Hawaii Five-O (1968-80) — Season 10 Episode Reviews

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CLASSIC FIVE-O (1968-1980):
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SEASON TEN (1977-1978) - QUICK INDEX

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

S10E01 (215) - Up The Rebels (Elayne Heilveil, Stephen Boyd)
S10E02 (216) - You Don't See Many Pirates These Days (Rossano Brazzi, Mark Lenard)
S10E03 (217) - The Cop On The Cover (Jean Simmons, Henry Darrow)
S10E04 (218) - The Friends Of Joey Kalima (John Rubinstein, Elaine Giftos, Alan Oppenheimer)
S10E05 (219) - The Descent Of The Torches (George DiCenzo, Geraldine Page)
S10E06 (220) - The Ninth Step (Gil Gerard, Emilio Delgado)
S10E07 (221) - Shake Hands With The Man On The Moon (Allan Miller, Christina Hart, James Wainwright)
S10E08 (222) - Deadly Doubles (Kurt Russell, Carole Tru Foster, Tim Matheson, Stefan Gierasch)
S10E09 (223) - Deep Cover (Geoffrey Lewis, Maud Adams, Dale Robinette)
S10E10 (224) - Tsunami (Leigh McCloskey, Ayn Ruymen, Lyle Bettger, Sid Clute)
S10E11 (225) - East Wind, Ill Wind (Bo Brundin, Sian Barbara Allen, Marisa Pavan, Michael Durrell, Mary-Angela)
S10E12 (226) - Tread The King's Shadow (Michael Mullins, Dierdre Berthrong, James Sikking, John Marley)
S10E13 (227) - The Big Aloha (Lara Parker, Cal Bellini, Eleanor Parker, John Reilly)
S10E14 (228) - A Short Walk On The Longshore (Sharon Farrell, Milton Selzer, Michael Conrad)
S10E15 (229) - The Silk Trap (David Birney, Soon-Tek Oh, Shannon Wilcox)
S10E16 (230) - Head To Head (George Grizzard, Joanne Nail, Charles Cioffi)
S10E17 (231) - Tall on the wave (Lisa Eilbacher, David M. Young, Kimo Kahoano, Valerie Charles)
S10E18 (232) - Angel In Blue (Vic Tayback, Enrique Novi, Carol Lynley, Nephi Hannemann)
S10E19 (233) - When Does A War End? (David Dukes, Bennett Ohta, Joshua Bryant, Donna Benz, Anne Francis)
S10E20 (234) - Invitation To Murder (Helen Funai, Sydney Lassick, Christina Kokubo, Anthony Caruso, Lyle Bettger, Eduard Franz)
S10E21 (235) - Frozen Assets (Peter Lawford, Nobu McCarthy, Mildred Natwick)
S10E22 (236) - My Friend, The Enemy (Aharon Ipalé, Kathryn Leigh Scott, Luciana Paluzzi)
S10E23 (237) - A Stranger In His Grave (Andrew Prine, Ted Markland, Laraine Stephens, John Hillerman)
S10E24 (238) - A Death In The Family (Manu Tupou, Reni Santoni, Jean Marie Hon)

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215. (S10E01) “Up The Rebels” ★★★

QUICK PLOT:

An Irish terrorist pretending to be a priest in Hawaii masterminds the hijacking of explosives with the objective of smuggling them to Northern Ireland.

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

REVIEW:

This show is OK if you can buy its premise that Sean Roarke (Stephen Boyd), a Northern Irish terrorist, comes all the way to Hawaii to steal explosives which are then transported back to a splinter group in his home country.

I don't get it. Was Hawaii associated with testing these weapons? Is it "out of the way" and easier to grab stuff there, as opposed to some location on the Mainland? Of course, there is another question — how do the clever bad guys know exactly where the explosives they are interested in are going to be tested at a specific place on some specific day ?

At the beginning of the show, a helicopter delivers "new and highly sophisticated" explosives to a Marine demolition team at some isolated testing ground near the ocean. After the helicopter leaves, a group of Roarke's associates, who are wearing wet suits and face masks and are approaching from the sea below, throw canisters of knock-out gas at the soldiers who faint dead away in a phony manner. When the bad guys climb up to grab the goods, they aren't wearing any gas masks! The helicopter actually flew right over them hiding below behind rocks with their rubber dinghy, but somehow the people in the copter did not see them or the other boat which arrived shortly after to take the stolen explosives and tow the dinghy and the four frogmen away, duh! (Thanks to Jeff.)

After the bad guys make their getaway, a black sergeant (Johnny Walker, the guy abused as "Rufus" by Danno in S11E06, "A Distant Thunder") who is wearing camouflage and leading some men nearby watches these two boats. His point of view is above the location and behind the boats, but when he looks at the first boat with binoculars, he sees the number on its side (HA [indicating Hawaiian registry] 6492C). He makes a note of this and gives it to McGarrett and Danno when they arrive soon after.

Belfast-born Stephen Boyd, best-known for his performance as Messala in the 1959 film Ben-Hur, gives a convincing performance as Roarke. He is pretending to be Father Daniel Costigan, who is visiting Catholic charitable organizations in Hawaii including St. Claire's Orphanage.

Elayne Heilveil is revolutionary groupie Casey Fogarty whose mainland industrialist father is known for his support of radical causes, including those espoused by Roarke. After she arrives in Honolulu, she makes the local paper, which Danno shows to McGarrett, recalling she was featured on the cover of Newsworld magazine after her involvement running medicine to the Indians during the siege at Wounded Knee in 1973, during which she was wearing "war paint." The enthusiastically chirpy but naïve Fogarty, who brings Roarke an attaché case filled with cash, soon develops a sexual interest in him after they meet at the Halona Point lookout, wanting to run away with the rebel "priest" and assist his cause. This bolsters the theory expressed in my review of The Capsule Kidnapping (S08E21) that getting involved with radical activities is an easy way to get laid.

Soon after, McGarrett meets with the Governor, who is disturbed by the theft of the explosives. As per McGarrett's request, the Governor has already "arranged for emergency search and seizure powers, as regards all ships leaving the islands during the next ten days." Commander Sprague (Ed Sheehan) from Naval Intelligence is also at this meeting. He says "What we're dealing with is a revolutionary new kind of plastic explosive. An amount no larger than a tape cassette can destroy half a city block. Now, in the hands of guerillas, it's a perfect weapon for urban warfare." Sprague says that the explosives are likely destined for "a rebel splinter group" in Ireland only after McGarrett refuses to co-operate without more information why they need Five-O's services.

Roarke proves to be both charming and cold-blooded. One of his co-conspirators, James Ryan (Lee Stetson), who owns the boat ID'd by the sergeant earlier, freaks out when he sees Chin Ho and Danno at his house at 2957 Kalakaua Avenue asking questions. He beats a hasty retreat to a bungalow court motel, the Sea Crest, where the phone number is 555-2399. Ryan phones Foley (Justin Tarr a.k.a. Tar), the man in charge of the explosives hijacking, to tell him about the cops at his house.

