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).
S09E01 (192) - Nine Dragons (Khigh Dhiegh, David Tomlinson, Michael Anderson, Jr., Dina Merrill, Amy Chun, Robert Nelson)
S09E02 (193) - Assault On The Palace (Clu Gulager, Michael McGuire)
S09E03 (194) - Oldest Profession — Latest Price (Elaine Joyce, Ned Beatty, Kelly Bishop)
S09E04 (195) - Man On Fire (Pat Hingle, John Hillerman, Alan Fudge, Pauly Gardner)
S09E05 (196) - Tour De Force, Killer Aboard (Cliff Gorman, Amanda McBroom, Udana Power, Boris Aplon)
S09E06 (197) - The Last Of The Great Paperhangers (Kevin McCarthy, Elaine Giftos, Antony Ponzini)
S09E07 (198) - Heads, You're Dead (Paul Koslo, Amanda McBroom, John Lisbon Wood)
S09E08 (199) - Let Death Do Us Part (Zohra Lampert, Jack Kelly, Lyle Bettger, Arline Anderson)
S09E09 (200) - Double Exposure (Meg Foster, Thayer David, George Wyner, Seth Sakai)
S09E10 (201) - Yes, My Deadly Daughter (Irene Ya-Ling Sun, Clyde Kusatsu, Paul Hecht, Kwan Hi Lim)
S09E11 (202) - Target – A Cop (Don Stroud, Gerald McRaney)
S09E12 (203) - The Bells Toll At Noon (Rich Little, Don Knight, Milton Selzer, Jimmy Borges, Mel Ferrer, Pauly Gardner)
S09E13 (204) - Man In A Steel Frame (Camilla Sparv, Jonathan Goldsmith)
S09E14 (205) - Ready, Aim..... (France Nuyen, Manu Tupou, Edward James Olmos)
S09E15 (206) - Elegy In A Rain Forest (William Watson, Edward Gallardo, Glenn Cannon)
S09E16 (207) - Dealer's Choice.....Blackmail (John Ritter, Nehemiah Persoff, Amanda McBroom)
S09E17 (208) - A Capitol Crime (Barnard Hughes, Dick Davalos, Jimmy Borges, Sharon Farrell)
S09E18 (209) - To Die In Paradise (Pamela Franklin, Stephen Young, Tommy Leonetti, Christopher Connelly)
S09E19 (210) - Blood Money Is Hard To Wash (Dane Clark, Jo Anne Worley, Terry Kiser)
S09E20 (211) - To Kill A Mind (Pat Hingle, Laura Campbell, Keith McConnell, Bill Langenheim, Pauly Gardner, Bucklind Beery, Mel Ferrer)
S09E21 (212) - Requiem For A Saddle Bronc Rider (George DiCenzo, Nicholas Hammond, Victoria Racimo)
S09E22 (213) - See How She Runs (Jessica Harper, Biff McGuire, Steve Carlson, Paul Shenar)
S09E23 (214) - Practical Jokes Can Kill You (Lee Purcell, Charles Frank, Allan Rich)
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.
Original air date: 9/30/76 — Opening Credits — End Credits Director: Michael O'Herlihy; Producers: Douglas Green (Hawaii), James Heinz (Hollywood); Writer: Jerome Coopersmith; Music: Morton Stevens
Timings: Teaser: 0:32; Main Titles: 0:59; Act One: 13:04; Act Two: 22:53; Act Three: 15:49; Act Four: 6:16; Act Five: 16:27; Act Six: 6:54; Act Seven: 14:13; End Credits: 1:05; Total Time: 1:38:12.
QUICK PLOT:
After the theft of a deadly toxin in Hawaii, McGarrett tracks Wo Fat to Hong Kong where Wo abducts and tortures him.
Click here to read Full Plot.Thanks to Bobbi for her help with the plots in this season!
REVIEW:
The structure of this show is unusual. There is a teaser, about 30 seconds long, which includes brief excerpts of the show to come, all of which except two take place only in the show's second half. What follows is yet another teaser, about 5:13 long, starting with McGarrett diving off a junk-like boat with furled sails after an establishing shot of Hong Kong and the main titles. McGarrett goes into the briny deep and is rescued by Suzie (Amy Chun), a Chinese girl and her uncle.
As they return to Aberdeen, an area on southwest Hong Kong Island, McGarrett has no idea what his name is as he sips tea that Suzie makes for him on the boat. There are some brief flashbacks to scenes of torture. He knows, however, that he has to get to "police headquarters right away." After he and Suzie leave the boat which has returned to the docks, McGarrett sees an English-language newspaper, The Hong Kong Register, with his picture on the front page, under a headline: "Police Comb Territory for Missing American." Some thugs who seemingly have been waiting for him nearby, chase him and Suzie in their car and then on foot through a market.
We see McGarrett running in slow motion, no sign of Suzie nearby, with a voice-over: "How did I get here, and why? What is it that I've got to stop by 4:00? Got to clear my head. Got to think. Got to think." Much of this opening sequence is repeated later in the show's second half, though it's about 2 minutes shorter.
I think it is highly unlikely that Jack Lord actually dove into the polluted waters off Hong Kong. There are at least two cuts after McGarrett jumps off the boat at the beginning of the show, though when the sequence is repeated later, there are no cuts at all. When he is rescued by Suzie and her uncle, they pull him up out of the drink on to their boat. If you look carefully at the way this scene is done, you never see Jack Lord other than up close with nothing of the horizon in the background, probably because these shots were done close-up in a swimming pool. We also get a glimpse of the wet hair on top of Jack Lord's head and it is not as thick as you might expect!
We then return to Hawaii for what is the real beginning of the episode, complete with a further voice-over by McGarrett which starts out "It all began two weeks earlier at Hickam Field in Honolulu." This doesn't make sense if this is still McGarrett in Hong Kong speaking, because he has no memory of who he is, and probably other things as well.
McGarrett continues: "I was there to meet an emissary from the Defense Department who brought with him two vials of a deadly toxin from a government stockpile. The president had ordered this stockpile destroyed, but agreed to lend samples to the University of Hawaii for use in important medical research. Five-O was made responsible for security while these lethal chemical agents were in the Islands."
The toxins arrive on a US Air Force plane (an old C-141 out of Travis AFB, CA, thanks to Bobbi) and are handed over to McGarrett, who is at Hickam along with several military men and HPD cops. With a police escort, the Five-O boss is driven to the university by Chin Ho, where he is met by the chief administrator of the place, Dr. Arnold Kiamalu (Harry Chang), as well as Professor Takeo Shimoto (Daniel Taba), who will be conducting experiments with the toxins, and Dr. Barbara Dalton (Dina Merrill), dean of students. (I don't know why Dalton is there, other than to set her up as a plot device for later.)
McGarrett outlines very strict security procedures for the toxins, which involve a card-reader that links up to the HPD "iron brain" computer. Armed guards will be on duty 24 hours a day, serving in shifts of four hours, and Shimoto will be the only one authorized to remove the toxins from a safe. "There will be no admittance to anyone without exception."
Dalton ridicules McGarrett's procedures, comparing them to not only those used by General Patton taking on "the German 9th Panzer Division," but also those employed by "Attila the Hun and Mata Hari." When Dalton says McGarrett has a strange way of showing what he describes as his dislike for "uniforms or guns on the campus," he tells her, "You're very pretty, doctor, and I'm sure you know a lot about chemistry, but let me lay out procedures for this operation, if you don't mind. My responsibility is to protect the people of this state." I don't know why he mentions chemistry, it's not mentioned anywhere prior to this that that is Dalton's area of expertise, and the "pretty" remark, which is not in an earlier version of the script I have (see below), is totally out of line, a jaw-dropping moment which would have raised eyebrows even back in 1976.
We switch to the airport, where Professor T.L. Shang arrives from Hong Kong. Shang is actually Wo Fat, and he is met by his former right-hand man Mr. Chong (Robert Nelson), who was already seen out on the streets in S08E01, "Murder—Eyes Only," after being busted in S07E12, "Presenting...In The Center Ring...Murder." Also in the entourage meeting Wo with a limousine is Walter Omori, "the mysterious actor," whose character name (not credited, like Walter), is Jimmy Tsen. Shang, a "distinguished teacher, author [and] philosopher," goes to the university campus, where he has been invited as a guest speaker and is mobbed like a celebrity.
One person who doesn't share this enthusiasm is Po Ling (Yankee Chang, in perhaps his biggest Five-O role). Po, now a professor at the university, was a friend of Shang back in Hong Kong. The two of them escaped from Communist China together over 29 years before with Po's bride-to-be who was shot dead by border guards.
Shang, who earlier described Dalton to his comrades as a "fighter for the underdog, champion of minority rights, [and a] member, Committee for Academic Freedom" (and therefore someone he could take advantage of), almost immediately insinuates himself into Dalton's company, and at his request, she offers to show him Enviro-V, "the environmental vacuum chamber," which just happens to be in the same lab as the toxin experiments are taking place. (Why does Wo knows this is Enviro-V's location?) But when the two of them arrive at the lab, they are turned away by the cops. Dalton is embarrassed, but Shang says "I understand completely. I have seen bureaucratic repression before."
Back at the Five-O offices, which have moved out of the Iolani Palace to the Territorial Building very close by because of renovations (which were actually happening), word arrives via the HPD computer that Dalton and Shang tried to get into the lab. Danno already sent a cable off to Hong Kong police for information on the professor. McGarrett requests Danno and Duke go to Shang's hotel to check him out, where they are met at the door by some bald-headed, bearded guy with a very vague resemblance to Wo (Gerald Lau) who is actually one of the associates who are helping with the sinister plot to steal the toxins.
Po Ling, who has checked out old photos of himself with Shang at home, shows up at the hotel room door later and confronts Wo, who he calls "an imposter." Wo doesn't take kindly to this. He orders Tsen and Chong to take care of Po, who is murdered and his body is put in his car and pushed over a cliff.
When Shang arrives back at the university for a welcoming reception, the mood is sombre, because of news of Po's demise, related by Dalton: "One of our faculty members was killed a few hours ago in a car accident." This news has gotten to the university very quickly, suggesting there was not much of an investigation into what happened, especially since Po was not driving down some road, even one of the usual single-lane back-of-nowhere roads all too familiar on the show, but instead, the car just went over the edge of a cliff in an equally middle-of-nowhere location, pushed by Tsen and Chong after they put Po's body in the driver's seat. Of course, the car explodes, using a stock shot seen before in S04E01, "Highest Castle, Deepest Grave," as well as other episodes.
To Dalton, Shang acts as if this news affects him, saying, "Po Ling was an outspoken critic of the Communist regime, a constant thorn in their sides." He suggests there was something suspicious about Po's death: "I've lived on both sides. I assure you that police states will stop at nothing to achieve their ends." Dalton is indignant: "It's so obvious. They resist our movements, tell us where we can and can't go. I suppose it's our own fault in the end, for not being more critical, more resistant." She says that Shang will get his look at Enviro-V, and takes him back to the laboratory where not only does she have a key to enter the room, but there are no police guards! Whatever happened to McGarrett's extreme security? Maybe all of HPD is trying to track down Po Ling's killer?
Seemingly being a gentleman, Wo takes the key and opens the door to the lab, but then makes an impression of the key behind his back. He then places some kind of a device on one of the gas lines to the Bunsen burner used in the lab. Dalton describes the Enviro-V with a bunch of high-falutin' language, to which Wo ironically replies, "I could not have spent a more profitable afternoon" as the two of them leave the room.
Shang is soon seen giving a lecture to students dedicated to his late "friend" Po "on the phenomenon of the exceptional man," quoting Nietzsche and the poet Longfellow. The students soak it all up and ask questions when it is over. While this is going on, Tsen and another guy ID'd in an early script of the show as Harry Luk make some modifications to the gas lines in the utility room on the floor below to introduce Freon gas into the system and knock out anyone using the Bunsen burner in the lab.
The next morning, McGarrett is disturbed to receive a call from Hong Kong, specifically Inspector D.W. Blake (David Tomlinson), who tells him that "a floater" has been fished out of Victoria Harbor, and it's the real T.L. Shang, who is "dead … awfully dead." McGarrett heads immediately to the campus, trying to contact the two cops who are in the laboratory with Shimoto and two students who are assisting with the toxin experiments. Interestingly, the two students do not have IDs which are run through the card reader, one of the cops just looks at the ID cards which they show him.
Wo seemingly knows that this experimenting is going on, because his bald look-alike goes to the utility room and turns on the gas which knocks out the professor, the students and the cops. Tsen and Luk, wearing gas masks, enter the lab toting machine guns and steal the vials. The campus security police, alerted by McGarrett via Duke, show up, but they are brutally mowed down by these two with the guns.
By the time McGarrett arrives to discover a scene of carnage on the floor outside the lab, Wo's three men have left, and their truck passes McGarrett as he arrives on the campus. He enters the lab with only a damp handkerchief over his mouth and nose. McGarrett issues a "full red alert" (a bad pun) and acts as if the bad guys intend to use the toxins locally, but Wo and his accomplices are likely in the process of leaving town.
At Shang's hotel room, a note is found which says, "You were too late, McGarrett, I have obtained what I came for. When and where I will use it, you will learn in due time." Soon after this, McGarrett talks to the Governor. They agree only one man could have pulled off this caper: Wo Fat. Based on analysis of the paper with the message on it, which is rice paper custom-made in the Orient, a watermark is revealed saying "Nine Dragons," which is a peninsula that is part of Hong Kong, but also the name of a criminal organization or "triad" in that city, the biggest and most feared criminal family of any in the Far East. McGarrett asks the Governor for permission to go after Wo, which the Governor is quick to grant without any hesitation.
We next see McGarrett arriving in Hong Kong on Air Siam (not United, as might be expected). He is greeted at the airport by Carter (Bob Hanna), supposedly from the local police, but soon after they depart the terminal, it turns out that everyone in the car is working for Wo Fat. McGarrett is shot in the neck with a tranquilizer dart, a movie/TV trope which various web pages explain is totally unrealistic.
When McGarrett wakes up, he is in Wo Fat's headquarters on top of Victoria Peak, a hill in Hong Kong with an elevation of 1,811 feet. As McGarrett goes outside, Wo tells him that he has been brought there "for a purpose." If McGarrett does not co-operate, he will be subject to "behavior modification through stress," using methods which have been "refined … considerably since the Korean War." When Wo gives McGarrett his agenda on a piece of paper, McGarrett rips it up and throws it in his face. Wo orders his minions, "Take him. Mr. McGarrett's reconditioning will begin."
Scenes of McGarrett being tortured follow, consisting of him spinning in a chair, experiencing hallucinations which may be cribbed from season one’s "Up Tight," and getting injections in his arm. McGarrett freaks out over frogs and what he thinks are snakes on the floor (he is no fan of snakes, which we will find out in S11E21, "The Year of the Horse"). Wo Fat cackles away maniacally. Most of the time during this McGarrett is still wearing his suit!
The scenes of torture are interspersed with phone calls between Danno and Blake regarding the flight that McGarrett arrived on, after Blake shows up at the airport and McGarrett is not there. Someone sent a telegram to the Hong Kong cops changing McGarrett’s arrival from 10 a.m. (when he really did arrive and was abducted) to noon, when Blake and Anthony Waring (Michael Anderson Jr.) from the "Triad Bureau" showed up. A certain amount of time must transpire here, because, realizing something fishy is going on, Danno and Chin Ho are quick to head to Hong Kong, where they finally arrive and meet Blake and Waring.
McGarrett is soon broken, but we do not see the results (other than a brief clip in the first teaser) until later, when we see that McGarrett has made a Korean War-style confession that he is responsible for the toxins being used to knock off members of the Chinese government who are meeting in Hangzhou. This will give Wo and his co-conspirators an opportunity to take over the government and launch missiles at the United States, among other bad things.
As Wo explains to Han-Chu (Fung Ngai) as he hands over the toxins to him: "When the deed is done, I will go to Peking to assume command, and issue the orders that will bring the American imperialists to their knees. And you, General, will once again have a high army command. Honolulu, Los Angeles, Detroit, Chicago, New York, Washington. These are our primary targets. The rest is a mere mopping-up action." But I am getting ahead of myself! When Wo pats McGarrett on the shoulder after the torture is over, he says that McGarrett is a "good boy." McGarrett picks up a bowl of food and throws it at Wo through the bars in his cell.
We cut to McGarrett in the junk-style boat like at the beginning of the show, on his way to be killed, though why they didn’t just knock him off in Wo’s headquarters is a good question. He overpowers two guards who were not seen earlier and dives into the harbor, where he is picked up by Suzie and her uncle. When Wo is notified that McGarrett has escaped, he is super pissed, ordering that the guards are to be executed "at once" and members of the Nine Dragons triad are to comb the city looking for McGarrett. (One wonders how Wo would have found out about this so quickly, considering there were no cell phones.)
After McGarrett and Suzie manage to evade the thugs who pursue them on land, the two of them get to police headquarters, where, before he enters the building, McGarrett is attacked by some crazed Nine Dragons lunatic who is actually stuntman Beau Van Den Ecker. Two local cops help McGarrett subdue this character. Once inside, he gets checked out by a police doctor (Bob Crickard) and seems to be back to normal, other than "exhaustion, physical and mental." Danno tells McGarrett he should "sack out for a while," but McGarrett says, "Danno, there's no time. Something is going to happen at 4:00."
Because of what happened with McGarrett's plane schedule, it is suspected there is a mole among Blake’s top officers, so in order to smoke this person out, a meeting is called in Blake’s office which the obviously alive and well McGarrett interrupts after the assembled are told that news about the missing McGarrett is "bad." Shortly after this, Waring tells Blake he has to go out on urgent business. Blake orders a tail to be placed on Waring. The cop who tails Waring (Bobby Canavarro) does so even more obviously than Chin Ho and Duke usually do in Hawaii.
When Waring phones Wo from a public phone booth to say that McGarrett is okay and at headquarters, Wo immediately knows that this is a setup. (Waring’s status with Wo is "Seventh Dragon.")
Waring takes yet another junk-like boat out into the harbor after a pursuit on land involving the not-so-undercover pursuing policeman, Blake and McGarrett. At the Marine Police Base, the two head cops get into a boat which pursues Waring out into the harbor, but two thugs emerge from hiding in the front of Waring's boat and hack him with machetes. As the police boat approaches, the two killers jump into the water where it looks like it would be a long way for them to swim to shore, and no one seems to be interested in picking them up and busting them. The dying Waring tells McGarrett that Wo’s hideout is on Victoria Peak.
A raid on this hideout follows shortly, but nothing is to be found. When he goes into the part of the building where he was forced to make his confession, though, McGarrett tries hard to remember what happened, saying "I don’t know … I don’t know … I don’t remember." But obviously he does figure things out, since in the next shot, he and Blake are driving through the streets of Hong Kong to some film developing lab. Without something to fill in the gap here, this is really ridiculous. How many labs would there have been in Hong Kong at the time of the show for developing film?
The guy in charge of the lab has a major attitude problem, not wanting to be overly co-operative, but he eventually tells the cops enough to know that McGarrett’s confession film was processed there. Not only that, but the guy who worked on this made a print of the film which is not normal procedure. This guy freaks out when he sees McGarrett, remembering that the film revealed McGarrett to be a traitor to his country.
In a screening room, the cops all get to watch the film which contains McGarrett’s coerced speech: "My name is Steven McGarrett, I am head of Hawaii Five-O, an American police unit. I am making this statement of my own free will for satellite broadcast throughout the world. It has come to my knowledge that at exactly today agents of the United States of America poisoned the water supply of Hangzhou where government leaders of the People's Republic of China were meeting. Two kinds of poison were used Cobra venom and saxitoxin. The latter derived from the red tide bacteria of shellfish. Both poisons were prepared and developed by United States intelligence agencies. I know because I was in charge of security while this crime was being planned under the guise of a research project. I call upon world conscience to condemn my government for this act of mass murder. As a personal protest, I intend to give up my American citizenship." McGarrett is traumatized by seeing this, saying "My God. How could I say those things? Even brainwashed, how could I say those things?"
With only 36 minutes to go before it is 4:00, McGarrett and Danno together have a brainstorm, figuring out everything exactly as it happened and will happen: "Wo Fat steals the toxins from Honolulu. Wo Fat poisons the water supply of Hangzhou, wiping out the main body of Chinese leadership. He beams this film over satellite, announcing to the world that the United States did it. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Meanwhile, Wo Fat sets himself up as the leader of China. Steps into the power vacuum. And then what? How about a retaliatory nuclear strike against the United States?
But all this is stopped (with only five minutes to go) and the conspirators in China are busted. Wo beats a hasty retreat and is not found.
After this, the vials of poison are returned just as the men from Five-O are about to return home (presumably a few days later, since the vials had been taken to China –- and why didn’t the Chinese just keep the vials, because the poisons could have been used for some sinister purpose?) At the last minute, Danno and Chin Ho went to China Travel Agency, an organization used to contact the government in Peking and pleaded with them to help, which was only given when Chin told the "travel agent" there (Eric Young) a Chinese expression meaning "He who does not stop murder is himself a murderer."
The beat-the-clock ending of this show, from the time McGarrett gets to the cop shop, with everyone running around like they have a stick of dynamite up their ass, really defies belief, but only if you know anything about Hong Kong geography and/or do some calculating using Google Maps for locations in the show, i.e., the Hong Kong police department headquarters, the Marine Police Boat Base, Aberdeen Harbor, Victoria Peak, etc. These calculations can't include the film lab location or Wo’s new hideout, because neither of these locations are specifically identified.
The first "teaser" with McGarrett getting rescued by Suzie should really have been eliminated, giving more time to open up the show, though that would only add a few minutes to the total time from the arrival at the police station to the end, which is 26 minutes and 55 seconds.
Despite the show’s flaws, however, this is still my favorite Five-O episode, one which I saw a very long time ago, perhaps when it was originally broadcast or repeated in the 1970s. More likely it was during my periods of unemployment in the 1990s when I became seriously interested in Five-O, which was broadcast on KVOS-TV in Bellingham, Washington and I started making notes about the show which became the basis for my original web site (see Seasons 9-12).
I like the international scope of the show, much more than that of season eleven’s "The Year of the Horse." Jack Lord gives an anguished performance in the scenes where McGarrett is tortured, one which will have you reaching for the thesaurus looking for a word equivalent to "intense" to describe this — in fact, I don't think there is another scene in the entire series where Lord's character reaches these dramatic levels.
As well, there is an outstanding score by Morton Stevens, especially in the scenes where McGarrett is brainwashed.
There are numerous differences between what appears in the show on the DVDs ("DVD" below) and what was in a copy of a script that I have ("Script" below), though that is "Second Draft, April 9, 1976." Whether this script was modified before filming or things were later removed during the editing process is not known. Click here to see a copy of the script.
Script: When McGarrett is taken away after he is no longer useful to Wo Fat, he is on a "hydrofoil boat." The two thugs accompanying him start shooting after he escapes and dives over the side. Amazingly, he is not hit. DVD: McGarrett is on a wooden boat, he kicks one of the two thugs over the side and punches the other one out before he leaps into the water.
Script: After he is rescued by Suzie and her uncle, they take his clothes to dry out and give him "the clothes of a Chinese fisherman." Suzie also shaves McGarrett while he is "out" after his ordeal.
Script: The thugs chasing McGarrett and Suzie in the market area fire guns at them.
Script: Prior to the toxins arriving in Honolulu, McGarrett and Danno meet with the Governor and Colonel DePaul at the Governor's office which fills in background on why the toxins are coming to Hawaii.
Script: Wo Fat's name is "Soong," not "Shang."
Script: There is no line about Dr. Dalton being "very pretty."
Script: Mr. Chong, Wo Fat's stooge, does not appear in the show's first half at all. Wo's henchmen are Jimmy Tsen (played, uncredited, by Walter Omori, the "mysterious actor") and Harry Luk, also an uncredited actor. The conversation between Chong and Wo in the limousine is handled by Tsen. When Professor Po Ling arrives at Wo's hotel, he is announced by Tsen, who later forcibly takes Ling away, puts him in his car and, with Luk, manually pushes the car over a cliff. DVD: Tsen and Chong put Po Ling in his car and push it over the cliff using another car, which is driven by Luk.
Script: Only Duke goes to Wo's hotel to meet the bald guy who is pretending to be Soong/Shang, not Duke and Danno.
Script: After McGarrett phones campus security to tell them that Prof. Sheng is a fake and to immediately check him out, they react appropriately. During the shoot-out with Wo's men, one of the two campus cops is killed. DVD: McGarrett later says, "They were alive when I left them."
Script – explained: The "Freon-12" gas used to knock out Shimoto and the two students via the bunsen burner supposedly produces phosgene, an extremely toxic vapor, according to McGarrett (this is not correct in real life). It is also explained that the small box which Wo attached to the gas line for the burner is "miniature power pack [which] put a small DC voltage on the line, which could be read by a simple voltmeter in the Utility Room."
Script: McGarrett tells Wo that the Hong Kong police were "diverted" when he arrived, just like "the way you diverted the Army captain for that Schofield payroll heist." Wo wonders how McGarrett knew that "my truck would enter the army camp at exactly 5:02 that day." This refers to some other caper of Wo which never happened in a previous episode.
Script: The torture of McGarrett is much more elaborate, including "lying face-up on a lab table, and wired all over his face and body for electric current. Suddenly the juice is turned on, and he writhes and screams and convulses in agony." Also: "Dolly through blackness to a beautiful oriental woman, her arms outstretched as though to receive him in love; then, moaning in pain, zoom out to show him hanging by his thumbs."
Script: The moustached guy that Wo gives the toxins to is "Mr. Han-Chu." Surveillance footage later reveals him to be "Keemoy [sic] Han-Chu — former general in charge of China's ballistic missile program. When Chou Enlai died, he wanted the country run by a military junta. But he was overruled by Chairman Mao, and stripped of his rank." The general is in cahoots with Wo as part of Wo's power play to take control of the Chinese government.
Script: McGarrett doesn't enter the police station with an element of surprise after the attack by the "rickshaw driver" (Beau Van Den Ecker). DVD: We first see him being examined by a doctor in the police station.
Script: Waring leaves the building under the pretense of investigating a triad-related killing, mentioning that Frank Chambers, who would normally handle this kind of case, "is ill." Chambers, who suddenly appeared in the show out of nowhere, has collapsed because of low blood sugar. There is no special significance to this that I can determine. In the script, Waring's name is "Ward."
Script: Waring tells Wo in their phone conversation that "old Blake is improving with obesity." Huh? DVD: The expression is "with age."
Script: The boat that Waring escapes on is described as "a small power boat." There are no other people on the boat and it later explodes. DVD: Two men emerge from some secret compartment in the boat, which is wooden-looking and seriously injure Waring with machetes. In both versions, Waring is still alive enough for McGarrett to grill him before he dies. On the DVD, Waring says Wo is on "Victoria Peak," but in the script, he says he is in "Kowloon — the old Tai Mansion — Castle Peak."
Script: McGarrett and Chin Ho go to "China Travel Service" to send an urgent message to the Chinese government. DVD: It's Danno and Chin Ho who go there.
DVD: At the end of the show, Wo Fat is in a building at Victoria Peak, watching his handiwork via a monitor which shows what's going on in China. Script: Wo has gone back to Peking, where he has a "command post" with monitors. Tipped off by McGarrett via China Travel Service at the last minute, Colonel Kuo-Ming, some big shot in Peking, busts Wo Fat and others for "high treason." Han-Chu is seen on a TV monitor wearing his general's uniform. He is preparing to launch a missile attack and do other evil stuff. Kuo-Ming tells Han-Chu via the monitor to "surrender or die."
Script: People who sometimes should be speaking Chinese in the show are speaking English, like during an initiation ceremony for the Nine Dragons. DVD: People sometimes speak Chinese and the subtitles say "SPEAKING IN FOREIGN LANGUAGE," as if we don't know that it is Chinese, duh! During the initiation ceremony, the dialogue is Chinese and there are English subtitles on the screen, the only time in the series subtitles for the dialogue appear like this (I think).
Script: Mr. Chong appears at the end of the Dragons' initiation ceremony to tell the assembled that McGarrett has escaped from the boat. DVD: Another collaborator of Wo's makes the announcement, I think this is Kee Mun, played by Rich King.
Script: As the show ends, McGarrett writes a letter to Suzie, telling her that she will get a $5,000 reward for helping rescue him (this was not mentioned previously anywhere). Blake delivers the money to her, and she tells her uncle that now they can buy a fishing boat (she mentioned in the script that they wanted to do this previously after McGarrett was rescued).
CASUALTY LIST:
Thanks to Bobbi for help with the Casualty Lists in this season. Where someone is injured seriously and they are not confirmed dead, a "best guess" may be made that they died from their injuries.
Death: Professor Po Ling killed by Mr. Chong and two other men working for Wo Fat.
Death: Professor T.L. Shang found floating in Victoria Harbor (not seen by us).
Injury (x5): Professor Takeo Shimoto, Jenkins, another student and two HPD officers knocked out by gas.
Injury (x2): University guards shot by Wo Fat’s men. McGarrett says, "They were alive when I left them."
Injury: McGarrett kidnapped and tortured by Wo Fat.
Injury (x2): McGarrett fights off two of Wo's men to free himself in East Lamma Channel. One lands in the water, while the other is beaten unconscious.
Death (x2): Crewmen executed on Wo Fat’s orders (not seen by us).
Death: Hong Kong CID undercover agent "42" hacked by Nine Dragons triad members.
Injury (x2): McGarrett and attacker fight on street in front of police headquarters.
Death: Anthony Waring hacked by two members of Nine Dragons on orders from Wo Fat.
MORE TRIVIA:
There is no promo for this episode on the ninth season DVD set. Whether one exists is not known.
This show was originally broadcast as a 2-hour feature, and later in syndication edited into two one-hour shows. Some of the differences between these versions (as well as between two syndicated versions) are outlined on this page.
For an interesting "anal-ysis" of the Five-O office moves for season 9 by alpha128 at the Internet Movie Database, click on this link.
Because of the length of the end credits, there is a bit of extra music before what is normally heard. Click here to watch this.
At the beginning of the show, as the main credits (producers, director, etc.) are seen over an establishing shot of Hong Kong, you can see the junk (ship) that McGarrett is on in the distance with Suzie and her uncle moving from left to right, just before it says "Written by Jerome Coopersmith." In other words, McGarrett is returning to Hong Kong before he escaped from the junk where he was about to be killed by Wo Fat's stooges!
