Hawaii Five-O (1968-80) — Season 3 Episode Reviews

INCLUDING ODDITIES, GOOFS AND TRIVIA

Copyright ©1994-2021 by Mike Quigley. No reproduction of any kind without permission.


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CLASSIC FIVE-O (1968-1980):
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Pilot Movie (Episode "0") | 1st Season (Episodes 1-23) | 2nd Season (Episodes 24-48) | 4th Season (Episodes 73-96) | 5th Season (Episodes 97-120) | 6th Season (Episodes 121-144) | 7th Season (Episodes 145-168) | 8th Season (Episodes 169-191) | 9th Season (Episodes 192-214) | 10th Season (Episodes 215-238) | 11th Season (Episodes 239-259) | 12th Season (Episodes 260-278) | 13th Season |

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RETURN TO THE SITE'S MAIN PAGECOMPREHENSIVE INDEX


SEASON THREE (1970-1971) - QUICK INDEX

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

S03E01 (49) - And A Time To Die... (Gerald S. O'Loughlin, Donald Moffat, Khigh Dhiegh)
S03E02 (50) - Trouble In Mind (Nancy Wilson, Milton Selzer, Harry Guardino)
S03E03 (51) - The Second Shot (John Marley, Eric Braeden)
S03E04 (52) - Time And Memories (Diana Muldaur, Martin Sheen, Edward Andrews, Kathy Cannon)
S03E05 (53) - The Guarnerius Caper (Albert Paulsen, Anthony James, Kenneth O'Brien, Ed Flanders)
S03E06 (54) - The Ransom (Andrew Duggan, Lloyd Gough, Ron Hayes, Peter Bonerz)
S03E07 (55) - Force Of Waves (John Vernon, Dewey Martin, Linda Marsh)
S03E08 (56) - The Reunion (Simon Oakland, Barry Atwater, Joe Maross, Teru Shimada)
S03E09 (57) - The Late John Louisiana (Don Stroud, Marianne McAndrew, Alfred Ryder)
S03E10 (58) - The Last Eden (Ray Danton, Paul Stevens)
S03E11 (59) - Over Fifty? Steal! (Hume Cronyn)
S03E12 (60) - Beautiful Screamer (Lloyd Bochner, Laraine Stephens, Anne Archer)
S03E13 (61) - The Payoff (Albert Salmi, Joyce Van Patten, Madlyn Rhue, Warren Vanders, Paul Carr)
S03E14 (62) - The Double Wall (Monte Markham, William Schallert, Joan van Ark, Sorrell Booke, R.G. Armstrong)
S03E15 (63) - Paniolo (Frank Silvera, Royal Dano)
S03E16 (64) - Ten Thousand Diamonds And A Heart (Tim O'Connor, Paul Stewart, Logan Ramsey)
S03E17 (65) - To Kill Or Be Killed (John Anderson, Michael Anderson, Jr., Peter Jason)
S03E18 & S03E19 (66 & 67) - F.O.B. Honolulu (John McMartin, Sabrina Scharf, Roger C. Carmel, Khigh Dhiegh, Joseph Sirola, Monty Landis, Howard Gottschalk)
S03E20 (68) - The Gunrunner (Paul Burke, Marian McCargo, George Murdock, Arthur Batanides)
S03E21 (69) - Dear Enemy (Vera Miles, Gary Collins, John Lupton, Dub Taylor)
S03E22 (70) - The Bomber And Mrs. Moroney (Mark Jenkins, Hope Summers)
S03E23 & S03E24 (71 & 72) - The Grandstand Play (Pernell Roberts, Don Chastain, Barry Atwater, Elliott Street)

Previous Season (Two) • Next Season (Four) • COMPREHENSIVE INDEXSeason IndexSite's Main Page


RATINGS:
★★★★ = One of the very best episodes, a must-see.
★★★ = Better than average, worthy of attention.
★★ = Average, perhaps with a few moments of interest.
= Below average, a show to avoid.


49. (S03E01) “And A Time To Die...” ★★½

Original air date: 9/16/70 — Opening CreditsEnd Credits
Director: Charles Dubin; Producer: Robert Stambler; Writer: Ken Pettus; Music: Richard Shores
Timings: Teaser: 3:46; Main Titles: 0:59; Act One: 8:02; Act Two: 10:43; Act Three: 13:39; Act Four: 12:38; End Credits: 0:54; Total Time: 50:41.

QUICK PLOT:

Wo Fat kidnaps a neurosurgeon's daughter to coerce the doctor to let a wounded undercover operative die during an operation.

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

REVIEW:

McGarrett is very annoyed in this show. When he shows up at a crime scene where an "intelligence" agent has been shot, he is stonewalled by a security guard. McGarrett knows where to find the man in charge, Sam Kavanaugh (Gerald S. O'Loughlin, who was seen in season one's "The Box" and "Six Kilos"). McGarrett tells him,"Since you're still a little new out here, Mr. Kavanaugh, maybe nobody has told you ... [t]hat not even United States intelligence can cover up a shoot-out and tell me it's none of my business."

The crime in question is the attempted assassination of Kyle Shepard (Chuck Couch), a British subject, and freelance newspaper reporter who has "spent the last ten years in Red China." According to Kavanaugh, "He dug us up a map showing the exact location of every missile silo Red China has built or is planning on building."

The assassination has been orchestrated by Wo Fat, who gets his stooge Chung (Danny Kamekona) to kill Shepard using a high-powered rifle from a room up in the Hilton Hotel Rainbow Tower. Shepard had arrived at Honolulu Airport and is ferried by helicopter to the Ala Wai Heliport near the Tower. This whole procedure seems very peculiar, however. Why didn't they just pick up Shepard at the airport and take him to the intelligence office, wherever that might be? Of course, then the show would likely be a lot shorter.

When Shepard gets off the helicopter, he freaks out and starts running, which ruins Chung's aim. What is supposed to be a fatal shot is off, the result being Shepard ends up in the Honolulu General Hospital in a coma. It is suspected that "while the bullet didn't actually penetrate the skull, it did crease it, causing a severe lineal fracture, possibly resulting in a brain contusion, which is causing intracranial hemorrhaging." This is not the first time one of Wo's henchmen bungles an assassination in the series, by the way. In S05E05, "The Jinn Who Clears The Way," Carl Tu (also played by Danny Kamekona) is equally inept.

As far as Kavanaugh is concerned, it is critical that Shepard survive, because the map of the missile silos is "memorized ... all in his head." Knowing ahead of time that Dr. David Forbes (Donald Moffat), "the top neurosurgeon in Hawaii," will likely be the one to perform the very delicate operation to bring Shepard back to consciousness, Wo kidnaps Forbes' young daughter Ellen (Sherry Plep), who is taking a sailing lesson, and then gets the doctor to return home at the beckoning of his wife Janet (Linda Ryan) to face a very stern demand from Wo: "I want Mr. Shepard dead. If Mr. Shepard dies without regaining consciousness, your child will be returned to you, unharmed. On the other hand, if you don't agree with the terms, won't pay the ransom so to speak, well, then..."

The doctor and his wife are appalled, but Wo tells them, "I'm not interested in winning your approval, doctor — only your co-operation. I'm just as much a victim of this situation as you, your husband and the child. … Mr. Shepard is not to regain consciousness. … I would genuinely hate to harm your child. But more important, in my profession, a man cannot afford a credibility gap. He must keep his promises if he wants anybody to believe his threats."

Kavanaugh checks with Jonathan Kaye in Washington, who orders the operation on Shepard to proceed. McGarrett reconstructs what happened when Shepard arrived by helicopter, that he "panicked" when he saw someone who he recognized as a Red Agent who had betrayed him. (This is the usual McGarrett brainstorm, trying to deal with this rationally is difficult.) When McGarrett suggests this is Ralston (Norman Dupont), one of the men on Kavanaugh's team who was "working both sides of the street," Kavanaugh tells him, "You've really gone into orbit, haven't you, McGarrett?"

Kavanaugh warms to McGarrett's suggestion when faced with a process of elimination as to who knows what is going on in the hospital and could be feeding information back to Wo (who was obviously identified for McGarrett by Dr. Forbes). Kavanaugh says he will put Ralston "on ice," but McGarrett says to let him loose, and maybe he will provide a lead to Forbes' kidnapped daughter. Kavanaugh tells Ralston to keep his eye on Tyler, another member of their staff.

Danno and Kono tail Ralston when he leaves the hospital and from a distance see him making an operator-assisted call at a public telephone. They speculate that this is long distance, but Kono investigates and finds there is no record of this at the phone company. The clever McGarrett then suggests that the call was to "a mobile unit or a marine call to a boat."

This, of course, is true. On a yacht, Wo is holed up with Chung as well as Oren (the Elvis Presley-imitator-like Nick Nickolas, who was seen at the beginning of the show tipping off Wo that Shepard had left Honolulu Airport by helicopter). We get a brief glimpse of Wo's "human side" when he reminisces about an incident which presumably happened during the Chinese Revolution. He plays chess with the doctor's daughter, saying "I knew a little girl once," and nearly lapses into sentimentality when he describes how this little girl was killed. He goes on, "So few women play chess ... they seem to have no grasp for it." He says, almost with some bitterness, "I don't always enjoy [winning]."

Forbes operates on Shepard, who dies, but not because of anything the doctor did. Kavanaugh wants to pretend that Shepard lived and is now "talking his head off," and he will get news of this to Wo Fat through Ralston. About the doctor's daughter's fate, Kavanaugh is cold-blooded, saying, "There's not one chance in a thousand that child is still alive," .

McGarrett gets a message that the phone company checked their records again, which reveals that Ralston's call was made "to a boat owned by the Island Marine Sales and Rental Company ... called the Sea Gypsy."

McGarrett asks for a couple of additional hours (equivalent to how long the operation would have taken if Shepard survived). When Kavanaugh says no, McGarrett tells him, "If you feed Wo Fat the word that Shepard talked, I'm gonna feed him the word that you lied. And if you don't think I will, you just try me." McGarrett gets his two hours.

Armed with a picture of the Sea Gypsy (where he got this from is a good question), McGarrett and Danno scour the local marinas by helicopter trying to find it. He has until 5 p.m. before the deadline runs out, and we see time ticking down to 4:25, 4:44, 4:52 and 4:58. Of course, they manage to locate the boat in time, but not before 5:00 rolls around and Kavanagh tells Ralston that Shepard survived.

Ralston passes along the word to Wo about Shepard and Wo leaves, instructing Chung and Bates to take care of the child. Kavanaugh and Forbes are driven to the marina by Chin Ho almost immediately as Wo is chauffeured away to go back to China to deal with the silos because of the information to be revealed by the supposedly now-recovered Shepard.

Overall, the acting for this show has been very good, and the script up to this point has made sense. Unfortunately, there is a totally stupid ending.

With the 5 p.m. deadline well passed (probably several minutes more) and no consideration for whether Forbes' daughter is going to be killed immediately, McGarrett and Danno, who were only seconds before flying over the yacht, as well as Kono, all appear on a Coast Guard patrol boat beside it, dressed in well-fitting Coast Guard uniforms, as if there was some floating Coast Guard haberdashery nearby, pretending to be "examining vessels to determine compliance with federal boating laws." Lucky for them, the kid is still alive, and Chung hides with her on the yacht, which is quickly uncovered, and Chung is taken out of action. Ellen is rescued and reunited with her father.

There is kind of a lame, feel-good ending with Kavanaugh telling McGarrett, "Maybe we can get along together from now on," to which McGarrett responds, "Yeah. Yeah, I'd like that."

WHAT DOES THE TITLE MEAN?

It is taken from a Biblical quotation (Ecclesiastes chapter 3) which begins "There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens: a time to be born and a time to die..."

LOCATIONS:

Thanks to Fred Helfing for Locations in this season. Times refer to the CBS DVDs.

2:12 — Helicopter lands at Heliport — Ala Moana Boat Harbor — Image — Heliport no longer exists
26:40 — Ralston leaves hospital — 3675 Kilauea Avenue — Image — Leahi Hospital
27:35 — Ralston pulls into gas station — NE corner of Hunakai Street and Waialae Avenue — Image — Gas station no longer exists, image is from 2009
27:58 — Ralston walks to payphone — As per previous — Image — See also S03E16, "10,000 Diamonds"
39:56 — McGarrett and Danny search for Wo Fat's yacht — Makani Kai Marina — Image — Satellite view

EPISODE PROMO:

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

CASUALTY LIST:

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

    Injury: Shepard is shot by Chung.
    Death: Shepard dies on operating table. Sanders tells Kavanaugh on the phone, "He's dead."

MORE TRIVIA:

  • The pay phone Ralston uses to tip off Wo Fat has the number 819-855.
  • The helicopter used at the beginning to transport Shepard from the airport to the Ala Wai Heliport by the Ilikai Hotel is the same one used at the end by McGarrett to search for Wo Fat's hideway. Supposedly owned by Helicopters Pacific Ltd., it is number N9016F (a Hughes 500 according to its side, actually a Hughes 369HS). It is also seen in "The Late John Louisiana" and "Paniolo" this season.
  • Why does the security guard at the heliport salute both Kavanaugh and McGarrett?
  • There are the sounds of tires squealing as cars brake and speed away (on gravel!) from this location.
  • One of the views of Chung's rifle scope at the beginning of the show is totally wrong — it's from ground level instead of up in the Rainbow Tower, from where Chung is aiming.
  • Washington big shot Jonathan Kaye is described as "Chief of the Pacific Area."
  • A good Wo Fat line: "You're being deliberately obtuse, doctor."
  • At the beginning of the show, a Japan Airlines plane is seen with "Official airline for Japan World Exposition" (Expo '70, held in Suita, Osaka, Japan, between March 15 and September 13, 1970) on its side.
  • The room in the Rainbow Tower Chung uses for the assassination is #702.
  • Stock shot with McGarrett arriving at the hospital. The crudely-made sign showing visiting hours is seen.
  • McGarrett snaps his fingers multiple times during his brainstorm about the possibility Ralston's call was to a marine unit.

GALLERY:

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50. (S03E02) “Trouble In Mind” ★★★½  BOOK HIM (4) 

Original air date: 9/23/70 — Opening CreditsEnd Credits
Director: Danny Arnold; Producer: Robert Stambler; Writers: Mel Goldberg & Sascha Gilien; Music: Morton Stevens
Timings: Teaser: 7:02; Main Titles: 0:59; Act One: 7:19; Act Two: 13:44; Act Three: 10:33; Act Four: 9:48; End Credits: 0:53; Total Time: 50:18.

QUICK PLOT:

Heroin contaminated with arsenic poses a threat to a jazz singer who is desperate to feed her addiction

Click here to read Full Plot.

REVIEW:

This is an above-average episode with singer Nancy Wilson guest starring as Eadie Jordan, who is scheduled to give a jazz concert at the Waikiki Shell. Her pianist and friend Mike Martin (Harry Guardino) is a former drug addict who served 6 months for possession and use of heroin on the mainland.

At the beginning of the show, the two of them are seen jamming at a Honolulu jazz club named Kiley's where they have come to see Rags (Robert Gibbons), an old friend from Chicago. Kono performs a one-man raid on the place, frisking Harry Partch (Dave Burton), a known dope dealer who complains about being forced to strip in the washroom.

After Martin and Eadie leave the club, they pass Kono at high speed, forcing him off the road. When Kono follows them and pulls them over and then checks their car, almost finding some heroin which Hank, the drummer in the club, slipped to Mike earlier, Martin hits Kono on the head with a rock. The next day, Kono tells Danno he feels "lousy."

When subsequently grilled by McGarrett, Martin gives an excuse that, despite the fact Kono identified himself as a cop, Mike says that he didn't know that Kono was police, and instead was threatened by a "big guy." McGarrett doesn't seem to be as concerned about the damage to one of his men as when Chin Ho was bonked on the head in S01E06, "24 Karat Kill."

Hank the drummer is played by series composer Morton Stevens. He becomes the victim of the arsenic-contaminated heroin he is using that has already taken the lives of five other people on Oahu: a seaman, a prostitute, a shoe salesman, an ex-pug and a 17-year-old girl, a high-school dropout.

Because he is a big fan of Eadie's, McGarrett is much kinder towards her than he probably should be, basically warning her about the poisoned dope, since he thinks that the one who is looking to buy it is Martin. But it is Eadie herself who is the junkie, and she is becoming more and more unhinged as rehearsals for concert proceed.

Martin wants her to get off the stuff, but after she insists that she only needs it "one more time" to get her through the concert scheduled for the next evening, he goes in search of drugs, having little luck until some old Chinese man (uncredited actor) gives him Harry Partch's address.

Martin arrives at this place just as McGarrett and Chin bust Partch for possession, though his heroin later turns out to be just cut with milk sugar. A very creepy scene follows where a young kid who claims to be a heroin addict (Remi Abellira) offers to sell Mike some smack, which later also turns out to be cut with sugar. When Mike berates the kid for his habit, the kid says he is talking "fuzz jive." Abellira was about 13 years old when this show was made; he looks much younger.

Danno and Kono suddenly show up at the boy's place. Martin is busted and thrown in jail, but after McGarrett goes to see him, the top cop finally clues in that Mike is clean and it is Eadie who needs the dope. In desperation, she has gone to the fleabag apartment of Ron (Milton Selzer), a former bass player who is the one supplying his "friends" with smack. The desperate Eadie visited the jazz club earlier where Rags gave her Ron's address.

McGarrett and Martin, acting on a tip from Rags, go to Ron's, where the sugar that is mixed with the heroin is found to be mixed up with Toxa-Quick rat poison which has accidentally leaked into the sugar's container. Eadie and Ron did drugs together, but Ron, a former addict, only took some speed. Eadie has left; Ron says she has gone to a "rehearsal."

The two men head to the empty Shell, but it is too late. Eadie, who is there, suffers convulsions just as they arrive and dies a painful death.

The script for this show, for the most part, is pretty good and the acting from all concerned, especially the principals, is excellent. The score is by Morton Stevens, and I would suspect that so are the arrangements for Wilson. Stevens had plenty of experience in this regard as the arranger and musical director for such stars as Sammy Davis Jr., Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin and Liza Minnelli. There are also some creepy musical moments when Martin buys dope from the kid and when he and McGarrett arrive at Ron's place near the end of the show.

There is one big question, though. Ron's supply of dope, the poisoned stuff, was for his "friends," so who gave or sold Hank the drummer the drugs which killed him and which also narrowly missed killing Eadie at the beginning of the show? (Mike tells McGarrett he bought heroin from Hank for her which Kono found in their car before he was knocked out.) It is suspected that the pusher was Partch, who was in the club when Kono frisked him at the beginning of the show. But after Che Fong analyzed the drugs seized from Partch's place, Che says they were "strictly bottom of the barrel, thinned down like I've never seen [with] the usual milk sugar." Most likely the bad drugs were from Ron, who was seen hanging around the club at the beginning of the show. But if the heroin containing rat poison were only for Ron's "friends," how did the five people who died get hold of it? It's not like they were all jazz fans who were hanging out at Ron's place.

WHAT DOES THE TITLE MEAN?

"Trouble in Mind," a vaudeville blues-style song written by jazz pianist Richard M. Jones and first recorded in 1924, is one of the songs which Eadie sings in the show. There are different versions of the lyrics, which, according to Wikipedia, deal with suicide. The ones heard in the show are: "I'm gonna lay / Lay my head / On some lonesome railroad line / Let the 2: 19 train / Ease my worried mind / Trouble in mind / Up here / My poor heart is beating slow / Never had no trouble / In my life before / No, no, no."

LOCATIONS:

8:45 — Eadie practices at the Shell — Waikiki Shell —Image
26:16 — Mike parks car before climbing steps — corner of Green and Alapai Streets — Image — Visited by me in 2014
26:52 — Mike climbs Steps — off Alapia St. between Green and Spencer Streets — Image — Visited by me in 2014
28:34 — Harry Partch's place — 708 Spencer Street — Image — Visited by me in 2014
29:07 — Mike watches Partch get arrested from steps — Alapai at Spencer Street — Image — Visited by me in 2014

EPISODE PROMO:

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

CASUALTY LIST:

    Injury: Mike Martin hits Kono on the head with a rock.
    Death: Hank, the band's drummer, dies of bad heroin.
    Death: Eadie Jordan dies of bad heroin.

MORE TRIVIA:

  • Wilson sings part of at least four different songs. One of these, Honeysuckle Rose by Fats Waller, is not included in the Season 3 DVD box set, probably because of music rights. From the time McGarrett leaves his office at the beginning of the show to when Wilson says "Maybe it's me..." is cut out (approximately 24 seconds). Click here to see the missing material. The songs she sings are as follows (these times are what is actually on the DVDs, not taking the missing music into consideration):
       Stormy Monday (T-Bone Walker) — 2:57 (starts at 0:08)
       Trouble in Mind (Richard M. Jones) — 1:30 (starts at 9:07)
       Spinning Wheel (David Clayton-Thomas) — 1:02 (on reel-to-reel tape, starts at 15:21)
       Trouble in Mind ("I'm blue, but I won't be blue", with piano solo) — 0:08 (starts at 17:57)
       Spinning Wheel (performed with band) — 0:30 (starts at 20:22)
       Trouble in Mind (with solo piano at end) — 0:33 (starts at 47:03)
    In the omitted section before she starts singing, Eadie is holding sheet music with her right hand and snapping fingers of her left hand. In the next shot, she is holding a microphone with her right hand. Then, in the next shot, she is holding the mike with her right hand and the sheet music with her left hand.
  • As they perform "Trouble in Mind" at the Shell at the beginning of the show, Martin tells the brass section, "You can cool it, take five," but the opening of the song right after this includes the brass. This intro to the song accompanies a very cool sequence of McGarrett driving to the Shell after passing the Dillingham Fountain (stock shot). The title song gets mentioned in the end credits.
  • While they are rehearsing, Martin has a lit cigarette in an ashtray on his piano, but he isn't smoking it.
  • When he confronts Martin in jail, McGarrett doesn't find any needle marks on his arms. He asks Mike, "Where do you take it? Behind the knees? In the eyebrows? Between the toes?" "Behind the knees" echoes what McGarrett asked Nicole Wylie in S02E09, "The Singapore File."
  • McGarrett tells Eadie he has "just about every side you ever cut, including your tapes and cassettes [which he pronounces "case-sette"] ... even the Funky Blues 45." Reel-to-reel recorders are seen in the show; Hank is listening to music on one just before he croaks.
  • McGarrett also mispronounces the word "autopsy" with the emphasis on the second syllable.
  • When McGarrett wants Chin to book dope dealer Harry Partch, he uses the expression "Book him" four times: "Book him," "Book him," "Book him!", and "Book him for receiving, pushing and possession." Partch lives at 2124 Kaluaha Drive. This character has the same name as an American composer who lived from 1901 to 1974.
  • McGarrett looks at a bunch of information in a folder about Hank after the drummer's death including Hank's photo. There is some paperwork which is supposedly Hank's musicians' union contract — but close examination reveals it to be concerned with oil drilling rights!
  • Ron tells Eadie, "I sat in with [legendary tenor saxophonist] Coleman Hawkins once. You know what the Hawk said about me? He said if he closed his eyes, he'd swear I was a black man [!]."
  • The dope-selling kid keeps his drug paraphernalia in a box of Ohio Blue Tip matches.
  • There is some inter-racial embracing between Mike and Eadie which probably raised eyebrows way back then.
  • Koko Head is identified in the subtitles as "Coco Head."
  • The one line of the old Chinese man — "Ten dollar, please" — sounds dubbed.
  • On the wall in Ron's place is a poster with a heading "Hawaii Salutes Arthur Godfrey."
  • The two musicians who have speaking parts during rehearsals are Red Callendar, the bass player who tells Eadie she is "the queen," and trombonist Trummy Young, who tells Martin he can't play any quieter (Young actually lived in Hawaii).

GALLERY:

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51. (S03E03) “The Second Shot” ★★★

Original air date: 9/30/70 — Opening CreditsEnd Credits
Director: Michael O'Herlihy; Producer: Robert Stambler; Writer: Eric Bercovici; Music: Richard Shores
Timings: Teaser: 5:31; Main Titles: 0:58; Act One: 11:20; Act Two: 11:25; Act Three: 8:20; Act Four: 12:15; End Credits: 0:54; Total Time: 50:43.

QUICK PLOT:

Five-O must thwart an elaborate assassination attempt on the life of a self-exiled Greek politician living in Hawaii.

Click here to read Full Plot.

REVIEW:

John Marley is Dr. Gregorios Lemira, a former physician and parliamentary deputy from Greece, who is living in exile in Hawaii. This reflects true events of the time, because from 1967 to 1974, Greece was ruled by far-right military juntas who feared the country would be taken over by leftists and communists. Lemira is described by Samuel Hammock from the US State Department (Walter Brooke) as "the symbol of freedom that all the opposition parties have clustered around." Lemira has been holed up for four months in a fortress-like estate surrounded by bodyguards and armed men with dogs, which is about as far away from his homeland as possible. (This location is the Anderson Estate, well-known for its use on Magnum, P.I. and other Five-O episodes like "Forty Feet High And It Kills.")

Lemira is not popular back in Greece, because a Greek Colonel (Henry Woltag) and doctor (Wright Esser) are seen in Athens planning his assassination. Eric Braeden is to impersonate Klaus Marburg, correspondent for Tage (meaning "Day"), "probably the most influential news magazine in West Germany," according to the Governor. Marburg, who wrote unsympathetic articles about Lemira in the magazine, will journey to Hawaii to interview him. A professional hit man named Achmet Schwed (identified in the end credits only as "Dark Man" (Ronald Kent)) will precede him there.

When Marburg arrives at the Honolulu Airport, Schwed shoots Marburg in his chest in a very precise manner which does not kill him, and causes the least damage possible. The whole point of this is to ingratiate Marburg with Lemira, which is exactly what happens. Lemira convinces Marburg to stay at his well-guarded compound, where he hangs out with not only Lemira but Lemira's niece Anna (Charlene Polite). Lemira ironically tells one of his personal guards, who is worried about Marburg's presence, "This man was almost murdered coming here to see me. What better credentials could he have?"

McGarrett is puzzled by aspects of the hit on Marburg, and isn't happy when Marburg becomes Lemira's guest. Considering Schwed missed Marburg's heart by only a fraction of an inch as planned, McGarrett is suspicious, saying "Pros don't get paid for missing." Other things also don't add up, such as the fact that the bullet was some custom-made job which went right through Marburg. The fancy rifle that Schwed used is later found in a locker (#472) at the airport in a manner which is much too obvious. McGarrett says everything that has happened with Marburg "just doesn't sit right."

After Schwed tries to shoot Marburg and Anna outside the hospital where Marburg is being taken for an X-ray, Schwed is killed by McGarrett after Marburg recognizes him, making Schwed's role in this conspiracy a suicide mission. However, Schwed, when he was getting an X-ray taken himself in the hospital prior to this, has left a gun under a table in the X-ray room which Marburg picks up, intending to use it to kill Lemira.

Unfortunately, handling a gun is Marburg's downfall, because after Schwed was shot, Marburg picked up Schwed's gun from the ground and gave it to McGarrett. Sending the prints to Interpol not only confirmed Schwed's identity, but confirmed that "Marburg" was an imposter.

As the show reaches its conclusion, Marburg manages to convince Lemira to get a "change of scenery" on a nearby beach where he draws the doctor out of sight of his two bodyguards Andreas (Nick Georgiade) and Paulos (Antonios Karidimas) over their objections. Marburg is just about to shoot Lemira point-blank when he himself is shot by McGarrett who, amazingly, has managed to figure out exactly where the two of them are alone on the beach. McGarrett is using the high-powered rifle which was recovered from the airport locker.

Where Marburg gets his gun during this scene is a good question, considering it is not a small gun and it has a silencer. It is not in his right front pocket, because he puts his hand in that pocket at one point. He doesn't have a right rear pocket. So it must be tucked in behind his belt in the back, where it seems odd that neither of the two guards noticed it.

The music is by Shores. It contains some interesting electronic-like sounds reminiscent of the composer's dopey hypnotic music in "A Bullet For McGarrett." Some of the orchestration of the "normal" music in the episode suggests the bouzouki, a Greek plucked stringed instrument similar to a mandolin.

WHAT DOES THE TITLE MEAN?

A killer named Marburg is part of an intricate plan where he is targeted by a sharpshooter named Schwed to give the appearance of being the object of a professional hit in order to ingratiate himself with Gregorios Lemira, an exiled Greek politician living in Hawaii. In the episode promo, Jack Lord describes Lemira as "target for the second shot," but in the show, McGarrett wonders why Schwed didn't "get off a second shot at the airport."

EPISODE PROMO:

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CASUALTY LIST:

    Injury: "Klaus Marburg" shot by assassin Schwed, a.k.a. "Dark Man," at airport.
    Death: Schwed is shot by McGarrett at hospital entrance. McGarrett confirms he is dead.
    Death: "Marburg" shot on beach by McGarrett. Lemira declares him dead.

