. The music behind Cargill's examination of the bonds goes on for 4 minutes, 57 seconds, one of the longest continuous musical sequences in the series. The stock trombone interval and marimba themes are also heard.

WHAT DOES THE TITLE MEAN?

A good question!

EPISODE PROMO:

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CASUALTY LIST:

Death: Raymond Sakai poisoned by Norman Cargill with cyanide-laced Scotch whiskey.
Death: Olivia Hillis murdered by Cargill, likely shot to death.

LOCATIONS:

• Fred Helfing tracked down Sakai's print shop seen in this episode, which is located on Kaminaka Drive at the corner of St. Louis Drive (photo here). This is quite likely a real print shop which is part of Chaminade University. This location is also seen in S01E21, "Not That Much Different." The print shop has the ubiquitous phone number 732-5577.
• Fred also tracked down locations at the end of the show. Maxine Taylor's house is located at 1469 Kaminaka Drive, which is very close to Sakai's print shop. Cargill picks up his girlfriend there. You can see "1469" painted on the curb. Unfortunately, the house is rebuilt. They drive a short distance up the street and and get cornered by McGarrett and HPD cops. If you watch the scene, this house matches up nicely. When they show Ben patting down Cargill, as Ben turns Cargill around, you can see a distinctive wall in the background.

MORE TRIVIA:

• In both of his two roles on the show, this one and Jacob Durkin in How To Steal A Masterpiece (S07E09), George Voskovec's roles are someone who has specialized knowledge. In this show he is a documents analyst ("one of the top men in his field") and in the next season show, an "expert, appraiser and restorer" who is "important in the art world."
• As Cargill is examining bonds (actually forging new ones), there is a cop named Naauao (Roland Naauao, likely a real member of HPD) sitting in an office at a desk behind him reading a book which Cargill wrote called The Science of Forgery Detection. In one shot the cop seems to have vanished.
• McGarrett misprounounces Cargill's name like "Car-jill" when he introduces the document expert to some bank officials
• When Cargill dials Taylor at 355-4991, this is not that number, because, among other things, the "9" is not at the bottom of the rotary dial.
• Prior to Cargill realizing he is under surveillance because of dust on his magnifying glass from the camera installation in the ceiling, Chin and Ben are seen watching him on a monitor. Cargill is seen is taking bonds from the bank people, but the camera angle is not from the ceiling, but a totally different angle from the side. When Chin mentioned the camera earlier, he said it had "a TV lens no bigger around than a cigarette," meaning it is unlikely any other camera than the one in the ceiling was installed.
• Cargill's girlfriend lives at 1410 Rolana Drive, Apartment 4. But when he picks her up at the end of the show, is it at her place or his? This joint looks more like a house than an apartment building.
• Prior to murdering Hillis, Cargill is hiding in the back seat of her relatively small Datsun, a trope on the show also seen in the twelfth season A Bird In Hand...!
• "Oretha Hoover" flies to Los Angeles on United Airlines flight number 114.
• Herman Wedemeyer as Duke is listed in the credits, but he is not in the show.
• Trucks for Bekin's Moving and Foremost Dairy Products are seen, as is an office for Deak & Co., a real-life financial group which was rocked by multiple scandals in the 1970s.
• There is a very funny exchange, McGarrett asks Che four questions which start with "Why," and Che responds, "I'm afraid the 'whys' are your department." McGarrett says, kind of sarcastically, "Thanks, Che."
• The name of one of the cops guarding Cargill's lab, Keoki, is spelled "Kiokee" in the subtitles.
• Thanks to Karen Rhodes for help with this review!

MUSIC:

Score by Bruce Broughton.

The two times at the beginning of each line in the list below are when the cue appears in the show and the length of the cue. Click the arrow in the player to hear a suite containing these cues. To finish before the end, click the stop (‖‖) button. The number in red is the approximate time you will hear the cue in the suite.

#1, 01:00, 01:13, 00:00, Cargill arrives at Sakai's print shop.
#2, 04:28, 01:39, 01:13, Sakai drops dead, poisoned; Cargill calls his girl friend Maxine.
#3, 07:32, 00:41, 02:52, McGarrett leaves the print shop; Maxine goes to the bank to get her bearer bond back.
#4, 10:05, 00:10, 03:33, After Maxine is annoyed because the bond she gets back is not hers; segue to Che Fong's office, Sakai's suicide note is a forgery.
#5, 16:05, 00:15, 03:43, Cargill is hired to investigate bonds for forgeries; Wave leads to end of Act One.
#6, 18:06, 04:57, 03:58, Cargill starts examining the bonds; he is duplicating them and keeping the originals for himself.
#7, 24:48, 01:42, 08:55, Maxine is freaking out because Five-O has been asking her questions; Cargill abducts bank employee Olivia Hillis and kills her (not seen by us).
#8, 28:31, 00:41, 10:36, Maxine, disguised as the now-dead Hillis, goes to the bank and takes out all of her money.
#9, 30:05, 00:12, 11:17, Cargill assures Maxine after she goes to Los Angeles, her part in their scheme will be over; Wave leads to end of Act Two.
#10, 32:00, 02:00, 11:29, Hillis having disappeared, Danno and Ben go to check out her apartment; Cargill continues forging bonds.
#11, 35:54, 00:24, 13:29, Five-O and Manicote discuss the case; McGarrett gets a call from Che Fong.
#12, 36:33, 00:32, 13:53, Che Fong tells McGarrett that Cargill's fingerprints are all over the bonds.
#13, 40:50, 00:31, 14:25, Cargill realizes that he is under surveillance.
#14, 42:05, 00:11, 14:56, Cargill calls McGarrett and says he wants a meeting to discuss the surveillance; Wave leads to end of Act Three.
#15, 47:12, 00:44, 15:06, Realizing the cops are hot on their trail, Cargill and Maxine start to flee.
#16, 49:22, 00:14, 15:50, A short distance from their place, the cops nab the two of them and they are busted.

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132. (S06E12) “Anybody Can Build a Bomb” ★�

QUICK PLOT:

A nuclear physicist becomes involved in an extortion scheme to blow up Honolulu with an atomic bomb.

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REVIEW:

This is an episode verging on science fiction, which, in the world of Classic Five-O, is another way of saying "It's kind of stupid."

A terrorist group has sent a disturbing message to the Governor: "We have stolen two birdcages of plutonium and produced a workable nuclear bomb. Unless you turn over $100 million in cash and guarantee us safe conduct out of the country, we will level Honolulu. Further, we have included a sample of our plutonium. Proper tests will verify its authenticity. You have 36 hours to put the cash together in used bills. At that time, you will receive further instructions. Do not try to find us or deter us. If any of our men are caught, the deal is off and your city will be in ruins by 6 p.m., Sunday. Signed Mercury."

As the show opens, McGarrett and the Governor are on their way in the Governor's limousine to visit an "expert" recommended by Pentagon bigshot Jonathan Kaye, Dr. Elias Haig at the University of Hawaii Manoa (same location as seen recently in "A Bullet For El Diablo"). Haig "goes all the way back to Alamogordo, [and] worked alongside Oppenheimer [and] Teller." He is played by veteran actor Lew Ayres, born in 1908, who was the Governor in the Five-O pilot "Cocoon." Haig is a kindly old sort, but this is deceptive, because he is actually working with the terrorists.

A plutonium sample which the Governor received is likely the real McCoy according to Haig, as is a drawing from the bad guys which is "an accurate representation of an effective nuclear device." Haig says that the threat in the message is "enough to warrant extreme caution," as he outlined in a book he authored called Our Second Nuclear Crisis.

As to where the terrorists got the stuff to make their atomic bomb, Haig says that there are numerous cases where these materials and components have been hijacked or stolen. This is not just limited to the time frame of the show; in reports dating from early in the twenty-first century, the International Atomic Energy Agency listed more than 2,000 instances of illicit trafficking and other unauthorized activities involving nuclear and other radioactive material dating back only 20 years.

After getting a lecture from Haig on how a nuclear bomb works, the Five-O team is assigned to find out where the components to make the bomb can be obtained locally (this is where the dumbness begins).

Uranium 238 is shown sitting beside some warehouse in Honolulu in propane-like containers. This stuff is not much use, though, because according to one WWW page, it cannot be used to make atomic bombs like its more dangerous brother Uranium 235. (Uranium 238 is specifically mentioned in the diagram which the Governor received.)

Polonium 210, which is seen stored in acetylene-style tanks, is relatively benign, unless it enters the body through inhalation, swallowing or broken skin, in which case it can be fatal. This was determined to be the cause of death in the 2006 homicide of Alexander Litvinenko, a Russian agent who had defected to the British MI6 intelligence agency. In the show, Danno is seen talking to some babe in a laboratory who gives him a test tube of Polonium 210. Shortly after this, she takes a spray bottle and sprays what looks like an LP record! What is this about?

Even the sample of Plutonium that the Governor received in a small pill bottle which looks like "a fragment of copper turning green," like Polonium "presents zero risk outside of the body" according to another WWW page, contrary to what Dr. Grant Ormsbee says in episode S09E04, "Man On Fire": "Any contact [with plutonium] can be fatal." As long as this substance is not inhaled or ingested, it is supposedly not that bad, according to yet more WWW sites. I would give it a pass, though!

Haig contacts the terrorists' spokesperson Mercury after the Five-O team leaves his office. For some reason, every time he calls this guy, he dials the number (277-9277), then hangs up, and dials it again. His message is "The pigeon is in the coop. It came on wings of Mercury. Pass the word." Mercury is played in a sinister fashion by sometimes Five-O director Allen Reisner ("Hookman" and 12 others), who wears dark sunglasses and drives around in a Cadillac.

In addition to their investigation, Five-O take notice of a news item in the Honolulu Advertiser, which says "Swiss metallurgist Anton Dolmeyer was admitted to Queens Hospital last night apparently suffering from severe radiation burns." Unlike most newspaper articles seen on this show, the text in this one — at least the first paragraph that we can easily read — actually gives some facts, rather than just being bogus text.

There are several suspicious things connected with Dolmeyer: the cause of his death was later described as "cirrhosis," not radiation poisoning, an intern connected with the case has disappeared, and when Five-O goes to the hospital, Dr. Beaumont (Danny Kamekona) is unable to find Dolmeyer's death certificate. With 10 hours and 42 minutes to go, Dolmeyer's body is exhumed and examined by Doc, who says that he died of "epidermal burns over two-thirds of his body and � massive brain cell damage" as well as fillings in his teeth, "each one radioactive enough to burn a hole right through the top of his head." Haig is particularly horrified by this, saying, "Such a monstrous way to die."

Dolmeyer, who was a resident alien, is then traced to one of several firms who in the last year "ordered all of the materials necessary to put together a bomb [sic]," specifically Pacifica Refrigeration Company. When Five-O goes to this business at 375 Nimitz Highway, the place is deserted, leaving only traces of radioactivity. Haig, who has been tailing along with Five-O, places another call to Mercury from McGarrett's own phone (!) when he is left at the office, reporting "The hawk has found the nest." At this point, there are less than eight hours left before the bomb will be detonated.

Despite the huge amount of money required as ransom, the Governor has managed to assemble the $100 million by drawing on the combined branches of the Federal Reserve in San Francisco, Seattle and Los Angeles ("Angles" in the subtitles). Jonathan Kaye (Bill Edwards) has suddenly appeared in a meeting of various bigshots at the Governor's office. One of the people at this meeting is Dr. Klaus Richter, played by Richard Angarola, who was Emilio Ramos, "El Diablo," only two episodes before. (At least he shaved off his moustache.) Richter thinks all the fuss over the bomb is "needless," denouncing Haig as being "unscientific," and says that the bomb threat is nothing more than a "bluff." Haig freaks out at these remarks, knocking over a glass of water on the table, saying "Stop this, I warn you. If you listen to Richter, you're mad. Dr. Richter has a long history of recklessness where atomic power is concerned. I have always said that one day, his smug complacency will get us all blown up. And I fear that this may be the day."

During this meeting, a phone call from the terrorists is received with further instructions for the delivery of the money and a "demonstration" is being arranged to show that these guys are not fooling around: "At exactly 1:00 this afternoon, a modest radiation flash will occur somewhere in Kapiolani Park." Haig defines this "radiation flash" as "Kind of small atomic flash fire, basically insignificant. But the radiation produced by the flash could be lethal to anyone within its range." This is "hardly insignificant"!

The sequence that follows is really ridiculous. Danno, flying over the park in a helicopter and speaking through a megaphone, clears the place, with people running away in terror (but only to the park's outer boundaries). McGarrett drives Haig to his house, which has an incredible view over Honolulu, to obtain a special detector which "is worth a dozen Geiger counters" and will help them locate the bomb in the park, described as a "plutonium mass," in "half the time." While he is in his house, Haig tries to contact Mercury once more, saying "I will not be a party to murder," but the line has been disconnected. McGarrett almost overhears this conversation, and pockets some doodles that Haig was making on a piece of paper.

Haig's device actually does not find the bomb, which is hidden in an ice cream cart, but the Geiger counters of several HPD bomb squad types do. Saying that he is the "expert" in how to deal with the situation, Haig pushes this ice cream cart into a nearby washroom. Haig leaves, but does not hide behind a large banyan tree, instead standing in front of it, where he is seemingly contaminated with radiation when the bomb explodes, making a bright light which we can see. The Governor says, "Thank God, I believe he contained it [!!!]" Richter tells McGarrett, "Better seal off that building � it will be weeks [sic again] before anyone can go near it." Haig is not in good shape, and is led away from the scene by Chin Ho. Meanwhile, McGarrett and others are relatively close to the where the bomb went off, duh!

Later, McGarrett asks Che Fong what is the meaning of the doodles which he took from Haig's house. Che replies, "You ought to remember this from your high school science class, Steve." McGarrett says, "All I remember from my high school science � is the girl who sat across the aisle." Che tells him, " It's [the] symbol for the element mercury."

We switch to Haig's place, where he is getting weaker and weaker. He has a United Airlines ticket dated 9/16/73 where the writing is very messy, and his destination is not clear. Haig has made a confession on his reel-to-reel tape recorder in a long, rambling discourse. Considering reels on machines like this are usually quite large even though they are being used for only a few words of recorded phone conversation or whatever, the ones on Haig's machine are very dinky in size by comparison.

Haig's confession does not really tell what the exact extent of his involvement with the terrorists was, though: ""I know now that this was a lie. A way to enlist my help. A scheme conceived by power-hungry, greedy men to use me for their evil purposes. They found my Achilles heel, my vanity. And because of my folly, millions will die. For this, I am profoundly ashamed. Although for me, there is no escape either. Stay and face the holocaust or take flight. It makes no difference. I am doomed, poisoned by the radiation from my own device. So be it. I could not live on and bear this terrible guilt. Of course there are those who will say I am taking the coward's way. Mr. McGarrett, I shall be gone when you find this. But I feel I owe you at least an explanation. While others like Klaus Richter stole the honors that were rightly mine, 30 years, the scales were tipped against me. Everything I touched went sour. A brilliant career, mismanaged. The child we prayed for, stillborn. Elizabeth's illness, years of suffering and expense. Always the pain, never the reward. But here, at last, was a chance. A chance to set the record right. To make up for all the misfortune. They came to me with a great and noble plan. A plan to end nuclear warfare forever. A plan to benefit all mankind. It was the answer to a dream I had cherished since Alamogordo. Stated simply, we would force the nations of the world into using the atom for peaceful purposes only. Then I would direct the greatest humanitarian enterprise ever conceived. The millennium was at hand."

McGarrett shows up while this confession is playing back, and there seems to be a section of it which is repeated. McGarrett finds Haig on the floor with a revolver, too weak to end his own life.

The nail-biting conclusion to the show begins, with the money having arrived from the mainland. Danno is on a truck at the airport getting the cash ready for Mercury's plane which will arrive soon. Chin Ho quickly tracks down a cancelled check from Pacifica Refrigeration Company to Central Moving and Storage thanks to a tip from Haig. Going to the moving company reveals that the bomb was delivered the day before to the Aloha Tower in a large wooden box, which we saw at the beginning of the show. Harry Luck (Robert Luck), the driver of the delivery truck, is tracked down to pinpoint the bomb's exact delivery location. The HPD bomb squad disconnects the bomb with instructions from Haig, who has been brought by McGarrett to the Aloha Tower. McGarrett, Ben and Haig are all there, even though the bomb could blow up at any second!

After the core of the bomb is gingerly removed, not touching the sides of what is holding it, a stereotypical "ticking" noise which we have heard every time the bomb's box was seen throughout the show stops. The money has been loaded on the plane, which is taking off, but several HPD sharpshooters "nail" the plane and it blows up along with its passengers (including Walter Omori, the "mysterious actor" who is one of the crooks receiving the cash) and the $100 million! Hopefully the Governor will just instruct the Federal Reserve to "print more money."

As Haig is taken away in a Physicians Ambulance, McGarrett asks him about Mercury, who Haig says is just a "concept," not a person. There is speculation that they will be hearing from Mercury again.

EPISODE PROMO:

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CASUALTY LIST:

Death: Anton Dolemyer dies of radiation poisoning.
Injury: Dr. Elias Haig suffers from radiation poisoning.
Death (x5): Pilot and four guys loading money into courier aircraft die in explosion. (One more if Mercury, a.k.a. Hermes I, is on the plane, not determined.)