When Roarke visits Foley soon after, Foley says that Ryan is "getting jumpy, could be trouble." After making a hang-up call to Ryan to determine he is at the motel, Roarke shows up at his room asking for donations to St. Claire's mere seconds after Ryan calls McGarrett asking for protection in exchange for spilling the beans. Roarke shoots Ryan dead with a gun in a hollowed-out Bible. (Why Ryan would let Costigan — or anyone — into his room, especially after hearing Roarke's Irish accent, is totally illogical.)

Later on, Roarke also takes care of Foley who suddenly wants more money, since he has been following Roarke around and has seen him talking to Captain Watson (John Stalker) of the The Halls of Tara, a ship that will take the explosives part way to Ireland under the guise of "toys." Roarke delivers an attaché case which contains not only cash, but also explosives to Foley in his shack out in the sticks. Afterwards, Roarke seems very smug about what he has done, much to the Fogrty's horror.

Roarke using the Halls of Tara (a name with an Irish connection), which looks like an oversized tug, is odd, even though his rationale for doing so is to avoid "the authorities [who] will be watching all ships bound for Europe." The ship's journey will be from Hawaii to West Africa via Cape Horn, after which the explosives will be flown to Ireland by chartered plane.

I'm sure there would have been more creative ways to smuggle the goods by going directly (and much more quickly) to Ireland. Based on some calculations I did, the distance by sea from Honolulu to Dakar would be around 14,500 miles plus another 6,450 miles by plane; on the other hand, if you went through the Panama Canal, the total would be around 12,000 miles by sea.

Five-O gets a telex from Scotland Yard with information they have been waiting to hear: "Costigan has a list of aliases half a page long. Father Daniel Costigan is only one of them. Real name, Sean Roarke. Wanted in Ireland as leader of one of the rebel groups."

At the docks, "toys" are loaded on the ship and Fogarty pleads with Roarke to take her with him. He says yes, but tricks her into taking the van they are using back to a nearby warehouse while he slips away on the boat. McGarrett and Danno show up at the warehouse, and a lot of speechifying by McGarrett follows, especially after Fogarty tells him the explosives will be used for "tactical necessities," a term which a short time before Roarke used as a euphemism for murder. McGarrett pulls a London newspaper out of his pocket (!) which details how several children in Ireland were killed and maimed and starts reading from it. Fogarty finally breaks down and tells him that "everything you want is on that boat," pointing at the Halls of Tara which is leaving the harbor.

There is some interesting stunt work as "McGarrett" leaps from a drawbridge which is the last obstacle the ship has to face before it is out to sea after he pursues the ship to the bridge in his car. Brought back to the docks, Roarke tells him and Fogarty "Up the rebels," an expression which he has used before in the show. (He also says something which I presume is in Gaelic, not sure what that means.) McGarrett replies, "And God help the children."

There is a good score by Morton Stevens, as usual for the first show of each season up until now, containing motives which will be heard in later episodes.

CASUALTY LIST:

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

Injury (multiple (5)): Marines knocked out with gas so explosives can be stolen.
Death: James Ryan shot dead in motel by Sean Roarke (we do not see this).
Death: Foley killed in explosion when his beach shack is destroyed by bomb in attaché case of money given to him by Roarke.

MORE TRIVIA:

• Che Fong analyzes scraps of paper which were burned almost beyond recognition which were recovered from Ryan's house where his girl friend (Kathy Paulo, identified only as "Hawaiian Girl" in the end credits) had tried to destroy them. These burned pieces bring to mind a similar scene in the pilot episode regarding the ship Arcturus. The burned paper is not burned that much, because a phone number on it can be used to identify and track down a warehouse that Roarke is using. This is Harry Endo's last appearance as Che Fong.
• When Roarke tells McGarrett "I do God's work," McGarrett replies, "I do police work. So let's both pray that the explosives are found before they're turned to the devil's work." As McGarrett leaves Roarke, he says "Dominus vobiscum" ("The Lord be with you.") and Roarke replies, "Et cum spiritu tuo." ("And with your spirit.")
• On a Honolulu Advertiser front page story about the missing Ryan is a headline in an Arial Bold-like type: "Fishing Boat Capt. Sought by Police." The story under this headline is the usual bogus text which begins "The facts regarding the situation remain the same, state the authorities." The author of this story is Hazel Masselin. This issue of the paper also has an article trumpeting Fogarty's arrival: "Casey Fogarty, Daughter of Boston Industrialist, Visits Honolulu." Other headlines in the paper include Skimming Scandal, 2 Travel Study UB Tours Set: European, World, Eight Judges Selected For Brotherhood, New Voters, Shriners Charter Plan to London, and Suit to Begin Today Over Delmonico Name. When Danno tells McGarrett to check out the society page of the paper to read the article about Fogarty, he says "Turn to page six." However, when McGarrett reads this page, it is a right-hand page, which would be an odd-numbered page.
• The closeup of the paper's front page has a picture of the missing Ryan under the "Skimming Scandal" article. Ryan is wearing a hat. When we first see the paper in McGarrett's hands, the picture under the "Skimming Scandal" headline is a totally different person with no hat, and headlines on stories in that area are also different. (Thanks to Sarah and/or Gary McIlvain.)
• Foley uses a peculiar expression to Ryan: "I wouldn't give an aku head for your life." The subtitles translate this as "a nakoo head" (thanks to Rick for the correction). "Aku" is the Hawaiian name for skipjack tuna, but a search for the word "naakuu" finds a reference to sole fish in India called nakku meen or Indian halibut.
• When Roarke arrives at Foley's apartment, he is driving a maroon-colored Mustang. But in a subsequent scene when Roarke goes to the docks to talk to Watson, Roarke is driving a blue Pinto and followed by Foley in this Mustang. Later, when he delivers the explosive package to Foley, Roarke is driving the white Ford Econoline (license number 1B-4159) which was driven by Foley at the beginning of the show.
• The opening credits say the script is by Robert JaMes, presumably Robert Janes, who wrote over a dozen of the shows of the final three seasons.
• When Casey suggests Roarke's phone could be bugged, the priest says "And a leprechaun could be eating a pineapple." McGarrett also makes an Irish-related remark when he says the idea of Irish terrorists in Hawaii is like "shamrocks among the sugar cane."
• Jimmy Keary e-mailed me about this episode in 2002: "If I had to pick one really awful episode [of the whole series], it's 'Up The Rebels'. Stephen Boyd's accent, although the actor was born in [Northern Ireland], is atrocious. I'm Irish, you see. So, for me, I'm afraid the whole episode was a bit of a dud."
• Duke tails Roarke in the usual obvious Five-O manner.
• Fogarty takes a Bernie's Cab to her first meeting with Roarke.
• When McGarrett is talking to Fogarty, presumably outside the Ilikai, flags of New Zealand and Norway are seen behind them.
• When Fogarty comes to Roarke's room, he suggests she has been reading "James Bond" because she is acting paranoid. Of course, Jack Lord starred in Dr. No, the first James Bond movie!
• Duke trails Roarke to his hotel, which has a sign near its entrance for the Hotel Koloa, but when Fogarty picks Roarke up soon after this (Roarke is wearing a very lame disguise, I'm surprised Duke can't see through it), there is a large sign saying "Doll House" across the front of the building.
• Stephen Boyd died of a heart attack on June 2, 1977, three months after this episode was filmed and 15 weeks before it was broadcast.

