Hawaii Five-O (1968-80) — Season 8 Episode Reviews

175. (S08E07) “The Defector” ★★★  BOOK HER, DANNO 

QUICK PLOT:

McGarrett locks horns with a cantankerous physicist sheltering a former colleague from Red China who is actually an imposter.

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REVIEW:

Soon-Teck Oh plays the title character, a foreign agent chosen for his resemblance to Chaing Li, an old pal of Nobel Prize-winning Dr. Grant Ormsbee (Pat Hingle), who is involved with top-secret Navy missile tests off Oahu. Like in S01E15, “Face Of The Dragon,” Soon-Teck is pretending to be someone he is not. Unlike in the earlier show where his character was from China, in this one his nationality is never specified.

Coming ashore in an inflatable rubber boat, Chaing is met by Lew Kameka (Robert Lee), a one-man welcoming committee who is suspicious about him. Chaing shoots Kameka dead. Before he is knocked off, Kameka says that Chaing was not very "professional." But despite Chaing refuting this to the now-dead Kameka, he is indeed not very "professional," because he takes Kameka's gun, shoots himself to make it look like he was fighting back in self-defense and puts the gun in Kameka's hand without wiping off his own fingerprints.

When Kameka's body is discovered, fairly quickly considering it seems to be at the usual "beach in the middle of nowhere" location, McGarrett is suspicious, because he knows that Kameka is a "lower echelon agent legman" from some foreign jurisdiction. When he talks to Commander Jim Hudson (Lee Stetson) back at the Five-O office, McGarrett further suspects "espionage," particularly "what the Navy has going that might've attracted foreign Intelligence."

Hudson pulls strings which allows McGarrett to board a ship where some "offshore testing" is happening, part of a "Navy contract," "something to do with missiles," where the "civilian in charge" is "difficult." We get to meet Dr. Ormsbee in the first of his three appearances in the show. He is a very objectionable individual, telling McGarrett, "I'm not interested in the grubby, psychopathic fantasies of espionage." He goes on: "I wouldn't give my full co-operation to the president of the United States unless I felt it was absolutely necessary. You'll get no information about my project, and no more of my valuable time. This is the first time in three years that I've been away from my laboratory. The islands are magnificent, McGarrett, but you don't add much to the view. It's been a charming visit. Good day."

Of course, McGarrett won't have any of this crap, throwing out the standard line: "Five-O has complete jurisdiction in these islands. Now, if we come up with any connection between your project and Lew Kameka's killing, I won't come out here again, I'm gonna haul your tail in." Ormsbee will not shut up, however, saying, "Now, what am I supposed to say to that? That I admire your style, and now we'll be cooperative friends? I detest arrogance, McGarrett. And I don't give one sweet damn about your jurisdiction. Now, you stay off my boat, away from my project, and out of my life."

When he returns back to his hotel room located at 1350 Ala Moana Boulevard (thanks to Fred Helfing for the location), Ormsbee finds Chaing there, despite the door having been locked. It takes a few seconds for Ormsbee to remember Chaing, whom he has not seen for 12 years. As they reminisce, Ormsbee says absolutely nothing about how Chaing got into the place! And how did Chaing know where Ormsbee lived, considering the guy lived a Greta Garbo-like existence and has been "in a paranoid security womb the past three years"?

Danno and Chin go to Far East Tours, a travel agency where Lew Kameka's girlfriend Carol Stone (Mary Ann Chinn) works. She seems upset to hear of Lew's passing, but as soon as the two from Five-O leave, she goes in the back room and, her teary look disappearing, she does an about-face. It's revealed that she is yet another "agent" who is in cahoots with the bogus Chaing and other local no-goodniks.

Ormsbee soon goes to see McGarrett with a somewhat different attitude, wanting protection for Chaing after listening to his old friend's tales of repression in his home country and a story about how he ended up shooting Kameka, saying "I am a defector, not a turncoat." When Ormsbee whips out a cigar, McGarrett is quick to tell him, "I don't permit smoking in this office, doctor. It's my airspace. I don't wanna pollute it."

Ormsbee's blood pressure goes up again as he and McGarrett argue about Chaing getting asylum with various conditions. McGarrett says that Chaing will have to "turn himself in" but finally bends when Ormsbee says that Chaing is "fully prepared to kill himself rather than become a political pawn. I cannot tell you how serious a tragedy his death would be for science, for our country, and for me personally."

McGarrett, Danno and Duke meet with Ormsbee and Chaing at a lookout above Hanauma Bay, which Ormsbee pronounces "Hauoonama." Some guy from Carol's cadre shows up nearby, having been tipped off as to the location by Chaing and takes potshots with a rifle to give the impression someone wants Chaing dead.

Chaing surrenders, which results in yet another screaming match between McGarrett and Ormsbee. The exchange between the two of them is quite delightful:

Ormsbee: McGarrett, I'm fed up with your fascist tactics. I demand you release Chaing immediately.

McGarrett: And I am fed up with your pomposity and bad manners. A man has been shot to death here, and your friend Chaing here has admitted responsibility.

Ormsbee: Chaing was shot first. Surely it must be obvious to you he fired in self-defense.

McGarrett: That is not up to me to decide. I am obligated by law to hold him over for a formal hearing. –

Ormsbee: The hell with your formal hearing.

McGarrett: You know, you really are crude. The district attorney will decide whether Mr. Chaing is to be indicted or not. And that decision will be based strictly on the evidence presented.

Ormsbee: What evidence does he have to prove it was not self-defense?

McGarrett: Why don't you save that question for the district attorney?

Chaing's prints, which are taken off of Ormsbee's car (when did this get done?), are sent off to Washington to see if they match up with government records from when he worked with Ormsbee in the past. There is nothing found, so McGarrett immediately goes into Brainstorm Mode, snapping his fingers a couple of times and saying "I think our defector friend is an imposter." Of course, McGarrett knows everything, like Kameka was killed by Chaing so he could "make himself appear to be a legitimate defector" and then he shot himself "to make his story stand up." As well, the subsequent sniping incident "was staged just for our benefit."

Although Ormsbee still can't admit that Chaing is a phony, McGarrett gets him to drop some references to a baseball game the two of went to many years ago which Chaing doesn't deal with well, though Chaing immediately has a suspicious look as if he knows what Ormsbee is up to.

The two men go to the ship where a missile test is being conducted, with stock defence shots of a Polaris missile launching. The sequence where a trained seal dives underwater to recover an important component of the missile is probably also a stock defense shot, because the US Navy actually used sea lions in this capacity. When a bullet-shaped capsule taken from the missile is given to Ormsbee, which contains "not only the guidance mechanism, but also a microcircuit that records every technological aspect of the flight," Chaing suddenly pulls out a gun and forces the doctor to return to land. Where he got the gun is a good question, because, prior to this, he was released from jail. Did he have time to go to Carol's place to pick one up?

Ormsbee is forced by Chaing to go a hideout where Carol is waiting with various other low-level spy types, and Five-O tails them, Chin somewhat obviously, but the others with a bit of distance. The jig is up for the bad guys and everyone is busted except for Chiang who bites on a poison capsule.

Five-O suddenly bursting into the hideout seems rather reckless, but not as much as when McGarrett picks up and sniffs the cyanide capsule that Chaing used to commit suicide.

The "bookem" is "Book her, Danno, murder one." Huh? Are they referring to Kameka? Hardly Carol's doing. McGarrett also says, "Take them, Danno." The stock music score contains the marimba theme, as well as excerpts from Broughton's score to "McGarrett Is Missing" from earlier this season.

EPISODE PROMO:

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CASUALTY LIST:

Death: Lew Kameka shot by "Chaing Li."
Injury: Chaing Li shoots himself.
Injury: Thug, part of spy ring, shot by McGarrett.
Death: Chaing Li commits suicide with cyanide pill.

MORE TRIVIA:

• The World Series game that Ormsbee uses to test Chaing took place Thursday, October 4, 1962 at Candlestick Park in San Francisco between the San Francisco Giants and the New York Yankees. McGarrett later says that Whitey Ford pitched the first game for the Yankees, which is quite correct. The date of this game was a bit less than 13 years before the date this show was broadcast.
• Cyanide as a method of suicide was featured only two shows earlier in "Death's Name is SAM."
• Chaing calls Carol's house (555-7670) from Ormsbee's hotel room, which is a bad idea, because this is used later to connect the two of them.
• Ormsbee's apartment number is 1021, but when we first see the building at the beginning of act two, his place is on at least the fourteenth floor.
• When Ormsbee goes into the convenience store near the end of the show on the way to the ship and he calls Five-O, you can see he is diealling 732-5577. On the counter in this store is a box of Super Splashers water pistols.
• Chaing's prints sent to Washington, according to Danno were "lifted from Ormsbee's car," but when was this done?
• The word "missilery" is used twice in the show. It is an adjective both times, but is usually a noun just meaning "missiles."
• McGarrett says "Lew Kameka was the Judas goat, and he ends up being led to the slaughter." I think he has his terminology mixed up, because a Judas goat, according to wordhistories.net, means either "an animal, especially a sheep or a goat, used to lead others to slaughter" or "any person or thing used as a decoy to lure people into being caught, arrested, etc."
• The missile launched in the show is supposed to reach offshore near Hawaii in 17 minutes and 12 seconds, according to Ormsbee. At a typical Polaris missile speed of 8,000 miles per hour, this distance would be around 2,300 miles, but the actual distance between Honolulu and Fiji, where the missile was launched from a submarine probably south of Fiji, because the missile passes over that country, is around 3,150 miles.
• Andrew Goodloe e-mailed me to report "The background sounds in the submarine control room from this episode are those from the Star Trek: Original Series Enterprise bridge."

GALLERY:

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176. (S08E08) “Sing A Song Of Suspense” ★★★  BOOK HIM, DANNO 

QUICK PLOT:

Five-O has to protect a singer who witnessed a death resulting from the actions of a gangster with ties to the Hawaiian music industry.

Click here to read Full Plot.

REVIEW:

As the show opens, Chelsea Merriman (Lois Nettleton) is singing for a crowd of a couple of dozen people in the apartment of Koko Apaleka (Tommy Atkins). McGarrett later estimates the number of people in the room was between 30 and 40.

Koko gave the popular Chelsea a break four years ago when she sang at his Raft Club for a "crowd" of six people, and she is grateful. Her song is hardly an incentive to keep watching. It is awful, sounding like a parody of a Joni Mitchell type folk song:

Down the corridors of misty dreams
I chase the strange elusive scenes
Of childhood days in playground games
And never hear the angry names
That once were hurled in early years
And echo still in unshed tears
But I'm not there, no, I'm not there
In the attic of my memory
I see the faded tapestry
Of tangled threads from broken toys
The photographs of fleeting joys
Of summer days gone quickly by
I turn my face away and sigh
But I'm not there, no, I'm not there
On a day that hasn't dawned as yet
Perhaps someone I've never met
Will say, "I'll tell you who you are
You are the one I've waited for"
And when I look into those eyes
That strip me bare of all disguise
Then I'll be there, then I'll be there.

This drivel goes on for two minutes and 12 seconds!

Koko's current girlfriend is the blonde Julene Balli (Karen Ericson). She is very drunk, and when Chelsea finishes, she sneers. She wonders why Koko won't promote her like he did Chelsea, who he sent to Las Vegas and arranged for her to have a recording contract. Julene says "I've been eighty-sixed" (meaning cancelled), saying that Aleno thinks she can sing.

Chelsea goes into Koko's dressing room and phones the front desk for a taxi to pick her up downstairs. She is almost leaving, when Julene and Koko come into the room, fighting. Koko is annoyed to hear the name of Aleno Kimura (Jerry Waialae), who is his competition in the music business in Honolulu and likely for criminal activities as well. She threatens to tell Aleno that Koko was responsible for the death of his brother, who went to Macau in connection with some gunrunning and was knocked off there by a couple of Koko's thugs.

Julene and Koko continue arguing on the balcony, which is very high up. Julene tries to leave, but says that Koko "can't cut it any more." He belts her in the face and she scratches his left cheek very badly. He smacks her again, so hard she flies over the balcony railing. After a few seconds, she finally lets go of the railing which she grabbed, and seems to first fall sideways before she plunges to her death.

Chelsea has seen all this, unobserved, and freaks out, leaving her purse in the dressing room and her guitar in the living room.

Five-O shows up soon and McGarrett says that he would like to "nail" Koko but that "he's too cool to make it this easy." When McGarrett asks Koko about the scratches on his face, he is told this is from "trimming roses this morning." McGarrett says, "Extra-Iong-stemmed ones, no doubt."

Guests from the party are grilled at Five-O headquarters, but their stories are inconclusive and sound like they are "all well-rehearsed — same speech about Julene being high on reds and booze." HPD officer Oliver MacDougall (Shelley Novack), formerly with LAPD, who has been assigned to help with the questioning, tells McGarrett that a lot of people left the party early because they were carrying hash or pot: "They get brown stains on their fingers from biting down on short roaches."

Danno returns Chelsea's guitar to her at her apartment, but she has a charity concert to prepare for and cannot answer his questions. Chelsea suddenly decides to take a Manoa Cab to the airport. While she is on her way, the cab is cut off by Aleno and his men who then deliver her to Five-O, saying, "This island will be a more pleasant place without Koko Apaleka. The difficulty is keeping this beautiful lady alive for Koko's trial."

This does not make any sense. Does this mean that Aleno knows or thinks (or the local crime world or media know or think) that "Koko is responsible for Julene's death"? It looked like Julene's fall from the balcony was not viewable by the people in the apartment's living room and only Chelsea saw it. Is this a crime for which Koko should be prosecuted, or should Koko be prosecuted for what happened with Aleno's brother? Neither of these options are specified.

McGarrett asks Chelsea several questions about what happened at the party, but she is evasive. She says she missed the charity concert because she was too "strung out to get up on stage and smile" because of Julene's death. When she tells McGarrett, "I am not used to being interrogated, particularly by highly skilled investigators wearing guns under their carefully tailored suits," he says, "Well, I would've thought that you were quite accustomed to men carrying guns, having worked Koko's clubs."

When McGarrett asks Chelsea hypothetically, "If you had seen Koko push that girl off the balcony, would you testify to that fact?", she says "Nobody could answer that until they have to." McGarrett quotes a line to her from one of her songs: "Too many folks are moving on when they should stick around and hold their ground."

Duke drives Chelsea back to her hotel room, where she finds Koko is waiting for her, having brought her purse with him. She says she was "having an identity crisis without [her] credit cards," which is odd –- how was she going to pay for the cab that was taking her to the airport earlier? Koko is concerned that she saw what happened with Julene, but Chelsea says she just told McGarett that Julene was "very uptight and drunk." Koko knows about Aleno delivering her to Five-O. He says that Aleno must have hoped that Chelsea would "finger" him (but for what?), but she says "all he succeeded in doing was giving me a good scare." Chelsea feigns being tired, and Koko leaves, but not before he makes some inquiries about her daughter Marissa (Traci Weled) and mother Mrs. Stroud (Jean Tarrant, note the character name the same as actor Don) back on the mainland which is a thinly-disguised threat.

Concerned, Chelsea phones her mother just as someone delivers a doll to her house, a present for her daughter. When Marissa, who is obnoxious, opens the box, she finds the doll's face has been cut open and there is some gross substance which looks like blood inside it. Chelsea tells her mother to "take Marissa to Uncle Frank's in Arizona" immediately.

Chelsea calls Five-O and McGarrett meets her and arranges for a well-publicized trip to Puanani Hospital under the guise of her suffering from "nervous exhaustion." On the way into the hospital, reporters are asking, "Is there a possibility that she might testify against Koko Apaleka?" Again –- why is this an issue? Is it automatically expected that because Julene was around Koko that he would be the guilty party if something happened to her?

In her hospital room, Chelsea gives a deposition about what she witnessed during the party. Dewey (Ward Benson), one of Koko's thugs, gets himself admitted to the hospital under the name of Pete Hoveland. He is having "coronary pains" and his room is right across from Chelsea's! Another of Koko's associates, the whale-like Taplin (Robert Lui), shows up with a "box of chocolates" for Dewey which contains a gun with a silencer. Taplin distracts the HPD guard and Chin Ho from the door in front of Chelsea's room which allows Dewey to go in and blast her "body," but it is just a mannequin with a bag of red liquid on its back which gives the impression of blood when it is shot.

McGarrett decides to move Chelsea to his beach house. Novack and other HPD cops are assigned to guard the place. There are vague hints of a romantic relationship between McGarrett and Chelsea when she is staying there; the two of them spend time talking about McGarrett's diet in an almost-sexual way. He tells her, "I'm one of those nuts who eats dates, figs, wheat germ and yogurt." When she offers to cook him breakfast, he suggests a "mushroom omelet sprinkled with a little Parmesan cheese," with "some whole-wheat bread, toasted, with seedless black raspberry jam," emphasizing the jam has to be "seedless." Obviously, these are ingredients that are already in the cupboards and refrigerator.

Koko can't believe that Chelsea is dead and it doesn't take long for him and his men to find the beach house. Arrangements are made for Chelsea to have her mother and daughter, who are now under police protection in Los Angeles, call her. But Koko's people somehow find out about this arrangement and, figuring out what the quite likely unlisted phone number at the beach house is, use this as an excuse to confirm that Chelsea is there with the help of Koko's evil receptionist (Sandra Higa). Koko himself shows up to knock Chelsea off after McGarrett pretends to drive away from the place, only to return at the exact moment Koko has both Novack and Chelsea held at gunpoint. McGarrett says that he returned via "the beach" where he says "I like to jog."

This episode is OK, though Koko is not as menacing a villain as we might like, and we aren't really told the extent of his criminal activities on Oahu, other than arranging to knock off Aleno's brother, which I'm sure Five-O didn't know about. Lois Nettleton plays her character very well with a wise-cracking attitude, always thinking ahead and able to come up with the right answers. The music is by Stevens and contains several interesting cues.

WHAT DOES THE TITLE MEAN?

This is obviously a play on words with "sing a song of six pence," a well-known children's nursery rhyme. There isn't really a lot of nail-biting suspense in the show, though.

EPISODE PROMO:

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CASUALTY LIST:

Injury: Julene Balli slapped by Koko Apaleka
Injury: Apaleka scratched by Julene on his face.
Death: Julene punched by Apaleka, causing her to fly over the railing; she eventually falls several stories down after losing her grip.
Death: Faked –- Mannequin representing Chelsea Merriman shot three times by Dewey.
Death: Aleno Kimura and his associate killed by Dewey (not seen by us).

MORE TRIVIA:

• A good line from Danno after interviewing guests from the party: "I don't know what they were drinking last night, but it wasn't truth serum."
• Jimmy Borges is Walter Mapu, Koko's "yes man." Arthur Meskil, the ugly-faced actor from Killer at Sea, appears briefly as one of Aleno's men who kidnap Chelsea. Chuck Chuck Akamine is a cabbie interviewed by Chin Ho.
• In the hospital, Dewey refers to his nurse (a Hawaiian woman) as "a brass-headed bimbo." He complains about the rate for staying in the hospital, which is $85 a day.
• After he surprises Chelsea in her room (768) after she returns from the Five-O offices, Koko suggests they have dinner, then changes his mind and calls room service to have it sent up. He calls the wine steward whose name is likely "Robert" (French pronunciation), but the subtitles translate this as "Robaire." After Chelsea pretends to be tired, Koko leaves but doesn't cancel this meal, at least from Chelsea's room.
• McGarrett's beach house street number is 5439.
• Chelsea says she studied music at Juilliard.
• The desk clerk (Lou Richards) at Koko's apartment (hotel?) is in cahoots with him. He tells Chin and Duke that Chelsea left the building by cab a "couple of minutes before I heard [Julene's] scream," which is a lie. He immediately phones Koko after they leave to tell him that Five-O has been "poking around."
• Chin uses the expression "bra" twice in the show, which the subtitles translate both times incorrectly as "bro."
• When Koko shows up at the end to kill Chelsea, he shows Novack Aleno's business card through a small window in the front door, claiming to be him. The card lists Aleno as president of Aleno Kimura Co. The address is 1050 Kinau Street, Honolulu with the ubiquitous phone number of 732-5577.
• Strictly speaking, I don't think Koko would be charged with murder for Julene's death, more likely manslaughter. However, there might be more charges up McGarrett's sleeve.

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177. (S08E09) “Retire In Sunny Hawaii...Forever” ★★★★  BOOK HER   BOOK THEM 

QUICK PLOT:

After Danno's Aunt Clara arrives in Hawaii to visit her nephew, she becomes involved in a Five-O murder investigation.

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REVIEW:

Danno's Aunt Clara, played by James MacArthur's real-life adoptive mother, Helen Hayes, comes to Hawaii for a visit but ends up helping Five-O investigate a scam stealing money from senior citizens' expired bank accounts.

On the plane to Honolulu, Clara befriends Edgar P. Miller (veteran "senior" character actor Ian Wolfe). He previously lived in Hawaii from 1924 and moved to Minneapolis in 1960. In 1966, Miller entered a veterans' hospital where he was later diagnosed with Parkinson's disease. With new medication introduced in the early 1970s, his condition improved and he was discharged in 1975.

Miller is returning to Hawaii to recover money from his former bank account with the Pacific Federal Bank, over $100,000. Because he has been away from Hawaii for 15 years, this account's status became "dormant," with its owner considered either legally missing or dead, so the money was turned over to the Unclaimed Property Bureau, State of Hawaii.