Near the beginning of the show, a harpsichord melody seems to refer to John Barry's music for the James Bond film From Russia with Love.
It seems odd to me that the time for McGarrett's speech to be broadcast internationally would be 4:00 PM Hong Kong time. This would be 1:00 AM in Los Angeles and 4:00 AM on the American east coast. I think that Wo would want to get a big ego boost from announcing his plans when people were not asleep. But that means the time in Hong Kong would be totally out of whack in order to do this. On the other hand, if there were nuclear attacks during the middle of the night in the States which produced death, destruction and chaos, Wo would also get a large charge out of this.
There is confusion over the name of actor Harry Chang's character at the beginning of the show. His last name is Kiamalu, but it is also spelled or pronounced Kaimanu and Kaimalu in the DVD subtitles.
McGarrett's confession film in the teaser at the beginning of the show is in color. When film is seen in the processing lab, the beginning looks like it is in color, but the rest of it is in black and white. When Wo Fat is watching the film later, it is seen on a black and white TV monitor.
There are instances of sloppy handling of evidence like when Chin brings the V9 gas canister to McGarrett and when McGarrett touches the magnetic device that Wo Fat attached to the bunsen burner line. What about checking for fingerprints?
The phone number in the biomedical lab is 555-9694. When Blake phones McGarrett, complaining that it is "three in the bloody morning," of course McGarrett is available to take the call, which would have been at 9:00 p.m. Hawaii time.
E. Lynne Kimoto is seen briefly as the Five-O's new receptionist.
"Halikolani Hotel" in the DVD subtitles is spelled "Hayakowani."
The Hong Kong Register was a real newspaper in the middle of the 19th century. The copy with McGarrett’s picture on the front page has some additional headlines: "Hongkong [sic] reserves now lower," "Teng may now… [incomplete]" and "Police send gold for tests." As McGarrett and Suzie look at the paper, a crowd on the sidewalk behind them is watching the filming.
Freon, the knockout gas introduced into the lab, is used in air conditioners and freezers. On top of those, there are a large number of commercial and industrial appliances that use Freon in both food transportation and cold storage warehouses, even dehumidifiers. According to the Wikipedia page for this product, it has a strong chemical smell like acetone, but has "low toxicity." It is now banned because of its deleterious effects on the ozone layer.
At one point, Shimoto picks up the vials containing the toxins with tongs, but then opens the lids with his ungloved fingers!
Is there a process shot when McGarrett is driving down what he says is the Nimitz Highway?
Po Ling's house is at 3803 Maunaloa Avenue, first seen in S04E03, "Wednesday, Ladies Free," tracked down there by Fred Helfing.
One of the cops summoned to the meeting in Blake's office that McGarrett interrupts is Five-O stunt man Chuck Couch.
In his autobiography Luckier Than Most (1990, Hodder and Stoughton), David Tomlinson relates that he appeared in Five-O with Jack Lord, "in my opinion one of the most arrogant and unappealing actors I ever worked with." And that is all that he says. This book, which is horribly expensive to buy, can be read for free at the Internet Archive.
Eric Young, who plays the "travel agent" near the end of the show, appeared in S01E09 of the Five-0 "reboot" as General Pak, an evil dictator from "Sandimar" coming to a conference of world leaders in Honolulu. As Ric Young (his name in the reboot), he also appeared in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom as Kao Kan, one of two sons of villain Lao Che.
At the 1996 Five-O convention, Kam Fong said that when he was in Hong Kong making this show, he was more popular with the locals than Jack Lord! In a TV interview from around 1977, Fong said that in Hong Kong, there were two versions of Five-O broadcast on local TV, one in English and one with Chinese dubbing.
193. (S09E02) “Assault On The Palace” ★★˝ BOOK HIM BOOK HIM, DANNO
Original air date: 10/7/76 — Opening Credits — End Credits Director: Ernest Pintoff; Producers: James Heinz (Hollywood), Douglas Green (Hawaii); Writer: Jerome Coopersmith; Music: Bruce Broughton
Timings: Teaser: 0:32; Main Titles: 0:59; Act One: 13:32; Act Two: 14:40; Act Three: 10:44; Act Four: 8:26; End Credits: 0:45; Total Time: 49:38.
QUICK PLOT:
A historical re-enactment during the Kamehameha Day parade is the coverup for a Honolulu bank heist.
The show begins with Arthur Lambert, curator of the Museum of the Pacific (Clu Gulager), driving Professor Henry Kalani (Robert Costa), an expert on Hawaiian history, out into the middle of nowhere on the usual one-lane-middle-of-nowhere road. Kalani, who is a busy guy, is annoyed that he has been dragooned to take this drive; in other words, he doesn't know where they are going. Eventually Lambert tells him that "it will be a most unique experience for you." When they stop, Lambert says he has discovered the legendary grave of King Kamehameha. Kalani says "you're the victim of a hoax or totally ignorant of ancient Hawaiian lore," but goes along with this, falling into a hole in the ground. Lambert picks up a shovel and bashes Kalani's head, then buries him alive, which we don't find out until later after Doc's autopsy.
Lambert then shows up at a meeting of people who are organizing the annual King Kamehameha Day parade. This includes McGarrett, the Governor, Harry Lewis from the Chamber of Commerce (David Palmer), and Edna Kalakaua (Keo Hughes). There is a desire for "something new … something that touches on Hawaiian history" rather than the usual marching bands, horses and floats. Lambert has something right up this alley — "a reenactment of an historical event right on the palace grounds. A little bit of history coming to life, as it were, within view of literally hundreds of thousands of people."
He is referring to the Wilcox Raid of 1889 where a group of armed men tried to overthrow the constitutional government and set up absolute rule with Princess Lili'uokalani as the figurehead, holding the Iolani Palace and several buildings for a whole day until they were finally routed by the loyal Hawaiian army. Lambert says his plan is accurate historically speaking and was approved by Kalani, who is not at the meeting, since Lambert just killed him.
McGarrett is concerned that "something like this is bound to attract even larger crowds than in previous years, and crowds tend to bring every crook and con man out of the woodwork." When Lewis says, "the business community is very concerned about that," McGarrett says they have already started to deal with the problem, and invites Lewis to go HPD to see how Danno is dealing with it.
The whole plot tangent of Lewis going to the police station has only one purpose, which we will soon see. The cops have rounded up "every crook and con man" including Taxi Joe Malua (Donald Roessler), who has just been busted by a couple of undercover officers for his usual routine of fleecing tourists. Danno gives them all a big speech, culminating with "Five-O's guaranteed the Governor there will be no heists, no scams and no rip-offs of any kind. Anyone who violates that pledge will be in trouble." I'm surprised no one tells Danno to shove this up his ass (including Malua), but no one does! These petty criminals are all sent to be locked up in jail, pending being soon released on bail by their lawyers.
Meanwhile, Lambert gets acquainted with Thomas Horton (Michael McGuire), "the best bank mechanic in the business" who has just been released from Oahu State Prison. Lambert wants Horton go into business with him "at an enormous profit to both of us," in charge of a robbery while the "raid" takes place.
Horton enlists help from several of his criminal buddies, including Maggie Burns (Logan Barrie Jones), who "worked miracles with a sewing machine at the women's reformatory." She will produce "two sets of costumes made to order, one set nobody knows about, couple dozen altogether" to be worn by Horton's associates in the "raid." Malua is signed up as the group's wheelman or driver. Lambert gets volunteers from the Chamber of Commerce to be "rebels," including Lewis.
Various reports have been circulating that Kalani is missing, and two hikers eventually run across his body, with the woman emitting a particularly blood-curdling scream at seeing the professor's hand sticking out of the ground. McGarrett wants the word sent out: "No leaves, no days off. No rest until the killer of Professor Kalani is found." One interesting bit of evidence found at Kalani's apartment is his copy of the scenario for the Wilcox raid supplied by Lambert which has a large question mark on its cover. Kalani also made a call to Lambert's museum the day before he disappeared. Lambert tells McGarrett "I'll look into this" when he is questioned about this call, saying "That call wasn't to me, by the way."
On the day of the parade, the Five-O team brings McGarrett up to date on security issues. Danno: "We got the intelligence report on all known con men, thieves and pickpockets in Honolulu. We can't watch them all. We brought them all in within the last 48 hours, given them the impression they're under a microscope." Chin Ho: "Security reports on all government buildings and commercial buildings in the area. But nobody gets in today unless authorized by us or the parade committee." Duke: "HPD marksmen on rooftops along the route of the parade. We've got every VIP in Hawaii to protect today."
Limousines are sent to the houses of men playing participants in the raid. They are all dressed in military outfits including red jackets and caps and most of them are scruffy looking with moustaches and beards, some of which are pasted on. Horton is in a limo driven by Malua. It picks up men who are not part of Horton's robbery contingent including Lewis, who immediately recognizes Malua from the police station, where Danno made a special point of talking to him. Lewis freaks out, threatening to go back into his house and "check into this." Horton pulls out a gun and shoots him. Talk about stupid!
Although badly wounded, Lewis attempts to drive somewhere for help, but passes out and runs into a parked car. The limo driven by Malua containing Horton and four "actors" who are not his associates goes to the tower at the end of the military road above Kamehame Drive on the eastern part of Oahu seen previously as Wo Fat's hideout in "The Ninety-Second War." (There is a big problem here, in real life, it would take probably an hour to get to this location and back to the parade.) The "regular guy" actors are forced into confinement in a locked room at the tower and are replaced with Horton's criminal friends who will break into the Unified Bank of Hawaii. They are wearing the identical raiders' costumes which Horton's pal Maggie manufactured. When McGarrett receives word during the parade that Lewis has been shot, he rushes to Leahi Hospital, but Lewis has already passed away.
Horton and his crew arrive quickly back at the parade where they mingle with the other raiders, of which there are 20 in total. As the Governor and other spectators look on, Lambert introduces his presentation and the raid takes place, with the rebels invading "key buildings surrounding the [Iolani] Palace." Horton and his four men enter the bank, where the manager gets a big surprise, because he was just expecting play acting. Horton's opening the safe with C-4-like explosive is synchronized with cannon shots by raiders outside in response to similar shots from the King's Guards, though I don't think the guards outside are Horton's men, but just part of the script. Men outside "surrender" waving white handkerchiefs, the raid is over and the parade continues.
With serious time compression issues, McGarrett goes to Lewis's place and manages to extract some information from a woman who is his neighbor (Anne Swan). At first she is very reluctant to help the police, but she eventually comes downtown and looks at mug books where she identifies Malua as the driver of the car which was picking up Lewis. The men from Five-O run out of the office, just leaving the woman sitting there!
Five-O rushes to Malua's place, but he is gone. Using an ice cream truck, he is picking up Horton and his men from the bank where they are waiting for him. At the apartment, McGarrett finds a map which shows the route Malua was taking to pick up actors, but also going to the tower location. McGarrett, Danno and Chin go there (again, a half hour away from downtown Honolulu). As they approach the tower in McGarrett's car, they can see the guard in the distance who, amazingly, cannot see them. They manage to bust the guy and then release the four actors who have been locked up in the room. McGarrett immediately issues a "code red" for the bank robbery, but Horton and his crew have already left. McGarrett and Danno seemingly leave the four men and Chin Ho standing outside the tower!
Predictably, McGarrett is enraged: "Not just a bank heist, but the biggest in Hawaii's history. And right under our noses." He tells his men, "We go into overtime until this thing is wrapped up." Although it is afternoon, McGarrett wants "every book you can find on the subject [of the Wilcox Raid] and I want them now. We've got some homework to do." He stays up until 2 a.m., typing a memo to his crew about what he learned about the Wilcox Raid. (McGarrett types very quickly, do we see him type in any other episode?) He also leaves a voice message on a portable tape recorder. The next morning he expects the team to have absorbed everything by the time they have a staff meeting at 9 a.m., though I don't know how this recorded message would have been passed along to them. At the meeting, after a brief discussion, the almost immediate consensus is that Lambert is the mastermind behind the whole plan. There is no easy way to prove this, however, but McGarrett says they will will use "direct frontal assault," same as the King's Guards used to overcome Wilcox, the mastermind of the original raid.
McGarrett goes to the museum to see Lambert. He throws out clues like a dog sniffing around a fire hydrant, not really coming out with any bombshell revelations which would cause Lambert to freak out. The big thing that was wrong with the re-enactment and which prompted Kalani to put a large question mark on his copy of the printed scenario was that the original raiders never got near the bank. When McGarrett suggests that someone in the museum is the culprit and the money is hidden "in that old war canoe, inside any of these idols, even in that old throne," Lambert shoots at McGarrett with a gun that he suddenly has in his hand. (Why didn't he use this gun to kill Kalani?) The bullet ricochets off a wall and leaves dust on McGarrett's suit. Lambert opens up a covered pot nearby and takes the money and attempts to flee, but is caught and busted. He asks McGarrett for consideration after spilling the beans on his confederates, which is laughable. McGarrett says to "Book him" for the second time, "Murder one, two counts."
On a basic level, this episode is OK within its own world, but if you start to think hard about some of it, the plot logic becomes shaky. The time compression is totally crazy! I can understand that if you don't know much about Oahu geography, the whole business about how the bad guys and McGarrett going to the tower (an hour in total for each of them) would produce some serious time problems in relation to the parade ... that is really is not a big deal — if you don't look at the map they find at Malua's place. As far as the big reveal that the original Raiders never went to the bank, I was thinking "Was this bank there in 1889? Is it possible that this was some other building then?" There are supposedly other buildings that the raiders go into, but we don't see this. The only action is around the bank.
The other thing that bothers me is that Lambert is kind of a bland villain, aside from the very nasty attack on Kalani with a shovel at the beginning of the show. He doesn't strike me as someone who can mastermind such a huge scheme. How Lambert knew of Horton's background and release from jail which neatly synchronized with the time of the parade is a very big question.
On the positive side, the Kamehameha Day parade has lots of colorful photography. It looks like the raiders were actually part of a real parade, and they have been cleverly edited together with scenes from the show. Bruce Broughton's score, which is very good, uses a lot of menacing low brass and woodwinds and has a couple of references to the Five-O theme.
EPISODE PROMO & TEASER:
On the ninth season DVD set, the episode promos with Jack Lord's narration are around 1 minute long, and the teasers which follow are just over half a minute. All the material in the teasers is from the promos. This duplication is no doubt the reason that there are no episode promos on the DVDs from the tenth season on. Click here to see the promo and teaser for this episode (to compare). Use the back key in your browser to return to this screen.
CASUALTY LIST:
Death: Professor Robert "Henry" Kalani falls into a dug hole, hit in the head with a shovel and buried alive by Arthur Lambert.
Injury: Harry Lewis shot by Thomas Horton — he is able to drive his car to Kilauea Avenue.
Death: Harry Lewis dies of his wounds at the hospital.
MORE TRIVIA:
"Kului Ridge" in the DVD subtitles is spelled "Kuliouou" and Kalani's name is misspelled "Kolani" throughout — but in the end credits, his name is "Professor Chang"!
On a wall at the Honolulu Police Department is a sign saying "Suspicious? Call 944-1212" (presumably a number for the local equivalent of Crimestoppers). At the beginning of the show, Lambert throws a piece of paper at Horton with the phone number 555-6465 (a pay phone) on it.
Before the parade, McGarrett gets kissed by a policewoman who puts a lei around his neck and when his men laugh, he says, "What's so funny ... never saw a lei before?" The cop's badge number is 3082.
Joe Malua's cab, not surprisingly, is from "Joe's Taxi," phone number 732-5577. When the witness to Lewis's shooting finds Malua in the mug books, there is no name accompanying his picture.
When Lambert and Horton are seen walking on the docks, there is a traffic barricade behind them from Safety Systems Hawaii, phone number 847-0137.
The Asian doctor at the hospital who tells McGarrett that Lewis passed away is "Dr. Monsoo" in the subtitles and "Dr. Matzo" (!!) in the end credits. It think it is more likely that his name is "Dr. Matsu" after listening to McGarrett address him.
Some stock shots of cop cars are seen after McGarrett calls in the robbery.
Horton identifies the bank vault as a "Carter-Wesson" model from 1912.
It takes over 17 minutes before we find out that Lambert is curator of the museum.
GALLERY:
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194. (S09E03) “Oldest Profession — Latest Price” ★★★˝ BOOK HIM
Original air date: 10/14/76 — Opening Credits — End Credits Director: Philip Leacock; Producers: Douglas Green (Hawaii), James Heinz (Hollywood); Writer: Anne Collins; Music: Morton Stevens
Timings: Teaser: 0:33; Main Titles: 0:58; Act One: 14:46; Act Two: 11:15; Act Three: 13:04; Act Four: 8:23; End Credits: 0:46; Total Time: 49:45.
QUICK PLOT:
Prostitutes are extorted for protection money after one of them is seriously injured in a bomb blast and two others are murdered.
This episode is very good. It makes total sense, without resorting to the usual "fan fiction" to fill in the gaps about what characters are doing or their motivation. The subject matter is pretty rank. If you had been watching this show as a kid or a teenager when it was originally broadcast with your parents in the same room, you might have felt uncomfortable ... if you knew what the show was about yourself.
Guest star Ned Beatty is Keith Caldwell, a nasty thug who is extorting money from Honolulu prostitutes. He is known to the cops, having a record clear back to junior high, mostly assault charges. He almost beat his former wife to death, did four years and was paroled three months before the show. He is "pretty tight with syndicate muscle."
Caldwell is currently working for Matthew Pendelton, a gangster formerly from Detroit where he was into "numbers, dope [and] extortion." Pendelton, whose specialty is protection money, is played by Robert Witthans, sporting a moustache, in a bigger-than-normal role. When Danno goes to visit him, he tells Pendelton, "All this sunshine here gets pretty warm. Coming from Detroit, you might find it can get real hot." Pendelton, who wants to be called by his nickname, "Penny," laughs at this.
Caldwell's M.O. prior to the show involves the murder of two hookers by drowning and bludgeoning. At the beginning of the episode, Alison Moana (Darrah Lau) gets a phone call about a "present" in a drawer which is a bomb that Caldwell remotely detonates, seriously injuring her and shaking up one of her clients, who, of course, does not co-operate with the cops.
Caldwell then goes on a blitz to phone hookers, telling them if they want to be safe, to meet his terms — which are $3,000 per person to those who work for themselves and $2,000 for those working for someone else. One of the indepedent women, Cory (Elaine Joyce) does not want to pay. Cory goes to see Charlene, her former boss, who runs a massage parlor. Charlene is played by Kelly Bishop, later known for Gilmore Girls, in one of her first TV roles. Charlene tells Cory, "You think the cops are gonna treat us like we raise pineapples or something? They can't help us. Nobody's gonna help us."
Cory then goes to see McGarrett, not in his office, but in a marina where he is working on his boat. He says she will tell him "everything" but at this point, all she has is a phoned threat, and there has been no drop-off of money, so McGarrett gives her his standard "no deal" line. McGarrett in this scene is relaxed and easy-going, unlike in the office where he is like a wound-up spring most of the time. We experience a totally different side of the top cop. McGarrett tells her to give him a call after she gets another threatening phone call.
Pretending to be a guy in town for a auto parts distributorship convention, Caldwell gets together with Cory in a restaurant. He comes on to her in an obnoxious manner, saying "I was kind of afraid to call you because what's been happening … two or three of you chicks have bought the farm in the last couple a weeks … I mean, is it a … a weirdo or what that's behind those murders? It's protection money. It's a shakedown, right? … I mean, why doesn't everybody pay? I mean, you know, if that's it. I mean, you'd pay, wouldn't you?"
Cory is creeped out by this. She tells him "We don't pay anybody … they pay us," and leaves. Cory then gets Charlene to call a meeting at the Lava Terrace of the "girls," who are divided strongly into two camps — who will pay and who won't.
Based on what Alison manages to tell Duke in the hospital, Che Fong determines that "The bomb was triggered by a radio signal. High frequency, very short range. Had to be transmitted from no more than 100, 190 yards away. Which means the phone call which made sure the girl was next to the bomb had to be from the same distance. So the extortionist could have called from inside the apartment building or right outside."
Ordered by Pendelton to use tactics which are less extreme than a bomb, Caldwell pays a visit to Charlene's Massage Parlor and chooses Dee (Debby Simpson). He brutally murders her in a back room and then leaves by the rear entrance. When McGarrett shows up, Char doesn't want to talk to him, telling him to "get a warrant." Cory also shows up. Compared to when she met McGarrett at the marina, her attitude is totally different. She tells him, "Kind of late again, aren't you, McGarrett? Course, I don't know what I really expected. All the great Five-O boils down to is a bunch of cops and a lot of publicity." McGarrett tells her, "We can't do much if you clam up on us, honey."
The way that Caldwell is finally IDd is quite clever. In fact, it is similar to how stupid criminals are caught today (2020) because they are seemingly unaware that people everywhere have cel phones, surveillance cameras and so forth. Armed with Che's theory about the remote control, McGarrett has a brainstorm that whoever blew up Alison at the beginning of the show was making a call from a phone near her hotel, and, not surprisingly, this is what happened. Frank of Frank's Fotos (Kimo Kahoano) captured Caldwell using the phone in the background of a tourist photo he snapped, as well as another one of him when he was in a crowd of spectators gawking nearby during the aftermath of the bomb explosion. Che Fong uses color slides from Frank and photo enlargement techniques to produce blow-ups of these pictures.
Meanwhile, Caldwell hassles Cory some more. She has gone back to the restaurant where they met before after talking to Char, who still doesn't want to pay extortion. She manages to escape from him, but he later tracks her to her apartment, where he wonders why she is packing her bags: "People are supposed to take vacations to Hawaii, not from." Out the window, Caldwell sees some HPD cops checking out his car in response to an APB which Five-O put out, and he takes Cory at gunpoint down to the main floor where he gets in his car with her and drives away just after McGarrett and Danno pull up.
A wild car chase follows after Danno leaps into the Mercury Grand Brougham as it is moving, with McGarrett driving like he is on a race course. There are some goofs in this car chase.
When Caldwell almost runs into a police car and McGarrett's car following him whips around, a closeup shows that it is not Jack Lord or James MacArthur in the Mercury. About 30 seconds later, after calling Caldwell "macho man," Cory opens her door and goes out. She doesn't jump out, it looks more like she is lying down and falls out. As this happens, the car is going around a curve to the left, but in the next shot, the car is now on a straight piece of road and going over a bridge which was not in the previous shot at all.
You would expect Cory to have just fallen on the street, but she manages to go over the curb and sidewalk and through some bushes with flowers and then do a somersault several times before she ends up in some sand beside the water that the bridge goes over.
After this, Danno (really James MacArthur) shoots at Caldwell's car and a hubcap goes flying off, but the hubcap has a red center, similar to the tires on McGarrett's car, not like those on Caldwell's. Caldwell's car goes off the road, supposedly because the tire has been flattened (though it doesn't look like it is) into a sandy area beside some rocks, pursued by McGarrett, whose car squeals to a stop on the sand, and the cop car.
If you look closely at the driver of Caldwell's car while this happens, it is obviously not him. Caldwell telling Cory during the pursuit that he is going to escape by hiding with her in the "cane fields" is ridiculous. ("I was born and raised in those cane fields. Uh, nobody's gonna catch me, sugar [a bad pun?].") I kept saying, "Yeah, and McGarrett will just set the cane fields on fire"!
After Caldwell is captured, it's pretty funny the way McGarrett's car fish-tails all over the place as he starts driving back to check up on Cory. Worried that she's going to lose her looks because of her dive out of the car, she tells McGarrett, "Make a hell of a secretary, won't I?"
The acting in this show is particularly good, not only Elaine Joyce as Cory and the other women portraying the hookers, but also Beatty as Caldwell, who is creepy in an insidious way, really a "psycho" as Duke comments early in the show about the as-yet-unknown killer. The music by Morton Stevens is excellent, including some Mancini-like lounge Muzak heard in the background.
EPISODE PROMO AND TEASER:
Click here to see the promo and teaser for this episode (to compare). Use the back key in your browser to return to this screen.
CASUALTY LIST:
Injury: Allison Moana seriously injured when bomb remotely detonated by Keith Caldwell.
Death: Dee strangled and stabbed by Caldwell.
Injury: Cory jumps from Caldwell's car as he is being chased by McGarrett and Danno.
MORE TRIVIA:
At the beginning of the show, when Duke says he's heard much higher prices for a single trick than the rumored $200, McGarrett asks how does he know. Duke says, "Chin told me." Chin Ho is totally nonplussed by this comment.
Jack Lord was seriously in need of a haircut for this show. Too bad Robert Whittans had a different role than a barber!
The "Kilauea Apartments" are translated as "Killowaya" in the DVD subtitles.
While Cory is talking to McGarrett on his yacht, the wind is totally blowing her hair, but his hair hardly budges.
Elaine Joyce also played a hooker in S02E04, "Just Lucky, I Guess."
Cory is seen smoking.
Pacific Ambulances are seen twice during the show.
GALLERY:
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Original air date: 10/21/76 — Opening Credits — End Credits Director: Gordon Hessler; Producers: James Heinz (Hollywood), Douglas Green (Hawaii); Writer: Stephen Kandel; Music: Don B. Ray
Timings: Teaser: 0:33; Main Titles: 0:58; Act One: 15:00; Act Two: 11:03; Act Three: 10:54; Act Four: 10:30; End Credits: 0:48; Total Time: 49:46.
QUICK PLOT:
Five bodies found in Mauna Loa crater are contaminated with radiation, leading McGarrett on a search for the source — deadly plutonium.
After five bodies are found inside an active volcano on the Big Island by a group of university students including Peg Wilson (the attractive Pauly Gardner in her first Five-O appearance), Doc Bergman is stumped as to what killed them.
Five-O launches a dragnet to try and determine the identity of the five dead men. There was no ID on any of the bodies and even their clothing labels were cut off. Three of the four are identified as having stayed at the Waverider Hotel on Oahu. They are Rene LaSerre from Martinique (a tourist), Carl Williamson from Rhodesia (on business) and David Akela from Belgium (on vacation). A fourth man was David Chadway, a local sports promoter whose income consisted of a quarterly check from Liechtenstein drawn on a private Swiss bank. McGarrett describes them as "Five dead men and four dead ends."
To help him with a theory about why the men died, "a theory so far out, I'm reluctant to even talk about it," Bergman enlists the assistance of "an expert," the obnoxious Dr. Grant Ormsbee (Pat Hingle), "one of the world's foremost physicists" who McGarrett previously tangled with in S08E07, "The Defector."
As Ormsbee enters the morgue, McGarrett is describing him as "a pain... [one suspects he wants to say "in the ass"]." Ormsbee wonders why his presence has been requested, saying this is "a matter better suited to the infantile trappings of a police mentality." McGarrett tells him, "I can do without your psychological profile of law-enforcement officers."
After determining the dead men all died from "massive radiation poisoning," Ormsbee balks at any further co-operation of an easy nature. McGarrett tells him that he went over his head and got the Navy to force the physicist to work with Five-O. Ormsbee says, "Fine. Fine, it's a deal," but then adds, "McGarrett, don't call me, I'll call you."
Five-O runs the dead men's fingerprints through Interpol and gets some interesting results. Akela is Ernesto Tomas Resula, a professional revolutionary and commander in chief of the terrorist Pan-African Strike Force. LaSerre is Suleiman Arjieh from Lebanon, one of the heads of a paramilitary splinter group backed by some heavy oil money. And Williamson is Williamson, an ex-mercenary tied to some fanatic anti-black elements in Rhodesia. It doesn't make sense that a Rhodesian is in a group with a pro-African activist like Resula.
The bad guys in the show, Donald Blair (John Hillerman) and the South African Piet de Groot (Alan Fudge), are working on a "project" at their company, the Medical Components Division of Unified Resources Ltd., producing nuclear warheads to sell to characters like these men, as well as other revolutionaries and terrorists. The dead men were all exposed to an accidental radiation leak in the company's basement laboratory.
Blair, the company boss, is a slimy individual, while de Groot is his systems engineer. Of course, de Groot is bad, because at the time of the show, South Africa was dominated by the white supremacy culture apartheid and was under an extensive arms and trade embargo! The company's basement is supposedly beneath Diamond Head, which is weird because I thought that's where there was the top-secret U.S. military facility seen in "The Ninety-Second War."
Ormsbee summons Five-O to his lab, where he tells them that the men in the volcano all died from exposure to plutonium. Where they obtained this from is a good question. Ormsbee has checked out every military atomic device on or near the islands, and nothing is missing. He says this element can produce "internal bleeding, nausea, vomiting" and "any contact, any at all, can be fatal." (Compare this to the ridiculous S06E12, "Anybody Can Build A Bomb"!) He later describes plutonium as "one of the most dangerous and volatile elements known to science."
There has already been a lot of news about the five dead bodies found in the volcano, particularly in a front-page story in the Honolulu Advertiser with a huge headline in red type. Blair has heard that McGarrett sent out "notices to all hospitals and doctors on the island … some sort of a warning about possible radiation sickness or contamination." In the article Ormsbee is mentioned, and Blair gets the idea that he could tell them what went on in that room where the contamination that killed the five took place and get the equipment in the room functioning again. Blair is desperate to get things back on track because some of his "clients" are wondering where are the goods they paid for, which are shipped to them under the guise of "dental units."
De Groot pays a visit to Ormsbee late at night and forces him to come with him at gunpoint. The physicist doesn't take this well, showering de Groot and the workers in the basement with abuse, like "I don't think I've ever seen such an amateurish system. It's no wonder to me you've had a breakdown. In fact, it's a small miracle that everyone in this jerry-built disaster hasn't been fatally contaminated." De Groot tells him bluntly: "I'm gonna make it very simple for you, Dr. Ormsbee. You stay alive only as long as you work for us. You figure out what happened in that little room and you repair it."
Ormsbee does dial his remarks down, but asks for some concessions like a box of a box of Hoyo de Monterrey cigars (an actual brand), stressing that he wants them from Cuba, not some Philippine imitation. When de Groot doesn't know what these are, Ormsbee calls him a "moron." Considering the embargo on Cuban goods began in 1962, this must have been a difficult request to fill.
