Five O Worst Episodes Medals


by John Chergi » Sun Jun 18, 2017 10:17 pm

Classic HFO Regulars, I'm curious what you think are the 3 worst HFO episodes. Here are my Gold, Silver, and Bronze.
Gold-The Kahuna Season 12. A forgettable episode although I like Kathy Lee Crosby. I think the Kahuna's presence and Truck's radiation poisoning doom this episode.
2.Silver-When Does A War End? Season 10. This episode like William Barker's landmines is a bomb. Poor casting and writing hurts this episode. Moramoto is a very boring businessman type and his refusal to be honest with McG hurts the episode. Throw in a horrible and excruciating ending as Barker waits too long to avenge his father's death has to be seen to be believed.
3.Bronze-Dear Enemy (Season 2) It's difficult to waste Gary Collins and Vera Miles but this episode manages to do just that in a poorly written episode. Collins character plays a lawyer who is a friend and lawyer looking after the woman. Her husband has been framed for murder but nobody seems to believe her. Because of her psychological condition, McG is not sure what to believe. There are many questions in Dear Enemy that are unanswered. 1.Why does the lawyer frame the lady's husband for the murder? 2.What makes this lawyer tick as he doesn't hesitate to kill any loose ends but is very attentive to the lady? CHFOF, what do you believe are the 3 worst episodes? JC


by ringfire211 » Mon Jun 19, 2017 9:31 am

"The Kahuna" was always on my list as THE WORST. But these days I might go with season 10's "Tread the King's Shadow". An absolutely excruciating episode which belongs in some Lifetime coming-of-age TV-movie, not Five-O. Two teens running away from their parents as they decide whether or not to have an abortion. Yuck! Total BOMB!!

"The Kahuna" and "The Moroville Covenant" might be the other two. Although season 9's "See How She Runs" is equally wretched (except for the bit with Kwan Hi Lim as the peeping Tom).


by John Chergi » Mon Jun 19, 2017 8:33 pm

RINGFIRE
Tread The King's Shadow is 1 of the 10 or 12 episodes of Classic HFO episodes I've never seen. A Bird In Hand Season 12 I have liked with more watches. Del Vecchi's men sure are everywhere and efficient killers. This Santos can drive a big rig, scuba dive gives Danno a run for his money with talents. On my 6 star system, I think most receive at least 2 stars. Even the worst HFO episodes better than some other series. I like Mr. Mike's Streets Of San Francisco episode capsule comments. Recently purchased the entire series Streets Of San Francisco. Can comment and follow along this summer. JC


by barnzoboy » Tue Jun 20, 2017 12:12 pm

There are a few episodes from the last 3 seasons that just didn't measure up in my opinion, so I could easily fill a top 3 from season 10 through 12, but I'll include an earlier season episode just for balance:

Bronze - Season 2 Epsode 02 - To Hell With Babe Ruth
This is the episode with Mark Lenard (Spock's father from Star Trek) as Yoshio Nagata who escapes a mental hospital and thinks WWII is still going on, thinks his daughter is his wife, and a whole lot of other crazy stuff. Note to casting director - let's get Asians to play Asian characters (ditto for Samauri & Ricardo Montleban).

Silver - Season 10 Episode 08 - Deadly Doubles
This episode is about a visiting Soviet tennis team and their attempt to defect, etc.

Gold - Season 11 Episode 03 - Deadly Courier
This is the episode where Danno gets hypnotized in order to try to kill McGarrett at the airport.

Some of these late season episodes just screamed "plot desperation" and seemed to just get too far-fetched. Hard to come up with new ideas after 200 some episodes I guess.

Dishonorable mention has to go to the last episode Woe to Wo Fat due to McGarrett's crazy get-up and impersonation of the old scientist. I saved it from the medal award because it has Wo Fat in it and it should deserve some mercy being the last episode.


by epaddon » Wed Jun 21, 2017 4:36 pm

"When Does A War End?" is rock bottom for being (1) a badly written story (2) wasting a great actress in Anne Francis and (3) it's hypocritical thesis. I've said before that if Moramoto were an ex-German camp guard the tone of the story would have been dramatically different and they wouldn't have given him a pathetic "the war made me an animal!" excuse and McGarrett's closing speech would have been exposed for the bad taste it really is in minimizing a subject of war atrocity that seldom gets enough attention.


by ringfire211 » Thu Jun 22, 2017 3:03 pm

John, you can watch "Tread the King's Shadow" online (if you don't have the season 10 DVD). Just google the episode title and it'll come up. You'll see it pop up on Dailymotion.

Yeah I never understood Mike's bomb rating of "A Bird in Hand". I don't remember it as being horrible at all. Now that I have the season 12 DVD I'll revisit it in due time and see if anything changed.


by ringfire211 » Thu Jun 22, 2017 3:23 pm

epaddon, I agree with you. Many shows will "preach" about forgiving war atrocities EXCEPT when it pertains to the Germans/Nazis. I say all atrocities are horrible and should be viewed equally. For what it's worth I consider Stalin to be in many ways even worse than Hitler because he actually killed and purged millions of his own people, in addition to starving to death 10 million Ukrainians -- that's 25% of the entire population of Ukraine! But since he's "Uncle Joe" and was on our side during the war then he gets a pass. Or if not a pass then he's looked at less harshly than Hitler. What's even scarier is that today Russia is in the process of "rehabilitating" Stalin. He's their hero now, when even during the Soviet times the Soviet leaders tried to distance themselves from Stalin and that whole dark period. Khrushchev was the one who immediately began the process of de-Stalinization, trying to expunge the memory of Stalin from all songs, slogans, verses, banners, etc. And this was all during Soviet times! These days there's no more Soviet Union but Putin is trying to bring Stalin back. It's insane! There are parades with folks dancing and marching with banners of Stalin! Can you imagine what would happen if folks in Germany started celebrating with banners of Hitler??

Anyway, I digressed... Sorry for the history lesson.