MORE TRIVIA:

• At the beginning of the show, when the movers are unloading the box containing the bomb at the Aloha Tower, the camera seems to be in slow motion. The box is delivered to the commissary for the Aloha Tower restaurant, which seems kind of far away from the tower itself.
• Harry Luck, the mover, has a phone number of 786-2300. But this is also Dr. Haig's phone number, revealed in a close-up of his phone prior to his failed suicide attempt.
• When an HPD cop phones Chin Ho to say he's located a company connected with the bombing plot, Chin says "Go, man."
• Stock players Ed Fernandez, Les Keiter and David Espinda all appear briefly. Keiter is playing some military type similar to the one he did in S04E17, "The Ninety-Second War," though their names are different.
• There are Mickey Mouse balloons seen in Kapiolani Park — did the show pay a licensing fee to Disney?
• Haig's house with the great view is at 1578 Kanalui Street (swing left to see the view). Thanks to Fred Helfing.
• As McGarrett drives up to Haig's place just as Haig is thinking about shooting himself, there is a closeup of a flower, a shot which is very similar to the opening shot of "The Finishing Touch," the previous episode.
• McGarrett examines a list of chemical suppliers that Five-O has tracked down which is attached to a board in his office. The first one on the list is Diane Foxton, 4563 Seaside Avenue, Honolulu, a major character in S06E13, "Try to Die on Time." Another one is Mr. & Mrs. R.W. Armstrong, close to R.G. Armstrong, who played the prison warden in S03E14, "The Double Wall," 12017 Ayres (as in star Lew) Avenue, Los Angeles 64, California. There are at least 11 other people who live in "Los Angeles 64" on the list.
• The partially-seen list which includes companies that ordered all of the components used to make bombs includes several in-jokes: Hartley & Grenat Corp., Bolger Machinery Co., Superior Drill & Tapping Co., Heinz (as in producer James H.) & Lake Chemicals, Freeman (as in Executive Producer Leonard) & Lorin (as in Story Consultant Will) Supply inc., Cushman Chemical Co., Inc., Friedkin (as in director David, though that is from the 8th season) Machinery Co., Romac Chemicals, Royal Chemical Co., Diversified Machinery Co., Boldman Chemical Co., Associated Electronics Inc., Pacifica Refrigeration Co.
• There is a continuity goof when Walter Omori's character has a gun pointed at Danno as the money is being transferred at the end of the show. He isn't wearing sunglasses, but in the last shot before he gets back in the plane, he is wearing them.
• As payment for his complicity in the plan, Dr. Haig is given a ticket from Honolulu to some unknown destination (the writing is intentionally scribbled) — via United Airlines, of course. The date on this ticket is 9/16/73.
• The newspaper headline "Swiss Metallurgist Radiation Victim," which gives Five-O a big clue as to the identity of someone locally involved with the bomb plot, is referenced in S06E21, "Nightmare in Blue."
• The building containing Pacifica Refrigeration Company at 375 Nimitz Highway where the bomb was put together is still there today (at least as of June 2019). Thanks to Fred Helfing.

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133. (S06E13) “Try To Die On Time” ★★�  BOOK HIM 

QUICK PLOT:

Five-O must unravel a web of relationships surrounding a macabre $240,000 lottery based on the projected hour of a gambler's death.

No Full Plot for this show; see review below where I did major "anal-ysis" of it! - MQ

REVIEW:

This show has a very complicated and confusing plot — I had to watch it multiple times.

Harry Foxton (1960s/70s comedian Jack Carter) tells his friends that he has six months to live because he has cancer, diagnosed by his "highly respected" doctor Roy Bromley (John Stalker). Foxton creates a lottery with 24 friends investing $10,000 each with the total $240,000 to be paid to the one whose choice of an hour "block" (i.e., midnight to 1 a.m.) contains the exact time of his death. Foxton is estranged from his daughter Diane (the sexy Louise Sorel) who considers her father to be selfish, irresponsible and a person who uses others, but she buys the first ticket anyway.

The show opens with a "beating the rap" party celebrating Foxton's seventh month of life held at the Surfside Country Club. Harry co-owns this place along with local millionaire Peter Suyam (Yankee Chang). Foxton ducks out just after midnight with Bromley, who is also at the party, and they take a golf cart to somewhere on the nearby course where Bromley gives Foxton a poison pill. From their conversation, it sounds like they have had this act of euthanasia planned for some time.

Almost immediately, Bromley is killed with two shots in the chest by someone who was waiting nearby in a truck where there is surveillance equipment like reel-to-reel tape recorders. The shooter was tipped off regarding Foxton and Bromley's departure from the party by someone with via walkie-talkie. Foxton is forced to go with the shooter, who tells him, "Come on, gambler." The next morning, Foxton's dead body is found in his Lincoln Continental with the 6.35 Mauser used to kill Bromley beside him.

Scotty McBain (Fred Beir), one of the investors in the bizarre lottery, shows up at McGarrett's office the next day wanting to know the time Foxton died, which is not yet determined. He reveals details about how the lottery worked. McBain is not the only person who wants to know the time of death — the Five-O office has already received 10 calls from other people who were at the party.

Various fishy things pop up immediately. The serial number has been filed off the gun found in the car and restamped, just like a walkie-talkie found at the country club. Doc determines that Harry did not die of cancer, but there is "no readily apparent cause of death." McGarrett tells Chin Ho to get a warrant and go to Bromley's office and get Foxton's medical records, but when Chin arrives there, the doctor's receptionist Miss Hill (Napua Stevens Poire) finds the file is missing.

Based on postmortem lividity and liver temperature, Doc estimates Harry's time of death at 10:30 a.m., but he needs "an hour either way," which means that any one of Suyam (time slot of 9-10 a.m.), Diane (10-11 a.m.) and McBain (11 a.m.-noon) could have been connected with Foxton's death and won the prize. They become prime suspects.

At Bromley's office, Chin finds that a safe was broken into and he finds a transmitting device under one of the desks. Other transmitters are later found at Bromley's home and in Harry Foxton's apartment. At these two locations, locks have been tampered with in a manner similar to the safe. McGarrett tells Chin to focus on finding a "wireman" (someone who specializes in wiretapping).

When Suyam doesn't show up for his interview at the Five-O offices, McGarrett sends Duke to his place, where Suyam is found shot dead in his basement wine cellar at 5:17 p.m. He was last seen by his butler Lewis (William Valentine) before 1:00 p.m., and Doc later estimates that Suyam died around 1:15. McGarrett is curious as to "what ruined this wine" in the cellar, even though there has not been any mention that anything was wrong with it. Lewis replies that the temperature for the cellar had been manually adjusted to 100 degrees.

Thinking that Suyam was rich and didn't particularly need the lottery money, Danno does some digging and finds that Diane and McBain had a "hot and heavy romance" four years before which ended very acrimoniously three years ago. This is around the time that McBain — who is in the "unclaimed freight" business — went bankrupt. When asked earlier, McBain told McGarrett he made the $10,000 he used to buy his lottery ticket during a recent surge in business.

While she and McBain were together, Diane was running a place called the Kula Club for which there were two sets of books, and she was taking McBain to the cleaners, resulting in his bankruptcy — the set of books intended for McBain's eyes showed a loss of $500,000 in three years. Diane took the $500,000 that she fleeced from McBain and gave it to her father, who told her that it was to pay off his bad debts, but instead he used it to purchase the country club along with Suyam.

Danno also discovers that Harry and Bromley had dinner before the party at a fancy local restaurant, sort of a "condemned man's last meal," including an expensive bottle of wine. The two of them left the restaurant at 8:15 p.m., and using this information as well as an analysis of their stomach contents and the name of the poison which Foxton ingested (escadine choline), plus McGarrett's brainstorm that Foxton's body was put in the wine cellar to change the temperatures connected with time of death (!!), Doc can say "I'm prepared to testify under oath that Harry Foxton died between 12:15 and 12:45 a.m. of the date in question."

Doc later determines that instead of cancer, Harry was going to die of Lou Gehrig's disease, which is described by its official name — amylotrophic lateral sclerosis. However, Doc says that Foxton injected the fatal drug, which is not correct — Harry swallowed it in pill form.

As a result of this revised time of death, the lottery has a new winner, a lawyer named Luther Heaton (Danny Kamekona), who is acting as a proxy for Foxton himself. Heaton tells McGarrett that Harry intended to give the money to his daughter to make up for all the heartbreak he caused her.

Diane Foxton soon appears at Five-O headquarters with the gun used to kill Suyam, same model as the one which killed Bromley. She found it in the glove compartment of her car. She has no alibi for the time of Suyam's death, saying that around this time she was "stark naked, taking a sunbath." McGarrett wonders if this alibi is really dumb or really smart.

The search to find a wireman produces results, seven men locally, none of whom fit the recent M.O. But one of them, Mel Listie, recently got out of prison in Joliet, Illinois where it is suspected that he picked up additional skills, like murder. He is played by newspaperman Eddie Sherman, who has very limited appearances and almost no lines in the show. Inasmuch as Listie is the most likely suspect, Five-O goes to his apartment where bullets are shot out through both the front and back doors prior to them entering. McGarrett tells Danno to be careful when kicking in the door, and Danno says he will, adding, "I like island living."

When they finally go inside, Listie is lying dead on the floor with two bullets in the chest from long before Five-O arrived, and the shooter has escaped through a dumbwaiter. Of the dumbwaiter, a small elevator between floors in the building, McGarrett says, "That went out with Bulldog Drummond," referring to a fictional detective particularly popular in the 1920's and 1930's. There is an estimated $60,000 in Listie's mattress, far more than he would be expected to earn from wire jobs.

Duke quickly locates Listie's surveillance van which is in a nearby warehouse. When Five-O checks it out, they find some things missing, like tapes and a receiver. McGarrett suddenly realizes that because they didn't identify themselves at Listie's place before the bullets came flying out, it is likely that McGarrett's office is also bugged. When they return there, they find a transmitter under a desk with the help of Che Fong, and McGarrett, Chin and Ben carry on a conversation designed to make McBain show up at Listie's van. Sure enough, he arrives there soon after and Five-O is waiting for him.

Caught in the act of snooping around the truck, McBain blabs away that he murdered Suyam because the millionaire knew details about the mess that Diane had created for him, specifically the fraud with the Kula Club, and did nothing to stop it. McBain tries to escape from Five-O, but he is corralled and busted. He has yet another Mauser pistol on him. McGarrett asks, "What did you do, buy these by the case?"

This is another of those "don't think about it too hard" episodes which isn't that bad from that angle, and has a neat gimmick regarding use of the wine cellar to change the estimated time of death. But McBain, while kind of an oily guy, hardly seems capable of masterminding some elaborate plan for Listie to carry out.

The whole business of using the wine cellar seems really far-fetched. How did McBain or Listie even know there was a wine cellar? Even though Listie had done some monkey business with the locks at Suyam's place, the wine cellar was still in the cellar (i.e., you have to go into the house to get to the cellar) and it seems to me that Listie dragging Harry's body into the place was fraught with peril that he might run into the butler either when putting it there or taking it out the next morning.

While McGarrett, Ben and Chin are setting up McBain via the "hidden" transmitter, there is a scene which isn't easily explained. Someone is listening to this conversation with a TEAC reel-to-reel tape recorder, but it cannot be Listie, because at that point, Listie is dead. There were "tape recorders everywhere" in the van when Duke discovered it, though we do not see them. There were no reel tapes in the van, however, and also no receiver so whoever was in the van could listen to conversations. The suggestion is that this TEAC recorder must be at McBain's place where he is listening in, especially since he soon shows up in the warehouse. But is McBain that technically knowledgeable he could be doing this?

It is quite possible that the script for this show was overwritten, with parts of it edited out later. When McGarrett is at Suyam's after the millionaire's body is found in the cellar, there is never any explanation then or later as to why Suyam was murdered at 1:15 p.m. Foxton's body was found in the morning, so it's not like Suyam surprised Listie when the body was being taken out and was killed then. Quite likely McBain (who later admits to killing Suyam) happened to drop in at the time, conveniently when the butler had just gone shopping prior to that.

There is also no set-up for the whole business about the temperature in the wine cellar having been changed. McGarrett says to the butler, "What caused all this, Louis? What ruined this wine?" without the fact the wine was "ruined" having been mentioned previous to this. It's not like the butler or Duke, who found the body, said anything about this earlier (at least that we are aware of) or that McGarrett said something along the lines of "it sure is hot in here."

There are issues over and above what's in the previous paragraphs, though. Part of McBain's scheme was him (or Listie) getting the identical Mauser pistols that were used (three of them — the one that killed Bromley, the one that killed Suyam and one that McBain has at the end of the show). Someone removed the bluing on the guns (a protective coating against rust) and restamped the serial numbers, done with "the same stamping tools." As he is nabbed, McBain tells McGarrett that he is "disappointed," saying, "If you'd have done your job, you would have traced those guns not to me, but to Diane Foxton. You see, she was the one that was supposed to take the rap." But the guns were not traced to anyone in the show, even though McGarrett told Ben to look into this.

Via the bugs, Listie obviously overheard a conversation between Harry and Bromley discussing the poison pill, so they knew that he was going to die some time after the party. But what was the point of putting him in the wine cellar? The exact time Harry died was turned into a total crap shoot, because putting the body in the wine cellar would have confused things further. There was no guarantee that he would "officially die" during Diane's "hour" to make it look like she was the one who formulated this grand scheme (and how would she be aware of all the medical technicalities like Doc?). In fact, Harry might have "officially died" during McBain's own hour, thus totally derailing his plan!

Bottom line is — McBain was a stupid criminal, beaten by the clever detective work of Five-O with help from their pals Che Fong and Doc.

WHAT DOES THE TITLE MEAN?

Harry Foxton has people make bets as to what exact time he will expire from a fatal disease. Knowing the precise time will result in a prize of almost a quarter of a million dollars.

EPISODE PROMO:

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CASUALTY LIST:

Death: Roy Bromley shot twice by Mel Listie.
Death: Harry Foxton ingested escadine choline; found dead in his car by HPD.
Death: Peter Suyam shot twice by Scotty McBain, found dead in his wine cellar.
Death: Listie shot twice by McBain and found dead in his apartment.

MORE TRIVIA:

• The Five-O crew is dressed informally at the beginning of the show (even McGarrett) at the club after Bromley's shooting. Later, they seem to be constantly in and out of McGarrett's office at headquarters — Chin seems particularly involved with the case. Many of the characters are sweating excessively during the episode.
• There's interesting camera work, switching focus between McGarrett and Ben, in one scene.
• A "photofax" is used to send a picture of Listie to the mainland. His mug shot number is 638529, and the picture was taken on 5/18/73. A previous address of his is seen on his rap sheet: 4201 Laurel Grove, Los Angeles. Another rap sheet is seen for Raymond L. Emstrom, his number is A45159.
• The violin, trombone interval and marimba themes are all heard; the score is by Ray.
• Various stock shots are seen outside a hospital and of driving straight ahead on a road near the beach as well as of the all-knowing HPD "Iron Brain" computer.
• If you look carefully at Listie's corpse on the floor in his apartment, you can see his eyelids moving.
• When the TEAC 3300 reel-to-reel tape recorder is seen, the brand name TEAC is covered up with a piece of cloth or tape which flutters when someone's hand moves to turn the machine off. I don't know why they suppressed this name, since the word "Scotch" is seen on one of the large metal tape reels.
• The Five-O receptionist Jenny is wearing very colorful clothes in this episode during her brief appearance.
• Diane lives at 220 Kapoho Drive.
• McGarrett snaps his fingers several times during the show.
• Danno uses the expression "without a paddle," as in "we are up shit creek �"
• An accountant connected with the books from the Kula Club is named "Corbett," same last name as Gretchen who would star in S07E19, "A Study In Rage."
• The story for this episode was co-authored by a woman, Jacqueline Lynch.
• An earlier title for this episode was "Hickory Dickory Death."

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134. (S06E14) “The $100,000 Nickel” ★★�

QUICK PLOT:

A sleight-of-hand artist is enlisted to steal a nickel valued by coin experts at $100,000, but after the robbery, everything goes wrong.

Click here to read Full Plot.

REVIEW:

The Pacific Coin Convention is being held at the Ilikai Hotel, including a bourse (sale) and an auction. One of the featured items to be auctioned is a 1913 Liberty Head nickel, of which there are only 5 specimens in existence. The value at the time of the show, as the title of the episode indicates, was $100,000. In August 2018, this coin sold for $4.56 million.

The beginning of the show is interesting, cross-cutting between the arrival of this rare coin at the show, complete with police escort, and the making of a counterfeit version of it by an engraver named Andecker (uncredited actor). His creation of the 1913 coin involves removing the "0" from a 1903 nickel and replacing it with a "1." The technique he is using with a chisel-like tool seems kind of crude, even though later the counterfeit is claimed to be a very good imitation up to "plus-three diopter magnification."

When Andecker offers to sell this bogus coin for $1,000 to a professional assassin named Paul Anthony (James Grahlmann), he is shot dead. Anthony, working for the slimy but debonair international criminal Eric Damien (Victor Buono), then goes to the Honolulu jail and bails out a sleight-of-hand artist named Arnie Price (Eugene Troobnick). Price was busted as part of a roust for a carney routine where he was changing 10s and 20s into ones until the cops trapped him with marked bills. Brought to see Damien, Price is told that he has "special talents." Damien wants him to substitute Andecker's bogus nickel for the real McCoy at the Ilikai show, which will earn him a fee of $10,000. To make his job more difficult, Price, pretending to be a collector of rare coins named Wilson Davis, will have to wear white gloves, but Price demonstrates to Damien that he can pull this off without any problems.

Price's wife Millie (Hildy Brooks) doesn't like any of this, but Arnie goes to the convention and makes the switch easily ... but alarm bells go off as he is leaving the hotel because Haviland (Robert Costa), the man in charge of the $100,000 nickel, notices what happened without knowing exactly who made the switch. Before being grilled by the cops and Five-O, Price quickly dumps the nickel into the payment slot for a newspaper box in the entrance to the hotel.

From this point on, the episode combines the plot device of "an item passes from one person to another" later featured in S07E23, "Diary of a Gun" and S12E07, "Use a Gun, Go to Hell" with that of a couple caught in a bad situation like S06E06, "Murder is a Taxing Affair."

Having been cleared by the cops, Price sits across the street in a car with binoculars watching the newspaper box, and eventually someone from the paper shows up to clear the money. When Price is watching, the first binocular angle is totally wrong; it's looking at the box from inside the hotel, instead of outside where he is parked. The following binocular shot as the money is being removed is correct, though it is a closeup compared to the previous view.