Under these circumstances, the bureau attempts to contact the owner of the money by placing ads in the local newspapers (note: these are papers in Hawaii, not elsewhere). If there's no response to the ads, the money goes into the state treasury. The money can still be claimed if the owner returns to Hawaii, shows identification and files a claim. Miller did file such a claim a few weeks before he returned to the islands because he wanted his funds to be available by the time he reached Honolulu.

Unfortunately, Miller's return to the islands conflicts with a racket run by J. Haven (Charles Durning), owner of the Golden Years Retirement Home, who enlists the help of senior citizens to pose as the owners of dormant accounts and claim the money, most of which goes into Haven's pockets.

The money for Miller's account has already been claimed by a "Fake Mr. Miller" (Charles Peck) with the assistance of Ellen Sutherland (Lynne Ellen Hollinger), deputy director of the Unclaimed Property Bureau, who is in cahoots with Haven. Two guards from the rest home (Michael Morgan and Palani Vaughn) show up at Miller's hotel room after he arrives and strong-arm him away, making it look like he checked out after only being there a few hours and went back to the mainland. Before he is forcibly removed, however, Miller attempts to call Clara, who is staying in the Hilton Rainbow Tower.

Clara freaks out after Miller tells her, "Two men, I think they're going to kill me," and contacts Danno, who is in the middle of an important criminal investigation. Danno brushes her off and gets Duke to go to Miller's hotel where he meets Fake Miller, who is in the room. Asked about the "kill me" comment, Fake Miller says that workmen were fixing his room, and he said words to the effect "the noise was killing me or some such thing." (This does not explain why the fake Miller called her in the first place.)

Duke reports that everything seems to be OK, which Danno relays to his aunt, but she is not satisfied and goes to the room herself, where she also encounters Fake Miller. A former actress, Clara uses her improvisational skills, pretending to be a representative of some seniors' organization welcoming Fake Miller to the islands, but he slams the door in her face. She then goes to the Five-O office to let them know that something fishy is going on because the Miller in the hotel room is not the one she was with on the plane.

The next morning, the real Mr. Miller's dead body is found on a beach. McGarrett apologizes to Clara for not taking her concerns about her friend more seriously, and she constructs a picture of Fake Miller with the help of a police artist which is distributed to all the usual local places as well as HPD.

After Chin Ho finds out about the sizeable amount Miller had in his bank account which was turned over to the Property Bureau, he goes with Danno go to talk to Sutherland. She details the procedure how funds like this are dealt with and how they can be recovered by their owner. But then she tells them that Miller's money was not put back in his bank account because "the claim was terminated" due to Miller's death. She shows Chin and Danno Miller's file which has a stamp with the termination date as September 26, 1975, the day before, as well as a newspaper announcing Miller's death today, September 27, 1975, Danno and Chin leave, suspecting that something untoward is definitely going on, because Sutherland knew about Miller's death before it made the local papers. (The file had been terminated the previous day when Haven called Sutherland and told her to terminate it using a kind of "coded" language.)

Chin and Danno start following Sutherland around, and they see her meeting with Haven. Danno was with McGarrett earlier when they went to the rest home to inquire about a second call from "Miller's" hotel room to the home after the one the real Miller made to Clara. This second call was ostensibly made after the real Miller had been taken away by the two guards. Duke interviews a ticket clerk at the airport (for United Airlines, natch — played by Luella Costello), who recognizes Fake Miller from the police sketch. His real name is Harley Welbourn, and he returned to Los Angeles the day before at 4 p.m.

Back at the Five-O office, there is a cumulative brainstorm involving McGarrett and the team: "Ellen [Sutherland] waits for a juicy unclaimed bank account to surface, one that's worth going after. And she notifies Haven. He finds an old woman or an old man at his rest home, willing to play along with the racket. They coached him, maybe even gave him forged papers. And they sent him to the Bureau of Unclaimed Property posing as Miller to file a claim. And Ellen verifies him as the rightful owner of the account. Well, at least that's what they planned to do. But the real Miller writes a letter to the bank down here saying he's on his way to claim his money. The bank sent the letter to Ellen, she called Haven. That really must've shook them up. So they planned to hit Miller on his arrival. But they had no way of predicting that he would get to know [Aunt Clara] on the plane and that she would be able to identify him later on, huh? Or that she'd spot the phony Miller. So a sweet little racket goes sour."

Danno tells the assembled that he checked and discovered "In the past six months, ten accounts were turned over to people claiming to be their rightful owner. Ellen Sutherland had to approve those. The sum total of the bank accounts was $1,742,000."

In order to prove this theory, McGarrett contacts his pal Frank Cooper (Frank Cooper) at the Pacific Federal Bank who creates a phony account under the name of Esther Bracken whose dormant money — over $200,000 — will be advertised in the local papers, with the idea that Esther will suddenly show up to claim it. Esther will be played by the former actress, Aunt Clara.

After finding that Clara, who soon comes to live at the rest home under the name of Mrs. Tepper, and who exactly fits the persona of Esther Bracken which has been created, including being in a wheelchair, Haven convinces her to apply for Bracken's money. It is disturbing the way that Clara as Tepper agrees to take on this task which Haven warns her is "naughty," but Clara, who is wearing a wire and is under the care of a nurse who is actually a policewoman, tells him, "It isn't that I'd mind the risk, that might be rather fun. As long as there's something in it for me."

Clara goes to the Property Bureau, where there is no handicapped incline to get into or out of the building, and claims the money with the help of Sutherland, who doesn't let on that she knows exactly what is going on, perhaps for the benefit of "Esther's" nurse. As Clara leaves the building, Danno is in a surveillance truck right behind the Econoline Club Wagon returning his aunt to the rest home. The back of this truck is completely open and I'm sure everyone a few feet away can hear him yapping on the radio to McGarrett!

When Clara gets back to the home, as she is about to sign over the check she received from Sutherland to Haven, she starts dithering, wondering if she should really be doing this, and then fussing over using her glasses and spelling out the name as she endorses it. All this makes Danno, listening via her wire outside the property, almost go up the wall, saying, "Give him the money and get out of there … She's playing games. Why doesn't she just get it over with?"

As Clara is taken back to her room, a large monkey wrench is thrown into Five-O's roundup operation when Welbourn, a.k.a. Fake Miller, returns to the rest home, despite the fact that Haven earlier assured Sutherland he "will not be back." Welbourn says he couldn't stand being away from Hawaii for more than a week. He sees Clara in her wheelchair and recognizes her, then rushes to tell Haven, "That's the woman who came to Miller's hotel room and tried to sell me a phony magazine. Remember? She's no cripple."

Despite this, the bad guys are rounded up and Clara is kept safe by her policewoman nurse who whips out a .38 Police Special that "nobody argues with" to take care of the two guards who would otherwise have knocked Danno's aunt off. As the show ends, Clara asks McGarrett when their next case will be. McGarrett has a big smile as he says "Good day, Mrs. Williams."

Helen Hayes is quite charming and delightful in this show. The way she keeps interrupting Five-O in the midst of their investigation is pretty funny. James MacArthur has fun playing with her — you can almost see him biting his tongue, thinking of telling the other actors: "Hey — this is my mom." Aunt Clara mentions people from her distant theatrical past, David Belasco (1853-1931) and William Gillette (1853-1937) whom she either knew of or worked with (also see below). As Haven convinces Clara to take part in his scheme, Danno says that she is "a regular Sarah Bernhardt," referring to the woman who was one of the greatest actresses of all time, who lived from 1844 to 1923. Hayes in her autobiography On Reflection recalls that she received some acting tips from a woman who studied with Bernhardt in Paris.

The only real disappointment with this show is Charles Durning, who is a bland villain who is not much of a criminal mastermind. His idea of "mean" is to take a floral arrangement one of the old ladies from the home (Peggy Oumansky) gives him and, out of her sight, throw it in the garbage.

Murdering Miller seems like an unusually harsh way for Haven to deal with his scam being derailed. The penalty for murder is lot more severe than fraud! I wonder –- didn't any of the people he asked to participate in his "fundraising projects" ever refuse him? If this happened, wasn't there a risk that this person might spill the beans to the cops? As well, considering the scam was pulled off with 10 accounts, it is amazing that none of the account owners other than Miller didn't show up to claim their money.

The excellent score is by Morton Stevens, exercising his usual "pick of the crop" rights, I suspect. There are two "bookems," the first is for Sutherland — "book her for fraud and murder one" — and the second for the two guards at the end of the show — "book them, accessory to murder." I think McGarrett is kind of guessing for the latter charges since there has been no connection between the guards taking Miller from the hotel room and knocking him off earlier that I am aware of. Nothing is said about booking Haven or any of the other people who conspired with him.

EPISODE PROMO:

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CASUALTY LIST:

Death: Edgar P. Miller killed by Haven's men.

MORE TRIVIA:

• The September 27th issue of the Honolulu Advertiser with the story about the discovery of Miller's body has a large headline on the top ending with "Blast Navy HQ," which seemingly has nothing to do with Miller. Below this is a sub-head on the Miller article: Body Found In Mamala Bay; A Former Resident of Hawaii. The article is written by Karl Hays and Carl (someone). There is another headline on the page visible: Eight Judges Selected For Brotherhood.
• When Clara takes a taxi, it has the phone number 555-2099 on its roof. Mr. Miller places a phone call to Clara at the Rainbow Towers (555-4956) and, after he is knocked off. A call to the retirement home (555-3770) is made from his room, either by the bogus Mr. Miller or Havens, who is with him in the room later, helping to clean it up.
• Miller's mainland address is 42 Brandon St., Minneapolis, MN. His room in the Makai Lagoon Hotel in Honolulu is 2504. Miller was born in 1900; the actor playing him, Ian Wolfe, was born in 1896.
• Esther Bracken's phony Social Security Number is 565-46-3038.
• A well-known goof: When Danny gets out of the car in front of the State of Hawaii Bureau of Records he is wearing a tan suit; when he enters the Unclaimed Property Department he is wearing a dark blue suit. The building where this department located is at 3049 Ualena Street.
• Helen Hayes teamed up with Mildred Natwick, another Five-O guest star (S10E21, "Frozen Assets" and S11E15, "The Spirit is Willie"), in a comedy-mystery TV show from 1973 to 1974 called The Snoop Sisters, about two elderly sisters whose name was Snoop (duh) who routinely stumbled across mysteries which they solved. This show received poor ratings, which Hayes blamed on "mediocre scripts."
• According to a bio-bibliography of Helen Hayes, she worked with William Gillette in a play called Dear Brutus which opened in 1918; I'm don't think she ever worked with David Belasco, but she did appear in a 1932 MGM movie based on a play by Belasco called The Son-Daughter, where she played a Chinese woman named Lien Wha. Variety reviewed this movie, saying that it "contains nothing to distinguish it from other subjects on Frisco Chinatown intrigue. It's old time stuff, moving slowly and laboriously toward a sad climax ... Miss Hayes is more often playing Helen Hayes than Lien Wha, although a neat change of pace in a role that calls for a Protean switch from lotus flower to tiger lily makes the part continually interesting, if not always true to type." A further comment in the book says "This oriental romance film, with Caucasians in all major Asian roles, failed to please critics or attract moviegoers." I think I have finally figured out why James MacArthur had such a negative reaction when I asked him about non-Asians playing Asians on Five-O when I had lunch with him many years ago ... because I was basically saying "Yo mamma" to him!
• Stock shot of cops speeding to a crime scene.

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178. (S08E10) “How To Steal A Submarine” ★★½  BOOK THEM, DANNO 

QUICK PLOT:

A high school vice-principal is involved in a drug smuggling operation.

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REVIEW:

Although he is a high school vice-principal who does community service where he works with underprivileged children and helps them to find employment, Orin Morwood (Jack Cassidy) is not a nice guy. He is also involved with smuggling drugs, including heroin. Despite a salary of only $14,000 a year, he has taken a dozen trips in the last 16 months to cities like Hong Kong and Singapore, some of which were only for one day, where he arranged for various forms of dope to be brought back to Hawaii.

As the show begins, Rafael Orduno (Nephi Hanneman), one of Morwood's associates, is out in Honolulu Harbor on his fishing trawler, the Irene Kay, waiting to receive drugs via a freighter named the Matusu which is nearby. This ship already spent some time in port where it was examined thoroughly by Five-O, who found nothing.

Sing Yen, a scuba diver, approaches Orduno's boat and gives him a package which contains heroin in sealed cans similar to those used for ham containing "several million dollars worth of heroin" according to McGarret later and "over a million dollars [worth]", according to Morwood later. After Sing delivers the goods, he is shot dead by Orduno, which totally freaks out James ("Jimmy") Scott (Darby Hinton), a young blond guy who has been hired as a helper on the trawler on Morwood's recommendation.

There is a Coast Guard helicopter flying over the trawler, and the ship is ordered to head to Kewalo Basin. The pilot of the copter doesn't see the shot diver, and it's very odd that the diver just didn't dive as soon as he saw Orduno's pistol, duh! Orduno quickly dumps the drugs and the gun he used to shoot Sing back into the water in a bag which is tagged with a piece of red cloth. Kewalo Basin, a commercial boat harbor located near Ala Moana Beach Park, is not the final destination of the ship, though. It just heads back part way into the harbor where it is soon boarded by McGarrett and Danno, who have been following it on a Coast Guard utility boat.

McGarrett has a few choice words with Orduno, who has a history of trafficking drugs. Orduno gives McGarrett a lot of mouth, insisting that he has been clean for two years. Danno and another guy in a black, non-Coast Guard uniform search the Irene Kay, but, again, nothing is found.

Back on land, Jimmy is upset because of Sing's murder and also because McGarrett asked him a couple of questions. When he goes to pick up his girlfriend Nani Hakua (the attractive Lydia Lei Kayahara) from where she works, he notices the company has a mini-submarine used to harvest coral at the bottom of the ocean. Jimmy figures news of this watercraft would give him brownie points with Morwood and Orduno, since it could be used to find the heroin which was thrown back into the ocean.

Orduno already warned Jimmy, "don't do nothing to make him sorry," meaning Morwood, who is already pissed about the drugs being thrown overboard, though Orduno assured him he has a "fix" on their location (no pun intended, I'm sure). Jimmy goes and sees Morwood, who tells him, "Perhaps I've misjudged you. I thought you were a boy with real backbone." Morwood says the idea of the mini-sub is "very appealing," but gives Jimmy a plane ticket and tells him to go to the Big Island and lay low there for a couple of weeks.

In this scene, Morwood adjusts Jimmy's collar and lays his hands on his shoulder, which is kind of creepy. Are we to think there is some kind of sexual element to their relationship and that which Morwood has with other boys? Although Five-O pushed the limit in many ways, perhaps this kind of suggestion was too much for TV in 1975.

McGarrett and Danno go to Jimmy's place because they have more questions for him, but they just meet his roommate Pete Akula (Francis Kamahela). Jimmy suddenly comes home, and seeing the cops, leaps over the railing and runs away to Orduno's boat to hide out. Orduno is not happy about this, figuring that Jimmy is a loose cannon. He calls Morwood, who tells him, "We're gonna have to terminate young James' employment with you. Permanently."

Five-O talks to Pete at their office. He says that Morwood has "kind of been like a father to Jimmy … since his folks died and everything. He really helps Jimmy out. I guess he's the closest thing to a family that Jim's got now." Shortly after, Jimmy's body is found at Mokulua Cove, well above the water line. (Later it is said that he "went off the cliff.") McGarrett and Danno go to talk to Nani, who is distraught when she hears of Jimmy's demise. Both Pete and Nani tell McGarrett that Jimmy didn't like Orduno very much.

When McGarrett and Danno finally go to see Morwood, he says he found Jimmy's death to be "terrible. I can't tell you how badly I was affected by it. I feel as if I've lost a son of my own … James was as much my son as if ... I'd been his own natural father." The teacher makes some peculiar comments, though. He says that Jimmy "took his own life," but there has been no such report in the news. Morwood says he spends a lot of time out of town because "I happen to know a good deal about raw silk. Most of which, I'm sure you both know, is marketed in the Far East. I've been acting as an agent for several of the garment companies here in the islands." Finally, he asks, "Why am I being investigated?" to which McGarrett replies, "I wasn't under the impression that you were being investigated, Mr. Morwood."

McGarrett and Danno go back to Nani's place, but she has taken an overdose of drugs which were from Morwood via Jimmy! She is almost comatose, but McGarrett makes her drink a lot of coffee and drags her around the room to "walk off" the drugs' effect. (Huh? This isn't a hangover.) McGarrett is kind of brutal the way he yells at her. Nani does mention the submersible, so McGarrett and Five-O rush to the pier (the Makai Pier, actually) where Orduno and Morwood have forced the sub's regular pilot (Don Pomes) to give them a crash course in how to operate it and after tying him up and leaving him on shore have left to pick up the submerged heroin. Note that when the Five-O duo left Nani's place, they didn't call for an ambulance for her!

The Coast Guard is called into action, and we again have some spectacular shots with the Cape Corwin (McGarrett and Commander Miller (Robert Harker) on board), the utility boat (with Danno) and a helicopter. The submarine's location is pinpointed with sonar, and percussion charges are dropped to freak out its two occupants, who are over 400 feet below where they have found the bag containing the heroin.

Orduno seems unusually adept at manipulating the submersible, even using its robotic-like arm to grab the bag. When the percussion charges cause water to start pouring into the interior of the sub, Morwood demands at gunpoint that Orduno surface, saying "I'm not gonna die down here."

These two guys are not too clever. They bring up the cans containing the heroin as well as the gun, the bullets from which can be connected to the death of Sing Yen, whose body washed up on shore some time ago. Why didn't they just leave these items? They would still be facing charges, but they would probably not be as serious as they will get … assuming no one will find the evidence which they abandoned at the bottom of the ocean.

Both Orduno and Morwood are busted, with expected charges of "murder one."

EPISODE PROMO:

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CASUALTY LIST:

Death: Scuba-diving courier Sing Yen shot twice by Rafael Orduno.
Death: Jimmy Scott's body is found on beach.
Injury: Nani Hakua overdoses on various pills but revived by McGarrett and Danno.
Injury: Submarine pilot gagged and tied up by Orrin Morwood and Orduno.

MORE TRIVIA:

• There is no explanation as to how Morwood knows Orduno — was Orduno also one of his students? Scott is described by Five-O as a "former student" of Morwood who also has a record for drug possession. It is not clear whether Scott is still a student. According to his roomate, Scott has worked for Orduno for a year ... but then the roomate says Morwood found Scott a job working with Orduno only "since school is out."
• This episode starts out saying "The Producers gratefully acknowledge the assistance of the United States Coast Guard.".
• Sing's body, after it is found washed ashore, is taken away in a Physicians Ambulance.
• McGarrett quote to Orduno: "I don't deal in phony charges and you know it."
• Jimmy refers to a job in a cannery where the salary is "$2.80 an hour," the suggestion being that this is a mediocre wage.
• Although the music is credited to Ray, near the end are some excerpts from Bruce Broughton's score for "McGarrett is Missing."
• Near the end, Morwood says to Orduno as they are under attack from above by the Coast Guard, "You know the charges we're facing?" I felt like saying, "Yes, percussion charges!"
• If Morwood is involved with smuggling huge amounts of drugs, where is he selling them? Just through his students? Thath would be strictly a nickel and dime business. There is no suggestion that Morwood is involved with any local drug lords or gangsters, for example.
• There is a shot in McGarrett's office where we see both McGarrett and Danno in the reflection of McGarrett's plastic board.
• Near the end, when Morwood is coming on board the Cape Corwin, we see McGarrett from the rear, but his hair is relatively light in color compared to seeing it from other angles. Vrinda thinks that "McGarrett" here was John Nordlum, Jack Lord's stand-in.
• Doc Bergman has white shoes!

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179. (S08E11) “The Waterfront Steal” ★★½  BOOK THEM, DANNO 

QUICK PLOT:

Five-O is called in to investigate after the owner of several warehouses in Honolulu creates an uproar over the failure of police to halt a wave of burglaries.

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REVIEW:

Simon Oakland as José Mendoza, owner of several warehouses on the waterfront, rants and raves in this show because there have been half a dozen robberies from businesses like his in the last two months.

After McGarrett is assigned by the Governor to get Five-O to pay special attention to the break-ins, Mendoza is not satisfied when McGarrett reports back, saying that he doesn't want to listen to "police platitudes."

Then Mendoza attacks the Governor himself, wondering if "the warehousemen are deserving of only second-class protection." The Governor, not usually one to get ruffled, says that this comment is out of line, for which Mendoza apologizes, but then launches into another tirade: "Aside from the warehouse robberies, I'm concerned with other problems on our island. The general breakdown of law and order. The leniency of the courts with our criminals. The conduct of some of our men who hold high office in this state. And in the next election, I assure you, gentlemen, I intend to speak my mind." Mendoza leaves the meeting in the Governor's office in a huff.

There is more than meets the eye to Mendoza, however, because he is the one who is the big brains behind the robberies, employing a gang to break into the warehouses, including his own to avoid suspicion. It is later revealed that one of the other companies, Interpacific Loading and Storage, was on the verge of going out of business as a result of robberies, and Mendoza then bought them out at fire-sale prices.

Mendoza's "gang" is kind of small, consisting of two ex-cons, Harry Opala (Rick Marlow) and Zeno Kahana (Alan Naluai) plus local boy Tommy Lin (Richard Hatch, identified in the end credits as just "Tommy" and "Tommy Lynd" in the DVD subtitles). Tommy just happens to be dating Medoza's daughter Elena, played by the buxom Kathy Beller, who was only 19 when the show was filmed. (You have to wonder how Tommy and Elena originally got together.) This relationship just gives Mendoza more to complain about, describing Tommy as "trash" and a nobody.