MORE TRIVIA:

  • At the beginning of the show, the doctor tells Schwed that the bullet has to enter Marburg's chest "just above the left auricle and below the subclavian artery; precisely 1 centimeter from the heart." But the point he is illustrating with the tip of his pencil on Marburg's chest seems quite high up, well above the heart.
  • In a test run for his shooting, Marburg puts on a jacket so Schwed can use the scope which will be on the gun to see how easy it is to hit the exact spot on his chest. Schwed looks through the scope, and there is nothing on the jacket's lapel. But in the next shot, after the Colonel gives Schwed what looks like a lens which will presumably make the shot more accurate, there is a black dot on the jacket lapel which was not there before which is over the point of entry. Eric Braeden's forehead is really covered with sweat during this sequence.
  • Later when Marburg arrives in Honolulu, his jacket lapel does not have a black dot on it as he descends the stairs from the United Airlines plane, but seconds later as he is seen in the crosshairs of the scope, the black dot is there. It is still there as he is shot and falls to the ground.
  • Marburg is taken away from the airport in a Physician's Ambulance, license number 3C-2606.
  • On the background balcony in scenes at the airport, there are quite a few people, probably watching the filming.
  • The Governor tells McGarrett after the assassination attempt on Marburg, that, according to a cable from the State Department, he "isn't scheduled to arrive until day after tomorrow," but nothing seems to come of this.
  • When he talks to McGarrett in the hospital, Marburg remarks: "When it comes to Dr. Lemira, they send only the very, very best," making a play on the famous advertising slogan for Hallmark Cards. He seems to be suggesting that the assassin, who Five-O has not yet caught, really intended to kill Lemira.
  • McGarrett tells Marburg in the hospital that he is from Five-O, but how would Marburg know what this is?
  • The assassin Schwed has no dialogue in the show at all. After he gets his X-ray taken at the hospital, he is revealed to be a very hairy-chested individual.
  • Outside the hospital after McGarrett talks to Kono who says the Governor wants to see him, there is a closeup of McGarrett's car door which is covered with rain.
  • When McGarrett tells Chin Ho to find the bullet which went through Marburg, Chin protests, "How come I always get stuck with these jobs?" McGarrett replies, "Because you're good at it."
  • McGarrett wears some cool sunglasses near the beginning of the second act.
  • A phone at Lemira's house has the number 287-1299. Considering the obsessive security in the house, one wonders how Marburg can use a phone in the place where he is recovering from his wound to pass a message to Schwed, his outside contact.
  • As McGarrett is driving Marburg to the hospital, his car is seen driving on the wrong side of the road in a scene lifted from S01E23, the previous episode which starred John Marley, "The Big Kahuna," and prior to that, S01E14, "Up Tight."
  • We get a quick closeup of McGarrett's desk phone, which has two vertical rows of extensions, both on the right side. The left row of numbers go from local 22 to 26, with "Hold" on the bottom; the right row goes from 27 to 31 with what looks like "Conf. Call" on the bottom. Interestingly, when McGarrett calls Lemira to warn him that Marburg is not who he seems to be, McGarrett punches seven buttons (as if dialing a local number) on the right side of the phone, but the actual keypad for dialing is on the left side of the phone. Anna's voice is heard by Danno and Chin Ho on the speaker.
  • When Schwed's rifle is found in the locker, McGarrett is annoyed that an airport employee (John Henry Russell) touched it. But then McGarrett touches the case containing the rifle himself, and so does Kono. Earlier on at the airport, when Five-O is in the room Schwed hid in while shooting at Marburg, McGarrett says "Seal this area and dust it," but he is touching metal shelving — not that this means anything, since Schwed was wearing gloves.
  • McGarrett calls Che Fong by his full name in the show, rather than just "Che."
  • Why does Lemira allow himself to go to the beach with Marburg at the end of the show? This is not the beach close to his compound, but a "private beach near Lanikai, about a half an hour drive," according to Anna talking to McGarrett on the phone.
  • At the end of the show after Marburg is killed, Lemira says, if the shot was "perhaps a quarter of an inch higher, he might have lived." This is obviously a parallel reference to the precise measurements surrounding the "shot" on Marburg at the beginning of the show, but it is unlikely that Lemira would have seen the bullet enter Marburg's chest (Marburg twists and falls away after it hits him), and it doesn't look like Lemira turned the body over to examine it before McGarrett and Danno arrive.
  • McGarrett snaps his fingers once.
  • Stock shot of McGarrett driving by the Ali Wai Cancel from the right to left.
  • Lemira is seen smoking a pipe.
  • McGarrett's car makes screeching noises as it brakes on sand by the beach at the end of the show.
  • Writer Eric Bercovici is mentioned by Jack Lord in the episode promo on the DVD (see above), something unusual.

GALLERY:

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52. (S03E04) “Time And Memories” ★★★

Original air date: 10/7/70 — Opening CreditsEnd Credits
Director: John Moxey; Producer: Robert Stambler; Writer: Jerry Ludwig; Music: Harry Geller
Timings: Teaser: 2:21; Main Titles: 0:59; Act One: 11:49; Act Two: 7:33; Act Three: 16:20; Act Four: 10:48; End Credits: 0:53; Total Time: 50:43.

QUICK PLOT:

McGarrett becomes personally involved in a murder case when a former girlfriend of his is the prime suspect.

Click here to read Full Plot.

REVIEW:

This murder mystery featuring Diana Muldaur as Cathy Wallis, an old girl friend of McGarrett's, is, for the most part, cleverly written, but it falls down badly at the end with a large goof. There is an effective near-symphonic musical score by Harry Geller which is not what we usually expect to hear on the show as well as above-average acting by all concerned.

Cathy is in Honolulu with her lawyer husband Frank, who is on business. She calls McGarrett at 3:00 in the morning as she is walking on the beach, having left her rental house which she returned to after having a very public fight with Frank at a party earlier. Leaving the house around midnight, Cathy just misses Frank when he also returns there, having been driven home by Roswell Borden (Edward Andrews), one of his clients and the host of the party, who did not come into the house.

Cathy's call brings on the first of several flashbacks to when she and McGarrett were a "number" years before when she literally picked him up on the street while driving to the Arizona Memorial. McGarrett was wearing his Navy outfit at the time. Neither of the two look a day younger.

Cathy returns to the house, but finds Frank dead on the floor. He is first thought to be the victim of a robber who was surprised in the act. But as Five-O investigates, it seems more and more like Cathy is the one who killed her husband, especially after hearing that their marriage was rocky, aside from the argument they just had at the party where she slapped him. Frank died of multiple contusions from a blunt object.

Considering there was a time frame of around two and a half hours when Cathy might have killed Frank, evidence suggesting she is involved is uncovered on the nearby beach, like her wrap containing her husband's blood, as well as a hairdryer with her fingerprints all over it which contains samples of Frank's hair and scalp tissue.

McGarrett, who did not realize that Cathy had married Wallis, is often totally tongue-tied when questioning her during the show. Saying this is "no ordinary case, not for you," Danno gingerly suggests that McGarrett should withdraw and let the other members of the Five-O team handle the investigation, a suggestion which McGarrett ignores.

Borden also falls under suspicion, because Frank was going to make a proxy vote against him in the upcoming election of directors for Borden's company, Aurora Enterprises, which would have put him out of a job. After Frank's death, McGarrett catches Borden snooping around the rental house looking for this proxy to destroy it, but after he is hauled down to the Five-O office, Borden is eliminated as a suspect after he tells McGarrett, "If I had did all of that [the complicated plan surrounding Frank's death] to get that proxy, do you think I would have walked out of there that night without it?"

Much against his revived feelings for Cathy while confronted with what seems like a rock-solid case, McGarrett eventually arrests her for murder, but then Cathy begins to suspect that her stepdaughter Joan (Kathy Cannon) had something to do with it.

Joan was also at the party and witnessed the fight between her parents. She received a call at the party from her fiancι Arthur Dixon (Martin Sheen) seemingly calling on the "tie line" from her father's legal office in San Francisco which a trace later reveals started at 12:22 a.m. and ended 15 minutes later.

Joan was in love with Arthur, a partner in her father's legal firm, but both Frank and Cathy were opposed to the idea of the two of them getting married. Arthur was in fact giving notice to leave the company after his boss gave him an ultimatum over this matter.

After the call from Arthur, Joan went to the rental house to talk to her father about "the marriage idea," but she chickened out when she got to the front door and went back to the party. Her arrival and departure were witnessed by Ramiro (Jose Mordeno), the houseboy from the place next door, confusing Joan with Cathy herself.

As Cathy languishes in jail, McGarrett has a brainstorm when listening to something that was taped during a visit to his office by Arthur and Joan. Joan said, "I remember I said to Arthur, 'This must be costing a fortune, this call [that Joan received during the party], across the Pacific and all.' But he said that he was on the tie line from the office."

McGarrett tells Chin Ho to get the phone company to check for calls, without mentioning any further details. The actual definition of "tie line" is somewhat vague: a telephone line between two private branch exchanges or private exchanges that may or may not pass through a main exchange.

What happened with Arthur was like this: Unknown to anyone, Dixon was in Honolulu on the evening of the murder. He arrived at 10 p.m. He killed Frank, then returned to the airport where he placed a call from a pay phone there to San Francisco which was then rerouted back to Honolulu via this tie line to Joan at the party. (It is interesting that Arthur knew that she was at the party.) With only minutes to spare, Dixon boarded the 12:45 a.m. flight back to San Francisco.

The next day, after the murder, Arthur showed up at Honolulu Airport again where he met Joan, who was accompanied there by McGarrett.

There is only one problem. To demonstrate how this tie line business works, McGarrett phones Frank's office in San Francisco, which has the phone number WAymont 2-3299 and asks to use the line to call Dixon's Honolulu hotel room. The number there is 734-2211, suite 53, where Danno just happens to be visiting Dixon under some bogus pretext. McGarrett puts Joan on the phone, and when Dixon answers it, his "foolproof alibi" is exposed. Danno busts him and Arthur says, "I was so close. I guess I wanted it all."

However, the problem is, the phone number 922-3299 (WA meaning "92") is the same phone number as the pay phone at the airport that Dixon used to call Joan at the party via the tie line! It is highly unlikely that these two phone numbers in different exchanges in different states would be exactly the same.

Kono and Chin Ho tracked down the phone at the airport after their investigation with the phone company, and Dixon was also noticed by an observant airline stewardess (Kathleen O'Rourke), who saw that he returned to San Francisco only a couple of hours after arriving in Honolulu.

The dialogue at the end of the show is kind of dopey as McGarrett says goodbye to Cathy at the airport, calling her "pretty girl." He holds her hand and they gaze into each others' eyes as the camera gets closer to each of them in successive shots. While you think that he might kiss her goodbye, finally, he just tells her "Aloha, Cathy."

EPISODE PROMO:

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CASUALTY LIST:

    Death: Cathy Wallis finds her husband Frank on the floor of their rental house, dead from several blows to the back of the head.

MORE TRIVIA:

  • These are the flashbacks, which take about 8:09 of the show's running time:
    • 1:21-1:30 – McGarrett recognizes Cathy's voice on the phone during the late night call. Montage of various scenes in the past: smooching, dancing, frolicking at the beach.
    • 5:00-5:09 – McGarrett meets Cathy for the first time in the present, he didn't know she was married. Kissing in the past, McGarrett tells her "I'm falling in love with you."
    • 9:00-10:06 – In the present, McGarrett sees a soldier kissing a girl which reminds him of when he was with Cathy. In the past, they get together over coffee, she has something to tell him, he says that she lied to him.
    • 26:23-27:16 – Their first meeting: Cathy, who is driving a 1958 Jaguar XK 150 roadster, picks up McGarrett to show her how to get to the Arizona Memorial.
    • 27:50-31:08 – In the past, McGarrett borrows the admiral's launch to take her to the memorial; she comes there because her brother lost his life on the ship.
    • 31:26-34:00 – McGarrett says he is falling in love, but she can't commit herself to him, she is going to marry someone else. He tells her "You have a right to change your mind," that she is old enough to make her own decisions. She leaves Honolulu.
  • When Dixon returns to Hawaii the day after committing the murder and hugs Joan at the airport, he says "It's all right, baby," but his mouth isn't saying any words. (The voice doesn't sound like Sheen's.)
  • McGarrett plays his guitar briefly.
  • Kathy (later Katherine) Cannon, Cathy's stepdaughter, plays an old girl friend of Danno in the eleventh season episode "A Long Time Ago."
  • Dolphins are seen jumping in a pool, but they are not at Sea Life Park, but seemingly in a pool at some hotel in Honolulu. McGarrett and Cathy also seem to be outside some hotel when they are talking, watching the two "kids" down below.
  • McGarrett uses a Uher Report reel-to-reel tape recorder in his office to record Joan's statement, but when he turns the machine off, notice that the entire image is flopped — the depressed button is now on the other side and the name of the machine is on the right, reversed. It is hard to imagine how, in this flopped state, McGarrett can turn the recorder off. As usual, McGarrett rewinds the tape several times and it stops at exactly the place he wants to start listening.
  • Cathy was born around 1940, making her theoretically somewhat younger than McGarrett.
  • The dialogue of Ramiro the houseboy which is bad English is very badly written.
  • I don't know how they found only Cathy's prints on the hair dryer, because when Kono finds it on the beach, his hands are all over it.
  • McGarrett arrives at HPD — is this a stock shot?
  • A fragment of the music from the episode promo seems to be taken from the pilot episode.
  • When McGarrett looks at his watch during the show, it is not the Tissot seen in this season's opener.

GALLERY:

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53. (S03E05) “The Guarnerius Caper” ★★★½

Original air date: 10/14/70 — Opening CreditsEnd Credits
Director: Tony Leader; Producer: Robert Stambler; Writer: Ken Pettus; Music: Don B. Ray [and Johannes Brahms]
Timings: Teaser: 6:33; Main Titles: 0:59; Act One: 8:32; Act Two: 10:59; Act Three: 11:41; Act Four: 11:06; End Credits: 0:53; Total Time: 50:43.

QUICK PLOT:

The theft of a priceless violin belonging to a Russian musician threatens to explode into an international incident.

Click here to read Full Plot.

REVIEW:

The teaser from this show is a study in contrasts.

It begins with Soviet violinist Dmitri Rostov (Ed Flanders) playing an arrangement of the final movement from Brahms' Violin Concerto accompanied by a piano before a small audience invited by industrialist Jared Gifford (Larry Ronson), head of the committee sponsoring a concert which Rostov will give on Saturday, July 29th at the Waikiki Shell.

This is interspersed with shots of two hyperactive white trash morons, Hutch (Anthony James) and Norman Dekoven a.k.a. Duke (Kenneth O'Brien), who are creating havoc on the streets of Honolulu, slapping a woman on the ass, pushing people off the sidewalk, stealing another woman's purse and jumping on the hood of a car which almost runs them over. The "crappy rock music" accompanying their antics is totally erratic, sounding improvised.

After Rostov finishes his recital, a boorish member of the audience, Babbitt (Jim Demarest) asks him how much his violin is worth: "How much do you suppose you could get for it? Fifty thousand? Seventy-five? Hundred thousand?" Rostov is at a loss for words, commenting, "It would be impossible to say."

Following Rostov meeting with other members of the audience, his KGB-like "handler" Josef Sarpa (Albert Paulsen) takes the violin and puts it in the trunk of Gifford's Lincoln Continental which has been loaned to the two Russians and which is parked in the basement of the building. Hutch and Deke are watching this, though not paying attention specifically to the violin. Hutch hotwires the car, which is not locked, and they take it to Sherwood Forest, another name for Waimanalo Bay Beach Park, where one finds stripped cars and appliances.

The theft of the car is soon discovered, and Five-O is quick to respond, especially since the Governor is freaking out. He is getting major pressure from the U.S. State Department, that "the Russians ... obviously see an excuse to embarrass this country in the eyes of the world. Washington's even worried that Moscow may use this incident as an excuse to cancel the cultural exchange program." Sarpa has contacted the Soviet Embassy in Washington who leak the story to the Associated Press with the angle that "the violin was stolen by American fascists as an act of political vengeance against the Soviet Union." (McGarrett comments, "They never change their tune, do they?")

When Sarpa tells Rostov to cancel his concert, scheduled for the following evening, Rostov replies, "I will not be party to turning this unfortunate business into an ugly political issue." Sarpa coldly tells him, "Very well, Rostov. I cannot force you to cancel the concert, but I caution you to be prepared to explain your lack of cooperation when we return home."

At Sherwood Forest, Tojo ([Gary] Ah Vah), an acquaintance of Hutch and Deke, shows up, saying about the car, "Who did you lift this from, some undertaker?" Popping the trunk, they find the violin, and Hutch and Deke use it like a baseball bat, trying to hit a beer bottle which they find on the ground. Fortunately, the violin does not make contact. Five-O has Chin Ho flying over the area in a helicopter, and when the three see this, they split.

Dropped off by Tojo in their part of town, Hutch and Deke wonder if they can get some cash for the "fiddle." Hutch remembers there is a blind "old coot" violinist named Gino Mazzini (Wright Esser, sporting heavy "old man" makeup) who gives music lessons who might give them a few bucks for it. When they take it to Mazzini's, he realizes that this is a quality instrument, and pays them $15, which is all the money he has. (I don't know how he knows he has $15 in his pocket, since he is blind.)

Later, Hutch hears a broadcast on the radio that, of course, is exactly what he and Deke need to hear to advance the plot, which says, "The violin, considered a national treasure of the Soviet Union, was reportedly insured for a quarter of a million dollars against theft or damage during the month-long goodwill concert tour of the United States by the Russian violinist." Hutch says that "The Russkie fiddler" is "offering 10 thou for it and no questions asked." He tells Deke and Tojo, "if that Russkie wants that fiddle that bad, then why don't we stick him good? I mean really shaft him. Like ask for 30 thou, that's 10 apiece."

They return to Mazzini's place and steal the violin back, with Hutch murdering the old man, stabbing him in the back. Luanna (Susan Stewart) the woman who lives across the hall from Mazzini, who got her to confirm it was a Guarnerius as per the label inside, discovers his body and calls Five-O.

McGarrett cautions Sarpa, who is offering the ransom for the violin, "If you arrange to meet [Mazzini’s killers] alone, you could end up in a basket," but Sarpa tells him, "Our offer for the return of the violin stands, Mr. McGarrett. I shall take immediate steps to see you do nothing to compromise it." When McGarrett appeals to the Governor for help, he is told, "Rostov and Sarpa are not to be kept under surveillance. You're to stay as far away from them as you can get ... You're not to do anything, one thing, to jeopardize Rostov's chances of recovering his violin." McGarrett is frustrated: "What about jeopardizing our case against Mazzini's killers? ... The Guarnerius is the only link we have. If we don't nail them with the violin, we may not have a chance to prove anything." All the Governor can say is, "Then that's how it will have to be. If anything happens to Rostov's violin, Washington's going to come looking for scalps. And there won't be a thing I can do for you when they start to lift yours."

Sarpa is contacted by the three men and he gets the Embassy to wire him the money. Despite what the Governor told him, McGarrett asks Rostov for his help to establish a connection between the stolen violin and the killers. Rostov tells him, "I am not a political man. I am a musician. My music is the only thing in the world that matters to me. I detest men like Sarpa, but they are the kind I must live with, must go home to. The kind who can tell me where and when and what I can play. " But he changes his mind after McGarrett tells him, "I want Mazzini's killers so badly that I'm willing to put my neck on the chopping block" and says, "If there's any heat, any heat at all, I give you my word, I'll take it."

Sarpa goes by taxi to meet the violin-nappers in Sherwood Forest, but he uses the cab's radio to contact Rostov and tells him to also come there, where he orders Rostov to deliver the money, with the implication that if anyone gets killed during the exchange, it will be Rostov. Rostov is fatalistic, saying, "I should be the one to run the risk of reclaiming it. And then too if I'm killed, there would be that much more propaganda value than if something happened to you, huh?"

McGarrett has been tailing Sarpa after Rostov told him the location of the Bank of Hawaii where the money was wired and at Sherwood Forest, sneaks up behind the three men as Rostov gives them the money, hoping to get his violin back, though Hutch starts to pull the strings off the instrument. McGarrett knocks Tojo out, shoots Deke dead with blood squirting out his back, and wounds Hutch in the leg. Hutch throws the violin into a field nearby, but aside from the broken strings, it is "not harmed," according to Rostov.

This show is interesting the way it depicts the "minder" Sarpa, who is not specifically connected with the KGB, but described by Rostov as "a highly trained intelligence agent." Albert Paulsen as Sarpa, with his mysterious Eastern European accent (though he was actually born in Ecuador) gives a very nasty performance, a big contrast to Ed Flanders' Rostov, who is very submissive by comparison.

During the Cold War, supervision of Soviet classical and other musical artists like this was very typical when they toured outside their home country. Exactly how Ken Pettus, the writer for this show, picked up on this is a good question, because this almost ventures into "sensitive issue" territory.

To compare with real life, one web page talks about the famous Soviet pianist Emil Gilels, whose life was constantly interfered with by Soviet bureaucracy: "It is clear the regime's paranoia was making his life miserable — there are many accounts of him being humiliated by the intrusive KGB agents who accompanied him on tours abroad." There are rumours that Gilels, who died in 1985, was murdered as a result of a botched injection at an exclusive yet substandard Kremlin hospital.


Just like with S02E02, To Hell With Babe Ruth, there is another example of cross-pollination between Classic Five-O and Hawaiian Eye, the Warner Brothers detective show (1959-1963). Despite its name, the earlier show was actually filmed on the Warner Brothers lot in Burbank with stock footage inserted which was taken in Hawaii.

Not only is the story of Hawaiian Eye S04E02, Somewhere There's Music, very similar to Five-O's S03E05, The Guarnerius Caper, about two white trash types who find a priceless violin in a car they have stolen, but so is the writer of both episodes, Ken Pettus. This leads into a lot of questions about "How could he get away with this?" which I am not going to get into here.

In the Hawaiian Eye show, violinist Stafford Price (character actor Wesley Addy) is giving a concert accompanied by piano in the Hawaiian Village's HV Dome, after which he intends to get to the airport quickly, because his plane to the mainland leaves in an hour. Kazuo Kim (Poncie Ponce) puts Price's violin, a Stradivarius worth an estimated $100,000, in the trunk of his taxi along with a suitcase. When some punks trying to steal a car in the parking lot nearby are surprised by security guard Moke (Five-O's Doug Mossman in an early role), they steal Kim's taxi because he left the keys in the ignition while he went back into the hotel for a few seconds to check on Price.

Philip Barton (Troy Donahue), the hotel's Director of Special Events, is distraught, because he put in a lot of effort arranging Price's appearance, suggesting that this is something you wouldn't normally see in the hotel, though the concert seemed to be very well attended. Barton figures that he won't be seen as "doing his job" if everything doesn't go smoothly with the violin being quickly recovered.

When Barton tells Hawaiian Eye's Tom Lopaka (Robert Conrad) about the theft of the violin, Lopaka has a lot of trouble tearing himself away from some babe he is chatting with in the hotel's Shell Bar. Lopaka's attitude, backed up by Barton, is like "let's leave this up to the cops to solve; the thieves didn't know the violin was in the trunk, and they probably don't know if it's worth anything anyway."

Unlike in the Five-O show where there were two psycho-like punks who stole a car with a violin in its trunk, in Hawaiian Eye there are three of them, Earl (Armand Alzamora), Chris (Gordon Wescourt) and 16-year-old Teo Nolan (Mark Romaunt). Teo, the last of the three, doesn't seem to be as criminally serious as the other two, being kind of edgy recently. He is described as "a drag."

As the three escape, the taxi gets a flat tire, and when they open up the trunk to get the jack and the spare, they discover the violin and, like one of the characters in the Five-O episode, Earl looks like he is going to use it like a baseball bat with Chris pitching a rock to him instead of a ball. Teo grabs the violin back from Earl and when a car passes by and Chris and Earl duck for cover, Teo runs away clutching the instrument.

After Teo arrives at his home in the Coral Palms Apartments, his sister Malia (Anna Navarro) returns there. We find out that their father used to play the violin, but he was a daydreamer who never knew what he wanted out of life. When Teo tells his sister that he wants to learn the violin, she is totally against this because it reminds her of their father, a makane, which she says means "restless wind." She says she doesn't want Teo to wind up like their father "cutting cane on the docks," describing Teo as "a little pupule [crazy]."

Teo is conflicted, and goes to a place on the beach called The Popokis where his two pals are hanging out. They tell him he should take the violin to the Hong Kong Loan Company and hock it, so at least they will make some money from their enterprise. However, these two guys have a big problem, because after fixing the flat tire, they returned to downtown Honolulu where they ran into some pedestrian, who was killed.

Instead of taking the violin to a pawn shop, Teo takes it to Mr. Viotti's place. After their father died, Malia sold their father's violin to Viotti (John Wengraf), who was giving the father lessons despite the fact that he had "hands of a plumber" and he played like he was "wearing boxing gloves." When the old man, who is blind, plays the violin, he realizes that this is not some cheap fiddle.

A newspaper columnist named Terry Sherwood has learned that the missing violin was in Kim's cab. Shortly after this, the cops find the stolen taxi (minus the violin) and conclude that the car was involved in the fatal hit-and-run because of damage to its front end. When Chris sees the newspaper with a large headline mentioning both the violin and the accident, he brings this to Earl's attention, and the two of them head to Teo's place. Price gets a call from Viotti (one wonders how he knew where Price was staying), because Viotti heard news about the violin on the radio. When Price and Barton go to Viotti's place, he tells them about Teo's visit earlier.

Teo returns home, still conflicted, and finds Earl and Chris, who seemingly have waited there for several hours. They tell Teo they want him to burn the violin because it's the only thing that can tie them to the taxi and the hit-and-run, but Teo runs away from them again.

As Troy and Price arrive at Teo's place, having been tipped off to the address by Viotti, they see Teo leaving the building, pursued by the other two. Barton and the three punks end up in a warehouse, where Teo is carrying on in a very anguished way. When Barton says he wants the violin back, he is attacked by Earl and Chris, one of whom has a knife. Despite the odds, Barton manages to dispatch the two of them with Teo's help and Earl and Chris run away.

The violin is recovered, but the episode ends in a lame way, with us finding out that the Teo ended up with probation for his part in what happened; the other two "weren't so lucky." There are some laughs, because Price decided to spend some of his time while the search for the violin was going on at Gertie's Grotto, which he thought was a nightclub. Instead, it turned out to be a burlesque house.

I don't know much about the state of Hawaiian Eye at this point (the fourth was its last season), but this show overall is mediocre. Robert Conrad's performance is very indifferent – he should get the Carol Lynley "I Don't Give A Shit" prize for his acting. Mark Romaunt's acting as Teo is equally bad – this actor only has one other entry at IMDb for an episode of Perry Mason the following year, 1963. Addy as Price's performance on the violin is no match for Ed Flanders in the Five-O episode. And despite the fact that Connie Stevens is a nice person, her performance of George and Ira Gershwin's "Fascinatin' Rhythm," which totally disrupts the progression of the story (as I'm sure her songs typically did on the show) is annoying. I'm still confused about how Ken Pettus manged to use the same story for two different series, but let's not pursue this…

MORE TRIVIA (BEFORE THE H50 ONE BELOW!):

  • The piece that Price is playing that concludes his concert is the finale from Paganini's 2nd Violin Concerto, also known as "La Campinella," likely in the version arranged for violin and piano by Fritz Kreisler. When Viotti plays a brief solo on the violin which Theo brings him, it is the melody from "On Wings of Song" by Mendelssohn, the second of six songs for voice and piano (Opus 34-2, 1834), a setting of a poem by the German Romantic poet Heine.
  • Viotti is obviously blind by the way he looks at other people and moves around with a cane, but no specific reference is made regarding this. The choice of the name Viotti for him is interesting, because that is the name of a famous Italian violinist (1755-1824) who knew both Haydn and Beethoven. In Five-O, the violinist's name is Mazzini, same as Giuseppe Mazzini (1805-1872), an Italian politician, journalist, and activist who, according to one web page, showed "a sign of … a first-rate musical culture."

(Thanks to Luther's nephew Dobie on the Magnum-Mania H50 Forum for alerting me to the connection with Hawaiian Eye.)

EPISODE PROMO:

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CASUALTY LIST:

Death: In Mazzini's apartment, Hutch stabs the old man in the back.
Death: Deke is shot by McGarrett and blood squirts out his back; assuming dead because he doesn't move.
Injury: Hutch is shot by McGarrett in the leg.