GALLERY:

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216. (S10E02) You Don't See Many Pirates These Days ★★½  BOOK HIM 

QUICK PLOT:

A wealthy shipping magnate enlists the aid of Five-O and the Coast Guard when one of his freighters containing "highly sophisticated military equipment" is hijacked.

Click here to read Full Plot.

REVIEW:

Rossano Brazzi, Emile de Becque in South Pacific, stars as Greek shipping magnate Zeno Stavrik, whose 160-foot-long, 1,000-ton cargo ship the Aldebaran, is hijacked under questionable circumstances.

At the beginning of the show, we see a boatload of "pirates" under the command of Conroy Baylor (Bruce Wilson), former chief mate who jumped the ship when it was in Singapore recently, take over the Aldebaran, which is sitting off Honolulu. They include Portuguese (Bob Apisa), Roland Nip (uncredited role), Sven (Daniel Cicogni), and the smirking Merkle (John Fitzgibbon).

The Aldebaran's cargo is supposedly mundane items like teak furniture, clothing, toys and radios. But soon after it is taken over, Danno interrupts McGarrett, who is working on his boat at a marina, casually dressed wearing a pink shirt and saying this is "the first day off I've had in three months." Complaining further, "When they make an eight day week, someone will figure out a nine-day work schedule," McGarrett takes an urgent call from Pentagon big shot Jonathan Kaye via the radio in Danno's car. Kaye tells McGarrett to find the ship and when he does, "just button it up tight and call me." Kaye cannot tell McGarrett what the ship was carrying, saying the situation is "very delicate … closed doors all the way."

McGarrett goes to the Coast Guard Rescue Station, where he meets with Lieutenant Commander Hawkins (Mark Lenard, relatively laid-back in the last of his four Five-O appearances). Since the Aldebaran has left for parts unknown and has a 10- to 12-hour head start on the searchers, there is a very wide area which has to be scoured with a C-130 plane, H-52 helicopters and two cutters including the Cape Corwin. McGarrett tells Hawkins that trying to find the ship is "like looking for a contact lens in a hula hall," which the subtitles translate as "the Hula Bowl."

On the ship, Merkle has killed one crewman, Joey (stuntman Beau Van Den Ecker), who tried to escape by jumping into the water. Merkle also shot Captain Edwin Covalt (Nelson Dick Fair) and then put the captain along with two other crew members, the cook Greasy (Sam Sanford) and Arfie Loudermilk (pro wrestler/actor Lord James Blears), adrift in a lifeboat when the ship is around one hundred and fifty miles south of Hawaii.

On his way to Honolulu in his private jet, Stavrik talks to McGarrett, saying that he has a "special affection" for the Aldebaran, "the first-born of my fleet," and that he fears "not only for my ship, but the crew." Later, in his hotel room at the "Regent Hotel," actually the Hawaiian Regency, Stavrik is evasive about the ship's contents, suggesting that "the search should be concentrated to the east, toward the mainland United States." When McGarrett rejects this idea, Stavrik says that the contents might soon be transferred to another ship and then it would be scuttled.

The Coast Guard finds debris which suggests that this is what happened and the search is called off. But the Aldebaran has been taken to a secluded cove on the north of Maui. Certain items are being off-loaded from the ship into a truck and Baylor and Merkle go and meet with "the paymaster" for their operation in a low-budget hotel room which turns out to be Stavrik himself.

Baylor and the pirates are all on Stavrik's payroll. When Stavrik congratulates Baylor on the deception with the debris, Baylor tells him, "Thanks, but I'm not enjoying this much. It's my first go at stealing. It's hard on my stomach … Shooting people doesn't make me sleep any easier either." Addressing Merkle, he says, "It makes me realize how desperate I am to be working with a bottom feeder like you." Merkle replies, "You should sign on the good ship Hope, deliver care packages and be Mr. Wonderful." Stavrik manages to calm them both down.

McGarrett talks to lab technician Charlie (Josie Over), who has seemingly replaced Che Fong. She tells him that the debris from the scuttled ship included traces of "trinitrolin" which McGarrett identifies as TNT ... which is actually trinitrotoluene, overkill if you want to sink a ship, and the "fuel oil" in the vicinity of the debris was actually lubricating oil. Both of these things are very suspicious.

When McGarrett gets fed up with the secrecy surrounding the seemingly now-lost ship, he finally gets Kaye to tell him it was really carrying "highly sophisticated military equipment" in the form of "lightweight anti-tank missiles." Kaye also says that Stavrik's ships "have made these clandestine deliveries before." This equipment was supposed to be discharged at "Port Sienyu," located in some mysterious country where the political situation is very unstable.

Stavrik meets with a mysterious representative named Joseph (Ed Fernandez) from the mysterious country which will soon take receipt of the weapons. After receiving a check for $1.5 million, Joseph compliments Stavrik: "It is easy to see how you have become a very wealthy man … You sell your cargoes twice and then collect insurance on your vessel." However, Joseph is not completely satisfied: "You gave us your guarantee that the missiles would be delivered. They are still a long way from the destination, and time is of the essence."

McGarrett meets again with Stavrik, telling him, "We have reason to believe that your ship is still afloat" and gets Stavrik to admit that he knew about the military cargo which he confirms was delivered. Stavrik tells him, "Your government requires that I keep matters of that nature confidential. And I do. That's why the United States ships very sensitive cargo [with] my line." While McGarrett is at Stavrik's hotel room, Danno contacts him to say that the ship's captain, who just recovered from surgery, said that he recognized Baylor's voice as the leader of the pirates. McGarrett throws Baylor's name at Stavrik with a big smile on his face, saying when the pirates are caught, "we will put them away for life," subtly suggesting that a similar fate is in store for Stavrik himself.

Soon after this, McGarrett hears again from Kaye, who says he checked and discovered that the shipment of arms was never delivered to Port Seinyu, concluding that Stavrik is "double dealing." Kaye orders McGarrett to arrest Stavrik immediately. But the magnate has left town, supposedly going back to his native Greece, but he has actually gone to Maui to meet Baylor and his men to warn them to speed things up because the heat is going coming down soon from Five-O.

The last part of the show has some time and topography issues.

During a meeting at the Coast Guard center to determine where the hijacked Aldebaran is, Danno has a McGarrett-like brainstorm, pointing out some obscure cove on a map of Maui projected from a slide as "a hot spot" which is the most likely place for the ship to be hidden (which it is, though we never actually see it).

There is no explanation as to whether this early Google Earth-like view of Maui was taken from a satellite a while ago or just recently. There seems to be an actual "hot spot" on the map like a dot of some kind, perhaps representing the ship after McGarrett asks Duke for an "enlargement" of the slide. (This is technically possible with some of these projectors, I am told.) This blow-up also reveals what might be "trucks," so maybe this is a recent satellite view.