Elena counters this comment with "What's wrong with nobodies? You were one once, remember?" Her father bellyaches more, "No, no, not any more, not now. We have a name. We have money. We have something to live up to." Elena tells him, "Yes, that's all you care about, appearances. How things look. Never how I feel inside. Not once how I feel."

In the show, when there is a heist, Tommy brings Elena along with him, even though the others would prefer she was just left at home. I guess she fits into the category of a "thrill-crazy chick," though her character development, like that of Tommy himself, leaves a lot to be desired.

During a new robbery a couple of days later, in addition to the usual warehouse security guard who is just cold-cocked, one of Danno's red-shirted HPD friends, Luis Kimura (Tommy Fujiwara) is knocked off when he tries to bust robbers at West Island Transfer Company's Warehouse 3, which is owned by Mendoza. Kimura is shot dead by Opala, but not before Kimura badly wounds Tommy.

When McGarrett shows up at the crime scene, Mendoza gives him more mouth: "How much do I have to lose before you cops do something about it?" McGarrett, who is totally fed up, says, "Look, Mr. Mendoza, you've only lost money. We've lost a policeman's life." When Mendoza replies, "I've had about enough. I'm going to the governor," McGarrett comes forth with a classic response: "Good, go to the governor, go to the president. I don't give a damn."

Considering Kimura flattened the tire on the robbers' truck, they put the wounded Tommy and his girlfriend in a Matson container (MATS 18766) on the back of a semi-trailer that was parked nearby. There didn't seem to be any problem starting this vehicle — were the keys just left inside it? They then drove it out to the middle of nowhere (really) and abandoned it, telling Tommy they were going to get an ambulance after locking him and Elena inside. Some close shots of the two guys in the truck cab driving it to this location, obviously done in a studio, are laughable.

Opala and Kahana then steal a car from a parking lot nearby (remember — we are out in the "middle of nowhere") where there is a pay phone that Kahana first uses to call Mendoza and say that Tommy and "this chick" with Tommy were left in the truck. On their way back to town, the two gang members are pursued by a motorcycle cop and desperately try to escape by driving on to the beach. When their car flies over and lands on some rocks, it explodes!

Locked in the container, Tommy and Elena have a big problem. Outside the warehouse, this truck had been impounded because it contained barrels of a chemical called methylene parathyrite. According to a guy named Dorrow (Herb Armstrong) from the Federal Bureau of Standards who shows up at the Five-O office, this substance is of a nature that is highly inflammable and 12 barrels of it could level a city block, especially if they're subjected to heat and agitation. Some of the barrels had been moved inside the warehouse, but others were still inside the trailer. Many of the barrels were old and some of them are leaking, and since it is as hot as hell outside at the moment, gas starts pouring out of the barrels in the closed trailer.

Five-O has figured out that Tommy is connected to the warehouse thieves. Danno saw what looked like a stolen calculator in a pawnshop where his now late friend Kimura pawned a ring, and the store owner, a relative of Tommy, confirmed that's where it came from. Chin Ho reports that Mendoza has been "calling all over town" trying to locate the now barbecued Opala and Kahana (huh, how would anyone, let alone Chin, know this?).

Armed with this information, McGarrett goes to see Mendoza and gets heavy, throwing these three names at him plus the fact that one of the security guards at the warehouse heard a woman screaming (i.e., Elena) during the most recent robbery. Even Mendoza can put two and two together and realize that Tommy (who he is already aware of in his capacity as a robber) and his daughter, who didn't come home the night before, are involved in the thefts.

A helicopter dragnet is launched to find the container truck (McGarrett got information about this from a bitching Mendoza in the aftermath of Kimura's murder) and soon enough it is located. On the way there, Mendoza can still not stop freaking out, yelling at McGarrett, "Can't you go any faster?" At the last minute, the door to the container is opened and Tommy and Elena are both freed, shortly before the chemicals explode.

As far as his daughter is concerned, Mendoza says, "She's just a kid, McGarrett. Go easy on her. I'm the one you want." McGarrett is in a ████-that-noise frame of mind: "She's just a kid, huh? She's also a thief and an accessory to murder. And so are you. Book them, Danno!" YES!

EPISODE PROMO:

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CASUALTY LIST:

Injury: Security guard Charlie (Vince Priore) hit on the back of the head by Harry Opala and knocked out.
Injury: Tommy Lin shot by Luis Kimura.
Death: Kimura shot by Opala.
Injury: Guard at parking lot knocked unconscious by Opala or Zeno Kahana.
Death (x2): Opala and Kahana die in exploding car wreck.
Not Nice: Tommy and Elena Mendoza trapped in trailer with toxic/explosive chemicals.

MORE TRIVIA:

• David "Lippy" Espinda as pawnshop owner H. Kaneho has a touching scene when Danno comes to redeem a ticket (#8518) of the now-deceased Kimura.
• When Opala and Kohana are escaping from the motorcycle cop, the action seems sped up, like a silent movie.
• There are continuity problems with what's behind McGarrett's car when he is trying to find the truck with the container near the end.
• McGarrett is seen sparring in a boxing ring near the beginning of the show. His partner is sometime Five-O stuntman Chuck Couch.
• The stock music has several cues recognizable as those of Broughton's.
• The name of Rick Marlow's character, "Opala," is the Hawaiian word for "garbage."
• Kimura's body is removed in a Physician's Ambulance. At the end of the show, an American Ambulance takes away the wounded Tommy.
• Tommy tells Elena: "Your father's got you wrapped up special delivery for some Punahou dude, all money and class." Punahou School is described by one web site as "an elite, pretentious, private, college preparatory school located in Honolulu." (President Obama went there.)
• Opala says to Tommy that he will meet him at "Phoebe's," presumably the same dive frequented by low-lifes in S06E07, "Tricks Are Not Treats."
• There is an interesting camera shot where Kahana calls to Tommy outside a warehouse being robbed — Kahana is seen only in the outside mirror of the truck.
• McGarrett quote: "We don't guess, Mendoza. We deal with facts."
• When McGarrett has his default brainstorm in the show, there is such quick finger-snapping (at least a dozen snaps) that it is almost impossible to keep count of them.
• The subtitles spell Dorrow's name as "Dorrow," but McGarrett pronounces it "Darrow."

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180. (S08E12) “Honor Is An Unmarked Grave” ★★★★  BOOK HIM 

QUICK PLOT:

A publicity-hungry crime writer discovers the remains of a youth missing for seven years, and brands Five-O as incompetent for never having solved the case.

Click here to read Full Plot.

REVIEW:

James Olson is Travis Marshall, a muckraking author who says he appeared on several major talk shows including "Johnny Carson, Mike Douglas and Merv Griffin." Marshall is also a lawyer, having passed the California bar examination, but he never practised law,

Marshall has an unmarked Honolulu grave in a Japanese cemetery dug up to expose Five-O's incompetence during their investigation into the disappearance of the rich Henderson family's son Brian seven years before. Brian's skull is found, with "a nice clean hole in his skull, just about the size of a .22."

A master of self-promotion, Marshall makes a lot of noise on TV where he is interviewed by several members of the local press. The camera techniques as the reporters follow him around the cemetery are more suited to film than TV. One of the TV stations has a large camera on wheels, such as you would expect to see in a studio.

Annoyed by Marshall's grandstanding, McGarrett pays him a visit and says that he wants to know everything Marshall has uncovered during his investigation. Marshall already went to see Agatha Henderson (Eileen Heckart), Brian's grandmother who took care of the boy with her late husband Tom after Brian's parents were killed in a plane crash. Marshall convinced Agatha to let him "work" for her, and she is paying him $300 a day to report information to her that he uncovers before giving it to the media.

McGarrett goes to see Agatha, who Heckart plays in a grand manner. She is a formidable opponent for McGarrett, who is very polite when he talks to her. Agatha tells McGarrett, "It is all on the record, and it is still very painful. I know of nothing. Except I hope this time that you are more successful in your investigation." He replies, "I intend to be. We try to improve."

Agatha is pretending she knows little or nothing, but it turns out she knows quite a lot. Brian, in his early twenties around the time he "disappeared," had a reputation as a swinger. When the Five-O team were looking at some old pictures of Brian earlier, there was one with him and a hot-looking Asian girl named Carol Chung. Chin asked, "Who's the chick?" Danno replied that she was considered "the sexiest number in town."

Closer to home, Brian was on friendly terms with his grandparents' servant Koji and became close to Maru, Koji's 15-year-old daughter. Although they seemed to be like "brother and sister," Brian raped her which resulted in a child named Kimo. After McGarrett leaves, Agatha goes to visit Maru, who is now married to Paul Kanahele (Jerry Waialae), not very happily, and warns her that she might also get a visit from McGarrett. The suggestion is that Agatha is supporting Maru and her son, who live in a nice beachfront house. Maru, now aged 22, is played by Elissa (Dulce) Hoopai. There is a suggestion that her marriage to Kanahele is a sham; she was previously married to another guy named George Fowler but it was annulled.

It turns out that Kanahele is Marshall's informant who provided him with information that helped him crack the case regarding Brian. Marshall goes to meet Paul, eluding Duke, who tails him in the usual obvious manner. The two men meet outside the Diamond Head Tunnel where Paul gives Marshall a bunch of pictures of Kimo which he has stolen from his wife's memorabilia. Marshall pays Paul some money, but not as much as he is expecting.

Marshall takes these pictures to Agatha, smirking as he tells her he will spill the beans about Maru being four months pregnant with Brian's child when he vanished (i.e., was killed). Marshall is expecting a lot of money from Agatha to keep his mouth shut, but she pays him some peanuts amount ($96.30) for his "services" and sends him packing.

The local media announce that the next day, Marshall will make a big announcement at City Hall revealing "some sensational new information." Marshall invokes lawyer-client privilege regarding the information he is going to release when a very annoyed McGarrett comes to see him again, but McGarrett denounces this as a "cheap shyster trick," saying, "You're not licensed to practice law in this state, therefore, there is no lawyer-client relationship." McGarrett says "before you call any press conference in the morning, you're gonna tell me everything you know about this case, or you're gonna go to jail yourself."

However, that evening, Marshall is shot dead. When Five-O go to Marshall's ransacked apartment, they find photos of Maru and Kimo in an envelope. When he sees a picture of Maru, Danno suddenly guesses that she is Koji's daughter. This is rather odd, because although Danno went to Kanahele's place earlier, Maru was not present and Danno hadn't seen Kimo either to draw conclusions about who these people were. As well, we have to wonder why whoever tossed Marshall's place didn't find the envelope containing these photos which Chin speculates are backups of the originals that Kanahele supplied.

The Five-O team suddenly rush off to Kanahele's place where Paul tries unsuccessfully to escape. Captured, Kanahele, not a particularly nice guy, admits in front of his upset wife that he took her photos and sold them to Marshall because she lied to him about the "phony marriage" with Fowler, which was designed to distract people from the fact that Brian was Kimo's father. Kanahele is held on suspicion of killing Marshall: "Read him his rights, Danno, and book him."

McGarrett goes to see Agatha again, asking for some help with a couple of questions: ""For instance, the phone call that Brian received at the party the night he disappeared, was it from here? And Brian is the father of the little boy, Kimo, Maru's child? Is he not? Now, that's very easily established, blood tests and so forth." Surprisingly, she eschews her lack of co-operation seen earlier, and blabs away a lengthy scenario about what happened on Brian's last night:

"Brian and his problems. After the loss of his parents, Brian couldn't seem to find a place for himself. Not with his peers, not with his elders … When Brian came to live with us, Koji was more of a parent to him than either Tom or I. And he seemed to relate to Maru. He was 22, she was 15. We looked on them as brother and sister. But he raped that little girl.

"When my husband discovered it, he sent for Brian. It was the night you speak of, the night of the party. Brian came in, and he came right here to the study. He didn't acknowledge me. He didn't see me in the living room. He was very tense. I could hear my husband's voice. That restrained but violent rage.

"I came to the study door. And Brian was pleading. I remember every word. He said, 'She chased me, sir. You won't believe it, but she did. You don't think 15-year-old kids know about sex. I just went along with her.' Then he made some terrible accusations. He accused Koji of plotting the entire thing in order to become a member of the family. The argument went on and on. The bitterness was indescribable.

"And then I heard a shot, and I opened the door. And Brian was lying on the floor, dead. [After this,] Koji took the body to the cemetery."

Although Agatha says she doesn't know how Brian died, McGarrett says "Your husband, Thomas Henderson, pulled the trigger on the gun that killed Brian and that you and Koji were aware of it." Agatha tells him, "You might have difficulty proving that."

McGarrett then turns to the matter of Marshall's death: "He tried to blackmail you and everything you struggled so hard to keep hidden all these years, he threatened to make public ... You're not very experienced in murder and I think it will be very easy to establish that you were at Travis Marshall's last night."

McGarrett actually apologizes to Agatha as he leaves after she has told her lawyer on the phone that she will be charged with first degree murder. I think Agatha is quite correct about McGarrett having a lot of trouble making a case in court!

This show is very classy. The script by Bud Freeman is not only clever, but structured in such a way that you don't know what is really going to happen until the very end, and even then there are things left open. The excellent score by Morton Stevens sounds at times like Bernard Herrmann and adds to the sense of unease; the color photography, especially of Agatha's flower gardens, is outstanding. The episode is directed by Jack Lord.

There were a couple of things not explained very well, perhaps because something got left on the cutting room floor.

At one point in the show, Chin Ho is delegated to go and talk to Koji "in the ancient manner [whatever the heck that means] ... to find out if that old man is involved." But when Chin gets to Koji's place, he finds out from a neighbor that Koji has passed away of natural causes. So Chin goes to a funeral parlor where a ceremony is taking place and Agatha and others are present, but Maru is not.

At the entrance, Chin picks up a memorial picture of Koji and his family and asks this fellow standing right beside it, "You are Shiru, right?" This is presumably Maru's brother, who has never been mentioned in the show prior to this. Chin asks Shiru (Bernard Ching) why Maru is not there, but he doesn't answer this question — this exchange is not seen by us, but related by Chin later.

When Marshall is tailed by Duke, he manages to get away by running through a park and then up a stairway where there is a taxi stand. He takes a cab to the Diamond Head tunnel area; you can plainly see the sign on top of the taxi. But when Kanahele shows up, Marshall is outside the taxi and they spread the pictures on its hood! This is peculiar — what is the taxi driver doing while this is going on? No doubt Marshall gave him a large tip to keep his mouth shut.

BUT ... after Duke loses Marshall in the park, not even trying particularly hard to follow him, he calls the office and tells McGarrett "I've been had." Whatever happened to the normal Five-O response to a situation like this, where they would check every taxi company in town to find who picked Marshall up at that location (which is a taxi stand) and find out where he was taken (and if the driver witnessed anything fishy)?

(By the way, after he gets the pictures, Marshall somehow gets back to his red Porsche in the park. The subsequent shots of him being pursued (again) by Duke (was Duke sitting there waiting for him all this time?) from the front of Marshall's car look like process shots, whereas the ones of Duke following Marshall look like the usual Five-O non-process shots.)

WHAT DOES THE TITLE MEAN?

At the end of the show, after Agatha's lengthy explanation of what happened the night Brian was killed, she says that Koji took Brian's body to the cemetery, to which McGarrett comments, "Honor is an unmarked grave, is that it, Mrs. Henderson?" The implication is that by being buried in an "unknown" grave, Brian's shame in all that happened would be hidden, just like his body.

EPISODE PROMO:

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CASUALTY LIST:

Death: Koji dies of natural causes.
Death: Travis Marshall is shot, McGarrett accuses Agatha Henderson.

MORE TRIVIA:

• This show has a higher level of sarcasm than normal. At the Five-O office, when Chin Ho says he is reading one of Marshall's books, McGarrett is pretty rude: "Can you read English, Chin?" Chin replies: "Only when it's translated into Chinese." Later, Chin Ho gets back at him when McGarrett comes out with a clever saying, "Poor man's felony is a rich man's prank." Chin says this would "make a nice bumper sticker." (Touché, Chin!) Later, Chin and Danno are at the cemetery when Koji shows up, and Chin has a good pun when Danno wonders why Koji is there. Chin says, "Maybe he digs graves." Danno seems to be talking very loudly to Chin about Koji; surely Koji could hear him!
• Marshall's best-selling book, prior to the one he is working on in the show, was titled A Question For the Jury. He gives Agatha a signed copy of the book and offers McGarrett one, but the Five-O boss politely declines. Earlier, Duke said he read the book, but "I made it to page 47. Talk about ego trips."
• McGarrett tells Marshall: "Writers never make me insecure ... So many good books have been written in prison."
• Marshall tells McGarrett that "kooks" often call him up wanting to share secrets ... "and more," giving McGarrett a kinky grin.
• Agatha's house is located at 3735 Diamond Head Road, seen in several other episodes.
• "MacDougall from HPD" is presumably the Shelly Novack character from "Sing a Song of Suspense." The time frame for when Marshall comes home and gets shot is screwy. According to Duke later, "MacDougall from HPD Took over the tail around 7. He says Marshall had dinner alone, came home at 10 and the lights went out 20 minutes later." But we see Marshall come home and immediately he goes to his "office" where he sees the filing cabinet has been rifled. After he looks in the cabinet, he is shot dead, and the sound of the gun is very loud. Why would the lights go out 20 minutes later?
• There seems to be some continuity issue near the end of the show. McGarrett goes with Danno and Chin to Maru's place. We see Chin going down her driveway first, followed by the other two men in McGarrett's car. Only McGarrett and Danno go into Maru's place to talk to her. After Paul escapes on a motorbike (after putting on a helmet!), McGarrett tries to stop him, but he gets away. Suddenly there are two more cars coming down the driveway. Some guy gets out of what is the third car, is this Kam Fong? Chin Ho rushes up after Paul is knocked out after he runs into some Hawaiian plant.
• Fred Helfing tracked down the location of the graveyard at the beginning of the show, it is Nu'uanu Memorial Park, at 2233 Nuuanu Avenue, the same Nuuanu that runs through Chinatown.
• Moe Keale plays Mrs. Henderson's servant/chauffeur Kono, who is always snooping around in the background.
• McGarrett addresses Maru as "honey" during the tense confrontation with her husband at the end of the show.
• When Agatha comes to Maru's place, Maru's son Kimo is playing with this toy called a Mattel Vertibird.
• The red flower at Agatha's that the camera focuses on as McGarrett leaves is an anthurium.
• Jerry Waialae played Elissa's husband, a different character, in a previous show where they appeared, season seven's "We Hang Our Own." And to top this off, Elissa appeared in the eleventh season show "A Distant Thunder," where the main guest star was James Olson.
• During a couple of night time scenes, there is damage on the print.
• In the episode promo, a short scene with Kanahele and Marshall looking at the pictures on the taxi's hood is in black and white, like a flashback. This very brief shot gives away the identity of Marshall's "informant" (Kanahele) who McGarrett has just referred to before the show!
• Marshall has a pet cat named Socking. Why he would have a cat while he is just visiting Hawaii for research on his book is odd. It is very unlikely he brought a cat from the mainland because of animal quarantines.

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, 01:00, 02:00, 00:00, Guys are digging grave under Travis Marshall's supervision, skull is found, pictures are taken.
#2, 04:13, 00:13, 02:00, Marshall is busted, we switch to Five-O office.
#3, 06:27, 00:20, 02:13, Marshall goes to see Agatha Henderson.
#4, 11:11, 00:34, 02:33, McGarrett goes to Marshall's place.
#5, 14:32, 00:48, 03:07, McGarrett leaves Marshall's, Danno confirms that dead body is Brian Henderson. Wave at end of Act One.
#6, 16:40, 00:27, 03:56, McGarrett goes to see Agatha.
#7, 19:06, 01:39, 04:22, McGarrett leaves Agatha's, she prepares to leave, Danno and Chin are at cemetery, Koji is there, Agatha goes to see Maru.
#8, 24:04, 01:57, 06:01, Duke tails Marshall, but loses him after Marshall takes a taxi and goes to meet Paul, Maru's husband.
#9, 27:23, 00:11, 07:58, Wave at end of Act Two.
#10, 27:36, 01:29, 08:09, Chin talks to Kono, finds out that Koji is dead, Chin goes to Koji's funeral ceremony (music is priest chanting), he talks to Shiru, Maru's brother.
#11, 29:45, 00:24, 09:38, Marshall goes to Agatha's again, he is tailed by Duke.
#12, 36:36, 01:47, 10:02, Danno goes to Maru's place, Paul says she is not there. Marshall returns home, someone has ransacked his filing cabinet, he is shot dead. Wave at end of Act Three.
#13, 39:55, 01:25, 11:50, McGarrett, Danno and Chin go to Maru's place, Paul tries to escape on motorcycle.
#14, 43:17, 00:25, 13:15, McGarrett goes to Agatha's again.
#15, 44:49, 01:37, 13:40, Agatha tells about "Brian and his problems," including details about the evening Brian was killed.
#16, 49:31, 00:21, 15:17, Agatha calls her lawyer after McGarrett says she will be charged with first degree murder.

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181. (S08E13) “A Touch Of Guilt” ★★★★  BOOK THEM, DANNO 

QUICK PLOT:

The son of a U.S. senator is involved in the coverup of a brutal gang rape.