Price and his wife follow the guy from the paper, and after he clears another box, Price attempts to grab the bag containing the money, but it ends up all over the alley. The newspaper guy pulls a gun on Price, and during the ensuing struggle, the guy from the paper is wounded, though not seriously. Arnie and Millie grab as much of the money as they can, and flee back to their motel. But the stolen coin is not in the change that they managed to recover.

They return to the place where the money was sent flying, but find nothing. Millie notices a little boy walking with his grandfather who picks up a nickel which is the same year as the old man was born — 1913. They follow the kid to a Chinese corner store where the kid buys some candy with the money and the store proprietor gives the nickel as change to a woman. It looks like she puts the money in a vending machine, which Millie starts plugging quarters into, trying to get change to no avail, but then the woman goes to a Chinese restaurant where she buys something to eat. A bum grabs the woman's purse and Arnie pursues the guy, but when he catches this character, the nickel is not in her purse either. Arnie and Millie give up and head to a bar for a couple of drinks. They are surprised when they get the nickel in change; they recognize that one of the other customers in the bar worked in the restaurant.

McGarrett has been to visit Damien after talking to Hans Vogler from Interpol. (How he figures out where Damien is staying is a good question.) He gets nowhere, though he says that their encounter is like "a mongoose watching a cobra," and that "the mongoose always wins." McGarrett has kind of a smug, "smarty-pants" attitude during his confrontation. When he gets back to the office, Duke shows up to say that "Davis" is Price, so McGarrett puts out an APB which results in Arnie being picked up almost immediately.

Brought to the office, Arnie plays dumb, but McGarrett says that "I'm not interested in you or your wife, but I am interested in that fat cat who set this whole thing up." Using Damien's phone number which was given to him (a "mobile number"), Arnie meets with Damien and Anthony. Spotting Chin following closely, Damien gets out of the car, but soon after this, Arnie attempts to wrest control of the vehicle from Anthony as it is driven further, and it ends up in the ocean after driving at high speed during which one of the hubcaps falls off. After everyone is rescued from the car, it explodes, thanks to a bomb which Damien left in it, a typical M.O. of Damien mentioned earlier, where "The ones who might wind up cooperating with the law always wind up missing or dead."

Soon after, McGarrett is quick to confront Damien at the house which is his base of operations as he attempts to flee, and when Damien pulls out the "real" coin which Arnie gave him earlier, McGarrett tells him that it is the phony one, which Haviland gave him after the robbery, and pulls the real one (which Arnie left with McGarrett when he got hauled into the office) out of Damien's ear. This seems kind of dumb, considering the value of this coin — which has already seen far too much abuse, being put in a coin box, dropped on the street and handled by numerous people!

This show is fairly entertaining, but there is one big plot hole. There is no explanation as to why McGarrett is suddenly interested in Damien when he is talking with Hans Vogler from Interpol on the phone. ("Hans Vogler" is very odd choice for this character's name, because that was the name of the edgy scientist played by Donald Pleasance in S04E16 and 17, "The 90 Second War.") Prior to this, the Five-O people were discussing the engraver Andecker who made the bogus nickel at the beginning of the show. Andecker did time in Europe before he came to Hawaii, and Chin Ho speculates that "Andecker got hit by a European cat," but so what? At this point, there is no connection between Andecker and Damien, or Damien and Anthony, who killed Andecker. In his conversation with Vogler, McGarrett seems to be pulling Damien's name out of thin air. On the other hand, Damien knows immediately who McGarrett is when the top cop shows up at his place with some paperwork (likely a warrant, which is never used).

EPISODE PROMO:

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CASUALTY LIST:

Death: Henry Andecker shot and killed by Paul Anthony.
Injury: Jennings accidently shot struggling for gun with Arnie Price, winds up comatose.
Injury (x3): Anthony, Arnie and Millie Price hurt when car runs into ocean.

MORE TRIVIA:

• Various shots of rare coins are seen at the beginning, as the end titles inform us "courtesy of United National Coin Corporation, Beverly Hills, California and World Wide Coin Investments, Limited, Atlanta, Georgia," accompanied by a narrator's voice telling how much the coins are worth at the time of the show. The coins are: an 1879 $4 coin (front/back), value $18,000; a $50 commemorative coin from the 1915 Pan American Exposition, hexagonal shape (front/back), value $15,000; another coin from the same exposition, round shape (front/back), value $15,000; a 1796 dollar (front/back), value $20,000; and a 1795 dollar (front/back), value $12,000.
• The main titles don't show up until over three minutes have passed.
• At the scene at one of those near-the-beach locations where Andecker is killed, a crowd is seen in the background watching the filming. Anthony used some bullets with "mercury cores" (a big deal is made about this by Che Fong), and he dropped a shell casing where he murdered Andecker that came from some obscure European source. These bullets would explode inside the intended victim, aside from containing a very toxic substance. An internet search for bullets with mercury in them doesn't discount that they couldn't have been custom-made, but their use seems to be have been outlawed by various international conventions.
• When he is frantically trying to track down the coin, Arnie has a bandage on his left elbow.
• Damien is staying in the same house used by gang boss Li Wing in S04E11, "A Matter of Mutual Concern," located at 3735 Diamond Head Road.
• Jimmy Borges appears briefly at the beginning as the Ilikai hotel manager who puts the title's nickel in the hotel safe.
• The newspaper box seen in the show says the paper is 15 cents each day, except Sunday, when it is 35 cents.
• The score by Bruce Broughton has a certain funky element to it.

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135. (S06E15) “The Flip Side Is Death” ★★★

QUICK PLOT:

A bank robbery carried out under the cover of a mock military emergency sends Five-O to a hotel on the north of Oahu to investigate.

Click here to read Full Plot.

REVIEW:

Four men — ex-con Tally Green (Don Stroud), music producer Art Walker (Peter Haskell), pineapple deliveryman Joe Keao (Gerald Waialae) and hotel employee/army reservist Louie Pahia (Frank Liu) — pretend to be military men transporting a shipment of VX nerve gas, a very real chemical warfare substance. There is no explanation as to why and how these four all originally got together.

The cylinders supposedly containing this gas rupture after the army truck stolen from Fort Ruger carrying them is intentionally sabotaged in downtown Kahuku at the north of Oahu. But the cylinders are empty, and the "gas" produced by some smoke bombs is used as an excuse to clear the neighborhood which includes a bank that has lots of payroll money for pineapple and cane-field workers in its vault. The robbers cut through iron bars in the bank with a special orthopedic saw used in amputations called a Gigli surgical saw.

The net take is around $250,000. Walker's share of the money is to help make up for losses at the music company bearing his name. He later says, "After the bath I took on my last three albums, I got no choice. I'm tap city."

Kahuku is about as far from Honolulu as you can get, from 36 to 45 miles, depending on the route you take. Five-O seems to get there with lightning speed, judging by the way they pass a police roadblock which has been quickly set up to grab the robbers. But the thieves are nowhere to be seen, which makes Five-O suspect they are still in the area, which contains Del Webb's Kuilima Resort Hotel and Country Club, later known as the Turtle Bay Golf and Tennis Resort.

The crooks swap their two stolen army Jeeps for a regular car and Keao's company pineapple truck which have been hidden under camouflage in an out-of-the-way location. The money is transferred to a golf bag and Green and Walker return to the Kuilima Resort where they are registered. While the money is being transferred, a golf ball, which later is part of their undoing, falls out of the bag onto the ground.

Keao uses the truck to bring 8-track tape cartridges which have been hidden in an abandoned sugar mill at the Kahuku Sugar Plantation to the resort where Green and Walker are staying. Pahia, who works as a waiter in the resort, delivers these cartridges to the two men's room, where Walker breaks the cartridges open and, after removing the tape inside, replaces it with some of the stolen loot. The cartridges are then put into a carrying case which is boxed up and sent to Walker's office in Los Angeles, delivered to the post office by Keao and his truck.

When Keao gets stopped by one of the roadblocks, a cop finds an 8-track which is Santana's Abraxas with a "Walker Music Company" sticker on it, originally released by Columbia. The box containing this tape was originally placed in the back of the truck, but when the cop finds it, it is in the front. The cop holds up the tape and says "Good group!" Later in the show, Danno finds several other tapes in a small box in the cab, as if these were Keao's own tapes. Several of these were manufactured by Certron, a real company. Danno suddenly has a McGarrett-like brainstorm as to the "gimmick," using the cartridges to transport the stolen loot off the island. The contents of this second tape, which also is from Walker's company, are identical to Bob Dylan's New Morning (also released by Columbia) and if you look closely when Danno slams the tape on the dashboard to open it up, you can see Dylan's face on the cover and the title on the other side of the cartridge as well.

McGarrett spends most of this episode in his office in Honolulu while the Five-O Team investigate the robbery. He does appear in Kahuku at the beginning of the show. When the police computer can't come up with a suspect from the hotel's guest list, McGarrett tells its operator, "It's got the Iron Brain stumped." McGarrett himself is pretty clever at the end of the episode, where he figures out the crooks' M.O. of hiding the cartridges at the sugar mill, disassembling them and stuffing them with money at the hotel, then smuggling them through roadblocks.

The hotel guest list, which finally connects Walker with the robbery, contains several in-jokes referring to the Five-O production staff:

• James Pettus (story consultant Ken)
• William Lorin (Will, story consultant — not for this show)
• Curtis Heinz (James, assistant producer)
• Doris Kenyon (Curtis, story consultant — not for this show)
• Pamela Busch (Bob, casting director)
• Bernard Dixon (Richard, assistant to the production manager)
• Curtis Fenneman (Cliff, assistant to the producer)
• Vivienne Freeman (producer Leonard).

Don Stroud as Green gives an exceptionally edgy performance as far as his co-conspirators in the robbery and aftermath are concerned. A woman screams — probably one of the loudest screams in the entire series — when the hotel elevator opens, revealing Pahia's body after he has been knocked off by Green, who was troubled by Pahia being grilled by the cops. Keao is also killed by Green who figures that he would not react well after Pahia's death and he is right — Keao comes after Green with a knife before he is killed with the Gigli saw.

Several shots are repeated in this episode — the closeup of Walker's and Green's hands stuffing the money in the 8-tracks, the label on the box of tapes (the address is Art Walker, P.O. Box 3352, Los Angeles 90027; Walker's Honolulu office is in ZIP code 96816), a Five-O car barreling past two HPD cars, the pineapple truck entering the garage at the Kuilima Resort, Pahia delivering tapes to Keao in the hotel garage and the Jeep being driven by a solo driver at the beginning of the show with the building which has a smokestack in the background.

The score is credited to Ray (we hear the trombone interval theme once with no trombone!), but almost all of the music in the first half of the show up to about 28:00 of running time is from "Hookman" by Morton Stevens. Listening to Stevens' iconic score while the visuals are totally different is kind of disorienting.

The color photography in this show is really first-class.

WHAT DOES THE TITLE MEAN?

The title of the episode supposedly refers to the 8-track tape cartridges in the show, but it doesn't make sense, because unlike 78 and 45 RPM records as well as 33⅓ RPM LPs and cassette tapes, 8-tracks don't have a "flip side." The tape is in a continuous loop inside the cartridge.

EPISODE PROMO:

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CASUALTY LIST:

Death (x2): Fake — Joe Keao and Louie Pahia feign death as part of VX nerve gas hoax.
Death: Pahia is stabbed by Tally Green in Kuilima Resort elevator.
Death: Keao is garroted by Green.
Death: Green is shot by Danno, falls out of window at least two stories up.

MORE TRIVIA:

• If you look at the truck carrying the nerve gas cylinders when it rolls over on its side at the beginning of the show thanks to a plastic bomb on the front tire attached to a hot wire under the cab, the hood opens up, and it looks like the truck has no engine!
• For some inexplicable reason, at approximately 13:39 of the show on the sixth season DVD, there is a brief insert from S06E17, "One Born Every Minute," which was both filmed and broadcast after "Flip Side". In this shot, Ed Flanders, Michael Strong, Tommy Fujiwara and Lynnette Mettey are all seen while driving down the highway. This 3-second shot does not appear in the video I made of the show several years ago off local TV. Both of these excerpts are followed by a shot of the US Coast Guard patrol boat Cape Corwin (WPB-95326). McGarrett did ask for the Coast Guard to make sure that no one was trying to get off the islands, but that was almost 3 minutes before in show time.
• After McGarrett gets a call from Che Fong, he says "I'll be right down," suggesting that Che's forensic lab is in the basement of the Iolani Palace.
• The loot from the bank robbery is $250,000. They are using 200 cartridges, which means there would have to be $1,250 in each one, and it would probably take quite a lot of time to assemble all this. But this assumes that Walker gets all the money! Each carrying case holds 24 cartridges. The tape from the cartridges is discarded. If someone from the hotel noticed this in the garbage, wouldn't this be suspicious?
• Walker tells Green "Those tapes have serial numbers ... they can be traced to my company." I am skeptical that this kind of tapes had serial numbers; further investigation is pending.
• While going through the hotel's guest list with the HPD computer operator, McGarrett says the name "Takashi," but the subtitles translate this as "Tokeshi."
• John Alexis Howard, who played the apartment manager in S03E09, "The Late John Louisiana," the previous show which starred Don Stroud, is seen briefly in this show as Walker and Green return to the resort.
• Pahia's body is removed in a Physician's Ambulance; so is Keao's, which is found in the middle of nowhere in the pineapple truck.
• Thanks to Dan Stomierosky for pointing out the information about the Dylan recording.

An earlier title for this episode was "The Cobweb Palace."

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136. (S06E16) “The Banzai Pipeline” ★★★  BOOK HIM, DANNO 

QUICK PLOT:

Five-O gets involved with three murders which take place at one of the world's most famous surfing beaches.

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REVIEW:

Sleazy land developer Oswald Greggs (Bob Basso) is freaking out because after a grand jury session, zoning commissioner Edward Huffman (John Lennon, not the Beatle) has been hit with three indictments for soliciting and accepting bribes. Greggs, who is the one who was bribing Huffman, knows that he will eventually spill the beans with the result that both of them will end up in the clink.

Huffman is preparing to leave Hawaii, a peculiar move, because people in trouble with the law are usually cautioned not to leave town. Huffman is contacted by Greggs to receive his payoff, so he goes to a beach near the Banzai Pipeline, an odd location far from downtown, close to the top of Oahu on the northwest side, rather than somewhere near the airport. Huffman meets Greggs' thug Andy Koa (well played by the gorilla-like Rudy Diaz). He is shown an attach� case full of cash but promptly stabbed with a knife in the back by Koa and left dead in the surf.

Rick McDivitt (Perry King), who wants to make a documentary to rival the classic Endless Summer with his surfing brother Roger (Nicholas Hammond) is nearby and finishing his filming for the day. He sees the jacket which was left in Huffman's car and steals the now dead man's wallet (Rick did not see the murder). Why the jacket was left in the car with the wallet being particularly obvious also seems strange. Koa sees Rick driving away from the scene and tries to stop him, but is unsuccessful. However, Andy recovers a can of film which Rick dropped as he was fleeing.

District Attorney John Manicote (Glenn Cannon) is at a meeting with the Governor, relieved that he now has what he considers an air-tight case against Huffman, when he receives a call from McGarrett. He and Five-O are quick to arrive at the murder scene. Manicote is super pissed, saying they had Huffman "right by the throat. Then Greggs steals him from us with a daylight kill on the very day the grand jury returns its indictments." (You have to wonder how Manicote knows that Greggs is responsible, even though he is probably the most likely suspect.)

Koa goes to Greggs' office where he is concerned that Rick might have witnessed the murder, but Greggs brushes off Andy's fears as he pays him. Greggs' henchman Cass Tanner (Jack Hogan) says that Rick was probably just "some little puker up there having his own dope party." However, Greggs asks Tanner to get the film in the can developed.

Rick is running out of money to finish his movie. He has already run up a large debt with George Bole (Terry Plunkett), owner of a photo lab. He gives Bole $250 cash from Huffman's wallet and later starts using Huffman's Global Express National Credit Card (number 317 9090 842), despite his brother's objections. Rick buys expensive goods and then tries to pawn them to get cash, which does not turn out as successful a venture as he expected.

Primitive credit card technology is shown, including a machine which flashes a green light on top to indicate the purchase was approved, along with a manual credit card imprinting device called the Addressograph Electric Recorder.

Five-O contacts the credit card company which alerts them when Rick tries to buy some expensive camera equipment, but before they can arrive at the store, Rick has fled, having stolen an expensive lens. Five-O tracks down Rick's beachfront address via his fingerprints which are left on the counter at another store. These prints are on file at the Department of Motor Vehicles, though it's hard to understand how the cops could have tracked him down this way.

Greggs and Tanner also try to locate Rick after viewing developed footage from the can which was dropped, though Tanner has little luck asking questions of surfers, telling Greggs over the phone, "these people up here are like a bunch of clams." Tanner gets lucky when he sees Rick drive by in his car which has a very distinctive motto on the back that Koa mentioned earlier: "Only the sun gives without receiving." (It seems odd that Koa could read this and remember it, but he couldn't read Rick's license plate.)

Tanner finds the house where the two brothers live and follows them to the beach. As Rick films Roger surfing spectacularly, Tanner shoots Roger dead, because from the film footage he thinks Roger is the one who was at the beach where Huffman was murdered. Tanner is hiding in the bushes at the edge of the sand by the beach with some people only feet away from him. Despite the fact his rifle doesn't seem to have a silencer, no one bats an eye when he shoots Roger and then wounds Rick who rushes to Roger's rescue. Both brothers are rushed to the hospital, where they pass away from their injuries.

Of course, McGarrett has the usual brainstorm when he realizes that "Maybe Rick still has something to say." There is no mention of how they recovered Rick's camera which was left on the beach after the two brothers were shot, and they get the film which shows Roger's murder developed. As they view the footage, McGarrett says, "With all that water on Roger's right, the sniper had to be somewhere east of Rick's camera. That cuts the area in half. When we get to the scene where Roger was hit, we can narrow the angle even more."