When Leila Kapehala (Lynn Howell Morse), one of the Unified Resources workers who is hapai (pregnant), gets sick from radiation which accidentally leaked into her office on the company's main floor, she visits her doctor who tells her "The baby may have to be aborted." The doctor attempts to contact McGarrett, but Leila suddenly runs away.
From the doctor, McGarrett finds out Leila worked at Unified Resources and he pays Blair a visit. Blair bad-mouths Leila, who is not in the office, suggesting that she is somewhere goofing around at a picnic or surfing: "You know these people [suggesting lazy Hawaiians]," to which McGarrett replies, "Yes, perhaps a lot better than you do." Blair sort of apologizes for what he said: "Look, I didn't mean that to sound..." Earlier, Blair told a woman at the company who was inquiring about Leila, "I know Leila's pregnant, that's her private affair. No pun intended."
Aware that Leila's boyfriend and father of her child was Raymond Sawyer, the fifth man in the volcano who has finally been identified, McGarrett asks Blair to post his picture and see if any of the employees remember him. Earlier, Blair told his secretary to make sure that any reference to Blair was purged from the company's records and essentially make him a non-person.
When McGarrett goes to Leila's mother's house where she lived, he finds she has been shot dead to silence her and all her letters and memorabilia connected with Sawyer have been taken. McGarrett comforts Leila's mother, who is grief-stricken. You would expect him to promise her something like "Five-O will not rest until Leila's killers are brought to justice," but he doesn't say anything along these lines.
Without a lot of preamble, McGarrett contacts the head office of the company which owns Medical Components and talks to the boss there, named Grainger (John Gary, the singer, in a cameo). McGarrett asks if the company has "a military weapons division with a government contract to manufacture nuclear weapons." Grainger tells him the answer is yes. They produce them, but under very tight government control. The government was planning to set up a nuclear manufacturing facility in the islands and all the necessary machinery was shipped to Oahu, and then everything was stopped dead — the government changed the law and the project was scrubbed. The equipment is still there, warehoused.
When Danno goes to investigate, he gets a worker to open one of the cases supposedly containing some equipment for this project, but it is full of rocks.
As far as the plutonium is concerned, McGarrett was informed by Washington that the French had a shipment of plutonium ripped off less than six months ago. France was one of two countries that didn't sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Pact (the other being China — this is true). One of the observers at French tests was de Groot, a representative of a civilian contractor, now living in the islands who is the production vice-president at Medical Components.
McGarrett says, "I think we have all the pieces now." He sums up everything: "Blair saw his chance, and he took it. He hijacked his own company's machinery from the warehouse. De Groot supplied the stolen plutonium. And now they're manufacturing nuclear devices … Three of the dead men in that volcano were foreign buyers. Chadway, who used his Islands Sports Promotion as a cover, was the salesman. Sawyer was the scientific brains. When he died, they needed a scientist to repair whatever went wrong, so they kidnapped one — Grant Ormsbee. One thing's for sure, they're doing a hell of a job keeping a nuclear manufacturing facility under wraps. Under. Under. That's it. Any bets, gentlemen, that the nuclear facility we're looking for is underground."
Up to this point, the show has been kind of interesting and even plausible, but it soon changes direction and becomes silly.
For one thing, to access the basement lab, Blair has to enter via a locked vault door in his office, then go behind some metal cabinets and down an elevator. One wonders what entrance do all the other people working in the basement use?
Accompanied by cops from HPD, McGarrett barges into Blair's company with a huge rifle, scaring the hell out of some of the people who work there, and quickly figures out where the secret entrance to the basement is in Blair's office. Danno goes through what looks like a typical military entrance, presumably somewhere near Diamond Head, and comes up through a metal door in the lab's floor.
The cornered Blair and de Groot roll metal canisters filled with plutonium down an incline at McGarrett and Danno as Ormsbee screams at them, "three or more of the canisters have to nest in order to trigger radiation." This whole scene is laughable, though if it is scientifically possible, I would certainly like to hear from someone about it. I think the suggestion is that the canisters will run into each other and they will blow up or something, which is ridiculous. "Nesting" in reference to this kind of metal canister (which is the kind which is actually used to store plutonium as per at least one WWW page) means the way the canisters can be piled and locked together.
Having run out of canisters, Braid and de Groot surrender and are taken away. Freed from captivity, Ormsbee starts to give McGarrett mouth again, but the Five-O chief arranges for him to be "busted" on a charge of "conspiracy" because he was helping Blair and de Groot "restructure the entire nuclear system completely." Ormsbee protests he was kidnapped and held under duress, but McGarrett insists he be taken to the hospital to make sure he is not suffering from radiation poisoning.
EPISODE PROMO & TEASER:
Click here to see the promo and teaser for this episode (to compare). Use the back key in your browser to return to this screen.
CASUALTY LIST:
Death (x5): Rene La Serre/Suleiman Arjieh; Carl Williamson; David Akela/Ernesto Tomas Resula; James Chadway and Raymond Sawyer all died from radiation poisoning; their bodies were put into a volcano crater on the Big Island.
Injury: Leila Kapehala suffers from dizziness, blames it on morning sickness but actually is suffering from radiation poisoning.
Death: Leila is shot and killed.
Injury?: HPD officer is shot by Blair.
MORE TRIVIA:
There is some interesting photography near the beginning of the show where the Five-O team and photographs of the five dead men on McGarrett's blackboard are in a tight closeup with the camera and the men moving around each other. This shot goes on for almost two minutes.
One of the corpses, Rene LaSerre, looks like Five-O director Alan Reisner — but not in the later-received picture from Interpol!
When Ormsbee smokes a cigar in McGarrett's office, he is offered an ashtray to put it out.
Blair has a good quote: "Luck is a function of good systems analysis."
The trombone interval theme is heard when Ormsbee is in his lab. The lighting during this scene, where he is confronted and kidnapped by de Groot, is interesting.
When vulcanologist Peg Wilson is about to be lowered to get some gas samples from the volcano, her professor cautions her about breathing in any of the noxious fumes. She giggles that it "might give us a terrific high." As the students rappel down into the volcano, some dopey music featuring a flute is heard. The word "fumarole," meaning "a hole in a volcanic region from which hot gases and vapors issue" is thrown out a couple of times by McGarrett, who arrives on the scene wearing a visor.
Is it possible to say that radiation poisoning was caused by some specific element, as Ormsbee suggests with plutonium? Again, help is needed from scientific types!
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Original air date: 10/28/76 — Opening Credits — End Credits Director: Jerry London; Producers: James Heinz (Hollywood), Douglas Green (Hawaii); Writer: Charles Larson; Music: Stock
Timings: Teaser: 0:33; Main Titles: 0:58; Act One: 10:13; Act Two: 14:18; Act Three: 9:46; Act Four: 13:14; End Credits: 0:46; Total Time: 49:48.
QUICK PLOT:
The murders of a CIA agent and the public relations director of the Ilikai Hotel are the prelude to a hit man knocking off visiting OPEC oil ministers.
At the beginning of the show, a CIA agent is found dead on a plane of tourists coming to Hawaii from the western United States. He is sitting in "the last seat by the window on the right hand side" according to the stewardess (Susie Burke), but he is on the left side of the plane if you are facing towards the front. Of course, after seeing that this guy hasn't left the plane with the others, the stewardess screams when she realizes he is dead, a relatively restrained scream compared to some heard on the show.
McGarrett is alerted to this incident by Danno while his car is being washed by some kids at a Chevron station for a Benefit Alumni Fund charity. (Rene Abellira is not there.) When Danno tells him no one will reveal the agent's mission — "Washington sources either don't or won't say" — McGarrett says, "Here we go again," i.e., "We are going to be jerked around by the Feds."
The guy who killed the CIA man with "some kind of surgical instrument" is Raymond, a.k.a. Robert Huston (Cliff Gorman), a professional assassin who has come to Honolulu to kill OPEC leaders who will soon meet there to "hammer out oil prices" (we don't find this out for a while).
Huston insinuates himself into the company of the Ilikai Hotel's public relations director Julia Lewis (Udana Power), trying to find out details about when and where the OPEC people will be staying in the hotel, but she has been sworn to secrecy. The two of them find themselves in a cab, and they get chummy. Although they are both going to "Ala Moana" (it's not specified whether this is the mall or the park), they end up at Paradise Park, a location seen in S03E11, "Over Fifty? Steal!" When Julia freaks out because Huston's questions about the OPEC meeting become too pushy and she wants to leave, he stabs her to death in a bloodless fashion.
McGarrett pumps Jonathan Kaye (Bill Edwards) for information about Mr. Dead CIA Dude. Kaye says that there is a news blackout at the CIA because this man was "on a very delicate assignment." Nothing is known about the hitman "Raymond," such as his true identity and who his intended victim is. There are no photos or fingerprints, and the only thing that is known is that he is Caucasian, a category which McGarrett tells Kaye includes 60 to 70 percent of the people in the islands. McGarrett says, "All we have to do is protect an unknown VIP from murder while we're looking for a hired assassin nobody can describe."
Because William Vaughn (Boris Aplon), one of the tourists from the plane, has a major felony record, Chin Ho drags him from a golf course to the Five-O office where he addresses McGarrett as "pal." McGarrett tells him "Don't call me pal." Vaughn suggests "that fat dame sitting next to me" can provide an alibi that he never left his seat on the plane, therefore he couldn't have committed murder. When they let him go back to his game, Vaughn says, "I was on the fourteenth hole when Charlie Chan there picked me up." McGarrett says, "Let Charlie Chan there know where you can be reached in case we wanna talk to you again." After he leaves, McGarrett says to Chin: "It looks like we're back to 'go', Charlie."
When Danno cannot complete interviewing passengers from the plane because they have a busy itinerary, McGarrett decides to get Sandi Welles (Amanda McBroom) to join them undercover as a tour guide to keep an eye on them and maybe figure out who "Raymond" is.
There is an unexplained gap in the action here, because when the tourists arrived, they were supposed to go to a Polynesian festival that evening and the next morning they were supposed to start visiting "the outer islands." Sandi is accompanying them as they leave at 8 a.m., and the boss of the tour tells everyone that "Sandi's going to be with us for the next week." As well, before Huston murdered PR lady Lewis, she told him that the people taking over a whole floor of the hotel (the OPEC people) wouldn't be there for another two weeks.
While they are travelling, Sandi develops an attraction to Huston, but when Huston says he is from Portland, Sandi blabs information about streets there which is incorrect, thus arousing the assassin's suspicion because he thinks she is "testing" him. She is only saved by the appearance of a couple of flaky tourists from the flight who have hot pants for each other, "Ms." Hazel Parr (Linda Ryan) and a guy named Young (Jerry Cox). Parr has been only too glad to befriend Young, because she originally pursued Huston, who stood her up.
Jonathan Kaye calls McGarrett again, saying, "I moved a couple of mountains and found out who your mysterious VIPs are" — the OPEC leaders, who will arrive "tomorrow, noon your time … on a chartered flight." This phone call must be a few days later because of the stuff mentioned above.
The next time we see the tourists are at the Hawaiiana Hotel on Kauai, and their leader tells them "We start for the airport in an hour." Parr says, "I can't believe it's all over so soon. What a wonderful vacation it finally turned out to be." This again suggests a "time gap."
Before they leave, Sandi snoops in Huston's room, which is not a good idea, because he catches her doing this. While he has her at gunpoint, he phones some "Mr. Big" (identified in the end credits as "Mr. X" [Ted Scott]) who tells Huston, "I've been thinking of canceling the contract … There's been a leak of some kind. There will be guards at the airport … Guards all along the route, all around the hotel." Huston says, "Getting in is easy. The problem's getting out again." He suggests after completing his mission, he will get out with "a friend" (i.e., Sandi) and he will then kill her.
When they get back to Honolulu, the troup group disembarks from their plane and McGarrett and Danno don't pay any attention to Sandi and Houston even though they walk right past them (!), perhaps because they are too preoccupied with the OPEC ministers' plane which arrives very soon — a United Airlines 747. Their leader, Sheikh Ibrahim Khaldoun (Michael Markrich) gives McGarrett a lot of mouth about security, but McGarrett says as long as they are in his jurisdiction, he is in charge, and if they don't like it, they can leave.
Sandi and Huston take a Bernie's Cab (phone number 732-5577) to the Ilikai. When they arrive, she sees Chin, who she addresses as "Duke." I'm surprised that the professional Huston doesn't realize that she is feeding Chin B.S. to suggest that something is wrong.
Huston takes Sandi to a housekeeping closet on one of the higher floors and ties her up. He locks the door, which is peculiar — where did he get the key? Sandi, who is gagged, lets out some muffled yells after Huston leaves, which might not be a good idea. After this, she manages to free herself and starts yelling loudly, which is heard by an HPD cop quite close by and, using his walkie-talkie, she alerts Five-O who are on the ground floor.
Almost at the top of the hotel, Huston crawls around the outside of the building, and McGarrett orders an HPD sharpshooter to take him out. Huston doesn't even get a chance to shoot at the OPEC people who are in the hallway inside. Instead, they shoot him and he plunges from the hotel balcony in the usual stock shot. Only one slight problem: When he is hit, Huston is on the hotel's 24th floor, but the man who is shot falls from the 18th floor.
It's obviously a stunt man on the outside of the Ilikai prior to this, especially since he has curly hair and a different hairline than Cliff Gorman. The stunt work is spectacular; I could hardly watch some of it (I have a morbid fear of heights).
Despite having kind of a dumb title, this is a very good episode, extremely suspenseful near the end. However, I don't get it why McGarrett says he doesn't want Sandi to see Huston's body after it has hit the Ilikai courtyard; isn't she a cop?
WHAT DOES THE TITLE MEAN?
"Tour de force" means "an impressive performance or achievement that has been accomplished or managed with great skill," referring to Raymond's spectacular stunt-filled attempt to knock off the OPEC oil ministers; "killer aboard" presumably means "on board the plane going to Hawaii." This title could be a bit less confusing.
EPISODE PROMO & TEASER:
Click here to see the promo and teaser for this episode (to compare). Use the back key in your browser to return to this screen.
CASUALTY LIST:
Death: CIA Agent stabbed with surgical instrument by Raymond/Robert Huston.
Death: Julia Lewis stabbed by Raymond/Huston.
Death: Raymond/Huston sniped by HPD officer, falls from ledge at Ilikai Hotel.
Injury: OPEC sheikh sprains ankle when tackled by his own guard to prevent him from getting shot.
MORE TRIVIA:
The number of passengers on the plane which brings the tourists to Hawaii at the beginning of the show is 284. But this plane is a Pan American Boeing 707, which has a maximum capacity of 202 (thanks to Kurt Tappe).
The Honolulu Advertiser has a front page news item written by staff writer Dennis Orbus about the death of Julia Lewis with a headline "No Clues in Local Slaying." The text below the headline and picture of Lewis is totally bogus. The major story at the top of the front page, with a red headline, is "City could be facing $5 million Kukui jolt." There are three other headlines on this page: "Aloha!", "Media wins in high court," and "Skimming Scandal."
Chin misprounounces Wisconsin as "Winsconsin."
McGarrett has a pretty wild tie in one scene.
We learn that Duke got a merit badge for drawing maps as an Eagle scout.
The Ilikai, which is seen as part of the Western International Hotels chain, gets a credit at the end for "production assistance." In the show, there is a shot of the torch lighting ceremony at the hotel which takes place every evening.
Is Dennis Chun the morgue attendant when Julia Lewis's body is brought there?
The Sheraton Maui Resort and Spa, 2605 Kaanapali Pkwy, Lahaina is shown from the air briefly as one of the places where the tourists go when they are exploring "the outer islands." (Thanks to Fred Helfing)
Dave Watson from Canada sent me the following pictures which were taken behind the scenes while this episode was being filmed:
#1. Dave with Kam Fong. #2. Kam Fong ready for his scene. #3. Jack Lord's trailer with Five-O license plate. #4. Jack Lord prepares to sign autographs. #5. Herman Wedemeyer. #6. Episode guest star Cliff Gorman. #7. Closeup of James MacArthur. #8. Another closeup of James MacArthur.
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197. (S09E06) “The Last Of
The Great Paperhangers” ★★★ DANNO, BOOK THEM
Original air date: 11/4/76 — Opening Credits — End Credits Director: Philip Leacock; Producers: James Heinz (Hollywood), Douglas Green (Hawaii); Writer: Orville H. Hampton; Music: Bruce Broughton
Timings: Teaser: 0:33; Main Titles: 0:58; Act One: 14:26; Act Two: 8:49; Act Three: 7:14; Act Four: 17:01; End Credits: 0:46; Total Time: 49:47.
QUICK PLOT:
A master forger pulls off two capers, one involving Five-O ordering office furniture, the other ripping off the U.S. Navy and a Honolulu bank for $200,000.
Kevin McCarthy, who was the charming but deadly serial killer Victor Reese in Classic Five-O's first episode "Full Fathom Five," returns in this episode as the "paperhanger" (forger) Hunter R. Hickey, also known as "HRH."
He was recently released from Leavenworth Prison in Kansas where he spent a "four-to-eight vacation" courtesy of McGarrett. The Five-O boss later recalls his involvement in this case: "Do you remember a few years ago we tipped the Detroit Police about some stolen traveler's checks, and I had to fly back east to testify against the forger?" Interestingly, at the beginning of this show, McGarrett is seen returning from Colorado, where, in a similar manner, they gave another guy "five to ten … so he won't be bothering us for a while."
Hickey has the assistance of two other crooks: Janice Lockman (Elaine Giftos) and Mack (Antony Ponzini). Hickey's relationship with Lockman is kind of creepy; the actors were almost 30 years apart in age. Ponzini's character is in charge of breaking into buildings, secure cabinets and safes. I guess you could call him a "boxman." He has hot pants for Lockman, but she resists him. Mack really doesn't have a lot to say in the show, and his part is not very interestingly written; what happens to him at the end is not surprising.
Hickey returns to Hawaii with his two associates to exact revenge on McGarrett. Mack breaks into the temporary Five-O office by climbing over a metal gate and then slides under an electric eye. He steals a single requisition form from a locked cabinet, knowing exactly where to find it, and leaves a souvenir doll of a Hawaiian woman, seemingly to confuse people. Lockman gets a little kid named Calvin (Shawn Sherman) to get McGarrett's autograph on the cover of Honolulu Magazine. When McGarrett is curious why the kid wants his signature, Shawn says, "When I grow up, I wanna be a detective, just like you."
Hickey duplicates the signature on the requisition form and orders $14,302 worth of office furniture from Pacific Equipment, a bogus company which he has set up at 11101 Leilani Drive. Considering this request has been submitted to the appropriate government finance office on official stationery (the stolen requisition form) and has McGarrett's (forged) signature on it, it is approved without any problems and a cheque is sent to Pacific Equipment. It is deposited in a bank account which Hickey previously set up and the total amount is promptly withdrawn within half an hour, which doesn't raise any eyebrows, which is odd, since this amount was for over $10,000 (maybe there was no rule about moving this much money under suspicious circumstances at the time?). The office space rented for Pacific Equipment is then abandoned. Hickey laughs when all this is completed, because Five-O has just helped him "get the seed money for the biggest score of my career."
This purchase brings Bill Stephens, state comptroller (Bob Basso), to the Five-O office wondering why the furniture there is the same old, instead of the stuff which was ordered recently. Stephens tells McGarrett, "The Governor's secretary got a phone call from a newspaper columnist tracking down a rumor: Corruption in the Five-0 offices." This is very interesting, because what prompted this? McGarrett finds this amusing: "From a newspaper columnist, and they're talking about corruption? That's funny." He tells Stephens that he never ordered any furniture and it's not his signature on the requisition. After getting a list of paperhangers from Washington, which has details about Hickey's release from prison, McGarrett is convinced that Hickey has something to do with this scam.
After the local paper prints a front-page story under the heading "Five-O Seeks Master Forger" where the opening paragraph is not the usual boilerplate text, but "At Hawaii Five-O's instigation, Hawaii police are combing the state for a master forger, recently released from Leavenworth," Hickey is concerned, and he should be, because where did the reporter get this information? Maybe it was planted there by McGarrett? Hickey goes to the Five-O office and does damage control. Both he and McGarrett have huge smiles on their faces, knowing full well what the other is up to.
Hickey says, "You see before you a reformed man. All I want to do is be an honest, contributing island citizen. The last thing that I would want is a misunderstanding with the police." When McGarrett wonders if he had any connection with the now-vanished Pacific Equipment, Hickey denies this, and says that his years of incarceration have paid off: "Leavenworth is not exactly a garden spot, you know. They taught me wisdom, they really did. I'm glad. They showed me the course that my life should take after my release. The straight and narrow. The way that I could teach others to avoid the mistakes of my life." When Hickey says he came back to Hawaii to write his memoirs, McGarrett suggests the title of the book would be the same as that of this episode. However, after laughing uproariously, Hickey gets very serious, saying, "In the future, unless you have solid evidence or are proffering charges, I don't want to read any more such stories [such as appeared in the newspaper]. I shall be forced to bring legal redress. Do I make myself clear?" After he leaves, McGarrett turns to Danno and says, "Our friend came here for just one reason: To see if we had anything on him, because he's planning a big score. Now, I'll lay you odds on that."
Of course, Hickey is up to no good. He intends to pull off a robbery of $200,000 from the US Navy, money that would normally be destined for sailors to spend after they have cashed their checks. Lockman and Mack check out the typical procedure that the Navy paymaster's office goes through with the Bank of Honolulu, the default bank in the series with the volcano fountain in the front, when they want to withdraw cash. Much of the rest of the show is like a fantasy, where an extremely elaborate plan is carried out and works without a hitch … well, almost.
Hickey, uses the $14,302 he "stole" from the Government of Hawaii and purchases some cars which are repainted and made to look like official military vehicles. He hires four men from the mainland, specifically Seattle, through a local crook named Wan Li (Clem Low) to pretend to be members of the armed guard surrounding the payroll contingent which goes to the bank. Hickey almost balks when he is told the fee for these four will be $1,000 each, which he says "sounds a little steep." Mack breaks into a U.S. government printing office where he steals a single check which will be used for the $200,000 bank draft. Lockman, who is suddenly working as a waitress in a bar which caters to military personnel, steals a check from one of the servicemen so Hickey can duplicate the machine signature on typical such checks. (When one of the men asks her what she is doing after work, she tells him, "Going home to my husband. He's a lieutenant commander in the Shore Patrol." They all laugh.) A phone call is made to the bank from the "Fleet Disbursing Office," saying they want to increase the amount of money which is to be withdrawn because "We've got a big carrier force coming in today, and I think that we need a little more currency than Commander Hutton drew."
Five-O is not sitting on their hands, though. Chin Ho incredibly manages to track down the kid who asked for McGarrett's signature, despite the fact that all they know is "He was a Little Leaguer [who had] a green and white uniform on, and there was a yellow peak on his cap." (Calvin plays right field for the Kaimuki Sharks.) The break-in at the government printing office which required the use of some C4 like material to blow open the safe is suspicious, just like the break-in at Five-O which got the requisition form. An alert employee at the printing office notices, unbelievably, that the last check in a book of same has been torn out — this is the one that will be modified to withdraw the $200,000. McGarrett asks for a tail to be put on Hickey, but this is a disaster, aside from Chin and Duke following him even closer than usual. Hickey and Lockman manage to swap personas in a way which seems very obvious so Hickey can go and mastermind the withdrawal from the bank downtown where he and the others will all be dressed in official-looking naval uniforms. It's pretty funny, just as Hickey and his men are leaving the bank, having scammed them out of big bucks, a phone call is received for the bank manager warning him to be on the alert which McGarrett ordered to be sent out to "all Oahu banks."
Once the caper is finished, Hickey pays off the men from Seattle, who return home. (Employing outsiders like this seems like a very risky move, in my opinion … it just increases the chances that someone will spill the beans either before or after.) Then Hickey tells Mack, "The staff car has to go back where it came from. If they find it here [a garage which was like the headquarters for the gang], they might trace it to us [I don't think so]. There's nothing to it. Bring it back to the lot, we pick you up at the corner, we zoom right out to the airport." Except that after Mack leaves, Hickey calls the cops and says, "The man who took that staff car, the Navy staff car, is returning it to the lot where he got it in just a few minutes." What a rat!
At the airport, as Hickey and Lockman go through security prior to boarding a flight back to the mainland, they are nabbed in a photo finish manner by airport security and Five-O. Hickey can't figure out what he did wrong. McGarrett clues him in: "When you break into a man's office, you should always make it a point to steal something. That's what did you in."
Overall, this is a light-hearted (though sometimes unbelievable) episode, with McCarthy playing a charming but oily crook. The score by Bruce Broughton, which is top-notch, sounds a lot like the ones by Morton Stevens for S03E11, S07E09, "Over Fifty? Steal!" and "How To Steal A Masterpiece." There is lots of clever woodwind writing. Well done!
EPISODE PROMO & TEASER:
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CASUALTY LIST:
None. The fifth episode to have no deaths or injuries.
MORE TRIVIA:
When the Honolulu magazine signed by McGarrett arrives in Hickey's hands so the forger can practice his penmanship and add the signature to the requisition form, it has a signature using a much thicker pen than the one McGarrett used while signing
Later, Hickey puts a piece of carbon paper where the signature should go on the check stolen from the government printing office and a piece of Scotch tape on top of this before he puts the check Lockman stole from the sailor over both of these and traces the signature. But I kept thinking, when he peels the Scotch tape off, won't it rip the paper?
Hickey sets up a dummy bank account for the Pacific Equipment Company at the Hawaii National Bank. But a close look at the account registration form shows that it is for the Crocker National Bank and the section where Hickey signs as "Abner Hobson" is actually pasted on to the form over a section of terms and conditions concerning the account.
The check for Pacific Equipment Company comes from State of Hawaii, Dept. of Accounting and General Services, P.O. Box 746989, Honolulu, Hawaii 96816." (This is not a real address, at least today.)
When Hickey meets Wan Li at a restaurant to discuss employing the guys from Seattle, they are playing mahjong, though this is not correct, because you need at least four people (sometimes three) to play this game.
McGarrett describes one of his brainstorms as "a wild hunch ... or wishful thinking."
McGarrett is seen coming out of a Waikiki Rotary Club luncheon where he was the guest speaker. He is walking down the steps with some older guy, who I originally thought was the Governor ... but it's not, duh!
Hickey is staying at the Ilikai Hotel.
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Original air date: 11/11/76 — Opening Credits — End Credits Director: Bruce Bilson; Producer: Douglas Green (Hawaii), James Heinz (Hollywood); Writer: Herman Groves; Music: Bruce Broughton
Timings: Teaser: 0:33; Main Titles: 0:58; Act One: 11:11; Act Two: 11:44; Act Three: 12:49; Act Four: 10:44; End Credits: 0:46; Total Time: 48:45.
QUICK PLOT:
Five-O searches for a trio of yacht hijackers after the owners and crew of a boat following a race from California to Hawaii are found dead.
This show is pretty straight forward. A gang of three are hijacking yachts for use in smuggling Asian heroin into Hawaii — Charlie Turner (Paul Koslo), the weaselly- and inbred-looking "Bama" Melton (John Lisbon Wood) and Frank Kane (Eldon).
As the show begins, they have signed on as crew members with the yacht Lady Fame, owned by Lyle and Celeste Thompson (Lloyd Campbell and Coralie Vellis). As observers, the Thompsons are following another yacht, the Star Fire II, competing in the Transpac race to Hawaii, where their son Jim (Lou Richards) is a member of its crew.
After Jim finishes the race, he tries to contact his father, but the three hijackers have taken over his dad's yacht, murdering the boat's Captain Van Cleef (Carl Tovares) by stabbing him and throwing him overboard, and tying up the parents. Unable to get through to his father after numerous attempts, Jim goes to the Coast Guard and talks to Lieutenant Commander Frank Brannen (Jack Hogan), who contacts Five-O. They are interested because there have been four similiar hijackings in the last year.
The trio of crooks are not too smart, because rather than just head back to Hong Kong where a shipment of heroin awaits them, they head to the north of Oahu near Kawela Bay. When a couple in a speedboat spots the Lady Fame, Turner starts shooting at them, which produces a quick call to the Coast Guard. McGarrett and Brannen arrive soon after this. The parents are found dead and the three hijackers have escaped inland.
A dragnet to find them fails. Hong Kong cops trace a call concerning an upcoming shipment of drugs to a Hawaiian pay phone — 555-8986, but when Five-O goes to the apartment where this phone is located, the hijackers have left, having seen the cops arriving and having left a message on the mirror: "ALOHA PIGS."
The three are soon seen at a Honolulu marina where they are eyeing another boat, the Sea Sage, which is preparing to leave soon. Danno and Sandi Welles are teamed up to try and find the hijackers at this marina. Danno looks silly wearing an undercover outfit consisting of "hip" clothing: bell-bottom jeans, a tank top and a conch shell necklace, and Sandi tells him so. Sandi's outfit looks kind of "touristy."
Danno is called away to investigate an incident maybe involving the three bad guys, but it turns out they were just "Three juiced-up local boys [who] tried to play Mutiny on the Bounty with one of the boats," according to a cop. At the marina, Sandi spies Turner, likely matching one of the three who is bearded, but when she starts to snoop around the Sea Sage after Turner boards it with some supplies, she is caught and tied up with three others who have already been taken captive, one of whom is stuntman John Thorp.
The Sea Sage leaves the harbor, and Sandi is forced to be a cook, including omelets which she dumps hot sauce all over. Once they are out in the ocean, she and the other three hostages are forced to jump over the side. The cackling Bama proposes to flip a coin to determine their fate: "Tails, you get the life raft. Heads, you're dead." The result is tails, and a life raft is thrown to the four who are treading water, but there are two holes punched in it and a couple of sharks are seen nearby. As a shark approaches the raft, Sandi says "I sure hope he hasn't seen that movie," referring to Jaws.
The Coast Guard spares no resources to track down the Sea Sage's captives and they are all rescued. The yacht itself is also tracked down, with Turner getting shot dead and the other two busted.
The ending of the show is kind of sucky in a Streets of San Francisco way, with Sandi worrying about whether she will get in trouble because she dumped her police badge back at the marina to avoid being identified as a cop. McGarrett thinks he can fix this for her.