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REVIEW:

Collegiate football players known as "The Big Three," Bink Avery (Richard Masur), Alex Scofield (Adam Arkin) and Kim Hughes (Lance Hool), all very drunk, abduct Makai Lagoon Club waitress Lani Okano (Beverly Kushida) after she gets off work because she spurned Hughes' advances. They take her to a beach and rape her. The rape is not seen, but there are flashbacks to it throughout the show, depicted with closeups using a hand-held camera with a fisheye lens.

When the three bring Lani back to her car later, she grabs a screwdriver and stabs Hughes with it. (How she suddenly finds the screwdriver in her car is not clearly established.) Hughes starts bleeding badly and is taken to the hospital.

Scofield is the son of a U.S. senator, regarded as "the pride of Washington, D.C.," and the Governor has asked McGarrett to be tactful when he investigates the stabbing. Scofield's father sends lawyer and spin-doctor Hal Zimmerman (Michael Collins) to deal with what happened. He tells Alex, "This escapade could have serious political consequences for your father if it's not handled properly."

Zimmerman's solution is to fabricate a story and hire some local hoodlum to be the patsy for the stabbing at a price of $5,000. The rape is totally swept under the carpet. David Matsui (Les Fong) takes the fall via an intermediary, Malano (Winston Char), after being assured that the charges against him will be dropped. Scofield, who has serious attitude problems, tells Zimmerman, "Touch ups are your specialty," to which the lawyer replies, "only because there's such a large market."

Lani goes to the hospital, but she is too embarrassed to talk to the nurse on duty about what happened. When Five-O goes to the bar to interview employees, she almost has a breakdown when they question her. Lani is brought to the Five-O office where she tells McGarrett that she was the one who stabbed Hughes, and that she was raped.

After hearing this, McGarrett is suspicious about the stabbing, even after Bink and Alex confirm Matsui was the one who did it. There is no reason for Lani to lie, and Duke says that Matsui, who is well-known to the cops, but also not remembered by anyone at the bar, is more likely to stab someone with a switchblade than a screwdriver. McGarrett tells his men, "This is a tough one ... no syndicate, no mainland connections, no masterminds … I want the truth."

You would expect that the newspapers in Honolulu would not report the names of rape victims as started happening during the 1970s under pressure from feminists, acknowledging that crimes of this nature are under-reported to police because of the shame and stigma associated with the crime. However, after Lani makes her accusations, it looks like her name is all over the front pages, one of which has a headline "Big Three Accused in Rape."

Lani's father, played by Seth Sakai, is unsympathetic to her situation and overly concerned about what "people will think," saying that he "can't go to work" and her mother (Ethel Azama) "can't walk down the street." When her father forces her go to the police station with him to get her to recant her statement, the cop on duty asks her if she really wants to do this. Sakai's character says, "What are you asking her for? I'm her father."

A vital piece of evidence is tracked down by Danno and Chin, a choker which Lani ripped off Bink's neck during the rape that got lost in the sand on the beach. Some scavenger with a metal detector picked this up and when he goes to get some cash for it at a pawn shop, the two from Five-O are close behind.

At the end of the show, Lani takes a gun from a drawer at her house. Does it make sense that her father would own a gun? She goes to Scofield's apartment. McGarrett somehow knows that Bink and Alex are both there. And Lani somehow knows the address and that the two will be there as well. She threatens Alex and Bink with the gun, telling them to phone the cops and admit to the rape. Alex treats her in a contemptuous manner, even with the gun aimed at him. Five-O shows up at the door in record-breaking time and she is shown the choker.

The choker probably, as the arrogant Alex suggests, "doesn't prove anything," and "is not evidence." But Bink, who has been having nightmares about the rape, starts blabbing away that "We did it," which is witnessed by the entire Five-O team. McGarrett's "Book them, Danno," is very angry.

Some of this show is difficult to watch, even more so than the other episodes which deal with rape, S04E18, "Skinhead" and S06E21, "Nightmare in Blue." Beverly Kushida's performance is excellent.

EPISODE PROMO:

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CASUALTY LIST:

Injury: Lani Okano kidnapped, taken to the beach and raped by Kim Hughes, Alex Scofield and Bink Avery.
Injury: Hughes stabbed by Lani.

MORE TRIVIA:

• Zimmerman knows about Five-O, specifically McGarrett, and McGarrett knows about him as well, even though there is nothing to establish these references.
• When they interview people working at the bar, Danno shows pictures of the three football players in their uniforms to Lani. Scofield's jersey has the number 69, but later when the same photo is seen on the board in McGarrett's office, it has the number 88. In a dressing room where he is wearing his uniform, Scofield is also wearing 88.
• Terry Plunkett is the manager of the Makai Lagoon Club. Zimmerman refers to this place as the "Zanza Bar." According to Karen Rhodes' book on Five-O, Zanza Bar was the actual name for the location.
• When Hughes is recovering in the hospital from his stab wound, an IV bottle hooked up to him contains some red liquid which looks like Kool-Aid.
• As Matsui is escaping from the cops, the camera pans up to show some older Asian guy wearing no shirt — his body is covered with tattoos.
• McGarrett quote: "Politics is a dirty business." At the end of the show, he suggests that "a smart lawyer" will get the chain of evidence (pun intended) to derail the charges, but he is confident that "we got a smart D.A."

GALLERY:

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182. (S08E14) “Wooden Model Of A Rat” ★★★  BOOK THEM 

QUICK PLOT:

While investigating a smuggling ring, McGarrett finds himself under public attack and indicted on a charge of possessing one of the contraband articles.

Click here to read Full Plot.

REVIEW:

The Museum of Oriental Art in Honolulu is having a display of netsuke, ojime and inro belonging to local collectors. Netsuke are small sculptured objects made from materials like ivory, animal teeth or wood, inro are crafted boxes used to hold personal objects like pipes, money or medicines, and ojime are sliding beads on cords designed to keep inro shut.

Some of the items in the show belong to McGarrett, specifically netsuke from the 18th and 19th centuries — an aspect of the top cop's personality that we didn't know about! According to Gustave Lupin (Richard McKenzie), the hyperactive director of the museum, "I think he started collecting in the Korean War when he was with the Navy stationed in Japan. He's added to it over the years."

Recently Five-O has been involved with a case where a guy named Kim Chung Lo (Peter Chun ) was smuggling dinky art works like this into Hawaii which had been stolen six months before from the Yokohama Museum in Japan. Although the goods were intercepted, Kim had diplomatic immunity, so he could not be questioned about his activities or charged. These pieces were being fenced to someone locally before being shipped to the mainland.

When local rich guy August March (Ed Asner), a very oily individual with a constant smirk on his face who also collects these expensive knickknacks, finds out about McGarrett's interest in them, he flies in art expert Professor Masaaki (John Fujioka) from the University of Yokohama. The two of them check out the exhibition, and Masaaki notices that the titular one from McGarrett's collection was among those stolen from the museum in Japan, not one brought from McGarrett's place which Lupin personally packed before it was transferred to the museum in an armored car.

Of course, there is a huge stink about this, because it is suggested that McGarrett took this particular piece, which is worth around $12,000, from the goods Five-O were investigating and kept it for himself. McGarrett's rat, which he says he picked up "in Japan in a flea market in 1951," was a Tomokazu, whereas the one on display is an Ittan (these are both names of real Japanese artists who made netsuke, suggesting the writer of the episode did some serious research). March is overjoyed when it's discovered that McGarrett's rat is purloined goods.

There is an abnormal interest in what is going on from the local press, which sends a lot more reporters and photographers to the museum than you would expect for such an exhibition. Even Masaaki later comments that it is strange there are so many media people covering "a small exhibition of miniatures, special items of interest only to a small group of collectors." The Honolulu Advertiser has World War II-style headlines on its front page: "Five-O Chief in Possession of Stolen Art," "Smuggled Items Turns Up In McGarrett Collection," "Questions Arise as to Smuggling Investigation."

At the museum, where the exhibition has been temporarily postponed, Masaaki gives a press conference, and lots of press are there. He says he has requested a colleague of his from Yokohama, Dr. Hayabusa, to come to Hawaii to confirm the identity of the stolen netsuke. When asked to explain how it could have ended up in McGarrett's possession, Masaaki says, "Mr. McGarrett is known throughout the world as a man of the highest principles and impeccable honesty. To even suggest that he might be in any way be connected with the theft of the lttan would be a gross insult." Watching this on TV, McGarrett comments, "I've never been called a thief more politely in my whole life."

Meanwhile, March is up to no good. He has an associate named Suzari (Kwan Hi Lim), who drives a Cadillac Eldorado convertible which is almost a block long and who can give March a run for the money in the oiliness department. March has heard that Kim, the smuggler, wants asylum in the States because he has a mistress in Hawaii, Malinda Grant (Josie Over). He doesn't want to return to his wife and child back home, wherever that may be (likely Korea). In order to get witness protection, he will have to sing like a "nightingale" and name names.

March tells Suzari to visit Kim, and when he shows up at Kim's place, he says, "Mr. March asked me to come and see you," which is a huge clue that March is the "fence" that Kim was dealing with. Shortly after this, Kim is found dead, with a "single shot in the right temple … and a suicide note to his wife, apparently, apologizing for the shame he's brought to her, their children, his country." McGarrett says, "suicide note or no suicide note, I want this treated as a homicide until somebody can prove to me that it wasn't."

Soon after the second art expert Dr. Hayabusa arrives, there is another press conference, where the identity of the rat that McGarrett supposedly stole is confirmed. Manicote is subsequently freaking out, saying "it [i.e., the shit] just hit the fan," and he will have to take this case to the grand jury, because this is "clearly a possible case of grand theft art." McGarrett tells him, "You're all heart, John."

Danno has a meeting with March, who strings him along with a "blizzard" of B.S.: "I cannot see how a mystery can be made of my invitation to Masaaki. After all, I am a fellow of the museum here in Honolulu. I'm also a patron of the museum in Yokohama. What could be more natural than to invite a man of his reputation to see our exhibit? As to my great munificence and generosity, I maintain those rooms at the hotel for the convenience of my business associates, and I use my company credit card for the airline tickets. Both are charged as expenses. The tax deduction is enormous. I pad my accounts outrageously."

March tells Danno his business is selling tractors: "Imagine. August March, the great patron of the arts, how does he make his living? By selling tractors, cultivators, earthmovers, and other sorts of agricultural implements. [Business is] fantastic. Branches everywhere. Manila, Singapore, Yokohama, everywhere. To the world, I am August March, a hard-nosed two-fisted business tycoon with a 90-digit computer for a heart. But to August March, who is August March? A man who is happy only when he is at home, among his beautiful works of art. Yeah. All of which he can afford only because he has inherited the ability to sell more devices that dig holes in the ground than anybody else."

Lots of things suddenly come into play that suggest something very fishy is going on. For example, a sailor named Dan Muzekian (Walter Jones ) who smuggled an ivory netsuke into Hawaii and was caught doing so was approached by someone in Manila to do this job. The local newspapers all got calls to send people to the museum on the day the scandal first broke because "something interesting might happen." There is a suggestion someone was in the back of the armored car who switched McGarrett's netsuke for the stolen one, but this is really far-fetched. Why would no one connected with the armored car company have seen this person?

Danno goes to grill Lupin who gets all flustered after Danno suggests he was involved in some shady business with the two rats. Lupin immediately rushes to March's place, saying he is under suspicion, but March tries to calm him down by saying, "They are men of small minds, Lupin. Naturally, they suspect you. And me. And everybody. That's the way they solve crimes. They consider everyone guilty. When you cast your net over every fish in the pond, you can't avoid catching the one you're after."

Lupin tells March he is washing his hands of this whole business and leaves in a huff. Shortly after, March summons Suzari again, telling him to take care of "our overly fidgety and tiresomely tense director of the Museum of Oriental Art." Lupin is soon found dead, hanging by the neck. It looks like he committed suicide, but Doc Bergman says this is total baloney. Lupin was dead before the rope was put around his neck and he died from a massive overdose of drugs, trying to make it look like this was connected with the fact Lupin was a dope addict.

The sailor Muzekian who was busted for smuggling is interviewed at Halawa; he says that Lupin was the man who contacted him in Manila about taking the ivory netsuke to Japan. Duke takes a picture of Suzari coming to March's place and shows it to the houseboy at Lupin's, who identifies him as the "Oriental between 40 and 50 wearing thick glasses" who came to Lupin's on the night he killed himself.

Suzari is hauled down to the Five-O offices and plays dumb, even though McGarrett tells him "I have enough evidence to put you away for the rest of your natural life." Things are getting tense, because the grand jury just indicted McGarrett! Suzari is obviously persuaded to co-operate, because he goes back to March's place and basically gets March to incriminate himself by handing over McGarrett's netsuke that March has kept. Suzari wants this for "insurance" purposes. Just as March is about to shoot Suzari , everyone from Five-O and some HPD cops suddenly appear inside March's house, which is very surprising, and March and Suzari are busted with a "Book them. Murder one."

Watching this episode is like eating cotton candy – there is virtually no substance, though what Karen Rhodes calls "The Process" is certainly in evidence. There is no motivation for what gives March a big hate-on for McGarrett, other than just being a powerful individual who likes jerking other people around, not to mention killing them. This show seems to be a serious case of much ado about nothing and is almost like a prelude for the later seasons where Five-O was obsessed with the follies of rich people.

One thing that makes the show interesting, however, is the score by Harry Geller, his last for the series, which uses mostly strings and a harpsichord, and includes the Hawaii Five-O theme. Some of the music is creepy.

EPISODE PROMO:

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CASUALTY LIST:

Death: Kim Chung Lo shot in right temple by Suzari on orders from August March to give the impression he committed suicide.
Death: Gustave Lupin killed by drug overdose then hung in his living room by Suzari on orders from March, another faked suicide.

MORE TRIVIA:

• March describes McGarrett to Suzari as an "interfering and irritating quidnunc of a cop." "Quidnunc" means "a person who seeks to know all the latest news or gossip."
• Danno and Duke meet Malinda Grant, Kim Chung Lo's mistress, outside the War Memorial Natatorium. They are shown having lunch with her in a restaurant nearby — but was there a restaurant nearby at the time of filming?
• There is a long tracking shot, almost a minute long, at the beginning when McGarrett and Danno are walking.
• At the end of a conversation between Suzari and March at March's house, it looks like Suzari is eating a piece of sushi.
• Other headlines in the newspaper with the hysterical headlines about McGarrett include Total on Strike in State is Estimated at $100,000, Rough Road Seen Ahead to Save NIP, Camp Help, Action Seen Tonight on School Sale and Improvements Complete at Post Office.
• It takes the Five-O team around 31 minutes before they start to investigate March.

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183. (S08E15) “Deadly Persuasion” ★★

QUICK PLOT:

The son of a former cop kicked off the force for corruption enmeshes Danno in a complicated frame and threatens to use a deadly nerve gas against a visiting royal family.

Click here to read Full Plot.

REVIEW:

I didn't like this show when I saw and reviewed it previously, and my most recent re-viewing (April 2020) didn't change my opinion much.

This show is one of the few where someone takes revenge on Danno, in this case Brad Stevens (Kario Salem) who believes Danno was responsible for his father, a corrupt cop who was "up to his neck in gambling in the rackets" and dismissed from the force, committing suicide.

At the beginning of the show, Stevens breaks into Kern Industries via a construction crane which just happens to be above a building where there is a "Special Projects" lab containing TZ-40, a nerve gas. One drop of this gas in liquid form when placed on the skin "will cause death within seconds," and if it is vaporized and the vapor released inside a building or in a heavily populated area, "everyone would die."

This whole sequence, which is accompanied by a musical cue by Ray that lasts 6 minutes and 18 seconds and is a good test run for filming the climactic scenes of S11E20, "The Skyline Killer," obviously employs a stuntman to perform the extremely dangerous maneuvers on the crane. You will notice that when "Stevens" reaches the building's roof, he almost misses it and has to swing over.

This would all have made a lot more sense if Stevens' character had been established as having some kind of background in construction work or if he had been a gymnast which might have explained how he could have performed such death-defying feats. As it is, the whole sequence verges on the ridiculous.

Once on the roof, Stevens then goes down through one of the air conditioning vents and ends up in exactly the right room which contains the gas in liquid form which he steals from a locked but unalarmed glass case like you would expect to find in a department store, leaving a greeting card which reads "Aloha — only the guilty need be afraid."

Let's face it, what are the chances that Stevens would know where the nerve gas — obviously something the company does not want people to know about — is kept in the building, and he knows that going through a specific air conditioning vent will take him exactly there? Somehow Stevens gets out of the building, seemingly not by going back up through the vent. Does he just walk out the front door of the building?

Interestingly, Stephens is a student in a university class where Danno is a guest lecturer on police procedure shortly after this, and he poses a question to Danno about how he feels about circumstantial evidence, as he feels was used to unjustly end his father's career. However, before Danno can answer the question, he is called away by Chin Ho to deal with the theft of the gas at the lab.

McGarrett is preoccupied with the visit of members of a "royal family" to Hawaii and after talking to people at Kern, he goes to the airport to deal with their arrival. Danno is left to investigate how the break-in at the lab was accomplished, and he seems kind of stumped, reporting to McGarrett later: "The inside access to the roof is still bolted and locked. And there's no access from other buildings. Whoever made the hit knows his way around. We found ropes in the shaft. But given the time element, he really had to fly."

But, Danno! The rope used to go from the crane to the roof should still be hanging there, since Stevens didn't (or couldn't) pull it down when he reached the roof, and then he used a blue rope to descend through the air conditioner. Is it possible that no one saw this first rope?

Stevens has formulated an elaborate frame to take care of Danno. He tracks down Harry Oakland (George Herman, giving a weaselly performance), an informer who, along with Danno, was instrumental in getting his father fired. At gunpoint, Stevens makes Oakland phone Danno at his office as if he has some scoop to pass on and then sends Danno on a wild goose chase across town, first to a pay phone and then to Oakland's place.

When Danno gets to Harry's hotel, though, he is not there, though he is just down the hall with Stevens in another room. Harry phones his own number and talks to Danno, saying that he is leaving town but will give Danno some information if he will meet him at the airport. The significance of the "other room" is not explained anywhere.

After Danno leaves the building, Stevens murders Harry, saying "I'm not gonna kill you, Harry. Danny Williams is," and he shoots Oakland dead, using what we will discover later is an old gun of Danno's. Danno's arrival (and departure) was witnessed by the clerk of the hotel, Galem Kam, to whom Danno spoke and Kam presumably told Danno what room Oakland was in. Nothing is said about whether Oakland was found dead in the "other room" or Stevens dragged the body back to Harry's own room.

Danno goes to the airport, where Stevens — who is nearby — calls Danno through a pay phone and threatens him, pretending to be a member of some "organization" alluded to earlier by Harry as "crazy" and suggesting that if Danno doesn't co-operate, the royal family, which McGarrett is dealing with not that far away outside on the airport tarmac, will be in peril. Danno is instructed not to try and contact Five-O regarding anything that is happening and that Oakland (who is now dead) will be along soon. Stevens has made a plane reservation in Danno's name for the mainland, and calls the cops to arrange for Danno to be arrested at the airport as if he was trying to escape.

There must be a considerable wait here, because McGarrett accompanies the royals, who are seemingly from Norway based on a flag on their limousine, back to the Ilikai Hotel. Back at the Five-O office, it has been determined that the gun used to kill Oakland belonged to Danno. Two HPD cops arrive at the ariport and pick up Danno, who is taken back to the Five-O offices on orders from McGarrett. Danno reacts badly to this, saying that this has blown his cover.

At the office, Danno admits that the gun which killed Harry, an "old service [.45] automatic" was his. But there is a huge question as to how Stevens got it. Did he break into Danno's house and find it in the trunk where Danno said it has been for the years, taking it out occasionally "to oil it and clean it"? If so, how would Stevens know that's where it was to be found? Or was the trunk in a storage unit somewhere?

Manicote is in the office listening to the conversation between McGarrett and Danno and says that legally speaking, Danno is screwed: "What we have, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, is a psycho using Harry Oakland as a pawn and the nerve gas as a club. Now the snitch is dead. We don't have the psycho, we don't have the nerve gas and we're asking you not to indict. I'm afraid that's not gonna make it."

Stevens is frustrated when news of Danno's arrest does not show up either on the radio or in the papers. He phones McGarrett and starts wondering why this is so, throwing the expression "circumstantial evidence" into the conversation. This causes Danno to have a flashback to Stevens' question in the university class in a black and white sequence. Danno has been poring through cases where Oakland was involved and clues into the fact that it was Stevens' son who was asking this question, perhaps because the professor in the class had addressed him as "Mr. Stevens."

Tipped off by Danno that this is the son of the disgraced cop on the line, McGarrett starts throwing certain details into the conversation: ""We had a lot more than that on your father, Stevens … I mean sworn testimony from two underworld heavyweights, for instance, who said that your father was up to his neck in gambling in the rackets … [I]t's all black and white. If you wanna meet me some place, I'll show you the case file."

This causes Stevens, who has been talking schizophrenically to a picture of his father several times previously during the show, to get more deranged. He tells McGarrett: "I am gonna use that nerve gas, McGarrett, and you and Williams are both going to be blamed." But was this Stevens' plan all along, or has he just gone off the bend completely?

The royal party leaves the Ilikai and Stevens, who placed his call from a nearby phone booth, follows them. But they are not the real royals. A bunch of police officers have been dragooned to appear at the royals' destination — the Valley of the Temples — in their place. When McGarrett arrives at this location, he sees Stevens car, saying "[H]is car is here. He must be around somewhere." But how did they know that car belonged to him?