MORE TRIVIA:

  • Guarnerius violins were made by members of a family from Cremona, Italy in the 17th and 18th centuries, the most famous of which was Bartolomeo Giuseppe Guarneri (1698-1744). As explained by Rostov at the beginning of the show, Giuseppe is known as del Gesω ("of Jesus") because his labels always incorporated the characters I.H.S. (a Greek acronym known as the Christogram), which in the show is identified inside the violin by Luanna. Whether these violins are "better" than the well-known instruments made by the Stradivari families is a matter of debate. There are numerous famous violinists who have expressed a preference for one or the other.
  • The Shell concert is slated for Saturday, July 29th, but in 1970, the year this show was broadcast, July 29th was on a Wednesday. This date was not on Saturday until 1972. This is the second show this season after S03E02, "Trouble in Mind," involving a concert at the Waikiki Shell.
  • The word "man" is used almost 60 times in conversations between Hutch and Deke.
  • The teaser is fairly long before the main titles kick in — about 7 and a half minutes.
  • A real phone number — 732-5577 — is seen on the side of Tojo’s Ikeda Pool Service truck. This number is used numerous times throughout the series, particularly by the Five-O office.
  • When Hutch and Deke are on the beach prior to hearing the news about the stolen violin, their radio is playing the selection "Operation Smash" from the Five-O soundtrack album. The announcer on the radio says that Gifford's first name is "Jack," but when he first meets McGarrett after his car is stolen, he introduces himself as "Jared."
  • Why doesn't Sarpa recognize McGarrett driving by the ransom site near the end of the show? It's not like there are a lot of cars on the road.
  • This is the first show featuring Honolulu used car dealer "Lippy" Espinda, identified in the credits along with his first name of David. He plays a taxi driver for Bernie's Cabs.
  • Sarpa is contacted by Hutch and Deke via a pay phone at the corner of Kanaina (3700 block) and Monsarrat (3100 block). This is an actual location, though it is unlikely the Dairy Queen seen at the corner of this five-way intersection is still there.
  • After the recital at the beginning of the show, Gifford addresses Rostov as "maestro." This is a term normally used for conductors, not soloists.
  • During the opening recital, there are two closeup shots of the violinist's fingers which seem to be playing accurately. Either Ed Flanders did a very good job or they hired some real violinist to perform in these shots. In a scene like this, a violinist might wrap his arms around the actor to play the instrument with the camera doing a tight shot to disguise this.
  • When McGarrett visits Rostov and Sarpa in their hotel room, a phone call is received for McGarrett. In the background is a musical score which is the third movement of the Brahms violin concerto (arranged for violin and piano) which Rostov is playing at the beginning of the show. (Thanks to my brother, the Brahms expert.)
  • A poster on the wall at Mazzini's place says that he played a concert at Carnegie Hall in New York on October 13, 1930. There seems to be a suggestion that Mazzini is remembered as a violinist of distinction by the fact that Rostov wants to dedicate the now-rescheduled concert to him at the end of the show.
  • After Luanna identifies Deke from a mug book, there is concern that this would not be enough to make a case against him for the theft of the violin and murder of Mazzini. Chin says that this is "One pake's [Chinese person's] opinion."
  • When Tojo drops off Hutch and Deke after they leave the forest, they are on 12th Street, just south of Harding Avenue. There's still a 76 station at that corner, but white building behind it is the same and helps to identify the location. Just a block up is the First Hawaiian Bank building where the two men first harass people and steal the woman's purse. Thanks to Fred Helfing.
  • The three crooks issue instructions to Sarpa from Fat Daddy's Pizza restaurant, where a pizza costs $3.99 and a hot dog is 45 cents. McGarrett, who is tailing Sarpa, drives right in front of this place and parks nearby to do surveillance of the scene behind him. It is surprising that the three do not spot McGarrett, especially since his car looks like a cop car with its radio antenna on the roof.
  • When McGarrett is sneaking up behind the money exchange at the end of the show, running up to a station wagon with "car in tow" spray-painted on its back door and also after Deke says "Beautiful, man," there is a funny noise on the soundtrack — maybe the sound of a bird?
  • Deke lives at 6552 Kalanianaole Highway. His number on a mug shot which was taken 7-30-70 is A11535.
  • I would like to see the follow-up to this show and witness the political heat which ensues!

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54. (S03E06) “The Ransom” ★★★

Original air date: 10/21/70 — Opening CreditsEnd Credits
Director: Michael O'Herlihy; Producer: Robert Stambler; Writers: Eric Bercovici & Jerry Ludwig; Music: Stock
Timings: Teaser: 2:42; Main Titles: 0:58; Act One: 14:13; Act Two: 8:16; Act Three: 8:50; Act Four: 14:51; End Credits: 0:54; Total Time: 50:44.

QUICK PLOT:

Efforts by Five-O to rescue an abducted young boy backfire when Kono becomes a prisoner of the kidnappers.

Click here to read Full Plot.

REVIEW:

This show about a kidnapping has parallels to S02E12, "The Devil And Mr. Frog" (DMF).

A young boy, Timmy Blake, is abducted, this time for $250,000 ransom (previous show, $300,000, equivalent to around $2 million today). The boy is played by Geoffrey Thorpe, who also played the kidnap victim in the second season episode. Timmy's father Nelson (Lloyd Gough, around 63 years old when the show was filmed) looks very old (as did the father in DMF, William Zuckert (54)) and the mother is nowhere to be seen.

As in DMF, we aren't given any details about what the father does for a living. Blake lives in a nice property with a security-controlled gate, but not secure enough to prevent the three kidnappers – Obie O'Brien (Andrew Duggan), Roy (Ron Hayes) and Earl (Peter Bonerz) — from easily getting through it. Blake must be in a profession which makes a lot of money, because at the beginning of the show, he tells McGarrett "I've handled bigger deals before," and of the ransom amount, "two hundred and fifty thousand dollars means nothing to me."

Five-O is tipped off about what is going on when Honolulu Savings and Trust notifies them that Blake withdrew $250,000 cash that morning "in 10s and 20s, unmarked, unconsecutively numbered." Blake is very annoyed about this invasion of his privacy, telling McGarrett, "If anything goes wrong, if you interfere and harm comes to Timmy, I'll hold you personally responsible." McGarrett unsuccessfully harangues the father with the usual mantra about how "kidnapping is a crime, whether you report it or not," and how Blake should not attempt to deal with this himself, despite whatever the kidnappers threatened.

The money drop is arranged (and overheard by a quickly-arranged wiretap which "the attorney general was very upset about") for Sea Life Park. Blake goes there along with, unknown to him, the entire Five-O team including McGarrett and Danno, which is kind of dumb, since it is quite likely Blake would recognize the two of them who came to his place earlier that day. At the park, Blake ends up sitting between kidnapper Roy and Chin Ho prior to leaving an attachι case with the cash by a public phone.

Unfortunately, some good Samaritan picks up the case and returns it to Blake, who drops it on the ground and all the money falls out, the bills looking like play money. Kono, seeing suspicious activity with the kidnappers trying to flee, attempts to stop them, but they force him into their van, which is driven to the out-of-the-way location where Timmy is being held.

There, Kono is tied up, but he manages to help Timmy escape through the ceiling of the room, which seems to be in a bunker of some kind. In fact, it later appears outside to be the same bunker used in episodes like "To Hell With Babe Ruth." The grill in the ceiling that Timmy pries open looks like it is very high up, and it seems unlikely that the kid would reach it, even by standing on Kono's head.

Of course, the kidnappers are not happy after Timmy escapes, and Roy beats Kono, who is sweating something fierce because of the heat in his prison room, very badly. At least Kono lets fly with a good head butt while fighting back.

Timmy, dressed in his pyjamas from when he was kidnapped, runs away and is found sleeping beside Makapu‘u Road by a delivery truck driver. This narrow street seems to be more like a driveway; I first thought that this was the road which led up the hill to the kidnappers' hideout!

Things are starting to unravel for Roy and Earl, who are both concerned because Kono saw their faces, unlike that of Obie, who later tells them he had "everything designed right, except McGarrett." Roy sarcastically tells Obie to his face: "The old pro with the perfect plans. Foolproof. 'Enough money for the rest of our lives'." Obie later tells the two of them about McGarrett: "We've got him psyched."

After McGarrett sees a Polaroid picture of the badly-beaten Kono sent to the Five-O office, he turns around, withdrawing by the window of his room like he did in "Once Upon A Time" (and later, "A Death In The Family") and is very upset, vowing to get the kidnappers, in an intense scene: "Danno, I swear, that if they kill that big Hawaiian, I'm gonna get them. No matter where they go, no matter how long it takes, I'm gonna get them." (This outburst seems rather ironic considering what happened to the "big Hawaiian" at the end of season four, where he was fired from the show, something which was reportedly influenced by Jack Lord's behind-the-scenes manoeuvering.)

Blake says that Kono wouldn't be in a pickle if McGarrett had listened to him earlier when he told Five-O not to interfere. But because Blake is overjoyed to have Timmy back, he offers to pay the ransom for Kono.

Knowing that the kidnappers will contact him on a pay phone with the number 732-9196, McGarrett has contacted Chief Special Agent Memms of the phone company who arranges for Chin Ho to work with Harris (Winston Char) in tracing the call he will soon receive. (This will become a stock sequence used in other shows.) McGarrett first tells kidnapper Roy that he is not paying any money unless he talks to Kono first, and when he finally talks to him, with Chin and Harris tracing the call, Kono drags out the conversation as long as possible, despite the fact that Roy punches him even more and clubs him with the phone receiver.

The second money drop to be done by Blake takes place in the Oahu Cemetery on Nuuano, where there is a military funeral taking place. When he leaves the attachι case there, it looks like another Samaritan tries to give it back to him, but it is actually Obie, dressed up in a major's uniform (thanks to Bobbi), who switches the money from the case into another bag right in front of Blake. After Obie splits, Blake yells to Danno nearby. Danno plugs Obie dead, which is unfortunate, because that also kills off a potential lead to find Kono (shades of the new Five-0).

However, the call tracing at the phone company has been successful to a marine gas station where Roy and Earl are working and where Kono is now being kept in a coffin-like box that doesn't seem to have any purpose other than hiding kidnap victims. McGarrett, looking like a geeky Sunday afternoon boater, borrows a motorboat and pulls up to get some fuel, but when he says he is a cop, Earl showers him with Kraig Royal (leaded) gasoline. Despite this, McGarrett is able to knock off Earl, who is fleeing in the boat very far away. Close by, Roy tries to kill Kono, but McGarrett shoots him dead as well.

Kono, whose face resembles raw hamburger meat, is taken away in an ambulance, but not before McGarrett asks him, "How do you feel, you big Kanaka?" Kono can barely reply, "Starved." McGarrett tells Kono he is "gonna be okay."

The stock score for the show is a real compendium of well-known themes and motifs. There are odd camera angles when Roy beats Kono at the hideout as well as at Sea Life Park.

At the 1996 Five-O convention, Zoulou (Kono) said that during the final scene, it was him — not a stunt man — in the box suspended above the ocean. If someone had screwed up and the box fallen into the water, Zoulou would have drowned!

CASUALTY LIST:

Injury: Kono is gut punched and hit in the back so the kidnappers can take him.
Injury: Kono is beaten by Roy at hideout.
Injury: Kono kicks Roy when he fights back.
Injury: Roy beats Kono with the phone when he refuses to speak to McGarrett.
Death: Obie is shot by Danno in Oahu Cemetery.
Injury: McGarrett has gasoline (leaded) sprayed in his face.
Death: Earl is shot by McGarrett when trying to flee in boat.
Death: Roy is shot by McGarrett when trying to shoot Kono.

MORE TRIVIA:

  • There is no promo for this episode on the third season DVD set. Whether one exists is not known.
  • The mini tape recorder used by the kidnappers seemingly can record at half speed so when the tape is played back at normal speed, the voice is sped up and distorted. This recorder uses small reels (about 3" in size). They use this machine to record messages which are played over the phone to Blake. One of the tapes is sent to Five-O with instructions for ransoming Kono. This tape is on a small reel, and when Danno goes to put it on McGarrett's tape recorder, he removes a large reel from the right, and then takes the large empty reel on the left as if to place it on the right. But in the next shot, the small reel is on the right, and the large reel is on the left. When McGarrett turns off the machine after they listen to the tape, it is seen from the opposite side and there are two large reels on the machine, possibly BASF tape, with the tape about halfway through on each.
  • The pay phone with the number of 732-9196 is at the corner of 1145 12th at Waialae in Kaimuki. The kidnappers' waterfront marine gas station hideout is in Kaneohe. They are kind of dumb, because McGarrett tells them that Blake is going to the cemetery right then and will deliver the money only when it's confirmed that Kono is OK. Obviously there will have to be some way McGarrett communicates with Blake (via Danno, who drives Blake there, unknown to the kidnappers) ... meaning there will be cops at the cemetery, contrary to the kidnappers' instructions. Duh!
  • The kids' song from S02E25, "Kiss the Queen Goodbye," is heard in the background at Sea Life Park. McGarrett, Kono and Chin Ho wear Hawaiian shirts while they are doing surveillance.
  • The kidnappers use a Polaroid camera to send black and white pictures of Timmy and Kono to the father and Five-O.
  • In the scene where McGarrett looks at Kono's picture, you can briefly see the shadow of the microphone on the wall behind Danno just before Danno says "They really did a job on him."
  • When McGarrett calls Chin at the phone company to get him ready to trace the call, he dials 1231239 (6 numbers). When Hayes calls the pay phone back to let McGarrett talk to Kono, he dials only 5 numbers.
  • A copy of the Honolulu Advertiser newspaper, used to prove that Kono is still alive, has various headlines with lower case type as usual: "cease-fire violation seen," "missiles at Suez," "school, housing bills vetoed," "now you see it, now you don't," "search on for ecology chief here" (thanks to Fred), and "pay hikes fall short of request." After Obie buys this paper from a street box and walks away, you can see the Queen movie theatre in the distance, which is showing Walt Disney's The Boatniks. On the right is a Thrifty Drugstore.
  • McGarrett wears his mysterious holster.
  • Doug Mossman plays a detective at the cemetery with Danno near the end of the show.

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55. (S03E07) “Force Of Waves” ★★

Original air date: 10/28/70 — Opening CreditsEnd Credits
Director: Paul Krasny; Producer: Robert Stambler; Writers: Mark Rodgers & Eric Bercovici (teleplay), Mark Rodgers (story); Music: Stock
Timings: Teaser: 3:43; Main Titles: 0:59; Act One: 13:06; Act Two: 9:53; Act Three: 11:09; Act Four: 10:00; End Credits: 0:54; Total Time: 49:44.

QUICK PLOT:

Five-O investigates the murder of a wealthy businessman in a boat explosion which also injures McGarrett.

Click here to read Full Plot.

REVIEW:

When Clark Sloan (Thomas Norton), a ruthless businessman, wants to talk to McGarrett during a yacht club party about something to do with "gambling," the two of them board a tender to go out to Sloan's boat. On the way there, there is an explosion which kills Sloan and seriously injures McGarrett, who winds up incapacitated for a while with a concussion and a broken hand.

There are plenty of suspects for Danno, who is now in charge, to consider, among them Sloan's young wife Maria (Linda Marsh), who only married him five weeks before in Las Vegas and Maria's ex-husband Neal Porter (James Daris), who had introduced her to Sloan while they were still married.

Before he was killed, the wealthy Sloan — with nudging from his new wife, no doubt — promised Neal $10,000 in cash to help clean up his gambling debts. Neal, with the help of both Maria and her (and her late husband's) lawyer Richard Fairbirne (Dewey Martin), breaks into Sloan's office to get into the safe where there is not only money but a letter from Maria renouncing any claims to his estate for five years which she obviously wants destroyed, since she stands to inherit about $7 million despite their short marriage. Unfortunately, Neal gets caught in the act.

After Danno finds Maria hiding in Neal's car as Neal tries to escape from Sloan's office building, he hauls her back to the office where he starts grilling her. Fairbirne, who quickly shows up, tells her to keep her mouth shut. Danno later turns the tables on Fairbirne when he proves that the lawyer had given a piece of paper with the safe's combination to Porter; Danno busts Fairbirne for "conspiracy to defraud, accomplice to breaking and entering, just for openers," sarcastically adding, "Wanna call a good lawyer?" (Nothing seemingly comes of this in the show, though.)

McGarrett is far too clever in this episode. He becomes very suspicious of Cal Anderson (John Vernon), a local handyman who is helping him work on a dilapidated boat which some "old Chinese gentleman" who McGarrett had helped out once had left him in his will. (Danno and Chin Ho ridicule this boat when they see it.) It turns out that Cal's father left his mother for a younger woman years before and the mother later turned up dead. (This was all related by Cal to McGarrett, apparently.)

McGarrett researches a similar case on Maui in 1967 where a man with a new, young wife similar to Sloan was also blown up in an explosion. And there was yet another case like this near Singapore in 1966. Cal was in the vicinity of all three explosions, a very far-fetched coincidence. Cal seems to be very forgetful about not only a speeding ticket that he recently received (verified by HPD Officer John Onoe (William Keoho), who gave it to him) but particularly the fact that he was on Maui when the explosion there took place.

McGarrett and Danno talk to Dr. Landis (Grace Albertson) at the Oahu State Hospital, who confirms McGarrett's suspicions that Cal is likely schizophrenic and motivated by being abandoned by his father in a sequence full of psychological mumbo-jumbo which rivals season two's "Killer Bee."

If one can buy this clap-trap, then the episode is enjoyable, despite red herrings all over the place, such as Porter getting all nervous about climbing up a boat's mast at the beginning of the show. There is plenty of snappy dialogue from Danno who turns up the heat during the investigation. He is very adept at getting Maria to answer his questions, especially when Fairbirne is cautioning her not to do so as per her legal rights. As well, he overcomes Fairbirne's do-everything-by-the-book attitude like when he makes the lawyer open Sloan's safe after saying "I will get a court order and we'll all sit here for as long as it takes."

As Cal, Vernon, a veteran of Canadian TV and frequent portrayer of film heavies, gives a relatively subdued performance and the nighttime photography near the end of the show is outstanding.

McGarrett seems to be taking a pretty big chance during his final conversation with Cal, where he is dropping all sorts of hints about Cal's involvement in the three explosions, especially considering Cal's supposedly precarious mental condition. Cal finally snaps and attacks McGarrett, who is pretty agile during their fight despite his injured hand. Fortunately, the other members of Five-O are nearby to help out.

WHAT DOES THE TITLE MEAN?

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EPISODE PROMO:

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CASUALTY LIST:

    Death: Clark Sloan is killed when his tender taking McGarrett to his yacht explodes.
    Injury: McGarrett is thrown into the water face down due to the explosion, resulting in concussion and broken hand.
    Injury: Neal Porter hits guard in the head when caught breaking into Sloan's office safe.
    Injury: McGarrett punches Cal Anderson during fistfight, eventually tossing him off the boat and knocking him out.

MORE TRIVIA:

  • To try and rattle Cal, McGarrett leaves a copy of the speeding ticket which he received on Cal's workbench. The number for this ticket is 5977. But later, when there is a closeup of the ticket which Cal crumples in his hand, the number is 5979. It was issued on June 1, 1970, with an expected court date of July 20. The license number of Cal's MG sports car on the ticket is 4C1953. Cal was driving 85 miles an hour, 35 over the legal limit on the Lunelilo Freeway.
  • The special effects for the boat explosion are much better than normal. McGarrett is taken away in a City and County Ambulance. As the ambulance arrives at the yacht club, the camera seems to be mounted on top of it.
  • Sloan's ex-wife Grace (Ann McCormack), who returns to Hawaii for the funeral, doesn't seem terribly shaken up by her former husband's demise: "Ex-wives don't have to mourn." Their son, Clark Sloan Jr., is played, uncredited, by Joel Berliner in a very brief scene. (Berliner played Hank in the banned second-season episode "Bored She Hung Herself.")
  • "Dr. Freeman" is paged in the hospital, though the DVD subtitles say "Dr. Freedland."
  • McGarrett says he checked on some telephone calls made by Cal at the yacht club around the time of the explosion. Would this have been possible in Honolulu for local calls?
  • The combination to Sloan's safe is 38-12-57. Danno says that the lab compared the handwriting of these numbers with a writ of habeas corpus which Fairbirne filed (was this also hand-written?) on April 16th, 1967. Danno doesn't go into details about this writ. When a closeup of Neal opening the safe is seen, though, it shows two numbers which look like 46 and 65!
  • At the end of the show as Cal is put into the cop car, Chin Ho is standing right beside him, but when Cal turns to look back at McGarrett and Danno, Chin is nowhere to be seen.
  • A Uher tape recorder, model Report 4000-S, is seen recording the conversation as Danno asks Neal questions.
  • Carole Kai plays a sexy nurse who wants McGarrett to use a wheelchair as he prepares to leave the hospital.
  • In Sloan's safe, there are several $1,000 bills, which were discontinued in 1969 (but still legal currency). Danno puts his fingerprints all over the safe and the stuff inside it when he and Chin Ho are looking in it.
  • The place where McGarrett is working on his boat is Lauhala Boat Repair, phone number 732-2144.
  • Good quote from McGarrett to Danno, after the latter does some above-average investigating: "You're a pretty good cop."

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56. (S03E08) “The Reunion” ★★½

Original air date: 11/4/70 — Opening CreditsEnd Credits
Director: Michael O'Herlihy; Producer: Robert Stambler; Writer: Paul Playdon; Music: George Romanis
Timings: Teaser: 2:06; Main Titles: 0:58; Act One: 10:12; Act Two: 12:23; Act Three: 13:21; Act Four: 10:38; End Credits: 0:55; Total Time: 50:43.

QUICK PLOT:

A Japanese businessman is accused by three former prisoners of war of being the officer responsible for torturing them during World War II.

Click here to read Full Plot.

REVIEW:

Hatsuo Shigato (Teru Shimada), president of Teletex Corporation, a Japanese computer research company, is in Honolulu for business. At the house (110 Wahani Drive) where he is staying, he receives several photos taken the previous day during a Trade Winds sightseeing tour showing him in the crosshairs of a rifle. Ordered by the Governor to handle the case and give Shigato "VIP treatment," Five-O begins their investigation.

When Shigato insists on going to the Ilikai Hotel for a business meeting to discuss a loan for his failing company over McGarrett's objections, his car explodes from a bomb and Shigato is almost trapped in the car by the seat belt which has been tampered with.

The scene switches to the Ilikai, where the 15th Airborne Division is having a reunion on the Luahala Terrace. As Danno escorts Shigato into the hotel, one of the men from this group, Frank Epstein (Simon Oakland) is convinced Shigato is Kim Rashiri, brutal commandant of the Lo Tang prison, a Japanese POW camp in the Philippines during World War II. Epstein, who is crippled, attacks Shigato with his crutches.

There are two other men from the veterans who also encountered the sadistic Rashiri in the camp during the war also at the gathering in addition to Epstein, who hoped to be a football player, and had one of his legs cut off: Mitch Bradley (Joe Maross) and Michael Holt (Barry Atwater). Bradley, who had a "brilliant mind" and it sounds like was destined to be an architect, was tortured by Rashiri which left him devastated, ending up as the owner of a gas station. Holt, on the other hand, collaborated with Rashiri, giving him part of a secret code which the three men had memorized. This has not endeared Holt, a business executive from the mainland who owns multiple corporations, to the other two.

When brought to confront Shigato by Five-O, Epstein can't understand why McGarrett can't believe his claim that the two men are the same person. Shigato denies that this is the case. Bradley is very edgy, and only admits they are the same after considerable pressure. Holt, on the other hand, says, "There is a slight resemblance. Very slight. But there's no way he can be Rashiri. Rashiri's dead. He committed suicide." The hotheaded Epstein flies off the handle, saying that this is because "[Holt] spilled his guts to save his lousy life. Rashiri didn't even have to lay a finger on him."

As the story develops, it turns out that Shigato is Rashiri, setting up the three vets in an elaborate scheme ... a bit too elaborate for one man, though Shigato is revealed to be a very slippery character in his interviews with McGarrett. McGarrett knows from his "cop instinct" that "something's strange" about this case.

The plot is interesting with several red herrings, but becomes illogical when Shigato's hired gun, Charlie Llacuna (Daws Dawson), a local "paid killer," not only manages to put darkroom equipment in Bradley's hotel room closet to give the impression that it was Bradley who took the threatening pictures which were sent to Shigato earlier, but also shoots Holt, who is talking to Shigato on a bridge connected with the hotel, from Bradley's balcony as Holt is telling Shigato (who he knows is Rashiri) that "I own you and your Teletex Corporation. I don't want you dead. I wanna see you bleed. I wanna see you broken and crawling in the gutter."

Llacuna then slips inside Bradley's room, places the rifle in a rack in front of the seemingly catatonic soldier, somehow getting Bradley's fingerprints all over it, and finally escapes, perhaps via the balcony.

All of this happens almost instantaneously as Kono breaks into the room after the fatal shot killing Holt is fired. After Holt later dies, Bradley is charged with first degree murder.

Shigato, who rigged his own car with the bomb earlier, soon kills Llacuna — who also took and sent the threatening pictures — with another explosive device which narrowly misses blowing up McGarrett and Danno.

Shigato lures Epstein to the house where he is staying where he tells the anguished vet that Holt had made his life a living hell by rising to a position of prominence in the business world and driving his company to near-bankruptcy.

Fortunately, McGarrett, who arrives on the scene with Danno, is able to convince Epstein, who has gotten hold of Shigato's gun, not to kill his former tormenter despite Shigato haranguing Epstein, blaming the vet for making him lose face during the war and turning into a "coward."

Directed by Michael O'Herlihy, this episode's photography uses some weird camera angles, and has an O.K. score by George Romanis, one of three he did for the show. But there are some questions as to how Shigato could have pulled off such an elaborate scheme.

For example, it is obvious that Shigato intended to kill Holt (via Llacuna) because of the financial sword which was held over his head, but did Shigato know that the three veterans would all be at the reunion and he intended to deal with all three of them?

EPISODE PROMO:

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CASUALTY LIST:

    Injury: Hatsuo Shigato/Kim Rashiri hit from behind by Frank Epstein with his crutches. Shigato/Rashiri is knocked out momentarily, but only "shaken up."
    Death: Michael Holt shot "badly" by Charley Liacuna from Mitch Bradley's room. Holt dies from his wounds.
    Death: Liacuna dies in explosion after bomb is delivered to his place.
    Injury: McGarrett and Danno are thrown over the bridge as Liacuna's place explodes.
    Injury: Shigato/Rashiri hits Chin Ho in the back of the head, knocking him out.

MORE TRIVIA:

  • Despite the title being listed on the DVD case and the title card for the second DVD as "Reunion," as well as Jack Lord saying this is the title in the episode promo, the actual title as seen in the main credits is "The Reunion."
  • At the show's beginning, we should already have a clue that it is not Bradley who was taking the photos of Shigato.
  • After Holt is shot, the way he falls is not logical, especially considering he is fatally wounded.
  • Llacuna has what looks like a "real" phone number — 277-9277.
  • When Epstein takes Llacuna's call at the Ilikai's outdoor bar, the children's song from Kiss the Queen Goodbye is heard in the background.
  • In a shot seen when McGarrett and Danno are on their way to Llacuna's place, the right side of McGarrett's car seems unusually dirty.
  • Jack Lord's hair has kind of a reddish tinge in this show, and in several shots, he is filmed in soft-focus. When McGarrett and Danno are thrown back by the explosion in front of Llacuna's house, it is obvious that it is two stunt men. James MacArthur's stunt man's hair is totally different than MacArthur's curly locks and Lord's hair is very red, in comparison with a shot shortly after the explosion when he is examining the damage in Llacuna's place.
  • While he is doing surveillance, Chin Ho picks up a copy of This Week magazine.
  • As in S01E04, "Samurai," the word "bushido" (the Japanese samurai code of chivalry) is misused. Holt says of Rashiri, "He was a Bushido. He was found dead in his ceremoniaI robes. He'd failed. He was disgraced. Suicide was the only way out."
  • One of the tourists at the beginning of the show takes a picture with a Canon FT QL camera.
  • McGarrett describes Shigato as a "precisionist."
  • There are a couple of stock shots, including one of McGarrett's car driving from right to left along the Ala Wai Canal.
  • When Epstein sees Bradley's camera, he sarcastically says, "Made in Japan."
  • Epstein recalls the last day he spent in the prison camp: February 17, 1945.
  • When McGarrett and Danno (or their stunt doubles) are thrown backwards over the bridge after the explosion at Llacuna's, this doesn't make sense, because McGarrett has already moved off the bridge and Danno would also have likely moved off it before the explosion.
  • Stuntman Beau Van Den Ecker plays Shigato when Epstein attacks him with his crutches from behind (see picture #5 in the Gallery below).
  • While Teru Shimada is a major character in the show with a lot of screen time, his name appears in the supporting player credits in smaller type.

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57. (S03E09) “The Late John Louisiana” ★★★★

Original air date: 11/11/70 — Opening CreditsEnd Credits
Director: Paul Stanley; Producer: Robert Stambler; Writers: Jerry Ludwig & Eric Bercovici (teleplay), Lionel E. Siegel (story); Music: Don B. Ray
Timings: Teaser: 3:11; Main Titles: 0:58; Act One: 12:26; Act Two: 10:32; Act Three: 11:12; Act Four: 11:28; End Credits: 0:53; Total Time: 50:40.

QUICK PLOT:

A contract killer's past catches up with him when he is ordered to kill a woman he was supposed to murder but instead fell in love with.

Click here to read Full Plot.

REVIEW:

Two years before the show, John Louisiana (Walter P. Young, Sr.), the title character, cleaned up (i.e., made a lot of money) in a backroom gambling den. This did not endear him to the owner of the place, Harry Quon (Alfred Ryder), later described by McGarrett as connected with "gambling, prostitution, smack, shakedowns." For his luck, Louisiana ended up getting stabbed to death in the back by Quon as two of Quon's thugs — Charlie Cayliss (Al Harrington, pre-Five-O team) and Tigner (John LaBrecque) — held him down. Working for Quon, Julie Grant (Marianne McAndrew), dressed in a geisha costume and acting as a waitress, witnessed this murder and fled the scene. (In a dream sequence recalling this in the present later, Julie runs into the camera's fish-eye lens, as does Tigner, who is pursuing her.)

Quon sent his stone-cold killer Nick Pierson (Don Stroud) after Julie, and he found her on Maui. However, he didn't knock her off, but fell in love with her and murdered some other woman who physically resembled Julie. That woman's body was found by the cops.

As the show begins in the present, Tigner is at Kahului Airport on Maui where he sees Pierson met by Julie as he arrives on Aloha Airlines from Honolulu. Whether Tigner was intentionally following either of the couple or this was just a coincidence is not specified. That evening, Tigner tracks the couple down to the place where they have been living as "Mr. and Mrs. Hollander." Pierson sees Tigner snooping around and shoots him dead in their yard. Seeing his body, Julie tells Nick, "They found me."

The next day, their next-door neighbor Mrs. Pruitt (Hilo Hattie) calls the cops when she thinks that Mrs. Hollander, who was supposed to visit her for coffee, has been kidnapped. Nothing is mentioned about the sound of Pierson's gun the night before, which was very loud. McGarrett and Danno soon arrive, likely because of the Tigner connection, and Mrs. Pruitt tells them that "Mr. Hollander ... works in Honolulu" and his wife "never goes anywhere. She said she didn't like to leave Maui ever. You know, Maui nō ka ‘oi ['Maui is the best']." (McGarrett smiles.)