Credibility is stretched by some of the camera and projection techniques in this episode. If Rick is on the beach filming surfers, how can he take a shot of them from the side while they are riding the waves? There are other odd angles in Rick's footage which don't make sense, and there are also cross-fades in some of the film which Sole watches, as if it had been edited by Rick (I thought these were just "dailies.") When Five-O runs their film from Rick's abandoned camera, they make it go backwards, though there are projectors that could do this. The critical sequence near the end where Rick, looking for "foxes [girls]" pans up to the sky and then over to the beach where Tanner with a rifle is hiding is just a little artsy-fartsy. McGarrett zooming with the projector to isolate and blow up Tanner in the distance is totally unrealistic, aside from the fact that the quality of the image remains sharp.

The scene at the end where Greggs and Tanner try to escape, ending up with their Mustang rolling down a hill and blowing up after catching fire is a classic Five-O example of the bad guys getting their "just desserts." (The car has no front license plate, by the way.) Duke, Chin and Ben all leap over these flags around Greggs' Sunshine Land Company office in a pursuit of this car; this is pretty funny.

Despite its flaws, this is an essential "Hawaiian" Five-O episode because of all the surfing footage!

WHAT DOES THE TITLE MEAN?

The Banzai Pipeline is a surf reef break located in Hawaii, off Ehukai Beach Park in Pupukea on O‘ahu's North Shore. A reef break is an area in the ocean where waves start to break once they reach the shallows of a reef. Pipeline is known for huge waves that break in shallow water just above a sharp and cavernous reef, forming large, hollow, thick curls of water that surfers can tube ride. The location's name combines the name of the surf break (Pipeline) with the name of the beach fronting it (Banzai Beach). It got its name in December 1961, when surfing documentary producer Bruce Brown stopped at the then-unnamed site to film. At the time, there was a construction project on an underground pipeline on the adjacent Kamehameha Highway, and someone with Brown made the suggestion to name the break "Pipeline". (Based on information from Wikipedia)

EPISODE PROMO:

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CASUALTY LIST:

Death: Edward Huffman stabbed in back by Andy Koa.
Injury: Danno is hit on the head from behind by Koa and almost knocked out.
Death (x2): Roger and Rick McDivitt are sniped by Cass Tanner. They die later in the hospital.
Injury: Tanner is hurt in rollover car crash after McGarrett and Danno shoot out tires; he is extracted from the car.
Death: Oswald Greggs dies in rollover car crash after McGarrett and Danno shoot out tires; after this, the car explodes in a massive fireball.

MORE TRIVIA:

• This is the second show in a row where the plot takes a twist because something is accidentally dropped on the ground by one of the "criminals." (Strictly speaking, Rick is not as much of a criminal as the bank robbers from the previous show, though he was using money and a credit card, both of which were stolen.) In the previous show, a golf ball fell on the ground; in this one, it is a film can.
• Huffman drives the Lincoln Continental with the same license number (8E-5800) seen in other episodes this season.
• Rick's driver's license is shown in detail. His full name is Richard N. McDivitt, his address is 14899 Tupukei Road, North Shore, Hawaii. The license expires on 4/30/76. His birthday is 4/30/48, he has brown hair, weighs 170 pounds, is 6 feet tall and has blue eyes. The number of the license is 546 10 8740. Brad Hamm points out a few problems with this drivers' license: "'Tupukei' is obviously an attempt at a Hawaiian name for the street; the only problem is that there is no letter 'T' in the Hawaiian language. Also the license shows Rick is from the town of 'North Shore.' Of course, there is no town of North Shore on Oahu. 'North Shore' refers to an area of Oahu. [The region of Oahu with this name has a postal code of 96712.] Throughout the entire episode, McDivitt's surf shack is supposed to be on the North Shore, but is actually on the South Shore in the Hawaii Kai area with the heavy traffic of Kalanianiole Highway in the background. The episode also opens with McDivitt filming at the 'North Shore' but he is actually on Bellows Beach along Waimanalo Bay."
• As the Five-O team search for clues, some of the music from "The Finishing Touch" is reused, as is a shot of Ben talking to an old bald guy with gappy teeth, which comes from "Hookman." Chin Ho smokes a pipe while he is on the streets investigating. (Bob Basso as Greggs also smokes a pipe.)
• When McGarrett arrives and finds Rick and Roger on the beach, he tells Danno: "Get an ambulance and HPD backup — they've been shot!" (This seems rather obvious.)
• In the hospital, Seth Sakai's voice is heard on the soundtrack giving medical orders (from the fifth season episode "Pig in a Blanket"), though Sakai is nowhere to be seen.
• In the photo studio, there is a picture of American presidents which features the current President Nixon on the wall. The month showing on this calendar is January 1971!
• Numerous Five-O stock actors are featured in this show, including Terry Plunkett, Josie Over, George Herman, Dick Fair and Bob Costa.
• Chin Ho tracks down suspects for Huffman's murder, which include Koa, also known as "Handy Andy." The number on Koa's mug shot is 95483 — there is no date.
• In her first Five-O appearance, Elissa Dulce plays Leila, the petite girlfriend of Koa. Dragged down to the Five-O offices to tell what she knows about him, she says to McGarrett "Let's cut the bull!" and gives him a bunch of mouth.
• Roger tells Plunkett, owner of the film lab and potential producer for the movie, "We're eatin' granola for dinner."
• Some of the footage at the beginning of the show is very grainy. In the episode promo, the subtitles have Manicote saying "the grand jury returns it's indictments," whereas in the show itself, the subs correctly say "the grand jury returns its indictments."
• In a scene with Duke at HPD headquarters, there is a Crimestoppers-type poster on the wall behind him with a "real" phone number of 944-1212.
• The HPD computer is seen briefly.
• The correct title for this show is "The Banzai Pipeline."

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137. (S06E17) “One Born Every Minute” ★★�

QUICK PLOT:

A bunco game using phony diamonds and preying on well-heeled male tourists sends McGarrett and Five-O into action in an attempt to head off a sinister racket.

Click here to read Full Plot.

REVIEW:

Joe Connors (Ed Flanders) and Cindy Imala (Lynnette Mettey), two bunco artists, team up with locals Big Mardo (Jimmy Borges), Sunada (Tommy Fujiwara) and Elfidio (Doug Mossman). The three actors from the Five-O stock company all have "bad guy" roles, though it is impossible for Tommy Fujiwara to ever be really bad! The name Sunada is used for three other characters during the series; Elfidio is similar to "Elpidio," first name of the revolutionary leader in S02E05, "Savage Sunday." Connors, who previously lived in Hawaii, uses the aliases "Tom Madrid" (any relation to Tony (S03E18 & S03E19, "F.O.B. Honolulu") or Billy (S08E17, "Loose Ends Get Hit")?), as well as "Jerry Spain" and "Palmer." Cindy's other name is "Miss Moore."

The crooks' objective is to scam well-heeled, middle-aged, married male tourists into "investing" in diamonds and then fleece them of large amounts of cash. When we meet the first of their victims, George Heller (Peter Carew), Connors, Cindy and Heller emerge from a restaurant where they have been completing their deal and they see Mardo breaking into Connors' car where the jewels are presumably stored in the trunk. Connors pulls out a gun and "shoots" Mardo, who fires back at the three with his own gun. Shortly after, Cindy and Heller witness Mardo's "dead" body as Connors glumly says "I killed him" before high-tailing it out of the parking lot in his car. Elfidio, dressed like an HPD cop coming upon the scene, yells at Cindy and Heller, but she tells Heller to run away, which he does. Elfidio says to spectators who appear because of the commotion, "I've got everything under control." He supposedly "arrests" Cindy, but there is no record of this later with HPD. All the crooks get together later with Connors, who looks out the window at the people below, saying "Pigeons � thousands of pigeons with thousands of dollars just waiting to be taken."

After Five-O starts investigating, Che Fong determines that the blood which was seen on the ground near Mardo's body was "Dracula blood � from a tube used by kids around Hallowe'en." The guns from both Connors and Elfidio were obviously shooting blanks. Although the idea with this gun battle was to foment a lot of confusion, it is unreal to me that no questions were raised as to why Connors' character pulled out a gun which he just fired with impunity on the streets of Honolulu!

Heller's wife Sylvia (Connie Sawyer) is super pissed, especially because the total her husband lost was $35,000: "He sold stocks � he called his bank, he withdrew three savings certificates. He even paid the penalties for early withdrawals." The Hellers go to the Five-O office where George helps construct sketches of the people who robbed him with the help of police artist Joe (James Severson, uncredited). But there is little that can be done, because in order to prosecute scammers, they have to be caught in the act, and there is "no proof that anything ever happened."

We soon get a total picture of how the scam works with the second sucker, Harry Maguire (Michael Strong). Despite the fact he is in Hawaii with his wife, Harry gets picked up by Cindy in a hotel and taken for a ride to her "uncle's workshop" to check out "table legs." I think this has some connection to Maguire's business, which is a furniture store in Grand Rapids, MI.

When they get there, the uncle's place is closed, but Sunada is in the parking lot, using the name of "Willy." He was supposed to be picked up by "Jerry Spain" (Connors) an hour ago, and needs a ride to town, something Maguire is totally indifferent to, because he wants to get into Cindy's pants. He suggests that Sunada take a cab or the bus, but Cindy overrides him, since she is driving the car. On the way back to town, they run into Connors, whose vehicle has broken down, even though it is pointing in the direction of town, not towards the place where he was going to pick up Sunada.

Connors was supposed to front Sunada money so he could go to New York and sell some diamonds, which are in an attach� case that Sunada shows, to the amazement of everyone, especially Maguire. The dialogue between Connors and Sunada is total bullshit, with Connors keeping up this expository narration for Maguire's benefit, saying things like "Would you believe I haven't seen this guy in a year? � Every time he gets down to his last dime, he uses it to call me. You have to feed this guy money like a parking meter."

Once back in town, they are sitting in the car outside a branch of the Bank of Hawaii at 4634 Kilauea Avenue (there is no special significance to this, as far as I can determine). As collateral, Sunada gives Connors a diamond which he says is worth three thousand dollars in exchange for a $500 loan to cover his trip to New York. Connors bullshits some more, "Willy, I've known you a long time. I know your father, I know your mother. I know you wouldn't try to cheat me, in front of two witnesses. It's a deal." He pulls out his checkbook (What? Where did that come from?) and writes Sunada a check for the five hundred! While this is going on, Maguire looks totally antsy and bored, but when Connors shows him the stone which Sunada just left, he says, "I'm no expert, but I know a diamond when I see one."

Connors is not so sure, he says, "Willy's a nice boy, but he has a touch of larceny in his soul." The three of them go to Wickersham Jewelers. Connors says "I've got a friend" who works there. Mark Wickersham is Elipidio and Mardo is in the store, probably pretending to be a customer. Elpidio examines the stone and says it's worth a lot more than three thousand. Then they notice that Sunada left his attach� case in the back seat. Looking at its contents, Elpidio speculates that this is "the Parkins collection," which is hot merchandise. He goes into the store and comes back out, prepared to offer $200,000 for the whole collection, "no questions asked." Maybe the suggestion is that Mardo is the customer? Both Maguire and Cindy tell Connors that he shouldn't even consider selling the jewels, which are not his. They return to the bank, where Sunada is waiting for them outside, probably freaking because of his attach� case.

They all go to a bar for drinks. Connors tells Sunada he can get $100,000 for him, which is about what Sunada was going to get if he went to New York and sold the jewels there. The idea is that Connors, Cindy and Maguire have to come up with $100,000, they will give this bread to Sunada, and then sell the jewels to Elpidio for $200,000, making a nice $100,000 profit to be split between the three of them. Between Cindy and Connors, they can come up with just $50,000, and as Connors is leaving the bar, figuring that this deal is not going to work, Maguire says just a moment. He tells Connors that he is sure that he can raise $50,000 as his part of the deal as an ominous "wave" kicks in.

While all this has been going on, Five-O has been busy investigating the scam. The car used with Heller was a rental job and the driver's license to obtain it was a phony. Connors has been ID'd by the New Orleans Police Department even though the sketch made of him hardly resembles Ed Flanders. He did time for bunco in Louisiana and has been out on the street for about six months. His routine with Cindy, his "girl roper," is well-known, and she has been spotted at four different places in Honolulu: "on the beach, in the hotels, on the prowl." Ben traces their latest mark — Maguire — to the Ilikai and they figure out who he is with the help of the hotel manager.

Connors, Cindy and Maguire get together again to pool their money, but only Maguire has been able to come up with his total share. The other two are $15,000 short. However, with the help of his brother-in-law, Maguire is able to make up the difference within a few hours, so his amount now totals $65,000. They meet with Sunada, who pockets the $100,000 and he gives them the jewels. When the three go to celebrate at a bar, with the jewels tucked away in the trunk of Cindy's car, Connors goes to make a phone call to Wickersham, and then Cindy has to go and "powder her nose." Both of them leave the place and leave Maguire to pick up the check. Around this time, Five-O goes to visit Maguire's wife Natalie (Patricia Herman) who suspected that something fishy was going on between her husband and "that tramp" Cindy, who was "hanging around the pool in a couple of cocktail napkins and making eyes..." When Maguire returns to his hotel room, his wife tells him that she just talked to the cops: "They showed me a sketch of that tramp. And they told me what she does." Maguire goes into the bedroom, closes the door and then leaps off the balcony to his death.

At Connors' hotel room, he is upset that for the first time, one of his marks killed themselves. Despite this, he convinces the others to pull off "just one more � a plump one, a quickie, in and out, getaway money while McGarrett's watching the airport." Cindy meets Alex Anderson (John Stalker), who is in Hawaii with a convention of meatpackers. Five-O follows the scam all the way up to the exchange with Sunada for the money, but then it all goes sideways because a valet parking attendant tips off Cindy that she is being followed. The scammers all retreat to Connors' "apartment" and are getting ready to split. However, Five-O convinces Anderson to go there and offer to see the deal through. But this doesn't make sense, if it is an "apartment" (that's what it's called in the show, not "hotel room"). How would Anderson know exactly which room Connors and his gang were in? This script blunder aside, Connors thumbs his nose at McGarrett, saying there is no way that Anderson giving him the $65,000 can be proved, but McGarrett points out that all the bills were marked.

Connors tells McGarrett, 'You conned me. A dumb cop, and you conned me. Me, Joe Connors." With a big smile on his face, McGarrett says, "How does it feel? How does it feel to be conned by a dumb cop? Huh?"

I don't like this show that much, though it does give the three Five-O stock players lots to do. The problem with the show is that the scammers are so damn greedy and the victims are so damn stupid! What is even dumber — two of the three victims are there with their wives, yet they manage to spend a lot of time with "that tramp" Cindy. What are their wives doing when this happens? Are they out shopping or something?

WHAT DOES THE TITLE MEAN?

According to Wikipedia, "There's a sucker born every minute" is a phrase closely associated with P. T. Barnum, an American showman of the mid-19th century, although there is no evidence that he actually said it. Early examples of its use are found among gamblers and confidence tricksters."

EPISODE PROMO:

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CASUALTY LIST:

Death (Fake): Big Mardo shot by Tom Madrid/Joe Connors.
Death: Harry Maguire commits suicide by jumping off balcony (not seen by us).

MORE TRIVIA:

• The gang of con artists is staying in the same building used by the scamming outfit, Reversions, Inc. in S06E08, "Why Wait Until Uncle Kevin Dies?" Maybe crooks get a preferential rate?
• Second episode for this season featuring the Royal Hawaiian Hotel — the first being S06E04, "One Big Happy Family."
• At one point, Elfidio holds a newspaper with the headline "talks today on troop cuts," in lower case type.
• Ben says there are 1,800 rooms in the Ilikai hotel, but according to the hotel's WWW site, there are only 1,050 rooms and condominium apartments.
• On the outside of the Ilikai, there is a sign advertising a show called "The Polynesian Man" starring sometime Five-O actor Nephi Hannemann in the Canoe House restaurant. Ben grills the barman at the hotel's outdoor watering hole (Joe Geremia, uncredited) and Mitch Mitchell plays the place's manager.
• I'm surprised when Maguire leaps from his hotel room to his death, despondent over all the money he lost, they don't show the usual stock shot. Prior to Maguire's death, the "bonging bell noise" from season four's "Cloth of Gold" is heard.
• Kam Fong's son, Dennis Chun, appears briefly as a parking attendant near the end of the show.
• Babe alert! She appears in the background at one of the hotels.

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138. (S06E18) “Secret Witness” ★★★�

QUICK PLOT:

A man who is an eyewitness to a murder finds himself, his wife and child the object of a hunt by the killer.

Click here to read Full Plot.

REVIEW:

Ted Reynolds (Mark Jenkins) works at the Kal Bi Restaurant, which is at 1146-C 12th Avenue and has the phone number 732-2088. On his way home from work early in the morning, he witnesses the murder of Joe Wang, number one bagman of local mob boss Dan Bok (Mark Lenard) by hitman Bo Lansing (Mark Gordon), who drives a black Lincoln Continental, license number 4B-2322.

Escaping from Lansing, Reynolds drops his library book (The Poetry of Robert Frost, edited by Edward Connery Lathem), which contains his library card inside, number 23-8956, that reveals his address to be 9916 Kapena Street. This is actually his previous address. His current one is apartment 601-127 Koa Street which Lansing gets from the phone book after trying unsuccessfully to get a librarian (Penny Jennings) to give him updated information.

When Reynolds reads about a $10,000 reward for information about the shooting in the Honolulu Star-Bulletin, the paragraph below this has no relation to the case at all, referring to a "preliminery investigation." Reynolds writes a letter to the paper's "Secret Witness" editor — he does this anonymously, keeping a corner of his letter so he can be identified later if there is an arrest or conviction thanks to this Crimestoppers-like service.

After the newspaper turns over a copy of the letter to Five-O, McGarrett asks to "have some Xerox copies made." McGarrett later quotes from the letter: "The man was dark-haired, under 6 feet tall, and weighed between 150 and 160. He wore dark glasses, a light-blue sports shirt and blue pants."

However, none of this information is in the letter, which is shown in close-up twice prior to this: "I saw the murder of Joe Wang. I was walking home from work a little after six this morning. As I was turning the corner I saw a man fire two shots into a man carrying a black satchel. The man he shot at was Oriental. Upon turning and seeing me he chased me. I was able to escape by going over a wall at the end of a parking lot. He fired again at me but I got away safely. I can positively identify this man. You can contact me through code number 9494."