Stevens climbs on to the roof of one of the temples and is going to fire the nerve gas which he has loaded in a flare gun. Danno wants to try and defuse the situation, but McGarrett says it is "too risky," to which Danno replies, "So is crossing the street." With McGarrett's OK, Danno takes a huge chance, giving negotiation the old college try, telling Stevens "You cared about your father. He was a policeman. You believed in him. You loved him … Your father killed himself … He called me that day after he left the hearing room … He couldn't bring himself to face you. Because you would know the truth … He was a corrupt cop."

Stevens starts blubbering and is busted by two HPD cops in hazmat uniforms, one on each side of him. I have to admit that Salem does give a convincing performance in the show, even though at times you really want to punch him in the face. However, some of the stupidities in the episode totally derail it.

EPISODE PROMO:

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CASUALTY LIST:

Death: Harry Oakland shot twice by Brad Stevens.

MORE TRIVIA:

• It takes just over a minute and a half for Chin Ho to have a call traced that Stevens makes to the Five-O office, and, amazingly, they actually figure out the call is coming from the phone outside the Ilikai.
• Chin Ho refers to the fleabag dump where Oakland lives as a "pleasure palace."
• Stevens drives a Triumph sports car, license number 6B-3535.
• When he is brought back to the Five-O office after being picked up at the airport, Danno says "Steve, what the hell is going on?" Manicote suggests that Danno will have to be indicted — just like McGarrett in "Wooden Model of a Rat."
• There is a stock shot of a police radio handset on a car's dashboard.
• You can hear the sound of a siren in the background around the time Stevens is starting his descent from the crane. At the beginning of the show, a police cruiser is seen driving near Kern Industries. The streets are very wet, as if it has just been raining.
• As Danno is busted at the airport, Stevens is reading a copy of the Honolulu Advertiser with headlines: Royal Family Arrives Today, Eight Judges Selected For Brotherhood, and Youth Problems Highlight Talks. Later when Stevens grabs a copy of a later edition, there is a large headline in red ink: No strike at docks: agreement attained.

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184. (S08E16) “Legacy Of Terror” ★★★  BOOK THESE TWO   BOOK HIM, DUKE   BOOK HIM 

QUICK PLOT:

Five-O seeks the killer of an aged importer who was a Japanese spy in Hawaii before the Pearl Harbor attack.

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REVIEW:

As in S06E6, "Murder is a Taxing Affair," Don Porter again plays a sleazebag. This time he is lawyer Alex Kelsey, who defended Minoru Tahashi after Pearl Harbor for charges of treason, with the result that Tahashi was acquitted.

At the beginning of the show, Kelsey goes to visit the now very old Tahashi (C.K. Huang) in order to finalize a will the old man wants written up, because he doesn't think he has long to live and he wants to "have everything in order" before his son Kazuo (Mako) arrives from San Francisco soon, probably "the last time I shall see him."

Tahashi has left a letter for his son concerning his estate in a safety deposit box at the Tokyo International Bank, and he gives Kelsey the key to this box "for safekeeping in the event something should happen to me before Kazuo arrives." After Kelsey leaves, he locks the old man in his room and pours kerosene out of a lamp, then starts a fire which burns down the building and incinerates his client.

Kelsey figures the letter in the box contains information about a fabled treasure of gold bullion worth over a million dollars which Tahashi stashed somewhere on Oahu after Pearl Harbor. At that time, the manager of the Tokyo Imperial Bank (now the International Bank) contacted Tahashi to help hide it somewhere after the Japanese attack, figuring it would be confiscated by the authorities.

When Kelsey goes to the bank after Tahashi's death to try and get in the box, the manager refuses his request because the old man never signed his will and Kazuo is supposed to be arriving that day, having contacted the bank that the safety deposit box should not be opened unless he is present.

After Kazuo arrives, he goes to Five-O, wanting to know "exactly" how his father died. He knows that Kelsey had an appointment to see his father on the afternoon of the fire. Meanwhile, Kelsey is hanging out with local mobster Din Lee (Moe Keale), playing golf on a hillside above Honolulu with a spectacular view. Kelsey figures that he will soon get his hands on the bullion. Lee offers to fence the gold for a commission of 50 percent, considering how risky such a transaction would be and having figured out that Kelsey was connected to the fire that killed Tahashi. Back at his room in the Ilikai Hotel, Kazuo talks on the phone to Kim Matsu (Haunani Minn), a woman who worked for his father, and tells her that he thinks his father was murdered.

McGarrett gets Kelsey hauled into his office and we find out what the top cop really feels about the lawyer: "I've seen your legal acrobatics. I've watched you turn courtrooms into circus arenas. I've lost count of how many killers and syndicate bosses you've kept at liberty with your legal technicalities, your intimidated witnesses, and your blatant perjury." Kazuo is brought into the office and he refuses to shake Kelsey's hand. Kelsey tells Kazuo, in a very oily manner, "Young man, I want you to know that, although the will was never signed, legally, you are still the rightful heir to your father's estate." Kazuo replies, "Was there ever any question?" Kelsey gives him the key to the safety deposit box.

At Tahashi Senior's funeral, McGarrett, Kelsey and Kim are all present, along with Commander Reginald Blackwell (Lew Ayres), a former naval intelligence officer who suspected Tahashi of being the director of Japanese espionage in Hawaii during World War II, but could never prove it. He later describes Tahashi as being "master of his trade, superb at laying false trails and covering himself, layer upon layer of compounded deceit." Kim meets Kazuo, and tells him that she typed up a letter for his father in English which is in the box in the bank which gives exact details about where the gold has been kept hidden all these years.

Kazuo goes to the bank to check out the deposit box. Two of Lee's goons, Regan (Bob Apisa) and Strang (Joe Kuon) are following him. Chin Ho also follows, in such an obvious manner that Kazuo gives him a hard time by telling Chin exactly where he is going afterwards. Then one of the two thugs flattens Chin's tire. Danno is called to give Chin a lift. There is a gap in the action here. When McGarrett joins them at Kim's, we find that Kim has been murdered and Kazuo appears to be beaten up. Kazuo tells them that the letter in the safety deposit box said that Kim had an old photo album with information about where the bullion was hidden. The two thugs supposedly stole this album, killed Kim and beat up Kazuo. But in actuality, it was Kazuo who killed Kim. The two thugs never made it to her place. How he gave the appearance of being beaten up is a good question –- maybe Kim fought back?

Kim's murder by Kazuo seems very shocking, because the two were relatively friendly when he first contacted her after arriving in Hawaii. But when he saw her at his father's funeral, Kim told him, "Look, I never believed the things you told me, Kazuo, not really. I think I knew all along you were just using me. And yet I did everything you asked. But I kept some things back, just for insurance." She then made a huge mistake when she told Kazuo that because she had typed up the letter from his father, she knew exactly where the bullion was located, saying, "I could get to it before you do."

Kazuo phones Kelsey, saying he wants to get together because "My highest priority is to live." After arriving at Kelsey's office, Kazuo attacks the lawyer and throws him off his balcony six stories to his death below. Chin, who is back tailing Kazuo again, witnesses this "fly," and when Five-O shows up soon, Kazuo is in the crowd and he tells McGarrett that he came there to kill Kelsey, who murdered his father, "only somebody beat me to it."

Din Lee's two thugs are captured after HPD cop Tolaka (Arte McCollough) finds their car which has an APB out for it. They are busted, but say they know nothing about the murder of Kim or the beating of Kazuo, because, according to Danno, "They both swear they didn't go near the girl's place. They say they lost Kazuo in traffic right after he left the bank" –- which Danno believes, much to McGarrett's astonishment. Din Lee is brought to the Five-O office and yells a lot at McGarrett, saying that he had no part in Tahashi's murder and goes into detail about the deal he made with Kelsey to launder profits from the gold bullion. When Lee says, "Now, look, McGarrett, maybe, maybe, you can book me for criminal conspiracy, but that's all," McGarrett tells him, "All right, that'll do for now. Book him, Duke, criminal conspiracy. Thanks for the charge."

After this, a lot of bits and pieces of evidence suddenly help to connect the dots. A report from San Francisco says that Kazuo is an insurance investigator with three indictments and no convictions for suspicion of fraud and falsifying claims as well as a propensity for violence (not to mention being "a karate expert"). An elderly man, Mr. Tse (Henry K.F. Lee), whose company was close to Tahashi's recognizes Kelsey as having visited on the afternoon of the fire. And Che Fong recovers a document from the fire which suggests that Blackwell sold Tahashi a shack out in the middle of nowhere after the war. We already have heard from Blackwell that he and Tahashi became pals despite the fact they were once "deadly enemies," sort of like how American and Japanese soldiers have gotten together more recently at places like Iwo Jima: "We went fishing or sailing or just sat and talked, until his wife died and his son went off to college. Then he seemed to age suddenly. Turned back to religion, the traditions of his upbringing. He became virtually a recluse."

At the end of the show, Five-O and HPD head to the shack, knowing exactly where it is. While trying to sneak up on Kazuo as per McGarrett's orders, poor Chin –- who is still having a bad day — walks right in front of Kazuo who is about to shoot at the cops, then tries to fight him, not a good idea considering Kazuo's martial arts expertise. Fortunately, Kazuo is then shot by Blackwell, who just happens to be near the shack in what is kind of a ridiculous coincidence. Opening up the box which contains the bullion reveals only three gold bars. The rest of it was used by Blackwell and Tahashi for various charitable enterprises connected with the Japanese-American community: "Scholarships to the young, [and building] the Sundown Center for the elderly." Whether anyone will object to this now is a good question … after all, didn't this bullion belong to someone, or was it just the "spoils of war"?

This sudden appearance by Blackwell at the end of the show, which leads it into kind of a sucky conclusion, was not the only thing that bothered me about the show:

• Why does Kazuo go to Five-O immediately at the beginning of the show? It is obvious he thinks that there was something fishy about his father's death, though he doesn't say anything at the time. Neither does McGarrett, who knows that Kelsey is disreputable. We don't find out what McGarrett thinks for several minutes more. Was there bad blood or something between the elder Tahashi and Kelsey in the past that would have contributed to Kazuo's suspicions?
• When Danno picks up Chin Ho after the flat tire, how does he know that Kazuo is going to Kim's place? Kazuo merely told Chin he was going to "Hawaii Kai" (translated by the subtitles as "Hawaiiki").
• Strang and Regan are located at the Avalon Furnished Apartments where they are listening to crappy pop music on their stereo while playing cards with some dame who is also painting her toenails. Danno knocks on the door saying the two hoods' names, but how does he know their names? Are they well-known to the cops in Honolulu because of their association with Din Lee?

WHAT DOES THE TITLE MEAN?

The title does not make sense. What does "legacy" mean? The gold bullion hardly qualifies as a "legacy," and it doesn't have anything to do with "terror," because most of the gold was used to benefit people. Is "terror" supposed to be refer to the murders (only two) caused by Kazuo?

EPISODE PROMO:

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CASUALTY LIST:

Death: Minoru Tahashi dies in fire set by Alex Kelsey.
Injury: Kazuo Tahashi apparently injured in fight with Regan and Strang.
Death: Kim Matsu strangled by Kazuo.
Death: Alex Kelsey thrown off balcony by Kazuo.
Injury: Kazuo shot in the arm by Commander Reginald Blackwell.

MORE TRIVIA:

• Tahashi Senior lived at 107 Pepeekeo Street, and was born in 1896. One of his former addresses was 1408 Gulick Avenue. His safety deposit box at the bank was number 17.
• Lew Ayres, who plays Blackwell, was the Governor in the Five-O pilot. Although Ayres was only 5′9½″, he seems to tower over other people at the funeral. Blackwell speaks Japanese at the funeral to Kazuo: "I'm so sorry this happened."
• After they bust into the pad where Din Lee's two thugs are hiding out, Duke finds "ammo" and "some pot," among other things. When they are driving earlier, Regan and Strang are accompanied by cheap-sounding music. The score is credited to Ray, though the first cue we hear in the show is from Broughton's "McGarrett Is Missing."
• Chin smokes his pipe during the show.
• There is a sign on the lawn outside Kim's place either for home rental or real estate which says "Better Homes" with a phone number of 732-6696.
• Kelsey's office is in the Moana Professional Building which has a street number of 250. There is a stock shot of a Physician's Ambulance on its way to this building after Kelsey's fall, but what is the point of having the siren on, since isn't Kelsey dead? There are also stock shots of firemen heading to the fire in Tahashi's building early on in the show.

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185. (S08E17) “Loose Ends Get Hit” ★★★

QUICK PLOT:

The state's rock-solid murder case against an Island racketeer vaporizes because McGarrett is suckered by the prosecution's star witness.

Click here to read Full Plot.

REVIEW:

As the show begins, Billy Madrid (Henry Darrow) is reviewing a deposition in Manicote's office: "I, Billy Madrid, being duly sworn, depose and say that on the afternoon of April 24th, I entered the Grass Shack Restaurant in Waikiki in the company of my employer Kum Chi [Jimmy Borges], at which time I observed Kum Chi shoot and kill one Harry Kwan. After the shooting, I drove Kum Chi to Hanauma Bay and saw him throw the murder weapon into the bay. I declare under penalty of perjury that the above is true and correct."

I don't know if Billy Madrid is any relation to Tony Madrid, who appeared in S03E18 & S03E19, "F.O.B. Honolulu." Darrow played slimy local gangster Johnny Oporta who had aspersions to becoming the Mob's man in Hawaii in S04E02, "No Bottles...No Cans...No People."

Billy has last-minute nerves about signing the deposition, but tells McGarrett, "I didn't have a choice. For ten years I've been Kum Chi's right-hand man, so I know how that crazy mind works. Loose ends, he don't like them. Loose ends, they get hit. And this time, I'm the loose end. So I figured I'd better make the first move and get Five-O protection. And you better come through." McGarrett promises him protection.

As Madrid leaves the building, accompanied by McGarrett, Danno and Chin Ho plus some HPD cops, a sniper on a neighboring building takes aim at him. This guy is not a particularly good shot, because the only person who gets hit is McGarrett. Danno and Chin rush into the building where the sniper was on the roof, but he gets away. There is a reason things have happened like this, to be explained later. Of course, Madrid is very nervous now.

McGarrett is attended to by a doctor, not Bergman, but another one played by Robert Brilliande, who played a doctor and a judge in four episodes prior to this one. He tells McGarrett to take it easy for a couple of weeks. McGarrett has to wear a red sweater. McGarrett calls Chief Davis (Mitch Mitchell) and says "I won't be pitching against the fire department," but the chief seems to be not from the fire department, but from HPD, because there is a large HPD logo on the wall behind him. The chief says, "Maybe we've [???] got a chance to win for a change," and McGarrett says he deserves this comeback. The chief takes McGarrett's request for additional police personnel to help out at safe house number four where Madrid is being sequestered.

McGarrett is assigned a driver, Officer Sandra (Sandi) Wells (Amanda McBroom, in her first of four appearances). Although only on the force for eight months, she was the top in her class at the pistol range and worked for "Juvenile Division, Bunco Squad, and cruised for two months in a blue and white." McGarrett seems a bit antsy, telling her "the people I'm dealing with now are murderers," but she replies, "if I were afraid of danger, I would never have chosen a police career." She also quotes from the rules: "Regulation 642, paragraph B states clearly that sex shall not be a barrier to any police assignment, provided the officer is qualified. And I assure you, I am qualified."

First item of business for McGarrett is to go and visit Kum Chi (perhaps Jimmy Borges' slimiest role), a mob boss who runs an "amusement corporation" and who is into "gambling, prostitution [and] dope." The repartee between McGarrett and Chi is quite delightful, concluding with McGarrett telling Chi he will face "a murder one indictment" based on Madrid's testimony.

After McGarrett leaves, two of Chi's goons, Benny (Joe Geremia) and Joe (Beau Vanden Ecker, uncredited) follow him and Sandi. Ordered to "take evasive faction," she performs some pretty cool maneuvers with McGarrett's tank-like Mercury. She turns the tables on the two thugs so the pursued becomes the pursuer after she backs into an off-road section of what looks like Battery Harlow where S02E02, "To Hell With Babe Ruth" was filmed. When McGarrett tells her to "force them off the road," she not only does that, but their car flips over in the "James Hong corner" near the Diamond Head tunnel.

McGarrett takes away the two men's "peashooters" to run ballistic reports, and Sandi rubs it in by giving them tickets for "reckless driving, exceeding the speed limit and endangering human life."

Meanwhile, at the safe house, Madrid says he is "going nuts." He wants the company of his estranged wife Madeleine Gray (Lynne Ellen Hollinger), who runs a dress shop in downtown Honolulu. He tells McGarrett that if his wife isn't brought to the house, "then I don't testify, not to a grand jury, not in a courtroom, not to anybody." McGarrett goes to the dress shop and tells Madeleine about Billy's request, which not only will involve her visiting him now under conditions of "complete isolation," but also moving him to the mainland with a new identity after the trial and sending her with him, if that's what she wants, which would include selling her shop. Just before McGarrett shows up, we have seen Kum Chi hanging around her store, telling Madeleine that when she sees Billy, "I got a message for him."

Madeleine moves to the safe house and Billy testifies before the grand jury, who indicts Kum Chi for murder one. When Chi is busted, he tells McGarrett, "You've cuffed me, you've printed me, you've mugged me. And I'm gonna sue you and Five-O for false arrest." He promptly calls Chauncey D. Allen (Ted Scott), regarded as "the best defense attorney in town."

At the trial, Allen demolishes Billy's testimony, despite the fact that he has been rehearsed ahead of time, because the restaurant where the murder took place was "dark," and Billy couldn't remember if he looked away when the fatal shots which killed Kwan were fired, suggesting that he was "not an eyewitness to this murder at all."

I am surprised that Manicote doesn't try to discredit Billy, other than saying he has just committed perjury. But Billy then drops a bombshell, saying "What I said before … I mean, I had to say. He said if I didn't [i.e., what Billy said at the grand jury], he'd bust every bone in my body," then saying that "he" is McGarrett! Manicote doesn't try to make Billy elaborate on details about this threat at all!

The whole trial is thrown into chaos, and the judge, the stern Don Over reprising his similar role from three previous shows, is furious because the prosecution has failed to come up with evidence to gain a conviction. Manicote and McGarrett have only a few days to try and straighten everything out.

McGarrett has a brainstorm as to what is going on. Madrid's turning the tables on his former boss as well as the purposely bungled assassination attempt was all arranged so that Kum Chi would be busted and then released once Billy's testimony was overthrown. Because of this, Kum Chi could be soon released and it will not be possible to try him again for the murder of Kwan because of the double jeopardy clause in the U.S. Constitution.

McGarrett hasn't much time to come up with ways to try and overturn the mess which has resulted in court. While the trial was going on, Sandi, who had chatted with Madeleine at the safe house about her shop, went there in plainclothes because she was curious that Madeleine was going to order a spring line of clothing which didn't make sense if the place would be closed if she was leaving town with Billy after the trial. While she was at the store, Sandi saw Benny, one of Kum Chi's two goons she dealt with earlier, who seemed to be looking at the place's books.

Although McGarrett tells Billy he is still a possible "loose end" despite the deal that Kum Chi has made with him, Billy and Madeleine go to a restaurant to celebrate. Sandi is there, supposedly on a date, and she goes up to the two of them and says, "The two of you cooked up the whole thing. You know what? You could send him [Kum Chi] away on a first degree conspiracy rap anytime you decide to sing." It is really unbelievable that she would say this, even if she is pretending to be drunk — it is totally unprofessional, not to mention odd, for a police officer to make these kinds of remarks, especially considering how "by the book" Sandi has been previously. (Not only that, because cops typically hang out together, it's peculiar that Billy does not suspect that Sandi's "date" Marvin is also a cop.)

McGarrett also arranges for a couple of policemen from Los Angeles to come to Hawaii very quickly. They shadow Billy around town as if they are a couple of hitmen who have been hired by Kum Chi to take care of business. When Johnny is pulled over by an HPD cop for speeding, a bomb in his car blows up spectacularly. (It is very convenient that this happens mere seconds after the HPD man asks them to come out of their car.)

Totally freaked out, Billy recants his perjured testimony on the stand when the trial resumes: "He did it. He killed Harry Kwan. I saw him do it. I saw him shoot Harry Kwan in the head three times. Now, what I said about looking the other way and about McGarrett twisting my arm, that was a lie. That's what I was supposed to say so Kum Chi would be sprung. But I'm not lying for you, Kum Chi. No more! Now, you killed Harry Kwan and then you tried to kill me, bruddah."

As one of the L.A. cops (Dick Fair) prepares to return to the mainland, he tells McGarrett that some of his techniques go a bit too far, assuming that he ordered Sandi to blow up Billy's car. McGarrett then yells at Sandi, "Blowing up Billy Madrid's car was a stupid and dangerous stunt. Not to mention a highly illegal one. Now, in this office, Miss Wells, we do not intimidate witnesses, physically or otherwise. And we never risk lives in order to obtain a conviction." However, McGarrett has to eat it big time, especially when he gets a report from the District Attorney handed to him by Sandi that the bombing was actually arranged by Benny Suvaric, Kum Chi's lieutenant who planted the bomb in Billy Madrid's car on his boss's orders.

I find McGarrett getting all "moralistic" here pretty funny — after all, this is the guy who ordered Sandi to force Kum Chi's goons off the road, which could have resulted in them getting killed!

EPISODE PROMO:

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CASUALTY LIST:

Injury: McGarrett shot in the arm by Jimmy Naguchu, Kum Chi's "button man" (hired killer).
Death: Naguchu is found shot dead. Assailant unknown.