The Maui coroner (Kwan Hi Lim) has dug up Tigner's body from where it was buried in the front yard, but there are no prints anywhere in the house or on Pierson's Mustang. Danno suggests they get Che Fong to check out the place, and when he arrives, he finds ONE fingerprint — which he says "looks like a lady's thumbprint." (This is baloney, it was not possible to determine gender from a fingerprint for about another 40 years, and that was not based on appearance.)

Meanwhile, Nick and Julie flee to Honolulu, where she sublets an apartment in the same building as him. When McGarrett returns to Honolulu, he goes to see Quon, telling him, "I'm gonna get you. Two years ago, when John Louisiana got hit ... I almost had you then." Quon tells him, "You know the old saying. Almost don't count." When McGarrett mentions that Tigner was just found dead, Quon plays dumb.

Summoned to Quon's place, Pierson is contracted to find out who "nailed" Tigner on Maui and then take care of them. Nick soon reports back: "Tigner was fooling around with some broad on Maui. Her husband wasn't around much. I guess the husband came home early one night, goodbye, Tigner." But Quon doesn't buy this explanation. He wants Nick to eliminate loose ends, because someone may be trying to muscle in on his business and maybe even knock him off. Quon shows Nick a letter that he received (which was actually mailed to him by Pierson): "Tigner was just to tell you that we're moving into the action."

Five-O is stumped by the "Hollanders": "They sure didn't want anybody to know who they are." This changes when a report from the FBI is received that identifies the one print from Maui as that of Julie. The ID of her body two years ago was made by an aunt based on Julie's wristwatch, but the body itself was too decomposed.

When McGarrett returns to Maui with Danno again, he runs into Pierson at the airport. Nick is there with Charlie on Quon's orders to further investigate what happened to whoever knocked off Tigner. McGarrett and Nick have a terse conversation. Danno later comments on Nick's reaction when McGarrett mentioned Julie. When the two of them go to see Mrs. Pruitt again, she identifies photos of Julie and Nick as "Mr. and Mrs. Hollander": "I never saw two people so much in love."

Pierson is starting to get edgy, and he tells Julie that they should go away, presumably to the Mainland. She could leave on a plane that evening, and he will follow in a couple of days. But she says she's not going anywhere without him. Hoping it will convince her to leave, Nick tells her everything — that Quon sent him to Maui to kill her, how he murdered a look-alike to produce "a body," and how everybody believed that he had fulfilled his contract. Interestingly, Julie is not horrified, as we might expect. She puts her head on Pierson's shoulder, saying "It's going to be all right, Nicky. I'm never going to leave you."

Back in Honolulu, McGarrett goes to Pierson's apartment building. The landlord tells him that a young woman rented a room recently, and when the landlord opens the door, McGarrett finds Julie. As they leave the building, Charlie just happens to pull up outside and sees the two of them.

When Nick goes to report to Quon, Charlie has obviously spilled the beans. Pierson is told he has to take care of Julie for good now: "You didn't kill her before, so you're gonna kill her now ... because that's the only way you are going to go on living." There is a big problem, however, because Julie is at the cop shop being grilled, but not saying anything, despite McGarrett showing Julie some photos of Nick's "handiwork," and even when McGarrett drags Quon down to the station to confront her.

As Danno escorts Julie in the police station soon after this, she is grabbed by Nick, who is disguised as a cop. When they attempt to escape, Charlie pops up in the back seat of Nick's car. They all take a trip to the usual middle of nowhere location where Charlie orders Nick to finally kill Julie. Nick shoots Charlie dead, but is himself seriously wounded by Charlie. He and Julie drive away towards a radar station, again in the middle of nowhere, pursued by McGarrett and Danno who have incongruously brought Quon along with them. Nick finally cannot go any further, and he dies at the side of the road. When McGarrett asks Julie is she is willing to testify against Quon, she nods, and he tells Quon, "The party is over."

This is a fantastic episode, definitely in my top five. In this show we have two people who are probably the most intensely in love in the entire series. As well, I kept thinking, unlike most characters in the series who are "in love," "These people actually have sex!" Both Don Stroud and Marianne McAndrew are perfect in their roles, as is Alfred Ryder, who identifies himself as being "a poor hapa-haole saloonkeeper," hapa-haole meaning any person of mixed ethnic heritage, regardless of the specific mixture. McAndrew, who previously appeared in the mediocre "A Bullet for McGarrett" in season two, is gorgeous!

The color photography in the show is outstanding, especially during the teaser. The score is attributed to Ray, despite the presence multiple times of the "memories" theme and the bonging bell sound, both of which are associated with Morton Stevens.

WHAT DOES THE TITLE MEAN?

The murder of John Louisiana set the events in the show in motion two years ago. When Harry Quon finally tells Nick Pierson that he knows the deception that Nick has been playing by not killing Julie Grant, Quon says that Julie "won't testify ... for the late John Louisiana."

EPISODE PROMO:

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CASUALTY LIST:

    Death: After Tigner tracks Nick Pierson to Julie Grant's place on Maui, Pierson shoots him dead.
    Death: In flashback, John Louisiana stabbed by Harry Quon, witnessed by Julie Grant.
    Injury: Nick hits Danno with a nightstick, knocking him out so Nick can take Julie out of HPD headquarters
    Death: Nick shoots Charlie Cayliss in firefight.
    Death: Charlie shoots Nick in firefight but Nick dies after he and Julie start driving on the road toward the radar station.

MORE TRIVIA:

  • Pierson gets Grant to sub-let the apartment (#512) next to his (#510) in the Pagoda Terrace. Pierson says her apartment is "right across the hall from mine," but it is actually the next one to the left of his when viewed from the front.
  • At the end when he is pursuing Pierson, Julie and Charlie, McGarrett is seen driving on a narrow, one-lane road, then on a two-lane highway, and again on the one-lane road.
  • Pierson uses the expression "baby" 20 times to Julie during the show.
  • A copy of the Honolulu Advertiser has the usual headlines in lower case type: "police probe killing on Maui" and "body found in Kihei backyard; tie to Oahu syndicate seen." Other headlines on the page include "Nixon assures NATO," "milk fight here may go to courts" and "Cambodia, Saigon air accord."
  • As Pierson and Charlie are about to leave Maui, Charlie goes to buy some candy from a vending machine, which includes several packages of M&M's.
  • Kono uses the antiquated expression "gunsel" (a criminal carrying a gun), referring to Pierson.
  • I like the fly on the dead Tigner's face near the beginning.
  • There is mention of Maui police Chief Kubota, who is seen later this season in the episode "Paniolo."
  • Pierson's apartment phone has the number 555-9834.
  • The letter that Pierson sends to Quon is addressed to "Harry Quon, c/o Harry's Cafe, Honolulu."
  • The house on Maui where the "Hollanders" live doesn't seem to have a driveway, but a gate in the fence which opens up to admit a car. As Pierson brings Julie home, a bag of groceries shows a box of Kellogg's Corn Flakes in a variety pack.
  • The badge number of the cop Pierson is impersonating is 199.

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58. (S03E10) “The Last Eden” ★★½  BOOK HIM   BOOK THEM 

Original air date: 11/18/70 — Opening CreditsEnd Credits
Director: Paul Stanley; Producer: Robert Stambler; Writers: Jerry Ludwig & Eric Bercovici; Music: Stock
Timings: Teaser: 4:19; Main Titles: 0:59; Act One: 12:24; Act Two: 8:45; Act Three: 9:37; Act Four: 13:47; End Credits: 0:54; Total Time: 50:45.

QUICK PLOT:

Businessmen attempt to frame a nightclub star who is outspoken against pollution after a disposal plant is demolished in an explosion.

Click here to read Full Plot.

REVIEW:

Ray Danton stars as singer Jimmy Nuanu who performs at the Canoe House in the Ilikai Hotel, often haranguing the audience with ecological issues. Despite his feelings for the environment, the outspoken Jimmy, described by McGarrett as a "hotheaded Hawaiian," is apparently well-to-do, since he drives a white Rolls-Royce.

Jimmy is set up as a patsy by a company headed by sleazy entrepreneur Walter Colfax (Paul Stevens), who wants to get control over the disposal of the island's garbage (seemingly a euphemism for "sewage" ... see below). Colfax gets help in this frame-up from Jimmy's pal Eddie Kamoko (Tom Fujiwara) in exchange for paying off $10,000 that Eddie owes to the Syndicate for gambling debts, though this is not explained very well.

Near the end of the show, McGarrett speculates that Eddie brought the seemingly very drunk Jimmy close to a local sewage disposal plant and left him almost passed out next to his car. The plant was totally destroyed in an explosion which not only caused $2 million in damage but also the death of a night watchman. Replacing this plant has been a subject of debate in the Hawaiian legislature for some time, but all this has resulted in is "surveys and double talk" according to Colfax. (The special effects for the explosion, using miniatures, are not bad.)

In the trunk of Jimmy's car some detonator caps were later found, and, as well, Jimmy had experience in dealing with explosives when he was in the army in Korea. The presence of some tire tracks that don't match Jimmy's car at the scene, discovered by Che Fong, however, raises some questions.

This show has an interesting premise, which was kind of ahead of its time, but there are quite a few issues.

It begins with Jimmy beating the crap out of a heckling patron named Zane (Robert Luck), who actually works for Colfax. This seems kind of odd, even though when interviewed by McGarrett later, Jimmy says he doesn't know Colfax. Colfax does greet Jimmy by name at the show's end where the singer goes to the developer's office to avenge the death of Eddie, who was getting too close to blabbing about how he set up his friend. As well, during the initial altercation with Zane, both Colfax and his stooge Sutton (Steve Merrick) are seen close by.

After this dust-up outside the Canoe House, Jimmy specifically says that he has to do a "second show," and he is seen sitting in his dressing room talking to his son Joey (Dan Jacques Kaleikini) and Kamoko. Eddie presumably spikes Jimmy's drink so Jimmy can be later planted at the site of the explosion, but the scene cuts directly to Jimmy stumbling around his car, incapacitated by the knockout drops (or whatever). If he did a second show, would the knockout drops have taken so long to take effect?

Colfax says that "16 million [the DVD subtitles translate this as billion] gallons of garbage go into the ocean every day," but he really means "sewage." Colfax's company has developed some process which will remove 90% of the impurities before the sewage is discharged into the ocean. When McGarrett grills Colfax in his office, he knows that a lot of small competing corporations were forced into bankruptcy or compelled to merge with Colfax's company on their terms, thus leaving Colfax's company as a monopoly dealing with the Hawaiian government who have been humming and hawing about dealing with the "pollution" issue for "years."

Bruce Wilson plays Captain Lyons, formerly a demolitions expert from the British Royal Navy who now runs a charter fishing business. While McGarrett asks his team to make inquiries of "other places using explosives on these islands," how does Five-O know that Lyons had experience with explosives, specifically tetrytol (a real product, a mixture of tetryl and TNT), which was used to blow up the sewage plant? Did Lyons have to register as a munitions expert or something when he came to the islands?

When Lyons is interviewed at Five-O, McGarrett tells Lyons that he knows the captain started out on a three-day charter recently (the boat was hired by a Colfax executive), but then checked in to Honolulu the next day (i.e., he was only gone for one day). Isn't there something inherently suspicious about this? The charter was supposed to be to Hanalei Bay on Kauai, but the logs for the harbormaster there do not match what Lyons reported (he went to the Nawiliwili on Kauai instead). This information is used to prove — not in a very convincing way — that Lyons was involved with the destruction of the sewage plant. These facts are sprung on Lyons, a slippery character, at the end of the show, when he is busted for the explosion along with Army Sergeant Dobbs (Robert Harker) who stole the tetrytol from a barracks (the same one seen at the beginning of S02E02, "To Hell With Babe Ruth").

When McGarrett asks Jimmy if he has ever heard of Colfax, Jimmy denies this. But even Professor Hale (Richard Morrison), who is an expert on ecology interviewed in McGarrett's office, knows that if anyone wants to make money out of the situation treating the sewage, it is Colfax. Does it make sense that Jimmy would not know about him? Hale has a rather cynical view: "Greed and money ... that's what ecology's all about."

At the show's finale, Jimmy goes to Colfax's office with a gun, but he is punched out and going to be "taken care of." Five-O arrive quickly and a gun battle ensues in the building's garage. After a bizarre chase up a down escalator, Jimmy grabs Colfax and almost pushes him over a railing several stories up, similar to what happened to Eddie.

McGarrett persuades Jimmy to let the law takes its course, and Jimmy, who earlier on told McGarrett "We Hawaiians always trusted you because you were always on our side," ends the show philosophically, saying, "You saved my life. But as far as the islands are concerned, nothing's really changed, has it? I mean, who's gonna save everybody else's life?"

WHAT DOES THE TITLE MEAN?

Jimmy Nuanu's friend Eddie Kamoko tells him: "You gotta shoot your big mouth off about how this [Hawaii] being the last Eden and how everything is getting ruined."

EPISODE PROMO:

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CASUALTY LIST:

    Injury: Jimmy Nuanu drugged so he can be framed for sewage plant explosion.
    Death: Harmon, the night watchman, killed in sewage plant explosion (not seen by us).
    Death: Eddie Kamoko thrown out the window by Sutton and Zane.
    Injury: Hughes knocked out by Jimmy when he goes to Colfax's office.
    Injury: Jimmy knocked out by Zane in Colfax's office.
    Death: Sutton shot by Danno during firefight in parking garage.
    Death: Zane shot three times by McGarrett to end firefight in parking garage.
    Injury: Colfax choked by Jimmy in final confrontation in stairwell.

MORE TRIVIA:

  • This show was co-written by Jerry Ludwig and Eric Bercovici, who wrote over 10 Five-O episodes in total. Prior to this episode, which aired on November 18, 1970, they had written a Mission: Impossible episode called Butterfly (broadcast October 30th of that year) which starred Khigh Dhiegh as well as other actors who appeared on Five-O such as James Shigeta and Helen Funai. Two of the characters in the Five-O show are named Phelps (played by Mitch Mitchel [sic]) and Briggs (played by Wallace Landford), the same as the "bosses" of Mission: Impossible. Also, in the underground parking lot of the building which contains the Colfax Corporation, there is a directory which lists information about which floor it is on and two of the company employees are identified as David Sutt and Seward Roll, perhaps an in-joke relating to Sutton Roley, who directed all five of the shows Ludwig and Bercovici wrote for Mission: Impossible, as well as three Five-O episodes from 1976 and 1977: "Double Exposure," "Elegy in a Rain Forest" and "A Capitol Crime."
  • On the walls of Jimmy's dressing room are posters for Arthur Lyman and Beverlee & Sidro with the Sneakers (actual 1970's performers on the Waikiki strip).
  • After Kamoko is thrown out of his apartment window and killed, there is a hair in the picture when the Beacon Ambulance team prepares to transport his body.
  • While pursuing Jimmy at a party, McGarrett encounters a blonde babe who offers him her services for free. McGarrett's classic response: "It's never free, honey." During the show, McGarrett refuses a drink twice. He also calls Jimmy by his Hawaiian name "Kimo."
  • During the teaser, Jimmy uses the popular phrase "Ain't no big thing" when he tells Eddie, "I hit the guy once or twice."
  • The kids' chorus from "Kiss The Queen Goodbye" is heard in the Muzak-like background at the beginning of the show. When Kamoko is talking to Jimmy in his dressing room, there is a simple tune heard which recalls one heard in S01E02, "Strangers In Our Own Land." The bonging bell sound is heard around the time of the explosion and the "pursuit" theme from "The Ways Of Love" is heard briefly during the episode promo.
  • The "bookings" are one for Jimmy and one for Lyons and Dobbs.
  • A stock shot shows an explosion on the side of a mountain; in front of this is a railway track. Although there was a railway on Oahu which opened in 1889, it was used mostly for transporting pineapples and sugar. It was taken over by the Navy and abandoned in 1970, around the time of this show.

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59. (S03E11) “Over Fifty? Steal!” ★★★½

Original air date: 11/25/70 — Opening CreditsEnd Credits
Director: Bob Sweeney; Producer: Robert Stambler; Writer: E. Arthur Kean; Music: Morton Stevens
Timings: Teaser: 4:07; Main Titles: 0:59; Act One: 11:24; Act Two: 6:59; Act Three: 12:33; Act Four: 13:33; End Credits: 0:53; Total Time: 50:30.

QUICK PLOT:

An aggrieved senior who is a master burglar plays cat and mouse with Five-O in a series of publicity-grabbing thefts.

Click here to read Full Plot.

REVIEW:

This is considered by many to be a classic show, and on IMDb is currently the highest-rated episode by users, though the Vashon Trilogy is edging towards it as I am writing this (September 2019).

Hume Cronyn stars as Lewis Avery Filer, a former insurance investigator who plays a game of cat-and-mouse with McGarrett and Five-O, using disguises and trickery during his robberies which net him over $200,000. He leaves Monopoly cards where he commits crimes to further taunt his pursuers. (Parker Brothers, the creators of Monopoly, get a credit at the end of the show.) After robbing a jewellry store at the beginning of the episode, he says "I've got two more jobs scheduled. Just two. Then I retire for good."

McGarrett, the Five-O team and even the Governor have a good laugh at Filer's smart-aleckiness, but they draw on a wide variety of resources to crack the case, one they haven't had anything like in years, according to McGarrett. This includes Che Fong's forensics plus computer analysis and even an opinion from psychiatrist Wally Emerson (John Hunt, in his first appearance on the show) who says that Filer is likely suffering from some kind of an identity crisis: "He has to label every crime. He behaves like a guy who has been kicked around all his life. Trodden on, shoved aside. And now, he's kicking back."

McGarrett points out patterns in computer printouts which Danno is "going blind" reading: "First hit, almost a year ago. Hundred and fifty, 250, 350, a couple of thousand here. The robberies are in groups of three. Then he lays off for two months. [Then he] sets up the next three. All the places he hit are commercial establishments. All insured."

Five-O determines that Filer was fired from his job at Island Home and Life around the time that he turned 50 and was having to contend with large hospital bills for his wife, who passed away from a heart condition. His company was taken over by a conglomerate named Mid-Pacific Industries (MPI), and he is only striking back at places that are connected to them.

At an extraordinary press conference, ordered by the Governor because MPI have "done a great deal for this island," Perstin Franklin (Les Keiter), one of their executives, tells reporters, "Every firm struck by this thief does business with us. We either insure it, own it outright, or we participate in some way in its profits." Filer himself interrupts this press conference, daring McGarrett in front of the assembled press to book him, which McGarrett has so far been reluctant to do without hard evidence, or he will sue the Five-O chief personally for libel.

Even more unusual than this press conference is the scene which follows in McGarrett's office, where Filer and McGarrett engage in a battle of wits. McGarrett tells Filer: "You wanna force me into court before I have a case. That way you can get an acquittal and live for the rest of your life on what you've stolen, with the blessings of the court. No chance. I'll book you when I have a case." Filer responds by saying, "You know, McGarrett, you're too smart to be a cop." McGarrett comes back with, "And you're too smart to be a thief. That's the one thing I regret about you, Mr. Filer. You are a thief." While they are talking, McGarrett suddenly grabs one of Filer's shoes and scrapes a soil sample from it. Given the lack of a warrant, I doubt if this evidence could be used. McGarrett says, "I'll apologize in court."

The clincher in the case is when McGarrett has a brainstorm remembering a previous similar case. He checks out one of the cars that Filer was using and discovers mileage information in an odometer-like device called a Hubodometer in one of the car's hubcaps which enables him to figure out where Filer is hiding the proceeds of his robberies. That such a gizmo even existed was news to me, and while this is sort of convincing, I seriously doubt that most people would be aware of such a thing.

The location where Filer has buried the money is Paradise Park, which features various varieties of flora and fauna which Che Fong has already identified. Filer is pretending to be someone working for the Water and Power Department, and takes a golf cart-like vehicle quite a ways into the park. McGarrett, who is hot on Filer's trail, can seemingly get to the location inside the park's "jungle" very quickly and surprise Filer when he is digging up the loot.

The episode is relatively light-hearted and, atypically, no one is the victim of violence; Filer treats some of his victims in a very "gentlemanly" way. As well, the show deals with issues of age discrimination which are still around today. The best part of the show is the jaunty music by Morton Stevens, who exceeded himself in writing a theme for Filer featuring a harpsichord which goes through several amusing variations.

CASUALTY LIST:

    None. The second time that’s happened –- the first was S02E08, "The King Kamehameha Blues."

MORE TRIVIA:

  • There is no promo for this episode on the third season DVD set. Whether one exists is not known.
  • McGarrett receives a registered parcel from Filer while he is at Che Fong's lab which contains some diamonds from the first robbery, perhaps because they "trace too easily." He opens the package in a rather cavalier fashion, leaving his fingerprints all over the wrapping. He is obviously not concerned that it might contain a bomb! Considering he has to sign for the parcel, McGarrett wonders how someone knew he would be at the lab to receive it. However, the address on the parcel is to McGarrett at the Palace, not the lab specifically, which suggests that Che Fong's lab is also in the Palace. There are three stamps on this parcel which are upside down. These are not real postage stamps, but "poster stamps" connected with the Los Angeles 1932 Olympics which cannot be used as postage, since they have no denomination. The parcel was mailed at the Punahou post office.
  • As Galen Kam shuts the blind on the front door window of his jewelry store (Kam's Jewelry) at the beginning of the show, we can see that across the hall is an office for Dr. D. Forbes, who is the neurosurgeon who operates in the third season opener, "And A Time to Die..." There is a calendar on the wall inside the store for "Kam Mau Co." The clock in the office is a Seth Thomas model. Why are there oxygen cylinders in the back room at this store? Also, how can Filer lock Kam and the employees in the back room? We see him lock the door from the outside, but the place where you can insert the key in the door is visible from the outside. It's not like you can lock the door from the outside to keep people in the back room.
  • Filer adopts the following personas:
    1) Older man with a beard, hat, pipe and sunglasses (at Kam's Jewelry);
    2) Guy wearing a plastic clown-like mask with bushy red eyebrows and moustache (as he calls McGarrett from a public phone after the jewelry store robbery);
    3) Old man, the owner or person in charge of stock at Rupert and Whitmore Importers, doddering, says he is sick (this company is on the 7th floor at 1420 Ala Moana);
    4) This old man changes to a cop who talks to McGarrett in the hallway and ignores Danno's instructions outside;
    5) Asian armored car guard at KashKart, his makeup is really bad! (KashKart)
  • Filer leaves the following Monopoly cards:
    1) Chance: Go directly to jail, do not pass go, do not collect $200 (at Kam's)
    2) Community Chest: Bank error in your favor, collect $200 (with the parcel of diamonds)
    3) Chance: Go to jail card again (taped to safe at Rupert and Whitmore)
    4) Chance: Bank pays you dividend of $500 (at KashKart)
    5) Chance: Go to jail card again (McGarrett gives to Filer at the end of show)
  • The Oahu Railroad is mentioned as having a depot in Honolulu. There was an Oahu Railway and Land Company which operated from 1889 to 1971. According to Wikipedia, it served several sugar mills and plantations and also hauled end products, equipment and workers. The sugarcane plantations sometimes had their own lines. As a common carrier, the OR&L carried freight, passengers, mail and parcels. Besides sugar and pineapples, the railroad hauled garbage from Honolulu to a dump on the Wai‘anae Coast, sand from Wai‘anae to Honolulu during the development of Waikiki, and served the major military bases. The Honolulu harbor branch, renamed the Oahu Railway, was used until December 31, 1971 for industrial operations.
  • The reels on the large video tape machine used to view Filer's robbery are turning at a rather fast speed.
  • Filer makes a getaway from Five-O and cops who are tailing him in a Mach I Ford Mustang (license N3-625).
  • The gemstone Tanzanite, stolen from Rupert and Whitmore, was discovered in 1967, as mentioned in the show. In the back room at this company is a box containing 50 army gas masks.
  • A car air filter in Che Fong's lab has a tag with a date on it — 2/16/70. Che uses a Swift microscope.
  • During the press conference, McGarrett makes a big noise about how he doesn't want Filer's name revealed despite that fact that there are movie cameras there recording every word, and Filer's name is mentioned several times.
  • The HPD impound lot is across the street from the Johnson and Buscher building. Only a few minutes earlier, we saw Danno and other cops participating in a stakeout drive right past this building.
  • A cartoon in the newspaper ridiculing McGarrett and Five-O's attempts to catch Filer has an accompanying article written by Louis M. Diuguid, who works for the Washington Post news service!
  • McGarrett is reading a paperback book called Bachelor's Hawaii, perhaps the one by Boye Lafayette De Mente and published in the 1960s. One of the subjects of this book, according to worldcat.org, is "sex customs."
  • The phone on McGarrett's desk has the number 287-1299. There are several extensions, including 32, 33, 34, 35, 19, 20, 21, 22, 1299, 1298 plus two HOLD keys. The six extensions on the right are all blank.
  • On the bottom of a monitor in Five-O office used to view the KashKart surveillance tapes is the word "HENSHAW," perhaps it belongs to Set Director Buck?
  • McGarrett is seen putting Visine-like drops in his eyes after pulling an all-nighter.
  • Benjamin Drew e-mailed me to say that at Paradise Park, Filer is shown removing a Muscovy duck from the cart before he can go to work. As he picks up the duck, you hear typical duck quacking sounds. But Muscovy ducks can't quack, the most noise they can make is croaking or hissing.

In August of 2015, Chad Engler contacted me regarding the Hubodometer featured in this show. He told me that his family's company made this device. He wrote: "They used an Engler Hubodometer, made by Engler Instruments from the 1940's to the 1980's when it was sold. These are odometers usually used on trucks and trailers. They simply can't be tampered with or broken. The company used to have a contest where people could hit them with sledge hammers and they never broke. In college I challenged my whole dorm floor to break one. 30 people taking turns with hammers, throwing it from the 4th floor onto a paved driveway, it never broke. Inside it is insidiously simple. There is no cable or anything like you would expect with an odometer."

When I asked him for more details, he elaborated: "The gauge inside of the acrylic case can rotate but doesn't because it has a lead weight that keeps it upright. So, the wheel and tire rotate but the gauge doesn't. Each hubodometer is geared for a particular tire diameter, using little gears translates each rotation into the right amount of distance. These things would go for millions of miles. Others were made to count acres for farming, or anything like that. This shows the inside. Here you can see the lead weight, crescent shaped. Here's the company and some boxes the products were shipped in."

When I came to revise my review of the show in 2019, I had some further questions for Chad, who replied:

MQ: What was the purpose of Hubodometers?

Chad: Hubodometers were invented to solve two problems:

1) To keep track of maintenance intervals on vehicles that didn't have odometers, such as the trailers that large trucks pull. Tractor-trailers were the largest market. Example: If you owned trailers that needed maintenance every 10,000 miles, you had no way to know when it was time. Eventually this would be a safety problem if the maintenance was missed for long enough.

Hubodometers were also used on many other vehicles such as golf carts, farm equipment, rental trailers, buses, even just machines that had a major revolving component would have one that counted revolutions instead of miles. They could be calibrated for any vehicle by using different gearing inside of the hubodometer. On farm equipment for instance instead of reading miles they would read in acres.

2) To keep track of miles driven in a way that was tamper-proof. Many trailers are leased with mileage restrictions or paid by the mile. In the old days regular odometers could be tampered with and that could reduce what the leasing company was paid and also wear out their equipment before they received their return on investment.

You might think they could just look at the odometer that is in the truck itself. The trailers would usually be attached to different trucks all the time so this wasn't a solution. The leasing companies wanted to be sure they were properly paid. Engler Hubodometers could be beaten with a sledge hammer and they could not be opened. The mechanism that drives them is so simple that it cannot be tampered with. Everything is internal, there is no cable leading to anything else that the driver could disconnect. You can't drive in reverse and remove miles from a Hubodometers either, they still count the miles in reverse.

The concept that rental car companies would want to prevent people from tampering with the car's odometer was a real concern for them and tests were done to see if Hubodometers could solve this problem. No Hubodometers were ever really sold for that purpose. The idea was tested, though, on the personal vehicles of some employees.

MQ: How hard was it to tamper with an odometer in the era of this episode?

Chad: In the old days you could jack up the rear end and run the car in reverse to remove miles from the odometer, so it was pretty easy to tamper. It was also possible to remove the cable from the back of the odometer and prevent miles from going on the odometer. Of course the speedometer would not have worked while it was disconnected but that's a small price to pay for a crime like this.

MQ: Was the way the Hubodometer was shown in the episode correct?

Chad: The way the Hubodometer was mounted in the show is completely unrealistic, it would never be mounted to the hub cap. On any vehicle they are mounted to the hub using two of the lug nuts and a bracket. The hub cap would almost certainly have come off the car with all that mass mounted to it if it were driven. I'm sure for TV it had to be this way so it could be turned and shown to the camera or maybe they just didn't know how to properly mount them.

MQ: Was the company contacted about the use of their product in the show?

Chad: Engler Instruments was started by Cliff and Howard Engler, brothers who were President and CEO and best friends. Both Cliff and Howard have passed away but I e-mailed their children to see if they remembered anything about this. I also talked to my father, Charles Engler, who was VP at Engler Instruments.

The best I can find out is that none of them knew this product was going to be used before the episode came out. They were not asked to consult on how the Hubodometer was used nor asked permission. That said, memory is a tricky thing and it has been a very long time. If they had been asked they would have been thrilled to say yes. They were all very excited and happy to have their product on display, even if the way it was used was unrealistic.

On a side note I discovered that some of the children of the company founders were not aware at all that the Hubodometer was ever in the show. I only learned about it myself a few years ago. I can't explain how we didn't know about it, you would have thought that our fathers would have told us all about it having something from work that we could relate to — to share, like that.

MQ: Do you think the average person would have understood what the Hubodometer's function was in the show and how it helped solve the crime?