McGarrett also examines a map of Maui on the wall which doesn't look anything like real life where the Hawaiian Islands are spread out over a distance of around 150 miles. Instead, they seem to be all crammed into this one map in a big mishmash. McGarrett notes there is "a road leading from there [the "hot spot"] back to the main highway," which we have seen earlier when Baylor and Merkle went to town to meet Stavrik using a Bronco which they had originally stashed at the drop-off point by the beach.

The Five-O team gets to Maui in record time — normally about 40 minutes by plane, not including time to get to the airport in Honolulu — and also from the airport in Maui to the out-of-the-way cove. McGarrett has the use of a Coast Guard helicopter to travel around.

Earlier, we have seen the pirates unloading the missiles from the ship, which are in wooden boxes. There are a lot of these heavy boxes, which would have necessitated several trips back and forth between the ship and the beach. They are brought ashore in a relatively small boat, though there is a crane on the ship which could be used to transfer the boxes to this boat. After loading the missiles into Kauai Moving Co. U-Drive vans, the pirates all move to a "campsite" further inland.

After the men are paid with money given by Stavrik to Baylor in town, three of them — Portuguese, the Asian guy and Sven — are supposed to "look after the ship," take it out to sea and scuttle it. They depart in the Bronco. We see them driving through the forest singing the sea shanty "Drunken Sailor" which dumbly fits in with the idea that they are pirates, I guess. They encounter a tree which has been placed on the road and a gun battle follows with Chin Ho and some Maui cops. This is the first time we see Chin in the show, by the way. They turn around, trying to escape, and Sven falls on the ground trying to get into the Bronco. Duke and some other cops are waiting in the other direction for the Bronco and fire shots through its window. Portuguese, who is driving the Bronco, is busted and so are the other two guys, Sven and the Asian.

Now, McGarrett didn't say that the road from the beach area to the highway was the only road, but if it was, how did Chin, Duke and the cops get further down the road past the pirates' campsite without passing everyone on the way? After all, they are using police cars.

Baylor and Merkle are heading for the airport in the moving vans intending to deliver the missiles to the airport, presumably the Kahului Airport, since that is the only international airport on the island. There a Pan Am cargo carrier waits to take the missiles to Joseph's country. But aren't these two guys also using the "only road"? I don't understand why the cops didn't just place roadblocks all over the highway since there is basically only way out of the isolated part of Maui where they have been staying.

The two eventually get to the airport where Baylor is betrayed. Merkle forces Baylor into Stavrik's tank-like Lincoln Continental at gunpoint, saying the authorities have identified him and Stavrik can't "afford" him anymore. There is no time to knock Baylor off, though, because McGarrett shows up and there is a chase at the airport which ends with an interesting stunt where McG almost gets run over by the Lincoln but manages to leap out of the way in the nick of time.

Stavrik tries to weasel out of any responsibility for what has happened, saying "I am a foreign national. I have committed no crime in your country." But this is baloney, because one of the crates is opened, revealing a missile very similar to the one used in S08E05, "Death's Name Is Sam." Relieved at being rescued, Baylor tells McGarrett he will co-operate to help put Stavrik away. McGarrett says that is good, but only if his testimony is "truthful."

This episode is sort of OK, despite the geographical stupidities which can be resolved by venturing into "fan fiction," something I do not like to do.

It's hard to take the constant smirking and mugging of actor Fitzgibbon as Merkle, even though he is supposed to be psychotic. He just needs a good punch in the face, and his arrest at the end hardly feels like just punishment. I like how his feelings are hurt when Baylor tells him to go forward and check the cargo after he knocks off Joey, admonishing him, "don't forget who's running this show."

Danno doesn't seem up on his history near the end when McGarrett tells him "Stavrik's crew moves like Rommel's Afrika Korps," to which Danno replies, "How's that?" The answer, from McGarrett: "I mean he moves rapidly, pal."

One thing that is curious — although the Coast Guard is seen in the show a lot, there is not the usual blab thanking them somewhere for their assistance. Maybe the footage featuring them was recycled from earlier shows?

The serviceable score is by Broughton.

WHAT DOES THE TITLE MEAN:

McGarrett springs the title of the episode on Danno when they are at the Coast Guard Rescue Center at the beginning of the show and Danno replies in a Long John Silver voice, "Aye, Steve," one of several lame attempts at humor between the two this season.

Chin, what do you got?

What have we got, Charlie?

To Kaye: It's crucial here that I know what the hell is going on aboard that ship.

Danno, what do you got?

This is McGarrett, Hawaii Five-O. I'm looking for Zeno Stavrik.

All right, Duke. Let's see what we've got.

To Duke: Let's see an enlargement of that, please.

Duke, get Chin. Get over to Maui. Organize some police search teams. Commander and I will meet you in Kahului.

Commander, have your people check every freighter in these Maui waters, please.

Danno, check the beach and the wooded area around here. If those are trucks, could be what we're looking for.

Get me the computer room, please.

You find anything, Danno? … What about Chin? … Is Baylor one of them?

Stavrik. This is McGarrett, Hawaii Five-O. Stay where you are.

To Stavrik: Hold it! Throw your weapons out.

Commander, open that crate.

All right, gentlemen, book him. Murder one. -->

CASUALTY LIST:

Injury: Arfie hit on the head with gun butt by Merkle and temporarily knocked out.
Death: Joey shot multiple times by Merkle.
Injury: Captain Covalt shot twice by Merkle, he later survives surgery
Injury? (one of two): Sven shot at by Chin Ho and Maui PD officer when trying to escape, falls off side of Bronco; Portuguese shot at by Duke and Maui PD officer when trying to escape. Chin Ho tells Danno, "We have three – one wounded, two in custody." (Which one is wounded is not known.)
Injury: Conroy Baylor shot in the leg by Merkle.

MORE TRIVIA:

• It is not mentioned why the U.S. government was involved with delivering the military hardware. Perhaps they were secretly supplying them to the "liberation army" group mentioned as being in the mysterious country? It is surprising that the U.S. wouldn't have just used a military transport of their own, rather than relying on some private company where such a shipment would have considerable risk. It is curious why Jonathan Kaye is so concerned to the extent of wanting assurance that the hijacked ship, including the missiles, was scuttled, I guess so the Americans' involvement with this equipment would not be known.
• Despite the fact the name of the Aldebaran is seen on the rear of the ship near the beginning of the show, it is misspelled "Alderbaron" throughout the DVD in the subtitles. When McGarrett interviews the two crewmen from the hijacked ship, Arfie is identified in the subtitles as speaking, but it is actually Greasy, the cook.
• When the two crewmen from the ship are set adrift with the wounded Captain Covalt, they plea for information about where they are located. But later it turns out that there was an emergency locator beacon in the life raft which the Coast Guard uses to track them down.
• Stavrik offers McGarrett some wine during a meeting, to which the teetotaler Five-O boss says, "No thanks. I never use it."
• The date 6-9-77 is seen on a $1.5 million bank certificate drawn on the First World Bank (cheque #1474) for "Banco de Swiss," payment from Joseph's country.
• Stavrik is seen smoking on his plane and later when he meets the pirates in a motel room.
• The Ford Bronco (license number 3B 4743) used in a couple of ninth season episodes makes an appearance in this show.
• When the hijackers go to meet Stavrik on Maui, a stock shot of a town where this happens looks very crude, even more than the episodes in the tenth DVD season which was not remastered. It looks like it was taken several years before.
• The "good ship Hope" mentioned by Merkle was a peacetime hospital ship operated by Project HOPE (Health Opportunities for People Everywhere) where doctors, nurses, and technical staff provided medical care and training to people in various countries visited, like Indonesia, South Vietnam, Peru, Ecuador, Guinea, Nicaragua, Colombia, Ceylon, Tunisia, Jamaica, and Brazil. The ship was retired in 1974, three years before this show was broadcast.
• The "bookem" is "All right, gentlemen, book him. Murder one."