Mark Lenard does a good job playing the wisecracking gangster Bok, though this character's name is kind of dumb. When he asks McGarrett and Danno what they're doing about Joe Wang, Danno replies, "We've already observed a couple of seconds of silence in his memory." Later in McGarrett's office when Bok reaches for an attach� case containing over $78,000 of Bok's money skimmed by Wang that McGarrett is using to entrap Bok, the music is momentarily reminiscent of Star Trek where Lenard, among other things, played Spock's father.

Lansing is one of Five-O's very nastiest villains — at the end, having shot Reynolds in front of his horrified wife Sue (Cindy Williams) in their apartment, he puts a gun to Reynolds' baby's head. Lansing must have good eyesight, since he can see the name and house number on the mailbox of R. Tanaka (Yankee Chang) from the sixth floor of Jenkins' apartment building. Tanaka's phone number is 555-6571, and he lives at 3539 Ewo Blvd., though where he lives is actually 3539 Keanu Street. Other phone numbers on the same page in the phone book that Lansing consults before calling Tanaka begin with either 555- or KL5, the letter equivalent to 555. Interestingly, in the column to the right of Tanaka are names like Talsky, Talstad, Talt and Talton, all of which should come before Tanaka, alphabetically speaking.)

At the end, it's amazing that Lansing doesn't see Danno, who is up against the wall in an external fire escape stairway with a rifle which he wanted to use to knock off Lansing. The hitman and his hostages pass right behind Danno, who should have moved to the stairway going to the next level when they were behind the wall. If the very careful Lansing had turned to the right for a second, he would have seen Danno!

Lansing is captured in a clever way. He demands that Five-O and HPD clear away from outside the apartment building so he can escape, but McGarrett gets Ben to loosen the lug nuts on the left front tire of Lansing's car, so when he tries to drive away, the wheel quickly falls off. As he tries to escape, Lansing is shot by Danno, still up in the building. In a death-bed style confession, Lansing admits he was hired by Bok. Just before he expires, a fly lands on his face, which many years ago was the subject of a lot of humor in certain Internet forums as to whether the fly should have gotten acting credit.

The score is by Ray. There is some creepy electronic music as Lansing knocks on the apartment door and Reynolds' wife Sue answers it. A bit of the Hookman score is reused, as is the trombone interval theme, which is heard on plucked strings at the beginning.

EPISODE PROMO:

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CASUALTY LIST:

Death: Joe Wang shot by Bo Lansing.
Injury: Ted Reynolds shot twice by Lansing.
Injury: Lansing bangs his head on steering wheel when car crashes.
Death: Lansing sniped by Danno, dies after telling McGarrett that Bok hired him.

MORE TRIVIA:

• The title card is over a freeze-frame and the opening credits are dragged out for over a minute. The director's credit seen when McGarrett is examining Joe Wang's body on a gurney has a gap between the "Directed by" line and "Michael O'Herlihy." Wang's body is removed from the murder scene in a black Physician's Ambulance.
• During the show's opening sequence, several local stores are seen, including Michiko's Flowers, Kaimuki Inn, Paradise Market and Ideal Pets and Supplies. There is a goof as Wang is seen walking towards the camera. The sign for Kaimuki Inn is some distance behind him, but in the next shot, seen from inside Lansing's car, Wang has just passed underneath this sign.
• A sign on the wall of the Kal Bi Restaurant says "Kim Chee [a Korean food] for Sale."
• The front page of the Star-Bulletin seen in the show has a front-page headline about an earthquake in Chile where two people died and thousands were left homeless. There don't seem to be any major earthquakes in Chile in 1973 according to one Wikipedia page, but this kind of news would be of interest in Hawaii, because a 1960 9.5-magnitude earthquake in Chile (the largest ever recorded anywhere) resulted in a massive tidal wave that destroyed or damaged more than 500 homes and businesses and killed 61 people in Hilo.
• Che Fong identifies Reynolds' typewriter as the Zephyr model manufactured by the Roma Company of Italy, manufactured for two years and then discontinued. McGarrett says, "See if the machine was distributed locally. If it was, I want to know the name of the distributor and all the retail outlets it was sold to," but this investigation runs out of steam. Ben later makes a connection between the typewriter and some menu cards that Reynolds typed up for the restaurant.
• There is a stock shot of McGarrett going up the real Iolani Palace stairway.
• When Five-O are trying to figure out what Reynolds' job is, Chin and Ben suggest he is "a janitor, a night watchman, or a night clerk in a hotel. Night manager, projectionist, [or a] ticket taker in an all-night grind house."
• I love the scene where Lansing tries to get Reynolds' address from the librarian, even attempting to bribe her. She tells him politely to take a hike. The library is closed on Monday, open 11-8 from Tuesday to Thursday, 10-5 on Friday and 9-5 on Saturday.
• In the page Lansing tears out of the phone book with addresses of people with the last name of Reynolds on it, there are what look like "real" phone numbers on the left side of the screen, but we do not see whose numbers these are. The listing for Reynolds is actually under his wife — "Mrs. Ted Reynolds" — at 127 Koa St., without specifying their apartment number.

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139. (S06E19) “Death with Father” ★★★

QUICK PLOT:

The son of a retired law enforcement official becomes embroiled in a heroin refining operation.

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REVIEW:

This show, the first one directed by Jack Lord, opens in a heroin lab on "Waimanalo Peak," a fictional location in the middle of nowhere. Two guys wearing gas masks which make them look like they are from outer space are preparing the white powder when they are suddenly interrupted by McGarrett using a bullhorn outside telling them to come out and surrender. In addition to Five-O, there is a huge presence of HPD cops, all heavily armed.

Two guards from the lab are killed and one of the workers is shot, while a fourth man escapes by jumping into a truck and driving down the hill, narrowly missing several cops and breaking through a barricade of police cars. Entering the lab, McGarrett inspects what is being made. He pronounces it 15 kilograms of "98 percent pure, number four."

At the Queen Emma Clinics, Ernie Fallon (Richard Rivera), the wounded lab worker, is hesitant to talk, but tells the name of his co-worker, the chemist who escaped — Tom Morgan (Peter Strauss) — after McGarrett says "it might help you in court."

McGarrett recognizes this name, because he not only knows the kid, but his father, Cliff (Andrew Duggan), who used to be in law enforcement. Exactly what branch of law enforcement is not specified, though Cliff says he has "friends in Treasury" who told him about McGarrett's big bust. Morgan was "beached" with only a couple of years to go before he would collect a pension. One wonders if his early retirement had anything to do with unorthodox methods he may have used while investigating and arresting.

When told about the revelation from "a suspect in the factory bust" that Tom, a chemistry major and straight A student, was one of the cooks, his father is incredulous: "You're telling me he's mixed up with hopheads and pushers?"

Cliff brings Tom to McGarrett's office where Tom says that Fallon, who he describes as "a creep," was trying to get back at him because Tom refused to steal some chemicals to give him several months back. As to Tom's whereabouts the previous day, he says there is a witness that he was on campus — a woman named Janice Wu. Tom goes to visit Janice (the attractive Luella Costello) and tells her that he needs an alibi. When she refuses to help him, he belts her in the face and threatens to tell the cops she is involved with him with the result she will go to jail.

Around this time, some guy connected with the drug operation goes to the hospital, and pretending to be a doctor, gives Fallon a "shot," which is from a pistol with a silencer. When he finds out what happened, Duke gives the guard who was on duty a major chewing out.

Ben is tailing Tom and it's in the usual obvious Five-O manner. When Tom and Janice head to her place at 211-275 Pele St. on his motorbike with Janice sitting behind him, Ben, who is sitting in his car on the street, looks directly at Tom out his car window as Tom pulls away from the curb!

Later, Danno goes to Janice's place for some unspecified reason and finds her overdosed on quaaludes, likely a suicide attempt based on the limited conversation Danno has with her in the ambulance. As the ambulance is on its way to the hospital, there is a peculiar insert edit as if there was a flub in the scene and the director did not want to reshoot it, since, typical of the show, it is shot inside a real ambulance travelling down a real street. By the time the ambulance arrives at the hospital, Janice is dead ("Pau," according to the paramedic).

Still tailed by Ben, Tom goes to the War Memorial Natatorium (identified by a sign as the Waikiki Natatorium), where he meets with two "top Asian [drug] dealers," Lee Song (Kwan Hi Lim), once one of the biggest Golden Triangle operators, and Luu Se Ngu (Seth Sakai), owner of a hotel in Saigon. Song tells Tom "We're gonna need another factory ... to process the other half of my base." Using a camera with a telephoto lens, Ben takes some pictures of this meeting, but many of the resultant photos are at the usual improbable angles. Song smokes in a weird upside-down manner reminiscent of Laugh-In's Arte Johnson.

Ngu is concerned that Tom will not co-operate to set up a new factory, but Song tells him, "There are forces inside of all of us, primitive instincts that tie us to our parents, like love, hate, fear. All directed towards them. And against them. With Tom, it is a death wish for his father."

Once the photos Ben took are developed, McGarrett goes to Cliff's place and shows them to him. McGarrett suggests the safest place for Tom right now would be behind bars, where the drug kingpins cannot get at him (though whether this would be safe is really highly debatable!). Soon after this, Cliff has a violent confrontation with his son, punching him and demanding to know why he is involved with with "hopheads and pushers and junkies."

Tom tells his father what he really thinks of him: "You ever ask yourself how a kid who was afraid of his own shadow won all those medals [in Vietnam]? Because I didn't care whether I lived or I died. It was either die at home for some imagined sin or off in the jungle somewhere by a sniper's bullet. A jungle you drove me into! It wasn't until I got home that I realized I wanted to live. Live long enough to see you hurt � What did you ever give me except a childhood full of screaming and bickering? A prison guard for a father, a cop looking over my shoulder judging every move I ever made! � You bugged people, busted heads, paid off your informers. I heard it all, I saw it all. Night after night, I heard you bragging about busting in doors, slamming suspects around. I did what I had to do � I don't care. [Cliff: Well, I care.] Only because the names are the same. Because you're still the big, tough cop. Without that, you're nothing. Your whole life would be a big, fat zero."

Cliff tells Tom "I can get rid of the evidence. I can save your stupid hide." After this, the two of them will leave country for parts unknown. This where things start to get stupid. Cliff goes to the HPD property room, having called Sgt. Phil Tallman, the attendant cop on duty, away on a ruse by pretending to be a cop upstairs who needs evidence from a "narcotics raid we made with the feds; I think it was back in August 2nd of 1972. It's case number 2742." (But how would he know this specific case?)

Morgan Senior gets into the room with a key and then into the evidence locker with another key, steals all the drugs which were seized recently from the lab, and then closes the locker and breaks into it again using a crowbar. But where did Cliff get these keys from? There is no indication that he used to be with HPD, and, even if he was, why would he still have keys for this room and the locker?

Cliff narrowly misses getting caught when Tallman returns. Called to HPD to witness the results of the break-in, and figuring that Cliff is the only one with "enough savvy and enough guts to pull this off," McGarrett goes to a boatyard where Cliff is hiding the dope in a secret compartment in a boat there.

Finally convinced of his son's complicity in the drug trade by McGarrett telling him that Tom is now in a cabin near Koko Head cooking more base, Cliff phones Song and offers to make a deal: the drugs from the property room for his son's safety. (But how does Cliff know Song's phone number — it's not in the Yellow Pages under "Visiting Asian Dope Lords," is it?)

When Song doesn't agree to his terms, Cliff hangs up, but Song phones him back soon (and how does Song know Cliff's phone number?) At some pre-arranged place, Song picks up Cliff in his limousine and blindfolds him, driving to the new drug lab. There, Cliff gives Song $1 million up front and offers to give him $1 million a year for the next four years as "insurance" for his son, a deal which Song accepts, along with leaving the States.

McGarrett, Five-O and the HPD cops are all near the new lab, just like at the beginning of the show, and they tell everyone to surrender. However, inside the lab, Tom turns on the gas from one of the propane tanks there while talking to his father (which his father can surely see!) and Cliff does nothing to stop him. Cliff tells Tom, "Let's go, son. You're coming with me." But Tom tells his father, "No, Pop. You're coming with me, lighting a striker used with a Bunsen burner. The resulting explosion and fireball looks like that from an atomic bomb. A very disturbing ending to the show!

The score for this episode is by Stevens, and it is brassy like Hookman, including a couple of arrangements of the Five-O theme, and also contains some very angular clarinet lines. When Cliff Morgan is in the property room, from then to the end of the act, the music is from Stevens' score to "Hookman."

WHAT DOES THE TITLE MEAN?

The title of this episode is a play on "Life with Father," a book which was adapted into a Broadway play, which was, in turn, made into a movie starring Elizabeth Taylor and William Powell as well as a television series. As it is, the show's title gives away the climax!

EPISODE PROMO:

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CASUALTY LIST:

Death: First guy/guard sniped by HPD officer outside drug lab during bust.
Death: Second guy/guard sniped by second HPD officer hiding behind truck during drug lab bust.
Injury: Ernie Fallon sniped by HPD officer while making a run for it.
Injury: Janice Wu slapped/punched by Tom Morgan.
Death: Fallon shot once by assassin in hospital room.
Death: Janice Wu overdoses on Quaaludes, found by Danno but dies enroute to the hospital.
Injury: Tom Morgan punched by Cliff Morgan.
Death (x2): Tom and Cliff Morgan die when shack explodes.

MORE TRIVIA:

• During the opening drug raid, McGarrett says he was in Marseille the year before where the Sur�t� showed him a drug "factory."
• Fallon has the number 53984 on his police mug shot — its date is 9/28/73.
• Duke seems very aggressive throughout the show.
• "Doctor Freeman" ("Freedman" in the subtitles) is paged in the hospital.
• Duke puts his hand on Danno's knee during the final surveillance.
• Cliff tells his son, "Now listen to me, damn it."
• Tom wears a helmet while driving his motorcycle. According to one WWW site, Hawaii's universal helmet law (a state law requiring helmet use for all riders — operators and passengers) was in effect from May 1968 through June 1977.
• In one scene, the streets are all wet, as if the filming was done shortly after a rainstorm.
• A copy of the Honolulu Star-Advertiser is seen with a large headline: Five-O Hits Heroin Factory, Two Killed, One Wounded. There are other headlines on the front page: Mayor Maps Plan For Building Program and Arrives Today on Maiden Voyage.
• When the title is seen during the credits at the beginning, there is a freeze frame.

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140. (S06E20) “Murder With A Golden Touch” ★★★  BOOK THEM, DANNO 

QUICK PLOT:

A scheme involving around a million dollars in stolen gold sends Five-O on an investigation that stretches to the depths of the ocean off Oahu.

Click here to read Full Plot.

REVIEW:

This episode is pretty straightforward. Grant Lawrence (Peter Donat) gets friendly with and marries Tamisha Kayata (Haunani Minn), whose father Tenjo (John Mamo, also known by the last name of Fujioka) runs Asian Metal Arts Company, the largest outfit in Hawaii manufacturing jewelry. Lawrence then ingratiates himself with Tenjo as a salesman, enabling him to plunder the company's vaults. He teams up with Joe Quillian (John Orchard), a shifty and cocky Englishman, and they purchase an ancient-looking mold to make gold bars from one of the Chinese community in Honolulu. Unfortunately the man selling the mold, Han Yat Lee, is blind and cannot provide a description of the buyer to Chin Ho later.

Lawrence and Quillian enlist the services of Ed Boyle (James Davidson) and Charles Fleming (James J. Sloyan), a couple of smart-alecky salvage operators based at the Makai Pier, to dump the gold bars in the ocean at the site of a 150-year-old shipwreck and then later pretend to "find" this treasure. The gold is purchased by Arthur Jentry of Jentry and Sons in San Francisco (Peter Carew), largest dealers of precious metals in the country after it is given the seal of approval in terms of its quality by the U.S. Mint Laboratory in Washington, D.C. It turns out that the gold is 99.5 percent pure, which Jentry buys for $1.2 million. Boyle and Fleming get greedy, since they are only being paid $10,000 for their services, and they are knocked off and dumped into the ocean.

Five-O becomes interested in this case when a former cop, now private detective Henry Mott is shot when he is snooping around a warehouse where Lawrence and Quillian are preparing the gold bars. Mott was hired by Tenjo Kayata who suspected something fishy was going on with his employee Lawrence, who spent a lot of time away from home rather than with his daughter. Gold dust on Mott's clothes which was picked up in the warehouse makes Che Fong suspicious, though the age of the gold cannot be determined because it does not oxidize.

Mott, by the way, is played by Walter Omori, the "mysterious actor" who has appeared in numerous other shows. True to form, he is not credited in this episode, just like all the others, even though he has a substantial part in the show, being on screen for about four and a half minutes! After he is shot, he crashes his car and dies on the sidewalk where a couple of junior dopers steal his watch, camera and gun.

Haunani Minn, who plays the daughter, is very attractive. Alas, she passed away in 2014. She was married to Marc Singer, star of the TV science-fiction miniseries "V," for over 40 years. Singer himself appeared in two Classic H50 episodes, "Bomb, Bomb, Who's Got The Bomb?" (S07E05) and "Target? The Lady" with Susan Dey (S08E04).

Her character acts kind of clueless about what her husband Lawrence is up to with his "extra-curricular" activities, though she does see him burying the gun that he used to kill Mott in their back yard. At the end of the show, she goes to her father's office and accuses him of telling the police "a lie" to destroy Lawrence, to make him run away from her, because her father hated her husband so much. Her father shows her pictures that Mott obtained of her husband fooling around with another woman. Shortly after this, Tamisha arrives at the Five-O offices with the buried gun.