The score by Bruce Broughton is well done. There are lots of harp glissandos suggesting the ocean, and low brass typical of the composer. Near the beginning there is a melody played by violin harmonics which sounds a bit like the Darth Vader theme from Star Wars, still several months in the future! Lou Richards gives an emotional performance in the scene where McGarrett is talking to him about the murder of his parents.
WHAT DOES THE TITLE MEAN?
As mentioned above, when Sandi and the other three on the Sea Sage are forced to jump into the ocean, Bama says he will flip a coin to determine their fate: "Tails, you get the life raft. Heads, you're dead."
EPISODE PROMO & TEASER:
Click here to see the promo and teaser for this episode (to compare). Use the back key in your browser to return to this screen.
CASUALTY LIST:
Death: Captain Van Cleef, skipper of Lady Fame, stabbed by "Bama" Melton and thrown overboard.
Death (x2): Celeste and Lyle Thompson killed by Charlie Turner.
Injury: Sandi Welles roughed up and taken hostage.
Injury: Coast Guard gunner shot by Turner, fate unknown.
Death: Turner shot dead by Coast Guardsman.
MORE TRIVIA:
Peter Harris recalls that this episode may be based on a true story: "I read a Reader's Digest article circa 1973 where the boat-jackers didn't kill anybody, although they DID flip a dime to see if they would. The story was entitled 'A Dime of Pure Gold,' since the boat-jackers tossed it into the life raft for the victims to carry [This is in the July 1972 issue.] The victims had water and several flares to signal passers-by, but they were far to the south of Hawaii (most trade routes are far to the north), and they were scared to death. I think the boat-jackers were arrested shortly after the rescue and sent up the river — just not for murder. The article would have been condensed from another publication. The boat-jackers would have had a legitimate case (morally, anyway) to be portrayed in fiction as the gang who killed the entire crew before sailing, punctured a hole in the life raft, and blew away a Coast Guard desk gunner (yes, Paul Koslo's character did all of this before another gunner cut him in half with an assault rifle). But it was definitely a torn-from-the-headlines story."
The show is filmed with the assistance of the Coast Guard; they get a credit at the beginning. When they locate the Lady Fame, McGarrett and Brannen are using a Utility Boat, number 41317. Out in the ocean when they are tracking the Sea Sage, they are on the Cape Corwin, a Cape-class patrol boat, number 95326, assisted by a Lockheed HC-130-H Hercules, number 1454.
When McGarrett finds the yacht where Jim's parents are dead, he cautions the Coast Guard men to leave everything alone, but he touches various things like railings and posts and uses the ship's radio to make a call! The blood of the murdered captain on the deck looks phony, a bit too red.
Chin Ho brings an elderly Chinese man (Yan Hoon Chang) to McGarrett's office who unknowingly helped the hijackers escape from the North Shore. Chin tells McGarrett: "All Caucasians look alike to him." The old man gets a kick out of sitting in McGarrett's chair.
In one scene near the end when the three bad guys are relaxing on the boat drinking beer, it looks like there is there is the shadow of someone's head in the picture. They are listening to "disco music" on a Panasonic 6 Band FM/AM/MB/SW1/SW2/CB RF-1150 radio.
Stock shots of cop cars are seen setting up a roadblock near a freeway entrance. There is also a lot of news station footage of what is presumably the actual Transpac yacht race at the beginning of the show.
When she is on the raft with the three people, Sandi thinks about "the commercial on television about the fruit punch where the big guy punches out the little guy" — this is for Hawaiian Punch, and first aired in October 1975.
At the end when McGarrett uses binoculars to see the four floating on the raft, his binoculars must be very powerful, because they seem almost next to the Cape Corwin. As well, they are more at "sea level" than you would expect.
The three pre-commercial "waves" before the next acts on the DVD set all look pretty ratty, like they were not remastered.
Sandi's address is 137 Kapaloa Street.
Charlie tells McGarrett to "go to hell" before he is shot dead.
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199. (S09E08) “Let Death Do Us Part” ★★˝ BOOK THEM, DANNO
Original air date: 11/18/76 — Opening Credits — End Credits Director: Barry Crane; Producers: James Heinz (Hollywood), Douglas Green (Hawaii); Writer: Bud Freeman; Music: Bruce Broughton
Timings: Teaser: 0:33; Main Titles: 0:57; Act One: 10:44; Act Two: 11:52; Act Three: 16:02; Act Four: 8:53; End Credits: 0:47; Total Time: 49:48.
QUICK PLOT:
A man who was wrongfully convicted of murdering his wealthy wife escapes from prison to try and prove his innocence.
Jim Spier (Jack Kelly), in jail for murdering Helen Newhall, an older, wealthy widow who became his wife, escapes from the Halawa Correctional Facility where he was a model prisoner who refused parole twice because this would be "a tacit admission of guilt" — or so it is speculated at lunch between Manicote and the Five-O team, where Manicote gets stuck with the check! (A very funny moment.)
After changing his appearance with the help of Claudine Hessler (Linda Ryan), a beautician friend, Spier breaks into the house and then the filing cabinet of Karl Norton (Lyle Bettger), the now-retired HPD detective who was responsible for his arrest and steals paperwork related to the case, later claiming that the "fink egomaniac" Norton conspired to frame him. Helen's body was found in a lime pit a year after she disappeared, and the jury was out only an hour and 20 minutes to convict Spier.
Anita Newhall (Zohra Lampert) is Helen's daughter who stands to benefit from her mother's million-dollar estate, especially if Spier's criminal status is not overturned because he is really innocent, as he claims. Anita is a woman described as "one flaky lady," who is into New Age activities like communicating with the dead via an Ouija board. When Danno says of the spiritualistically-inclined Anita after he gets nowhere interviewing her, "I couldn't connect with her astral plane," McGarrett suggests, on his way to see her, "Maybe my kharma is more in tune."
Later that night, Spier breaks into into Anita's house and confronts her. Anita accuses Spier of killing her mother, but not by murdering her. Calling him a "cheap hustler," she says, "You wanna talk about all the different ways you killed her? You married her but you despised her … You were going to love her but you didn't … She trusted you. She gave everything over to you. Money, anything you wanted. She signed her life over to you. And you didn't kill her? … Shall I make you a list?" When North, who she has hired to guard her estate, appears at the door, she bonks Spier on the head and takes his gun, and then surprisingly shoots Norton dead, blaming it on Spier when Five-O shows up later.
A mysterious "other woman" named Edna Kentner is also connected with the case of Newhall's murder. According to Norton, Kentner was "a one-night stand [Spier] picked up in a bar" who Spier claimed he was with the day his wife disappeared.
Looking for clues about Kentner, Danno interviews a stewardess (Valli Hanley) on the ramp which leads from the Ilikai Hotel to the beach. The flight attendant recalls not only that Kentner (or someone fitting her description) left Hawaii the day after Helen disappeared, but she also recommended the woman see a dentist friend of hers in San Francisco for some problems she was having with her teeth.
Spier finally gives himself up to Chin Ho and Duke, and in the Five-O office, tells McGarrett that he and Helen had an "arrangement," which resulted in him having affairs with other women because "the physical thing [with Helen] didn't work out." Spier admits because of this, wanting to merely be Helen's friend and companion, "I caused that old girl a lot of pain," just like Anita accused him earlier.
The finale of this show requires a lot of attention.
"Evelyn Knight" (note the initial similarity to "Edna Kentner"), who Danno unsuccessfully pursued to San Francisco as the woman who needed dental work and is suspected of using the name of Kentner as an alias, returns to Anita's house, and is discovered by McGarrett and Danno, who show up at the place, to be none other than Helen, Anita's mother (Arline Anderson).
A big clue that this woman is Anita's mother is the ring on her left hand which Che Fong previously told McGarrett was discovered in the lime pit and used as evidence against Spier; it was later returned to Anita after the trial. McGarrett sarcastically asks Anita, "If you and your mother were not in touch [after the trial, as Anita suggested], how did she get it? By astral projection?" Anita goes into a big huff, "I don't have to sit here and take these snide, vicious attacks on my beliefs. They're my convictions. They're my religious convictions."
Helen says she had a "traumatic loss of memory" after she returned home unexpectably before she "disappeared" (or was "murdered") and discovered Spier and Edna (whose name really was Edna Kentner) having sex in her house. (She says she confronted Edna "in my bathroom, naked.")
The furious Helen, who looks like a "little old lady" type incapable of major violence, attacked Edna, who fell in the bathtub, striking her head. Possibly Edna was still alive, but, based on the conversation that follows, McGarrett says that Anita went to the bathroom and finished Edna off. When asked "Why?" McGarrett says "There's the will and the estate that Anita stood to gain. Her hatred of Spier and her jealousy of him, that's why."
One wonders where was Spier while all this was going on? He had supposedly left the house, leaving his "one-night stand" alone there, which is kind of dumb!
This is not as dumb as McGarrett during the final scenes of the show, though. When Anita's mother starts blabbing away that "I killed Edna Kentner" and Anita tries to make her shut up, he should have immediately read the women their rights! As it results, both women totally incriminate each other and McGarrett tells Danno to book them both for conspiracy. He calls Manicote and tells him to release Spier and get ready for a huge lawsuit from him. Good luck trying to prove all this stuff in court!
The music by Broughton is very modern-sounding, especially the final "confession" music.
WHAT DOES THE TITLE MEAN?
Obviously a play on the line "Until death do us part," heard at wedding ceremonies.
EPISODE PROMO & TEASER:
Click here to see the promo and teaser for this episode (to compare). Use the back key in your browser to return to this screen.
CASUALTY LIST:
Injury: Prison guard hit in the head by Jim Spier during escape.
Death: Karl Norton shot dead by Anita Newhall.
MORE TRIVIA:
When Spier goes over the chain-link fence at the beginning of the show, he could probably go through the large gap in the gate near him. The fence looks like it is going to collapse!
A sign near the gate at Halawa says visiting days are Saturday, Sunday and holidays from 8:00 a.m. to 10:30 a.m. and 12:00 p.m. to 3:30 p.m. Children 12 years and under are not allowed to visit.
Spiers' hair at the beginning of the show is a phony grey so it can be "dyed" back to what is presumably the actor's normal hair color by Claudine.
In the files he stole from Norton's, Spier learns that Anita hired a private detective to investigate Edna Kentner after her mother's disappearance. When he confronts her at her house, he asks her "Who was the shamus," a term for a P.I. Before she can answer, they are interrupted by Norton knocking at the door.
Chin Ho says "Charlie Chan knows all," referring to himself when he figures out an important clue.
McGarrett is annoyed, saying "I want this case cleaned up." He tells the Five-O team to "check every beauty parlor in the state" to find Claudine, the beautician. The Five-O office number of 732-5577 is on a "wanted" poster for her.
Claudine lives at 9196 Kolanianaoli. She has a very nice waterfront house. She tells Spier that she spent over $2,000 investigating Norton.
Danno has goo-goo eyes for the stewardess he interviews.
McGarrett mispronounces "alias" as "a-less" .
Very interesting lighting in the scene where Anita shoots Norton.
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Original air date: 12/2/76 — Opening Credits — End Credits Director: Sutton Roley; Producers: Douglas Green (Hawaii), James Heinz (Hollywood); Writers: Dean Tait & David Deutsch; Music: Bruce Broughton
Timings: Teaser: 0:32; Main Titles: 0:58; Act One: 13:31; Act Two: 7:36; Act Three: 10:04; Act Four: 16:17; End Credits: 0:48; Total Time: 49:46.
QUICK PLOT:
A professional photographer is pursued by gangsters after she takes a picture of their boss who has "returned from the dead" in order to take over a Hawaiian crime syndicate.
This episode is directed by Sutton Roley, and like the other ones he did for the show, both later this season — S09E15, "Elegy In A Rain Forest," and S09E17, "A Capitol Crime" — this show is just a bit off the wall. This was done intentionally, according to the late Seth Sakai, to whom I spoke at the 1999 Five-O Reunion. Roley told Sakai that the plot of the show was clichéd and ridiculous, so they made its two villains as wacky as possible to compensate.
Sakai plays Vincent Kauoli, a mobster "returning from the dead" to Oahu. This was the first time that Sakai shaved his head for a part, and he wears a huge gold earring to boot. He has come back to take over the rackets of Doyle Weston (Thayer David), with the help of two double-crossing but well-dressed thugs who work for Weston, Allen Sherick (George Wyner ) and Angelo Okima (John Gracciano).
Weston is a real piece of work — a crippled and hypochondriac Japanophile. He wears kabuki-like makeup and clothes with Asian designs, has an opium den in his house, eats baby food (the bottles look like disguised ones from Gerber) and listens to the sound of a koto. Thayer David was only about 45 when this episode was filmed, but he looks much older.
Based on what's in the script, I figure the back story to Kauoli's return is like this: Kauoli was in Hawaii up to about a year ago, at which point he was busted and going to testify in court, probably naming names. He decided to take a powder, and Sherick and Okima were supposed to arrange for the plane taking Vince out of the country to crash. But these two guys were "like brothers" to Kauoli, and a fatal plane crash was staged, with Vince instead escaping to Brazil. (The two were paid for their changed loyalties.) Weston took over Kauoli's rackets, but Sherick and Okima kept in touch with Vince who returned to Oahu on a cargo ship and was picked up at sea by Captain Tanaka (Tenaka in the subtitles, played by Danny Kamekona) using his yacht Kiholo.
As the show begins, we see Sherick and Okima talking to Pule Lamii (Michael Palmere), who is in charge of Weston's gambling and prostitution operations, in a field in the Diamond Head Crater. Lamii tells them, "I'm glad we had this little talk." But as he tries to get in their car with them to leave, Okima pushes him away and they chase him with the car through the thick underbrush in a scene noted for its hand-held camera work and Bruce Broughton's violent and dissonant score. Lamii tries to escape through the Diamond Head Tunnel, but he is run over and killed.
Kauoli soon after this arrives at a marina where he is met by Sherick and Okima. Nearby, Anne Waring (Meg Foster), an actress-turned-photographer who is having an exhibition in Honolulu, is taking pictures and she snaps one which includes Kauoli, who wants to keep as low a profile as possible. He orders Sherick and Okima to take care of her.
Anne returns to her show, which is somewhere outdoors. Danno, who is on his day off, is checking this out, and he gives her some criticism about things he doesn't like about her pictures as well as some positive advice. The two of them are attracted to each other immediately and Danno is soon seen with her having a picnic and engaging in some open-mouthed kissing, something not seen often on the show.
Sherick and Okima figure out which hotel Anne is staying at and Okima tosses her room (#759) trying to find the photos including the one of Vince, but they are not developed yet. Anne, returning to the room, sees Okima inside and manages to escape and hide.
When Okima reports to Vince that Anne "got by" him, Kauoli is pissed and tells him to take care of things. Meanwhile, Sherick is busy knocking off another one of Weston's lieutenants, Sammy Nolo (Beau Van Den Ecker), who is in charge of drugs and porno. There is a cool stunt as Nolo flies up onto the hood of Sherick's stolen car, breaking its windshield; he is then dumped into a canal. According to Five-O stuntman John Thorp, the breaking glass was likely produced by putting explosive charges around the windshield which were activated by the driver when Van Den Ecker hit the window.
When Danno comes to pick up Anne the next morning for a tennis date, he finds the tossed room, where the door has seemingly been open for hours, and no one has noticed. Danno must have love on the brain, because he doesn't hesitate to pick up her phone, thus ruining any potential fingerprints on it. He talks to the desk clerk (the gorgeous and tall Rose Marie Alvaro), who gives him the photos, including the one of Kauoli, which have now been delivered plus a pair of sunglasses which Sherick gave the clerk to determine which room Anne was staying in.
Thinking there is something fishy going on, Danno goes to the Five-O office, where he gets a call from Anne. McGarrett abuses Danno for taking this personal call from Ann in his office, saying "Isn't that sweet?" Anne says she is going to stay with her stewardess friend Edith Ward (Luella Costello) and that she wants to avoid "reporters at the hotel." (But if there were reporters at the hotel (and why would they be there — was Anne's disappearance news yet?) how would she have heard about this if she hadn't been back to the place?)
Having had time to go home and put on a suit, Danno goes back to the hotel to get some of Anne's belongings, but is knocked out in her room by Okima, who takes a piece of paper out of Danno's pockets which has Edith's address — 112 Ahila — written on it.
Anne is returning to Edith's, taking the Kahala Mall bus, but when she gets to the stop near her friend's place, she sees Sherrick and Okima nearby. She runs in front of the still stationary bus (a very bad move!) and gets hit by a car, which fortunately is travelling at a very slow speed. Even though she isn't seriously injured, an ambulance shows up and takes her to the hospital. Danno arrives shortly after this and finds out what has happened to Anne from Edith, who has been at the scene for several minutes.
Sherick and Okima tail the ambulance and force it off the road, and grab Anne from inside. When she wonders what is going on, Sherick tells her, "somebody wants your autograph." The subtitle identification as to who is saying what during her kidnapping is not always clear. They take her to see Vincent who is staying at Koa Ridge Farms, an old pineapple plantation near Waipi'o. Kauoli is annoyed. He tells them, "Take her inside. You shouldn't have brought her here. Now she can make me. Even if you find the film, I want her dead."
Weston has been freaking out, because he wants to know who locked off Lamii and Nolo, and is not getting any answers. Sherick and Okima comes to his place. Sherick tells him, "We're ready to deliver the killers. They're not outside. They're right here. I mean, you're looking at them, Mr. Weston … Angelo and I took out Pule and Sammy. But it wasn't our idea. It was Vince Kauoli's … You remember a year ago? You paid Angelo and I to hit Vince. You were afraid he was gonna … [t]ake you down with him when he went to trial? Angelo and I talked it over. We just couldn't do it … We'll sell you Vince, Mr. Weston. We'll even take you to him … One hundred thousand and the top two vacancies now open in your organization. For that, you buy Vince." Weston tells his man Lou Tolford (Samuel Hiona), "Go to the downtown office. Get the money."
McGarrett has already had an encounter with Weston in his office, offering the mob boss protective custody, considering his two lieutenants are both now dead and he will probably be next. Weston is very annoyed at having been dragged from his house, and it's the usual repartee:
Weston: You're not gonna get away with this.
McGarrett: Get away with what?
Weston: Having me picked up like a common criminal.
McGarrett: What kind of criminal are you, then?
And:
Weston: I'm gonna hit you with a lawsuit for false arrest.
McGarrett: Where did you get the impression that you were under arrest?
McGarrett gets Tanaka hauled in to the office after they ID his yacht from one of Anne's photos, though we don't see any numbers on one photo where the resolution doesn't look particularly good. Tanaka is subject to an intense interrogation with odd camera angles and film noir-like lighting. He answers all of the questions with "I don't know" until McGarrett mentions things like "criminal conspiracy" and "accessory to murder," and then changes his tune.
Weston is taken to see Kauoli. Sitting on a table in front of Kauoli, Weston hears from Vince that he wouldn't have ratted him out at the trial a year ago. Kauoli adds that the action Weston took with the plane crash "didn't give you the right to order Sherick and Okima to do a number on me." Weston says that those two are loyal to him, but then Sherick pulls out a gun and says, "If we double-cross Vince like we did you, people just wouldn't trust us anymore."
Weston says that the men he has brought with him have surrounded the house. However, Kauoli's own men have rounded them up and he says, "I'm having them dumped in the nearest sewer." Weston looks very nervous in a close-up: "Let's talk, Vince." Kauoli replies, "We should have done that a year ago. Have a nice day, Doyle." Weston leaves, and Kauoli shoots him in the back through the closed front door of the place.
This episode has taken a lot of heat because of the ending.
After finding out where Vince is hiding from Tanaka, Five-O and HPD arrive at the pineapple plantation, but they are discovered and instructed to throw their guns on the ground, the tires in their cars are flattened and Anne is used like a shield as Kauoli, Sherick and Okima prepare to escape.
McGarrett suddenly appears out of nowhere in a helicopter and peppers the ground below with an Uzi-like machine gun, narrowly missing the good guys. As well, Danno, who threw his gun on the ground, suddenly pulls another one out of his pocket — and, in fact, if you look at this scene very carefully, you will see before he gets this gun, he has another gun in his right hand!
Although ridiculous, the stunts with McGarrett (or Jack Lord's double) hanging on to the helicopter while shooting at the car containing Kauoli, Sherick and Okima below are pretty spectacular. At one point, McG shoots in front of the pilot out the other side of the copter! As someone at IMDb points out, when McGarrett causes the escaping car to explode as it flies up and over a cliff, it has changed from a dark red Lincoln Mark IV with a sunroof to a bright red Ford Thunderbird with no sunroof. Some of this sequence is re-used in the Jack Lord production M Station Hawaii, which was filmed between the show's 11th and 12th seasons, according to IMDb, but not screened until 1980.
Considering how wacky much of the rest of the episode is, I don't know if we can excuse this ending. The big question is — did McGarrett know what was going to happen with the takedown of Kauoli and was his helicopter attack planned ahead of time? Maybe … but not enough for me to raise the rating to four from three and a half.
Still, there are a lot of good things about this episode: the direction, acting, photography, editing and music where Broughton uses low brass and harp(s) in particular, are all outstanding. The show has also been criticized for its violence, but if you compare the casualty list to other episodes, there are others which are worse.
EPISODE PROMO & TEASER:
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CASUALTY LIST:
Death: Pule Lamii run down and killed by Allen Sherick and Angelo Okima after lengthy chase through brush and Diamond Head Tunnel.
Death: Sammy Nolo run over and dumped from car hood into canal by Sherick.
Injury: Danno hit on the back of the head by Okima.
Injury: Anne Waring bumped by car as she runs across the street away from Sherick and Okima.
Injury: Anne kidnapped by Sherick and Okima.
Death (multiple — anticipated): Doyle Weston's thugs (12?) rounded up by Vincent Kauoli's thugs to be "dumped in the nearest sewer."
Death: Weston shot three times by Kauoli.
Death (x3): Kauoli, Sherick and Okima killed when their car explodes going over a bluff after shootout with McGarrett.
MORE TRIVIA:
After Anne sees Okima in her room, she runs away down the hall and hides in the "linen closet," even though he is not far behind her, and he doesn't manage to figure out where she went. Later, when Anne gets off the bus, she sees Sherrick and Okima nearby and is hit by a car when she tries to escape. Her friend Edith just happens to be coming home, and an ambulance shows up very quickly after Edith yells for someone to summon one. The ambulance leaves just as Danno, recovered from being knocked out at the hotel, arrives on the scene. Edith explains to him that before Anne left in the ambulance, she said "something about two men being after her" and that "they had been at her hotel room earlier." But both men weren't there; Anne just encountered Okima.
There is a closeup of Sherrick's watch prior to him killing Nolo; it is a Bulova watch.
Anne drives a Porsche, license number 2B-2814.
Sherrick has a great line when he tells Weston: "Like Mack the Knife, 'old Vince is back in town'," referring to the classic song "Mack the Knife."
Original air date: 12/16/76 — Opening Credits — End Credits Director: Bruce Bilson; Producers: Douglas Green (Hawaii), James Heinz (Hollywood); Writers: Tim Maschler (teleplay), James Menzies (story); Music: Don B. Ray
Timings: Teaser: 0:32; Main Titles: 0:59; Act One: 11:53; Act Two: 10:17; Act Three: 9:46; Act Four: 15:34; End Credits: 0:46; Total Time: 49:47.
QUICK PLOT:
The daughter of an organized crime leader betrays her father by stealing $4 million from him.
"Financial whiz kid" Ray Vincent (Carl Botefuhr), who works for gangster Chang Liu (Kwan Hi Lim), returns to Oahu from a money laundering expedition in Europe with four million in cash and is promptly shot dead, along with Lou Benson (Len Ross), who has been sent to meet him in the middle of a forest. Vincent arrives by helicopter with the suggestion later by McGarrett that he was "flown back into Hawaii," but this is a normal looking helicopter, unlikely one which could have come from the mainland. Before his demise, Vincent tells Benson "Three weeks on a freighter is not a very pleasant experience," suggesting he was somehow picked up off Oahu (thanks to Bobbi). As well, Vincent is hardly a "kid"; the actor was over 50 years old!
Vincent is knocked off by the Wo Ching gang, "one of the most powerful street gangs in Honolulu" according to Chin Ho, headed by Jerry Quan (Clyde Kusatsu), who is the boyfriend of Chang Liu's daughter Lee Mei (Irene Yah-Ling Sun). She is in cahoots with Jerry to steal the four million. When her father finds out his trusted lieutenants have been assassinated, he is furious and gets his remaining "main man" Varna (Paul Hecht) to investigate.
Five-O is soon on the case after the bodies of Vincent, Benson and the helicopter pilot are found by Bobby Kalani, a young hunter, played by Rene Abellira in his final Five-O appearance. However, Bobby is himself in trouble when some of the gang members track him down and beat him up after his name and address are published in a local newspaper story about the killings. Revealing his information like this seems very odd.
When McGarrett goes to visit Chang, he bursts into Chang's office saying, "I don't like waiting rooms, I have a busy schedule." He does this so quickly that he probably overheard Chang telling Varna, "I give you 24 hours to find the money." McGarrett is just going through the motions in much of this show, but there is a war of words between him and Chang during their confrontations. Because Chang starts to get nervous after some of the local competition is sniffing around, thinking that he has lost control over his "business," McGarrett later mocks Chang's inability to figure out what happened to his money, describing him to his face as the "laughing stock of the underworld."
Varna spies on Lee Mei, who has her own house, finally confronting her after seeing her and Jerry engaging in some smooching in her front yard after an argument. Varna tells her that he wants half of the four million, and finding herself painted into a corner, she agrees with this and sets up a meeting between Jerry and Varna in his gang's warehouse where Varna shoots her boyfriend dead. Before Jerry is executed, she tells him, "I'm sorry." Five-O almost immediately shows up at the warehouse, as if this location is well-known to them as Jerry's hangout, despite the fact that the Wo Chings are supposedly like Greta Garbo in relation to their activities. Lee Mei escapes in her Lincoln Continental, almost running over Duke (or his stunt double), and Varna is left on his own. He eventually gets back to Chang's place.
Trying to get more information which can help solve the case, McGarrett has the entire Wo Ching gang rounded up. This doesn't work, because of the gang's oath of silence. One of their members, Tony (Reggie Ho) gives the men from Five-O interviewing him a lot of mouth. He calls them "fuzz" and "super heat ... big and bad, and twice as sad," and refers to Danno as "Curly." When Danno decides to release Tony, saying that Chang knows he was involved with the execution of Vincent and "maybe he'll have better luck getting a confession out of you," Tony freaks out and starts co-operating.
Varna returns to Lee Mei's house, only to find her leaving with bags packed. After he threatens her, she says she will take him to the place where the money is hidden "in the morning" because "we can't make it by dark, and the money's hidden." This is dumb. Where are they? Oahu is only 44 miles long and 30 miles across, geez! Things get dumber when she says, "I've arranged to stay with a friend. Someone we can trust. We can both stay there together tonight, then leave in the morning." Why don't they just stay where they are?
The two of them leave, but only a few minutes after this, Danno and Chin Ho show up. I don't know why. Did Tommy say something? Did he know that Jerry's girlfriend was Lee Mei? Nothing is explained! Danno finds fragments of a map which Jerry made and gave to Lee Mei when they were still co-conspirators and she burned just before Varna arrived at her place, after having memorized it. Despite the fact the map is almost completely destroyed, Che Fong manages to turn these fragments into a very nice looking photo after he reconstructs it showing exactly where the money is buried — "the area around the old Kapunapu Mill." Augh!
The stupidities of this show are not over yet. The next day, Lee Mei and Varna go to the place where the money is hidden and recover it from the water tower where Jerry hid it. Lee Mei tells Varna, "My one regret is that my father will go down to his grave without ever knowing what happened to his precious money. What a pity." But a door in a building right next to them opens, and her father is there with a couple of thugs, having overheard everything she said! So how did he find out that she and Varna would be there? Did she blurt out the location while they were having sex at "the friend's" the night before and then Varna snuck away for a few moments and passed the info on to his boss? Why would Lee Mei have told Varna the location after burning the map?
Five-O and HPD have also arrived on the scene which they figured out from the burned map and the bad guys are all put out of action or busted after a brief firefight. Chin Ho grabs Varna who tries to escape through the forest. McGarrett is above in a helicopter much like he was in "Double Exposure," the previous episode, but at least he is not doing something ridiculous like blasting people with a machine gun.
Too bad this episode totally goes to hell near the end. This is Irene Ya-Ling Sun's best performance of her three in the series. (The others are S11E03, "Deadly Courier" and S12E14, "The Golden Noose," both illogical.) She is a harsh babe and, at the same time, a super bitch the way she sucks up to her father as she is conspiring to steal his money with Jerry or Varna. At the end, ever duplicitous, she tells her father, "You won't understand this, but more than anything, I wanted to show you what I could do. What I could be, without you hovering over me, pulling all the strings … [E]verything was always by your rules. I got sick of playing your little games. Sick of being treated like some sort of ornament." Chang offers to let her live, but only if she begs his forgiveness, but she refuses!
Photographically speaking, there is an impressive sequence where McGarrett and Lee Mei are driving away from her father's house in his car, though it is difficult to figure out how far away from the house she is when she gets in. Once again, Five-O shows what a great production it was for its avoidance of process shots which would normally be used in a situation like this.
The interesting score is by Ray, with some peculiar electronic sounds. The trombone interval theme is heard as Danno checks out Tony's truck for evidence. Later, as Varna retrieves the money from the water tower where it is hidden, there is a brief excerpt from Stevens' score to "Nine Dragons." Some crappy pop music is heard on Lee Mei's stereo after she is taking a swim in her pool. Other parts of Ray's score have a vaguely "Oriental" sound to them and at one point sounds like Béla Bartók!
EPISODE PROMO & TEASER:
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CASUALTY LIST:
Death: Lou Benson shot by Wo Ching gang on orders from Lee Mei.
Death: Ray Vincent shot by Wo Ching gang on orders from Lee Mei.
Death: Helicopter pilot C.J. Williams (no relation to Danno that we know of) shot by Wo Ching gang on orders from Lee Mei.
Injury: Jerry Quan slapped by Lee Mei.
Injury: Bobby Kalani beaten by two "local" guys.
Death: Jerry Quan shot by Varna.
Injury: One of Chang Liu’s thugs shot by Chin Ho and HPD officer.