Chad: I thought it was clear enough that there was some kind of a backup odometer on the car and that the difference between the main odometer and the backup odometer provided the data that solved the case. Of course I have had Hubodometers and instruments like that around me my whole life.

MQ: In the pictures you sent me, one of the Hubodometers has "REVO-COUNT" on it, what was that used for?

Chad: I don't know why this is, but revo counts were used on golf carts sometimes. I don't know why they would want revolutions instead of miles but underneath it's really all the same thing — just a way to keep track as to when it's time to do maintenance. I'm sure revo counts were used on other machines too, but I don't know any actual examples.

MQ: On the front of two of the units you sent me pictures of is a message about how you shouldn't use cleaning solvents on them. Why was that warning there?

Chad: The reason people were warned about solvents is that the front half of all of these hubodometers was made out acrylic plastic. It is very strong but solvents can make it cloudy and that would make it hard to read the numbers.

MQ: Thank you, Chad!

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, 00:00, 01:14, 00:00, Opening Wave; Filer arrives at the jewelry store, begs to be let in.
#2, 04:05, 01:00, 01:14, After Filer taunts McGarrett, we see the show's Main Title.
#3, 05:06, 00:22, 02:14, Opening credits, McGarrett is driving, Five-O is at the jewellery store, Kono is interrogating employees.
#4, 06:23, 01:19, 02:36, Filer taunts McGarrett more to look at him in a nearby phone booth using binoculars he left in the store; Filer is wearing a mask.
#5, 10:07, 00:26, 03:55, A package of unsatisfactory diamonds is received by McGarrett at the lab, it contains a Monopoly card, "Bank error in your favor, collect $200."
#6, 12:44, 00:42, 04:21, Five-O goes to building where the "Monopoly thief" has struck again, Filer is pretending to be the store owner, an old man.
#7, 14:30, 01:54, 05:04, Filer as the old man goes into a nearby room, he locks the door, leaves another Monopoly card and changes his disguise to a cop. Five-O encounter him in the hall, not knowing who he is; this leads to Wave.
#8, 16:30, 01:56, 06:58, Outside, Danno encounters Filer who escapes in a car, Danno pursues, but loses him.
#9, 19:58, 00:02, 08:54, Whip pan.
#10, 23:01, 00:27, 08:55, Filer steals a delivery which has just been made to some company by what looks like two armored car men; Filer is disguised (badly) as an Asian wearing the same kind of getup as the other two men.
#11, 26:33, 00:01, 09:23, Whip pan.
#12, 29:36, 01:18, 09:23, Filer appears at a press conference where he is the subject of discussion and threatens to sue McGarrett for libel.
#13, 35:28, 00:33, 10:41, Filer leaves McGarrett's office where the two have been trading barbs, leads to Wave.
#14, 36:02, 00:55, 11:14, Danno and Kono are doing surveillance on Filer's place in the middle of the night.
#15, 38:16, 01:25, 12:09, McGarrett, Che Fong and Chin Ho analyze maps, Danno and Kono are still doing surveillance.
#16, 40:23, 01:38, 13:35, Filer switches his rented car to a Mustang Mach I, Danno and Kono follow but lose him.
#17, 43:30, 06:06, 15:13, McGarrett and Chin Ho figure out where Filer's "bank" is, based on odometer-like information in rented car hubcaps, McGarrett goes to Paradise Park and busts him.

GALLERY:

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60. (S03E12) “Beautiful Screamer” ★★★½

Original air date: 12/2/70 — Opening CreditsEnd Credits
Director: Tony Leader; Producer: Robert Stambler; Writer: Stephen Kandel; Music: Stock
Timings: Teaser: 4:25; Main Titles: 0:58; Act One: 12:29; Act Two: 8:45; Act Three: 13:54; Act Four: 9:20; End Credits: 0:54; Total Time: 50:45.

QUICK PLOT:

A strangler writes poetry by Byron in lipstick on the legs of two victims he murdered, one of whom is Danno's girl friend.

Click here to read Full Plot.

REVIEW:

Walter Gregson (Lloyd Bochner) is a self-made man who owns a construction company. He is worth about $1.5 million, but has overextended himself with loans totalling some $2 million. To cover himself, he has put up collateral in the form of stock which he would receive from the inheritance of his wife Sally (Laraine Stephens) — if she dies. (This seems peculiar, can a man put up things his wife owns like this, just because they are married?)

During a wedding rehearsal for some friends of the couple at the beginning of the show, we see that relations between Gregson and his wife are far from amicable. In fact, they are chilly, and the wife wants a divorce, telling her husband by the time she gets home that day, she wants him to have totally cleared out of their house.

A desperate man, Gregson has formulated a complicated plan to kill his wife and inherit her fortune and thus solve his financial dilemma. Thinking in advance to throw the cops off the track by confusing them, he murders two of his wife's friends, Linda Marsh (Valerie Holmes) and Jane Michaels (Anne Archer). Sally and these two women were part a group of five life-long girl friends, neglected by rich parents. The girls called themselves "The Orphans." Their finishing school teacher, Miss Hawthorne, used to read them a poem by Byron called The Giaour. After murdering the two women, Gregson writes lines from this poem on their legs with lipstick.

This just demonstrates how stupid he is, because this would make it more likely that there was some connection between the two women and his wife, if he managed to knock her off as well — which he does not. Gregson further demonstrates his stupidity, because he strangles Linda on a tennis court at the Makaha Inn where she is taking lessons, and Jane in the office at this resort where she is involved with a charity auction for the Junior Blind, both locations where he could have been interrupted at any time.

There is a major complication with Five-O during this investigation, because Jane was Danno's girl friend which produces a heart-rending reaction from him when he finds out she is dead. McGarrett wants Danno to take time off, but Danno refuses, saying "I've gotta work on this case." The investigation leads him to Pete King, who works washing dishes in the Makaha Inn, but also is a painter, some of whose works were featured at the auction. Having Danno talk to King, who had received a few hundred dollars cash from Jane to help him out, is a very bad idea, because Danno attacks King violently when he says that he and Jane had a "good relationship" and Danno should not "make it dirty ... Maybe you don't care, but don't smear mud on her." As Chin Ho and Kono leap on to Danno to stop him, everything goes into slow motion.

Back at the office, Danno offers to resign, but McGarrett says no, just to take some vacation time (but Danno again doesn't do this). Shortly after, King comes to Danno's place to apologize, because he didn't realize that Danno and Jane were close. King is instrumental in letting Danno know about the Byron poem and Miss Hawthorne, which moves the case towards resolution, along with Che Fong's finding that the writing on the women's legs resembles that of Gregson, despite the fact that "it's difficult to make identification on this ... because it's lipstick on skin."

At the end of the show, Gregson's wife Sally is taking some blind kids to various places on the island as part of her volunteer work. Meanwhile, Gregson, disguising himself as one of his construction workers, sneaks out of his portable office at a work site and follows her. He knocks out a cop who has been assigned to protect Sally, and he and his wife plus the kids eventually end up at Hanauma Bay.

Danno arrives there soon and finds Gregson has gotten his wife away from the kids and is trying to strangle her like the other two women and throw her off a cliff. For some reason, Sally does not just run away in the opposite direction. A melodramatic fight ensues, with Gregson flying over the edge and hanging on by his fingertips. Danno pulls him back up. The end of the show has McGarrett radioing Danno to make sure he is OK, and as the end credit rolls, the focus is on Danno for a change.

Considering this is the major "Danno has a life" episode of the series, James MacArthur does an exceptionally good acting job. The way they figure out that Gregson was not at the wedding rehearsal at the beginning of the show by the way that times on a clock on the wall do not add up should not be thought about too hard, though.

The score is another stock music mish-mash with themes coming from all over the place, especially the series' first episode, "Full Fathom Five." There are also excerpts from the "memories" theme and the bonging bell sound, among many other cues.

WHAT DOES THE TITLE MEAN?

This is a pun on the title of the famous 19th century parlor song Beautiful Dreamer written by Stephen Foster. Both Linda and Jane attempt to scream when they are being strangled. Sally, Gregson's wife, screams very loudly, because he doesn't have his hand over her mouth.

EPISODE PROMO:

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CASUALTY LIST:

    Death: Linda Marsh strangled by Walter Gregson.
    Death: Jane Michaels strangled by Walter.
    Injury: Pete King beaten up by Danno during questioning at Pete's apartment.
    Injury: Officer Fujiwara hit over the head by Walter (there is blood on the left side of his head).
    Injury: Walter attempts to strangle his wife Sally.
    Injury: Danno jumps Walter as he's attacking Sally and fistfight ensues. Danno eventually subdues Walter with several punches, a flip and letting Walter hang onto cliff.
    Injury: Walter punches Danno during fistfight.

MORE TRIVIA:

  • When Gregson sneaks out of his trailer, he goes through a trap door in the floor. Why this door is there doesn't make sense. In the twelfth season show "School For Assassins," Lloyd Bochner also goes out a trap door in a scene which makes even less sense. When Kono comes a-knocking on the trailer's door which is locked from the inside, a worker who says he was sitting in front of this door did not see Gregson escape. Kono finally opens the door with a crowbar. When Gregson is escaping, this worker's feet are not seen.
  • Was Five-O again being ahead of its time in terms of dealing with handicapped issues when it features the blind kids that Sally takes on an "expedition"? A couple of the shots of her driving in a station wagon with the kids looks like a process shot, but then the camera pulls back to reveal that it is not. The kids, all standing in front of a wall at Hanauma Bay, suddenly jump around in unison as Danno's car squeals up beside them — a cute moment.
  • The cop who is supposed to be providing surveillance for Sally is named Fujiwara, but I don't think it is actor Tommy. The shot of the radio handset on the dashboard in Danno's car near the end is the same as the one seen earlier in Fujiwara's car when McGarrett tries to contact him (he is already incapacitated at that point). At the very end, when Danno gets in the car and uses this handset, it is not seen on the dashboard even though that's where he picks it up. This handset is also seen in "The Reunion."
  • McGarrett quickly figures out where the quotes from Byron originate (in pre-Google days!). How Gregson himself knows about this poem is a mystery. What Gregson writes on the women is not exactly the same as Byron's poem. "And every death a tear can claim / except the sinning sisters' shame" in the original is "And every woe a tear can claim / Except an erring Sister's shame." The other quote is "She was a form of life and light / that, seen, enters into night," which, in the original, is "She was a form of Life and Light, / That, seen, became a part of sight...."
  • After Linda is murdered, Danno tells his girlfriend, "She wasn't assaulted sexually." Linda's full name is Linda Marsh, same as the actress who was seen in "Sweet Terror" and this season's "Force of Waves," as well as the twelfth season episode "Image of Fear."
  • The show has some interesting photography and editing the way the two murders at the beginning of the show are intercut with other activities going on at the same time like the wedding rehearsal. Near the end, as McGarrett rushes down the palace steps and gets in his car, there is a helicopter shot (it looks too high for a crane) which goes up very high above the palace as McGarrett drives away. McGarrett drives past the Dillingham Fountain (stock shot).
  • Danno is seen reading a copy of the Honolulu Star-Advertiser which has a feature on the two murders: "Mystery Killer Still At Large." There are other headlines, which are not in the usual lower case type: Diplomats Feted as Important Issues Go By the Board, Raises Urged in Bay Car Insurance, Transit Problems Given Airing at B-M-R Convention, Need for SST Explained, and President Proposes Plan to Extend Space Launch. The feature article is written by William Bailey and Paul Crumbine, the same journalistic team whose articles are also seen in Ironside episode S04E01, "A Killing Will Occur" and in Kojak episodes S02E03, "Hush Now, Don't You Die," and S05E15, "Chain of Custody"!
  • A shot where Gregson gets out of his truck to look at his wife as she buys ice cream cones from a Mr. Softee truck for the blind kids and Fujiwara at some pullout on the highway is flopped later (horizontally reversed) at the Hanauma Bay parking lot. If you look carefully, you can see the license number of 50-143 is backwards, and the steering wheel is now on the right side of the truck. As well, the rocks in the background are the same. This second shot does not make sense, because as Sally parks her car, you can see her husband's truck far behind her in the parking lot with the wooden frame in the back. The truck is parked at 180 degrees to her car, so Gregson would not have been able to look at her car from the front of his truck like this shot suggests.
  • Three checks written to Pete King by Jane are seen. They have dates of 8-1-70, 8-31-70 and 10-1-70.
  • The brief musical cue which opens acts 2 and 3 is the same.
  • The Makaha Inn seen at the beginning of the show is featured in season two's finale, "Kiss The Queen Goodbye."
  • A "Drink Ours" pop machine on the tennis courts features orange juice and guava nectar, plus one other drink.
  • Two ambulance services are used in the show. A Beacon Ambulance takes away Linda's body, while and City and County Ambulance is used for Fujiwara.
  • When McGarrett consoles Danno after Jane's murder, he refers to how Danno consoled him in season one's "Once Upon A Time."
  • McGarrett describes Gregson's murders as a "pattern killing."

GALLERY:

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61. (S03E13) “The Payoff” ★★★★

Original air date: 12/9/70 — Opening CreditsEnd Credits
Director: John Moxey; Producer: Robert Stambler; Writer: Ken Pettus; Music: Stock
Timings: Teaser: 6:50; Main Titles: 0:59; Act One: 9:53; Act Two: 13:55; Act Three: 10:08; Act Four: 8:03; End Credits: 0:52; Total Time: 50:40.

QUICK PLOT:

Two members of a gang involved in a kidnapping for ransom on the mainland several years ago show up in Hawaii to take revenge for being screwed out of the money..

Click here to read Full Plot.

REVIEW:

Six years before this episode, a gang of five people kidnapped the son of Washington state's Governor Bannister for ransom (the son died during the kidnapping): Vince Ryan (Albert Salmi), Madge (Madlyn Rhue), Jase Gorman (Warren Vanders), Toomey Walsh (Paul Carr) and Lew Kelso (Richard Brady, Vincent from "The Singapore File"). Jase and Madge, who was Jase's girl friend at the time, wanted to double cross the other gang members, but Jase was played for a patsy by Madge, who ran off with Vince and the money, which totalled $500,000.

Following this, Jase returned to his home state of Hawaii, where he had been jailed for manslaughter in the early 1960s. Given a pardon after three years for saving the life of a prison guard during a hostage situation, Jase had moved to Seattle as soon as he was released.

Before this show begins, Vince and Madge are visiting Hawaii, preferring "a nice warm part of the world" to Seattle which is having "a bad winter." Vince recognizes Jase on the street and decides to frame him to make it look like Jase was the one who double-crossed everyone.

At the beginning of the show, Vince tracks Jase down to his flophouse room. He shoots Jase and leaves a bunch of the ransom money stuffed in Jase's mattress. Although Jase is bleeding from somewhere in several scenes after this and it appears he has lost "a lot of blood" from its appearance on the floor of his room, it is not very convincing when he is shot, since there is little blood on and no damage to Jase's shirt, despite being shot at almost point-blank range.

Vince doesn't stick around to make sure that Jase is dead, which is unfortunate for him, because the wounded Jase manages to make his way to the house of his girlfriend Lila Daniels (Joyce Van Patten). From there, Jase phones Walsh and Kelso, still in Seattle, and lets them know what Vince has done.

The two men waste no time in coming to Hawaii to take care of "some unfinished business." They know where Vince is likely hanging out, since he "always liked to keep in touch" and recently sent them a postcard of the Hawaiian Village Hotel where he and Madge are staying which dissolves into the actual building.

Five-O gets interested in all of this in several ways. The first is because after Jase was shot, he attempted to call Five-O from the pay phone in his building, but abandoned the call after McGarrett answered. Then he tried to call Seattle long distance to talk to Toomey, but abandoned that call as well when his landlord Bemis (Robert Edwards) got too nosy. Finally, the money which Vince stuffed in the mattress contained silver certificates which were part of the ransom money from the kidnapping six years before. I'm quite surprised that neither Vince nor Madge were aware of the status of these certificates which were similar to regular bills in design. They were discontinued in 1964 but redeemable in silver coins or raw silver bullion up to 1968. They are still legal tender today. Danno comes up with a lengthy list of the ransom bills including those from the mattress.

The finale of the show is like a well-oiled machine. Walsh and Kelso arrive at the hotel and register under the names of A. Morgan and M. Hollister. They phone Vince, who is surprised about them being in Hawaii, to have a drink, which motivates Vince and Madge to split as fast as possible. Walsh and Kelso go up to Vince's floor, but a family using the elevator while changing rooms delays things. Madge scoops up all the cash and puts it in a suitcase and leaves her room just as the two men from Seattle show up in the hallway. She shoots at them and goes back into her room. Meanwhile, Five-O has arrived at the hotel, having been tipped off that someone tried to spend silver certificates in the place's gift shop. Five-O arrives on Vince's floor and a gun battle ensues with Vince shot, Walsh and Kelso busted, and Madge discovered whimpering in her room clutching the cash which has spilled out of the suitcase.

There is excellent acting in this show from the relatively large cast, even in the minor roles like Bemis the landlord and Oliver (Alan Naluai), the bartender at the place where Lila works. The script by Ken Pettus is very tight, with not a syllable wasted. The photography is also excellent, especially the color, as well a couple of interesting shots, one when the Five-O team enters Jase's room and the camera is above and the previously-mentioned one with the dissolving postcard.

EPISODE PROMO:

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CASUALTY LIST:

    Injury: Jace Gorman shot by Vince Ryan in flophouse room.
    Death: Jace dies from being shot after telling McGarrett about the rest of the gang in the Bannister case.
    Injury: Toomey Walsh shot in shoulder by McGarrett in hotel hallway.
    Injury: Vince Ryan shot by McGarrett after he aims at Danno. Fate unknown.

MORE TRIVIA:

  • Madge has a good line. She finds $40 in silver certificates in Vince's jacket before she sends it to the cleaners, money he picked off the floor that he dropped at Jase's place. She pockets this cash and uses it to buy some earrings in the gift shop, one of the things which leads to their undoing. When Vince finds out about this and is annoyed, she tells him, "The money's cold. It's been over six years. You told me that yourself. Now stop worrying. Look, if you're gonna have a nervous breakdown every time we spend some of this money, let's just forget it. Tell you what, we'll paste it end to end, roll it up and use it in the bathroom."
  • McGarrett tells Kono to "get on the phone to every bank in Oahu." Kono looks pretty annoyed in this show — not surprising, considering McGarrett is constantly barking "do this/do that" to him and Chin Ho. Kono has only a few lines, one of which — "On my way, Steve" — is said in kind of a high-pitched voice. At least Kono gets to break down a door.
  • There is an establishing shot of Seattle seen which shows the city's iconic Space Needle. But this picture has been vertically stretched so the shape of the structure is ridiculous as is that of Mount Rainier, seen in the background, which has a very pointy top. This is what it really looks like.
  • Some of the music in the teaser was previously heard in S01E10, "Yesterday Died And Tomorrow Won't Be Born."
  • During the investigation, Danno asks if Lila is a "B-girl."
  • I like the bobble-head Asian dolls by Lila's phone (see screen shot below). Lila's address is 3334 Maile Street.
  • In Jace's room, there is a bottle of some rotgut identified as "Pebble Ames." The sign at the entrance to the building, which advertises rooms for 50 cents a day, is the same as seen in "Dear Enemy" later this season.
  • One of the silver certificates is shown with the serial number A11956964A.
  • Jace's mug shot from his manslaughter bust has the number A21403. It was taken on 9-28-60.
  • The Hawaiian Village Hotel on the postcard has the address of 1136 Ala Wai. This is close to the actual address, which is 2005 Kalia Road.
  • When Walsh and Kelso register at the hotel, they say they are from 1046 Green Valley Circle, Seattle. The date they register is 9/18/70. Their room is 319. Ryan's room is 1031.
  • There is a stock shot of the Five-O team running down the Iolani Palace steps.
  • Vincent is smoking some cigarettes which say "NIVAL" on the package; maybe this is "CARNIVAL," but there is no sign of an "R."
  • Jace's body is removed in a City and County Ambulance.

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62. (S03E14) “The Double Wall” ★★★½  BOOK HIM, DANNO 

Original air date: 12/16/70 — Opening CreditsEnd Credits
Director: Michael O'Herlihy; Producer: Robert Stambler; Writers: Jerry Ludwig & Eric Bercovici; Music: Stock
Timings: Teaser: 4:32; Main Titles: 0:58; Act One: 10:41; Act Two: 12:58; Act Three: 10:34; Act Four: 10:07; End Credits: 0:54; Total Time: 50:44.

QUICK PLOT:

When a real estate developer hears a dying convict confess to the killing which put him in jail, he takes the prison doctor hostage and demands McGarrett reopen the case.

Click here to read Full Plot.

REVIEW:

Three years before the show, Harry Kellam (Monte Markham) was sentenced to life in prison for the murder of his partner, Tom Chaney. Both men were real estate developers, and their business prospered until financial troubles developed, with Chaney reportedly using company funds to pay off his gambling debts.

Kellam is now in Oahu State Prison where he is working as an orderly in the infirmary. When hitman Frank Ritchie (Morgan Sha'an) is seriously stabbed in an altercation in the prison yard, he is brought there. Before he croaks, Kellam is shocked to hear Ritchie admit that he was the one who killed Chaney. Because there are no witnesses to this confession, Kellam becomes more and more agitated, grabbing a shotgun from Bates, one of the guards (Al Harrington, who appeared in the previous prison episode "The Box" as a convict). He then takes the prison doctor Sam Berman (Sorrell Booke) hostage and tapes the gun to the doctor's neck, requesting to see McGarrett, who he considers "the smartest cop on this rock." McGarrett comes to the prison and meets with Kellam who tells him to reopen the case and exonerate him, or the doctor will die.

With the clock ticking and Kellam in bad shape because he has been awake for almost two days, McGarrett has no time to waste. He goes to visit Kellam's lawyer Craig Wilkie (William Schallert), who has little to offer but mentions Ted Cowan (Richard Roat), who witnessed the murder and "looked like Harry's salvation for a while, but at the trial, his testimony was of no value." Wilkie is immediately depicted as a very fishy character, and when McGarrett leaves his office, starts to make some phone calls.

Barney Banyan, a "torpedo" who was an associate of Ritchie, is hauled into the Five-O office, but he just gives McGarrett some mouth, telling him to "get off my back." Danno is investigating what happened to Kellam and Chaney's assets and controlling interests after their company went into receivership, but the trail is mired in a bunch of legalese in different jurisdictions.

Subsequent scenes with Wilkie suggest that he was seriously involved in getting Kellam sent to jail, though we don't find out to what extent for a while. He talks to Bedford (Peter Whitney), who has a connection to Banyan and assures him that Cowan, who apparently knows more than was heard in court, will not say anything because he will be charged with perjury. There are alternating scenes with Kellam and Dr. Berman at the prison where things are becoming more desperate as the sleep-deprived Kellam is on the verge of passing out.

McGarrett goes to see Cowan, who says he "didn't see anything," and the car that drove away from the murder scene "was too far away for me to see much." He recalls finding Chaney's body, saying, "You read about things happening ... Terrible things. But you never think it will happen to you."

McGarrett erupts in a huge speech to Cowan: "Violence is frightening, Mr. Cowan. It frightens all of us even if we deal with it every day. But it's nothing to be ashamed of if you feel fear. There's a man in prison who says he doesn't belong there. That he was framed. If an innocent man is imprisoned, Mr. Cowan, it has something to do with all of us, particularly if we can help. If you know anything about the Chaney case that you haven't told already for whatever reason, now is the time to speak up. I don't have much time. Neither do those two men at the prison. I don't have anything to tell you. Just think about Kellam. If he is innocent, just think what he's been through already. Look, for God's sake, don't be sorry. You can't appease violence and brutality. Either you take a stand against it and fight it, or it'll kill you. Now, think about it. Think about it while there's still time. Four hours have elapsed since convict Harry Kellam took Dr. Sam Berman hostage in the prison hospital. Dr. Samuel T. Berman, a dedicated physician, whose life is now in the hands of a desperate man already convicted of one murder."

At the prison, the stern warden (R.G. Armstrong) says if Kellam tries to make a break for it using the doctor as a shield, the guards have orders to "shoot to kill." Kellam is fading fast, and the doctor is desperate to keep him awake and talking. Eventually Kellam passes out and the doctor, having convinced Kellam to remove the tape holding the gun to his neck, manages to cut the gun completely loose. However, the doctor does not leave Kellam alone in the room, but stays there, obviously believing in Kellam's innocence, a nice touch.

Pieces solving the case to vindicate Kellam are falling into place, with McGarrett going to visit Man Fook-Low (Arthur Hee), a gambler who was connected with Chaney. The two of them have a beating-around-the-bush philosophical discussion which reveals that Chaney made more money than he lost. An accountant named Rycourt (Bill Bigelow wearing a wig) tells McGarrett that the books for the Kellam-Chaney land development company were intentionally cooked to make it look like the business was the victim of "a massive embezzlement," which was totally untrue. And Danno finally tracks down who benefited from the dissolution of the company: "[He u]sed every legal trick in the book. Interlocking corporations, withholding companies, the whole bag. The one who picked up all the marbles when Kellam and Chaney went out of business was Wilkie."

McGarrett's rant to Cowan has finally sunk in, and Cowan phones Wilkie that he wants to set things straight. Wilkie tells Cowan to come to his office, but on the way there, Cowan is shot dead by Banyan. When McGarrett goes to see Cowan's wife Freda (Joan Van Ark), she tells him that she knows what her husband really saw when Chaney was killed, but her testimony is useless, since it is all hearsay. One thing is certain, Wilkie frightened Cowan into not telling the truth about what happened.

Freda later goes to Wilkie's office and threatens to shoot him with a revolver, but she is overpowered by Banyan and Bedford, who intend to shut her up. Banyan tells Wilkie, "No extra charge. Knocking off Tom Chaney and her husband, that cost you, so this one's free." McGarrett and Danno arrive just in the nick of time. Bedford is wounded and Wilkie shoots the armed Banyan dead, thinking that will earn him brownie points with McGarrett.

Telling Wilkie "no deals," McGarrett tells him "I'll listen to [Freda] and so will the judge and jury," because, as she says, "I just heard it all." The charge against Wilkie is murder one.

Returning to the prison, McGarrett wakes up the sleeping Kellam, telling him "It's all over now … all over."

This is an excellent episode, with Monte Markham's best performance of his four in the series (two of those — "Here Today … Gone Tonight" and "School for Assassins" – have terrible scripts). Sorrell Booke, pre-Dukes of Hazzard, is also noteworthy. In fact, all of the acting is well above average.

One thing that bothers me is the way that Cowan is killed by Banyan. As he approaches an intersection (see More Trivia section below for more details), there is only one car beside Cowan, a Volkswagen bug. Another car, which looks like a blue Datsun, passes him on his left before this, but if Cowan was shot from someone in this car (and he is fatally shot in his left temple), then it is unlikely he would have stopped behind the white car in front of him, he would have just run into it.The only other explanation is that Banyan is on the other side of the intersection somewhere, perhaps with a silencer. But then how would Banyan have known the exact route that Cowan was taking to Wilkie's office?

However, whatever explanation you come up with for Cowan's death, at least it is not totally implausible.

WHAT DOES THE TITLE MEAN?

Bobbi suggests "because Kellam was wrongly convicted, he's behind the physical prison wall and the "double wall' can be considered the frame-up by his sleazy lawyer" or "the double wall can be thought of as the doctor's office and he would have to get through both walls of the prison [not to mention the outside wall] or 'the double wall."

EPISODE PROMO:

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CASUALTY LIST:

    Death: Frank Ritchie dies in infirmary after being stabbed in prison yard.
    Death: Ted Cowan is shot in the head by Barney Banyan in traffic.
    Injury: Trying to escape with Banyan and Freda Cowan, Bedford is shot by McGarrett .
    Death: Banyan is shot dead by Craig Wilkie in hallway outside his office.

MORE TRIVIA:

  • Fred Helfing tracked down the location where Cowan gets shot in the head: it's at at the intersection of Date Street and Kapahulu Avenue. Cowan is driving east. You can see the drive-in restaurant from the show in the background, and if you swing around to the right, you can see the building directly in front of Cowan's car. Both of these buildings are very similar today. The one in front of the car at the corner has some business called "Yoko's." This location with the sign about how you can turn right on a red light is also used in the fourth season episode "Nine, Ten, You're Dead," where a car containing Albert Paulsen and a hitman named Duke gets abandoned and Kono, who is following, gets out of his car to see what happened.
  • The guy in the car behind Cowan's is Walter Omori, the "mysterious actor" who appeared in other shows like "The Singapore File" and "No Bottles...No Cans...No People." His car, which has an unusual license plate with a very short "number," has a bumper sticker for Joe Kuroda, who was a United States senator for Hawaii. As Walter gets out of his car, you can see what looks like plastic sheeting on the outside of Cowan's Mustang behind the driver's door.
  • McGarrett's arrival by car at the prison originally appeared in S01E16, "The Box." Bob Sevey and another reporter from KGMB named Beldock (Bob Jones) is on the scene, covering the hostage drama live.
  • Danno talks to HPD Officer Spivack (Terry Plunkett), who interviewed Cowan shortly after the murder. When Danno leaves him, the subtitles say he says "Thanks, Sarge," but Danno actually says "Thanks, Terry."
  • Cowan's body is taken away in a City and County Ambulance.
  • According to Karen Rhodes' book, Monte Markham was tapped to replace Jack Lord, who threatened to quit the show during a dispute during the seventh season. Markham's character would be chief of State Department Security for the Far East, not the head of Five-O. Lord was eventually persuaded to stay on by the Governor of Hawaii.