MORE TRIVIA:

• The show's first act is over 20 minutes long; the second act is less than five.
• There are several closeup shots of rotating tires, including those on McGarrett's Grand Brougham.
• Kum Chi's office is at 737 Kapuhulu Street; its sign shows the temperature is 83 degrees.
• In court, Billy gives his address as 1056 Hunakai Street, Honolulu.
• When Kum Chi is finally booked, his mug shot number is A371326.
• The way McGarrett uses two cops from the mainland to act in an intimidating manner is similar to another instance in S07E08, "The Two-Faced Corpse."
• An earlier title for this episode was "Cross And Double Cross."

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186. (S08E18) “Anatomy Of A Bribe” ★★★  BOOK HIM, DANNO 

QUICK PLOT:

A crooked contractor and a building inspector are suspects after a devastating fire destroys the new Global Trade Center in Honolulu.

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REVIEW:

Vince Maynard (Allan Arbus) is the top inspector for the Department of Building and Safety. He was brought from the mainland by his boss George Barnes (Norman Wright) to "to update the department." His resume included "Advisor to building syndicates. High-level construction work for the government. And he did a column for an L.A. Paper on buildings and real estate."

When the World Trade Center, a recently-completed Honolulu mega-project expected to serve as "a nerve center for expanding trade in the southern hemisphere" is completely destroyed by fire, resulting in three deaths and multiple injuries, including four firemen, Maynard, who approved its plans, is quick to phone the building contractor Martin Rogers (Robert Hogan), and tell him to "get out of town." Since they are on Oahu, Rogers goes into hiding at a beach house near Kahuku on the north of the island owned by Maynard.

The reason for this is because Rogers bribed Maynard to get his stamp of approval on the project which resulted in a saving of $100,000 in construction costs because of substandard materials. The Governor is majorly upset at the destruction of the center, especially after fire commissioner Ralph Lawson (Don Mundell) points out this was caused by wires which were too thin to carry the electrical load and cheap wallboard which should have been fire-retardant steel, among other things.

When McGarrett goes to Barnes' office, he meets Maynard, who is smug and smarmy saying, "Are we under investigation?" He tells McGarrett that the final inspection of the trade center was made by Joe Kimura (Walter Yong), a 25-year man with the department. McGarrett assigns Chin Ho to work with Maynard to track down Kimura, and the two of them split up, each taking three of six buildings where Kimura might be found.

I'm sure it is no coincidence that Maynard knows exactly where Kimura can be located, and he asks him to double-check certain specifications of the "reinforcing" on an upper floor of the Alema Building where he is working. Once they get to that floor, Maynard clubs Kimura over the head with a piece of wood, dumps booze over him after having to break the bottle open, and throws his body out of the building witnessed by horrified young people driving nearby including Kathy Paulo (uncredited), who screams loudly.

McGarrett and Danno soon show up. Maynard, who supposedly arrived on the scene after Kimura "jumped," tells McGarrett, "Those whiskey fumes could knock you out." When McGarrett asks him, "Was Kimura a heavy drinker?", Maynard replies in a nonchalant manner, "I don't know, but the trade center fire and three people dead because of him, how much can a man have on his conscience before he cracks?" As Maynard walks away, McGarrett gives him a "look."

Forensic work soon starts to establish a pattern connected with Maynard which is very fishy.

Doc Bergman says there was a negligible amount of alcohol in Kumura's body — .03% — suggesting he was not a heavy drinker, and he hadn't had anything to drink for hours, if at all. McGarrett says "I should have known better. Drinkers don't pour booze on their clothes, they pour it in their mouths." Danno found the pieces of the bottle which Maynard smashed open. Considering that Maynard, when he broke the bottle, also got booze all over his hands, it's odd that no one smelled liquor on him as well, though maybe he had time to wash his hands in addition to hurrying down from the upper floor in the construction site elevator.

Che Fong looks at the paperwork which Kimura supposedly signed, approving the plans for the trade center, but it's revealed that Kimura's signature has been cut and pasted out of some other document, and the original documents are nowhere to be found.

McGarrett decides to set a trap for Maynard, using Dave Harris (John Karlen), a friend who runs a construction company. Harris submits plans for a new condominion complex where there are obvious code violations. When he meets Maynard for lunch, the two of them talk in an ambiguous way about how much Harris will have to pay to Maynard to approve the plans, euphemistically substituting population figures of Kahului on Maui with the amount in cash.

Harris is taping the conversation using a recorder in his attaché case, but Maynard figures out he is being recorded. He later goes to the Five-O office to report that Harris was trying to bribe him, but Harris is sitting in the office a few feet away where he has been meeting with McGarrett!

When he sees Harris, Maynard says, "Or was it a case of entrapment?" McGarrett tells him, "There was no entrapment, Mr. Maynard. But there was an attempt at shakedown. You should know about that, huh?" Seriously, McGarrett should just have kept his mouth shut! Maynard tells the top cop, "I'm going to sue you personally for slander and defamation, as well as the state for entrapment. How does a cool million grab you?"

None of this sits well with Manicote, who tells McGarrett, "As district attorney, I tell you that evidence [which Harris obtained on the tape] would never stand up in court. He may not win the lawsuit, but he could hold us up in litigation for months. Not to mention the embarrassment he would cause."

There is a sudden bombshell when Barnes calls McGarrett to report that Maynard has resigned, saying "He accused me of working with you to set him up for a frame." Not only that, but Maynard has a ticket on a plane back to the mainland the next day. However, Maynard is seen buying a gun from some guy at a shaved-ice stand (shades of the reboot's Kamekona, a guy with connections to the criminal underworld).

McGarrett figures that Maynard is likely going to kill Rogers. They meet with Rogers' wife Betty (Darcy Hinton Cook), who has been tailed by Duke for some time. She is at Koko Marina at the request of her husband who was going to run away with her to Upolo on the Big Island. McGarrett visited Betty earlier in the show and she basically told him that her husband would never do anything bad like happened at the trade center and McGarrett should stop hassling her and get lost. McGarrett now gives her a big pitch that her husband is in extreme danger, with the result she gives him the phone number of Maynard's hideaway which is the ubiquitous 732-5577.

When Five-O and HPD arrive at this house, Maynard has already taken Rogers away at gunpoint. The usual HPD helicopter and APB locates Maynard and Rogers soon enough.

However, while the show has been fairly logical up to this point, with only about seven minutes remaining, it goes totally to hell. Maynard, despite previously being a conniving and cool customer, takes Rogers to "the old Lagoon Hotel complex on Lagoon Drive," where he and a partner were going to construct a hotel years before until they found out the ground underneath was unstable.

Maynard starts babbling away as if in a fantasy world, saying that despite new engineering techniques which might have made construction of the hotel possible, the state of Hawaii said it could not be done, and "that was the end of our fortune." His partner killed himself.

Ranting yet more, Maynard starts shooting at Five-O and HPD cops who have surrounded him. Eventually he is wounded and busted for "conspiracy, fraud, bribery and manslaughter." Rogers says he will co-operate to help put Maynard away.

Darcy Hinton Cook, though just a member of the Five-O "stock company," gives an excellent performance as Rogers' wife Betty.

EPISODE PROMO:

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CASUALTY LIST:

Death (x3): Three people killed in the fire at the Trade Center (not seen by us).
Injury (multiple): A dozen people injured in the fire, including four firemen.
Death: Joe Kimura hit with 2″×4″ by Vince Maynard, then thrown off building.
Injury: Maynard shot in the leg by HPD officer.

MORE TRIVIA:

• An aerial shot of a fire at the beginning of this episode is the same as the one of Mr. Tahashi's house ablaze in "Legacy of Terror," only two episodes earlier.
• When McGarrett goes to interview Rogers' wife, he is seen wearing cowboy boots.
• There are stock shots of cop cars.
• At the beginning of the show, the Governor walks around a table and his hands are at his sides. But in the next shot, both hands are in front of him.
• If Rogers is confined to Maynard's house, how does he get out to go to the post office to mail a special delivery letter to his wife which tells her to call him so they can plan an escape? Chin Ho later suggests the letter was sent because "[Rogers] figures we got a tap on his phone," but this doesn't make sense, because Five-O doesn't know where Rogers was hiding until the end of the show.
• Just before Maynard and Kimura go up an elevator prior to Kimura getting knocked off, there is an inexplicable shot of some workman punching a time clock. I figure this is Walter Omori, "the mysterious actor." Kimura's Social Security number, shown on his ID after his death, is 546-10-8740. He was born in 1930.
• On Bergman's desk, there are several books with the title of Corpus Juris, a term used for comprehensive collections of laws.
• A police helicopter, number N8585F, is seen searching for Maynard and Rogers at the end of the show.
• If Maynard resigns at the end of the show, why does he take a company car from the bureau to the house where he has hidden Rogers?
• Inside Maynard's hideaway, there is a sign on the wall which says "Men's Card Room."
• According to a credit at the end, this episode was "Suggested by Ruby D. Litteer."

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187. (S08E19) “Turkey Shoot At Makapuu” ★★★½  BOOK HIM 

QUICK PLOT:

Five-O searches for the killers of an airline stewardess and a hang-gliding pilot.

Click here to read Full Plot.

REVIEW:

Molly Taggart (Lee Purcell) is testing the newly designed hang glider her brother Draper (Lou Richards) has made at Makapuu Point where the jump-off point is near the military installation seen in numerous episodes like "F.O.B. Honolulu." After Molly gets airborne, her brother starts driving to the beach where she will eventually land 1,300 feet below and her roommate Sheila Romney (Susie Burke) follows him, heading off to her job as an airline stewardess.

However, in yet another example of the TV trope "Plot-Driven Breakdown," Sheila's Porsche suddenly dies. I don't understand why she doesn't honk her horn at Draper, who is not that far in front of her or why he doesn't notice that she is not following. Sheila starts to walk to get help, which I think would be quite a long way away, and two guys, Thomas "Tonker" Onker (Chuck-Chuck Akamine) and Blooey (Billy Roessler) suddenly show up and start to strip her car for parts. Up in the air, Molly observes all this.

Sheila turns around and sees the two guys messing around with her car, and she goes back and confronts them. Blooey, though he is wearing huge moronic red headphones with a radio inside, hears what she says and leers at her, saying "Hey, that's a nice wahine, huh? Would you like me fetch them?" (???) He chases after her with a knife. Tonker notices that someone up in the sky has been observing everything and the hang glider Molly is flying has a very distinctive design on the wing.

Molly doesn't see what happens to Sheila, because she flies to the beach to tell Draper, who is already there, what is going on. When they return to the area where the car broke down, the car is missing, and Sheila can also not be found. Molly is concerned, because recently two sailors had car trouble on Oahu and called a tow truck. When the truck arrived, the sailors were dead from knife wounds. Draper tries to reassure her that car strippers "don't hurt people, they just want the parts of the car."

Five-O is alerted to Sheila's disappearance, though this would seem more like an HPD matter. Molly shows up at the Five-O office, upset because she figures they are not doing enough to find her friend. While she is there, a phone call is received that Sheila's dead body has been located.

Tonker and Blooey sell the stuff they stole to Deke, who has a used car parts business. He is played by Kenneth O'Brien, who was one of the white trash twosome in S03E05, "The Guarnerius Caper." He wonders what Blooey, who is wearing his headphones, "is high on … nobody's that happy."

At Five-O, Molly describes the van used by Tonker and Blooey as a "roach coach," usually applied to a catering truck selling low-quality food, but I think more likely to a vehicle used to hang out in and smoke dope. However, Cheech and Chong's Up In Smoke was two years in the future! She is still upset about the speed of the investigation, but McGarrett gives her the usual speech about how it takes time.

Tonker and Blooey return to the hang gliding launch point where they ID Draper with the help of a spectator, played by stuntman John Thorp. The duo assume that it was Draper who witnessed what happened previously.

In response to McGarrett ordering the boys from Five-O to check out "hot shops, swap meets [and] junkyards" to see if the stolen parts can be tracked down, Chin ends up at Deke's. When Chin says that he wants certain parts for his car, a Porsche, and wonders how he can be sure that ones he is examining will match his car because all the numbers are gone, Deke says those parts are exactly the ones he needs and he has "extraordinary powers" to determine this. Chin says he also has extraordinary powers, whipping out his Five-O badge, and confiscates the parts.

Danno is assigned to give protection to Molly, though we don't see him formally introduced to her in this capacity. At Makapuu, Draper takes flight while doing more tests on his glider. Blooey shoots him with a rifle and Draper, wounded, ends up crashing into the ocean, where he drowns. Neither Molly or Danno hear the sound of the rifle shot, though I don't know how close they are to Blooey.

After Che Fong finds prints on the parts which Chin brought back to the office, Deke is hauled into a meeting, resulting in another typical McGarrett speech about how complicity can lead to a lengthy jail term. Without co-operating, Deke leaves and goes to a bar where Blooey and Tonker usually hang out. They are not there, but Chin Ho is, surprisingly, and he follows them to Deke's store where he takes note of Tonker's van's license number.

Draper's body is recovered, and Molly identifies his body at the Coast Guard Makai Range Station. Upset because the two people closest to her are dead, she has a meltdown and starts blabbing to a couple of reporters that this is all her fault, even though McGarrett cautioned her about speaking to the press. Following this there is a radio broadcast which claims she described the killers as "a couple of locals in a light blue van," but she never said this to them.

Molly is determined to use Draper's glider to help trap the two bad guys, and is able to sneak away from Danno who is supposed to be watching her. She contacts the local media and a news item on the radio (which Tonker and Blooey just happen to hear) say that "A new world's record for hang gliding may be set over Oahu today by Miss Molly Taggart. She'll be flying in place of her brother, Draper Taggart. His body was found yesterday in the ocean with a fatal gunshot wound." The two psychos head to the hills above Makapuu to knock her off.

McGarrett quickly shows up at Makapuu despite the isolated location and typical narrow roads. Molly has a radio with her while she is flying to communicate with him. Blooey tries to shoot her with a rifle, but he is killed by Danno. Tonker also has a rifle and is cornered by McGarrett and busted. Molly is wounded by Blooey, but lands on the beach below; she will survive.

This is an above-average episode, aside from a few nitpicky continuity issues. The way its component parts are assembled together is very clever (see the interview with John Thorp below), and the acting is very good, especially Lee Purcell and the two moronic car strippers with their "Pidgin light" accent. (They correctly use "bra" instead of "bro," even though the subtitles interpret the expression as "bro.") As Draper, Lou Richards is a bit too chirpy – he must have studied flashing his teeth with Bruce Boxleitner! There is breathtaking aerial photography and an excellent score by Morton Stevens — click here to hear excerpts.

---

When I was redoing my review for this show in 2020, I was curious to know how some of the camera work in this show was done. I contacted John Thorp, who I had talked to at the Five-O convention in Burbank in 1996, who had multiple responbilities in this episode. He confirmed to me that in order to get the point-of-view shots of the person piloting the hang-glider from above, the lower part of the hang glider, minus the wing, was hung under a helicopter.

JT: I put a cameraman behind me in a swing seat shooting over my shoulder and he looked at me and said "Have you ever done this before?" and I said, "Oh yeah, I do it all the time. I've hung from underneath that helicopter and helped put things in place and rapelled out of that chopper numerous times." I knew the pilot could come within whiskers of where we needed to put the blades, so to get the shot of guys shooting at us we flew the helicopter right at them and did the same motions just like we would do as if we were flying a hang glider, only we've got a 75-pound, $100,000 camera behind us.

MQ: Those cameras they had were 35mm, which are pretty serious, not like a 16mm camera.

JT: Exactly. Those were big 35mm Arriflex cameras, they were like a Panavision type of camera. The distance shots were shot from the cliff itself. The other shots where we were looking up at the actor, which seemed a little hokey, were done by hanging them from a crane. So I had the actor hanging from a crane, acting like he got shot, then the distance shot was me flying the glider with one arm, hanging off, and looking limp in the saddle.

MQ: I remember at the 1996 convention, you described how you were flying the hang glider but you were also a spectator watching, so you were actually watching yourself.

JT: Yeah, it's the "magic of movies." I wanted to act as well, because for each job you have, you're getting paid from another contract. As a spectator, I said something like "Yeah, that's Taggart, he's the only one who can fly that," so I had lines which earned me an actor role. Then I did the stunt work: I doubled for the girl Molly, and I doubled for her brother Draper, I acted in it, and I second unit-directed it and I stunt-coordinated the whole aerial pont-of-view of the hang glider.

MQ: There was another show after that which featured hang-gliding, "Practical Jokes Can Kill You." Did you have anything to do with that show?

JT: Yeah, I co-ordinated that as well, landing the hang glider on the roof of the building. That was the same thing, hanging underneath the helicopter. We got extremely lucky on that shot, because it was an impossibility. On the day we went up there, what I was going to do was just build a scaffolding, and then early in the morning before the wind picked up, just run off the scaffolding and land on the roof, and I would hit the roof for sure. So the day of the shoot, it was dead still, and it looked like it was going to hold all day long, so I said, let's fly over the fence, let's build a scaffolding above the fence, instead of just on the roof ... and then just clear the roof, with the whole length of the roof my landing area, and we pulled it off on the first take. So again, we had the helicopter closeup, you see the roof coming into view, then the distance shot of clearing the fence, and landing on the roof.

MQ: That shot seemed very hairy.

JT: Exactly, that was close. We had a good older glider that we used and we had a great pilot. In our time, we have lost 23 people off that cliff. [The sequence in "Practical Jokes" started at the same take-off point as "Turkey Shoot."] We ended up with a key to the gate [on the road which leads to that area]. In fact, to this day, the Hawaiian Hang Gliding Association still has a key to that locked gate. We used to have to hike up there in the early days and then finally they asked us if we would maintain that road, because it was an abandoned military site or a training center up there that they used. Who knows what they used it for, because who's going to hear you if you're yelling. This was probably a waterboarding place where they're going to break you, because nobody's going to hear you. There was razor wire the whole way around it. We built the scaffolding high enough so we knew you would clear the fence, but you never know. But we pulled it all off. My entrance into the stunt business was with the "Turkey Shoot" episode. The footage, the dailies came back and they said "Who the hell shot all that footage?" The same kind of questions you are asking. That came back from CBS. So Jack Lord came to me and said, "Would you have lunch with me today?" And I said, "Sure, I'd love to have lunch with you today." He said, you know, that footage came back, the dailies came back, and it was spectacular. So I had lunch with him and he asked me to sign his autograph book! He put his autograph book in front me and said, "Would you tell me what it felt like jumping off that cliff in front of all those people yesterday? What you got was incredible." And about that time, Chuck Couch, the stunt co-ordinator walked by, and Jack said, "Hey, Chuck, would you do what this kid did? It was spectacular. If something comes up, I want you to use him. And if anyone asks why you're using a guy that virtually doesn't have any experience, have him see me." And then Jack said, "Get your Screen Actors Guild card, and we'll use you. What you did yesterday was spectacular." That was my entrance. I never came looking for the job as a stunt man, but it found me, and that was "Turkey Shoot." You can go on to YouTube and put in "Stunts Hawaii," and there's a lot of old footage that I have on there. There's another show called "Heads, You're Dead" where they threw us overboard. That was another Five-O where I actually acted in it. There were so many I did where you are just getting pushed out of the way, or a non-descript stunt.

(The YouTube videos include #1, the 70s (includes Classic H50), #2, the 80s, #3, Tribute to Dar Robinson, #4, the 90s, #5, the 90s, and #6.)

WHAT DOES THE TITLE MEAN?

The expression "turkey shoot" has multiple meanings. It can be a literary turkey hunt, or a contest where turkeys are awarded as prizes. According to Wikipedia, it can also mean "an opportunity for an individual or a party to take advantage of a situation with a significant degree of ease." There is also a military term which means a turkey shoot "occurs when a group or team catch the enemy off-guard or outgunned to the point of being unfair."

In the show, Draper is heard saying, "If you guys will lead me over to the edge, my heart will soar like a turkey." He tells Molly, "Hey, go get me a cheeseburger. I'm gonna be up here a month." She tells him, "I'll get you a cheeseburger. Call me fat, you turkey!" Later, when Molly pretends to be breaking a record in order to trap Tonker and Blooey, she tells Carl, who has assisted her and Draper, "Tell McGarrett I'll be hanging up there like a 2-dollar turkey."

EPISODE PROMO:

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CASUALTY LIST:

Death: Sheila Romney murdered by Blooey.
Death: Draper Taggert sniped by Blooey; drowns when his hang glider ends up in the ocean.
Death: Blooey sniped by Danno; falls from tower.
Injury: Molly Taggart sniped in the leg by Tonker.