MORE TRIVIA:
Kwan Hi Lim's role in this show approaches guest star status, more so than the one he had in S06E05, "The Sunday Torch."
When Jerry is doling out some of the money from the four million to his gang near the beginning of the show, one guy complains that they are supposed to lay low for two weeks. Jerry describes this as "the deal," and "if we want the rest of our money, we gotta play along." This is a peculiar turn of phrase. By saying "we" and "our money," rather than "you" and "the money," is he addressing the gang members like they are children?
When Varna comes to Lee Mei's after she has burned the map, why doesn't he smell this?
Chang's financier is Ray Vincent; in the previous show, the gangster played by Seth Sakai was Vincent Kauoli. Remi Abellira's character's last name is Kalani, same as the professor in S09E02, "Assault on the Palace."
Lee Mei's house number is 6067, Jerry Quan's mug shot number is 71326.
The Wo Chings hang out in a garage where there are several Volkswagen "Beetles" as well as a green van. Jerry drives one of these cars, a green VW "Bug."
In the DVD subtitles, Koala Basin is translated as "Kohala."
McGarrett uses the phrase "Bet on it."
There seems to be a slight "wow" in the music on the soundtrack at the beginning of the show.
GALLERY:
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Original air date: 12/23/76 — Opening Credits — End Credits Director: Robert Scheerer; Producers: James Heinz (Hollywood), Douglas Green (Hawaii); Writer: Bill Stratton; Music: Stock
Timings: Teaser: 0:32; Main Titles: 0:58; Act One: 13:30; Act Two: 14:39; Act Three: 9:32; Act Four: 9:47; End Credits: 0:46; Total Time: 49:44.
QUICK PLOT:
A vengeful paraplegic ex-con turns sniper and begins shooting police officers.
Nathan Purdy (Don Stroud), who was paralyzed by a rookie cop's bullet during a bank robbery, but is pretending to be a wounded veteran whose nickname is "Sarge," monitors police calls around Honolulu with a scanner. Later he calls in similar incidents to the dispatch number at the same locations and shoots the cops in revenge when they show up. McGarrett says that Purdy has "turned cop killing into a science."
In addition to monitoring calls, Purdy does odd jobs at his apartment repairing things like stereos. His parole officer George Atwater (Raye Birk) cautions him that pretending to be a disabled veteran is a violation of his parole. Purdy tells him, "People hire ex-Marines, they don't hire ex-cons."
After a couple of cops are killed, Five-O gets involved with the ongoing case. However, when Danno and Chin Ho are checking files with the "Iron Brain" and come across Purdy's name as a potential suspect, they note he is a paraplegic and say "It can't be him." Later, suspicion falls on Purdy's doper friend Tim Ryder (Gerald McRaney) after he steals a case from Purdy's car trunk, thinking it contains a guitar. Ryder, who looked after Purdy in the prison hospital after he was shot, is an ex-Marine who brings Purdy electronic equipment (likely stolen) to fix, though Purdy describes the stuff Ryder brings him in the show as "junk."
When Ryder takes the case to a pawnshop, he gets a big surprise when it is opened and he finds out that it contains the high-powered rifle with a Starlight night vision scope which Purdy used to kill the two cops and seriously injure a third. Oni, the pawnshop owner, played by Terry Plunkett, is quick to call Duke at Five-O after Ryder hastily leaves. Duke and Chin Ho visit Oni's place; he describes Ryder as a "heavy dopester," one of those people who "steal so much, they don't know what they got," distinguished by long sleeves, acting fidgety and driving an old beat-up car.
McGarrett is very skeptical that a heroin addict can qualify for precision rifle work as the sniper has demonstrated. After thinking about the shooter's MO, he figures it is someone other than Ryder. McGarrett quotes Outwitted, a poem by Edwin (McGarrett says "Edward") Markham which inspires him to set a trap for the real killer: "He drew a circle that shut me out / Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout / But good [McGarrett says "love"] and I had a [the] wit to win / We drew a circle, and [that] took him in."
As part of McGarrett's plan, two cops rig a stereo in an apartment to play loud music so multiple complaint calls can be made to get the killer's attention. When McGarrett and Danno go to this apartment, one of the cops, thinking it is some stewardesses from next door, addresses them as "sweets" when they knock on the door. McGarrett says to Danno, "Sweets? He must mean you."
Ryder gets nabbed by the cops after he flips his car when driving the wrong way into a freeway entrance and everyone, including the police chief, played by Seth Sakai, is convinced that he is the sniper, especially when there is lots of evidence to connect him to the crimes including the rifle and a watch engraved with Ryder's name which he had "sold" to Purdy that Purdy lost at a shooting scene and was later found. Everyone except McGarrett, that is.
The police chief calls off the stakeout, but then Purdy phones in a complaint about a blaring stereo coming from a car in the parking garage in the same building where the stakeout was located. McGarrett realizes that this may be the real sniper and he and Danno show up at the scene both wearing HPD cops' uniforms which were hastily provided to them. After an encounter with Purdy, who says he is the complainer who gets "these bad migraine headaches from this war injury … I can live without this racket," McGarrett suddenly flashes on the tire tracks made by Purdy's wheelchair, remembering there were similar tracks at one of the shooting scenes.
Purdy takes aim at McGarrett, almost hitting him, and Purdy is subsequently shot dead, rolling down the parking garage ramp in his wheelchair. When Danno feels Purdy's neck for a pulse and finds none, he says "Pau," meaning "finished." The subtitles just translate this as "Oh."
This is an interesting episode. Although Purdy is not a nice guy, perhaps Five-O was unintentionally making a positive statement about handicapped people, because Purdy can certainly get around in a wheelchair even though he is disabled and despite, one would suspect, the lack of handicapped facilities in 1970's Hawaii.
He plays basketball with non-handicapped friends so well he is featured in the local papers and is described by his doper pal Ryder as "Jerry Lucas on wheels."
Purdy also manages to get around easily in his car, though I don't understand how he can control the pedals if his legs do not functional normally. When Purdy falls out of his wheelchair during an argument with Ryder in his apartment (and you can see the crack in Don Stroud's ass), he doesn't seem to have a lot of trouble getting back into the chair.
EPISODE PROMO & TEASER:
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CASUALTY LIST:
Death: HPD Officer Ichiro sniped by Nathan Purdy.
Death: HPD Officer Jack Mifune sniped by Purdy.
Injury: HPD Officer Cartwright sniped by Purdy.
Death: Purdy shot by McGarrett — McGarrett shoots once, but there are "two in the 10 ring."
MORE TRIVIA:
Although Seth Sakai is addressed by McGarrett as "Captain Sakai" and refers to himself by this name, in the end credits he is "Captain Charles." Sakai told me at the 1999 Five-O Reunion that Jack Lord was responsible for this name change. Sakai's character's name is misspelled "Sukai" throughout the DVD subtitles. The subtitles also goof up when the Central Dispatch operator (Jo Pruden) says "Suspect proceeding mauka [meaning "toward the mountains"] on Punchbowl," saying this word is "Malga" (!).
The scene where Ryder flips his 1968 Mercury Cougar on the freeway exit is used again in S10E06, "The Ninth Step." The license number of the car is 5B-8000.
Bernard Ching is Officer Ichiro, Purdy's first victim in the show. Oni, the name of Terry Plunkett's character, means "devil" in Japanese. Mrs. Pelcher (Dorothy Mackaill, an actress from the silent screen era and the early 1930s), an old lady who lives at 2809 Lanikai, insists she be called "Ms." rather than "Mrs." when talking to one of two cops who Purdy shoots in her front yard. Ms. Pelcher's dog's name is "Stonewall." Aside from some TV appearances in 1953, this was Mackaill's first TV or film appearance since 1937.
There are at least two scenes where the Honolulu streets are seen soaking wet from rain.
McGarrett quote: "The hearts and minds of the criminal community do not change overnight." Another one, said to the two cops who are setting up the loud stereo so bogus complaints can be generated via Sarah Hale (Jo Pruden), the HPD dispatch operator: "I have absolute faith in your ability to create a disturbance."
One of the cops rigging the setup, a blonde guy, is named MacDougall (Mark Malmborg), presumably the same character as in S08E08, "Sing A Song Of Suspense," where he was played by Shelly Novack.
When Purdy asks Ryder if he is still using heroin, Ryder says that he is now on "meth" — meaning methadone.
The word "duff" (meaning "ass") is heard during the show.
A Palolo Valley bus is seen outside Oni's pawn shop.
Purdy keeps a list of potential police calls to follow up on, including "peeping Tom, noisy hi-fi, baby crying, Pelcher (referring to Ms. above; part of her street address is visible), skateboarders."
David Von Dolteren e-mailed me: "[In this episode,] Don Stroud asks his cohort, 'What's in the box, goose?' This was a take-off on 1960s Granny Goose potato chips ads featuring tough guy actor Phillip Carey as the title character, often asked 'What's in the bag, Goose?'"
GALLERY:
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Original air date: 1/6/77 — Opening Credits — End Credits Director: Jack Lord; Producers: Douglas Green (Hawaii), James Heinz (Hollywood); Writers: Charles Larson (teleplay), Irv Pearlberg (story); Music: Morton Stevens
Timings: Teaser: 0:33; Main Titles: 0:57; Act One: 15:38; Act Two: 11:03; Act Three: 7:32; Act Four: 13:15; End Credits: 0:47; Total Time: 49:45.
QUICK PLOT:
After a young girl dies of a drug overdose, a man who loved her and who is obsessed with old movies takes it upon himself to avenge her death.
A top episode, with Rich Little basically playing himself as Johnny Kling, a former drug addict who is obsessed with old movies and who does impressions of Golden Age movie stars like Humphrey Bogart, James Cagney, W.C. Fields, Sidney Greenstreet and Edward G. Robinson. When a young girl Kling was in love with, Makame Maile, dies from a heroin overdose, he seeks revenge on the three people who sold, distributed and imported the drug.
Charlie Hazard (Kevin O'Connor) is the dealer. He is shot dead on the steps of a church (similar to Cagney in The Roaring Twenties (1939)) as he is about to meet with Father Neill (Mel Ferrer in a cameo, prior to a starring role eight episodes later in S09E20, "To Kill a Mind"). The church building is the Sanctuary for the Central Union Church in Honolulu at 1660 S. Beretania Street. The shooter is Kling, high up on the roof of the Punahou Circle Apartments nearby (thanks to Fred Helfing and Bill).
Charlie has an appointment to meet with McGarrett since he wants to "jug" the people who he is involved with in the dope trade ("jug" meaning "imprison"), but because he first had a meeting with these people and was late, he was going to see Father Neill. When McGarrett gets to the church after someone finds his name and private phone number in the dead Hazard's possessions, Neill tells him that Charlie was coming to see him every day at noon because "He was afraid of eternal damnation … We'd meet every day in my office … and we'd talk about the murder. At least that's how Charles thought of it. He'd re-hooked an island girl who'd been clean for over a year. She died of an overdose. Charles felt damned."
Milton Selzer is James Kellman, the distributor. Kling shows up at his apartment and calls him "you dirty rat," an expression which Cagney never used with these exact three words in any of his films. Kling says "We held this kangaroo court … All of us. Cagney, Robinson, Bogart, Raft. The whole gang. Anyway, to make a long story short, we fingered the three of you for murder." After Kellman falls to his knees to beg, pleading, "Mr. Cagney, please … I can make it worth your while," Kling shoots him, saying, "You didn't say 'pretty please'."
Kellman is bandaged like a mummy and made to fall out of a motel closet, similar to the finale of Cagney's film The Public Enemy (1931), where his character, seriously wounded in a shootout, is kidnapped from the hospital by some gangsters and murdered, then brought to his family home and left at the front door.
Kling is taking a big chance with this killing, calling McGarrett and getting him to come to the motel while he is watching from a nearby phone booth. Considering Kling actually tells McGarrett he is in a phone booth, I'm surprised that McGarrett doesn't scope out the neighborhood. Kling is not thinking too straight by this point.
The motel manager, Mrs. Cramer (Jorie Remus), who insists on being called "Ms.," is able to produce a very accurate sketch of Kling with the help of a police artist. In fact, it is so accurate that McGarrett suddenly has a brainstorm while driving away from the scene with Danno, who shows it to him. McGarrett remembers meeting Kling a couple of days earlier at Start Anew, a rehabilitation center where Kling was performing some of his impressions for a crowd. McGarrett suddenly stops his car with a loud squealing of brakes in the middle of the road.
The sequence with the mummified Kellman is eerily similar to the film, because Kling has obtained an old wind-up gramophone with a recording of "I'm Forever Blowing Bubbles," which is heard at the film's finale, including the place where Cagney (and Kellman) hit the floor face first. Over the phone, Kling tells McGarrett to play the record, which clicks repeatedly in the run-out groove as the music ends, accompanying the "wave," which is very creepy.
There are some mindless trivia issues with this scene as far as the 78 RPM record of "I'm Forever Blowing Bubbles" is concerned.
If you look carefully when McGarrett puts the needle on the record, the label on the record is white. The total time the music plays from the beginning of the record to the end of the side is unrealistic, it shouldn't be approximately 45 seconds; if this is a 10″ record, it should be at least 2 minutes. There is a shot of the record and tone arm from above, and you will see that what is on the right side of the turntable, some circular silver thing, does not match up with what's beside the tone arm when you see McGarrett put it on the record, viewed from the side.
As the scene ends, we see the record rotating with the needle clicking in the run-out groove. It is a Capitol record, same label as the Five-O soundtrack, and the label is not white any more, it's black with white writing. It really is a record of "I'm Forever Blowing Bubbles," which is performed by Frank DeVol and his orchestra, recorded in 1947, part of an album called "Waltzing on Air." But this version of the piece is not the same as the one in the show, which is old and scratchy. The record in the Cagney film was on the Brunswick label, but I can't find a picture which matches that one, which was probably not the one actually playing the music anyway, it was most likely just dubbed in after the fact. Thanks to Mark for help in identifying the DeVol record.
After the revelation from the artist's sketch, McGarrett and Danno go to Kling's apartment. McGarrett is looking in a desk and sees this paper (he barely even looks at it!) which contains the names of Hazard and Kellman, now both deceased, as well as that of Paul Thayler. McGarrett says, "I think he's president of Mid-East Importing Company," to which Danno comments, "Maybe Mr. Thayler imports more than meets the eye," duh!! This is all just a bit too coincidental as far as the script is concerned, as is Danno finding a program for the Varsity Theater where there is a Cagney film festival at the moment including Public Enemy, The Roaring Twenties and White Heat.
While this has been going on, Kling has kidnapped Thayler, who is indeed the importer of the dope. He is played by Don Knight in a relatively restrained performance. Kling finds Thayler lounging at the beach with his bikinied girlfriend, Pauly Gardner in her final Five-O role (sigh). Considering Gardner was probably in her early 20s when the show was filmed in 1976 and Knight was born in 1933, that makes him at least 20 years older than her, which is creepy.
McGarrett and Danno go to the movie theater, where the connection between the mummified Kellman and Cagney in Public Enemy becomes very obvious. The two cops barge into the projection room wanting to see the yet-unseen final film on the triple bill White Heat (1949), annoying the projectionist, played by Kwan Hi Lim. Using a Moviola, they see that the film ends with an explosion in an oil refinery. Putting two and two together, McGarrett figures that that is what Kling's grand finale will be.
Sure enough, Kling has forced Thayler to chauffeur him in his blue Volkswagen bug to the Aloha Oil Refinery (the same location as in S02E02, "To Hell With Babe Ruth"?) where he makes Thayler climb a ladder to the top of one of the large tanks there. Thayler snivels and whines as he ascends, claiming that he is afraid of heights. Kling intends to duplicate the final scene of White Heat (1949) where Cagney played Cody Jarrett, a psychotic gangster who flees the cops after a violent confrontation and goes to the top of an oil storage tank which he blows up, yelling "Top of the world!"
McGarrett, Danno, Duke and a bunch of HPD cops rush to the refinery, where McGarrett persuades Kling to give up: "Remember the girl, Makamae? Remember how she used to laugh? … Johnny, come on down before you kill somebody … Don't die like a coward. Come on down and be a hero. She'd be proud of you, Johnny. The girl loved you. Now, will you please come on down?" Johnny seemingly has gotten Thayler to confess "where he brings the stuff in, where he stores it." Perhaps this accounts for the long time between Thayler being kidnapped while it was still sunny out and it is now night, and the amount of time the two from Five-O spent watching movies.
The episode ends with Kling doing a dance like Cagney did in Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942), the film where he won his only Academy Award for playing George M. Cohan. Both McGarrett and Danno give him a look as if to say "What the…?"
In Booking Five-O, Karen Rhodes calls this episode, which is directed by Jack Lord, "the best single episode of the series." It is definitely one of the very best, despite some issues mentioned above. The acting is of a very high caliber, especially Rich Little, particularly in the scene at the cemetery where he sits in front of Makamae's grave, reminiscing. This is not Little's first dramatic performance, by the way. He played a similar role as an impressionist in a 1970 episode of Mannix.
The smaller roles in the show are also very well done, like Terry Plunkett as the building manager who talks about "the fat dame in room 4-B [who] comes up here [on the roof] and sunbathes in the raw," Jimmy Borges as Tommy Saito, boss of the rehabilitation center, Kwan Hi Lim and Jorie Remus, even smaller roles like Len Mednick as Kling's landlord who is nervous about McGarrett disturbing anything in Johnny's room, Connie Kissinger as the attendant at the movie theater, Johnny Walker, the guy abused by Danno later in "A Distant Thunder" as Pete Holloway and Pauly Gardner.
The musical score by Stevens is one of his best, suggesting from the beginning of the show that something is not right, with a jagged, dissonant clarinet theme over ominous strings.
The episode is "suggested by a story by James Breig," one of two shows with such a credit, the other being "Anatomy of a Bribe."
In 1998, James Brieg e-mailed me: "I am the editor of a Catholic newspaper in Albany, NY. It's called The Evangelist. But I also write a weekly syndicated TV column for several Catholic newspapers around the country. I was also a huge 'Hawaii Five-O' fan. So I wrote a column about the show and how great Jack Lord was. Somehow, he saw the column and dropped me a note of thanks. Seeing an opportunity, I wrote back and asked for a telephone interview, which he granted — perhaps because he was pleased with my column but also perhaps because he was from New York State (he asked about the condition of the Hudson River) and was raised a Catholic,
"During the phone interview, I asked the cliché question: 'What's the most difficult part of doing a weekly series?' He said, 'Coming up with good scripts.'
"Seeing another opportunity, I decided to write a script, which turned into 'Bells.' I sent it to him and soon got a call from the producer saying they would like to buy the story. Of course, I was excited that it had been considered good enough to actually use. (By the way, I wrote it with Frank Gorshin in mind; he had been on the show a couple of times [sic].)
"My script was rewritten; I don't think an original word of mine remains. But the essential story and outline of scenes is the same as my original, and the characters are my invention. The plot line — someone who can't carry out his crimes unless he is imitating famous movie gangsters — was later lifted for a theatrical movie, which didn't do very well (I forget its title).
"I was thrilled when the episode finally aired. All of my relatives and co-workers tuned in; I didn't have a VCR at that time. But later, when the episode ran in syndication and I had a VCR, I taped it and still have a copy.
"I tried to sell them another script, but they didn't bite. So that was the end of my Hollywood career. But out of it I got a letter from Jack Lord, a phone conversation with him, a story on TV and a check. When the episode aired, the producers sent me a keepsake that still hangs on my wall: a plaque containing three color photos: the Hawaii Five-O title card, the title card for that episode and my credit line.
"When he died, all of these memories came back to me. Jack Lord was the target of lots of comedians, but I found him to be very cooperative and pleasant. He certainly didn't have to read my submission, much less direct it himself. It remains a high point of my life."
CASUALTY LIST:
Death: Charlie Hazard sniped by Johnny Kling. He dies the same way as "Eddie Bartlett" in The Roaring Twenties.
Death: James Kellman shot four times by Kling. He is tied up and put into a closet like "Tom Powers" in The Public Enemy.
MORE TRIVIA
There is no promo for this episode on the ninth season DVD set. Whether one exists is not known.
In 2016, I received an e-mail from Allie Santiago, who played an extra in this episode. She described her experience as follows: "In 1976 while auditioning for Jack Lord and Dick Kindelon to play a theater ticket salesgirl in 'The Bells Toll at Noon', I was disappointed to learn that I was too young for `the role. At age 17 I looked more like 13 or 14. The next day, much to my surprise, I received a phone call from the casting assistant. She informed me that Jack Lord 'wrote a little part into the script just for me.' ... The part he added to the script called for me to sit on a church bench (Central Union Church in Honolulu) and respond to Mel Ferrer's call to 'go and get a ambulance' after Kevin O'Connor is shot by Rich Little. I was thrilled at the final cut to see myself in the scope of the rifle along with the awesome long shot of me running. Most of my 12 hours on the set was spent watching Jack direct. I got to also chat with my pal Beau Vanden Ecker, and talk football at length with Herman Wedemeyer."
McGarrett is blunt with Charlie Hazard at the beginning of the show when Charlie keeps stringing him along on the phone, promising to give information about the local dope trade: "Don't get snotty with me, pal."
There are no crosshairs on Kling's rifle when he is shooting.
When Kling dials Five-O from a touch-tone pay phone, we can see that he's calling 732-5577. Danno tells the phone company to trace the call in a voice so loud it's quite likely that that Kling can hear him.
As the cops gather beside the oil tank at the end, you can see what looks like an old model red fire department vehicle beside the current day recent model police cars.
The dates on Makamae's gravestone are 1956-1976.
McGarrett quote: "I think it's all written out for us if we could just read the language."
Hazard is shot on the third of the twelve "bongs" of the church bells for noon.
Makamae's address was 1732 Kalakaua Avenue.
The Varsity Theatre was located at 1106 University Avenue. It opened in 1939 and was converted to a two-screen theater in 1985. It closed in 2007 and was demolished in early 2008. Some prices at the concession stand in the show: cold drinks: 25, 35, 45 cents; popcorn: 25˘; buttery popcorn: 40, 60 cents; hot dog: 45, 60 cents.
Kellman's body is taken away in a Pacific Ambulance.
GALLERY:
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Original air date: 1/13/77 — Opening Credits — End Credits Director: Allen Reisner; Producers: Douglas Green (Hawaii), James Heinz (Hollywood); Writer: Robert Stambler; Music: Don B. Ray
Timings: Teaser: 0:33; Main Titles: 0:58; Act One: 14:47; Act Two: 13:28; Act Three: 10:42; Act Four: 8:32; End Credits: 0:46; Total Time: 49:46.
QUICK PLOT:
McGarrett is set up to be the prime suspect in the murder of his girlfriend, and the evidence is rock-solid.
This is the best "McGarrett has a life" episode, though it has a few issues.
He is seen romancing Cathi Ryan, his foreign-accented girlfriend of two months, played by the super-gorgeous Swedish actress Camilla Sparv. She is a dress designer, just like Jack Lord's wife, Marie. Cathy has a sad history, because her husband and young daughter were drowned in a sailing accident. McGarrett says he will help her recover from the "self-pity" she feels.
The two of them are seen flirting at a fashion show, playing tennis and relaxing on McGarrett's yacht. Most of Cathi's appearances in this show are in flashbacks, however, since she gets knocked off about two and a half minutes into act one and McGarrett is set up in a very professional way to make it look like he did it. Shortly after he arrives at Cathi's place, he is knocked out.
After he recovers, the phone there and his car radio inexplicably do not work, and to call HPD, McGarrett has to drive to a phone booth at the Makai Pier (see S09E20, "To Kill a Mind," as well as M Station Hawaii). When he returns to Cathi's, there is major inattention given to potential fingerprints, not only by McGarrett, who picks up the phone without any caution from the cops, but also by Detective Chick Matsuda (Terry Plunkett), part of the HPD team that quickly arrived, tipped off anonymously by some eyewitness who provided details incriminating McGarrett.
Cathi was killed with McGarrett's gun, which shows signs of just having been fired. I don't understand what is the deal with McGarrett's watch being placed under Cathi's body. What is this supposed to suggest? The phone as well as McGarrett's radio now both work, having been "restored" by whoever set everything up.
McGarrett is soon out on bail after the men from Five-O scrape together $50,000, for which he is very appreciative. Chin Ho manages to track down some information from an informer which suggests a connection between what happened and Sam Wailua (Alan Naluai), an enforcer working for Charlie Ing (Danny Kamekona), who is in Oahu State Prison.
As well, Che Fong, using the usual forensics to track down dirt on rental car tires which left tracks outside Cathi's place, suggesting that there indeed was a setup against the Five-O boss, also finds "a couple of beautiful prints from the jack" in the car's trunk (and it just so happens that whoever drove the trunk had a flat and had to fix it). These prints are put "on the wire" and news comes back that they belong to Malcolm Vaughn from Detroit (Jonathan Goldsmith), who has "two arrests for suspicion of homicide and no convictions."
McGarrett has a brainstorm when out driving with Danno and sees some guy near the tennis courts where he spent time with his lady love. Having just had a flashback at Cathi's where he and Danno were "reconstructing" and McGarrett "brainstormed" everything that happened there — he was knocked out, the watch was planted, he was doped up while unconscious and the killer switched a gun in McGarrett's pocket — he realizes someone had access to his locker at the tennis club where he kept his gun. At the club, it is quickly determined the only person with a key to do this was Yoshi (Kimo Kahoano), the resident pro.
Yoshi tearfully breaks down and confesses that he was the one who took McGarrett's gun from the locker after some thugs kidnapped his sister Sachito and threatened to kill her with a morphine overdose. The sister is still being held by the bad guys, but after Yoshi leads Danno and McGarrett to a public phone in Kapiolani Park from where he called his sister, they are able to track down where she is being held (I guess).
McGarrett investigating himself does not please District Attorney Manicote, which results in a terrific screaming match. At least McGarrett does not raid the place where Yoshi's sister is held — that's left up to Danno, Duke and some HPD cops.
Wailua the enforcer returns to town. As soon as he gets off the plane, he is brought to the Five-O office where McGarrett doesn't waste any time giving him a piece of his mind: "The man you brought here was a shooter, an assassin. His name is Malcolm Vaughn. He happened to kill a lady that I was very fond of. And I'm gonna burn you for it if it's the last thing I do on earth." McGarrett grabs Wailua by the collar and acts as if he going to punch him out.
Yoshi is brought into the room as if he has some astounding revelation which should make Wailua realize that he is in really big trouble, but this doesn't make any sense. First of all, Wailua has been out of town "for over a week." The time frame as to when Yoshi's sister was kidnapped is not clear, being "about a week ago." Furthermore, when Yoshi was taken by thugs to the pay phone to talk to his kidnapped sister (rather than from his home, which seems odd), "They met me at my apartment the next day. They placed the call and I spoke to her." There is no suggestion that Wailua was directly involved with any of this, because he wasn't even there. So what is the point of Yoshi being brought into the room? He can't "recognize" Wailua, because the people kidnapping his sister are two totally different guys. Yoshi doesn't even say anything, he just stands there!
Despite this, Wailua is scared poopless by Yoshi's presence and suddenly offers to make a deal, which McGarrett, as is his custom, refuses. Wailua says, "It was Charlie. He said they couldn't do anything to him. I mean, he's already serving life." McGarrett tells him, "Transporting a killer across a state line is a federal offense. And I'm going after a federal indictment. I'm gonna have him transferred to a prison on the mainland where he won't be surrounded by friends or be able to make deals."
Before he bids Wailua farewell, McGarrett finds out that Vaughn is "holed up in this place over on Maui." (It is a good question as to how Wailua knows this.) But previously Ing told some stooge in the prison, "He's picking up some money for me in Maui," which was hidden behind "a false panel in the back of the mirror in the bathroom." In other words, Vaughn wasn't going to stick around, and when he came back to Oahu, Ing said, "Have him killed."
McGarrett and the Five-O team go to the house on Maui, where Vaughn is "holed up." Elissa Dulce appears as Nali, his girlfriend, in a non-speaking role for about 20 seconds, though she gets credit at the end. She is grabbed by McGarrett, who clamps her mouth shut, and taken away.
Vaughn tries to escape, realizing the place is surrounded by cops. Pursued by McGarrett, he runs into the ocean, making me wonder why. Was he intending to swim back to Oahu? There is interesting hand-held camera work during the cool fight in the surf as McGarrett beats the shit out of Vaughn, punching him at least 7 times in the face. There is no swelling music (or any music at all) as the show's final act comes to a close.
The music by Don Ray is pretty good, with several interesting cues including this one, which accompanies McGarrett's re-creation of what happened at Cathy's after her murder. At the beginning of the show when McGarrett finds Cathi's body, the score is ominous and creepy. However, when McGarrett and Cathi are hanging out in the flashbacks, it suddenly becomes very banal, especially the one near the end of the show in slow-motion which looks like a Clairol commercial.
There are two issues of the Honolulu Advertiser seen. The first has a large headline "Five-O's McGarrett Charged With Murder." The second, with a headline worthy of World War II, "McGarrett Fights Back:" with a sub-head "Five-O Chief Heads Own Investigation," has other stories: Eight Judges Selected for Brotherhood; Newly-Zoned Area Results In 150 More Building Permits; 2 Travel Study UB Tours Set: European, World; Political Placards' Removal Is Asked By Zoning Director. The text in the articles as usual has nothing to do with the heading, but at least the headlines are in capitals for a change. The front-page picture in this second issue is of Nathan Manu's bombed-out car from S01E02, "Strangers In Our Own Land" (thanks to Jeff Herman).
EPISODE PROMO & TEASER:
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CASUALTY LIST:
Death: Cathi Ryan shot by Malcolm Vaughn on orders from Charlie Ing.
Injury: McGarrett hit over the head and drugged by Vaughn.
Injury: Yoshi's sister kidnapped by Sam Wailua's thugs as part of frame against McGarrett.
Injury: McGarrett "beats the shit out of Vaughn."
MORE TRIVIA:
Jonathan Goldsmith, formerly known as Jonathan Lippe, who plays Vaughn, appeared in S01E09, "By The Numbers." He was more recently known as "The Most Interesting Man in the World" in Dos Equis beer commercials on TV and has appeared in numerous Internet memes.