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63. (S03E15) “Paniolo” ★★★

Original air date: 12/30/70 — Opening CreditsEnd Credits
Director: Michael O'Herlihy; Producer: Robert Stambler; Writer: Ed Adamson; Music: Don B. Ray
Timings: Teaser: 4:19; Main Titles: 0:59; Act One: 11:38; Act Two: 7:30; Act Three: 8:20; Act Four: 17:06; End Credits: 0:55; Total Time: 50:47.

QUICK PLOT:

An old cowboy rancher and his connection to the death of a real estate agent brings Five-O to the island of Maui.

Click here to read Full Plot.

REVIEW:

In this slow-paced episode, the title of which is the Hawaiian word for "cowboy," Maui cattleman Frank Kuakua (Frnak Silvera), whose land has been his family's for multiple generations, is up against developers who want to buy his property. His hired hand Hody Lindquist (Royal Dano) dealt with similar encroachments in Texas and Wyoming before he moved to Hawaii.

One persistent developer is Lester Cronin (Bill Bigelow), who purchased an IOU for money that Frank borrowed from local bar owner Harry Pawai (Robert Luck). Cronin threatens Frank, saying with this IOU, which demonstrates Frank's inability to pay off his debts, he can "get a lien and a public auction."

When Lester gets a bit too pushy, Frank says "Don't you 'bruddah' me" and shoves him backwards, causing Lester to strike his head on a tree, killing him. This is totally unrealistic, unless Lester is suffering from some pre-existing condition which the fall might have exacerbated. Nothing like this is mentioned by the Maui coroner Dr. Woodrow (Albert Harris) later.

Ironically, Lester was just indicted by a grand jury on the mainland for fraud and bribery, which requires his extradition. This prompts Five-O to try and track him down on Maui. After his death, Lester was propped up in his rented car which was pushed over a cliff by Frank. Danno, who is scouring the island in a helicopter, manages to locate the wrecked vehicle. An autopsy reveals slivers of wood in Cronin's head wound where he struck his head on the tree and Five-O steps up the investigation.

After disposing of Lester's body, Frank goes to Honolulu to visit his daughter to give himself an alibi. He is estranged from his daughter Dorothy Owens (Marilyn Chris) because she "married a haole" who later deserted her. Frank does bond with his grandson Bud (George "Keoki" Awai), talking of hanging out at ka palekana wahi (the "safe place") on his ranch.

After he returns to Maui, Frank talks to Five-O, telling them that he wasn't present around the time Lester died and Hody also has excuses. When they get back to Honolulu, McGarrett and Danno interview Dorothy, whose alibi story does not match her employment records at the Ilikai Hotel coffee shop where she worked on the day her father was supposedly visiting. Her son, who overheard the conversation with his grandfather when he was there, confirms this.

Knowing that the jig is up, Frank mounts his favorite horse which he has been riding for 17 years and heads off into the back country of Maui. Jack Lord, who played a rodeo rider in his previous series Stoney Burke, gets a chance to ride a horse along with a posse of local men including tracker Charlie Latea (stuntman Beau Van Den Ecker). Danno helps to track with the helicopter and he is finally cornered soon after he puts his trusty horse, who has fallen lame, out of its misery.

McGarrett tries to reason with Frank, but Frank shoots him in the arm, prompting the posse to fire back, killing Frank, despite McGarrett telling the men earlier that he wanted him taken alive.

Overall, this episode is good, having the same theme as season one's "Strangers In Our Own Land," where the people of Hawaii are being exploited in the name of progress. But the presence of Bill Bigelow as the sleazy real estate developer Cronin is not believable, because this actor is far too "nice" a guy.

The final big confrontation, despite the aspect of Frank dying from "suicide by cop" is also hard to take, because McGarrett's pleading speech, not helped by the very haole outfit including a colorful neckerchief that he is wearing, almost comes across as patronizing, when he says stuff like "I'm not speaking to you as a cop. I'm not just looking to take you in. I understand how it is with you. I understand how it is with your people. Now, I know it's your land. I feel ashamed of what's being done here in the name of progress, but we can't turn back the clock." Considering how wired up Frank is, even having hallucinated about hanging out with his grandson the night before, there is probably no easy solution to resolving this case.

Although he does mention Frank's daughter and grandson as "reasons to live," McGarrett doesn't say anything at all about the fact that Cronin's death would likely be classified as an accident, which seems kind of important in the scheme of things, other than "I can promise you a fair trial and a recommendation for leniency."

There are no complaints about Frank Silvera's acting in the role of Kuakua. Silvera was born in Kingston, Jamaica, and spent much of his film career playing "foreigners," including the occasional South Seas role like in Mutiny on the Bounty (1962) where he played the obligatory native who just happens to speak English for the convenience of the story. Five-O's "Paniolo" was one of his last acting jobs — he died on June 11, 1970, over 6 months before the episode aired.

WHAT DOES THE TITLE MEAN:

"Paniolo" is the Hawaiian word for "cowboy." According to Karen Rhodes' book, "Since most of the original cowboys on Hawaiian soil were Mexican immigrants who spoke Spanish, the word originated in the Hawaiian pronunciation of "Espaρol."

EPISODE PROMO:

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CASUALTY LIST:

    Death: Lester Cronin is pushed backwards by Frank Kuakua, striking his head on a tree. Hody Linquist confirms that Lester is dead.
    Death: Frank shoots his horse.
    Injury: McGarrett gets shot in the arm by Frank.
    Death: Frank is shot dead by the posse.

MORE TRIVIA:

  • The episode promo says "Kuakua [is] a man trying to hold back time with murder." I don't think so. If this case went to court, I think the charge would more likely be manslaughter.
  • One sequence after Frank shoots his horse and another after the posse finds the dead horse, where McGarrett makes a face, are the same. On the DVD third season set, after McGarrett tells the posse he wants Frank brought in alive, the voice of the cop who says "He's got a rifle with him, right? What if he starts shooting? What are we supposed to do?" sounds like it is looped with that of Moe Keale. After McGarrett says "OK, Charlie," and the posse rides off, the English audio cuts out for a few seconds; there is no dropout in the Spanish audio track.
  • When the posse first starts out, there are five cops including Charlie the tracker. But at the end there are only four including Charlie. Prior to this, McGarrett tells one of them, "Joe, stick with the horses. We'll go on foot from here."
  • How can Frank can go to Oahu to visit his daughter Dorothy in Honolulu, since he tells her he is very short of money? Furthermore, when he later tells McGarrett he was visiting her, why doesn't Five-O just check the airline passenger list for confirmation?
  • When Frank arrives at his daughter's house, the music accompanying what sounds like a cop or cowboy show on TV in the background is the same as the perky music heard at the end of "Bored She Hung Herself." Later, when Danno goes to Harry's Corral, the bar operated by Harry Pawai, the music heard playing is the children's song from "Kiss the Queen Goodbye." The "memories" theme is heard in the bar later when Hody talks to Harry, then McGarrett and Maui police chief Ben Kubota (Michael Morgan). At the beginning of the show, there is a vague "western" tinge to the music as Frank is seen rounding up cattle. The score is by Don Ray.
  • When Dorothy phones Frank in Maui from Honolulu, she only dials seven numbers. Was this possible because both numbers were in the same area code?
  • The helicopter Danno is using is the same one seen in "And A Time To Die," supposedly owned by Helicopters Pacific Ltd., number N9016F (a Hughes 500 according to its side, actually a Hughes 369HS). Not only is the helicopter the same as in the earlier episode, but so is the pilot! In one scene in "Paniolo," the helicopter parks dangerously on a hill at an angle and Danno leaps out and then back in (see screen shot below).
  • Several Hawaiian expressions in the show do not appear in the DVD subtitles, whereas most individual words do — for example, makua kane (father, used reluctantly by Dorothy) and mo'opuna (grandson, Frank asks his daughter about Bud).
  • When Danno is at the airport expecting to see Cronin returning to Oahu, the plane is an Aloha Airlines Boeing 737-200 "Funbird," number N73712.
  • As the car containing the dead Cronin's body plunges down the cliff, the music accompanying this is usually heard during a pre-commercial "wave."
  • While in Maui, Danno stays at the Sonesta Beach Hotel in Kaanapali.
  • Near the beginning of the episode, Chin Ho is seen smoking a pipe in McGarrett's office when he and Kono are discussing some operation with McGarrett not related to the episode's main story.

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64. (S03E16) “Ten Thousand Diamonds And A Heart” ★★★

Original air date: 1/6/71 — Opening CreditsEnd Credits
Director: Paul Stanley; Producer: Robert Stambler; Writer: E. Arthur Kean; Music: Don B. Ray
Timings: Teaser: 3:55; Main Titles: 0:58; Act One: 9:49; Act Two: 11:42; Act Three: 11:57; Act Four: 11:28; End Credits: 0:54; Total Time: 50:43.

QUICK PLOT:

An electronics genius is sprung from police custody by a wealthy gangster to mastermind a $10 million robbery of the Honolulu Diamond Exchange.

Click here to read Full Plot.

REVIEW:

Master criminal Sheldon Orwell (Tim O'Connor), described by McGarrett as an "electronic genius" and "expert on burglar alarms, chemistry, explosives [and] police techniques" is in court as a witness to a prison killing. As he leaves the building, likely returning to jail since he is handcuffed and accompanied by policemen, he is sprung from the cops' protection by three men — Murray (Ward Bensen), a driver (Beau Van Den Ecker, uncredited) and Sturgis (uncredited actor) — who throw smoke bombs into the vicinity of the cops' car. As Orwell is hustled away from the confusion, Sturgis is shot dead as several other cops quickly come out of the building holding rifles.

Presumably clued in on why he has been kidnapped during the drive, Orwell is taken to the roof of a parking garage near the J.H. Schnack Building at 922 Maunakea St. where he meets Willard Lennox (Paul Stewart), later described by Chin Ho as a "dinosaur ... who goes back to Capone" who lives "like a baron over on Maui [with] cars, airplanes [and] the big estate." Lennox is not happy that grabbing Orwell didn't go off problem-free, and he shoots both Murray and the driver dead, saying, "I never spent a day in jail myself. Maybe now you know why."

Lennox tells Orwell, "From now on I own you," but Orwell replies, "You don't own me, and I don't own you. We just need each other. Ten million dollars' worth," setting up the adversarial relationship between the two men that is one of the highlights of this episode.

Shortly after this, Orwell and members of a team that Lennox has assembled to steal $10 million worth of jewels from the Honolulu Diamond Exchange meet for a brainstorming session at an apartment that Lennox uses as a "love nest." When Lennox finds out that Orwell has a heart condition, he wonders if the plan is going to work. Orwell tells him, "You're just the banker, I'm the one with the brain." Members of the team include:

  • Potter (Norman Dupont), an electronics geek who can look at circuit diagrams and complex wiring which resembles "spaghetti" and immediately figure out which wires have to be cut or tapped into;
  • Harding (John McCormick) and Meade (Bruce Stillians), two ambulance attendants;
  • Edmund Putney (Logan Ramsey), the "inside man" of the group who has been a member of the exchange for two years and has access to its fortress-like 20th floor in a downtown building. Entrance to the exchange is controlled by tight security with strict ID checks.

In this episode Che Fong works overtime helping Five-O.

A cigar ash that Lennox dropped on Murray's jacket in the opening scene where Murray was killed gives Che problems, and he has to send the ash to Washington, where it is identified as coming a specific brand of cigars — Kamal from Turkey, which is linked to a store in the Kahala mall where one of the customers is Roxie Newton, who is buying the cigars for her boyfriend, Lennox. This to me is far-fetched, because while it is possible to identify the brand of cigars through trace metals in the soil where the tobacco is grown, I doubt if this kind of forensic technology was available in the early 1970s. (McGarrett comments "Either she's got a boyfriend or women's liberation is working overtime.")

In the dead Murray's cerumen (ear wax), Che finds traces of marble dust. This later connects Murray to Orwell and Lennox, because in the same building where Lennox's girl friend Newton lives (the above-mentioned "love nest," tracked down by Five-O via the cigar connection), there is a sculptor named Zeibach and the dust from his projects is a major annoyance.

In Newton's apartment, Che also finds hair samples which are from Newton, Orwell and Lennox which even identify the sex of the person they came from, which is very far-fetched. This is possible with DNA analysis, but that did not happen until the 1980s.

Another major clue relates to the gun used by Lennox at the beginning of the show to knock off the two men. Ballistics records show that it is a Luger nicknamed "Brunnhilde" used in at least four killings over the last 10 years which has a connection to Lennox (exactly how is not specified).

Meanwhile, Lennox's team manages to construct a plan which will overcome the obstacles the well-fortified diamond exchange puts in their way.

Using an ID card which looks totally phony, Potter gains access to the electrical room on the same floor as the exchange. He taps into the closed circuit TV camera and, using a small VCR, records stock footage of activity in the exchange room. Later this will be played back for the benefit of the guard in the building's lobby to make him think that nothing unusual is happening upstairs.

Because there is only one elevator which goes directly to the exchange, and any attempt to rob the place will cause it to be locked up, Putney and Potter have to rappel down one of the other two elevator shafts, a drop of about 200 feet, which gives the overweight Putney something to get concerned about. He is told to get "out on the Pali" and get some practice.

Five-O accumulates a lot of clues as to what might happen with the big caper, but they don't know exactly which of several possible locations will be the one that Lennox and Orwell hit. Finally, the big day comes, and everything goes off like clockwork as far as the robber is concerned ... almost too well.

Using some thylacine stearate (a bogus drug) which he obtained at a medical supply house which is supposed to produce conditions similar to having a heart attack, Orwell causes a major distraction in one of the other two elevators in the exchange building. Harding and Meade quickly show up with their ambulance to help him, and all of them, including Lennox, who is pretending to be Orwell's "friend," go into the elevator and the doors are closed. Having robbed the place upstairs, Potter and Putney rappel down into the car, and put on ambulance attendant uniforms. When everything is ready, the elevator doors are opened, and the supposedly near-death Orwell is driven away.

Only problem is, Orwell, who has a history of heart issues which required him to use nitroglycerin, seems to be really having a heart attack as the ambulance goes to a pre-arranged location where the team will switch cars and head to a plane waiting to take them to the mainland and then Brazil. But Orwell is just pretending, and switches the bag containing the diamonds from the robbery with another containing what look like a bunch of plastic beads.

The team abandons the ambulance and gets in the other car, supposedly leaving Orwell to die, and they are nabbed by McGarrett thanks to help from an HPD helicopter who has been following them. Their car has two tires shot out; Lennox and the others are in a daze when they are arrested.

Orwell thinks he has the last laugh, getting to a boat in the Ala Wai Yacht Harbor from which he intends to sail away to a nice retirement. (Earlier on, Orwell was identified as someone who crossed the Atlantic alone in a 21-foot boat "just to prove a point.") Unknown to him, Five-O is aware of this "option" and Danno, who is at the marina, alerts McGarrett who soon shows up to the dismay of the incredulous Orwell.

This show has a very tight script which requires attention. The first time I re-watched it in 2019, I found quite a few things which were odd, but a subsequent viewing answered a lot of questions about things which I had misinterpreted or overlooked.

For example, the scale model of the exchange and the building lobby looks like it is one piece, but it is actually two pieces, one for each location, which are placed together.

The cigar ash is found on what looks like a piece of plaid cloth, and Murray's jacket is more of a solid color. But in a closeup, you can see the plaid design.

However, there are still some things that left me scratching my head:

  • In the teaser, Orwell has the chain connecting his handcuffs separated in the middle with a heavy duty cutter. But a few seconds later he gets out of the car with no handcuffs. If he had a key, why didn't he just use that in the first place?
  • The access card that Potter uses to gain access to the diamond exchange is peculiar — on the bottom line are three entries for Room, Rate and Clerk. The guard beside the exchange elevator seems to have to check off Potter on a list, just like the other men who are going up. Was Potter, who is from Honolulu Power and Light according to the sign on the back of his coveralls, pre-approved to access the top floor?
  • Where do Putney and Potter get the ropes they use to rappel 200 feet down the elevator shaft? Putney has a pretty normal-looking attachι case with him, and Potter has a large metal toolbox. Neither of these to me suggest they can carry 400 feet of rope; in Potter's case, he also has a revolver, another gun which looks like the Luger that is supposed to belong to Lennox. In Potter's case you can see there are also some binoculars — no rope! In Putney's case there is a book: Hawaii Buyer's Guide. In addition to the ropes, there also has to be dynamite or some explosive in these which is used to blow a hole in one of the other elevator shafts.
  • When Orwell fakes his heart attack and is taken inside the elevator, they close the doors which allows Potter and Putney to rappel down inside the elevator shaft into the car without being seen. All four men, other than Lennox, then don ambulance attendant uniforms, which is double the number of attendants who went into the elevator in the first place. Doesn't anyone consider this odd when they finally emerge?

Aside from this, though, the show is enjoyable for the way the case is solved by Five-O and Che Fong and the conflict between Orwell and Lennox, especially Orwell, who knows he is the best at what he does. Stewart, a veteran character actor whose career began in the 40's with films like Citizen Kane, gives a great performance as the irascible Lennox.

WHAT DOES THE TITLE MEAN?

Ten thousand diamonds = the booty from the robbery; a heart = Orwell's "thumper."

EPISODE PROMO:

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

CASUALTY LIST:

    Injury (x2): HPD officers escorting Sheldon Orwell from court hit in head with saps.
    Death: Sturgis shot by HPD officer who runs out of courthouse. He is taken to the hospital but "never made it into surgery."
    Death (x2): Murray and the driver are shot by Willard Lennox.
    Injury: Orwell takes drug to give heart attack symptoms; Lennox tells McGarrett he is dead.

MORE TRIVIA:

  • When Orwell begins to enter the elevator at the Diamond Exchange and then has his "heart attack", he clutches the right side of his chest, rather than the left side where his heart is. He then falls forward towards the camera and collapses. Maybe the editors had the film reversed for some reason, although it is pretty difficult to tell. (Thanks to Jeff H.)
  • Phosphorus pentoxide, tracked down by Chin Ho, is supposedly the chemical used to make the smoke bombs which cover Orwell's abduction at the beginning of the show. Chin says this is used in skywriting. But a look at the Wikipedia entry for this chemical suggests this is all bogus; it is a "potent dehydrating agent." As the cannisters of this stuff are thrown at the beginning, a parking space with a name crudely printed on it — "Bishop" — is seen.
  • McGarrett looks at some paperwork connected with Orwell with a moustache which has an address of 14921 Kingsdale, Los Angeles on it. There is a name below this under "Disbursing Officer's Payment Data" (thanks to Fred): Ralph Hernandez.
  • On a flyer which is created to distribute to pharmacies and medical-supply houses and which prompts a guy named Ogdon (Mark Sebastian) from one of these places where Orwell bought the heart-attack-symptoms-inducing drug to come to the H50 office, there are pictures of Orwell with and without his moustache. But in both of these pictures, Orwell is standing in exactly the same position in front of the height indicators at the police station where mug shots are taken. This flyer says: "The below described male is wanted in connection with a Murder which occurred on 10-21-70, at 1338 hours, at Maunakea and [Pauehi?] Streets. This individual is an expert on burglar alarms, chemistry and explosives. USE CAUTION IF SEEN. Arrest and contact the Criminal Investigation Division, Homicide Detail. [Signed] FRANCIS KEALA, Chief of Police" (Keala was the real chief of HPD from December 24, 1969 to April 1, 1983; but his signature on this flyer does not look like "Keala.") The flyer gives details about Orwell: he is 55 years old, DOB 5-19-15, 6'0", 160 lbs., has a ruddy compexion, light grey hair, blue eyes, and a tattoo on his upper left arm: spider, John John.
  • The ambulance used to transport Orwell is from the Clark Ambulance Company, but one of the shots of it fleeing the robbery on the Pali Highway (a long way from downtown Honolulu) is from "King of the Hill," and is a City and County Ambulance. Lennox refers to the vehicle as a "meat wagon."
  • The HPD cop in the helicopter following the ambulance is addressed as "Blake" by McGarrett, but the tag on the cop's shirt says his name is W. Monteilh.
  • Michael Morgan, who plays the Exchange Room Guard, appeared in the previous episode as Maui Police Chief Ben Kubota.
  • A bottle of nicroglycerin pills which Orwell loses is from the Oahu Pharmacy, phone number 732-0340.
  • When McGarrett finds marble dust in the "love nest," he tastes it — does he think it is heroin or something?
  • At the beginning, Orwell is driving a white Rolls-Royce convertible.
  • McGarrett snaps his fingers twice in this show.
  • Fred Helfing has tracked down the location where the robbers abandon the ambulance and switch to another vehicle.

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65. (S03E17) “To Kill Or Be Killed” ★★★★

Original air date: 1/13/71 — Opening CreditsEnd Credits
Director: Paul Stanley; Producer: Robert Stambler; Writer: Anthony Lawrence; Music: Don B. Ray
Timings: Teaser: 1:40; Main Titles: 0:58; Act One: 15:51; Act Two: 8:51; Act Three: 8:05; Act Four: 14:26; End Credits: 0:54; Total Time: 50:45.

QUICK PLOT:

Five-O meets resistance from Army intelligence after a Vietnam combat hero is found dead under mysterious circumstances.

Click here to read Full Plot.

REVIEW:

A very short yet effective teaser kicks off this episode, which ranks with the best of them for its fourth act, one of the most emotionally intense and gruelling of the entire series.

Five-O investigates the suspicious death of Vietnam war hero Lieutenant Jack Rigney (Peter Jason), who fell six stories from his apartment balcony. His father is an old-school soldier, Brigadier General Earl Rigney (John Anderson), whose other son Michael (Michael Anderson, Jr.) is thinking of skipping the country to avoid the draft.

Michael, who is supposed to report for military service the following Monday, visits the offices of the Hawaii Committee to Aid Draft Resistance, where Al "Doc" Eben is Max Heller, a counsellor. Heller peppers Michael with questions the draft board might ask him, but Michael says "I'll never get past the shanghai brigade. It's Canada or jail." ("Shanghai" refers to the way that men were gathered to sail ships in the 19th century, even if that meant resorting to kidnapping by physical force or with the help of liquor or drugs.)

Posters like "War is not healthy for children and other living things," "What we are saying is give peace a chance in 1970," "Fight for peace," "Thou shalt not kill," and "What if they gave a war and nobody came" are seen.

When Michael visits an underground newspaper and tells one of the hippie-like workers there he is going to flee to Canada, he is cautioned: "Don't get the idea that Trudeau-turf is a pacifist's Eden." (Pierre Trudeau, the father of Justin Trudeau, was the prime minister of Canada in the early 1970s.)

To help solve the case, the clean-cut Danno goes underground as a potential deserter, not very convincingly. When McGarrett grills Danno about his beliefs, Danno replies, "Like I'm splitting for Canada ... you know, Trudeau-turf, where it's cold and it snows eight months of the year ... and if I never feel the heat again, or hear the buzzing of flies, smell the stench of rotting bodies, it'll be too soon — dig?" McGarrett says, "Danno, you should pass easily."

Anne James (Brooks Almy), the sister of one deserter who's already in Canada, supposedly an old friend of Danno, tells him, "Don't tell me you're gonna be inducted ... you look too old to be a draftee." But Danno is not supposed to be a new recruit; instead, he is someone who has already been to Vietnam and now wants out.

His back story says he graduated from the University of Hawaii in June of the previous year and enlisted in the army in April of the current year. Now he is on R&R in Hawaii with six days left, then he has to return to combat. He is currently AWOL. This would probably make him about 23 or 24 years old, whereas James MacArthur was around 33 at the time the show was broadcast.

In the scene with Ann, MacArthur seems to be forgetting his lines: "Yeah, but, uh, [pause] Canada's [a very long pause] opening up to all kinds of protestors." At least he doesn't mention Trudeau again (twice is more than enough).

Danno ends up at a hideout outside of town with several draft-dodging hippie types. His cover is almost blown when one of them named Kit (Paul Mickelsen, uncredited) recognizes him as having visited the resisters' office as a cop where he talked to Heller earlier. In fact, Kit scowled at Danno when he was there. In e-mail to me many years ago, Mickelsen said his fondest memory of the show was "the famous line (at least to my kids) of 'He's fuzz man, fuzz!'," which he says to Matthews, their leader, just as the hideaway is suddenly raided by the cops and military types. As they are escaping, Danno grabs the arm of Matthews in a cop-like move as they run outside the place, then lets go.

Matthews was played by Honolulu journalist Dave Donnelly, sporting a beard and sunglasses and spouting New Age dialogue like "Sure you kids don't want some soup? It's really groovy. Meat, bananas and a little Asiatic ginseng. Guaranteed to blow your stomach ... Did you ever wonder why bananas grow here and not in Alaska? It's because they contain one part sodium to every 850 parts potassium." He contacted me in the late nineties, saying, "The scene was filmed in a shack in Kalama Valley which today is a thriving community, Hawaii Kai, complete with golf course."

Chin Ho has a good line in McGarrett's office earlier as the facts of the case become more and more prevalent: "How do you like them pineapples?" There is some interesting trivia behind this comment, according to Mickelsen: "The 'nice pineapples' line was a result of an extra who was one of the hippies at the house. She was braless, wearing a see through blouse and had a body that demanded attention. The cast and crew were very entertained by her running from the house, so much so that about 15 takes ensued, most with no film in the camera." (This scene does not seem to have made it into the final print.)

As he tries to find out whether Jack Rigney was killed (Michael, who took his brother's gun, is suspected) or he killed himself, McGarrett finds himself stonewalled by the military, who tell him, "Cool your investigation." His response: "I'm not about to be pressured into cooling any or all of my investigation in this case. I work for the State of Hawaii, not the federal government."

Glenn Cannon plays Colonel Franklin, who throws obstacles in McGarrett's path. Finally, General Rigney gets on the phone (202-545-6700) to Jonathan Kay [sic in the credits] (not identified by name in the show, but played by Robert Dixon) in Washington to complain about the "electronic eavesdropping" in his son's apartment "like he was some Commie spy."

The final scene, where the surveillance tape made of Jack's final moments with Michael first telling his brother to get help and Jack leaping from the balcony after Michael leaves is finally played while his mother, father, brother, Colonel Franklin, and Michael's girl friend Gail Howard (Joy Bang) along with McGarrett and Danno listen, is outstanding — this should get five stars out of four!

Jack's death is revealed to be suicide, a reaction to his having participated in a My Lai-like massacre under orders: "We didn't care what we killed ... peasants ... gooks ... anything. We only cared about our body count, about our high-kill ratio." When the General tries to reconcile with his remaining son, Michael says "It's not over, I've made my decision. I'll have to go to jail." The father says, "Then I've got two dead sons."

The score by music supervisor Don B. Ray introduces us to the "military theme," which will make repeat appearances in future episodes. There are also variations on the "memories" theme.

Michael Anderson, in an interview posted elsewhere on the site, said of this episode, "That never aired when it was supposed to. Jack told me later that the network had decided it was — I don’t know, I was never given the whole, exact story — but it was very sensitive. The military didn’t like the idea that we would do a movie on draft dodging in the first place. Or that — I think somebody felt it was sensitive. I think somebody leaned on somebody at CBS. I don’t know, but that’s what I think … I think that somebody felt they had gone too far. I know that first episode [I did] never aired until later. Many years later, in fact. The reason I know this is that I never got a residual for it! … [It] was ‘69 I did it ... I think Jack liked the idea that they were doing something cutting-edge, taking on difficult issues, and stuff. 

(Note, this does not jibe with the production date for this show being in the third season. "To Kill Or Be Killed" was twelfth in production order for the season, but it was eventually broadcast as the 17th show.)

WHAT DOES THE TITLE MEAN?

When he is talking to Danno, Max Heller, the counsellor with the draft resisters, says "It isn't easy for a 20-year-old to decide between going to jail, leaving his country, to kill or to be killed."

EPISODE PROMO:

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

CASUALTY LIST:

    Death: Jack Rigney falls to his death after leaping from his apartment six floors up.

MORE TRIVIA:

  • Five-O is still at Jack's apartment when Danno gives McGarrett some paperwork connected with Jack, which he seems to have obtained very quickly. The first piece of paper has white type on a black background, as if it came from microfilm or microfiche. This paper is also seen in the episode "Ten Thousand Diamonds And A Heart." There is something paper-clipped to the top of this black background paper when McGarrett opens the folder, but when we see it in closeup later, the paper-clipped material isn't there. Under this, there is some other paperwork which looks like an academic article. It has normal typewriter type on white paper. Neither of these two pieces of paperwork has anything to do with the Rigney boys. There is also a black and white picture of Michael.
  • Michael took Jack's gun away after it looked like Jack was going to shoot himself in the head. Michael then dumped the gun in a trash can in the back of the building, which was witnessed by Mrs. Jessup (Frida May Bird), the housekeeper. This gun is later found by Kono, who shows it to McGarrett. He says that it is a "Russian-made nine-shot Tucard" which "lots of the boys smuggle back" as souvenirs from Vietnam. The gun's name ("Tucard") in the English subtitles is wrong, though; the Spanish and Portuguese subtitles correctly identify it as a "Tokarev." An article about this gun on Wikipedia has further information.
  • When he is intentionally harassing Michael at the draft-dodgers' center, Heller uses the expression "Bull!", followed by "All this bunk about conscience. I think you're just being arbitrary to suit your own inconvenience."
  • Michael's girl friend Gail raises five hundred dollars to help the two of them get to Canada. When he asks her how she did this, she tells him, "Well, seven professors and 22 students, man. I started a kind of sympathy fund. … They know you. That seemed to be enough." I think this is sort of like the early 70's equivalent of a GoFundMe campaign.
  • When McGarrett and Chin go to the university dormitory where Gail lives, the street is all wet as if it has just been raining.
  • The general refers to Jack as a hero who fought at "Dak To," site of a real Vietnamese battle in 1967 and "Ben Cat," another area of military significance.
  • Allen Croyden (Thomas McWilliams), the guy who is bugging Jack's room, works for the FBI Army Criminal Investigation Division. Croyden is using a Nagra recorder for surveillance; the tape reels have large "spokes," similar to Scotch brand tape. When the recording is played back later, the copy is on a Sony reel-to-reel tape.
  • When Jack jumps from the balcony at the beginning of the show, it looks like it is a real person, not a dummy.
  • After Danno arrives at the hangout in the valley, a blonde woman gives him a joint. He tries to give it to Michael and Gail, but they refuse to take it.
  • A copy of the Honolulu Advertiser is seen, with a large headline: "Vietnam hero falls to death; brother sought for questioning." A second heading says "upholds [Honolulu mayor Frank] Fasi veto" and a third refers to "troop reduction."
  • When Michael and Gail travel around town on a motorcycle, they are wearing helmets.
  • General Rigney says that he participated in "three wars," but when Michael is talking to his brother, Jack says, "I don't even want him [his father] to know … He never fought in a war like this. He never had to become an animal." If this is suggesting the father never fought in Vietnam, what is the other war is he referring to?
  • One of the characters in the show, played by Donald Weller, is named "Rafe Bellamy." Is this a joke referring to the American actor Ralph Bellamy?