At the end of the show, McGarrett is very clever. Although the million two has been paid and the funds deposited in a bank, McGarrett conspires with the bank manager to make it look like Lawrence and Quillian, who have both fled the country, have screwed each other. Both of them, perturbed, arrive back in Honolulu at the bank where they are directed to see "Mr. Miller" in "Room A." This is McGarrett, who swivels around in his chair, saying, "Aloha, gentlemen. Let me assure you that neither one of you cheated the other. We just made you think that happened by sending you both the same message: 'Account overdrawn.' Book them, Danno. Murder one, three counts."

There is some peculiar math in this show relating to the price of gold.

Near the end of the show, Kayata comes to McGarrett's office to tell him that after an inventory, they discovered "185 pounds Troy weight of gold was missing." McGarrett says "That's about 300 kilos," which Kayata says is worth "One million two hundred thousand."

185 pounds Troy weight of gold is actually about 69.05 kilograms, or 2,435.66 ounces. The price of gold in January 1974 when the show was broadcast was $135.70 an ounce, though when the show was filmed, it might have been less. Using this figure, 2,435.66 ounces x $135.70 = $330,519.06, not $1.2 million!

However, if you go backwards from McGarrett's estimate of 300 kg, which is 10,582.2 ounces, then multiply by $135.70 per ounce, you end up with a value of $1,436,004.54, more than $1.2 million.

Things get complicated, because McGarrett later says, "Three hundred kilograms missing from the Asian Metal Arts Company, 258 found in the wreck of the clipper Boston Cloud."

I don't understand this discrepancy. The show doesn't mention in what form the gold was stolen from Kayata's company, whether it was in the form of bars, or random pieces of gold, or dust or whatever. When Mott is snooping around at the beginning of the show, he accidentally cuts the power in the building where Lawrence and Quillian are fooling around with some dames, so they come downstairs, worried that someone is checking out their enterprise, which has the gold bars they have made in some tank. The gold seems to be being "washed," though this doesn't make sense, because doing this wouldn't change the appearance or "age" of the gold as Che Fong said earlier.

Mott hides in this basement room, which is where he picks up gold dust on his clothes, so obviously either some of the stolen gold was in the form of "dust," or dust was produced by the process of converting the gold into bars. Mott decides to make a run for it from the room, which is how he gets shot.

If 258 kg of gold was found in the ship, as opposed to 300 kg, that would be 86% of the 300 figure. Applying this 86% to the value of $1,436,004.54, you end up with $1,234,963.90, which is close to the figure mentioned of $1.2 million!

But, adding to the confusion, at the end of the show, Danno says that "11 months of stealing" was involved in transferring the gold out of the vaults. When McGarrett asks Jentry how much would have to be taken out each day, Jentry estimates "30 ounces." That makes a total of 10,037.5 ounces, which would be worth $1,362,088.75, or $1,171,396.325 at the 86% rate!

EPISODE PROMO:

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CASUALTY LIST:

Death: Henry Mott shot by Greg Lawrence and/or Joe Quillian. He escapes in his car but later dies.
Death (x2): Fleming and Boyle killed by Quinlan; bodies dumped in ocean.

MORE TRIVIA:

• John Fujioka will appear in next season's "Hara-Kiri: Murder" (S07E13). His first name, "Tenjo," means "ceiling" in Japanese.
• When Fleming and Boyle are found dead underwater, McGarrett says, "The finders were not keepers." (Sounds like an episode title.)
• This show reuses "The Finishing Touch" music by Broughton, though the score is credited to Ray. Two other stock themes — "echoing trumpets" and "bonging bell" (the latter used particularly in underwater scenes) are also heard.
• There seem to be an awful lot of fish in the underwater scenes. Fred Helfing suggests "the gold bars are buried in the sand at the bottom of the aquarium tank at Sea Life Park. Once or twice, they point the camera towards the surface and above the water, and you can see the roof type structure of the tank area."
• A copy of the Honolulu Star-Bulletin is seen. It contains an article about Mott's murder, with a headline "... KILLED IN MUGGING," written by William Bailey. There are other articles with headlines: "More rigid rules sought in fight to clean city parks," "Raises urged in Bay car insurance," and the incomplete "State Assembly Approves: Education Bill Met With..."
• Arthur Jentry is played by Peter Carew, wearing glasses, a moustache and a wig. Compare his appearance in S06E17, "One Born Every Minute," where he is bald.
• Chin Ho speaks Chinese to a society of old men who he thinks may have been tricked into selling their gold to the two bad guys.
• Jenny comes rushing into McGarrett's office to tell him that she has seen the salvage company on TV in the Five-O front office telling about their "find." The implication here is that Jenny is goofing off and is watching TV while at work! Jenny is once again wearing a colorful outfit.
• The salvage duo's boat is named the "Louise," though Danno later in the show refers to it as the "Pacific Pearl." The Coast Guard ship Cape Corwin is seen as Five-O locates this ship after the two men have been murdered.
• When they show Paris, where Lawrence, using the alias of Andre Lemieux, is waiting for news of his windfall, there is an interesting starburst effect before the Eiffel Tower is seen.
• McGarrett wears cool sunglasses in this show.

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141. (S06E21) “Nightmare in Blue” ★★★★

QUICK PLOT:

A series of brutal rape/murders seems to have been committed by a policeman.

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REVIEW:

Walter Stark (John Beck) was an applicant for HPD, but didn't make the grade. Despite this, he has managed to either purchase (or maybe keep?) a police uniform, as well as obtain a portable warning light which he places on the roof of his Buick LeSabre. He drives around, looking for women who are either in need of roadside assistance or whose husbands or boyfriends are not around and, after pretending to be a helpful cop, he rapes and kills them.

When I wrote an earlier review of this show, I said that we don't know what makes Stark tick, but this is not correct. As we see from his encounter with one of the victims in this show, he gets sexually excited by women resisting his advances. As to what makes him tick beyond this, that is unknown.

The first woman he encounters in the show is stewardess Joy Mueller. Her car suddenly has a flat tire, and whether this was because of something Stark did, like shooting at it or putting something in the road to cause the flat, is not determined. He offers to drive her to "a gas station about a mile down the road, open[s] until [the subtitles say "at"] 6."

Although Mueller was originally on a two-lane road, she encounters Stark on the narrow middle-of-nowhere road that we have seen before above Koko Head. Stark drives away with her, then he returns, and dumps her now-dead body over a cliff. The music by Don Ray, which was banal at the beginning of the show, is suddenly jarringly dissonant, and then switches to tragic as the camera focuses on Mueller's body and her beaten face. The music in this show is very effective, including a motive for tympani (kettledrums). Camera angles looking up at Stark from the passenger side of his car add to the unease.

Mueller is the fourth recent victim of a killer with the same M.O. After Doc does an autopsy on Mueller's body, he is able to determine the rapist's blood type (B) from his semen. Mueller's roommate, Sherry Wells (Melody Patterson), is horrified by what happened to her friend.

Stark's next victim is Andrea Burdick (Katherine Justice), a housewife. After he sees her husband Joe (Alan Fudge) leaving, Stark knocks on her door, pretending to be investigating "a few burglaries in this area recently." Invited into her house because she trusts him, he ends up raping and brutally beating her. She is taken to Queen's Hospital in deep shock.

McGarrett wants a stakeout set up to catch the rapist: "Ask them to assign six of their policewomen to a special unit. The youngest and prettiest they have." Uh, OK� We have to remember this is in 1974. Elissa Dulce as Laura is one of the cops chosen, and she pretends that her car has broken down. Stark, driving his car and wearing his uniform, shows up and acts like he wants to help her, but she tells him to get lost, saying, "Listen, Mac, you're not supposed to be here. The orders were for all cars to stay clear of this area." Duke and another cop are hiding nearby, parked behind some bushes listening to their conversation via a two-way radio, but Stark leaves, and an opportunity is lost.

Laura later kicks herself for not clueing in to this "policeman" being the suspect. I'm surprised that she didn't realize something fishy was going on because Stark didn't have a name on his shirt, unlike most HPD cops, for example, P. Bertulfo, probably a real HPD cop/actor who found Mueller's car earlier on in the show (Five-O hears about him as "Officer Mikala"). When Laura comes to McGarrett's office later, she kicks herself again that she cannot find Stark in mug-like books which contain pictures of members of the force. McGarrett calls Laura "honey" twice.

When Andrea's husband Joe shows up at the hospital when she is finally able to talk, he is furious after finding out the man responsible for the crime is a policeman. He tells his wife, "Just keep your mouth shut," because "All they [cops] care about is saving their own kind." When McGarrett arrives, nothing is made of this fact.

McGarrett says to Joe that his wife is lucky to be alive and that she can identify her rapist, but Burdick says, "You're gonna ask her if he was good-looking, if he had a good build, did she enjoy it? I mean, before he started to strangle her. You are not going to make my wife out to be a tramp." McGarrett calmly says that he has no intention of doing this. His blood pressure rising, McGarrett says, "No one, no one, has more compassion for that lady in there than I have. I've dealt with a lot of rape cases. I know the trauma and the anguish that she must have gone through. But I'm gonna talk with your wife with your permission or without. Now, you can make it as easy on her as possible or you can make it hard. Now, which is it gonna be?"

Only after McGarrett threatens to contact district attorney Manicote does Joe allow him to go into Andrea's room. She says to McGarrett, "I can't tell you anything." Frustrated, he replies, "Why won't you tell me? Do you realize what you're doing? There's a madman loose in this town. He'll go right on killing and raping. If you don't help us stop him, every murder he commits from now on will be with your blessing." Seriously, this is not a way to get co-operation from someone in Andrea's condition!

Meanwhile, acting on the assumption that the rapist is a cop (McGarrett: "It would explain a lot of things: Why those girls got into his car without giving him any trouble; why he was admitted to those homes."), the entire HPD is eliminated to the relief of Captain Harada (Ed Fernandez) after there is no connection with Type B blood and Mileage Maker tires on cop cars from the "American-Ohio Rubber Company." The Five-O team and Che Fong work hard to determine that new front tires on Stark's car were installed recently, and the purchase is narrowed down to a specific store which connects the tires with Stark � who Duke says was on the probationary "washout list."

McGarrett leaves a book from HPD with cops' pictures at the hospital and Joe puts it in her room. She finally picks it up and recognizes Stark immediately, and tells her husband, "I didn't have to feel ashamed � I can't forget. Neither can you. We never will. Joe, all we can do is try to understand what's happened and live with it. And not let it happen to anybody else if we can do anything to stop it."

She tells Joe to call the cops, which he does, just as Five-O and HPD are on their way to The Esplanade apartment complex in Hawaii Kai where Stark lives and, at that moment, is raping and strangling Donna Wilson (Danielle), who has just moved into the apartment next to his own. In the ensuing confrontation, Stark is shot dead and plunges over a balcony to the ground below.

When McGarrett is notified via a radio message from Jenny at the office that Joe Burdick just called saying that his wife wanted to talk to him to ID Stark, McGarrett says, "Call her back and tell her there's nothing more to talk about." This seems kind of crass, as if his sympathy towards Andrea was just a ruse to help him catch the criminal.

But maybe not, because both McGarrett and Joe Burdick show major signs of frustration, McGarrett so much so that he violently kicks the door of his office leading out to the balcony. Joe, on the other hand, trots out the usual clich�s based on typical police response and courtroom prosecution behavior of the time like "a woman gets raped ... she's asking for it!" In other words, people involved in this case have flaws.

---

This episode provoked a disturbed reaction from author and feminist Caryl Rivers in a New York Times op-ed piece on October 6, 1974 entitled "TV Has Fun With Robbery, Arson and Kidnapping. So Why Not Rape?":

I sat through one hundred and twenty minutes of rape the other night, thanks to the vagaries of television programing. It didn't bother me at all. And that was what bothered me. First, CBS's detective adventure series, "Hawaii Five-O," served up a story about an ex-cop who rapes and strangles women, After that, NBC's cops-and-robbers series, "Police Story," gave us a drama about a rapist who repeatedly assaults a woman while her young daughter looks on.

TV has, of course, "discovered" rape, a subject that was formerly taboo on the home screen, and in what has come to be a cherished television pattern, first approached the new territory with some seriousness and care. Last spring, NBC's made-for-TV movie, "A Case of Rape," which starred Elizabeth Montgomery, gave a compelling picture of the physical and emotional battering a rape victim suffers�not only at the hands of her attacker but afterward, from authorities who supposedly are there to help her, The critics applauded "A Case of Rape" for its mature handling of a difficult subject.

So now, having made the required gestures in the direction of maturity and "adult programing," TV can add rape to the list of things it trivializes with depressing regularity, Rape has become just another plot gimmick to keep things rolling in the shoot-em-ups, along with kidnapping, robbery, arson, blackmail and murder.

The "Hawaii Five-O" episode featured what I can only describe as "glamour rape." The show reminded me of the old gangster movies in which Humphrey Bogart or James Cagney lived it up in grand gangster style until the last reel, when the obligatory Just Desserts were served up to them. At that point, they were either gunned down, blown up or toasted in the electric chair. The message we were supposed to get was, Crime Does Not Pay. But the message we really got was, Ah, What Fun It Was While It Lasted!

The rape on "Hawaii Five-O" was not horrifying, not ugly. "Titillating" is the word for the way it was presented. Lovingly, the camera stalked the rapist's victims, It peeped at shapely legs in mini-skirts, leered at a wiggly walk, watched a swaying bottom. It made rape seem like a subject for a Playboy centerfold, an incident without terror and pain. The cop-turned-rapist was all swagger and macho menace in his blue police uniform and tinted glasses. He killed and mangled his victims, true, but that was given short shrift by the TV camera. The camera ogled legs and bottoms, but we got only a glimpse of the victims' bodies. A gorgeous female hitchhiker in tight jeans and a blouse that bared her midriff climbed into the rapist's car. A few minutes later her body rolled out of the car and down an embankment. For the TV audience, it was a brief glimpse of a cipher, not a human being. The hitchhiker was not a real person, and of course there were those tight jeans: Wasn't she really asking for it? Perhaps, the incident seemed to suggest, she merely got what she deserved.

Another victim was slapped around by the rapist, but, in the counterfeit style of most TV violence, it was unconvincing. I felt no terror, no anguish as I watched. I've seen too many people slapped around on TV shoot-emups, Again, the woman being roughed up was a cipher. Afterward, there was a bit of contrived drama about the woman�who had survived the attack�and her husband, which provided the show's hero (acted by Jack Lord) with a chance to lecture the victim about her duty to cooperate with the police so as to save other women from rape.

"Glamour" is the only word I can use to describe the aura created by the manner In which the rapist was photographed. There were, for example, numerous low-angle shots of his police car, sleek as a jungle cat on the prowl. The blue light atop the car twirled, phallic and restless. Given the clear relationship between the automobile and male sexuality in our society, the symbolism was obvious, even if unintended by the producers of "Hawaii Five-O." The effect was sexy and glamorous, not horrifying. The rapist was slim, handsome and virile. The camera's treatment of him was so blatantly machismo in tone, granting him so much of the swagger and force that All-American boys are supposed to covet, that I had a funny feeling that lot of viewers weren't identifying with the victims but with the villain. Sure, he got his just desserts in the end, but while lasted�ah, what fun it was!

The rape on NBC's "Police Story" was starker, more realistic. A little girl was found wandering on a freeway, and she led the police to a culvert where her mother lay unconscious after having been attacked. The child's reaction, a mixture of bewilderment and acceptance, was real and terrible. But the TV audience was given only a glimpse of the victim as she was carried off to an ambulance. The story veered off in another direction after that, turning into a drama about a cop too involved with his work. We neyer saw the rape victim again. Like the murdered hitchhiker on "Hawaii Five-O," she, too, was a cipher, not a human being.

My 120 minutes of rape-watching that night made me worry about television's tendency to prettify things�to drain the horror out of them. We are given corpses galore on TV. We yawn at horror and switch channels restlessly. Death is sanitized, blood is catchup. The consequence of a rape-murder is a two-second view of a body under a blanket, with maybe, an arm hanging out for purposes of "realism."

But the reality of rape is not sanitary, not glamorous, not sexy. Once, when I was a teen-ager, I heard my father talking angrily about a rape case. My father was a member of the local parole board, and he knew details about such things that didn't make the newspapers. I listened and then, saturated as I was with the male-oriented mores of the time, and affecting a sophistication I didn't possess, I said breezily, "Oh, it was only rape. She'll live."

Except that in this case, my father said, the woman had been so badly bitten that part of her breast had to be amputated. I was shocked. It was the Mickey Spillane era, and Spillane's macho hero, Mike Hammer, dealt with rape with elan. It was supposed to be good, virile fun.

"Rape" is an uglier, more terrifying word to me today. Just recently I heard that a young woman I know, a talented journalist, was raped and beaten so brutally that she may have suffered brain damage. A student of mine, blessed with great gifts and a zest for life, was stabbed and raped and her body dumped in the woods. These brutalized women were not ciphers, nor were they miniskirted sexpots. The thing that was done to them will echo through the lives of their families for more years than I care to think about.

So I have a suggestion for the makers of television's cop dramas. When rape is the subject, instead of showing us actresses with catchupy bruises or anonymous figures under blankets, why not use a real police photograph of a real rape-murder victim, exactly the way she was found? There would be nothing counterfeit or plastic about that. And it might give the folks out there on the ether side of the tube an idea of what the word "rape" is really all about.

---

In Booking Five-O, Karen Rhodes devotes the entire review of this episode to a response to the New York Times article:

Sociologist (and novelist) Caryl Rivers criticized this episode for a "T&A" [tits and ass] approach to rape, with macho overtones. While Ms. Rivers' article raised valid concerns about entertainment- media attitudes toward rape, it ignored McGarrett's position of victim advocacy.

She also ignored the pressure the surviving victim receives from her husband to deny the reality of the event. When we first see this pair, they seem to have a strong, happy marriage. The crisis precipitated by the brutal attack proves an almost fatal strain to the union. This episode shows that the crime of rape has ancillary casualties: the families of the victims.

Rivers also decries the phallic symbolism of the blue light atop the rapist's car, stating that it's sexually exciting to the viewer. In some shots, the light fixture looks more like the dorsal fin of a predatory shark, threatening and horrifying rather than titillating. The episode shows rape not as an act of sex but one of degradation and the brutal exercise of power. By his attitude, bearing, and behavior, the rapist � rather than appearing attractive and sexy, as Rivers charges � comes across clearly as swaggering and repulsive.