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217. (S10E03) “The Cop On The Cover” ★★★  BOOK THEM BOTH 

QUICK PLOT:

A woman magazine writer doing a story on Five-O becomes McGarrett's nagging, omnipresent critic as he investigates a puzzling kidnapping case.

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REVIEW:

In this story, one of the few Five-O episodes written by a woman (actually co-written by two women), Jean Simmons guest stars as Terri O'Brien, a pain-in-the-ass reporter from News World ("the new 'in' magazine" — mentioned in "Up The Rebels" as well) doing a feature story on Five-O.

McGarrett allows Terri to interview him and follow him around only after the Governor orders him to do so. The Governor tells McGarrett, "I'm not asking you to pose for a centerfold!" He says, "You Irish are all alike — hotheads!" and that McGarrett should "cool off and settle down" after McGarrett raises his voice.

Terri's access to Five-O is all-encompassing — she sits in the office as McGarrett, Danno and Duke discuss a kidnapping that Five-O is investigating and sticks her nose into various other matters.

When Terri asks Danno how to describe McGarrett, Danno says he is "dedicated, honest, intuitive, tough, daring and eminently fair." She wonders if he is the "John Wayne of Waikiki." McGarrett tells Terri he thinks the Hawaiian people are "being terribly exploited." She needles him about rumours that he may be the next Governor, and says he is rated one of Hawaii's most eligible three bachelors, known for his gourmet cooking, playing guitar and painting (three things associated with Jack Lord). She says he presents a "very sexy image" to women. Interestingly, O'Brien refers to McGarrett as a "true Renaissance man," a term which was also applied to Lord.

When she starts to ask why there are no women in Five-O, McGarrett says, "Okay, honey, that's enough," explaining that adding untrained people to the team could interfere with Five-O's effectiveness. There is more sexist sparring in the Five-O office when McGarrett says that Terri is "operating on female intuition," to which she replies, "I didn't know intuition had a gender." Frustrated by her constant meddling, McGarrett later refers to her as a "second rate Lois Lane" and calls her "Ms." O'Brien (which the subtitles translate as "Miss").

Moe Keale has a major part in this show as bus driver Joe Moala who is also an ex-convict. He is suspected of involvement with the kidnapping after Stuart Longworth (Henry Darrow), father of the two kidnapped kids, leaves a package containing $50,000 in ransom money (and — as revealed later — microfilm for his design of a breeder nuclear reactor) on Moala's bus.

Moala keeps staring at Longworth while he is driving and later says that Longworth drew attention to himself because he was wearing a suit ("Nice suits stand out like a sore thumb on my run.") as well as the fact that he took the bus for only one stop.

As Longworth gets off, Kia Chieu (Josie Over) moves from the back of the bus to the seat he formerly occupied to grab the package which is underneath it. Moala notices her as well. It's surprising that Longworth doesn't recognize her, since she is a receptionist in the front office at the ESSTR Corporation where he works. Chieu actually stands up to move to the seat as Longworth is moving towards the back door of the bus and walks behind him as Longworth exits.

The key to a bus station locker containing the ransom is later found at Moala's house. It seems far-fetched that Chieu and her boyfriend went to all the trouble to track down who was the driver of that particular bus so they could plant the key in his home dresser drawer and draw attention away from themselves. They hardly seem like "sophisticated criminals" who provoke Longworth to refer to the "insidious terror these people make me feel."

Moala fakes a heart attack as he is about to be taken to jail and later escapes, which leads to a dramatic confrontation where McGarrett pleads with Moala to give himself up, because he is convinced of Moala's innocence. In McGarrett's office, Moala convincingly recalls the events with Longworth and Chieu on his bus and later identifies Chieu from Longworth's company's personnel photos.

Having finished her story on Five-O, Terri manages to track down Chieu because she wants to ask her about the huge glasses she wears. Terri is recognized by Chieu from when she visited Longworth's office and then tied up by Chieu and her boyfriend. When McGarrett rescues Terri in the nick of time, he takes advantage of her tied-up and gagged state to give her a stern lecture about interfering with his investigation.

At the finale, to "eat crow," Terri brings a gourmet meal to the Five-O office late at night, and the teetotaler McGarrett is seen pouring champagne into two glasses, something which I don't think has been seen since the pilot episode.

This episode is OK, but both McGarrett and Terri are two strong-willed people engaged in a battle of wits which tends to become kind of tiresome after a while. Terri is a lot like McGarrett, because she has a brainstorm when she hears Moala mention the oversized glasses that Chieu was wearing which Terri herself saw on Chieu at Longworth's company when she went there to interview him. She convinces the receptionist at the company to give her the home address of Chieu who has just started her vacation, intending to go Hong Kong to sell the microfilm to the highest bidder!

The music by Richard Markowitz, the only score he did for the series, is nothing special; that accompanying the first pre-commercial wave is pretty boring!

CASUALTY LIST:

Injury (x2): Jason and Hilary Longworth kidnapped by Kia Chieu and her boyfriend.
Injury: Terri O’Brien gagged and tied up by Kia and her boyfriend.

MORE TRIVIA:

• This is the last episode directed by Paul Stanley, who did 19 shows in total. Gerry Day, who co-wrote the teleplay for this episode, also wrote the script for S10E22, "My Friend, the Enemy," another show this season about a reporter getting involved with Five-O's investigation of a kidnapping.
• There is a lot of background noise at the beginning where Longworth takes the call regarding his kids, when McGarrett and Terri are driving and when McGarrett is interviewing Longworth at his house.
• Che Fong is referred to as going over the van where Longworth's two children were tied up, captive, prior to being found by the cops, but Che is not seen.
• When Chieu and Jackson are first seen together, Chieu seems to have a grocery store bag containing some Lay's potato chips.
• Moala drives the Alapai Street bus route, though the sign on the side of the bus by the door says "King Street." The fare is 25 cents. At the place where Longworth boards the bus, in the background is the Alena Floral Boutique.
• Bad words! Longworth's wife (Jo Pruden) at the beginning, when referring to her children, says "They can bloody well do without the van for a week or two." Later, McGarrett, hearing that Moala has escaped, exclaims "What the hell do you mean?"
• As McGarrett and Terri leave Longworth's place, it is raining, and McGarrett has an umbrella.
• Lani, the Five-O receptionist, is played by Connie Kissinger.
• Jack Lord is seen flexing his hands several times during the show.
• The key to the coin locker containing the ransom money doesn't seem to have anything on it identifying the location. I'm sure there are dozens of coin lockers in Honolulu!
• When the Longworth kids are being grilled by Chin Ho, he is asking them if they heard any unusual noises during their kidnapping when they were blindfolded. Elaine blurts out, "You [her brother] had the quad turned up so loud, you can't hear anything else anyway." Presumably "quad" refers to an 8-track quadraphonic tape deck, but does this mean that Jackson left this playing loudly while they were being driven around?
• The "bookem" is "Okay, book them both. Kidnapping and extortion."