In McGarrett's "reimagining" of how the setup happened, Vaughn's face at one point is covered with some kind of a weird mask, because McGarrett doesn't really know what he looks like. But this is stupid, since we can see his face from the side in several other angles. We have already seen Vaughan earlier talking to Ing in prison. (Huh? How can Vaughn, who is a criminal, get in there? Oahu State Prison isn't like "Club Fed.") Vaughn is also getting his fingerprints all over the phone jack and other places during the re-enactment.
When McGarrett is trying to phone for help after he recovers from being knocked unconscious, there is a shadow of some crew member or equipment on the lamp in front of him. Later, if you look carefully behind McGarrett in the passenger seat as he and Danno are driving, starting at approximately 36:16 on the DVD set, you can see a man's head in the back seat (maybe the sound technician for the scene?). Thanks to Robert Ryan for pointing this latter goof out.
The DVD subtitles identify Plunkett's character as "Chit" Matsuda, through his name is actually "Chick." (The end credits just list him as "Lt. Matsuda.") The subtitles translate the word "paniolo" ("cowboy" in Hawaiian) as "Boni Oro" (!!) and later as "Paniola."
Che Fong's hair is somewhat longer and greyer than in the previous season. Fred Ball is a clerk at the Ilikai Hotel.
Good McGarrett quote to Cathi: "Some cops are 'super' when you get to know them."
An earlier title for this show was "The Man In The Steel Frame."
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Original air date: 1/20/77 — Opening Credits — End Credits Director: Jerry London; Producers: Douglas Green (Hawaii), James Heinz (Hollywood); Writers: Tim Maschler; Music: Bruce Broughton & William Broughton
Timings: Teaser: 0:33; Main Titles: 0:58; Act One: 11:55; Act Two: 8:31; Act Three: 9:27; Act Four: 17:34; End Credits: 0:48; Total Time: 49:46.
QUICK PLOT:
Working with a Tokyo police officer, Five-O tries to locate the source of a smuggling ring which is sending handguns to Japan.
In a twist to the usual white-guys-playing-Asians, this episode features the Fijian-born Manu Tupou, probably best known for his role as Prince Keoki in the 1966 film Hawaii, playing Japanese police lieutenant Kimo Nahashi. This is about as hard to believe as the Hawaiian Walter Yong playing Joe Kimura (if this character is supposed to be Japanese) in S08E18, "Anatomy Of A Bribe." One could make a similar complaint about Tupou's co-star France Nuyen (French/Vietnamese ancestry) considering she is playing an American/Japanese woman named Iso Toguchi, but only if you are a racial purist who was bothered by Chinese actress Ziyi Zhang playing the "Japanese" lead in Memoirs of a Geisha (2005).
Tupou appeared five times on Five-O, playing local Samoan gangster Tasi (S04E11, "A Matter of Mutual Concern"), Hawaiian radical nationalist Abraham Meleha (S05E12, "The Clock Struck Twelve"), kumu boss Cappy Pahoa (S10E24, "A Death In The Family") and chief inspector of the Singapore police Central Narcotics Bureau (S11E21, "The Year Of The Horse"). Theatrically-trained, Tupou was well suited to roles that exuded authority. In "Year Of The Horse," Singapore is an island which has multiple demographics, but there is no suggestion that in "Ready, Aim….." Nahashi has mixed parentage, which might account for the fact that he speaks perfect English.
Toguchi has a history with Nahashi. She is a naturalized American citizen, suggesting she was originally from Japan, though this is not specifically mentioned anywhere. She became pregnant seven years before when she was unmarried and went back to Japan to have the child. She somehow became involved with Nahashi. When Nahashi was subsequently put in charge of an investigation into a racket smuggling stolen handguns from Hawaii to Japan, where gun control laws are very strict, he got her to return to Hawaii to dig up information. It is never made clear why Toguchi is particularly qualified to help him with this investigation, which seems very risky for her.
Togushi gets a job at the Honolulu Japanese restaurant/"tea house" called the Nuuanu Onsen ("onsen" is the Japanese word for "hot springs"). It turns out that this restaurant is involved with the smuggling operation in conjunction with the Hawaiian Gold Dairy, particularly one of its chefs, Nick Tanaki (Brian Fong). It's not said whether Toguchi knows about the restaurant's involvement as part of her snooping. It's quite likely she does know.
After some stock shots of Tokyo at the beginning of the show, Nahashi is shown on a stakeout in Japan with another cop (Gary Hau, uncredited) in a Toyota Corolla. While pursuing some guy, Hau's character is killed and an attaché case the guy had spills guns all over the street.
We cut to Honolulu, where Toguchi seems very edgy about something. This is because her connection with Nahashi's work has been discovered (no mention how). Toguchi's daughter Nahame (a very un-Japanese name), who is in Japan living with her grandmother, has been kidnapped to coerce her mother to co-operate with the Honolulu gangsters in charge of the smuggling racket, specifically some "Mr. Big" named Morrison (Roger Perry) and his slimy associate Benny Dansero (a.k.a. "Dancer"), played by Edward James Olmos.
Five-O is aware of lots of activity recently as far as stolen guns are concerned: four gun shops have been hit in the past month with over 190 weapons taken — only handguns, not rifles or automatic weapons.
Nahashi arrives in Honolulu because he receives word from Toguchi that the guns are going to be leaving the country soon. She passes information about his arrival and where he is staying to the bad guys. When Nahashi leaves the Kukui Plaza Hotel, he is followed by local hitman Robert Makala (Jimmy Borges), who is driving a Triumph Spitfire. Makala's efforts to kill Nahashi are unsuccessful, which does not endear him to his bosses. Nahashi suffers a head wound when his rented car runs into what looks like a bunch of cut-up palm trees. He is detained by the cops, who are suspicious because he is ID'd as Harold Osuna, a "businessman" who just happened to be wearing a Japanse 9mm handgun in a shoulder holster.
Nahashi is taken to the hospital, but flees from the place and gets together with Toguchi. He is disturbed by the possibility that she has betrayed his presence, since she was the only one who knew that he was coming to Hawaii. However, she doesn't want to tell him anything, like where the guns might be stockpiled, and particularly the business that her daughter is kidnapped.
Nahashi makes some arrangements to get together with her again which is in some out-of-the-way location. Toguchi drives there in her Pinto and waits for him; he appears walking across a field. Suddenly, there are two cars, one from Five-O, the other from HPD. The cops whisk Nahashi away, but Toguchi is sitting there in her car, mere feet away, watching all this (there is no one else nearby), and nobody bothers to connect her with what is going on or question her? WHAT?!? As well, one wonders how Five-O knew that Nahashi was at this location in the first place. The scene looks like it is on Sand Island and in the background is a tower highly reminiscent of one used by a sniper in an earlier episode which featured Nuyen, S07E17, "Small Witness, Large Crime."
Nahashi is brought to Five-O headquarters where he is grilled by McGarrett, who knows his real identity. McGarrett also knows about Toguchi, who Nahashi confirms is his inside source for information. He says that he came to Hawaii because she contacted him to say that a shipment of over 900 guns, worth over a million in dollars in Japan, was scheduled to leave Hawaii soon — in fact, in less than a day. (McGarrett makes some peculiar remark, wondering if Nahashi would be in Hawaii if the gun laws in the USA were stricter. Nahashi replies to McGarrett: "I didn't say that, you did.")
Danno and Duke get a connection to Dancer through Jimmy Alahana (Rod Aiu), an informant, who purchased a gun which the cash-strapped Jimmy needed to get rid of. Meanwhile, Dancer forces Toguchi to go to the Valley of the Temples to meet Nahashi again, with the intention of having Makaha kill the cop from Tokyo. She tells Nahashi about this meeting. He contacts McGarrett, who comes to Nahashi's hotel and says, "I'm gonna let you play target, only because we're running out of time. But I'm gonna have a cop behind every tree out there. For your lady's sake as well as yours." Makaha is there, but he doesn't get off any shots before cops swarm in his direction. Incredulously, he escapes!
Emotionally a wreck because of the near-assassination, Toguchi finally tells Nahashi about her daughter's kidnapping. Before coming to the temples, Dancer phoned the place where her daughter was being held in Japan and let her talk to the kid. Nahashi says this is a good thing, because they can then track the number to the house in Japan where her daughter is being confined.
Dancer and Morrison decide that if Toguchi was the one who turned Five-O on to the assassination attempt she should be "taken care of" because she is a "loose end." Dancer comes to Toguchi's, and takes her away, but before he breaks in, she scribbles something, supposedly in Japanese on a board on the wall, but this writing is not Japanese at all, it makes no sense whatsoever. Nahashi comes to her place, where he just misses the two of them. In fact, Dancer and Toguchi, instead of going down in the elevator which means they would have run into Nahashi, who was coming up, take the stairs down! Nahashi sees Noguchi's writing on the wall, which directs him to look in a pot where Toguchi has put a phone number 555-4897, which is that for the Hawaiian Gold Dairy.
With only a couple of hours beore the guns are to be shipped out of the country, Five-O goes into overdrive to get information about Mahaka which connects him with Dancer from Mahaka's boss, Hodges (John Stalker). Among the items on Dancer's rap sheet are "armed robbery, extortion, inciting to riot [and] indicted for breaking into a National Guard armory and smuggling weapons across the border into Mexico." When Five-O goes to Makaha's place, they find the bungling hitman has been shot dead.
Dancer brings Toguchi to the Hawaiian Gold Dairy where she is locked in a cold storage room in preparation for having a talk with "The Man." Nahashi tracks her down there thanks to the phone number, but when he tries to put the drop on Morrison, he is cornered by Dancer who locks him with Toguchi in the room and the temperature is set to minus 40 degrees (presumably Fahrenheit). This seems excessively cold for a commercial refrigerator. However, Nahashi is able to quickly find a vent in the room which they use to escape (this is kind of lame).
Danno has found out some of Dancer's current associates include Tamaki, the chef. McGarrett, in desperation, tells Chin and Duke to go to the restaurant and keep an eye on things, suspecting that the last of the guns that are being stockpiled will soon be leaving the country. McGarrett's hunch is right, of course. A truck from "Moana Frozen Foods" which is moving the guns leaves the restaurant and is tailed by the two from Five-O, even more closely than usual, to the dairy. There the guns are placed in sealed plastic bags which are then put in buckets of ice cream which are filled up, presumably to be exported to Japan. As usual, there are an awful lot of people involved in these operations which could have led to someone blabbing to the cops, but of course, no one did.
Five-O and HPD arrive at the dairy, and McGarrett announces to the workers filling the ice cream buckets that they are under arrest. Dancer and Morrison attempt to flee, pursued by Nahashi. He corners Morrison but Dancer is going to shoot him in the back. However, McGarrett shoots Dancer in the back without saying anything, which Karen Rhodes, in her book on Five-O, says is "out of character."
In McGarrett's office, there is a sentimental ending with Toguchi's daughter having been freed from captivity by the Japanese police. When she asks her daughter over the phone in English, if she is "all right," the kid replies, in Japanese, "I'm OK, are you OK?"
EPISODE PROMO & TEASER:
Click here to see the promo and teaser for this episode (to compare). Use the back key in your browser to return to this screen.
CASUALTY LIST:
Death: Kimo Nahashi’s partner shot by smuggler on street in Tokyo.
Injury: Nahashi suffers head injury after being run off the road and shot at by Robert Makala.
Death: Makala shot dead.
Injury: Lookout at dairy taken down by Nahashi.
Injury (?): "Dancer" shot in the back by McGarrett — McGarrett orders an ambulance.
MORE TRIVIA:
In the end credits, Manu Tupou's last name is spelled "Topou."
When Nahashi is in Tokyo at the beginning of the show, there is Japanese writing seen on walls and banners. After the initial "Tokyo" establishing shot, a banner is seen hanging on ropes across the street from where a woman is sorting vegetables. As Nahashi and his partner pursue the gangster with the attaché case, this same banner, which contains the word "dragon," is seen hanging in front of a brick wall at a street corner. There is a smaller sign above Nahashi's car for Yamaguchi Ton'ya, "Ton'ya" meaning something like "wholesalers" (this is an old term). Before they start chasing him, the gangster walks in front of a fish market. The last character in the sign just below the roof is for "store," but it is not properly made. The red banner on the right below this says something like "fresh daily." The white banner hanging above the brown awning says "welcome" in characters which are more Chinese than Japanese. The large banner on the left side of the store identifies it by its name. The red "fresh daily" sign is seen again on the left after the cops pursue the gangster around the corner. There is a large banner hanging above the street at that point which advertises a dance show at Ueno Park (a famous park in Tokyo) with information about when it is being held (August 6, Saturday afternoon) and how much it costs to get in.
The music is by two Broughtons — Bruce and his brother William. It is OK. At the beginning, there is some "Asian"-sounding music played by what sounds like a recorder, similar to that used in the previous episode with Nuyen where it was associated with a young boy.
When Dancer calls the place where Toguchi's daughter is being held in Japanese so she can talk to the kid, her daughter says in Japanese, "Hello, mommy. I'm OK. When are you coming home?"
The short scene in the restaurant after Nahashi talks to Toguchi on the beach is exactly the same as when he first calls her there.
Makala's Spitfire is originally purple with a license plate of N-9488. But while he is pursuing Nahashi, the license number changes to 3A-5579. Later, Makala has the car repainted to what looks like a grey color, but when we see the car after this, it is more like a dark green, again with the 3A-5579 license. The license plate holder on the back of the car which we see after it has been painted has "LOVE THOMAS" at the bottom. Bobbi is of the opinion that two different cars are involved here; I would tend to agree.
A "real" phone number is seen on a sign in an auto repair shop: 841-2745.
When McGarrett talks to Nahashi's boss in Tokyo on the phone, the connection is terrible, as usual.
Dancer is seen getting hot water dumped on him at Charlene's Massage Parlor, which was featured in the third episode of this season, "Oldest Profession — Latest Price."
I find it odd that when the temperature is turned down in the freezer after Nahashi is locked inside with Toguchi, you can't see the two characters' breath.
More goofs from IMDb: Chin Ho says to McGarrett over the radio that the frozen food truck is marked Manoa, when in fact, it is marked Moana. The car shown in the first scene which is supposedly in Japan is a left hand drive car, but cars in Japan are right hand drive. When Iso and Kimo are locked in the freezer, Kimo finds a vent grille, removes it and they escape to the outside. If this were a real freezer there would be no such vent, as the outside air would come in and thaw all the contents.
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Original air date: 1/27/77 — Opening Credits — End Credits Director: Sutton Roley; Producers: James Heinz (Hollywood), Douglas Green (Hawaii); Writer: Herman Groves; Music: Bruce Broughton
Timings: Teaser: 0:33; Main Titles: 0:57; Act One: 11:15; Act Two: 12:35; Act Three: 14:37; Act Four: 9:02; End Credits: 0:46; Total Time: 49:45.
QUICK PLOT:
A maniacal rapist-murderer threatens the daughter of the Hawaiian Attorney-General.
William Watson gives his best Five-O performance in this episode as the "butcher" Marcus Lucien, who escapes while being transported to prison to serve a sentence for multiple rape/murders. The episode is directed by Sutton Roley who had a tendency to go a bit over the top with the three episodes he did for the series, the others being S09E09, "Double Exposure" and S09E17, "A Capitol Crime."
The show has numerous issues with topography and locations as well as other things which we should not think too hard about.
At the beginning, the prison van transporting Lucien is on a divided highway and looks like it emerges from one of the Pali Tunnels. After pouting like a baby, "I never hurt nobody," Lucien punches one of the guards (Lee Woodd) and grabs the shotgun from the other (Chuck Couch) who he knocks out. Then Lucien points the gun at guard number one and tells him to talk to the driver on the microphone which connects the back of the truck with the front and say that the prisoner (i.e., Lucien) is throwing up and to pull over. It is odd that the driver can't hear the yelling and commotion that is going on in the back. Also, there is a window between the back of the truck and the driver's cab, but the driver doesn't look through this! When the driver finally stops, he is on a smaller road, and we can see what looks like a bridge for a divided road up above in the background. The driver goes to the truck's back door and when it opens, he is shot dead.
Shortly after this, Chin Ho picks up McGarrett from a dock near the place where he has been sailing a Hobie Cat type of boat along with someone else. Dan Stomierosky points out that this scene is exactly the same, except for the dialogue, as the one at the beginning of S08E02, "McGarrett is Missing." The license plates on Chin's car in the earlier show were black lettering on yellow plates, as opposed to this current show, where they should be blue lettering on white plates.
Chin knows that Lucien has escaped and he has "killed a guard." But this doesn't make sense — wouldn't Lucien have killed all the guards? If this was the case, how would the people at Oahu State Prison know that he escaped, and why is the truck not just driving through the streets of Honolulu, where this prison is actually located, as opposed to out in the sticks?
Anyway, McGarrett and Danno are soon in the middle of nowhere near a lake, pursuing Lucien, along with some HPD cops. McGarrett, wearing a wide-brimmed straw hat, plans strategy with a map. He says, "A witness saw [Lucien] heading for the mountains. So I would assume he'd try to get over them. Probably come out over here at Waipi'o or Haleiwa." But these two cities are located very far apart from each other! And to add to the confusion, a radio announcer later says that the search "is underway in the mountains due east of Kaneohe Bay," which IMDb reports would be in the Pacific Ocean.
Lucien comes across a pair of hippies living in the forest. He arouses them from their pot-filled existence and says "You're under arrest," laughing. Then his demeanor changes completely to seriousness and he says "Let's have a party." He murders them both.
Lucien's escape coincides with Karen (Laurie Prange), the daughter of Manicote, who is now the attorney general of Hawaii, being in the same area on a university field trip where she gets lost, foolishly having resisted partnering with anyone, though some guy named Rich (Randy Ruff), a football player who has hot pants for her, offered to keep her company. While searching for flowers, Karen falls down a hill, knocks herself out and is rescued by David (Edward Gallardo), a mute "nature boy" type who has been living in the forest for the last year, having managed to construct himself a shack using scraps of wood or whatever and somehow managing to find food to eat. It is hard to guess what the ages of these characters are supposed to be — the actor playing David was 28 years old, the one playing Karen was 27.
Meanwhile, Duke and Chin have been delegated to find an associate of Lucien who is supposed to help him get off the island. They chase an informant named Sancho (Harry Williams) down a filthy dirty alley and find him inside an equally filthy dirty dumpster from the Oahu Refuse Collection Co. (phone number 847-6581). Sancho, who says Lucien "went squirrelly," says the associate's name is Homer Wamano (Beau Van Den Ecker).
They go to Wamano's place where there are two guys outside, seen from behind, who are standing in a very weird position as if they are holding up a rack of drying clothes with their arms. Wamano flees and, rather than the usual close tailing, there is an exciting chase where the two from Five-O almost run into a bus. They abandon the chase, but locate Wamano later with the help of an APB. There Wamano leads them on a foot chase through an auto junk yard. He pulls some sudden martial arts moves like Kazuo in S08E16, "Legacy of Terror" and seems to be getting away, but then Duke pulls some martial arts moves of his own and Wamano is busted. From him they find out that the meet between Waimano and Lucien is "set for Waipi'o, then to boat at Makaha."
Since David is mute, Karen has a captive audience when she regains consciousness and yaps away, grilling David about his family history, which he manages to explain very well, and also tell him about her first boyfriend, Tommy who was only 11 when she was 10. Karen's university comrades having reported her missing to the police, her father shows up by helicopter and starts hassling McGarrett to let him join the search party, which the top cop at first resists.
When Lucien predictably meets Karen and David, who are trying to get back to civilization, he forces them to handcuff themselves together and lead him across the mountains. He leers at Karen, licking his lips as he tells her things like "We wouldn't want him [David] lookin' on when we get to know each other, would you?" The three of them finally arrive at the top of the mountain range or hill or whatever the heck it is supposed to be. This location is near the ocean with a road near the bottom of some cliffs, depending on which way you are looking.
Despite the needle-in-a-haystack chance of finding Lucien, McGarrett stumbles on him at this location. Flip-flopping between lunatic babbling and seriousness, the giggling Lucien forces McGarrett to throw his gun over the cliff. But then McGarrett grabs Lucien and throws him over the cliff. McGarrett then tries to flee with Karen down the side of the cliff, which looks not that far from where Lucien just fell. But then Lucien is suddenly back at the top of the cliff and starts firing his shotgun at the two of them.
Danno and Manicote, who have been pursuing Lucien from the other direction, also appear at the top of the hill, and after Danno tells Manicote to "Let us handle it, please" and heads towards Lucien from Lucien's right side, Manicote pulls a gun out of his coat and runs towards Lucien from Lucien's left, firing at him. Lucien fires at Manicote and hits him in the leg; he falls over the cliff and Laurie rushes to his aid, endangering herself. McGarrett offers to take the place of the two while Lucien cackles maniacally, "Judgment day is here!"
McGarrett miraculously finds his gun which he threw over the cliff only a few minutes before. While all this is going on, David's right wrist has been handcuffed to a tree nearby, but he manages to free himself and throws this amulet-like toy fire engine that his father gave him at Lucien, who is distracted just long enough for McGarrett to pick up his gun and shoot Lucien dead.
McGarrett and Danno go down the hill to where Manicote and his daughter are. Manicote apologizes for losing his cool and McGarrett tells him, "Next time, leave it to the pros." We never see Manicote on the show again, perhaps he got canned because of his interference with Five-O?
The show ends with everyone going down to the road at the bottom of the hill where some cops await. Meanwhile, David is at the top of the hill, watching everything. Despite the fact that David spent a lot of time trying to free himself from the handcuffs, with the result that his right wrist was all soaked with blood, in the final shot where we see him, there is no blood on his wrist at all.
If you can ignore the near-comic ineptness of the location shooting during the show's final act, Watson's Lucien is a truly creepy villain, definitely in the show's top five. Bruce Broughton's score is excellent and the photography, much of it hand-held, is also very good.
WHAT DOES THE TITLE MEAN?
According to Wikipedia, an elegy is "a poem of serious reflection, usually a lament for the dead," so the title of this episode doesn't make a lot of sense!
EPISODE PROMO & TEASER:
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CASUALTY LIST:
Injury (x2): Marcus Lucien beats up two guards in back of armored truck, knocking one of them out.
Death: Armored truck driver/guard shot with shotgun by Lucien.
Injury: Karen Manicote falls and hits her head during class field trip.
Death (x2): Hippie couple brutally killed by Lucien.
Injury (x2): Homer Wamano beats and karate kicks Chin Ho and Duke.
Injury: Duke subdues Wamano with chop to the neck.
Injury: David cuts/scrapes his wrist while escaping the handcuffs.
Injury: John Manicote shot in the leg by Lucien.
Death: Lucien shot by McGarrett then falls down cliff.
MORE TRIVIA:
The license number 3B-4743 is seen on a Bronco used by the students in the opening sequences. (This license plate is used in several subsequent shows.)
It sounds like "Big Iron" sung by Marty Robbins is heard playing on a radio as McGarrett and Danno find the hippie pad where Lucien slaughtered the two inhabitants. But Kenny Harrelson e-mails to say this is not Robbins, but "is in fact a 'recreation.' It mimics Robbins' version perfectly, but it's not actually him singing. CBS was well known for featuring recognizable songs in episodes, only played by no-name artists to sound like the original, familiar versions. They also did this same thing a lot in Magnum, P.I." The subtitles identify this song as being by Johnny Cash, which is not correct. It was written by Robbins, and there was not a release of this song by Johnny Cash until 2002!
In addition to "Home Sweet Home" and "Our Place" scrawled on the walls of the hippies' pad, which looks like a concrete bunker, there is a "Butterfly of Love" poster hanging, the same as seen in Ricky's bedroom in S05E04, "Pig In A Blanket." I read somewhere that this poster also appears in some episodes of The Brady Bunch.
When we see the driver of the prison van, there is a brief flash of a shadow on his face.
Lucien's prison number is 20369.
At the very end of the show, the camera looks up at the top of the cliff, and there is something there which has a metallic appearance to it ... not David!
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207. (S09E16) “Dealer's Choice.....Blackmail” ★★★˝ BOOK HIM, DANNO
Original air date: 2/3/77 — Opening Credits — End Credits Director: Ernest Pintoff; Producers: Douglas Green (Hawaii), James Heinz (Hollywood); Writer: Tim Maschler; Music: Don B. Ray
Timings: Teaser: 0:33; Main Titles: 0:57; Act One: 11:14; Act Two: 15:04; Act Three: 9:14; Act Four: 11:58; End Credits: 0:46; Total Time: 49:46.
QUICK PLOT:
Policewoman Sandi Welles' brother gets up to his neck in trouble when he tries to blackmail a local gambling boss.
Sandi Welles (Amanda McBroom, in her final Five-O appearance) is back, and she has a boyfriend — who is Joe Moore! Moore plays Jed Rucker who owns Pan-Island Tours, an airline service using small planes to take tourists sightseeing, among other things.
Sandi's brother Mike (John Ritter) works for Rucker, but has been neglecting his job recently because he has a big gambling problem. At the beginning of the show, Mike goes to a casino set up in someone's house. When the cops bust the operation, Mike flees out the back door as does the boss of the place, Victor Palua (Nehemiah Persoff) and his right-hand man Sammy Crane (Michael Morgan).
Mike witnesses a boat-like Lincoln Continental driven by Palua quickly leaving the scene which runs into George Tatupu (Ernest Chan), the HPD cop in charge of the raid. Mike makes a note of the license plate of this car (6B-4913).
McGarrett shows up just as Tatupu expires. The Five-O boss is deeply affected by this, having known Tatupu who served on the force for 20 years "without a scratch." Soon after this, McGarrett becomes the compassionate cop, comforting Tatupu's widow Rose, in an emotional scene.
Sandi is assigned by McGarrett to interview the women who were present at the casino raid, because "questioning them is gonna require a certain finesse." Mike gets the idea to blackmail the driver of the car which killed Tatupu and, using a ruse, he gets his sister to call the Auto Registration Division and get information from the plate number which is that of Palua, who is connected with a tourist agency called Surf and Sand International. Mike calls Palua, demanding $10,000, which is the exact amount Mike owes to the menacing loan shark Willy Vance (John Duke Russo), who is hassling him recently for repayment of his debts.
Palua sends his thug Jimmy Tanaka (Rodney Arias) with the 10 grand to the old airstrip at "Kapaleelee" (Kapalili?) where Mike, flying one of the company planes, picks him up, pretending that someone else paid him to do this. The money is then dropped by an abandoned farm building in the Waipahu area where it is picked up by one of Mike's co-workers, Stu Hinman (Rap Reiplinger). Amazingly, Stu does not snoop in the bag and see the money.
Back at his office, Tanaka tells Palua that the way the money was delivered was a "foolproof plan." But Palua is suspicious, almost having a McGarrett-like brainstorm: "This kid in the plane, why would this blackmailer have so much trust in him? … It's still possible he knows more than he's telling." Palua tells Tanaka to keep an eye on "the kid."
This is the only place in the show where there is a lapse in logic. There is nothing to indicate how Tanaka manages to track Mike down, but when Mike is later seen buying a shaved ice, Tanaka is watching him in the background and then leaves his car and follows Mike, who hides inside someone else's car.
Mike cannot resist the urge to take the $10,000 and gamble with it, which he does, only to lose it all. He is sweating something fierce as this happens. Vance shows up at the gambling den and tells Mike that "Time's up." Mike counters by saying that is going to tap Palua for yet more money, another $20,000 to be delivered to the same isolated airstrip.
Vance goes to Palua and blabs about this deal, and Palua gives him ten grand. As Vance leaves, he tells Palua to tell Mike that "Willie's sorry." Palua tells Tanaka, "Oh, my, my. A loan shark with a conscience. How touching. Make sure he doesn't get any second thoughts, huh? I don't need any more loose strings." (Palua already sent Crane, who was the passenger in the car which killed Tatupu, to Las Vegas for a change of scenery.)
Meanwhile, Sandi is having a few brainstorms of her own, having seen Vance hanging around the airstrip where her brother works and somehow knowing his position in the local criminal underworld to the extent where she can ID him from a mug book. Drawing on details of her interactions with Mike the last few days, she figures he is the mysterious "missing witness" seen by another cop from the raid outside the casino just prior to Tatupu getting run over.
McGarrett gives her a relatively stern lecture, telling her "Gambling is a disease just as chronic as alcoholism." But time is of the essence, and Chin and Duke go to Vance's place, just in time to avoid him being wasted by Tanaka. Soon after this, McGarrett calls Sandi to tell her about Mike's planned meeting with Palua at the airstrip, which they supposedly heard about from Vance, but Vance was never told about this! (Perhaps Five-O convinced Tanaka to spill the beans?)
On his way to the airstrip, Mike sees Palua's car from the air, but the topography of the area below does not match what we have seen prior to and after this sighting. The road with Palua's car is more like a typical one-lane middle-of-nowhere road such as we have seen in numerous other episodes, located on the east side of Oahu.
After arriving in record time at the airstrip, which really is in the middle of nowhere, McGarrett does some fancy climbing up on storage tanks while pursuing Palua and, with the help of Danno, Palua is busted. Mike avoided landing when he saw Palua waiting for him, but he soon returns. McGarrett tells Sandi, "You'd better get him some professional help. He's gonna need it."
Overall, an above-average episode, aside from a few minor issues. What a pity that Amanda McBroom couldn't have been added to the cast full-time!
WHAT DOES THE TITLE MEAN?
Five-O fan Todd Witteles, who is also a professional poker player, offers the following comment in a review of this episode: "The 'Dealer's Choice' portion of the title refers to a poker game where the person dealing gets to pick the variant of the game. In pubic cardrooms, where the dealer is an employee and not a player in the game, the person with the rotating 'dealer button' in front of him gets to choose the game. Unlike five-card stud, Dealer's Choice s still a variant of poker sometimes played, including at the World Series of Poker. The poker Mike played in the episode was likely NOT a dealer's choice game."
EPISODE PROMO & TEASER:
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CASUALTY LIST:
Death: HPD Sergeant George "Keoki" Tatupu hit by Victor Palua with the latter's Lincoln Continental.
Injury: Mike Welles beaten/punched by Willy Vance.
MORE TRIVIA:
The name of Palua's organization, Surf and Sand International, conflicted with some real life company, because almost every time it is said in the show, you can see the lips of the characters are actually saying "Sand and Surf International" (thanks to Karen Rhodes for this) and all these instances had to be redubbed.