MORE TRIVIA:

• A copy of the script for this episode being sold at Ebay suggests the original title of the episode was just "Turkey Shoot."
• At the beginning, there is a shot of Molly with a town in the background. In order for us to see the town, she would have had to turn 90 degrees from the previous shot. Later, when Molly is in the air, the place where Sheila's car craps out is not that far from some location nearby where there are some cars parked outside, suggesting she could have been able to get help or call from there. In another shot around this time, you can see a white truck driving somewhere in the area, though whether it's near Sheila's car cannot be determined.
• Tonker is seen reading a copy of the Honolulu Advertiser looking for news about Sheila. The front page has a large headline "Stewardess Murdered" with a sub-head "Hang Glider Watches." Other headlines in the paper include "Pension Actions Delayed," "Camp Help," "Youth Council Divides Job," "County Water Link Scandal," and "Ohio College to Admit GI's Wives for Free." In an unusual move, the first paragraph of the lead story is actually about the subject matter, rather than the usual bogus text: "Airline stewardess Sheila Romney was murdered today while a hang glider was soaring overheard observing the scene of the murder."
• When Blooey gets out of the dune buggy prior to checking out the hang glider who watched him and Tonker previously, he is not wearing the red headphones, but he is in the next shot when Tonker talks to John Thorp, the blonde spectator with a moustache.
• When Draper and Molly are at HPD regarding Sheila, there is a Crimstoppers-like poster on the wall with a phone number of 944-1212.
• After Oscar is grilled by Five-O, he goes to the Aloha Lounge (formerly the Sunset Drive-In); there is a number of 1933 above the entrance. Other businesses in the area include Kwok's Chop Suey, Kaimuki Auto Parts, Queen Florist and Ace Music. Blooey and Tonker normally hang out at this bar. Chin Ho, undercover, is sitting beside Oscar as he talks to Soma (Wallace Landford), the bartender. How did Chin know that Oscar would be there or how did he get there so quickly? In the background, you can hear the Hawaiian song sung by kids in S02E25, "Kiss the Queen Goodbye."
• After Chin phones in Tonker's license plate number and he gets it ID'd, he calls the office and says the van belongs to "Thomas Onker (the subtitles say "Tonker") who "has a felony record."
• When Draper is shot by Blooey, there are no crosshairs on the rifle scope.
• Oscar comments on Blooey's headphones again when he encounters him a second time: "Doesn't he ever take those things off?" Tonker says, "Nah, his brains might fall out," to which Oscar replies, "You mean he has some?"
• Joe Moore is seen reading the news on KGMB.
• At the end, McGarrett gives Tonker the "bookem" treatment, with a couple of HPD cops taking him away.
• When Molly escapes from Danno at the gas station while he is supposed to be protecting her, you can see that it has been raining heavily.
• Oscar calls McG a "big hog" and "fuzz."

GALLERY:

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188. (S08E20) “A Killer Grows Wings” ★★  BOOK HIM, DANNO 

QUICK PLOT:

Criminals threaten to destroy the entire Hawaiian sugar cane industry by using imported moth larvae for which there is no known insecticide or natural enemy.

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REVIEW:

Carol Vogel plays Kate Holbrook, whose husband died recently and she is dithering about selling their property, which includes a plantation with acres and acres of sugar cane. Sam Patton (Richard Kiley), a slimy developer, wants to buy her land to convert it into a $30 million resort village. He has imported some insects from Australia which will devastate her sugar crop, therefore seriously devaluing the property and her business, the Koolau Sugar Company, which is already suffering from an "unsettled" sugar market. These bugs, known by their Latin name of Emmalocera depressella, are commonly known as root borers, which consume the base of newly sprung sugarcane shoots. None of this buggy business is made up, though according to various web sites, these pests are most common in India and Pakistan.

Patton has a guy named Vadney working for him (Robert Witthans, sporting a beard and with his hair dyed), who is negotiating with Holbrook to buy her place, pretending to represent a bunch of investors on the mainland. He tells her, "I think what they'd like to be able to do is tell their friends they own a sugar plantation in the islands. With them it's a prestige thing as well as a business." He assures Holbrook that none of the people working for her will be let go, which is a total lie, just like the investors, who are all phony. The manager of the plantation, Warren Chadwick (Paul Shenar), who is very oily, is involved with Patton and Vadney's scheme.

This episode has potential, but it also has a couple of very major mistakes. One of these mistakes happens at the very beginning of the show, with the result that if we are to take what happens there seriously, the logic of much of the entire plot which follows does not make any sense.

Bruce Wilson, sporting some impressive muttonchops, is Dr. Ian Weatherby, an Australia entomologist or bug specialist, who is snooping around Holbrook's cane fields as the show begins. Although the property is huge, he has found the exact spot in the proverbial middle-of-nowhere where Patton has dumped the borers which will destroy the crops. There is no logical reason why Weatherby is there considering that – according to the show — there are a quarter of a million acres where sugar cane could be planted on Oahu. He has been in Hawaii as part of a visiting Australian scientific mission which was studying cane-field pests and most of his fellow scientists flew home the day before.

Chadwick comes across Weatherby snooping and wonders what he is up to, telling him he is on private property. Weatherby says, "I was told no one would mind if I poked around here a little," without being more specific. Neither Chadwick nor Holbrook gave him permission to do this. Chadwick is alarmed, especially when Weatherby tells him, "Your cane field is infested. This will have to be reported to the Experimental Station as soon as possible. That parasite there could spread throughout the entire islands." Chadwick kills Weatherby by bashing him on the head with a rock and moves his body to a different location to confuse the cops. This location is "Kalani Point," which is supposedly 15 miles away from the plantation, but when Five-O finds the car and body, it looks like it is still on the plantation. "Kalani Point" sounds like "Kalanai Point," which is in the northeast part of Oahu.

Unknown to Chadwick, Weatherby's murder is witnessed by Jose Gomez (Reggie Ho), who just happens to be working nearby in the middle-of-nowhere. Later, Gomez will try and extort Chadwick for money after news of Weatherby's death and the threat of bugs — which Che Fong finds when he does the usual forensics — hits the fan.

The beginning of the show would make more sense if, instead of having the Australian Weatherby involved, let's say that Gomez, who is one of Holbrook's employees, found the bugs, though it wouldn't be as if someone like him would normally be looking for this, since the bugs are in the roots of the sugar cane. If Gomez threatened to tip off the authorities, then he would have been killed by Chadwick, which happens anyway. Chadwick is kind of dumb, first because he is unaware of Gomez' seeing him kill Weatherby, but also because he doesn't bother to remove Gomez' driver's license from his pocket, though I'm sure Five-O could have figured out who he was.

Five-O is interested in Weatherby's murder, even though it makes no sense. They check out the place he was staying which is supposedly the Ilikai, but it's more like an apartment building. Nothing is found there. They also try to reconstruct his last hours, but that doesn't give them any clues either. While trying to retrace Weatherby's route, McGarrett is pointing at a map, identifying certain places, but the map has nothing to do with these locations.

McGarrett knows Holbrook, and when he goes to visit her and show her a picture of Weatherby, who she does not recognize, she has harsh words about Patton. It's obvious why Patton is letting Vadney do all his up-front dirty work. Holbrook says her late husband Matt "detested that man. I'd burn this place to the ground before I'd sell to him. He's not a builder. He's a crook." McGarrett tells her, "I've had some go-arounds with Patton myself. Attempted bribery of the planning commission. He claims to be a land developer, but what he really does is exploit loopholes in the law and then deface the land."

Before Weatherby was killed, he mentioned the name of Dr. Amanda Maitland (Josie Over), the boss of the local Experimental Station to Chadwick. He wanted to alert her to the presence of the borer moths. Weatherby must have met her during his fact-finding mission, but this still doesn't explain why he was on Holbrook's property. McGarrett goes to see Maitland who gives him scientific mumbo-jumbo about the bugs' incubation cycle and how the last two sugar crops on Mauritius, where they originated, were completely wiped out. She tells McGarrett that they have only three days before the larvae which Weatherby found will mature.

Patton is not happy about Chadwick murdering Weatherby, and is more disturbed when Chadwick is hauled into Five-O and grilled about $100,000 that he used to pay off some debts recently, money which McGarrett suspects was given to him by Patton. Chadwick tells McGarrett to shove his line of questioning, and to get a subpoena if he wants any further answers. McGarrett tells him, "That's exactly what I intend to do." Patton gets some thug to waste Chadwick, whose car is pushed over a huge cliff with Chadwick in it.

McGarrett is having the usual aneurysm brainstorms, telling Danno and Duke, "Maybe in our quest for a motive, we've overlooked the obvious." Duke seems unusually clueless, not being able to pick up on what his boss means. McGarrett suggests that Weatherby was killed to keep him from alerting the public to the bugs, which would cause the value of land to decrease significantly, seriously affecting someone trying to sell their property, and the only property up for sale in the area where the bugs are likely to be found is Holbrook's, duh!

In order to get Patton, McGarrett arranges for Holbrook to contact Vadney, who comes to see her. Both of them are aware of the threat the bugs pose. Holbrook points out that if the sugar crop is decimated, no one will want to purchase her property. Vadney, with a smile on his face, tells her, "Obviously, the land would have to be appraised at considerably less than its present value." She suggests that the investors may have changed their mind as to the land's purpose, and Vadney tells her, "You must be aware, Mrs. Holbrook, that your land has a value even if it it's not used to produce sugar. And, of course, a bargain is a bargain." When he confirms the investors may indeed want to turn the land into a housing development, Holbrook tells him, "I don't suppose what you're doing in all this is illegal, but it certainly makes you into a Grade A number-one fink," and terminates the conversation. McGarrett has been in the next room listening to all this.

Five-O stops Vadney on the road back to town and drags him to the office. McGarrett starts getting heavy, telling Vadney like how he will be charged with "two counts of complicity in murder," in other words, the usual stuff which may be difficult to prove in court. Vadney gets very nervous, telling McGarrett to talk to Chadwick, but, just at this moment, a phone call is received saying that Chadwick's body has been discovered by HPD and Five-O despite its out-of-the-way location. McGarrett tells Vadney, "I'm afraid Mr. Chadwick will not be available for questioning. They just found his body at the bottom of a quarry [the Malahani Quarry]." Vadney breaks down and says that he will co-operate, though the only people who know the place where the bugs were dumped are Chadwick (who is now dead) and Patton.

McGarrett manages to trick Patton by having an article planted in the local paper. With a headline of "Sugar Crop Safe: Threat from Borer Moth Ends," the first paragraph of the article reads "Dr. Amanda Maitland of the university experimental station today announced that the incubation period of the dreaded borer moth has passed without incident and the threat to the islands [sic] sugar plantation has ended. Exact location of the insect colony is not yet known, but the [the first paragraph ends here]." This freaks Patton out, and he drives to the middle-of-nowhere (sigh) on Holbrook's property to check where he dumped the little pests.

Chin Ho follows Patton in a police helicopter which is very noisy. I'm sure Patton would notice that he was being tailed! McGarrett and Danno also tail Patton, but the cars they are using keep switching back and forth between the Park Lane from earlier seasons and the current Mercury Marquis, which is totally crazy. (This is the other big mistake, which I'm sure people viewing this show back in the 1970s could have picked up on.) A couple of times the two cops are following Patton really obviously, because only their car and Patton's are in the area. They see Patton looking in the specific place he put the bugs, which is in "Section K-23, west side" according to a map McGarrett has. I don't know how they can figure this out, because there are no identifying signs or anything, and any one section of the cane fields looks like any other (at least to me). McGarrett broadcasts this location to Duke, Holbrook, Maitland and several of Holbrook's employees on a truck, who show up and set the field on fire.

Patton takes off, but he gets cornered so many ways, he ends back up where his bugs are being burned and he drives into the fire, almost getting toasted himself, except he is rescued by McGarrett and Danno. McGarrett's suit gets kind of dirty. Patton is booked by Danno on a charge of "Murder one, two counts."

The score by Jerrold Immel, the second and last one that he did for the show after S07E05, "Bomb, Bomb, Who's Got the Bomb?," is interesting, containing some up-tempo arrangements of the Five-O theme as well as a weird electronic buzzing sound like the noise of bugs, appropriately. The sequence at the end, including the chase of Patton, is accompanied by a very long musical cue which goes on for over 9 minutes. Some of the score sounds like Immel "boned up" by studying some of the music for previous episodes, though the new music is Immel's own.

WHAT DOES THE TITLE MEAN?

The bugs eat the roots of the sugar cane, then they become moths which fly somewhere else and lay their eggs, which When McGarrett figures this out with the usual brainstorm, there is such quick finger-snapping (at least a dozen snaps) that it is almost impossible to keep count. to become more bugs, and the cycle continues. When Danno and McGarrett find the place where Patton left the insects, Danno says, "The bugs...," and McGarrett says, "About to sprout wings."

EPISODE PROMO:

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CASUALTY LIST:

Death: Dr. Ian Weatherby hit in the head with a rock by Warren Chadwick.
Death: Juan Gomez killed by Chadwick.
Death: Chadwick killed by Nick Kahana and another thug hired by Sam Patton; his car pushed over a cliff with his body in it.
Injury: Sam Patton drives his car into fire and rolls it.
Injury (x2): McGarrett and Danno go into the conflagration to grab Patton, ending up "a little charred around the edges."

MORE TRIVIA:

• The first time Vadney meets with Holbrook, she says to him, "There's one thing I don't understand." He replies to her, and the subtitles read, "What's that, Mr. [which should be "Mrs."] Holbrook?
• Jose Gomez' name on his driver's license is "Juan Gomez." It shows he lives at 733 Waipahu Ave., Waipahu, HI 96797 and is 5′8″, weighing 125 pounds. The license number is 346 10 8740. When Gomez' dead body is hauled out of the ditch, why is his arm covering his face? Is this an actor different than Reggie Ho?
• Danno has a couple of interesting comments: "The snakes are loose, Steve," and, when told about Chadwick getting $100,000 to pay off his debts, he says, "Well, the good fairy didn't put it under his pillow."
• In the bogus newspaper article designed to entrap Patton, the second paragraph is about some government conference which has nothing to do with the first, and is repeated: "Thus at this conference all our governments found themselves in unanimous agreement regarding this undertaking. Arrangements for dealing with questions and disputes between the republics were further improved." There is another article with a headline "Proposal Heard on Danbury Bus Fare Increases."
• After he leaves Holbrook's, Vadney is pulled over by Danno, who runs Vadney's car off the road on a busy street. Don't the Five-O cars have sirens?
• When Chadwick's car hits the bottom of the cliff, it does not explode.
• When Danno is talking to McGarrett on the phone, he mentions a time frame as between "11 and 12 a.m. yesterday," meaning "12 noon."
• The name of the larva is misspelled Emmalocera depressla on a bulletin sent out to plantation workers.
• Might be a pun of some kind when McGarrett says of Patton, "Let's see if we can smoke him out."
• How did they do the shots in the helicopter with Chin Ho, was the camera attached to the outside of the copter?
• Holbrook smokes a cigarette.

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189. (S08E21) “The Capsule Kidnapping” ★★★

QUICK PLOT:

The son of a Japanese industrialist is kidnapped and held in an underwater capsule accompanied by a demand for $1.5 million in ransom money.

Click here to read Full Plot.

REVIEW:

Tadashi (Shawn Sherman), the son of Byong Sunahara (Daniel Taba), "one of Japan's leading industrialists," is kidnapped while his family is on vacation in Hawaii. He is grabbed from the house where he is staying by Paul Colburn (Bruce Boxleitner) and Asuko Sunada (Suesie Elene). Prior to this, Tadashi's mother is knocked out with a chloroform-like substance later determined by Che Fong to be the venom from lionfish (this is based in fact). The houseboy who works for the family is shot dead when he comes on the two leaving with the kid.

Tadashi is held for $1.5 million ransom in a specially-constructed capsule underwater offshore from Oahu which was designed by Professor Philip Tolvar (Liam Sullivan) from the Oahu Pacific Institute of Oceanography. Talvar is a big proponent of building underwater cities to "house the teeming populations of the future." The kidnapping has political implications, and Jonathan Kaye is soon on the phone to McGarrett.

The ransom money is supposed to fund "experiments" which Tolvar and Colburn are working on, but you have to wonder why Tolvar would get involved with something which is so brazenly illegal, especially since he doesn't seem to exhibit any criminal tendencies. In fact, when Tolvar finds out the Sunaharas' servant was killed, he is very disturbed, telling Colburn, "You assured me there'd be no shooting, no violence … I'd rather we abandon the whole plan." Colburn tells him that they have already gone too far, and that everything will be OK.

The ransom money is actually going to end up in the hands of the Japanese Red Army because of Asuko, who insinuated herself into Colburn's life when he was in Japan doing graduate work a couple of years before. Unlike the usual fictional Five-O radical groups, the Japanese Red Army or Nihon Sekigun was an actual terrorist organization which was active world-wide in the 1970s. After meeting with Tolvar, Colburn drives Asuko home in yet another of those great non-process shots (starting around 12 minutes into the show) and she gives him a deep smooch, making sure he doesn't want to abandon the kidnapping. This move gives more evidence to back up a theory I have that one of the reasons people get involved with terrorism is to get laid.

At Asuko's place is Shigemi (Michael Hasegawa), who has come from Japan to keep tabs on the operation. She tells him, "I like him [Colburn], but that won't stand in the way of what we have to do."

The father is more than willing to pay the ransom to get his son back, but only if he can talk to him first. This is arranged, and kills two birds with one stone, because Five-O uses this as an excuse to get the Civil Defense trucks to try and triangulate where the call regarding the drop point is being made, since it will use a channel on citizens band radio. The father talks to his son, but Tadashi doesn't say anything about where he is being held (like underwater), which I thought was one of the first things he would mention. It's not as if the kidnappers gave the boy a big speech about how he should restrict himself to certain topics. Tadashi finally says "Father, I am under…," but the call is suddenly terminated. It is peculiar that father and son are speaking English except after the call is cut off and the father lapses into Japanese, which his son cannot hear.

Danno does some interesting driving when he and Chin are trying to get to the location where the Civil Defense trucks have figured out the call is coming from. They are blocked in by construction crews and they get around this by going through a ditch in their car. It almost looks like they were blocked in by real construction crews; this seems like kind of an unusual move to put in the script. After this, they drive up what looks like an overpass under construction where the road underneath is loose gravel, causing their car as well as an HPD car following them to careen all over the place.

When Danno and Chin finally get to the place where they think the call is being made, a shed on Sand Island, they find what Che Fong later describes as "a radio relay setup [which] receives incoming signals on one frequency and transmits them on another. Unfortunately, we were monitoring only one signal, the wrong one." Che also says, "Judging from the strength of the signal, we can make a rough assumption that the capsule is within eight miles of the shed" — which is far too much area to check out in a few hours.

The board in McGarrett's office has a detailed map of the Honolulu area and he makes a circle on it with the shed at the center. Dan Stomierosky points out: "McGarrett has to draw an eight mile radius circle on the map from Sand Island. He winds up with a circle that's a mile or so radius at best. If you look at a map, an eight mile radius circle from Sand Island would cover a third of Oahu!"

McGarrett has already suspected the boy is being held underwater, and earlier got Danno to check out dive shops to see if anyone has been ordering large scuba tanks which could be used to keep him alive. The kidnappers in their demand messages have said that Tadashi will run out of air in about 52 hours.

The father is instructed to bring the ransom money the next morning to an out-of-the-way location "at Sand Island outflow point … at water's edge." This is done, and there are lots of cops as well as Five-O nearby, something Asuko specifically warned against. Colburn comes ashore in a scuba outfit and takes the father's attaché case full of cash underwater back to the Oceanographic Institute's boat that he and Asuko borrowed, which is nearby. Are attaché cases usually waterproof? As soon as he gets back to the boat and hands over the money to Asuko, she shoots him dead!

The Coast Guard's Cape Corwin has been trying to help McGarrett locate the kidnappers. They have some equipment which is so sensitive it can supposedly hear a diver's heart beat under water, though it's hard to imagine how this is possible because of the sound of the ship's engine. With this equipment, they manage to find the boat which Colburn and Asuko borrowed, and even Colburn himself when he came ashore to pick up the money.

After she shoots Colburn, Asuko takes the boat back under a nearby bridge where Shigemi is waiting for her. The boat is tracked down by Duke, and after McGarrett arrives where it is with Danno, he gets Danno to call the Institute, who tell him the boat was checked out by Tolvar who also checked out the Institute's airplane. This makes no sense at all, because where is Tolvar going? Does he intend to abandon his job and run away somewhere with the cash?

With only about eight minutes of the show left, everything gets far too rushed. Having been picked up by Shigemi, Atsuko stops at a pay phone to call the radio station where she has made most of her demands regarding the ransom and say "Tadashi Sunahara will die for the sins of his family. Let this be a warning to all members of Japan's imperialist ruling class. Liberation is at hand. The Red Army will prevail."

McGarrett orders an HPD full tactical squad to a specific location at the Honolulu airport and the cops appear there almost immediately. When Asuko and Shigemi arrive at the Institute's plane where the door is open as it is sitting on the runway, Tolvar wonders what has happened to Colburn. Atsuko responds by shooting him dead too and commanding Shigemi to take over piloting the plane. Before he croaks, Tolvar sends out a radio message giving the number of the buoy above the capsule, 1134-H. He does this on the police band which he already programmed into the plane's radio for some reason and McGarrett hears this!

There follows a crazy scene where McGarrett and the plane race down the runway with McGarrett in his boat-like Mercury Marquis trying to stop them by weaving back and forth. This does not work, and eventually the plane turns around and starts to take off. However, the tactical squad puts a quick end to this, shooting at the plane which explodes in a manner very similar to the end of S06E12, "Anybody Can Build a Bomb." Like in that show, the special effects for the explosion are very bad.

Despite the fact there are no other buoys seen in the show, and the one Tolvar radioed about is kind of out in the middle of nowhere in the harbor, it is tracked down very quickly by the Cape Corwin. Tadashi is rescued, and McGarrett ends the show saying, "I'll notify his parents."

This show would have been a lot better if it hadn't been so sped up at the end. Suesie Elene does an excellent job portraying her character as sweet to Colburn one moment, a cold-hearted, ruthless bitch the next. Boxleitner is also very good, not flashing his teeth too much, and so is Liam Sullivan, despite the script inadequacies of his part. It is not really obvious at the end how the kidnapped Tadashi is extracted from the capsule ... or how he was put into the capsule at the beginning of his ordeal, for that matter, but this is something that we probably should not think too hard about.