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218. (S10E04) The Friends Of Joey Kalima ★★½

QUICK PLOT:

McGarrett gets involved in a Honolulu Police Department Internal Affairs case involving a young officer, a friend of his, who is arrested during a police raid.

Click here to read Full Plot.

REVIEW:

McGarrett goes to bat for Joey Kalima (John Rubinstein), a young HPD cop and friend he has known "since he was a kid." Joey is accused of dereliction of duty and, as a result, suspended from the force.

Joey's faux pas is being present at a luau attended by members of his extended-like family where his "Uncle" Keoki Topo (Kwan Hi Lim) is bookmaking in his house oblivious to Joey while everyone outside is celebrating the birthday of Keoki's sister, Joey's honorary "Mama" (Elizabeth Smith).

When cops from HPD headed by Sergeant Bernard Wong (Bernard Ching) raid the place acting on a tip, Joey is busted because, as a police officer, if he knew a crime was being committed and did nothing about it, he is in serious trouble.

According to McGarrett, Joey had a future as a welterweight boxer, and even went to the 1976 Olympics in Canada, but all he ever wanted to be was a cop. After he joined the force, he went to night school and got his degree in police science. He and his wife Lily (Elaine Giftos) have "built their entire life around his career with HPD." McGarrett describes Joey as "the finest example of what a cop should be."

Lily is majorly upset to hear about Joey's arrest, especially after she just sat through a speech by McGarrett at an orientation meeting addressing a bunch of drooling new cops' wives on the "responsibilities, pressures, and the dangers" unique to a policeman's job, emphasizing that "police work is teamwork, not just on the street, but in the home too."

Internal Affairs is making a case against Joey and the man in charge of this is "Fearless" Bernie Fryer (Alan Oppenheimer), who is a major league bastard. Not only does he want to ruin Joey's future, but he has a major hate-on for McGarrett as well. He snidely asks the top cop "Aren't you a long way from the Governor's office?" after McGarrett decides to represent Joey at the I.A. hearings, even suggesting that McGarrett might use his influence with the Governor to get Joey off. McGarrett denounces this as "a cheap shot."

Fryer later shows McGarrett a picture of Joey meeting with Keoki and Lewis (Brian Fong), Joey's pal from the "family," recently, where they came to offer him help with his suspension. Internal Affairs cops were nearby capturing everything on camera, "just doing their job." Fryer says "Kalima welcomed Keoki Topo into his home." This is a total lie, Joey just spoke to the two men on the street in front of his house.

Fryer tries to butter McGarrett up, saying "I've never liked you, but I've always respected you. You do your job better than any man I've ever seen. But this time you're letting your personal feelings get in the way. He's gonna take you down with him." McGarrett tells Fryer, who describes himself as Mr. Warmth, "You're all heart."

At the I.A. hearing, the charges against Joey are read out: "Count one, frequently associated with Keoki Topo, a known bookmaker. This association compromised your integrity as a police officer and brought discredit to the department. Count two, on the 9th of this month, you were present while Keoki Topo was conducting said bookmaking and failed to take action in accordance with your position as a police officer. Count three, following your suspension, you were again seen in the company of Keoki Topo and his associates."

Despite testimony from Mama, Keoki, and Lewis, plus "unofficial" help from members of the Five-O team investigating behind the scenes, the prospects of Joey winning the case against him, based primarily on circumstantial evidence, look grim, especially so when Teo Rodriguez (Al Lopaka), the informer who gave the cops the tip about Keoki, turns up dead.

However, help comes from another plot in the story, which Joey is so far peripherally involved with. At the beginning of the episode, we saw Joey on his beat hanging out at Marco's Music, a store selling records as well as audio and video equipment. Unknown to Joey, the owner of the store, Marco (Jimmy Borges) is involved with three crooks who are using the basement of his business to tunnel into the First National Bank of Hawaii next door: Batai (Seth Sakai), Reed (Kimo Kahoano) and Otis (Chuck Couch).

Otis is seriously injured in a collapse of the tunnel, and later dies of his injuries. Batai and Reed take his body and dump it in a cane field. Rodriguez, who is pals with Marco, snoops around the store and sees the trap door leading to the basement where the tunnel is being dug. Teo talks to Marco, and we find out that Rodriguez gave the cops the tip about Keoki, but he was paid $50 by Marco to do so. Marco wanted to get back at Keoki who had stiffed him with a couple of bets. Because Rodriguez knows too much, he is killed by Batai, who sneaks up behind him and bashes him on the head. Rodriguez' body is dumped on a hill.

Forensics lab technician Charlie, played by the sexy Lydia Lei Kayahara, determines that there was lava dust on both of these bodies, something which is not in either location where they were found. There is plenty of this dust in the tunnel under Marco's store, so much so that a ventilation system is set up with a fan on the store's roof with a giant aluminum hose like used with a clothes dryer to suck the dust from the basement while the two remaining crooks work.

When McGarrett and Joey come to the neighborhood where they are trying to retrace Joey's steps to see if there are any clues connected to the raid on Keoki's place, McGarrett notices a lot of lava dust on the counter at Marco's which Joey laughs off, repeating a line from earlier when Marco said he couldn't afford to pay the janitor bills, especially based on the small amount of business that Joey had given him. Marco tells McGarrett, "I'm just a poor Portagee."

As they are driving away from Marco's, McGarrett has a half a brainstorm because Marco mentioned a Frank Sinatra record which Joey had bought to give Mama on the day of the luau, meaning Marco knew that Joey was going to Mama's the day he was arrested during the police raid. This in itself is not significant, because Marco never had a gripe against Joey, who he just described to McGarrett as "the best cop we had on this beat" and even offered to testify in Joey's favor at his hearing. But Marco knew Rodriguez, who Joey — who also knew him — says "got around."

McGarrett and Joey return to the store, and Joey notices the ventilator on the roof which looks like an "exhaust fan," commenting "What's a record store need an exhaust fan for?" Joey says he never saw this before during his strolling through the neighborhood. McGarrett gets Danno to quickly look up someone; it is not specified that it is Marco, but whoever it is, has a "record on the mainland … for petty larceny."