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66 & 67. (S03E18 & S03E19) “F.O.B. Honolulu” ★★½

PART ONE:
Original air date: 1/27/71 — Opening CreditsEnd Credits
Director: Michael O'Herlihy; Producer: Robert Stambler; Writers: Jerry Ludwig & Eric Bercovici; Music: Stock
Timings: Teaser: 4:48; Main Titles: 0:59; Act One: 7:28; Act Two: 13:16; Act Three: 8:04; Act Four: 15:14; End Credits: 0:55; Total Time: 50:44.

PART TWO:
Original air date: 2/3/71 — Opening CreditsEnd Credits
Director: Michael O'Herlihy; Producer: Robert Stambler; Writers: Eric Bercovici & Jerry Ludwig; Music: Don B. Ray
Timings: Teaser: 5:32; Main Titles: 0:59; Act One: 12:15; Act Two: 11:18; Act Three: 11:29; Act Four: 7:47; End Credits: 0:54; Total Time: 50:14.

QUICK PLOT:

Counterfeit plates for U.S. twenty-dollar bills are sought by various international agents including Wo Fat, resulting in murder, treason and double cross.

Click here to read Full Plot.

REVIEW:

"Economic warfare" is the theme of this two-parter.

The Chinese, emulating the Nazis during World War II who duplicated English currency to the extent that it would have thoroughly disrupted the worldwide financial system (it did not, since their plot failed), have produced a set of $20 dollar plates which are so perfect that even David Carter of the US Treasury Department (Howard Gottschalk) says they match the "minute difference between the vertical lines and the horizontal lines" behind Andrew Jackson's portrait, "72 eighty-eight hundreths of an inch, compared to 70 eighty-eight hundreths of an inch for the horizontal lines."

These plates were stolen in Nanking and have left a disturbing trail of death across Asia. Commander Ron Nicholson from US Army intelligence (John McMartin), an old pal of McGarrett, has been assigned to track these plates down. Jonathan Kaye (Joseph Sirola) has arrived from Washington to announce the US government will pay a $1 million ransom for the plates. He says "The future of the free world depends on what we do here in Hawaii within the next 24 hours.

Of course, other countries are also interested in the plates. The intrigue begins in Honolulu when Corporal Robert L. Kurtz (Tim Tindall) is found murdered by two Asian assassins in the Ilikai elevator. Kurtz appears to be returning from Saigon on R&R, but there is no such record of anyone by this name in Army records. Kurtz is actually Leo Price, wanted by Interpol for murder. A Buddha that "Kurtz" was bringing home contained what seemed to be the plates, but it turns out they are blank. When his killers take these plates to Wo Fat, who is holed up in some installation on top of a mountain nearby, he is furious. (One wonders why Wo's hangout is so secret; it's not that far from downtown Honolulu!).

In addition to Wo Fat, obviously representing China in the bidding war for the plates to get them back, the other major player is the Russian Mikhail Ivanovich Toptygin (Roger Carmel), known as Misha. There is also Nicole Fleming (Sabrina Scharf), described by Nicholson as "Born in Manchukuo, mother, Russian, father, British businessman, supposedly. Too many aliases to trace. Speaks five languages with absolute fluency. Interpol has a file linking her to everything from espionage to blackmail. Make no mistake, she's as deadly as she is female."

Fleming shows up to claim the "personal effects" of her "brother" Kurtz/Price, who she was working with, wearing a mourning black cap and veils, but McGarrett almost immediately addresses her by her real name. She says she has nothing to hide and gives him the key to her room at the Kahala (suite 84). Five-O searches through the place but they indeed find nothing.

Fleming's other partner with Price is the "little ferret of a man," Anthony Cameron Madrid (Monty Landis) who is also nearby. Wo Fat, who contracted the three of them to deliver the plates, is not happy, despite Madrid's claim that "Price double-crossed me in Penang." Madrid is just an pouty irritation throughout the show, and it's unfortunate that Wo doesn't knock him off during their first encounter, despite Madrid claiming that "We know they're [the plates] due to arrive here."

Fleming spends much of her time in the show sitting around the pool at her hotel while being surveilled by Kono and Beau Van Den Ecker. Considering she is wearing a bikini, it is easy to forgive some of the plot stupidities which ensue. Madrid tries to suck up to her after his rejection by Wo, but she tells him if Wo doesn't need him any more, then neither does she.

Five-O is kind of short on coming up with clues until Lieutenant Hinano from Army intelligence tells them he's "picked up some signals that don't fit into the FCC ham-operator's schedule" that just happen to be emanating from Wo Fat's hideout. This gives McGarrett and Danno an excuse to fly over the place and drill the henchman there (Wo having fled the scene) with machine gun fire.

One of these stooges attempts to burn incriminating evidence before he is killed, but Danno manages to recover a tiny piece of reel-to-reel tape from a garbage can which was set on fire. Despite being recorded at a speed which makes it sound like The Chipmunks, Five-O manages to decipher this at TV station KGMB where they have had similar technical help before. All that is on this tape, which is only a few seconds long, is some Chinese dialog which is the letters "ZIL MA," translated by Chin Ho.

This is where the show gets kind of stupid, because using this tiny fragment of dialog, taken from a tape which is either 1200 or 1800 feet long, Five-O can begin to crack the case, figuring out that the plates are arriving on a ship the BRAZIL MARU. When they go to investigate, they find the plates were obtained from a crew member, "Zagor, the third engineer," who was murdered by McGarrett's pal Nicholson! DUH! This bit of detective work hearkens back to the pilot, where the name of another ship, the S.S. ARCTURUS, was determined by examining scraps of paper taken from a burned notebook.

It turns out that Nicholson is in cahoots with Fleming. He contacts Jonathan Kaye and says he wants $2 million for the plates plus amnesty. Of course, this just ups the amount the Russians and Wo Fat are willing to pay, to $2.5 million and $3 million respectively. Fleming meets Nicholson on some deserted beach where he has parked a rented camping car, and between smooches talks about how she wants "to be somebody" and the two of them will run away together. When she mentions the amounts the Russians and Wo have offered to pay, presumably with her as a broker, Nicholson gets a bit nervous. Moments later, she shoots him dead, with four shots to the abdomen.

Nicholson had only one of the two plates on him, but he told her the other one is "safe and sound just the way we set it up." At Fleming's hotel room, Toptygin finds an impression in a notepad which looks like a map, which he later turns over to Five-O, after McGarrett meets with him saying "You can't win, but you don't have to lose," considering Wo is going to get the plates and because earlier he was rebuffed by Wo when offering to team up with him. McGarrett can compare this map to the transparent one in his office, and using mileage statistics from Nicholson's camping car and the fact that his shoes contained tar from a road which was being repaired, they narrow down the location of the other plate to the Byodo-In Temple.

Fleming meets with Wo, but only gives him one of the plates and instructions on where to find the second one. He doesn't trust her, and insists that she accompany him to the temple where there doesn't seem to be anyone around, and we hear the familiar "bonging bell" sound. When they get there, they find the weaselly Madrid, who has been rebuffed by both of them. In a confrontation accompanied by music from the end of "A Thousand Pardons," Wo gets shot, but when Five-O shows up seconds later, he is nowhere to be seen. There is a considerable amount of blood lost from Wo, and Fleming is busted.

The plates are returned to Kaye, who doesn't even tell McGarrett "thank you"!

WHAT DOES THE TITLE MEAN?

According to one WWW page, F.O.B. stands for “free on board” or “freight on board” and is a designation that is used to indicate when liability and ownership of goods is transferred from a seller to a buyer. "Free on board" indicates whether the seller or the buyer is liable for goods that are damaged or destroyed during shipping. When used with an identified physical location, the designation determines which party has responsibility for the payment of the freight charges and at what point title for the shipment passes from the seller to the buyer. In international shipping, for example, “FOB [name of originating port]” means that the seller (consignor) is responsible for transportation of the goods to the port of shipment and the cost of loading. The buyer (consignee) pays the costs of ocean freight, insurance, unloading, and transportation from the arrival port to the final destination. The seller passes the risk to the buyer when the goods are loaded at the originating port.

CASUALTY LIST:

    Death: Lance Corporal Kurtz/Leo Price shot in head in Ilikai Hotel elevator by Wo Fat's men.
    Death (x3): Wo Fat's men shot by Danno from second helicopter.
    Death: Wo Fat's man shot at top of tower by McGarrett from helicopter.
    Death: Wo Fat's man shot by McGarrett inside building after he starts fire.
    Injury: Carter hit in head in police laboratory to steal the bill.
    Death: 3rd Engineer Zagore shot by Commander Ron Nicholson.
    Death: Nicholson shot four times by Nicole.
    Death: Wo Fat's guard, accompanying him and Nicole to the temple, killed by Madrid and put into koi pond.
    Injury: Wo Fat shot by Madrid but all that's left is a blood trail at the temple.
    Death: Madrid shot by McGarrett and falls from bridge.

MORE TRIVIA:

  • There is no promo for this two-part episode on the second season DVD set. Whether one exists is not known.
  • Footage of the plane with Jonathan Kaye landing at the beginning of the show and a Cadillac limousine approaching the plane has been seen before in the series' pilot and also the episode "Three Dead Cows at Makapu‘u."
  • An old lady, listed as "Mrs. Spencer" in the end credits, is played by Peggy Oumansky. She is seen knitting by the Kahala pool, obviously spying on Fleming for Toptygen, because near the end of the show, she is found tied up in Fleming's room where she was attempting to spy on her. The actress only appeared in Five-O, her other shows were Retire in Sunny Hawaii... Forever and Though the Heavens Fall.
  • There is a huge amount of yellow leader put on the tiny fragment of tape which is recovered from Wo Fat's hideout.
  • Kurtz eschews travelling to Honolulu on a Trade Wind Tours bus and instead takes a Bernie's Cab. Later, another cab has the familiar number 732-5577 on its roof.
  • Default Hawaiian music is heard in the background on several occasions, including the kids' song from Kiss The Queen Goodbye. Military themes and the "marimba theme" are also heard. The first part of the show has stock music, the second part is credited to Don Ray.
  • When Kurtz goes up in the elevator at the Ilikai, we see from the panel in the lobby that it stopped at the 12th floor, then the 18th. But when the doors open and we see Kurtz with a bullet in his head, it is seemingly back at the lobby (and there is no woman screaming as the doors open, as usual). The elevator we see during the main credits is the one which goes up and down to the hotel's restaurant, not the one which goes to rooms within the hotel.
  • Corey e-mailed me about this episode: "At the end of part one, there is a close up of the sought-after $20 bill plates. The problem is that the close-up shows that the plates have a serial number. Real plates don't have the number. Earlier in the episode, they refer to the counterfeit sample bill having zeros as serial numbers, which couldn't be the case if the plates had actual numbers. What good is a bunch of counterfeit dollars all with the same serial number?"
  • Toptygin meets Wo at the Makai Research Pier in Waimanlo where Wo's boat is tied up (site of the post-Five-O Jack Lord-directed production M Station Hawaii).
  • As McGarrett talks to Captain DeJongh of the Brazil Maru (Ed Fernandez), there is a rainbow in the background.
  • It is interesting the way that when Wo shows Toptygen a sample of the bill printed by the plates, there are starbusts coming off the bill.
  • At the end of the show, one of Wo's bodyguards is shot dead by Madrid and ends up in a pool full of koi fish. We don't hear the shot, though they don't seem to be that far away from Wo and Fleming, and there is no silencer on Madrid's gun.
  • McGarrett misprounounces the name of the Byodo-In Temple featured in the show's climax as "Bye-oh-do-in" rather than "Be-o-do-in".
  • Karen Rhodes in her book about Five-O suggests that Roger Carmel's character is identified in the end credits as "Misha the Bear" because the actor used to do the voice of Smokey the Bear in public service announcements. However, according to Wikipedia, this nickname "in any of its forms, is a common colloquialism in Russian for a bear [and] most anthropomorphic bears in Russian fairy tales have this name." Misha was also the name of the Russian Bear mascot of the 1980 Moscow Olympic Games.
  • When McGarrett is grilling Nicole at poolside in the second part of the show, she is reading a copy of The Atlantic Monthly. This is the November 1970 issue of the magazine (thanks to Heather at The Atlantic for assistance with this).

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68. (S03E20) “The Gunrunner” ★★½

Original air date: 2/10/71 — Opening CreditsEnd Credits
Director: Tony Leader; Producer: Robert Stambler; Writers: James D. Buchanan & Ronald Austin; Music: Stock
Timings: Teaser: 3:57; Main Titles: 0:58; Act One: 12:06; Act Two: 8:43; Act Three: 9:01; Act Four: 15:02; End Credits: 0:54; Total Time: 50:41.

QUICK PLOT:

After a munitions dealer makes a cold-blooded deal with revolutionaries to kidnap and murder his wife for compensation, his plot backfires.

Click here to read Full Plot.

REVIEW:

This show is sort of OK, but if you think hard about it, there are quite a few questions. I think the creators of this show started to write themselves into a corner at more than one point, or maybe the script was just too long for an hour, and stuff started getting left on the floor.

Claire Cunningham (Marian McCargo), the wife of arms dealer Ben (Paul Burke) is kidnapped by separatist revolutionaries from the island of Arasunda. Cunningham had negotiated a shipment of arms and munitions to the Republic of Malanesia, the country from which Arasunda is trying to separate. The kidnappers want this shipment diverted from its intended destination to them.

Cunningham is having major money problems, primarily because of a recent Central American deal where the transaction went sideways and everything was confiscated, so anything interfering with his business, aside from damaging his reputation, could push him over the edge financially, according to his friend Hank Merrill (George Murdock).

After the abduction of Claire, one of the kidnappers is found dead on the lawn outside Cunningham's place, seemingly killed by a bullet from Cunningham's rifle. He was twenty-five-year-old Kemal Rojani, who arrived in Hawaii three weeks ago from Arasunda.

McGarrett goes to see Sangree, the obsequious Malanesian Consul in Honolulu (Arthur Batanides), who says that Lieutenant Emir Kanjil (Daws Dawson), an agent of the Arasunda Separatist Party who has also come to Honolulu, is the leader of a group trying to secure arms for an illegal uprising. Rojani was a member of Kanjil's group.

The kidnappers' van is located in the middle of nowhere after it broke down with transmission problems, and traces of blood inside are noted. The van belongs to a man named Bajano, a resident alien in the export/import business who originally was from Arasunda, but has been in Hawaii for 10 years. Bajano is played by Philip Pine, who had experience in S02E14, "Which Way Did They Go," playing another "Asian" (as in this episode, not particularly well).

McGarrett goes to see Bajano, who says his "cousin," who was Rojani, the dead man on the lawn, used the van, after threatening him at gunpoint, as well as his family back in Arasunda, who "would be considered the family of a traitor." Bajano tells McGarrett, "I'm not political, Mr. McGarrett. I'm a businessman."

The kidnappers phone Cunningham at home. Their conversation is recorded on a wiretap which McGarrett has set up. They want the shipment to leave as expected the next day, but when it gets to Hong Kong, it will be redirected to the revolutionaries in Arasunda. Cunningham tells them, "I can't do that. The weapons are sold. I have a contract [with the Malanesians]." The kidnappers reply, "You have a contract, with a corrupt government of traitors and exploiters. You will arrange to deliver the shipment as instructed. That is the only way you will see your wife again."

Cunningham goes to see McGarrett, who insists that the guns not be redirected to the revolutionaries. McGarrett wants more time, and Cunningham gets another 36 hours from the consul, whose country needs the armaments desperately. When he goes to the consulate, Cunningham tells the people there about the threat against his wife. They offer him $500,000 more if the guns will leave Honolulu that day: "You will receive payment the moment the airplane leaves Honolulu airport."

There is a mole in the consulate who, as soon as Cunningham leaves, calls Kanjil and blabs about this deal which has just been made. Five-O has figured out where the guns are being stored — at Pier 39. The separatists quickly go to the pier and attempt to stop the guns from leaving to the airport, but there are only three of them and despite knocking off the people driving one of the trucks, there are a lot of well-armed men working in the warehouse there, as well as Cunningham, who is also armed. All three separatists, including Kanjil, are killed. McGarrett, who shows up at the pier with other members of the Five-O team, tries to get information about where Claire Cunningham is being held before Kanjil kicks the bucket, but learns nothing.

McGarrett pays a visit to the HPD forensics lab, where Doc (Robert Costa) has some interesting news: the blood in the van, suspected of being that of Claire, was AB negative, whereas her blood type is actually O. AB negative matches the blood type of Bajano's cousin, who was killed on the lawn. McGarrett speculates, "He was found on the lawn. He never got back to the van. So the bleeding had to take place on the way to the kidnapping." When Doc says, "Why would they take a wounded man on an operation like that? It's crazy," McGarrett replies, "They didn't. They didn't take a wounded man. They took a dead man." WHAT?!? #1.

McGarrett goes to talk to Merrill, who says he never actually saw Cunningham shoot the cousin. Merrill also identifies Bajano as the middleman between Cunningham and the separatists "when they first tried to make a deal for the guns." In other words, Kanjil tried to get the guns through Bajano, which failed because the asking price was too high. Finally, Danno finds out that everything Bajano told them about the cousin was a lie; Bajano also has no living relatives on Arasunda and was once indicted for smuggling.

McGarrett then has a huge brainstorm to Danno: "I think Bajano has Mrs. Cunningham. And I think he took her with the help and connivance of her own husband. Cunningham had his own wife kidnapped? That's the way I see it. I think he set us up from the very outset. Even the phone calls. He knew that we'd tap the line if he didn't cooperate. He had Hank there to support his story. But the dead man was killed by Cunningham's gun. Hours before the kidnapping. And that's what ties Bajano and Cunningham together. Well, you can forget self-defense. That's conspiracy and murder one. Right. And we're gonna get Mr. Cunningham on exactly those charges after we find his wife." WHAT?!? #2.

Of course, all the above is true!

Cunningham phones Bajano at his hideout and says to let his wife go: "All you have to do is let her think she escaped. Once she gets home safe, my lawyer said he's sure he can get the guns released [McGarrett had the guns confiscated after the shootout as evidence], but it's gotta be done now."

Bajano says, "When you have paid the agreed $50,000, then we will let your wife go." (Huh? When was this amount "agreed" on? WHAT?!? #3.)

When Cunningham says, "I don't get a penny until the guns are shipped," Bajano replies, "I suggest you ask the Malanesian consulate to advance you the money.Tell them $50,000 now and you can ship them the arms. They are reasonable gentlemen. Also, they need the guns very badly."

While all this is going on, Claire tries to escape, but when Bajano and his two stooges investigate and catch her in the act, she sees their faces, so they realize they will have to kill her.

Cunningham goes to the consulate and gets the $50,000. McGarrett goes to the consulate and has harsh words with the consul, who wants to keep his mouth shut about what is happening. McGarrett threatens to make a huge stink about all this in "the international press." The consul tells McGarrett that the $50,000 they just gave Cunningham was "an advance." (Does this mean he would get the other $450,000 to compensate him for his wife as well?)

When Cunningham gets to the hideout, Bajano says he told the wife (who he intends to kill anyway) that he is her husband's employee. Cunningham tells her, "I had to do it this way to make an extra half a million dollars." What a sleazebag! But Bajano is equally sleazy, having murdered the man described as his cousin seemingly just for the sake of getting the $50,000 — which is to be used for what purpose? Who was this guy? A martyr for the cause?

After Cunningham and Bajano squabble over the money, Cunningham is shot dead by one of the stooges. Five-O shows up, there is a gun battle. Bajano and this stooge are shot dead; the other stooge is captured by Chin and Kono.

It is possible that this show was inspired by real events.

According to Wikipedia: On July 4, 1957, U.S. rifle manufacturer Fairchild ArmaLite sold a five-year manufacturing license for the AR-10 to the Dutch arms manufacturer, Artillerie Inrichtingen (A.I.). With its large factory and production facilities, A.I. could produce the ArmaLite rifle in the large quantities that Fairchild expected would be forthcoming. (The guns in the show are identified as AR-10s, and they come from Holland.)

In 1957 Samuel Cummings, "a famous international arms dealer," secured a order of 7,500 AR-10 rifles from Nicaragua, with an initial delivery of 1,000 rifles to be delivered before January 1958. The order was contingent on a successful completion of a 7,500-round endurance test.

With the AR-10 in short supply, Cummings left his personal demonstrator rifle with Nicaragua's chief military commander, General Anastasio Somoza, who would personally conduct the endurance test trial. While General Somoza was firing this rifle for the trial, the bolt lug over the ejector sheared off and flew past Somoza's head. The general angrily returned Cumming's AR-10 and canceled the entire Nicaraguan order. The remaining rifles were inspected and refitted as necessary with new parts to prevent reoccurrence of the bolt lug failure, but the Nicaraguan order was lost for good.

In the show, according to Merrill, Cunningham (note the similarity of the name to "Cummings") "made a deal in Central America six months ago. It went sour. Everything was confiscated. It nearly wiped him out." As well, Cunningham is dealing with a Dutch arms manufacturer; Hank is talking to a guy at the company named VanDroot.

EPISODE PROMO:

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CASUALTY LIST:

    Injury: Claire Cunningham chloroformed when she is kidnapped.
    Injury: Hank hit in the head with sap by one of the kidnappers.
    Death: One of the kidnappers is found dead in Ben Cunningham's yard; later determined he was killed before the kidnapping.
    Death: Guard dog is killed; fate of guard unknown.
    Death (x2): Driver and ‘shotgun' of first truck loaded with guns shot by revolutionary.
    Death: Revolutionary by crane shot by Ben.
    Death: "1st Separatist" shot by men behind trucks who loaded guns.
    Death: Kanjil shot by Ben. Injured at first but dies after talking to McGarrett.
    Death: Ben shot by "1st Kidnapper"
    Death: "1st Kidnapper" shot by Danno.
    Death: Bajano shot by McGarrett.

MORE TRIVIA:

  • There are parallels between this episode and S02E05, "Savage Sunday," another show where revolutionaries from a mysteriously-named foreign country come to Hawaii in search of armaments.
  • When Kanjil is at the pier, he pulls the pin on a grenade. The typical time for a grenade to explode is from 3-5 seconds, sometimes up to 7 seconds. The one in the show takes about 40 seconds to detonate after it is then hurled at one of the trucks after Kanjil runs almost up to the door of the warehouse.
  • Robert Luck is seen on a photo as one of the revolutionary suspects, and Beau Van Den Ecker plays "1st Separatist," on screen for about 15 seconds. Daniel Kamekona is a slimy general from Malanesia wearing sunglasses.
  • There are several stock shots: above the Iolani Palace as Five-O cars pull out onto the street, McGarrett running up the palace steps, McGarrett arriving at HPD headquarters, Winston Char and Kam Fong tracing a phone call. The last of these was first seen earlier this season in S03E06, "The Ransom."
  • Why the guns are at Pier 39 is difficult to understand. At the airport, Kono talks to Kwan Him Lim who plays a shipping clerk. He tells Kono that the guns have arrived from Holland and have gone to the pier. But then they are going to be brought back to the airport almost immediately to be shipped on another plane!
  • During his visit to Doc, McGarrett is wearing a grey suit. In the next scene he is going up the Iolani Palace steps (seen as a camera pans past columns at the front of the palace) in a blue suit (or maybe it is a black suit, hard to tell). In his office, his suit is blue.
  • During a chase near the end, where Five-O is following Cunningham around Honolulu to be led to the hideout where Claire is being held, Kono radios to McGarrett, but his voice seems altered. During this chase, McGarrett and Danno are using a map. Why? Don't they know their own town?
  • When the Malanesian consul is abusing McGarrett for his interference in the country's internal affairs near the end of the show, you can see him literally spitting at McGarrett.
  • Cars from Five-O and HPD approaching Bajano's hideout, which is in the middle of nowhere, are very noisy on the gravel.
  • The marimba theme is heard multiple times in this show; the "Pursuit" theme heard in S01E07, "The Ways of Love" is also heard when Claire is being grabbed.
  • Cunningham's house is again the Anderson Estate, seen in numerous other episodes. It seems odd that there is an armed guard with a dog outside; is Cunningham that paranoid?
  • At the beginning of the show, Cunningham tells his wife that if the current deal does not go through, "Hank and I will go back to flying charters, I promise you."
  • In response to a suggestion that the kidnapping was not particularly well-planned, Danno suggests that the kidnappers "could have been hopped up."
  • Doc says that they got Claire Cunningham's blood type from "Iolani Hospital," but the subtitles say that it was "Waianae Hospital."

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69. (S03E21) “Dear Enemy”  DANNO, BOOK HIM 

Original air date: 2/17/71 — Opening CreditsEnd Credits
Director: Murray Golden; Producer: Robert Stambler; Writer: Jackson Gillis; Music: Richard Shores
Timings: Teaser: 3:08; Main Titles: 0:58; Act One: 12:55; Act Two: 11:42; Act Three: 7:36; Act Four: 13:30; End Credits: 0:54; Total Time: 50:43.

QUICK PLOT:

A woman tricks McGarrett into reinvestigating the homicide charge for which her husband was convicted.

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

REVIEW:

This is more of a plot anal-ysis, which hopefully will help others to understand this talky and confusing story. Aside from the usual quality production values and excellent photography, about the only thing worth watching is guest star Vera Miles, but even her presence isn't enough to raise the rating from one star.

Ray Tobias (the very irritating Dub Taylor) returns from Australia, where he has been living for a year after leaving Hawaii. Described as "unreliable and opportunistic," he was formerly the manager of an apartment house where Betty Anders, the mistress of Fred Whiting (John Lipton), an aspiring politician, was murdered. Tobias makes a phone call, which we later discover was to lawyer Henry Lockman (Gary Collins).

After Tobias spends some time in the Pantheon Bar where the bartender is Lippy Espinda and Tobias runs up a hefty tab, he goes to the docks to meet someone (presumably Lockman), but he trips on a broken step, is knocked unconscious in the fall, and then murdered by drowning. McGarrett of course is suspicious, but Che Fong says there is nothing fishy about Tobias' end.

McGarrett meets with state senator Amos Bolin (William O'Donnell), a friend of Whiting's, after the newspapers run muckracking stories trying to connect the murdered Tobias with the sensational trial after Anders' murder, which resulted in Whiting being convicted. Bolin says that there is no connection at all, because Tobias was an "inconsequential witness." While Tobias — who was on the witness stand for only a few minutes — saw Whiting and Anders going into her apartment on occasion, he was not present when the murder took place.

Lockman, Whiting's tax counsellor, political advisor and business partner, co-owned Anders' apartment building with Whiting, and is now backing Bolin in the upcoming senatorial elections.

McGarrett gets a call from Lockman to meet with Whiting's wife Flora (Vera Miles) who everyone thought was in a hospital on the mainland after having a nervous breakdown. She has returned to Hawaii ostensibly to meet with Tobias, having received a letter from him saying that he had information about other people seen with Anders which could clear her husband. However, when McGarrett asks to see the letter, she says it was lost in the hospital on the mainland.

Flora says when she returned to Hawaii a few days before, she went to the beach house where she and her husband formerly lived and went into her husband's room where she found a broken cuff link under a piece of furniture, which she gives to McGarrett. It turns out that a cuff link which was found under Anders' murdered body and traced back to her husband was a vital piece of evidence which helped to convict him. According to McGarrett, that cuff link is in "the attorney general's files."

There was another cuff link which the police subpoenaed from Flora to compare to the one under the body ... which was returned to her and is now in her safety deposit box. When McGarrett asks to have this cuff link, Flora says that she will go to the bank with Lockman to get it.

McGarrett meets with Whiting, who is in Oahu State Prison. Whiting says he left his job at the university to run for the state legislature. He says he met Betty when she walked into his office "by mistake." Whiting says that when he got home to the beach house on the night when Betty was murdered (he and Betty had a fight prior to this, but he swears he did not kill her), he noticed that one of his cuff links was missing. Whiting says Betty threatened to expose their relationship, but he was primarily concerned with confessing everything to his wife.

After this, Flora meets with McGarrett in his office, and she has suddenly got one page of Tobias' missing letter, but not another which gives more details about why Tobias wanted to meet her in Hawaii. When questioned about the second page, Flora can't remember what was on it, then says that it was of such a sensitive nature that Tobias had to come to Hawaii to talk to her about it.

While she is talking with McGarrett, Danno comes in with the other part of the broken cuff link that the cops have just found after a search in Whiting's beach house room (strange that no one found it a year before!). Flora tells McGarrett "You thought the broken link was the one I had in the safety deposit box."

