by Mr. Mike » Sat Nov 19, 2016 11:10 am
Preliminary thoughts, there will likely be more...
You know there is a big problem when 8 hours after the show was broadcast there was only ONE message about the episode on IMDb. And that wasn't even concerning the crime of the week, which was about the murder of a conspiracy theorist -- Susie Freeling (Katie Malia), a rather cute woman and friend of Jerry's -- who is investigating the fact that several members of President John F. Kennedy's cabinet were in Hawaii just before his assassination (historically correct, by the way). The rumour among conspiracy buffs was that they had something to do with what happened on November 22, 1963.
The ONE message that was posted at IMDb related to something that Danno said in his discussion with Grover near the beginning of the show, which continued the bullshit from last week about the fact that Grover's son is dating Danno's daughter. I couldn't deal with this garbage at all, especially considering the "seriousness" of the rest of the show, I just fast-forwarded through that whole section. This baloney lasted for over 3 minutes!
Considering this episode was VERY Jerry-centric, I enjoyed it more than I expected because it was something different, but, as usual, the whole thing got seriously derailed because of the writers' ineptitude.
There was one big problem. It is revealed that the members of JFK's cabinet meeting in Hawaii were NOT talking about their boss's assassination a couple of days later, but "Operation Mongoose," a CIA covert operation authorized by Kennedy at the end of November 1961. This concerned various schemes against Cuban leader Fidel Castro ranging from making him look like a fool in the eyes of the Cuban public to assassinating HIM.
The conversation around the nightclub table, involving people like Secretary of State Dean Rusk, went like this: "The chiefs have little faith in the CIA's ability to pull off a clean assassination. They're about to be proven wrong. Yes... and God willing, years from now historians will look back and say Operation Mongoose did more to ensure this country's security than the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki."
But Operation Mongoose was NOT planned just before JFK's assassination. If the writers for the show had actually looked this up on Wikipedia, they would have noticed that this "operation" was disbanded at the end of 1962, about 11 months before JFK got knocked off! ("By October, as the Cuban Missile Crisis heated up, President Kennedy demanded the cessation of Operation Mongoose. Operation Mongoose formally ceased its activities at the end of 1962.") So, in the show, we learn from Jerry that the big mystery about a possible JFK assassination-related "conspiracy" relating to the cabinet presence in Hawaii was nothing.
The show had a very lame ending where they explain the killing of Freeling because she was also investigating some "chemical company" (like Monsanto, I guess) and it was the chemical company who arranged for her murder. That is all we are told! BAD!!!
MORE TRIVIA:
- I had serious doubts about the tape recorder used in the show which recorded the nightclub table discussion and 53 years later was still in the possessions of the recently deceased club hostess who had used it. It looked more like something that would have been used on Mission: Impossible, broadcast a few years after the JFK assassination. But this is a real "vintage" tape recorder called the Nagra SN (http://www.cryptomuseum.com/covert/rec/nagra/sn/index.htm) and, in fact, was -- according to the link -- ordered by JFK himself for use by "American secret services."
- One of the actors on the show, Remi Abellira, who played Boss (1963), appeared on the original Five-O as a young child. As far as I can determine, he was in the current episode only for a few seconds as the guy who gave the boy working at the hotel a message to deliver to Dean Rusk.Review is revised and updated
by Mr. Mike » Sun Nov 20, 2016 12:13 amhttp://fiveohomepage.com/2010-log7.htm#9
by North » Tue Nov 22, 2016 1:49 pmA thought crossed my mind watching this episode over the weekend, the real Jack Lord McG would have been doing the governor's duty by then. I seem to recall the governor saying it had already been many years he had put McG in charge.
by Mopsy54 » Tue Nov 29, 2016 5:08 amI enjoyed the episode but anything on Hawaii is fine with me.
by todd » Thu Dec 29, 2016 2:17 amThis was a very good episode.
I agree that the ending was lousy, but there was really no way to write a good ending without leaving us with a ridiculous "conclusion" that the CIA killed Kennedy.
It would have been nice, though, if they had set up a better "actual" villain, rather than resorting to a deus ex machina tactic of explaining the murder on a previously unmentioned corporation.
Other than that, I felt everything was well done, especially the 1963 scenes.
While the feds-versus-locals showdown is a longtime (and overused) staple of police shows, I thought the writers did a really good job with it.
I felt this one deserved at least 3 stars.
It's too bad the show can't consistently be the quality we've seen in this episode and the one following it.