Parking in a garage managed by Robert Luck costs 45 cents per half hour. The outside of this garage is exactly the same as the one seen in S01E06, "Twenty-Four Karat Kill," into which Kaz Garas and Marj Dusay are pursued by Paul Richards and Richard Loo, and where the iconic phrase "Book 'em, Danno" is heard for the first time. You can see the blue Mercedes used by the latter two entering the garage, which still seems to be under construction after 8 years! However, if you look at the cars on the street and the workmen in front of the building, this seems to be an alternate take of the scene in the previous show's.
When McGarrett talks about interviewing the old "madam" Marge Clayton (Jorie Remus) who is now a real estate agent with a connection to the houses used for casinos, Danno says: "Want to see Marge alone, Steve?" Duke and Danno start snickering and McGarrett breaks out into a big smile.
A Telechron clock is seen on the wall at the gambling den where Mike loses the $10,000 he extorted from Palua.
Sandi's badge number is 244.
Sammy Crane's number on his HPD mug shot is 95671.
A can of pop from a shaved ice truck is 25 cents.
McGarrett is seen dictating a letter to Brian Sleven, Royal Hong Kong Police Commissioner. He is also seen eating noodles from a cup with chopsticks in his office.
The plane flown by Mike in the show, N29162, is a Cessna 206 Super Skywagon, also seen in S07E20, "And The Horse Jumped Over The Moon." Its number is likely false.
In addition to "book 'em," McGarrett also asks Danno to "take him," referring to Palua at the end of the show.
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208. (S09E17) “A Capitol Crime” ★★★ BOOK THEM, BOTH OF THEM
Original air date: 2/17/77 — Opening Credits — End Credits Director: Sutton Rolley; Producers: James Heinz (Hollywood), Douglas Green (Hawaii); Writers: Bill Stratton (teleplay), James Menzies (story); Music: Ken Harrison
Timings: Teaser: 0:33; Main Titles: 0:58; Act One: 19:23; Act Two: 9:39; Act Three: 9:29; Act Four: 8:48; End Credits: 0:47; Total Time: 49:37.
QUICK PLOT:
A senior citizen threatens to blow himself up with a group of hostages if his demands to stop the demolition of his home are not met.
Things start out with Jimmy Borges' stage show at the Palm Plaza Hotel being taken over by an aggrieved senior citizen, 71-year-old Clinton Palmer (Bernard Hughes), who has a bomb attached to his body. A former electrical engineer, Palmer has configured an ordinary remote control which sends a radio signal to a battery, wires from which are attached to cakes of nitrostarch, a secondary explosive similar to nitrocellulose, a very volatile compound. When Sergeant Asaki, HPD's bomb expert (Daniel Taba), is called in to determine if Palmer's explosive is real, he says, "It's C-4. Military explosive. Could blow the whole wing."
Palmer is upset because the place where he is living, an old two-story boarding house at 2709 Waialae Avenue (which Palmer pronounces "Waioolay") is slated for demolition because it is located "smack-dab" in the middle of a new multi-million dollar youth center that the government is slated to build. It is not specificially said in the show which level of government is behind the project, the suggestion seems to be it was a joint project between the city and the state governments.
Palmer's house, which dates back to 1900, is not just home to him, but other old folks as well. He has called the Governor's office 33 times complaining about not only the impending demolition but the chicken feed amount of money that the people living there have been offered to relocate which "wouldn't buy a tree house on a coconut farm." Palmer says that he actually doesn't own the house, just lives there.
In addition to Borges, some spectators for his show, most of whom quickly cleared out of the room when Palmer announced that he had a bomb, plus a couple of dancers, are taken hostage. McGarrett, who has been at an extradition hearing for George Hawley (Dick Davalos), quickly arrives at the hotel with Duke and Chin Ho. Danno is assigned to deal with transporting Hawley to the airport. Whatever crime Hawley has done must have been extremely severe, because there is a massive amount of reporters outside the court building when Hawley comes out and is put in a paddy wagon.
McGarrett puts his negotiating skills already demonstrated in S07E22, "The Hostage" to good use. The Governor is on the North Shore, but very quickly returns to the hotel where he is unusually sympathetic to Palmer's demands, even though his efforts to try and stave off the eviction and demolition are not successful. After tense negotiations, which are not helped by the sight of Palmer's shaky hands holding the remote control button for the bomb, word is received that a local construction company will relocate the house anywhere for free. The Governor does get through to the country appraiser who says that the place was undervalued and can be reappraised as a multiple dwelling valued at $60,000. With this money, the Governor suggests that the house will end up on "a pretty nice lot."
McGarrett is relieved when the situation is defused, as is Jimmy Borges, who has been handcuffed first to Palmer, and then to a chair.
However, Hawley's girlfriend, Mary Beth Rogers (Sharon Farrell), who watched him taken away from the courtroom earlier, shows up at the hotel, where there is a huge crowd outside. When an old friend of Palmer, Mrs. Amy Nichols (Elsie Rogers), who previously phoned McGarrett asking if she could bring Palmer something to eat, shows up at the hotel, arriving in her ancient car and carrying a tureen of turtle soup, Rogers talks to the old lady and pretends to be Palmer's daughter, which gets the ear of some of the cops controlling the crowds. Nichols and Rogers are both taken into the hotel, and Rogers rushes to the stage and grabs the bomb's remote control which Palmer has finally relinquished.
Rogers starts screaming hysterically, telling McGarrett to bring Hawley to the hotel. McGarrett contacts Danno, who is finally on the way to the airport with his prisoner, and tells him to turn around. Hawley talks to McGarrett, who he refers to as "the big hog," making demands like a plane and $100,000. McGarrett tells the Governor, "This is not my day." When an HPD sharpshooter trying to get a shot at Rogers from inside the showroom's air conditioning system fails, she demands that McGarrett come to the front of the stage, and he complies. Things look pretty bad at this point, but Palmer pretends to have a heart attack. McGarrett tries to grab the remote from Rogers, but she pushes the button anyway. Fortunately, Palmer has disconnected the wiring on the bomb, and it doesn't go off. Rogers is taken away and booked, and Danno is contacted, telling him to resume the drive to the airport with Hawley.
This show is very good, with imaginative touches by director Sutton Roley who also appears as the extradition judge. There are a lot of closeups and some hand-held camera work like when the Governor arrives at the hotel, as well as Robert Altman-like overlapping dialogue in the theater's control booth between McGarrett and other characters.
Sharon Farrell's performance is as if her script said "Act as nutty as possible," and Davalos, who looks like an Elvis imitator and was James Dean's brother in the 1955 film East of Eden, also has a major attitude. Bill Bigelow as the hotel manager Kirsten hassles McGarrett about the disruption to his business, saying that so many people have cancelled the place might go bankrupt. McGarrett scoffs at this. Jimmy Borges, introduced as the "crown prince of tranquility," gives a very good performance as an entertainer, which is what he was in real life.
There were a few head-scratching moments during the show, however:
Rogers arrives outside the hotel, and she talks to Mrs. Nichols, saying "it was so unfair the way they've been treating he [sic — meaning Palmer] and his friends," but how does she know Palmer's back story? Was this on the news already? I don't think so.
KGMB reporter Richard Wallenbeck (Don Rockwell) approaches Mrs. Nichols, and asks her, "Is that the dinner that somebody offered to bring Mr. Palmer?" But how would he know about this? The only time this was previously mentioned in the show was in a conversation between Duke (to whom Mrs. Nichols spoke) and McGarrett. McGarrett said "no thanks." It is unlikely that McGarrett would have revealed this detail to the press.
Earlier, Wallenbeck made a report on the radio: "Sergeant Asaki of the H.P.D. Bomb squad has just confirmed that Palmer is carrying a highly effective form of plastic explosive, which he's threatening to set off unless he's granted an immediate meeting with Governor Jameson. The exact nature of Palmer's grievance is not known, and it probably won't be until the governor arrives on the scene. [When the Governor did arrive, he refused to make any comment.] He's expected at any moment now. Steve McGarrett, the Five-O chief, is on the scene and in charge of police activities here." I find it hard to believe that all this information was released to the public. Even if Asaki was cornered by the media, would he have blabbed so much? (Just a point of interest, KGMB, now associated with TV, had a radio station which was sold off in 1980.)
After his dilemma is resolved, Palmer finally puts the detonator down, but when Rogers rushes the stage, how does she know where to immediately find it? After she knocks Palmer down, she has a microphone in her left hand and the detonator in her right. Where did she get the microphone? A few seconds later after the commercial between the last two acts, she has the detonator in her left hand and a gun in her right. Where did she get the gun? (Maybe she had this all along?)
EPISODE PROMO & TEASER:
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CASUALTY LIST:
Injury: Emily, tourist taken hostage, faints.
Injury (bogus): Clinton Palmer fakes having a heart attack.
MORE TRIVIA:
There is a stock shot of McGarrett turning a corner, except he is turning in the Park Lane, which he no longer drives!
When McGarrett uses the expression "senior citizen" referring to Palmer, the old man says this term gives him "the fantods," an obscure expression meaning a state of irritability and tension.
Mary-Beth Rogers drives a green Volkswagen van, perhaps the same vehicle driven by John Ritter in the previous episode. When Farrell approaches the hotel, it is obvious she is not wearing a bra.
Jimmy Borges is heard singing the beginning of "Sweet Leilani," a song featured in the 1937 film, Waikiki Wedding. It won the Academy Award for Best Original Song, and Bing Crosby's record of it became one of the biggest hits of 1937.
Hawley tells McGarrett that his girlfriend is a "moonchild." Presumably he means this in the sense of "a cool person," but this term usually refers to someone born under the astrological sign of Cancer.
Is McGarrett serious when he tells Palmer that "Every newspaper, every television station in the whole country is listening" to what's going on with the hostage taking?
Ed Fernandez plays Captain Matthews from HPD.
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Original air date: 2/24/77 — Opening Credits — End Credits Director: Joe Manduke; Producers: Douglas Green (Hawaii), James Heinz (Hollywood); Writer: Bill Stratton; Music: Don B. Ray
Timings: Teaser: 0:33; Main Titles: 0:57; Act One: 13:20; Act Two: 15:26; Act Three: 9:23; Act Four: 9:15; End Credits: 0:46; Total Time: 49:40.
QUICK PLOT:
After a popular female country and western singer is kidnapped for $500,000 ransom it appears as if she and her abductors have perished at sea
Dennis (Christopher Connelly) and Quincy (Stephen Young), two "irrational and unpredictable" kidnappers, grab singer Bobbie Jo Bell, a.k.a. "The Southern Belle" (British actress Pamela Franklin). They intend to extort half a million dollars from Stanley Ducco (Tommy Leonetti), her manager and president of Lucky Label Records, seeking revenge after Ducco had them investigated on the mainland for making bootleg cassette and 8-track tapes which led to a prison term for both.
This show has problems from the beginning. Dennis picks up Bobbie from the Ambassador Hotel in a stolen taxi when she is going to the airport to return to the mainland. (It is not explained how he knew that she was leaving at a specific time.) You can see the lighted sign from "Islandia Cab" on top of the cab with the last few numbers of the usual ubiquitous Five-O phone number (732-5577) visible on the back of it as it pulls up to the hotel. The trunk lid is filthy dirty, but as the cab is seen driving away from the hotel in a shot from above, the sign has disappeared and the trunk and hood are both clean. Soon after this, as Bobbie Jo is transferred to an Econoline after trying unsuccessfully to escape from the taxi by smashing her guitar case through its window, the sign is back. As well, the hood of the cab is now filthy dirty, which keeps Che Fong from getting any fingerprints off it later.
After punching Bobbie in the stomach to subdue her, Dennis drives to the docks where Quincy is waiting in a boat, probably also stolen. Dennis makes a call to Ducco in Los Angeles from a pay phone there. The operator interrupts him when his three minutes are up. I don't know if he was using a fistful of quarters to call long distance; I don't think you could make credit card calls on pay phones in 1977. When Jack Tonoa (Lee Woodd), a security guard starts asking Quincy questions, Dennis pushes him off the dock into the water and the camera gets wet. Just around this time, the pay phone rings. Is this supposed to be Ducco phoning back? Considering this is a pay phone, and Call Display with phones wasn't introduced until 1987, how would Ducco have figured out this phone number? Or was it just a coincidence that the phone rang?
At the morning briefing in the Five-O office the next day, Danno brings up the fact that Bobbie Jo "was reported missing by her manager in L.A." Presumably because the stolen Econoline is found at the docks, McGarrett and Danno go to talk to Tonoa. He wears a bandage around the top of his head, which doesn't make sense, because Dennis didn't strike him on the head, and it's unlikely he hit his head on something in the water. Tonoa mentions the ringing phone, but this seems solely like a plot device to get Chin Ho to trace the call from the pay phone and determine that Ducco made the call. Using further investigative methods, Chin figures out that Ducco took $500,000 out of the bank and also is on his way to Hawaii.
When Ducco arrives in Honolulu, because he has been cautioned by Dennis not to contact anyone, typical of most ransom remands, he does not make any attempt to do this. But you have to wonder: If Ducco didn't want to arouse the suspicion of the cops, why did he report Bobbie Jo as missing in the first place? McGarrett confronts Ducco in his hotel room, and the manager is very wary of dealing with him until McGarrett points out the duo are the most dangerous kind of kidnapper because of their ineptness. Ducco says he will contact McGarrett if he hears anything.
Dennis and Quincy make it to Kauai with Bobbie Jo but their boat breaks up on the rocks during the night as they are sleeping. The scenery in this show is nice, though one wonders if it's really Kauai, after seeing a shot of a lake taken from S09E15, "Elegy in a Rain Forest," only three shows earlier.
Kauai is depicted as Eden-like, where hippies and nature types grow "twenty-two kinds of vegetables" and shun things like cigarettes and meat. But the small, rustic-looking Yang Store, where Quincy buys supplies, seems more well-stocked than Walmart, selling everything from backpacks and shoes to groceries, bullets and cone sushi (two for 50 cents).
At this store, using the pay phone, Quincy phones Ducco, who has arrived in Honolulu with the cash and is registered at the Hawaiian Regent Hotel. Quincy tells Ducco, "We want you to come to Kauai, check in at the Princeville Hotel under the name of Frank Carter, and then we'll call you."
The two kidnappers and their victim meet some Kauai locals like Colin Lamb (Kevin Coates), who they dub "Organic Man," as well as Bible Jim (Lee Jay Lambert) and his flute-playing friend Amanda (Mary Tyler). Bobbie attempts to escape, but she twists her ankle. This just annoys Quincy, who wants to knock her off, until she suggests this is not a good idea if he wants to get his hands on the ransom money: "Without me, you'll get nothing."
Back in Honolulu, it's determined with the help of Coast Guard Commander Devons (Donald Carter) after wreckage from the kidnappers' boat (now confirmed as stolen), including Bobbie Jo's guitar, is found on Niihau where it drifted on the currents, that the three are most likely on Kauai. After McGarrett asks Danno, "You used to surf over there, didn't you?", Danno tells him that Kauai is "[A] great place to camp and hide. Plenty of isolation, very few roads." But Kauai isn't some rinky-dink island, it's only about 8% smaller than Oahu!
Since Bobbie Jo is a singer, she has to sing a song, accompanying herself on a ukulele which she finds at a shack where the three hang out. The tune, which can give the one in S08E08, "Sing A Song Of Suspense," a run for the money, is awful:
I remember Mama / Always mendin' broken clothes
John and I would play in mud / That oozed between our toes
Daddy was a preacher man / When preaching didn't pay
There were hungry times / But he knew what to say
He'd say keep your circle round, child
Keep your wheel a-turnin'
Keep your candle burnin'
Through the darkness of the night
Don't let disappointments tie you up
And put you down / Hear his sound
And keep your circle round / Hear his sound
And keep your circle round
Ducco leaves Honolulu, but Duke and Chin pass along to McGarrett word that he has left his hotel. McGarrett manages to have Ducco's cab going to the airport stopped and he joins the record producer to go there with him and then to Kauai — this is ridiculous.
Because of his prior experience on Kauai, Danno is dispatched there, where he backpacks into the wilderness with a walkie-talkie which only produces static. He manages pretty quickly to determine exactly where the kidnappers and their victim are holed up. He arrives just about the time that Colin is shot dead by Quincy when he is on his way to contact the cops after Bobbie slipped him a note that she has been kidnapped. As Quincy returns to the shack where the they have been staying, Danno, who found Colin's body nearby, shows up and tells them they are under arrest. However, Bible Jim hits Danno's hand with his "staff," screaming "This is the Lord's valley! Guns are an abomination in the eyes of God!" Danno does manage to wound Quincy, but Dennis, Quincy and Bobbie escape.
As repentance for his interference, Bible Jim makes his way to the local cop shop, where McGarrett and Ducco have already arrived, and strategy on how to intercept the kidnappers is discussed. The three traipse through forests and climb up the side of steep cliffs where a highway is supposedly located just on the other side without major problems despite Bobbie's twisted ankle. Although whenever we have seen the steep cliffs in the background, they are always covered with vegetation, these have changed into a sheer rock face with nothing between them and the ocean, unlike before where there was a grassy section between them and the beach. The Kauai police captain (Robert Lee) says that there is a "4,000-foot drop" beside the cliffs.
Pointing to a map, Bible Jim says that the three are "headed for these caves above the falls," but it is more logical that they just want to get out of that area and back to civilization where they can exchange their captive for the cash. McGarrett says, "I'll need a chopper, unmarked and fast," which is provided. In fact, it is the same helicopter used often on Oahu (number N9014F), with the same pilot (Bill Lacy)! Although you would expect this to make a fair amount of noise, they stealthily manage to land near the top of the cliffs where Dennis emerges with Bobbie and is quickly arrested. The wounded Quincy is nearby taking shots at Danno, who is in hot pursuit. McGarrett shoots Quincy dead.
I liked this episode more than during previous viewings, but it is still kind of dull. The two kidnappers are dumb — did they really expect to collect the ransom money and then escape somewhere? And Bobbie Jo lacks the verve of Lois Nettleton's singer in "Sing a Song of Suspense." The result is we really don't care about these characters as much as we should.
EPISODE PROMO & TEASER:
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CASUALTY LIST:
Injury: Bobbie Jo Bell kidnapped by Dennis. He gut punches her to keep her from fighting back.
Injury: Jack Tonoa pushed into the water by Dennis.
Injury: Bobbie Jo sprains her ankle while trying to escape on Kauai.
Death: Colin Lamb shot by Quincy.
Injury: Danno hit by Bible Jim’s staff, misfiring his revolver.
Injury: Quincy shot in the arm by Danno in ensuing firefight.
Death: Quincy shot three times by McGarrett while standing on ridge.
MORE TRIVIA:
The trombone interval theme is heard played by the French horns at one point. The score is by Ray.
Dennis is smoking as he waits to pick up Bobbie at the beginning of the show.
Colin tells the kidnappers, "In the summer, we get some campers, nudies, looking for a wilderness experience."
Winston Char is the manager of the Yang Grocery.
GALLERY:
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210. (S09E19) “Blood Money Is Hard To Wash” ★★★ BOOK HIM, DANNO
Original air date: 3/3/77 — Opening Credits — End Credits Director: Allen Reisner; Producers: James Heinz (Hollywood), Douglas Green (Hawaii); Writers: Bill Stratton (teleplay), Curtis Kenyon (story); Music: Don B. Ray
Timings: Teaser: 0:33; Main Titles: 0:57; Act One: 15:38; Act Two: 9:55; Act Three: 8:41; Act Four: 13:15; End Credits: 0:46; Total Time: 49:45.
QUICK PLOT:
A mainland gangster attempting to buy out legitimate businesses which can be used to launder syndicate money runs afoul of McGarrett and Five-O.
This episode is full of sarcastic lines. Victor Jovanko (Dane Clark) is in Honolulu ostensibly "for his health." He and his brother Albert, who is back in their home base of San Francisco, are described as "medium-weight syndicate figures" whose "specialty is money-laundering."
Five-O gets interested in Victor after a thug named Johnny Apollo who works for the Jovankos is one of two men connected with a brutal attack on Charlie Steadman (John Allen), the quarterback for the local football team, giving him a "severe shoulder separation." (There was a professional team in Honolulu connected with the World Football League, competition for the NFL, but they only played two seasons, in 1974 and 1975.)
Victor meets with the manager of the team, Burt Davis (Ed Sheehan), making an offer to buy them out, but Davis says "I'd rather have cancer than sell my team to you." When Danno suddenly appears, showing his badge and saying he is from the "Department of Laundry Inspection," Victor leaves, but on the way out of Aloha Stadium, he suggests to his lawyer Ed Gurney (Lee Stetson) that maybe they should "bend another player." When Gurney tells him he should "go a little slower [because] things are different in the islands," Victor says, "It's just Cleveland with coconuts."
McGarrett is waiting for Jovanko outside the stadium and gives him an envelope containing airline schedules, suggesting that Victor should be on a plane out of town soon. When Victor says he will probably be going back and forth between the mainland and Hawaii frequently, McGarrett reads him the riot act in a speech which seems very high-risk (and as we shall see soon, is):
"I've learned about your new method of laundering money. You buy a legitimate business, such as a football team, and then you use the cash flow from the box office to wash all that dirty money that you make in drugs and other related rackets … [to Gurney] After your client buys the club, the attendance figures miraculously go up, not because more people are buying tickets. Well, he'll take care of that by issuing more passes and freebies. That way he can account for any amount of cash that he can put in the bank. And, zippo, all of a sudden, that dirty money is nice and clean."
To add insult to injury, Jovanko's limousine is hauled away because it is in a tow-away zone. Referring to McGarrett, he tells Gurney, "What do you want to bet he makes 'Pig of the Month'?"
McGarrett already told the men from Five-O, "I wanna know everything [Victor] says and does." When Jovanko joins Nathan Miller (Jim Demarest) for a game of golf while he discusses buying Miller's two nightclubs for $500,000, Chin is seen doing audio and video surveillance nearby with some other guy. However, how can their camera see Victor throwing his club on the golf course? The angle is totally incorrect, suggesting they are behind him, whereas they are actually below him, at the bottom of a hill. Or for that matter, how can Victor see the cops from the course?
Back at the office, the Five-O team laugh themselves silly at the sight of Victor throwing his clubs in frustration, as well as other footage where Jovanko was trying to buy two buildings in Kaneohe and later is meeting two men for lunch where the flowers on the table contain a bug.
After five days of this, Victor is going up the wall, because his brother expects results. Albert phones him, saying "People are waiting back here." Victor refers to McGarrett as "scoutmaster, Troop Five-O" who has "this wild and wonderful fascination for yours truly." Victor goes out of the hotel to use a "clean [pay] phone," where he dials 12 numbers for the mainland. He makes a person-to-person call to his brother, and while the operator is involved, she does not announce the call as such when Albert picks up the phone.
Albert suggests that Victor "buy" McGarrett, but Victor says this can't be done, because McGarrett is "from Sunny Good Street," a reference to the 1965 song Sunny Goodge Street by singer Donovan which, according to one web site contains "elements of folk, jazz, classical and blues music" and references "Goodge Street Station, a Tube [subway] stop in the Fitzrovia district of London where Donovan would get hashish. The song takes us on a journey where he makes the score, smokes it, and goes on a mind-expanding trip where in the end, there is love."
Victor instead decides to try and "buy" members of the Five-O team. He is not very successful. Betty Watanabe (uncredited actress), Gurney's secretary, slips $29,000 in cash into Chin's supermarket bag when he stops to help her pick up items from her own bag which have fallen on the ground near the store. When Chin brings this money to the office, McGarrett takes it and donates it to the Kaahumanu Home for the Handicapped, resulting in a tax receipt for Victor.
Victor finally gives up (or appears to). He comes to the Five-O office and says he and his brother are no longer interested in making investments in Hawaii because "we couldn't find anything that interested us." He compliments McGarrett on having "a great sense of humor." When he says "If I do come back, maybe you can arrange a tour for us. It might be nice for a change to ride in the same car," McGarrett replies, "If you don't mind wire screens."
Victor returns to San Francisco, but in a "never forgive, never forget" frame of mind, decides to go back to Hawaii in "disguise." But what's with this disguise? It's so stupid! It consists of a grey hair dye job, glasses and a paste-on moustache. If anyone from Five-O ran into Victor on the street during his return, they would recognize him immediately.
Back on Oahu, Victor keeps a very low profile, but he has brought along a thug named Augie (Terry Kiser) to do his dirty work. Augie keeps tabs on McGarrett for some time, trying to figure out a pattern in his routine, only to determine there is "no pattern" except for McGarrett getting his hair cut every week at the Hair House, where it sure doesn't look like he is getting his hair cut to me! Augie, with a nylon stocking over his head, gets some unidentified Asian guy to drive him past the barber shop. McGarrett has this deer in the headlights look as he sees these two guys approaching and a shotgun held by Augie sticking out the window of the car. He ducks down as Augie blasts the window of the Mercury Brougham and goes back into the shop, only to emerge seconds later shooting back as Augie and the other guy quickly leave the scene.
Once again, brother Albert is not happy with the efforts to take care of McGarrett, yelling at Victor over the phone, "Our friends are waiting back here. They're asking questions. And I'm getting hard lines, and they're saying that you can't close anything."
When Albert mentions a letter he got concerning the "donation" to the handicapped home, Victor has a McGarrett-like brainstorm. He visits the home where the kindly Mrs. Stevens (Jean Tarrant) thanks him for his generosity. Victor gets an idea from busts of King Kamehameha which are made by the people there and sold as souvenirs. He has them make a small statue of a horse which is then delivered to McGarrett's office with a card saying this is "in grateful appreciation from his admirers" at the home. It contains a bomb and McGarrett has another deer-in-the-headlights look just before it explodes, causing him to roll over his desk in what looks like an outtake from "A Gun For McGarrett."
The damage to both the office and personnel is pretty bad. McGarrett has a depressed skull fracture and undergoes surgery, Duke has a broken arm, Danno is pretty bashed up and Chin has two fractured ribs. Fortunately Lani the receptionist, who brought the package with the horse statue into McGarrett's office and is played by the sexy E. Lynne Kimoto, left before the bomb went off. When Chin later complains of hospital food, McGarrett says to Danno, "Tell him we'll try to have some eggroll sent in." Danno says that Chin prefers manapua (Cantonese barbecue pork buns).
Victor is at his wits' end now. After Augie, who says McGarrett's "got a rabbit's foot," tries to get to him in the hospital which is "wall-to-wall pork," he tells Victor "the hospital's turning into a police academy [where] McGarrett's the top hog," an expression echoing what George Hawley used for McGarrett in "A Capitol Crime," only two episodes before.
However, Victor has another brainstorm when he is about to inject himself with insulin for his diabetes. He decides not to take the medication, which results in him collapsing on the street and being taken to Queen's Hospital where McGarrett is recovering in a room guarded by two cops. I don't know how Victor could have predicted that he would have been sent to this exact hospital; there is more than one hospital in Honolulu, after all.
After being admitted, Victor starts a fire in a women's washroom on the same floor as McGarrett's room. Both of the cops guarding him go to investigate this, which is very dumb. The frustrated Victor sneaks into McGarrett's room, but how did he get past the cops and the nurse? He takes five shots at "McGarrett" in bed using a gun which he smuggled into the hospital inside a tape recorder, but the corpse is just a dummy.
Victor is horrified when the lights in the room come on and he is confronted by Danno and Duke. Not only that, McGarrett is in the closet on crutches, looking like Milton Selzer in "The Bells Toll at Noon" where he was made up like a mummy resembling James Cagney in the 1931 movie The Public Enemy.
McGarrett tells Jovanko, "Stupid of you not to realize your medical tag would reveal your identity." DUH! The "bookem" for Danno is "attempted murder, five counts."
The acting in this show is very good, especially comedienne Joanne Worley in a serious role as Victor's browbeaten wife who he is constantly telling to shut up. The music is by Ray. The trombone interval theme is heard when McGarrett is at the barber shop and there is a very long cue (about 4 minutes) when Victor is setting the fire in the hospital.
EPISODE PROMO & TEASER:
Click here to see the promo and teaser for this episode (to compare). Use the back key in your browser to return to this screen.
CASUALTY LIST:
Injury: Quarterback Charlie Steadman is beaten up by Frankie Apollo and another goon played by Arthur Meskill, the guy with the terminally bad complexion who starred in "Killer at Sea" and other shows.
Injury (x4): Bomb explodes in McGarrett’s office: McGarrett is seriously injured with a depressed skull fracture; Danno is thrown against the wall and has cut on his face; Chin Ho breaks two ribs; and Duke suffers a broken arm.
Injury: Victor Jovanko puts himself into diabetic shock in order to gain entrance to Queen's Hospital.
MORE TRIVIA:
The letter received from the home for the handicapped which Albert refers to over the phone to his brother mentions the "donation" (now $25,000 instead of $29,000) only in the second of its three paragraphs. The first and third paragraphs seem to refer to the career of a diplomat that has nothing to do with the show. The letter is addressed to "Mr. Jananko."
In one scene in his car, McGarrett's voice doesn't match his lips when he is talking on the radio. This is a stock shot also used in other episodes.
Waimanalo is translated in the DVD subtitles as "Wymanello."
Victor smokes cigarillos, Chin smokes his pipe in the supermarket, Miller smokes a cigar, Augie smokes a cigarette.
Why is the iconic Transamerica Building in San Francisco not seen? It was completed in 1972.
Che Fong is in the credits, but not in the show.
McGarrett asks, "Wasn't it George Bernard Shaw who said, 'Golf is a nice walk spoiled?'" But it wasn't. It was also attributed to Mark Twain, again not. Trying to track quote this down with Google is complicated.
McGarrett's barber at the Hair House is not Robert Witthans.
GALLERY:
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211. (S09E20) “To Kill A Mind” ★★˝ BOOK HIM (2) BOOK HIM, GENTLEMEN
Original air date: 3/17/77 — Opening Credits — End Credits Director: Gordon Hessler; Producers: James Heinz (Hollywood), Douglas Green (Hawaii); Writer: Stephen Kandel; Music: Stock
Timings: Teaser: 0:33; Main Titles: 0:57; Act One: 17:56; Act Two: 8:54; Act Three: 11:21; Act Four: 9:17; End Credits: 0:48; Total Time: 49:46.