At this point, the story gets kind of dumb. McGarrett and Joey go up on to the roof of the music store to check out this fan, but how do they do this? Don't they have to go through Marco's store to get to the roof? Marco is not there, because he is in the bank next door via the tunnel with the other two guys who finally broke through to the bank vault, despite the fact McGarrett and Joey just talked to him minutes before. Did Marco just leave the front door open or something?

Following this, McGarrett and Joey are seen walking around in the back of the store and looking in the trap door which leads to the basement and the tunnel to the bank. The two of them go downstairs and McGarrett must be fit to be tied, getting his nice suit all covered with lava dust when he crawls through the tunnel! Joey and some well-armed HPD cops who have been requested crawl through the tunnel with him and, soon enough, Marco, Batai and Reed are all arrested.

The show ends with the three-man Internal Affairs review board telling Joey: "We find that you were indeed present when a crime was being committed. But there is much doubt that you had knowledge of that crime on this occasion, although you knew it had occurred in the past. But at the recommendation of Captain Fryer and because of your performance in past days, the Board feels that you have demonstrated such integrity and faith in the department, as to erase any doubts which might be caused by your association with the Topo family. Your record will be cleared. You are hereby reinstated."

But Joey really didn't solve the case at all, unless Marco confessed to the cops about how he got Teo to blab on Keoki, resulting in Joey’s suspension, etc., etc.! Even Fryer congratulates Joey on the verdict at the end, with a suggestion that he and McGarrett might cross paths again, which never happens — at least in the series.

CASUALTY LIST:

Injury: Otis, digging tunnel, suffers suspected broken ribs and punctured lung due to cave in.
Death: Otis dies of his injuries.
Death: Teo Rodriguez hit over the head from behind by Batai.

MORE TRIVIA:

• There are some changes in the music in this episode on the season 10 DVD of the show. In the original TV broadcast at the beginning of the show, Marco is playing a recording of "I Wish That I Had Loved You Better," a song popularized by Eddy Arnold (but not sung by him as far as I could determine). It sounds like a couple of lines from the song are played over and over while the scene changes to the digging in the basement. On the DVD, there is some low-key tune; the only lyrics I can make out are "I went looking for answers..." I can't identify either the song or the singer, though when Marco takes the record off the turntable and puts it back in its jacket, the jacket is for "Volume II" by the Brothers Cazimero, a Hawaiian group! Marco and Joey then talk about country music, and after saying "Some of the lyrics are pure poetry," Joey continues, in a section that is cut out of the DVD: "Look, there's one song ... uh ... [sings] 'Things were so clear when my life stretched out before me, like a long, long Texas Road ...' Isn't that beautiful?" Marco replies, "Joey, what do I know about Texas roads ... this is Hawaii." This song that Joey is singing is "Long, Long Texas Road," written by Roy Drusky. The lyrics to that song actually go "When the day stretched out before me like a long, long Texas road." Following this, the broadcast dialog continues as on the DVD: "Marco, have you ever listened to Waylon Jennings or Willie Nelson?" In the original broadcast, after Joey leaves the record store and goes to his car, you can hear him singing the incorrect lines again. On the DVDs, you can see him moving his mouth, but the sound has been removed. I no longer own a tape of the broadcast, but a friend who shall be anonymous sent me a dub of the opening of the show taken from the version of the show you can get on Amazon which is the same as the original broadcast. This confirms, among other things, that the Brothers Cazimero LP jacket was used instead of one from an Eddy Arnold record.
• In the Hawaii Five-O reboot there was another Internal Affairs cop named Fryer played by Tom Sizemore (Vince Fryer). He recruited Five-0's Kono Kalakaua (Grace Park) to aid him in taking down his former partner Frank Delano (William Baldwin) while pretending to strip her of her badge so that she could mix with Delano and his own group of corrupt cops. Both McGarrett (Alex O'Loughlin) and Chin Ho (Daniel Dae Kim) were angry when they later found out this scheme about Kono being demoted. McGarrett actually punched Fryer in the face in revenge for Fryer using Kono as bait as well as not confiding in the Hawaii Five-0 team. Fryer was eventually promoted to Chief of Detectives at HPD but died in the Season 2 finale. His death was later avenged by McGarrett.
• Joey's house is 3803 Maunaloa Avenue. This house has previously been used in "Wednesdays, Ladies Free" (the home of Kathy, the hooker) and "Assault on the Palace" (where the guy is waiting on the front steps and gets shot when he tries to foil the kidnapping). Thanks to Fred Helfing.
• "Mama's" hair at the party is kind of weird ... she looks like she is bald! Later when she testifies for Joey before the Internal Affairs review board, her hair looks more normal.
• McGarrett has a good line to lab technician Charlie, who tells McGarrett that she figured out the business with lava dust because she is "smart": "If women are so smart, why do they dance backwards?" I think the lab has a predeliction for hiring women named "Charlie" — Josie Over was Charlie in the previous show.
• At the end when McGarrett calls for backup to deal with the bank robbery, he can be seen dialling "911," which is followed by stock shots of cop cars.
• Chin Ho holds his pipe when grilling a woman who says that Joey gave Rodriguez some breaks. Terry Plunkett is a bartender who says he saw Joey bust Teo a couple of times. Duke says Rodriguez' rap sheet doesn't show anything, commenting, "Maybe he decided to give him a chance." Plunkett replies, "Or maybe it was all a scam because Teo was his snitch."
• In the record shop, there is an ad for Zenith stereos behind Marco, as well as another for a Panasonic TV with a Quintrix color picture tube. There are also a lot of LP records in the store.
• A Crimestoppers-like phone number 944-1212 appears on a poster at the police station.
• McGarrett uses the expression "calabash" twice. According to Wikipedia, "In Hawaii the word 'calabash' refers to a large serving bowl, usually made from hardwood rather than from the calabash gourd, which is used on a buffet table or in the middle of the dining table. The use of the calabash in Hawaii has led to terms like 'calabash family' or 'calabash cousins,' indicating an extended family grown up around shared meals and close friendships."
• At the beginning of the show, some dialog of Batai (Seth Sakai's character) is identified as that of Reed in the subtitles. At several other places in the show, Batai is identified in the subtitles as "BATES." When Marco comes to the seedy hotel room where Otis has died, he speaks to Batai, but the subtitles read, "But I..."
• Mama says that at the luau, trying to establish a time frame for Joey, they listened to "one side of the [Sinatra] record," but where would they have done this? There doesn't seem to be a record player outside where the luau is taking place and when Mama shows the LP to Joey, it looks like it is still in the bag which Marco provided.
• On the roof of Marco's store, McGarrett tastes the lava dust? Why? It isn't heroin! Shortly after this, McGarrett snaps his fingers ten times.
• Rodriguez' mug shot number is 187695.
• John Rubinstein's last name is misspelled Rubenstein in the end credits.

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219. (S10E05) The Descent Of The Torches ★★★

QUICK PLOT:

Five-O investigates the disappearance and death of an archaeologist on the Big Island.

Click here to read Full Plot.

REVIEW:

This is probably the series' most "Hawaiian" episode, taking place on the island of Hawaii.