The episode emphasizes responsibility. McGarrett points out to the surviving victim that she has a responsibility to provide information to help cap- ture the perpetrator of so heinous a crime. McGarrett and his men realize their responsibility to treat the victim as a victim and not as the instigator.

"We're not spared the surviving victim's injuries. Her bloody, lacerated face is a testament to her suffering. The mental anguish, not only of the crime itself, but also of its effect on her relationship with her husband, comes through. Neither are we spared the blood as the rapist, shot by Dan Williams and McGarrett, falls to his death on the concrete below. A pool of blood around his head shows plainly his dire end.

The "T&A" of which Rivers complains comprises brief shots and is nowhere near as egregious as one would think from reading the article. One gal in hip-huggers at the beginning is ludicrous because she has to keep pulling them up. The short skirts another woman wears aren't any shorter than was the fashion at that time. There isn't any more "T&A" in this episode than there is on the covers of Ms. Rivers' own paperback 'Immaculate Heart High' novels.

We must remember, too, that these alleged "T&A" shots are from the rapist's viewpoint, showing that he regards his victims not as people, but as objects for his gratification. Rivers concentrates on the 'T&A' aspect, which is a small part of the episode, and ignores McGarrett's compassion for the victims and his determination to remove the perpetrator from society, as well as his insistence on social responsibility from all concerned. This is not playing fair.

Hawaii Five-O did not shy away from addressing subjects which were unpleasant or distressing. Nor did it, at its best, shy away from the tough ending where the Five-O team doesn't arrive in time to save the last victim, where they don't have all the answers, and where they sometimes make mistakes.

EPISODE PROMO:

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CASUALTY LIST:

Death: Joy Muller raped and strangled by Walter Stark. "Victim #4."
Injury: Andrea Burdick punched, raped and strangled by Stark.
Injury: Donna Wilson slapped, terrorized by Stark.
Death: Stark shot by McGarrett and Danno (Danno fires the fatal bullet) causing Stark to fall over balcony railing.

MORE TRIVIA:

• Despite their last names in the show being Burdick, the end titles identify Andrea and Joe's last name as Barone.
• The date of the assault on Angela was September 25. Another woman, Sharon Power, was attacked and killed on September 22.
• Dispatch contacts McGarrett to tell him there is "another beating and strangle victim." When McGarrett talks to the Five-O team shortly after this, he says the woman was "possibly raped," even though the dispatcher didn't mention this angle to the crime.
• From their surveillance position, why can't Duke and the other cop see Stark and his phony cop car in addition to Laura? The number on the badge Stark is using is 1209.
• There's a stock shot of McGarrett arriving at the hospital plus another one of a Five-O car leaving the Iolani Palace parking lot.
• At the beginning, Danno and Ben drive up to the crime scene in the middle of nowhere with the siren at full blast.
• Melody Patterson, who plays Sherry, the roomate of Joy Mueller, was married to James MacArthur at the time the episode was filmed.
• In the HPD mug book that both Laura and Angela Burdick look at to identify Stark, all the other cops have two large vertical photos on the right side of the page, one where they are wearing a cap and one without. Stark's page contains one large frontal view of him on the right side without a cap. Stark's birthday is January 4, 1948, according to the book.
• In a newspaper that Angela is reading, there is a headline: "Swiss Metallurgist Radiation Victim." This is referenced in S06E12, "Anybody Can Build a Bomb." Another headline on the page is "Team Effort Launched in 'Self Help'."
• When Stark and his last victim in the show drink a couple of beers, the brand is Nacy L. Courey's Age-Dated, a bogus beer used as a movie prop with a label similar to Budweiser.
• When Joe tells Angela "You won't have to be ashamed," the subtitle reads "You won't have to ashamed."
• The scene where Stark at the end plunges over the balcony is very similar to the one earlier this season in "Tricks Are Not Treats" where the Asian hitman plunges off of a roof.
• The "i" in "in" in the title is in lower case.

  GALLERY:

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142. (S06E22) “Mother's Deadly Helper” ★★★�

QUICK PLOT:

An extremist embarks on a murderous crusade against what he considers laxity in law enforcement and too-lenient judges.

Click here to read Full Plot.

REVIEW:

Anthony Zerbe gives an excellent performance as Lester Smith, a.k.a. Cord McKenzie, a right-wing crackpot who thinks he is helping McGarrett by dishing out justice to criminals who avoid prosecution because of technicalities, early parole and so forth.

On the mainland, Smith was a member of a group called "Ever Vigilant" (shades of current-day militia types). He was known to police for having beat up a student demonstrator and helped break up a peace parade. He hails from Greeley, North Dakota where he served in the National Guard. (There is actually no such city as Greeley, ND; there is a Greeley in Colorado, though.) Danno suggests that Smith chose the pseudonym of "Cord Mackenzie" because a character with this name used to be a macho hero found in "Western pulp magazines." On the rear bumper of his Buick Skylark Smith has a sticker which says "Support your local police." In Honolulu, he runs a penny arcade called Jollyland.

At the beginning of the show, Smith rushes from a courtroom where a judge refuses to give Manicote another continuance for a trial which has gone on far too long, and releases the defendant, Joe "Happy" Furika, later IDd on a TV show as a "waterfront hoodlum," a professional killer hired to knock off a union man who was "making too many waves." Smith goes to the top of a nearby building with a rifle and plugs Furika who has emerged from the court building with his lawyer.

What is odd is that Smith's rifle is not using a silencer or something similar and no one looks up or seems interested in figuring out where the fatal bullet came from. There is confusion between the episode promo and the show itself. In the promo, a doctor who attends Furika after the shooting says that he was killed by "one bullet wound, right through the back," but in the show, the doctor says "one bullet wound right through the abdomen."

Having accomplished his mission, Smith leaves the building, the Family Court for Intake and Counselling Services, with the rifle disguised in what looks like a large place mat or a blind, same as when he went to the roof (shades [no pun intended] of Lee Harvey Oswald).

Shortly after, McGarrett is at the scene, joining Danno, Chin Ho and Ben, who are already there, and Duke rushes up with a special delivery letter from Smith which arrived at McGarrett's office. The speed of this letter is unbelievable, though it was obviously sent before the shooting. Perhaps Smith thought ahead of time it was already a done deal that Furika would get off.

McGarrett reads the letter aloud while sitting in his car: "Dear Steve, I never wrote to you before, but I sure have wanted to because I'm a true friend of the police, and I have always thought you was a real great cop. I know what you think of all those dumb Supreme Court decisions and all those bleeding-heart judges who are soft on all them murderers and rapists and cruds, so when I sat in that courtroom and watched that murdering Furika get off, it was just like an explosion inside of me. And that's why I give you a hand today. That's right, Steve, it was me shot him. One 44-40 bullet right through his stinking gut. So from now on, I'll be around to give all you great guys at Five-O a hand whenever you need it. Yours for law and order, like it used to be. P.S., I can't sign my real name for now, but maybe later. For right now, just think of me as Mother's Helper."

McGarrett tells Chin, "I want a complete computer readout on every law enforcement freak HPD has ever run through its files. Including those in and out of hospitals and prisons."

Later at the lab, Che Fong says that "blotched" characters in the typed letter McGarrett received are "due to old age." I would have thought they were produced by dirt! Che has identified the make of typewriter as a "portable Corona" which is at least 40 years old. In the letter, which is projected on the wall, it says "set in that courtroom" instead of "sat," and where McGarrett read "through his stinking gut," it says "stinking head." There is also a sentence which McGarrett didn't read: "I'd just had it up to here — like the fella said about the alligators, ha ha," probably referring to the well-known line, "When you're up to your ass [or neck] in alligators, it's hard to remember that your initial objective was to drain the swamp."

Three days later, Smith just happens to be watching TV as Bob Sevey reads the news on KGMB, saying that no progress has been made trying to determine who was Furika's killer. Smith also hears on the news that "Patsy Lihau, convicted of rape and attempted murder seven years ago, in what was then one of Honolulu's most sensational cases, has been approved for parole and is expected to be released within the next 48 hours." Smith goes to Oahu State Prison and tails Lihau (Derek Mau) when he gets out.

Soon after this, Smith sends another special delivery letter to McGarrett which Chin delivers. McGarrett is very careful to handle it with tweezers and avoid touching it by holding it in its plastic evidence bag. (The tweezers seemingly appear out of nowhere; McGarrett is like Houdini. He uses the tweezers to open the envelope by ripping the flap.) But McGarrett touches the enclosed newspaper article with his hand (you can see his thumb in the picture) and gives this article to Danno who handles it without any precautions at all! This article is written by Nacy Courey and spells Lihau's name "Lahoud." The article contains the usual bogus newspaper text, some sections of which are repeated. Danno describes Lihau as "a real piece of dirt."

This letter says, "Dear Steve, I guess you didn't think I'd be writing you again so quick, and neither did I, but, brother, I sure got sore when I heard on TV this rapist scum was going to be paroled. Anyway, I just want you to know, you didn't have to worry about him."

McGarrett, Danno, Chin and some HPD cops hurry to Lihau's place, a rather nice apartment considering he just got out of prison. They find Lihau hanging from the neck, having been bonked over the head first. Another "personal" letter to McGarrett is attached to Lihau's pant leg, which reads, "I did it for us, Steve. You and me. I had to take care of this Commie scum." (Danno comments, "Lihau wouldn't know a Communist if one came up and bit him.") Smith's message goes on: "I knew you'd want me to, just like I knew you wouldn't say nothing to the TV or the dumb newspapers about me writing you these letters. Like they say in football, Steve, two down and how many more to go, huh? Yours, Mother's Helper."

Frustrated with Five-O's inability to catch Smith, McGarrett goes on a TV talk show hosted by Freddie Dryden (Casey Kasem), who he has found loathsome in the past, with the intention of getting Smith's attention. Of course, Smith is watching, thanks to a lot of pre-broadcast publicity. Smith even forces people in the arcade to stop what they are doing and watch TV on a color set as opposed to the black and white one Smith watches in his office. McGarrett says exactly what Smith wants to hear.

On the subject of parole, McGarrett tells Dryden, "We need parole, Freddie. But parole for those who truly want to get a fresh start, who truly regret their mistakes, not for the hard-core felons. Not for those who go on parole only to commit another felony whenever the mood strikes them. Whether prison is considered, it keeps murderers and rapists and an assortment of felons off the street. It keeps them in confinement, away from people, where they can't hurt or maim or victimize them any longer. Now, I'm sure there are a lot of you out there who think that the law is very soft on criminals. Well, that's not my domain. That's the province of the courts. I am a police officer. I deal in enforcement and protection, investigation, apprehension. But there is a public-minded citizen out there who has some very original ideas on the subject, who has been in touch with me quite regularly � I'd like him to know that I'd welcome the opportunity to sit down with him and discuss this problem. He knows who he is."

Soon enough, Smith contacts McGarrett through his office and McGarrett ends up running around town from one phone booth to another getting instructions. Ben is driving McGarrett in a Hawaiian Adventure Cab, and they end up at a funeral at Oahu Cemetery. Smith is in attendance at the funeral, but before coming there, he found some guy at the local unemployment office who he convinced to come to the funeral and impersonate him for $10. When this guy approaches McGarrett at the funeral, pretending to be Smith, and McGarrett and Ben then pursue him, Smith realizes that he has been deceived. He manages to sneak away by sitting in the front seat of one of the hearses, though you have to wonder why the cops, which have been quickly asked to "seal off" the place, cannot find him. The cops do find Smith's car, which is sitting nearby, complete with rifle in the trunk, and they use the car to track down information about Smith and his background.

Realizing the jig is up, Smith gets desperate, kidnapping Judge Bergstrom (Frank Cady), who was responsible for the lax treatment of criminals which we have seen in the show so far. Smith was particularly aggrieved by Bergstrom recently releasing a couple of youthful offenders, suspending sentence and giving them three years' probation because they were on trial for their first offense. Following this, Smith sent McGarrett another screed which said, "I been locking the barn after the horse has already been stole. Instead of going after the cruddy murderers and rapists, why don't I go right to the source, like they're always talking about? Preventive medicine. Makes a lot of sense, don't it, Steve? A lot of details to work out, but I'm on the right track." Smith grabbed Bergstrom after knocking out the cop who was been assigned to give the judge protection as per McGarrett's orders.

With a deadline before Bergstrom is to be executed, McGarrett is desperate for a solution to the case. Pulling all the facts together in an even bigger brainstorm than normal, the clincher is the background noise from Smith's phone calls. Che Fong analyzes these sounds with an "oscillograph": machine-gun fire from the video games, "wooden things being knocked down" — miniature bowling alleys, "bells with a whirring noise and the sound of metal and metal" — pinball machines, and the sound of traffic, meaning the place is open to the street. All of these add up to an arcade, and the only one in the ZIP code 96813 from where Smith mails his special delivery letters in downtown Honolulu is Jollyland. Che Fong breaks out in a big smile, happy that he can help McGarrett figure all this out.

With only 11 minutes to go before the deadline for Bergstrom is up, Five-O and the cops raid the place, and Smith is taken into custody, after a brief skirmish where a garbage can is thrown at McGarrett, hitting him in the head and drawing blood. As he is taken away, booked for murder one, Smith hisses, "I'll get out, McGarrett. Then you'll get yours. I'll be out on parole, so keep looking behind you, McGarrett, because one of these days, zap!"

Zerbe's nervous, gum-chewing portrayal of Smith is very edgy, though the way Smith's letters are written tries a little too hard to make him look stupid. He seems pretty articulate when he is issuing instructions to McGarrett during the wild goose chase around town. The way Five-O unsuccessfully tries to make a connection to a suspect named Wheeler which does not pan out because the guy was in the hospital when Furika was being gunned down is an interesting detail. The music by Ray contains the usual stock tracks like the trombone interval theme and also some ominous bass passages.

WHAT DOES THE TITLE MEAN?

Smith signs himself as just "Mother's Helper," the "deadly" obviously referring to his propensity to take things a bit too far. The Rolling Stones had a song hit in 1966 called "Mother's Little Helper" but that is about drug abuse among suburban housewives!

EPISODE PROMO:

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CASUALTY LIST:

Death: Joe "Happy" Furika sniped by Lester Smith.
Death: Patsy Lihau hit behind right temple then hung by Smith.
Injury: HPD officer protecting Judge Edgar Bergstrom hit with gun butt by Smith and knocked out.
Injury: McGarrett hit in the head with garbage can thrown by Smith.

MORE TRIVIA:

• "Oscillograph" was an early term for oscilloscope, a device used to display varying signal voltages, not analyze sounds.
• Smith (using the name of Mackenzie) lives at 1722 Keola Street. His driver's license number is 547 10 8522. He was born on 12/3/32, is 5′9″ and weighs 160 pounds.
• At the beginning of the show, Ben says Furika "had about as many friends as a guy who had bubonic plague." Furika's body is removed in a Physicians Ambulance.
• McGarrett says that in his first letter Smith referred to judges as "pinkos," but this is not the case.
• When Ben is driving McGarrett in the cab, they pass the Kukui Market which is having its "grand opening."
• Casey Kasem does not get featured billing, he is relegated to the end credits section usually reserved for the Five-O stock company. The only two actors with major credit are Anthony Zerbe and Frank Cady (the judge). The latter is best known for his role as storekeeper Sam Drucker in three American television series during the 1960s — Petticoat Junction, Green Acres, and The Beverly Hillbillies.
• A tape recorder in McGarrett's office uses Scotch band reel-to-reel tape.
• At the end of the show as Five-O and HPD converge on Jollyland, it is raining. McGarrett's car is the only one that doesn't have its wipers going. In the background we can see a truck which has logos for Fritos and Lays on the side as it passes. Inside the arcade, a girl is seen playing one of the shooting games.
• By the door outside Smith's Jollyland office is a peace sign. Across the hall is a Crimestoppers-like poster with a phone number of 944-1212. There is also a calendar with a picture of Richard Nixon in a cameo-like frame hanging on the wall.
• Patsy Lihau's place is near the intersection of River Street and Pauahi Street (thanks to Fred Helfing) — then and now. The water on the right is Nu'uanu Stream.

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143. (S06E23) “Killer at Sea” ★★  FRISK HIM, DANNO 

QUICK PLOT:

McGarrett and Five-O become involved in the investigation of a robbery-kidnapping which ends up with them on board an ocean liner.

Click here to read Full Plot.

REVIEW:

As the show begins, Vincent Gordon (Curtis Keene), a business manager who "represents some of the top people in Honolulu" and has their power of attorney, is withdrawing large sums of money from his clients' accounts, half to two-thirds of their cash, usually in the range of $20,000, plus the securities in their safety deposit boxes. He is being driven from one Honolulu bank to another by a man wearing a floppy straw hat and accompanied into the banks by a scary-looking thug named Arthur Meskill.

Weber (Norman Wright), manager at one financial institution, get suspicious about Gordon's withdrawal based on calls he's had from associates at other banks and contacts Duke, who says he will send someone to come and take a look. When Weber tells Gordon there will be a delay, Gordon attempts to leave, but after Weber sees Meskill's gun pointed at Gordon's back, there is a shootout with a guard in the bank, who is seriously injured. Meskill is shot dead and an armed citizen in the bank, Everett Chang, United States Congressman, twice elected to the House of Representatives, who attempts to intervene, is wounded and later dies in hospital. There is immediately something odd here. Why does this Congressman have a gun? Was Hawaii an open carry state in 1974?

McGarrett and Danno, plus a large number of HPD cops, are alerted to the car involved in the robberies, which heads to the docks where a cruise ship, the S.S. Monterey, is preparing to leave Hawaii. There are numerous stock shots of police cars, and the tires of McGarrett's Park Lane smoke when he turns sharply around a corner.