QUICK PLOT:
When debris from a Russian submarine which sank off Oahu a year before suddenly turns up, McGarrett is suspicious that one of these pieces is going to be used to erase an already-recovered computer.
A year before the show, a Russian spy submarine sank off Oahu, and the US Navy recovered approximately half of it. Among the debris was part a computer bank, but there was a missing component which would allow the data in this bank — all the information that sub accumulated in the years it was at sea — to be analyzed. (This is my interpretation of what happened, anyway.)
As the show begins, two stooges working for bad guy Emil Radick (Mel Ferrer, extending his Hawaiian vacation after appearing in S09E12, "The Bells Toll At Noon") dump a bunch of submarine-related junk including a part with "CCCP [Russian abbreviation for 'USSR'] 4117" on it. It floats ashore where a bunch of young people are surfing, and they contact the authorities. Five-O shows up and McGarrett is told by Commander Miller (Dean Melang) "I'd appreciate the cooperation of your office in locating any other parts of her that might wash ashore. I can't even place a value on their importance … [T]he Navy would like to keep this under wraps." In order words, Five-O becomes like garbage men!
Dr. Margaret Hammond (Laura Campbell) is the chief oceanographer working for a government research facility on the Makai Pier on the east coast of Oahu. This was also the location of Jack Lord's post-Five-O production "M [Makai] Station Hawaii," which used several actors and crew members who worked on Five-O and also concerned itself with a Russian submarine which sank off Oahu. Radick needs Margaret's co-operation to dump more debris so it will float to a beach near this facility which has access restricted to people like herself. In order to get her to co-operate, Hammond's younger brother David (Bill Langenheim), one of the surfers seen at the previous location, is kidnapped. Margaret does dump more debris, which includes a part which, when connected to the already-recovered computer, will totally erase all the data on it.
The material unloaded by Margaret, which also includes a US government tarp with information on it connected to her (!!), floats to an area near the pier where it is recovered, which is very odd, because while Radick and his associates know that the previous batch of stuff would drift to a certain area (the surfers' beach), how did they know that the stuff that Margaret dumped would end up on the beach near the pier, considering the area was restricted?
Margaret intentionally acts clueless when the debris is brought ashore, but the cantankerous Dr. Grant Ormsbee (Pat Hingle), McGarrett's nemesis in two previous episodes, now considered to be an "expert" in submarine technology, shows up — at whose invitation is a big mystery — and immediately realizes one of the pieces of junk is the missing "computer disengage mechanism" which will allow him to uncover secrets about the sub which so far have eluded him. Ormsbee blusters his way through every conversation he has with McGarrett, and Hingle's acting is shamelessly hammy. He first only talks to McGarrett and Miller, totally ignoring Margaret, but finally asks for her to be "assigned to my section."
After David has been not seen for two days, his girlfriend Cathy Doar (Pauly Gardner, see the Gallery below) becomes concerned. The two of them had a fight on the surfers' beach earlier around the time debris was being discovered. Cathy goes to the cop shop where she talks to Sergeant Mirataki (Tommy Fujiwara), who opens a missing report for David. Radick finds out that Cathy is asking questions where she shouldn't be and arranges for her to be killed in kind of an obvious way, run over by a car at what is not exactly an out-of-the-way location. Radick is pleased that Ormsbee is involved with the data recovery, but does not want McGarrett to be also snooping around, and he orders him to be killed as well.
McGarrett's brain is a working a mile a minute. He tells Ormsbee that "It's all too neat, too convenient. The key device turns up just when we need it." When he wonders if there is any chance that using the disengage unit could destroy the computer's memory bank, Ormsbee arrogantly tells him that there is "no chance" that this will happen. Ormsbee adds, "[U]nless we use this device, it's a virtual certainty, we're gonna lose some, if not all, of the computer's information." But this does not make sense. How could the data disappear? Hasn't it already lasted for a year? And how would Ormsbee know what data was currently on the computer anyway?
At one point, McGarrett threatens to go over Ormsbee's head with some Navy bigshot in Washington to get his way, and Ormsbee retaliates that he has already beaten McGarrett to the punch, saying "I only talk to God." (This is reminiscent of a line in the Five-O pilot "Cocoon," where Andrew Duggan's character Miller says "Everyone knows that Steve McGarrett only takes orders from the Governor and God.")
Although Ormsbee is going to start testing the equipment very soon, Margaret still has time to be taken to see Radick to make sure she maintains her level of co-operation. Radick gives Margaret a bunch of philosophical blather when she is getting the equivalent of the third degree from him with a bright light shining in her face: "You must consider the art of indirection, Dr. Hammond. In the eternal savage conflicts of nature, creatures assume different guises. Fear is concealed behind the mask of ferocity. Death appears as a smile. A soft enticement. I think of myself as an ecologist. Dealing in the balance of fear, greed, desire. You need not understand."
McGarrett also has time to interview her and engage in a gun battle with two of Radick's stooges who follow him to her place and try to knock him off. Margaret manages to figure out approximately where she was taken blindfolded to talk to Radick because as a scientist, her work "involves plotting directions," which is silly.
After the gun battle at Margaret's, McGarrett calls Ormsbee to tell him that the "disengage unit" will indeed erase all the data, and soon after this, Ormsbee dissolves some styrofoam from the unit with what looks like acid, revealing a small metal "bug" which supposedly was going to destroy the information on the computer. Exactly how this "bug" works is a big mystery.
At the finale, after it's determined that David is being held in the abandoned Malalo School, Ormsbee with Margaret rushes to the crime scene following Five-O and cops from HPD, perhaps trying to make McGarrett forget that he was right about the "bug". Five-O and HPD surround the building which they enter and bust Radick's two stooges. The big man himself attempts to escape, but the tire on his car is shot out. At the end, Radick and his two men are busted, and so is Ormsbee for "interference with the police action" which McGarrett admits to Danno is just to make Ormsbee "squirm."
It's more of the same which we have already seen in previous episodes between McGarrett and Ormsbee in this show. It gets to the point where you want the Five-O boss to just punch Orsmbee in the face. Ferrer as Radick is a bland villain, complete with a moustache which looks like it is pasted on to his face. He has hardly any accent which is odd if he is working for the Russians. You have to wonder where did they get all the components which are found on the beaches, at a military surplus store or something? I'm surprised that the Navy didn't compare the components which were found in the show with ones which were found a year before to see if there was any duplication, thus suggesting something fishy was going on.
The stock score uses music from S09E09, "Double Exposure" (Broughton) and S09E01, "Nine Dragons" (Stevens).
WHAT DOES THE TITLE MEAN?
A good question!
EPISODE PROMO & TEASER:
Click here to see the promo and teaser for this episode (to compare). Use the back key in your browser to return to this screen.
CASUALTY LIST:
Death: Cathy Doar run down by one of Radick's thugs.
Injury: One of Radick’s men "nicked" by McGarrett (or so he thinks).
MORE TRIVIA:
After Cathy Doar is murdered by hit-and-run, the police report (#82/3759) says this took place near Maakapu Lookout. She was 20 years old and lived at 82801 Edna Road in Palama Beach. The attending physician was Dr. Howard Reston.
Pauly Gardner (Cathy) was also in the previous Ormsbee episode, S09E04, "Man on Fire," as a vulcanologist who rappels down the cliff at the beginning of the show. Her entire acting career consisted of appearances in three Five-O episodes, the other one being S09E12, "The Bells Toll At Noon," where she played Don Knight's girlfriend. All three shows took place in this, the ninth season; this one is the last of the three.
The daily report police sheet refers to an Officer Mifune from the Pearl City Division — same name as a cop who was killed in the Don Stroud episode S09E11, "Target — A Cop." There is also reference to Sammy Nolo, who is wanted for parole violation. This character was in S09E09, "Double Exposure." If the order of the shows is the same as the order in real life, Nolo is now dead! His last known address was 4340 Kawaiahe Avenue in the Aina Haina area.
When a security guard at the Makai Pier facility surprises Margaret who is about to take a boat and dump debris, she tells him, "You know how impulsive we liberated women are."
As Duke and Danno help McGarrett with the aftermath of the gun battle at Margaret's place, smoke can be seen in the background — and not from the shooting.
When McGarrett arrives at the school near the end, his car almost runs into the camera. As Radick attempts to flee, just telling his men to "Watch them" (Ormsbee, Margaret and David), McGarrett shoots at Radick's Cadillac, causing a hubcap to fly off the car. But it's a hubcap with a red center, and the ones on the Caddy's wheels are silver in the middle. As well, the right front hubcap is the one that goes flying, and McGarrett is shooting at the car's left side.
There are three "book ems" at the end, twice for Radick, and once for Ormsbee.
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212. (S09E21) “Requiem For A Saddle Bronc Rider” ★★★ DANNO, CUFF HIM
Original air date: 3/24/77 — Opening Credits — End Credits Director: Harry Harris; Producers: Douglas Green (Hawaii), James Heinz (Hollywood); Writer: Herman Groves; Music: Don B. Ray
Timings: Teaser: 0:33; Main Titles: 0:58; Act One: 15:17; Act Two: 9:32; Act Three: 9:27; Act Four: 13:16; End Credits: 0:47; Total Time: 49:50.
QUICK PLOT:
The sister of a missing rodeo cowboy enlists McGarrett's help in finding out what happened to her brother.
Susie Wainane (Victoria Racimo), a young woman whom McGarrett has known since she was a kid, returns to Hawaii because she is concerned about her brother Billy (Al Lopaka). Susie's father was an HPD cop who was killed in the line of duty.
Billy was formerly employed by one of the ranches on the Big Island up until six months ago, but quit his job to join the rodeo, which is currently giving a show at Waimanalo.
Billy phoned Susie a couple of days ago at midnight her time on the mainland West Coast, where she is studying in the graduate school at Berkley, but the call was cut off. Susie got the police to check on this, and they only determined the call originated at Waimanalo. It isn't specified whether this was the police in California or Hawaii.
McGarrett and Susie go to the rodeo grounds where no one, including Len Jessup (George DiCenzo), who is like the "boss," or Calvin Lyle (Nicholas Hammond), Billy's best friend, wants to talk to them. Billy's body and that of his girl friend Lani Kapalii (Audrey Meyers) are soon found in the ocean; we saw them being dumped over a cliff at the beginning of the show by Jessup. The couple was going to get married, and had taken their obligatory blood tests prior to getting hooked.
McGarrett asking questions causes concern, particularly with Jessup and Calvin. When the latter sounds like he is going to track down Susie and explain to her what really happened on the night Billy died, we find out in a flashback that the rodeo riders were celebrating her brother's upcoming marriage by getting very drunk and encouraging him to take on Crazy Luke, "a mean old bull that's never been rode."
Billy was gored by the bull and died. Lani showed up at the arena soon after and saw his body, after which Jessup raped her, telling Calvin, "It being Billy's wedding night and all, I kind of filled in for him." Jessup then murdered Lani and later dumped the two bodies the next day, in broad daylight!
During the show, Five-O is involved with some investigation which involves illegal gambling. There is a lot of what I like to called "Stephen Spielberg movie dialogue," where characters yap away with details that have little to do with the actual plot, and just fill time.
McGarrett seems to be in a big hurry in one scene where he asks a group of cops assembled in his office, "Any questions, gentlemen?" without waiting for a response. In another scene, he hangs up the phone before Danno replies "Got it, Steve." There is sloppy editing near the beginning. In one shot, Danno is looking at Steve and in the following shot his head is down, reading a folder. When Chin Ho takes a bus ride to grill the driver (Sam Peters) about Billy's girlfriend, he is standing in front of the "line" despite a sign right above his head which warns people about doing this.
Susie disappears for most of the fourth act, then suddenly reappears at the very end. McGarrett and Danno track down Jessup, who has given Calvin a very nasty beating to prevent him from telling anyone about what happened to Billy. At one point, Danno is put in serious danger from Jessup's rifle, but just moves out the way in time.
At the end, Possum the rodeo clown (Rod Aiu) releases Crazy Luke who gores Jessup to death, and then comments "He needed dyin'." Possum is the only one who will likely be charged with anything. Despite Calvin's concerns for being charged with something because of Billy's death, it is very unlikely this will happen, since that was really not his fault (or even that of the late Jessup's).
The episode is low-key as far as the acting by McGarrett and Susie is concerned. Don Ray did the music, nothing really special except for the scene of the party where Billy gets killed.
EPISODE PROMO & TEASER:
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CASUALTY LIST:
Death (x2): Billy Wainane is gored to death by Crazy Luke, the bull. His girl friend Lani Kapalii is then raped and strangled by Len Jessup, after which both bodies are dumped over a cliff into the ocean.
Injury: Jessup choked by Calvin Lyle, fight ensues.
Injury: Lyle beaten/punched by Jessup to the point of serious injury.
Injury: Jessup shot twice by McGarrett.
Death: Jessup gored to death by Crazy Luke.
MORE TRIVIA:
According to Wikipedia, "In saddle bronc [riding, as opposed to bareback], the rider uses a specialized saddle with free swinging stirrups and no horn. The saddle bronc rider grips a simple rein braided from cotton or polyester and attached to a leather halter worn by the horse. The rider lifts on the rein and attempts to find a rhythm with the animal by spurring forwards and backwards with their feet in a sweeping motion from shoulder to flank."
Carole Kai plays Susie's friend Alaki Kaimi, at whose house she is staying during her return to Oahu. Kai appears far too briefly in a bikini. Roland Naauao is HPD detective Lt. Matusu in this show and another cop in the next one. The cashier at the rodeo grounds is played by Elsie Russell, who was the old lady who brought Clinton Palmer, the aggrieved senior, some turtle soup in "A Capitol Crime," only four episodes earlier. As she tells McGarrett the price of admission is "2 bucks a head," she calls him "sonny."
When Billy is playing with the bull prior to his death, there are odd camera angles and the use of different lenses which give the scene a surreal quality. Billy's body (including his clothes) was supposedly painted red "head to toe" by the cowboys to encourage Crazy Luke to attack him, but when we see Billy's body in the buckboard at the beginning of the show, his face has no paint on it.
Jack Lord (or his stunt double) gets to spar with Crazy Luke briefly. Several years prior to Five-O, Lord starred in Stoney Burke, a TV series where he played a saddle bronc rider.
McGarrett wears an orange leather jacket when he first goes to the rodeo grounds with Susie — the weather hardly requires this!
Jessup and Calvin both have Texas-style accents.
When Duke is at the beach where Billy and Lani's bodies are found, he reports that he is there because of a "DB" (dead body).
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Original air date: 3/31/77 — Opening Credits — End Credits Director: Harvey Laidman; Producers: Douglas Green (Hawaii), James Heinz (Hollywood); Writer: Anne Collins; Music: Don B. Ray
Timings: Teaser: 0:33; Main Titles: 0:58; Act One: 10:32; Act Two: 12:00; Act Three: 10:29; Act Four: 14:26; End Credits: 0:46; Total Time: 49:44.
QUICK PLOT:
The runaway teenage daughter of a legendary Los Angeles police detective is framed for murder, then vanishes into a hippie cult.
Jessica Harper plays the 17-year-old "teenybopper" Sarah "Sunny" Mandell, who is framed for murder by Todd Daniels (Paul Shenar) to get back at her father, L.A. cop Babe Mandell (Biff McGuire, playing another uptight dad like he did in "Murder — Eyes Only"). Years before, Babe was involved in a drug bust which resulted in the death of Daniels' brother. In real life, Shenar was over 17 years older than Harper, who was born in 1949.
On the mainland. Sunny's home life was unhappy because her father was "a cop for 29 years." Daniels became her lover and the two of them ran away to Hawaii. Lynne Ellen Hollinger plays Daniels' blonde girlfriend Liana Meyers. She picked up Clifford Braswell, a 49-year-old accountant from the mainland, in a Honolulu bar and took him to a low-budget motel where she shot him with a gun that was placed in Sunny's hand when she was brought to the place by Daniels. After Daniels violently throws her on the bed in the motel room, Sunny runs away and escapes in the busy crowds in downtown Honolulu, leaving her purse in the motel. Later, her fingerprints on the gun are matched to those on her driver's license in the purse.
Kwan Hi Lim is a Peeping Tom named Maiki with a hokey accent who spies on people with binoculars as they go into the motel where the failed frameup of Sunny was attempted across the street from his house. When he goes shows up at the Five-O offices to fulfill his civic responsibility after the murder is discovered and featured on the local TV news, Maiki tells McGarrett he thought the people were going to have a "swap meet." He says spying on people is his "hobby," to which McGarrett comments as Maiki and his embarrassed wife leave, "It's a great hobby."
The tale Maiki tells Five-O does give them an important clue: there were two men and two women who went into the motel. Considering how "observant" Maiki is, though, it's odd that he doesn't notice that two brunettes (Meyers and Sunny) went into the place, but when they come out, Meyers is blonde, having disposed of her brunette wig. The motel is identified as the Sunset Motel on a radio broadcast, but the sign on its outside wall says "Ohua Motel."
Sunny ends up crashing at the War Memorial Natatorium where she meets an Asian guy named Cloud (Roland Nip). He is connected with a cult called "The Reborn" led by Osiris (Steve Carlson), a Christ-like guru who spouts a nonstop amount of stereotypical New Age philosophical mumbo-jumbo. Sunny is mesmerized by Osiris's blathering, saying she wants to stay with the cult. He says "Welcome to tomorrow" and gives her the name Willow. (Later he asks her: "You're not weeping, are you, Willow?" — gag!) Names of other commune members, who live in a large house and peddle crafts like pots and candles to tourists, include Mariah, Rainbow, Phoenix, Karma, Rhyme, Cassiopeia and Aquarius. Sunny says, "The names are so pretty."
Sunny's father Babe arrives in Honolulu, where he hooks up with McGarrett who knows him from five years before. He is some kind of legend in the police world, because the local radio station mentions that he is on his way to deal with his daughter's involvement with the motel murder. Babe is a tough, no-nonsense cop who tells McGarrett, "You still look like a guy who gets about 45 minutes of sleep a night." McGarrett replies that Babe "still resemble[s] the classic Lombroso criminal type" (Cesare Lombroso (1835-1909) was an Italian criminologist who developed later disapproved theories that criminality was inherited and that someone "born criminal" could be identified by physical (congenital) defects.)
Babe is constantly on the phone with cohorts on the force back on the mainland using multiple phone lines which McGarrett provides for him in the Five-O office, and has even brought a police scanner along with him. Sunny comes to the attention of HPD after they investigate an incident where someone threw a beer bottle at one of the cult's members, hitting her in the face. When the cops show up at the commune, the other members of The Reborn are keeping her healthy by chanting because "We heal ourselves." One of the cops recognizes Sunny, presumably from a photo which has been circulating. When they return with Five-O later, they don't find her because she is hiding in the place's basement.
McGarrett once again moves the case forward with a couple of brainstorms, first suggesting that Sunny has been framed with the motel murder, and then figuring that of 64 potential suspects from people in Babe's past, including "murderers, burglars, pushers and rapists," Daniels and Meyers were the most likely suspects because "who would make a more dedicated partner than a lover?" Meyers is traced to an apartment in Honolulu and after Five-O shows up there, she spills the beans about Daniels going to the Reborn communal house. Daniels already got scoop about where Sunny might be from some creep who tried unsuccessfully to get her to do cocaine on the beach with him rather than hang out with Osiris, who was preaching.
Daniels finds Sunny in the Reborn house, but when Osiris tries to stop him from taking her away, he shoots the cult leader dead. Cloud uncharacteristically reacts badly to this and knocks Daniels out a second-floor window, causing him to be seriously injured when he hits the ground below. The group takes him into the house and starts chanting, but Five-O shows up and McGarrett orders an ambulance. Babe's confrontation with his daughter is not entirely successful — she slaps him in the face after he hugs her, saying, "You're just doing it now because you're supposed to. You're always doing things just because you're supposed to. When somebody breaks the rules. Or when somebody's dead."
McGarrett figures that she will finally come around in time. The final exchange between Babe and him is a classic. Babe: "For God's sakes, McGarrett, do you always have to act like a cop!" McGarrett: "Coming from you, Babe, that's pretty funny."
This show is not particularly popular among fans, but it isn't that bad, though Osiris' dopey blabbering does get to be kind of hard to take. There is a scene between Osiris and Sunny which is kind of creepy. He strokes her hair and touches her, and she withdraws from him, saying "That's not what I want." He says, "What you want is a father. And a father doesn't put his arms around little girls that way." She replies, "They don't put their arms around them at all."
This is definitely Lynne Ellen Hollinger's greatest Five-O performance — we even get to see her in a bikini! Bikini fans should also check out the waitress seen during the titles at the beginning of the show.
EPISODE PROMO & TEASER:
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CASUALTY LIST:
Death: Clifford Braswell shot by Liana Meyers in set up to frame Sunny Mandell (not seen by us, before the show).
Death: Osiris shot by Todd Daniels.
Injury: Daniels thrown through window by Cloud.
Injury: Babe Mandell slapped by Sunny.
MORE TRIVIA:
A copy of the Honolulu Advertiser has a large headline: "Prisoners cheer exception ruling."
When Daniels wants to go to the commune's house to find Sunny, Meyers suggests they go to the Salvation Army first to get him some more appropriate clothes. She tells him, "The macho look doesn't cut it with the grass-and-pills generation."
In the commune house, a stereotypical hippie poster is seen on the wall: "Today is the first day of the rest of your life."
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214. (S09E23) “Practical Jokes Can Kill You” ★★˝ BOOK HIM
Original air date: 5/5/77 — Opening Credits — End Credits Director: Ernest Pintoff; Producers: James Heinz (Hollywood), Douglas Green (Hawaii); Writer: Bill Stratton; Music: Don B. Ray
Timings: Teaser: 0:33; Main Titles: 0:57; Act One: 12:35; Act Two: 8:35; Act Three: 6:56; Act Four: 19:03; End Credits: 0:46; Total Time: 49:25.
QUICK PLOT:
Crooks enlist the aid of hang-glider enthusiasts to help them steal rifles from a military armory.
Lee Purcell, who starred in S08E19, "Turkey Shoot at Makapuu," returns as Molly Taggart, who is now co-owner of a hang-gliding and windsurfing store, Windsong Custom Surfboards Rental, with her boyfriend Todd Seymour (Charles Frank).
Todd is up to no good, using his hang-gliding skills to steal the priceless cloak of King Kamehameha, already ripped off from a museum once in S02E08, "King Kamehameha Blues." Made of plants and feathers, some from birds which are now extinct, it was on display in the penthouse of the Honoliki Hotel, very well guarded. This theft is not an anti-establishment prank like in the earlier show, aside from the fact that the actor playing Todd is about 30 years old, hardly someone who would take in part in the equivalent of what Danno later calls "an old-fashioned panty raid."
Todd lifted the cloak to make money from people who bet on whether he could pull the theft off. His pal Benjie (Dane Taylor) says "Think of the advertising value." Molly tells them both, "How are you going to advertise that without getting arrested?" Considering the windows in the hotel penthouse were all locked from the inside, it's a mystery how Todd managed to get inside the building, let alone take off from the hotel roof and escape.
When Todd goes into his store with the cloak, the theft of which is all over the news, he is noticed by Joko (Chanell (formerly Chuck-Chuck) Akamine), who was Tonker in "Turkey Shoot." He is a horny creep with an annoying Cheshire-cat-like smile who just tried unsuccessfully to hustle Molly to go with him to the sold-out Volcanic Rock concert.
Recently Joko was involved with an attempted theft of some M-16 rifles from an army truck which did not go well. The guy who hired him for this, Abilleno (John Duke Russo, who was the goon Willy Vance in S09E16, "Dealer's Choice — Blackmail" seven episodes earlier), is working for Lou Marvin (Allan Rich), a smuggler who peddles arms to liberation fronts, underground groups and guerrilla movements in third-world countries. The bungled hijacking of the army truck ended with its driver seriously injured and in hospital and the other soldier on it dead.
Joko figures that someone who can pull off the theft of the king's cloak with hang-gliding would also be able to land on the roof of one of several armories on Oahu where M-16s are stored and help him and Abilleno overpower the guard there. Marvin can sell these rifles for up to $1,000 each.
Danno has a brainstorm in this episode. He figures that someone with a hang-glider could have pulled off the theft of the cloak, so he tries to talk to one of the enthusiasts of this sport who has landed near Makapuu Point. When he realizes it is Molly, he refers to her as "the proud bird with the golden tail." She seems very annoyed by his presence, or perhaps this off-color remark which, aside from being pretty sexist, was the marketing slogan of Continental Airlines. Chin Ho asks Danno, "She's a friend?" and he replies, "She used to be."
Later, Danno visits Molly and Todd's store and talks to them and Benjie. He is throwing hypothetical remarks at them, like he is interested in buying "a new set of wings … as light as a feather … with good control so I could land on a hotel roof, maybe. Like those guys did at the Honoliki." He suggests that the theft was done by "some high-spirited American youths getting their jollies in the friendly skies … I've the feeling if the cape is returned in perfect shape, [McGarrett will] be willing to write this whole thing off as a silly prank" (which Danno has already cleared with his boss).
The cape is indeed returned quickly, draped over the statue of Kamehameha which is visible from the Five-O offices. But Abilleno soon makes an appearance at the hang-gliding store after Joko puts a bug in his ear. He offers Todd several thousand dollars if he will take part in a "practical joke" where somebody [will] land on a roof of a warehouse [and] throw a switch to open an electric gate." Molly immediately sees something fishy in this suggestion and Abilleno leaves, telling them to "think about" what he said.
Todd and Benjie go to the Five-O offices to talk to Danno about Abellino's "offer," but Danno is not there. Meanwhile, Abilleno and Joko go to the store and kidnap Molly. When Todd and Benjie return to the store, Danno shows up just as a phone call is received telling Todd that "you're flying the sunrise special tomorrow, or your cute little partner will be delivered in an airtight plastic bag."
Investigation by the Five-O team, including photo identification by the soldier who survived the hijacking and a tip from an informer lead them to connect Abilleno with Marvin. According to Chin Ho, the former has "got a record as long as a coconut tree, everything from pimping to suspicion of murder." The latter was "involved in some kind of smuggling operation last year, the 'Seatrain caper,'" Seatrain being a real-life shipping and transportation company which went out of business a couple of years after this show. A court order from Manicote reveals Marvin's phone contacts with "Hong Kong, Singapore, Macao, Taipei, Thailand [and] Manila."
Prior to Todd making the flight to the armory, he meets with McGarrett, who is wearing very cool sunglasses, and Danno. They give Todd a transmitter which will be triangulated by the Civil Defense trucks, but it falls on the street and gets run over Marvin's barge-like Mercury Marquis. It's time for McGarrett to have a brainstorm, and he surmises that the theft of the rifles will likely be from the storage depot at Makapuu because "that's within range of some cliffs" where Todd can take flight (which, course, is exactly correct).
Todd lands on top of the armory roof and overpowers the one lone guard there (not particularly difficult, even with the empty revolver that Marvin has given him). He demands that Molly be freed, and once this is done, he opens the gate to the Small Arms Storage Facility so Marvin and the others can enter. Abilleno is about to shoot a locked door so the bad guys can load the rifles into an Econoline, but suddenly Danno, Chin and Duke appear, having sneaked up out of nowhere. Marvin attempts to flee, but McGarrett corners him, and Marvin runs down the hill to where there is a perilous drop. Unlike Don Porter in S06E06, "Murder Is A Taxing Affair," he resists jumping off the edge and is busted.
This episode is sort of OK, though there are a lot of topographic issues to do with the landing on the armory roof which is probably not a good idea to think about too hard. There are also some continuity problems — for example, when Todd is on his way to go to the armory, the hang-glider on the roof of his car is blue and white, but the one which he uses to actually pull off the caper is orange, yellow and white. Much of the action takes place on the usual middle-of-nowhere single-lane roads. The music is supposedly by Ray, though at the end, excerpts from Broughton's score to "Double Exposure" are heard.
EPISODE PROMO & TEASER:
Click here to see the promo and teaser for this episode (to compare). Use the back key in your browser to return to this screen.
CASUALTY LIST:
Injury: Abilleno knocked in the face with transport truck door by US Army soldier.
Injury: Joko knocked out by US Army sergeant.
Death: US Army sergeant shot by Abilleno.
Injury: US Army soldier shot by Abilleno.
MORE TRIVIA:
The director (Ernest Pintoff) and writer (Bill Stratton) are the same as for the previous hang-gliding episode, "Turkey Shoot At Makapuu."
John Thorp, who supervised the hang-gliding sequences in the previous show, also worked on this episode, uncredited. You can read his comments by clicking here. Some of the footage from the earlier show is reused, like shots featuring the hang-glider made by Molly's brother Draper, which crashed in the ocean.
Todd and Molly's store is located next to a bridge over the Ala Wai Canal (thanks to Fred Helfing).
A newspaper is seen with a headline "King's Cape Returned." Other headlines on the page are "1000 Fishermen on Ice Floe Saved" and "Youth Council Divides Job."
When the men from Five-O are on the roof of the hotel where they find a feather from the cape, it seems to be much lower than in a previous shot which looked up at the place.
The number on Abilleno's mug shot — 69517 — uses the same digits as that of Sammy Crane in the previous show where he appeared — 95671. Other suspects viewed in mug shots include Clamner, number 95483 and Pasquez, number 52652, with a date — 2/16/72. Clamner, seen only briefly, is Rudy Diaz who played Andrew Koa in S06E16, "The Banzai Pipeline."
In the opening sequence, Abilleno shoots at the army truck, giving the driver a chest wound. How this happens is difficult to understand, since the truck is driving far away from Abilleno.
In some shots, Chanell Akamine has a large boil on his left cheek; in other shots, it is not there.
There is a stock shot of cop cars driving onto the freeway and also of driving in downtown Honolulu.
The Ford Bronco driven by Molly's boyfriend Todd is the same vehicle used by Dr. Ormsbee in S09E20, "To Kill A Mind" three episodes earlier, right down to the license number — 3B 4743.
McGarrett snaps his fingers a few times. When he finds out about the cape that has been stolen, he tells Danno that this is an "HPD matter" ... but in "The King Kamehameha Blues," this was not the case. He tells Danno "You know these 'kite people' pretty well."
Chin brings some drinks to the Five-O office, saying "Fresh coffee from your favorite Chinese restaurant." When McGarrett says, "It's tea," Chin replies, "What do you expect from a Chinese restaurant?"
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