The music is by Broughton and is very good, despite a couple of cues which are not by him.

EPISODE PROMO:

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CASUALTY LIST:

Injury: Tadashi Sunahara’s mother knocked out with lionfish venom so he can be kidnapped by Asuko Sunada and Paul Colburn.
Death: Sunahara’s houseboy shot by Asuko.
Death: Colburn shot by Asuko.
Death: Dr. Philip Tolvar shot by Asuko.
Death (x2): Asuko and Shigemi killed in airplane explosion after their plane is peppered with fire from HPD tactical squad.

MORE TRIVIA:

• Asuko's first name gives different characters pronunciation problems. The father's first name of Byong is totally un-Japanese; it sounds more like Korean.
• During his phone call with Jonathan Kaye, McGarrett calls him "sir" at one point, rather odd considering their rather chummy relationship in earlier shows.
• Robert Costa plays the owner of a store which sells pet fish and aquariums. Beau Van den Ecker makes a brief appearance as a diver near the end. He may also be the cop who chases after Colburn when he is seen near his apartment where McGarrett and Danno are asking the landlady questions.
• Subtitle goof: What do you say to a man who's son has just been kidnapped?
• The Honolulu police band is on frequency 123.1, the emergency channel is 121.5.
• When McGarrett finds the boat that Asuko abandoned under the bridge, he is putting his fingerprints in various places where he shouldn't.
• Sam Sanford, who in real life was the "morning man" on radio station KHON (also known as KPOI), plays a radio talk show host who relays the kidnappers' messages to Five-O.
• McGarrett is told by the HPD operations center that the kidnappers are located on Kenhi Street, but he then sends a radio message that they are on Kenhi Road.
• The father speaks Japanese twice. The first time is in McGarrett's office, where he tells his lawyer Matsuda words to the effect "I'm sure you will get the ransom out of the bank; I won't forgive you if my son gets hurt." The second time is after the conversation with his son: "Tadashi, please do your best while we try to help you."

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190. (S08E22) “Love Thy Neighbor, Take His Wife” ★★★

QUICK PLOT:

A militant ecologist is seemingly involved in the kidnapping of a wealthy land developer's wife.

Click here to read Full Plot.

REVIEW:

Kimo Kahoano plays Ben Tanaka, leader of the ecology group Earth People United. At the beginning of the show, he is rehearsing a speech that he will make at a rally that day: "We are not radicals or ecological freaks. We are people from all walks of life. Students, housewives, farmers and fishermen, doctors, lawyers, merchants, who are determined to stop this continuous rape of our land by developers. Here at this site, for another huge hotel, on yet another stretch of our virgin beach, we of the Earth People now draw the line. No more! If our lovely land is to be destroyed, then we, as Hawaiians, will die with it!"

Tanaka gets into his Volkswagen bus with "SAVE OUR LAND" on the back and "RISE UP AGAINST HIGH RISE" on the sides and finds himself with a gun pressed up against his neck by a guy hiding in the back. He is forced to drive to the house of developer Del Wingfield (James Karen) where another guy hiding in the bus chloroforms and kidnaps Wingfield's attractive wife Lisa (Alba Francesca) who is practising yoga in her back yard. The rally Tanaka was intending to go to was actually at a multi-story hotel under construction that her husband was building.

The abduction of Lisa is witnessed by Wingfield's next door neighbor Vincent Rhoads (David Huddleston), who is the one that hired the two kidnappers, Kekoa (an unshaven Danny Kamekona) and the libidinous Molony (Dennis Redfield). After grabbing Lisa, they make Tanaka drive back to his place where they knock him out with chloroform, dope him up, plant Lisa's headband in his van and then take her to a secluded location.

Tanaka arriving at Wingfield's place was captured on a surveillance camera covering the driveway. The played-back video (and even what we see when Tanaka arrives) is kind of weird; there are three horizontal lines in the picture, like you would see if you were fast-forwarding it. Five-O is quickly contacted regarding the kidnapping. They are skeptical that Tanaka is really a kidnapper. Danno says, "He's heavy on that ecology stuff, but he's well-respected by a lot of people."

Shortly after he comes to, Tanaka is visited by his girlfriend Julie (Janit Baldwin), who just happens to be Rhoads' daughter. Hearing the sounds of sirens approaching his house, Tanaka splits, telling her that he will be at their "special place."

When McGarrett comes to Wingfield's, he is introduced to Rhoads, who mentions the connection his daughter has with Tanaka, saying that he told her to "stay away from him." Back at the office, McGarrett wonders why the kidnappers weren't aware of the camera at Wingfield's, which had been installed only a week before because of some recent demonstrations by ecology types outside the place.

Rhoads makes the ransom call to Wingfield, using a filter which fits over the mouthpiece of a pay phone. The call is recorded by HPD, but is too short to be traced. Rhoads wants half a million dollars. Prior to this, Rhoads had some words with Julie, who told him that her boyfriend "didn't do anything." Her father tells her that she should "face up to the facts."

Meanwhile, at the kidnappers' hideout, they have given Lisa some clothes to wear other than her yoga outfit, for some reason I don't understand. Wearing the mask he used during the kidnapping, Molony, who is a harsh creep with two murder raps on the mainland, tells Lisa, "How come a foxy chick like you is married to a square dude like Wingfield, huh? I bet you're starving, aren't you? I must look like some kind of freak with this thing on. It's too bad you can't see the real me. I'm irresistible."

When he goes back in the other room, he tells Kekoa, "I think I'm gonna have me a nice little party before we hand the lady back over to big daddy." She can hear everything he is saying, and I'm surprised when Rhoads shows up shortly after, he blabs away so she can probably recognize his voice and hear everything he is saying as well. They force Lisa to make a brief tape recorded statement which Rhoads takes back to the pay phone to play for her husband to make him think she is still alive.

The ransom drop is to be made at the Waikiki bus station, and the attaché case is bugged with a receiver that Chin Ho can hear while wearing a special pair of glasses. Wingfield delivers the money, but Rhoads has cut a hole in the floor below locker #186, which is on the lowest level of all the coin lockers and takes the case out via the building's basement.

HPD has tailed Julie to Tanaka's place, so McGarrett goes there. She doesn't want to deal with him, obviously considering him to be one of the "pigs." McGarrett gives her a big pitch to convince her to help him, saying "I care about human life, believe it or not." She tells him to "go to hell," and calls him a "lousy cop." McGarrett responds, "I'm not a lousy cop, I'm a good cop." Julie suggests that the reason McGarrett tracked her down was because he knows young people "like to get it on."

However, when McGarrett tells her that he has good reason to believe that Ben might be innocent, she changes her tune. She takes him to the "special place" which is out of town near a waterfall. There, McGarrett takes Ben into custody, which does not endear him to Julie: "I really gotta hand it to you, baby. You waited almost eight hours before bringing a cop here."

On the way to get Ben, McGarrett finds out some interesting information from Julie, who is now his pal. Ben and her are going to be married when she finishes college. She describes her father as a "Big WASP and big businessman from Diamond Head [who] hates Ben because he's part Hawaiian and because he's an ecologist who's willing to fight for what he believes in. And that conflicts with father's business interests." She says that after her mother died several years ago, her father became "unglued" and "things started to go bad with his business," and that their house, in the ritzy neighborhood next to Winfield's, is "mortgaged to the hilt."

Back at the kidnappers' hideout, the horny Molony continues lusting after Lisa despite Kekoa's objections: "I know you've been Ionely back here, baby. I thought you might like some company … You're gonna learn to like me. Yes, you will. Because I'm the kind that grows on foxy chicks like you." When she pulls off his mask, he tells her, "You shouldn't have done that. You see, I don't like it that you did that, because now you can identify me."

Motivated by what Julie told him, McGarrett gets Danno to pull Rhoads' financial records. They find out he borrowed $300,000 to invest in one of Wingfield's high-rise hotels and the loan is coming due the next day. With Rhoads' dislike of Tanaka because of interest in his daughter, plus Tanaka's ecological efforts which are keeping Wingfield's property from getting built, there is "motive and opportunity."

McGarrett gets the help of Bob Skinner (Bob Turnbull) from a local radio station to broadcast a story which, of course, the kidnappers just happen to be listening to: "A new and startling development in the kidnapping has been brought to the attention of this reporter. Repeat. Once again, this unconfirmed exclusive report. Tanaka was taken into custody and charged with the abduction of Lisa Wingfield, wife of the multi-millionaire contractor, Del Wingfield. Waiting confirmation is the rumor that Tanaka has confessed to the kidnapping and shortly will lead the police to a hideout where Mrs. Wingfield is being held. Also unconfirmed is a report that police expect to recover the entire half-million dollars paid in ransom within the next few hours."

Molony and Kekoa both freak out, figuring that they have been betrayed by Rhoads. Molony goes to Rhoads' house, demanding to see the ransom money. Julie surreptitiously sees and overhears this meeting and calls McGarrett, who is at Wingfield's place next door. Julie seems to have McGarrett's number memorized, but maybe she just calls the cop shop and they connect her to him via Central Dispatch. Rhodes and Molony return to the hideout, where the money is divvied up, but they have been tailed there by Five-O and the cops after Julie's call.

Rhoads tells the two to "get the boat ready," which has been prepared for some time, but does not make a lot of sense. Where are they expecting to go? Molony wants to "terminate" Wingfield's wife because she has seen him. When Rhoads objects to this, Molony kills him. Molony then tries to escape using Lisa as a shield, but an HPD sharpshooter stops him with a shot to the shoulder and Kekoa is grabbed by Danno.

I like this show, because it is pretty logical and kind of a nail-biter. There are a few nitpicky things, like how does Rhoads find out about Molony and Kekoa to hire them. They don't act like they have ever worked together before; they are not exactly "birds of a feather." Like in "A Killer Grows Wings" two episodes before, McGarrett uses local media to trick crooks, leading to their downfall. At the end, I was thinking how will Rhoads daughter Julie survive her father's death and the fact that he probably has left her saddled with tons of debt, not to mention the mortgage on their house! Hopefully she will marry Ben and they will live happily ever after. Somewhat more in doubt at the end of the show is what happened to poor Duke, who was knocked out by Molony while he was doing surveillance on Rhoads' house. We see Duke recovering from this and he moves like he is going to contact McGarrett, but isn't seen again in the show!

WHAT DOES THE TITLE MEAN?

As per Wikipedia, "love thy neighbor" refers to the Biblical phrase "thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself" from the Book of Leviticus and the New Testament about the ethic of reciprocity known as the Golden Rule. Thus, this title is ironic, because obviously you wouldn't take your neighbor's wife under these circumstances.

EPISODE PROMO:

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CASUALTY LIST:

Injury: Lisa Wingfield chloroformed and kidnapped by Kekoa on orders from Vincent Rhoads.
Injury: Ben Tanaka chloroformed and drugged by Molony.
Injury: Duke knocked unconscious with a gun butt by Molony.
Death: Rhoads shot by Molony.
Injury: Molony shot in shoulder by HPD sniper.

MORE TRIVIA:

• Kimo Kahoano does not get featured billing in the end credits, presumably because he was a member of the Five-O "stock company."
• Various posters are seen at Tanaka's house. One says "It's time for the people who talk about pollution to join the people who are doing something about it." Another says "Life. Pass it on," and a third reads "We care about Wildlife Hawaii." A couple of cans of Comet cleanser and a bottle of Ivory dish soap is seen in the kitchen. The position of the Ivory and a roll of paper towels on the shelf changes.
• When Tanaka's Volkswagen van is located after the kidnapping, Danno tells McGarrett: "Find out if Mrs. Wingfield owns an Indian-type headband." McGarrett then turns to Wingfield and says, "Mr. Wingfield, does your wife own a turquoise headband?"
• A stock shot of a radio on the dashboard of a police car is seen.
• It seems very odd that McGarrett and Danno would drive Wingfield to the bus terminal to deliver the ransom. What if the crooks saw them together, wouldn't this make them nervous? In the depot, there is an ad for a tour of the Polynesian Cultural Centre, which costs $23.00. One of the undercover cops is reading Ring Magazine (a boxing publication); Chin Ho is reading Field and Stream.
• The music is by Ray; it employs some electronic sounds. At the bad guys' hideout, there is crappy rock music playing on the radio. The trombone interval theme is heard briefly.
• Che Fong has help trying to identify Rhoads' disguised voice from a phone tap by Professor Sellers (Jan Shapiro), who says that the voice has traces of a southwestern U.S. accent (Rhoads is from Oklahoma).
• A very brief shot of Rhoads' place looks like it is the Anderson Estate.
• At the beginning of the show when Lisa Wingfield is kidnapped, there are a couple of extreme closeups of her eyes as she reacts.
• Moloney addresses Rhoads by name near the end of the show at the hideout.
• Rhoads drives a Lincoln Continental. The license plate, number 9F-569, is not fastened on to the car properly when it's seen at the end of the show.

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191. (S08E23) “A Sentence To Steal” ★★★  BOOK HIM, DANNO 

QUICK PLOT:

McGarrett sends an undercover agent into a young offenders' rehabilitation institution to find out who is behind recent gold thefts at dental-supply warehouses.

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REVIEW:

At the beginning of the show, Joey Cooper (Gregory Enton) and Jimmy Luka (Rene Abellira), two young punks, rip off 30 pounds of gold worth around $60,000 from the Kanoni Dental Supply Company, the third such robbery in a month. A security guard (Chuck Couch) interrupting the robbery is seriously wounded when his gun is seized during a struggle. The van the two crooks used is tracked from a partial license plate number recalled by the guard which is "29." Some super powers must be involved in doing this, because the actual number on the van is 91-288.

This van is registered to John Manoa (Tommy Fujiwara), but it's owned by the Makama Youth Rehabilitation Home in Waikiki where Manoa is the administrator. According to Danno who did some investigating, "Manoa is an ex-con whose real name is Fred Napa. He was convicted of armed robbery, two counts. He did a three-year stretch at Oahu State Prison and got out a couple of years ago." McGarrett is familiar with this home, which is for young offenders, male and female. It was set up by Elizabeth Rollins (Barbara Baxley) four years ago, and her nephew, Edward Ross (Tommy Sands), works there as the liaison with the HPD Juvenile division.

At the home, Ross runs the place with an iron hand. The routine is very strict, with the kids there being responsible for various duties and if these duties are shirked, trouble results, because "It puts a heavier workload on the others."

McGarrett goes to meet with Rollins, who is some rich dame who lives in a nice waterfront estate and drives a Mercedes convertible. (Baxley previously played Sadie, the white trash matriarch in S06E04, "One Big Happy Family"). When he tells her "there might be some trouble at the home," she says, "There must be some kind of mistake. I hope for your sake it's a mistake." Meanwhile, Duke has been surveilling Manoa, who is seen giving an envelope to Vinnie Kowa (Dennis Dubin), who got out of the home about a month ago.

To check out goings-on within the home, McGarrett enlists the help of Louie Pakoa (Rudy Ramos), an HPD cop who has "worked the gangs." Pakoa is one of those Michael J. Fox-like characters who looks eternally young. The actor was around 25 years old at the time the show was broadcast, and I don't think he would fit in that well with the other kids at the place, some of whom look to be in their early teens. After receiving his instructions from McGarrett, Pakoa says " Ciao, baby." McGarrett gives him a stern admonition: "My name is Steve or McGarrett, or Mr. McGarrett, take your pick. So let's cut this, 'Ciao, baby,' juvenile jive, huh? In this office, you're a sergeant of police and I expect you to conduct yourself like one. That understood?"

When Pakoa is introduced to Ross as "Louie Keoki," Ross tells him that the home will give him "freedom and a chance to make it clean." When Pakoa replies, "Three months in your kiddie farm will be a breeze," Ross tells him angrily, "Let's get one thing straight. We don't take any mouth from punks like you who think they know it all. When you're accepted in our home, you play by the rules. You got that?"

At the home, we get an idea of their participatory democracy when Bobby, a kid caught "popping reds" is voted out of the place. Among the "kids" there not putting in a good word for Bobby are Gary (Chuck-Chuck Akamine with a full beard and long hair, who appeared as the psycho Tonker only four episodes before in "Turkey Shoot At Makapuu"), and Ron Nakahara as Pete, who was Dive Shop Owner in "The Capsule Kidnapping" only two episodes back, in real life 28 years old!).

Pakoa tries to find out from Cooper where the "action" is in the place, saying "I hear you and me are both in this nursery school on the same trip," but Cooper brushes him off. When Pakoa calls McGarrett, he says, "I got a chance to follow Manoa" without elaborating on exactly how he did this, saying that he also saw Manoa meeting with Vinnie Kowa. McGarrett mentions a sandal with a cut in it which Che Fong found a print of at the scene of the first robbery in the show. Later that evening, Pakoa snoops around lockers at the school and gets a trace of this sandal, but there is no indication how he would know specifically which member of the home would have worn it.

Rollins comes to the Five-O office, not happy. She drops the Governor's name, saying "The Governor told me you had promised to take your man out of the home if you didn't find anything to implicate my boys. Have you?" McGarrett says he has no intention of doing this. She tries to convince him otherwise: "I've tried to base the home on trust. I have tried to give my boys something that they didn't have. Something they call a fair shake. Something to believe in. Someone to trust. Now I'm not going to let you destroy that." He tells her, "Elizabeth, why should I wanna destroy something? Something that's so important to you, something that's so constructive. But think about that guard. When somebody put a bullet in him, they're moving up. That's attempted murder. It's no longer juvenile delinquency." She asks him again if he will take his man out of the home, and when he again says no, she tells him "I'm afraid that you and I have nothing more to say to each other" and leaves.

Pakoa meets with Danno and gives him his tracing of the sandal. When this is compared to the cast that Che Fong made, McGarrett says that this puts "Joey Kowa" at the scene (the subtitles merely say "Joey." What he really means is "Joey Cooper," who he is confusing with Vinnie Kowa – an annoying mistake!

McGarrett gets Che Fong to make a gold wafer similar to one that was stolen, then Pakoa confronts Cooper with this, saying he found it by Cooper's bunk. Threatening to go to "the man," Pakoa says "Cut me in on the action." As far as the envelopes received by Vinnie Kowa are concerned, he is hauled into the Five-O offices, where he says he was getting money from Manoa because he lost big bucks in a poker game, and Manoa was giving him $30 at a time to pay this off, which Vinnie was going to pay back.

Luka and Cooper go to see Ross after the gold wafer is found. Cooper doesn't want to participate in any more jobs, but Ross threatens that he will go to a judge and make sure they spend one to five years at a prison farm rather than getting out from the home in 2 weeks if they don't pull off "one more job."

Danno and Chin have found out about a place called Kiko Gold which is very fishy. This company has sold about 60 pounds of gold in the last couple of months. When various merchants look at mug shot books to find who they were dealing with from this company, they identify Harry Lio (Harry Chang), a local gangster well-known for his involvement with drugs and hookers. Danno and Chin go to see Lio, but he gives them a bunch of mouth. But then so does Chin when Lio doesn't give them what they want to hear: "That makes two wrong answers."

Later, when Pakoa is trying to phone McGarrett, he is grabbed by Cooper and Luka; in other words, he is in deep shit. However, the street smart Pakoa manages to convince the two punks that they should co-operate with him, because McGarrett is after the big bosses in the theft ring, not them. Pakoa takes Cooper and Luka to meet with McGarrett and Manicote near the Oceania Floating Restaurant, where a deal is offered.

With the co-operation of Five-O, Luka and Cooper make the final robbery and drop the gold off at the usual place, but they are grabbed and forced to go to where the gold is melted down. Ross and Lio are both there. Ross tells them, "I thought you might like to see what we do with the gold after you've stolen it." Five-O and HPD manage to follow Luka and Cooper, who have been taken there by boat and surround the place. There is a confrontation and both Lio and Ross are busted, Ross after he leaps through a window. They are later indicted on six counts (we don't find out for what specifically), and will do "a minimum of five to ten years."

Considering that Rollins, no doubt still pissed at McGarrett, came to the home before this all went down, and Manoa told her, in a you-promised-a-long-time-ago-there-would-be-no-secrets-between-us admission, that her nephew was under investigation for his part in the robberies, there is a big question at the end of the show: did the old lady tip off Ross, which is why he was at the gold-melting location at the end of the show?

This show is OK, though Tommy Sands' non-singing performance, kind of a crucial role, is restricted to "act annoyed" and "act tough." The music by Ray is pretty amusing, it consists mostly of cheap-sounding funk and watered-down Tijuana brass.

EPISODE PROMO:

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CASUALTY LIST:

Injury: Guard at Kanoni Dental Supply Company shot by Jimmy Luka.
Death: Thug/courier shot by Louie Pakoa and second HPD officer.

MORE TRIVIA:

• During the first robbery seen during the show, Cooper and Luka spray fire extinguisher foam into an alarm bell to keep it from being heard, a technique also used in S07E09, "How to Steal a Masterpiece.
• 30 pounds of gold (approximately 437.5 troy ounces), stolen in the first robbery, is worth $60,000, or about $137 a Troy ounce. The price was in this neighborhood in late 1975. Danno says the price of gold "dropped over $30 an ounce in the last two years." Ths price actually dropped $30 an ounce in one month around September 1975, probably around the time the show was filmed.
• Ed Fernandez is seen very briefly as Yoshi, a detective. Arthur Meskil (uncredited) is the go-between who takes the stolen gold and delivers it to a metallurgist who melts it down. As the boat departs for the metallurgist after the first robbery in the show, a dog is seen running across the screen.
• In an HPD mug shot, Harry Lio's number is 32446.

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