Five-O later tracks down an associate of a jeweller who made the original cufflinks named Bill Makoto (Ah Vah), and in a surprise confrontation with him in McGarrett's office, Flora admits that she had the duplicate (broken) cuff link made up and planted the evidence to try and spring her husband from jail. McGarrett is very annoyed, saying that Flora will likely be charged with manufacturing evidence, among other things. He sends Flora back to her hotel room to be put under a doctor's care.

Following this, Lockman is in the outer Five-O office and overhears Danno saying in a really obvious way that Five-O is closing in on the person who broke into the flophouse room where Tobias was staying and ransacked the place earlier (it was Lockman). Lockman actually lifts up the phone to hear Danno talking to Kono!

At Flora's hotel room, Lockman drugs her drink. He tells her that he broke into Tobias' room because he wanted "her story to look better." He also admits that he set up her husband with Betty and walked in on Betty after she had the fight with Flora's husband. When Betty said that she was going to expose Lockman, he had to kill her. Lockman is just about to dump Flora's near-comatose body over the hotel room's balcony when McGarrett and Danno burst in.

I swore I would not watch this episode again, having just rearranged the original review which was one long paragraph into a bunch of shorter paragraphs.

But, of course, I could not resist watching and soon grabbed my clipboard I use to take notes.

While the show started out OK, it didn't take long for things to get complicated.

Tobias is supposed to meet someone at Pier 5A after his evening of heavy drinking. Rather than just stay on the dock by this warehouse, he goes down these steps, one of which is rotten, and he trips and falls on the floating dock. Someone unseen hits him on the back of his head and then holds him underwater, drowning him. First, I'm surprised that Che Fong never saw a bruise on the back of Tobias' head, and secondly, how does Che know that Tobias' blood type, found on the dock, is type AB? It would take at least 20 or 30 minutes to identify this in a lab, aside from the time it took to transport the sample to the lab. Whether Tobias would fall down in such a way that only his head was under water (you can see the typical crime lab outline of his body on the dock) is debatable, because probably the lower half of his body would have to be on the dock, if he completely didn't slip into the water.

Later, Danno manages to figure out that a phone call that Tobias made from a pay phone at the dock after he got off the boat from Australia was made to Lockman's office. This is very suspect — did the phone company at the time have the ability to track calls in such a precise manner? Perhaps they are just bluffing when they confront Lockman with this fact later, because Lockman doesn't dispute it.

Lockman manages to figure out where the flophouse Tobias was staying in is located. How did he do this? Did Tobias tell him where it was during their phone conversation? Tobias isn't even using his real name to stay at the place. He is "Stanley Jefferson." When Lockman goes and tosses the place, he knocks out the woman caretaker. But after Five-O gets a call from her and goes there, how do they connect the place with Tobias? Didn't Lockman take Tobias's passport which he found? (Lockman seems quite surprised to see this.) When Kono gets there, he knows that Tobias was using the room, but says that it just contains "dirty laundry."

One of the major problems with the script has to do with cufflinks which were evidence that was used to send Fred Whiting to jail a year before, after his mistress Betty Anders was found murdered.

When McGarrett goes to visit Flora Whiting, Fred's wife, who has returned to Hawaii after spending time in a hospital on the mainland because she could not deal with her husband going to jail, among other things, she gives him a piece of a cufflink which is broken. She says she found this when she "moved a piece of furniture" at the beach house owned by her and her husband when she visited the place a couple of days before (on "Wednesday").

After Anders' murder over a year ago, a cufflink was found under her body at the beach house, which connected Fred to the murder for which he was convicted and went to jail. Back then, Fred Whiting had "lost [the cufflink] days before." According to Lockman, the couple's lawyer, that cufflink is likely "in the attorney general's files" (which it is). The matching link from the pair was subpoenaed for evidence in the trial and was returned to Flora later. She says it is now in her safety deposit box (which it seemingly was, she gives it to McGarrett later). The other part of the broken cufflink is located in Whiting's beach house room after another sweep of the place. It seems very odd that this was not found there before.

Later it is revealed that "four days ago," Flora went to Makoto, who created the original custom-made cufflinks, and got him to make another one in the same style. So what was the point of this? Did she find the broken cufflink after when she went to the beach house? Or did she break this new cufflink and leave part of it at the beach house where it would be found later and then give the other part to McGarrett? The whole business with the cufflinks is VERY confusing.

At the end of the show, Flora is taken back to her hotel room after freaking out in McGarrett's office. Her doctor, Wurderman (Bob Gleason), gives her a sedative and she goes to sleep. Lockman goes to the room after the doctor and Chin Ho leave and lets himself in with Flora's keys which she gave him earlier. Flora is awakened by a ringing phone (which is McGarrett phoning; Lockman does not answer it). Lockman offers to give her some more medication, but Flora wants a drink; this is a very bad idea to mix these two things. In addition to giving her a pill, Lockman dumps more of the medicine into the drink, unseen by her (I think).

On the verge of passing out, Flora suddenly starts blabbing away, asking Lockman if he ransacked Tobias' room (does she know about this?) and killed Tobias. She also knows that the doctor didn't let Lockman into the room, despite being asleep when Lockman entered. She knows more plot details as well, like the fact Tobias knew Lockman killed Anders, who then "blamed it" (???) on her husband. Lockman starts blabbing away too, telling how he set up her husband with Anders. (The explanation for what happened, like most of this, is not particularly clear.) But he really doesn't care, because he intends to dump Flora's nearly-comatose body over the balcony to the street below.

In the nick of time, McGarrett and Danno show up and stop him from doing this, but then McGarrett says, "We found out who rented the green sedan [seen leaving Tobias' motel after the room was tossed]. But you had to stop her from telling us you took the car, didn't you, Lockman? You borrowed it to get to Tobias' motel and ransack his room." Who is "her" that he borrowed the car from?

There are a lot more unanswered questions when this show is over, like why did Lockman set up his friend Whiting in the first place? And what will happen to Whiting now? Will he be released from jail? Unlikely, considering that Lockman is a sleazy lawyer who will probably find further ways to obstruct justice. He will no doubt say that when he was trying to dump Flora's body over the balcony that he was just taking her outside for some fresh air. And her testimony about anything that he confessed just before this is unreliable because of the stupor-like state she was in from the medication and booze!

WHAT DOES THE TITLE MEAN?

When Flora Whiting first meets McGarrett in the show, she says, "I greet the enemy." McGarrett says, "The enemy?" to which she replies, "Oh, yes, of course. But thank you for coming so quickly. " Later, McGarrett tells Flora, "I'm a cop. I work on facts. Doesn't make any difference now what anybody thought, myself included. You see, Mrs. Whiting, I am not the enemy." At the end of the show, when everything is resolved, Flora calls McGarrett "My dear enemy," and hugs him.

EPISODE PROMO:

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CASUALTY LIST:

    Injury: Ray Tobias falls down the stairs at Pier 5A.
    Death: Tobias hit in the head and held under water.
    Injury: Landlady hit in head, knocked unconscious by Lockman.
    Injury: Flora Whiting overdosed by Lockman.

MORE TRIVIA:

  • There are some good quotes from McGarrett: "My job is to dig out the truth ... wherever it lies, wherever it's buried"; :I'm a cop. I work on facts. Doesn't make any difference now what anybody thought, myself included"; "You've gotta be a lawyer to be a cop today, Danno."
  • Some of the minor character names in the end titles are arranged like the guest stars.
  • The shot where McGarrett arrives and enters the prison is from the first season episode, "The Box." The sequence where McGarrett walks across the prison yard looking up is from "The Double Wall."
  • The song heard at the pier at the beginning is the one sung by children in "Kiss the Queen Goodbye."
  • McGarrett and Danno get to Flora's apartment very fast at the end of the show after getting no response from phoning her.
  • Danno shows McGarrett a photocopy of a check from Lockman made out to Tobias drawn on the Central Pacific Bank. Danno says the check was made out "a year ago," but it is dated October 8, 1960. The bank has stamped the check, "1970" can be seen.
  • The prison shirt worn by Whiting has the number 18790. This is the same number on the California prison shirts worn by McGarrett and Barca in first season episode, "The Ways of Love."
  • The Honolulu Advertiser with a date which seems like Tuesday, October 13, 1970 is seen. The headline on the paper is "Whiting case mystery death," with heads on other articles: "CR timing disputed," and "milk fight here may go to courts."
  • The rent for Tobias' flophouse room is 50 cents a day.
  • On the phone that Lockman uses to snoop on Danno's conversation in the middle of the rotary dial where the phone number should be, it says "Someone's Hoping You'll Call Long Distance." The phone has a hold button, plus four numbers: 732-5577, 732-5589, 732-5579 and 732-5500, and one other button.
  • As Lockman leaves the Five-O office after listening to the call, there is weird electronic-sounding music.
  • At the end of the show, Lockman tells Flora her husband was "Simon-pure." This obscure expression, according to one web page, is from from the phrase "the real Simon Pure," name of a character in the play A Bold Stroke for a Wife (1717) by Susannah Centlivre (1669–1723) who is impersonated by another character in some scenes. It means "real, genuine," or "authentic."

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70. (S03E22) “The Bomber And Mrs. Moroney” ★★★

Original air date: 2/24/71 — Opening CreditsEnd Credits
Director: Paul Stanley; Producer: Robert Stambler; Writers: Eric Bercovici & Jerry Ludwig; Music: Stock
Timings: Teaser: 3:54; Main Titles: 1:00; Act One: 11:33; Act Two: 11:11; Act Three: 10:20; Act Four: 11:51; End Credits: 0:57; Total Time: 50:46.

QUICK PLOT:

When a man comes to the Five-O office to avenge his brother's killing by Danno and finds Danno is not there, he takes people hostage.

Click here to read Full Plot.

REVIEW:

This episode would have been a lot better if it weren't for one huge goof. The brother of Thad Vaughn, who Danno accidentally killed in S01E05, "....And They Painted Daisies On His Coffin," takes people hostage in the Five-O offices, demanding that Danno show up so he can avenge Thad's death. But in this show, Thad's name has been changed to Joey Collins, and his brother, the hostage taker, is Marty Collins (played by Mark Jenkins)!

There are various hostage taking complications such as one might expect. The people in the office who are rounded up are Jenny, a cop named Officer Kyle (Vernie Hoke), Chin Ho and an elderly woman Chin is interviewing, Minnie Leona Moroney (Hope Summers). Danno is out of the building, but soon shows up, despite Kono trying to get more time by saying that Danno is returning from Maui and won't be back for a couple of hours.

McGarrett is out of town in Chicago, and offers advice to Danno, Kono and others on the phone. The time difference between the two cities is 5 hours, suggesting that Chicago is currently on Central Daylight Time.

Marty was serving a prison term for armed robbery, with a sentence of two-to-ten years. Having become an "ideal prisoner," he was released on parole only five days before, yet he has already assembled an arsenal of weapons: a gun, several sticks of dynamite and a grenade which is blue in color and looks like it is made out of plastic. Marty says that he picked up knowledge on how to assemble all of this stuff in prison, "practical electronics."

Some of the dynamite and the grenade are put on the door to McGarrett's office after everyone is forced inside there. To further emphasize he means business, Marty makes Kyle go out on to the palace balcony, where he shoots him in the back, causing him to fall to the ground below. A report from the hospital later says that Kyle will survive.

What's going on in the office can be monitored through the phone system, because Chin Ho took the phone on McGarrett's desk off the hook and dialed through to the information desk in the Palace before he was blinded from the flash of Marty's gun during an altercation after Kyle was shot.

Mrs. Moroney, who came to the Five-O office to complain that her children want her to come back to Wisconsin because she is too old to be on her own, is the loose cannon among the hostages. She is a "take no crap" kind of old biddy who does not hesitate in speaking her mind to Marty. Although he is very agitated, Marty does not just shoot her, instead telling her that she is "nasty." Minnie seems to have the attitude that "if you shoot me, it doesn't matter, because I am old," and Marty is equally determined to blow himself up with the others if he doesn't get what he wants.

Having arrived, Danno takes charge of the situation in a manner similar to S01E10, "Yesterday Died And Tomorrow Won't Be Born," where McGarrett was out of action after a failed assassination attempt. HPD SWAT team members are shown running up the inside stairs of the real Iolani Palace, but they are prevented from storming the office because Marty has rigged the door from the inside with explosives.

A sharpshooter named Olena (Roland Naauao) is stationed 214 yards across the street, but he can't get a clear shot because Marty rarely approaches a window and if he does, there is usually someone else in the way. Olena is not the same actor playing the character with this name, a close friend of Danno, who appears in S05E04, "Pig in a Blanket." There he is played by Frank Atienza, who has already been seen in S02E05, Savage Sunday, as Cooper.

Danno is run off his feet, taking charge both in the Palace and also across the street, conferring with Olena and other cops. To me, rushing back and forth seems not like a particularly good move, because Marty could look out the window and see this activity. Danno tries to get to McGarrett's office through the air conditioning system, but it is too narrow.

With time running out, Danno finally surrenders, going into the office where Marty puts on a vest containing some of the dynamite and activates a timer on a detonator also on the vest which is set to go off in half an hour. Of course, Marty does not just shoot Danno, though we have already seen Danno getting shot three times in a dream-like sequence in Marty's mind.

Danno tells Marty that the killing of Joey (Thad) was an accident, and he "grieved" for his brother, which doesn't evoke any sympathy. Excerpts from the season one episode are seen, showing the chase which led up to Danno firing through the door of Thad's apartment and fatally wounding him, as well as the discussion that Danno and McGarrett had afterwards about how police work was "a stinking job."

Prompted by Minnie telling Marty that he is "a common hooligan" and "a little coward," Danno taunts Marty big time, saying his brother was "yellow and snivelling" and "a no-good punk," daring Marty to shoot him dead while looking him in the eye, while at the same time maneuvering Marty to appear in Olena's sights.

Olena finally takes Marty out, but the timer on the dynamite is still ticking. Through the door, Danno takes nail-biting instructions from the HPD bomb expert Mossman (Doug Mossman). (Danno will later show expertise as someone dealing with bombs in S05E12, "The Clock Struck Twelve.") Though the time frame for the detonator to go off seems to have been exceeded, Danno manages to take care of things using a knife which he just happens to have on him and some wire from the telephone which Marty tore out of the wall, though further details like how the grenade and dynamite on the door are dealt with are not shown.

Considering McGarrett is only seen in the show for just over 4 minutes, he almost has the last word, though Danno at the end tells Minnie "I don't think anyone [like her relatives trying to get her to come home] can force you to do anything you don't want to." As Jenny gives Danno a hug, the phone rings and she answers it. In other words, it's "back to business as usual," a nice touch.

It's too bad that the IDs of the two brothers were screwed up, because otherwise this could have been a top episode, despite the contrived finale with the deactivating of the bomb. James MacArthur gives an excellent performance to rival the one he gave earlier this season in "Beautiful Screamer," especially from about 31:30 where Marty's identity and reason for the hostage taking are finally revealed. Aside from the big goof, the episode is well-written and well-acted by others as well.

EPISODE PROMO:

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CASUALTY LIST:

    Injury: Officer Kyle is shot by Marty and falls over railing onto ground.
    Injury: Chin Ho has Marty's gun flare in face, blinding him.
    Death: Officer Olena shoots Marty in the head.

MORE TRIVIA:

  • The shot near the beginning showing three men walking across the prison yard is from the first season episode "The Box." R.G. Armstrong is no longer the prison warden.
  • The phone number of the reception desk in the Palace is 555-2368, extension 15, but the area code is 311, not 808. A large sign in the entrance to the Palace says there is an ongoing restoration project sponsored by the Friends of the Iolani Palace.
  • The opening stock shot, taken from high above, shows McGarrett — who is in Chicago — running down the Palace steps and getting in his car.
  • The two excerpts from the first season show take up just over 2 minutes.
  • As Danno is defusing the bomb at the end of the show, the marbima theme is heard.
  • When Olena finally takes out Marty, can the shot be heard by the cops and Five-O team members inside the palace waiting to get into the office?
  • In attempt to get through to Marty, his mother (Bea Barrett-Davis) is brought to the Palace in record time. (She must live just a few blocks away.) Unfortunately, her presence just seems to agitate him more. Earlier on, he told Minnie that she reminded him of his mother, "The way she used to yell at me and Joey when we were little kids."

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71 & 72. (S03E23 & S03E24) “The Grandstand Play” ★★★★

PART ONE:
Original air date: 3/3/71 — Opening CreditsEnd Credits
Director: Paul Stanley; Producer: Robert Stambler; Writer: Adrian Spies; Music: Stock
Timings: Teaser: 4:51; Main Titles: 0:58; Act One: 12:22; Act Two: 12:08; Act Three: 8:39; Act Four: 10:51; End Credits: 0:53; Total Time: 50:42.

PART TWO:
Original air date: 3/10/71 — Opening CreditsEnd Credits
Director: Paul Stanley; Producer: Robert Stambler; Writers: Adrian Spies, Eric Bercovici and Jerry Ludwig (teleplay), Adrian Spies (story); Music: Richard Shores
Timings: Teaser: 9:03; Main Titles: 1:00; Act One: 8:29; Act Two: 8:03; Act Three: 10:37; Act Four: 12:37; End Credits: 0:53; Total Time: 50:42.

QUICK PLOT:

The developmentally challenged son of a professional baseball player witnesses a murder at the ballpark, but he is reluctant to tell his father or the authorities.

Click here to read Full Plot.

REVIEW:

After the death of his wife and with only a couple of years left in his career, American League baseball star Lon Phillips (Pernell Roberts) comes with his son Gary (Elliott Street) to Hawaii to play in the Hawaii Islanders minor league team. Gary is developmentally challenged, and Lon finds himself frustrated in bringing the kid up himself. Lon's friend in the majors for ten years, Coley Bennett (Jock Mahoney), also in Hawaii now, tells McGarrett that Gary is a "sweet kid" who Lon figures it's "easier out here" to raise "away from the big cities." Lon tells his son, "We're gonna make it."

On the first night when Lon appears at a game for his new team, Gary finds himself enmeshed in a mess of trouble. He leaves his seat in the stands to get a hot dog and runs into a drunken older woman, Emily Workman (Electra Galias Fair), who he helps when she starts to fall to the ground. She rewards him with a kiss, then wipes off her lipstick with an embroidered handkerchief. Shortly after this encounter, Emily is strangled to death nearby under the stadium bleachers. The man who kills her, Lou Horton (Don Chastain), a security guard at the stadium, bumps into Gary when he is fleeing from the scene.

Grilled by members of Five-O, including McGarrett, Gary doesn't want to admit witnessing anything, since he was not supposed to leave his house seat, where his father was keeping his eye on him. Emily's husband, Lester Workman (Barry Atwater) is also present at the game, along with the Governor. He tells Five-O that his wife, from whom he has been legally separated for a year, approached him "lushed up" earlier and proceeded to embarrass him and publicly humiliate him as was her wont.

Five-O's questioning of Gary is strictly with kid gloves, not so much because of his condition but because of his father's celebrity status. In fact, the show is quite remarkable for the way that Five-O bends over backwards to interview and deal with Gary and try and get his co-operation, which is not forthcoming.

McGarrett talks to Holbrook (Tim Tindall), a tennis pro at a club where Workman and his wife used to hang out. Holbrook says that Emily had "style and class in everything she did ... or almost did." Holbrook says that one day when her husband wasn't around at the court, she showed up and started "throwing her body around" at him, but they later avoided having an affair, because she was scared of losing her kids and all the alimony she was getting.

McGarrett goes to see Workman, who is very reluctant to tell him anything. He says that contrary to local rumours, he was not having his wife watched. His children are currently living with him, and he is taking great care to protect them, like hiding the day's newspaper which has a front-page story about his wife's murder. (The children are not seen in the show.)

This issue of the paper — the Honolulu Advertiser — has the usual lower case headlines on the front page: "woman socialite is slain at stadium"; "body found beneath bleachers"; "danger of super war"; "scientist reports moon rock missing"; "serious peace effort signaled"; and "City remap plan could be voided — see page A-12." There is a picture of Lon and Gary with a caption: "Tragedy mars Island debut of Lon Phillips."

Meanwhile, Lou Horton is becoming unhinged, knowing that he bumped into Gary — who he also saw in the newspaper photo — at the stadium. He is drinking from a bottle of Golden Delight bourbon whiskey, and his partner in crime, identified in the credits only as "Horton's Girl" (Josie Over) is smoking. Horton wants to "take care" of Gary, calling him a "dumb little fat slob" and that he will "shut him up for good."

Horton goes to Lon and Gary's apartment, where he is seen snooping through the window by the place's manager (Ed Fernandez). He tells the manager that he is looking for someone named "Johnson," but the manager says the tenants there are named "Phillips." Gary is not there, because his father, in frustration, screamed at him earlier and Gary is taking a tour of the downtown area on a bus where the guide (Laola Ohai) has taken a liking to him. Lon, who found a handkerchief at their place that Emily Workman dropped at the stadium which Gary obviously picked up and McGarrett told him about earlier, has been out trying to find his son. When Lon comes home, the apartment manager starts addressing him as "Mr. Johnson," as if he is trying to be funny.

Around this time, Five-O learns of several large withdrawals from Emily Workman's bank account: $1,500, then $2,000 and then $3,000.

When Gary's city tour is over, he makes his way home. Horton has been watching their place from a bar across the street where he rebuffed the advances of a hooker.

Lon has gone to the Five-O office to see McGarrett. After McGarrett tells him "Your son's life might be in danger," and a great deal of hesitation, Lon shows McGarrett the handkerchief. Interestingly, the embroidery of E.W., which was originally in a script type, is now in a large, sans-serif font. McGarrett immediately contacts Kono and tells him to head to the Phillips' apartment.

Kono arrives there just as Gary is about to walk in the door, closely followed by Horton, but when Kono yells at Gary, he freaks out, runs away and hides. Kono is oblivious to Horton, who sees Gary then get on a bus. Horton follows the bus until Gary gets off and starts to cross the street, at which point Horton tries to run him over with his car.

(This is where part one of this two-parter ends.)

Horton doesn't run over Gary because another car suddenly pulls out from behind the kid and Horton has to swerve to avoid an accident.

Chin Ho goes and sees Emily Workman's maid Lily Ahn (Sod Yong), who originally put the handkerchief in Emily's pocketbook. (Emily must have been getting a lot of alimony to afford this kind of help.) The maid is distraught, not wanting any more dirt to besmirch her former employer, but Chin is persistent (Kam Fong is excellent in this scene). He shows her the hanky — the original one with the script type!

Chin wonders, "Can you tell me why Mrs. Workman went to the stadium so often? Was she seeing someone there?" Ahn explains: "She had met him [she doesn't say specifically who this is, presumably it is Horton]. Then there was something terrible, pictures of them together that he had. And she had to give him money. But the other night, the last night, she'd decided no more. No more money. No more blackmail or she was going to call the police ... She never said his name. But that's where she met him, at the stadium." This refusal to engage in any more blackmail is the motivation for Horton's killing Emily.

McGarrett goes to see Workman again, offering his theory that his wife was being blackmailed because of the photos that Chin was told about. Workman is still unco-operative, but McGarrett tells him they can't let things rest as long as Gary's life is in danger. Workman still denies he had his wife followed, saying again, "I didn't hate my wife." When McGarrett leaves, Workman makes a call ... to Josie ("Horton's Girl"), saying they have to get together "right away."

McGarrett is convinced that Workman was having his wife tailed, and orders the Five-O team to check with all the local private investigators, of which there are only 14 (not very many, in my opinion). These guys are not enthusiastic about opening their case books to people like Chin and Danno until they are threatened with a warrant.

One of these PIs named Galvin (Tom Fujiwara) was hired by Workman, but summarily dismissed a couple of weeks later. This just motivated Galvin, a self-described "snoop," to keep digging and he found out that Workman obtained the services of a woman who looked like "a girl friend" (Josie) but their relationship was "Strictly business ... Cash on the line. He gives, she takes." In other words, she was blackmailing Workman. Instead of helping to produce an artist's sketch of this "knockout ... Eurasian, real cute ... maybe a little frayed around the edges," the "snoopy" Galvin has photos of her which he took with a telephoto lens.

Workman meets with Josie, who is driving a Datsun Sports 1600, so the blackmail business must pay off. Josie originally came to Workman about her "friend" Horton meeting Emily at the stadium club bar and that how, because of this, she and Horton might be able to do him some good, keeping an eye on his wife. Workman says that their efforts exceeded his expectations: "In fact, I think you've even done me a big favor … With Emily dead, all my problems are solved." He tells her to burn the negatives from the pictures (we already saw Josie doing this early on in the show) and "Forget that you ever knew me. And I'll forget that I ever knew you." He tells her to also forget about any money which might still be owing: "The bank just closed." Workman finishes their conversation by telling her, "Remember this, I've got far more on you than you ever had on my wife. I've got you for murder."

When Josie returns home, Horton is even more agitated than before. Although she says she told Workman nothing, he told her that she and Horton should both "get out, go away." Horton tells her "The kid saw me and Workman knows. [This is two separate things, not that Workman knows Gary saw him.] Now, that's the same thing. We'll get away, but first there's loose ends and I'm gonna take care of them." McGarrett and Danno, armed with the further evidence from Galvin, go to Workman's place, but when they arrive, Horton has beaten them there and murdered Workman by strangulation. Workman's body is found floating in the water in front of his oceanfront property.

Meanwhile, Gary is wandering around town, and befriends a bunch of kids who are playing baseball, impressing them with the fact that he is Lon Phillips' son. He leads this gang to the stadium where he says he can get them in for free, but is discouraged when he sees the place is crawling with cops who are actually looking for him, because he is expected to show up for the game that evening, just like every game where his father plays. The kids know a secret way to get into the stadium for free, but once inside, Gary gets spotted by Josie (who works in the stadium's concession stand!) and Horton.

Horton confronts Gary and tries to strangle him, but McGarrett steps in, punches out Horton and busts him and Josie. Gary tells McGarrett, "He's the man that hurt that lady, mister." Gary is reunited with his father, who has been climbing the walls all day wondering what has happened to his son.

This is a leisurely-paced show, which might almost have been compressed enough to fit in a single hour. (I'm sure the new Five-Zero could have done this.) The acting is excellent throughout. Pernell Roberts is particularly good expressing the frustration he feels with Gary, who it sounds like had some episodes of troublesome behavior before: "He was doing all right, he liked it here." Some of the filming, like the finale, was done at an actual ball game in Honolulu.

There are several instances of the "memories" musical theme throughout, as well as the marimba theme. Interestingly, the first part is stock music, but the second part is scored by Richard Shores. Similarly, the first half was written by just Adrian Spies, but the second half has Spies down for the story, whereas the teleplay is by Eric Bercovici, Jerry Ludwig and Spies.

CASUALTY LIST:

    Death: Emily Workman strangled under ballpark grandstand by Lou Horton.
    Death: Lester Workman strangled by Lou Horton.
    Injury: Horton attempts to strangle Gary under the bleachers before McGarrett and Danno arrive.
    Injury: Horton punches McGarrett and attempts to strangle him.
    Injury: McGarrett throws Horton into metal wall during fistfight. Horton is punched multiple times before being subdued.

MORE TRIVIA:

  • There is no promo for this two-part episode on the second season DVD set. Whether one exists is not known.
  • Lon Phillips' number with the team is #2. As the show begins, we see #26 at the plate, then #20. Lon is next, and he hits a double, later making it to home plate. But then #20 is at bat again, followed by #26.
  • Gary's seat at the stadium is number B8, 1-3, which is on the right side of the aisle looking up from the playing field, but he says that it is "B8, 1-1 on the aisle." When he shows Five-O the location on a floor plan of the stadium later, this seat is on the left of the aisle (it is just called "B8"). As well, there is no seat in front of the one on the floor plan, whereas there is a seat there when we see the shot of the crowd, which looks like the number might start with B4.
  • The establishing shot from above the tennis court in this show is taken from "Beautiful Screamer" earlier this season.
  • According to Gary, the address where he and his father are living is "142 Ocean Boulevard," but it is actually across from the Ambassador Hotel on Namahana Street.
  • When Lon comes home from the store with groceries, a container of orange/passion juice is visible in the bag. Gary is eating corn flakes from a box on the kitchen table where the brand name, Kellogg's, is covered with a label. A tin of butter cookies is also seen at their place. A copy of Life Magazine is on a table in their living room.
  • In the bar across the street from the Philips' place, there is promotion for Primo Beer on the wall, and the bartender is seen carrying a case with Primo on it. As Horton is waiting in the bar, he looks outside and sees a couple crossing in the crosswalk and a white car pulling up to the intersection. Virtually the same shot is repeated at the beginning of Act Four. Later, on the back of the bus which Gary takes and Horton tails, there is an ad for Primo Beer. (This bus is spewing a lot of pollution as it is driving!)
  • Both McGarrett and Kono get in their cars from the passenger side.
  • Workman's maid's last name — Ahn — is the same as actor Philip who appeared as the Attorney-General in the pilot episode, and was in two other shows, "Sweet Terror" and "Journey Out Of Limbo."
  • Near the end of the show, McGarrett says there are five entrances plus the players' gate to the stadium, but when he enumerates them with his finger on the map in his office, there are seven entrances.
  • At the stadium, there are various large advertising signs for companies like BP, Seiko, Sony, Zippy's, Sanyo, etc. There are also signs above particular sections of the stadium as if they are intended for employees of specific companies.
  • Under Emily Workman's bank book on McGarrett's desk is a bunch of paperwork (not specified) which is signed by Elmer B. Senner on March 1, 1962.
  • A good line from McGarrett to Workman in this show: "Nobody can keep things hidden forever."
  • Workman's address is 1343 Pualei, phone number 841-1851

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