The driver of the robbery car and his large attach�-like case containing the proceeds from the banks vanish onto the ship. McGarrett and Danno arrive, and soon after this, the cops bring Gordon to the docks, saying "We found him near the golf course on Ala Wai [spelled Alauai in the subtitles] Boulevard." IDd as "a hostage in the bank shooting," Gordon tells McGarrett that the "crazy gunman who drove the getaway car" tried to kill him by shooting at him three times before Gordon "jumped out of the car." Gordon says, "I guess he would have kept shooting except the police were on his tail." If this was the case, it seems odd that the police didn't see this happening at the time.

A search for the bag with the money which went on to the ship via a conveyor belt is launched, but it has already been taken off the other end. Gordon is escorted on to the ship to try and find the man who was driving the car, but, considering there are over 600 people on board and the captain refuses to delay the ship's departure unless a life or death emergency is involved, there is not enough time to resolve things. Instead, McGarrett, Danno and Gordon "take a cruise."

I don't know whether most of the filming during this show was done on the ship while it was between Honolulu and San Francisco (a voyage of five days); I kind of doubt this. There are some shots of the ship taken from above, probably stock shots. Considering the show is only about 50 minutes long, there is no opportunity to have a "floating Grand Hotel" kind of episode. Most of McGarrett and Danno's interaction is with the crew, including Parkins (Peter Leeds), whose initial interaction with the two cops is suspicious.

Two other characters are basically red herrings, and not even that. John Byner plays Duffy Malone, a mundane nightclub comic, who is paranoid because he has run up some major gambling debts, "25 or 30 thousand, and into the syndicate's books for maybe double that." Malone comes to McGarrett for protection, but Hawaii's top cop is already seriously out of his jurisdiction, I don't think so!

Gail Strickland is Elena Lewis, a feature writer for Transpacific Wire Services. Over the ship-to-shore radio, Chin cautions McGarrett that she is licensed to carry a gun. In the ship's dining room, Lewis sends over a bottle of champagne to McGarrett, telling him, "I like to meet attractive men, and I'm not very good at shuffleboard." He describes this gesture as "a friendly ice-breaker at $14 a throw." When he asks her why she did this, she replies, "We're supposed to be the liberated sex." He says, "No, no, honey, I don't buy it ... with your looks, you don't have to give away bubbly." Yawn! Strickland has a somewhat more substantial part in next season's "How To Steal A Masterpiece."

McGarrett maintains communication with the office back in Hawaii via the usual Five-O phone number of 732-5577. When he is given the passenger list during a briefing with the ship's crew, he is told that the list contains over 600 people — passengers and crew. When he talks to Chin Ho a few minutes later, he tells Chin the list has "over 500" people. There is no fax machine on the boat, only a Telex. This means that to send the entire list back to Five-O in Hawaii for them to run it through the HPD computer, it would have to be typed in manually by someone on the ship and then typed in manually again after it is received to be programmed into the "Iron Brain."

Sending this list back home does produce results, however. But only one, yes ONE, person on the ship has a record — Frank Fallon (William Devane). As Chin reports, he "used to deal in Vegas casinos, then got caught skimming. Three years in state prison, then worked as a card shark on cruise ships in the Caribbean. Got caught there too."

Almost half an hour into the show, McGarrett goes to see the smart-alecky Fallon, who has been staying in his room like Greta Garbo. Gordon does not ID Fallon during a fire drill for passengers after this. Although there are 600 (or 500) people on the ship, Gordon completes his inspection of them quickly. He previously has been marched past passengers by McGarrett, where it is really obvious that he is checking for someone, and also asked to observe them in the dining room.

Meanwhile, Danno has located the bag which contained the money from the robberies, but it is empty. Unable to track the cash down, Danno tells a ship's employee, "Let's hit the staterooms." Seriously? Does he mean the stateroom of every passenger on the ship, while they are all taking part in the drill?

When McGarrett wants, with Parkins' help, to see inside a cargo hold which contains large items, even a couple of cars, they discover that the alarm system for the room has been tampered with and the seal on the door has been changed. As passengers leave the ship while it is docking the next morning, they are taking their hand luggage with them, which is being inspected. Around this time, Malone is knocked out by someone, which McGarrett wisely speculates was to distract him and Danno. Meanwhile, Fallon goes to the cargo hold where the money has been hidden. But knowing somehow that Fallon has gone there, McGarrett orders all watertight doors locked and makes an announcement that Fallon is under arrest. Fallon tries to escape, just getting through most of the doors as they are closing, but at the last one, he gets through but the laundry bag containing the money doesn't.

After escaping up a conveyor belt which leads to the docks, Fallon is busted and taken away by the San Francisco cops, but McGarrett turns to another officer and says, "Here's your man," indicating Gordon. Gordon is incredulous at this, but McGarrett tells him, "You and Fallon planned this whole thing. Swindled your clients � this whole phony rip-off. Proceeds to be shared by crook and victim later on. You had me fooled � Fallon was on board, and you refused to identify him. We examined the jacket that you discarded, the one with the bullet crease in it. It had powder burns on it. You told us that the gunman fired at you after you jumped out of the car. [Actually, this is not what Gordon said earlier!!] Now, powder burns are caused by a shot fired at extremely close range. You took your jacket off to do it. Not very smart, Mr. Gordon."

Gordon is to be extradited to Hawaii on a charge of murder one, and unless Fallon drops a dime on Gordon, I think McGarrett has a lot of stuff to prove in court!

This is a lame finale to a lame episode. It's bad enough that we have to attribute all sorts of ship-related geeky knowledge and super powers to Fallon who disabled the alarm system for the cargo hold, including tampering with a warning light on the ship's bridge, and also cut and replaced the seals on the door in order to hide the money in that area!

EPISODE PROMO:

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CASUALTY LIST:

Death: Arthur Meskill shot by bank guard.
Injury: Bank guard shot by Frank Fallon. Chin reports guard is "wounded."
Death: U. S. Congressman Everett Chang shot by Fallon, dies during surgery.
Injury: Two shots are fired through Gordon's stateroom room, he falls over backwards and passes out.
Injury: Duffy Malone hit from behind by Fallon.

MORE TRIVIA:

• Banks which Gordon visits while withdrawing money include Bank of Hawaii (Hawaiian Trust Company Ltd.), First Hawaiian Bank, American Security Bank, Hawaii National Bank, Bank of Honolulu and Citibank. At the beginning of the show, one of the checks (#2152) Gordon signs to withdraw money has the date of 10 Dec 73.
• The S.S. Monterey, based in San Francisco, was owned by Pacific Far East Lines, who are mentioned in the end credits. Launched in 1931, it was used as a fast troop carrier during World War II. On its way to be scrapped years later, it sank off the coast of South Africa in 2000.
• There is a considerable delay between some of the individual credits at the beginning.
• The "a" in "at" in the title is in lower case.
• Les Hutchens sends along an anecdote: "I was with Keene Curtis during the filming of this episode. There was an interesting problem during filming where Mr. Curtis' own suit needed to be 'altered' to make it look as if it had been shot. They had filmed for two days with his suit and now had to put a bullet hole in it. Keene had strong reservations about this so a special effects man sewed some thread into the shoulder, and brushed it with some chalk. The final effect as seen on tv was very effective, and his suit was totally undamaged."
• At the end where Fallon is escaping up the baggage conveyor, it's obviously not him.
• Some behind-the-scenes from this show surfaced on the auction site Ebay: #1; #2; #3; #4; #5.

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144. (S06E24) “30,000 Rooms And I Have A Key” ★★�

QUICK PLOT:

A well-to-do jewel thief steals from Waikiki hotel rooms for the thrill of the chase, leaving taunting clues behind.

Click here to read Full Plot.

REVIEW:

David Wayne plays an elderly (these days "middle-aged") crook named Bordeaux, a.k.a. S.R. Horus, who is a master of disguise, similar to Lewis Avery Filer in S03E11, "Over Fifty? Steal!" and that show's mediocre sequel, S04E14, "Odd Man In." There are numerous parallels to the Filer episodes, especially the music, some of which is reused from the earlier shows along with excerpts from Bruce Broughton's score to S06E11, "The Finishing Touch."

This Bordeaux episode and the two Filer shows were all written by E. Arthur Kean. The two lead characters are very similar, and not just in the actors' ages. Hume Cronyn, who played Filer, was born July 18, 1911 and David Wayne, Bordeaux, was born January 30, 1914. Filer in "Over Fifty" was taking revenge against his former company who denied his wife medical benefits. Filer in "Odd Man," on the other hand, was motivated by greed, stealing millions of dollars from drug smugglers, which is also what motivates Bordeaux, who steals valuables from people in hotels prior to ripping off a multimillion dollar diamond shipment. Filer leaves Monopoly cards in "Over Fifty" to irritate McGarrett; Bordeaux' trademark is a rose.

McGarrett uses a blackboard in his office to come up with an "anal-ysis" of Bordeaux's methods. He makes a note that Bordeaux' "Unconscious M.O." is "ego," and later changes that to "super ego." Bordeaux' cleverness, however, is unrealistic.

How would Bordeaux know that his first victims in the show hide a pearl necklace, an opal ring and a watch in shoes in their hotel closet and a diamond necklace in a dopp kit (a small toiletry bag)? These locations are written on a page in a small book he has containing "notes to self," so he must have learned this from somewhere.

After stealing these things, Bordeaux rips this page out of the book and burns it in an ashtray, another of his trademarks. The page for this first theft mentions the location as "Hotel Ilikia" even though we have seen the Ilikai's actual sign and elevator only a few seconds before; he also has written "Minoa Suite" (instead of "Manoa") there.

Aside from his disguises, which includes a priest with the name "Father Doigt" (meaning "finger," which is what he gives to Five-O), Bordeaux also has his own key-cutting machine which he uses to create master keys. This is kind of far-fetched, but nothing compared to how Bordeaux sneaks a transmitting bug under the desk of the manager of the hotel where he will be "working."

Five-O is technologically savvy, even though this is about as unrealistic as Bordeaux' bug. Danno uses the "computerized [and] centralized" CIB, or Central Information Bureau, which seems to be a fancy term for HPD's "Iron Brain," since we see the usual stock shots of that. Danno gets people at this "bureau" to produce a "list of probables" registered at the local hotels who would be likely victims of Bordeaux because they are "loaded."

Coming back to the office with this list, Danno explains to McGarrett, "There's a guy over at CIB who's a whiz with computers. He set the whole thing up. Programmed it, ran it through four or five different ways. According to him, it comes down to these three choices." But this is so unbelievable! People registering with a hotel don't offer information as to their wealth. The only way you could guess about this would be based on what kind of rooms they chose � and how would the police computer have access to this information, anyway?

When Five-O goes to talk to Joel Holt (Norman Dupont), manager of the Coral Crown Hotel, about setting up a trap for Bordeaux there, Holt does reveal details about how Mr. and Mrs. Scherzinger (one of the "probables" on Danno's computerized list who are staying at this hotel) won't use the place's safe deposit boxes. Holt also knows that "the latest insurance report [WHAT?] tells us that they're carrying a hundred thousand in jewelry with them."

Makes me wonder if it is normal that rich guests would tell their hotel managers information like this, as if they were talking to a doctor or a psychiatrist. Perhaps this is how Bordeaux found about the obscure location of valuables in the Ilikai from the guests telling the manager there — if his office was also bugged — about the shoes and the purse? (Insert Steve Martin "NAAAH" here!)

Anyway, unrealistic as this may be, Holt blabs away about the Scherzingers' jewels, and Bordeaux is sitting in his room listening to the transmitted information, because he seemingly has nothing else to do, so he knows exactly where these valuables are hidden!

McGarrett gets Ben and Chin to rig "closed-circuit cameras, monitors, video machines, [the] usual setup" in the Scherzingers' room. This is something which we should have seen on the show more often, but then it sounds like it required a pretty hairy court order to set up.

Later, as Chin and Ben watch the monitors, Bordeaux, dressed in a security guard outfit, enters the Scherzingers' room with his master key and finds their valuables, which are in a locked box hidden under the liner of a steamer trunk (such an obscure location — would the guests really have told the manager this?)

McGarrett comes into the room as if to arrest Bordeaux. But then Bordeaux, having already rigged "some kind of a mountain climbing device" over the balcony (when did he do this?) and despite being about 60 years old, rappels down what is later said to be "20 floors"! Talk about stupid.

Bordeaux taunts the Five-O boss in advance of his next robbery by sending him an invitation: "McGarrett — the pleasure of your company is requested at a burglary to be held one p.m. to nine p.m. the eleventh day of this month at the Hawaiian Regent Hotel. R.S.V.P. Yours sincerely, S.R. HORUS"

This robbery is suspected to be a big one, because Five-O get a telex from Interpol that "a diamond courier is en route here from Johannesburg, South Africa with $2 million in rough stones. Now, stolen, they'd be untraceable. Cut, they'd triple in value." The courier is delivering to Luther Newhall, staying at the Hawaiian Regent. When Ben is skeptical that Bordeaux knows about this diamond shipment, McGarrett tells him, "Look at the information he's gotten so far. He knows. Count on it. He knows."

McGarrett and Danno go to the Hawaiian Regent and talk to the manager. He is played by Johann (Hans [H.]) Strasser, who was the manager of the Swiss bank in S04E16, "The Ninety-Second War, Part I" and who appeared in four other episodes during the series. Although his name in the end credits is "Chadaway," he is addressed once by his real last name, "Strasser" and answers the phone using his real name. Of course, Five-O checks his office first to see if there are any more bugs. There are not.

Bordeaux knows exactly when the courier, named Simmons, will arrive, and he taps into the hotel's phone system, answering for room 1004, which is Newhall's room. To do this, Bordeaux goes to the 10th floor. Pretending to be Newhall, he redirects Simmons to his own room which is 919. The panel containing all the connections for phones on the 10th floor has phone numbers for floors from the eighth to the eleventh.

There seem to be some very serious problems with the last act of this show (which starts in a moment), as if a lot of it got left on the cutting room floor.

We see Simmons arriving at room 919, where Bordeaux greets him at the door with a U.S. Southern accent. After a commercial break, Simmons is seen freaking out with the men from Five-O, presumably having given the diamonds to Bordeaux and then having gone back downstairs where McGarrett told him that he was scammed. But when he met Bordeaux, wouldn't he have asked to see some ID � and is he just giving the diamonds to Bordeaux? Didn't Bordeaux have to pay for them? McGarrett knows that the "telephone relay panel" is on the 10th floor, which he sends Ben to check, but we aren't told what he finds, if anything.

Bordeaux, rather than trying to escape while there is a big flap in the hotel over what happened with Simmons, is engaged in some "icing on the cake" thefts, for example, stealing pearls from room 1933 where the guest has hidden them inside the back of the room's TV set. This is really ridiculous, not only that Bordeaux would know this (How? From bugging the manager's office, as if someone would tell the manager this crazy location?), but that a hotel guest would carry a screwdriver around so they could take off the back of a TV set in their room and hide something there.

This robbery in 1933 is reported to the manager almost immediately (we are not told by whom). Danno and Ben go to the 19th floor as Chin and a maintenance man from the hotel are monitoring the elevator cars and watching a panel which shows which floors cars are currently at. (It is a good idea not to pay too much attention to this panel.) Chin says the service elevator has been stopped on the 19th floor for "about six minutes," suggesting that's how long it has been since Bordeaux started his post-diamond-robbery crime spree, but then two more robberies are suddenly reported to Strasser's office.

When Danno and Ben arrive on the 19th floor, they see Bordeaux and run around the floor in a circle trying to trap him, but they end up running into each other. It looks like Bordeaux went into an air conditioning vent near the ceiling but even Ben has trouble pulling himself up to inspect it. Inside this vent is another bungee-like cord like Bordeaux used when he leaped off the balcony, as if somehow Bordeaux went into the vent and then dropped down some huge distance. (I don't think so.)

After McGarrett practically browbeat Che Fong to analyze registration cards from the various hotels where Bordeaux has been staying using pseudonyms for matching fingerprints ("check every print you can find"), including the Hawaiian Regent, Che has delivered these cards to the hotel extremely quickly, it seems.

From what Che found, McGarrett has determined that Bordeaux is in room 1912, very close to where Danno and Ben are. Danno tells McGarrett on his walkie-talkie, "Steve, he got away. I hate to say it, but he could be anywhere." Bordeaux overhears this with his door (room 1912) slightly open, but then goes back in the room and starts to remove his moustache in preparation for leaving. Suddenly McGarrett appears in this room, and busts him!

Are there supposed to be gaps in time here that we are not aware of? How did McGarrett, who Danno just spoke to, get up to the 19th floor in the elevators so quickly, especially since a big deal was made about holding the elevators to make sure that Bordeaux didn't escape!

This room 1912 seems to be similar to the room where the pearls were inside the TV — or maybe these hotel rooms all look the same. Was it Bordeaux himself calling these thefts in to the hotel manager?

Augh! I can't deal with this!

EPISODE PROMO:

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CASUALTY LIST:

None.

MORE TRIVIA:

• The police artist who is usually called "Joe" (James H. Severson) appears in this episode as "Frank." He has to construct a portrait of Bordeaux in reverse, working backwards from three other sketches which show him in disguise.
• McGarrett and the Five-O team wear Hawaiian shirts when they are undercover near the end of the show.
• The sign in Japanese seen briefly in front of the hotel reads: "Japanese real estate group — Hawaiian night club tour — see front desk for reservations."
• McGarrett line: "I'm a cop ... I don't drink." McGarrett is seen reading The Honolulu Advertiser which has headlines like "even Santa hit by fuel crisis" and "3 women linked to prison guns."
• Near the end of the show, Chin Ho, along with a hotel employee, watch a panel that shows the various floors where elevators are located. Chin tells Danno that the service elevator for a floor where they suspect Bordeaux to be has been stuck there for 6 minutes, but if you look carefully at the panel for the service elevators, it is the same one as the regular elevators, with a large strip of tape hiding two out of the five vertical elevator light displays on the right side of the panel.
• At approximately 12:20 of Chapter 3 of the DVD, there is a shot of the front of the International Market Place where there is a banner sign appearing to advertise a performance or appearance by ZULU (maybe this is "Zulu's Revenge"?). Thanks to David Burt for pointing this out.

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