The script by Alvin Sapinsley, who wrote "Skinhead," the Vashon Trilogy, "One Big Happy Family" and "Bones of Contention," among others, is intelligent, and combined with some scenic photography, provides a much different atmosphere than we are used to on Oahu. (Based on credits at the end of the show, they really did leave Honolulu.)

Geraldine Page plays anthropologist Philomena Underwood. Both she and her anthropologist brother Charles (John Hunt) are compared to that of the pioneering Leakeys in Africa. They are very British, Philomena even referring to radio as "the wireless," an antiquated expression that some web sites suggest went out of fashion around 50 years before this show was broadcast.

After Charles is harassed by "a blasted witch doctor" in a "bizarre costume from the past" who tries to steal his personal journal at the beginning of the show, Professor Alika Kalei (George DiCenzo) from the Department of Anthropology at the University of Hawaii, Hilo tries to assuage the Underwoods' concerns about the negative reaction from local people about their work which has included threatening letters and an attempt to intimidate their workers, all of which "has gone far beyond petty annoyance."

Some people feel that the Underwoods are getting too close to what is considered sacred territory, specifically the burial place of King Kamehameha. Kalei bluntly tells the Underwoods they should just stop digging, which they refuse to do.

Five-O is called on by the Governor to investigate after Charles Underwood disappears. After flying to Hilo, McGarrett and Five-O find themselves up against a wall of suspicion and superstition. When McGarrett asks Duke, the most Hawaiian member of the team who "can find out things none of us can" what he knows about "these local legends," the reply is "Only what I was taught since I was a child, Steve … it's best that they're not disturbed." But after McGarrett pleads with him, "I don't want you to violate your principles or your beliefs, I just want you to do an investigative job for me as a cop," Duke says he will see what he can do. The pressure on Five-O's investigation ratchets up when Charles is found dead in the ocean not far from the diggings, the cause of death being "a severe blow to the base of the skull" – in other words, murder.

There is an annoying sub-plot to the show where Professor Kalei's assistant George Atkins (Lou Richards), after overhearing a conversation between McGarrett and his boss and thinking about what Kalei said in a book about Kamehameha, decides to try and locate the Hawaiian king's grave, which he thinks is in a lava tube. Atkins teams up with a friend named Eddie (Lee Lambert, Bible Jim in S09E18, "To Die In Paradise"), convincing him that there is huge money to be made from artifacts that could be buried with the king, who died in 1819. The two of them manage to find what they think is the grave site, despite needle-in-a-haystack odds. When Eddie falls into a deep pit, he is left there by Atkins, who doesn't return until the next morning, by which time Eddie is dead, also with his "skull bashed in."

Kalei describes the idea the Underwoods are looking for Kamehameha's grave to McGarrett as "outlandish," instead saying the anthropologists have been studying the "Uricai voyages for years." Intrigued by the idea that the location of Kamehameha's grave has been kept secret by word passed down for years, McGarrett goes and talks to a local kahuna named Mahina (Nephi Hannemann), who tells him, "Scientists want to dig [Kamehameha] up to study him. The fanatics are after the mana [superhuman powers which could be obtained by having a part of the dead king's body]. The adventurers are after the artifacts and treasures that are said to be buried with him. And the traditionalists would shed blood to prevent any of it."

When shown a picture of the "witch doctor" that Charles Underwood sketched after he was attacked, Mahina says its ceremonial costume was once in his possession and he donated it to Kalei's Department of Anthropology over a year ago. When he goes to talk to Kalei about this, McGarrett is told there are only two such costumes in the world, one in Hilo and the other in London. McGarrett suggests that whoever is the keeper of the secret of Kamehameha's grave borrowed the Hilo costume and committed two murders. Kalei then makes a peculiar comment that "there is still the possibility that both deaths were accidental," which is odd, because the coroner concluded that both deaths were homicides.

Back at his hotel, McGarrett gets a list of four names which Duke has managed to dig up which "might be names of members from Kamehameha's burial party." McGarrett talks to himself while he is analyzing these lengthy Hawaiian names syllable by syllable. Duke had told him that "Today their spelling would be shortened." It is far-fetched how he can get extract Kalei's name from "Kanekaliikuulei." (The other names are Kamakuikahulewa, Koamokumokuoheeia and Kumulukelale.)

McGarrett rushes to Kalei's house to talk to him about this coincidence, but in a huge surprise ending, the relatively young-looking Kalei has suddenly died for no logical reason and his body is being taken away in a canoe by Mahina as Kalei's three sons watch from the shore outside his house.

McGarrett is convinced that Kalei was the most recent keeper of the secret of the burial location (which, when we now think about it, was quite likely near where the Underwoods were digging) and the killer of both Underwood and Eddie, telling Danno "All our modern police methods have turned up nothing, but I think he did them both in."

McGarrett's supposition does not explain why Eddie was murdered, however. It is unlikely that Atkins would have told Kalei about snooping around the lava tubes with his pal, since he has a lot of hesitation admitting what he was doing to McGarrett later. So how would Kalei have known about Eddie in the pit, unless he was checking this location daily to make sure no one would find out about this being the location of Kamehameha's grave (if that even was the case)? Perhaps the only explanation to this is reminiscent of what Kalei tells Atkins who is skeptical that torches can burn underwater: "We are dealing with a Hawaiian legend, and in legend, torches burn quite easily underwater."

The score to this episode is by Ray. When McGarrett is talking to Kalei in his office, some of the music is dubbed at a level which is so low you can hardly hear it. There is an unusual amount of background noise in the episode produced by the wind and other sounds of nature. I think the people recording the sound for the show didn't have time at this "new" location to adjust to compensate for this noise considering what was likely a tight filming schedule.

WHAT DOES THE TITLE MEAN?

The Descent of the Torches is the title of a book by Professor Kalei. He explains its meaning: "It refers to the bearers of the king's [Kamehameha] body descending with their torches into the water and disappearing from view."

CASUALTY LIST:

Injury: Dr. Charles Underwood grabs his personal research journal back from "witch doctor," falling to the floor with the book.
Death: Underwood's body is found in a bay about a mile from the dig site after he disappears; autopsy reveals he suffered "a severe blow to the base of the skull."
Injury: Eddie falls into pit at the end of a lava tube, bumping his head and breaking his ankle.
Death: Eddie has his "skull bashed in" during the night.
Death: Professor Kalei dies of unknown causes "at about midnight."

MORE TRIVIA:

• McGarrett's wardrobe for this show includes a lot of white: a white turtleneck, white pants, a white tie and even white shoes.
• McGarrett gets ferried around to and from the archaeological excavation site in the default Oahu Five-O police helicopter, number N9014F, here disguised as a copter for the Hilo Police. His main base in Hilo is the Naniloa Surf Hotel, which gets a credit at the end of the show, along with Hawaiian Airlines.
• When McGarrett gets off the plane in Hilo with Danno, he says, "Have Lani make reservations for us at a nearby surf hotel." If you look up "surf hotel" on the internet these days, this suggests a place which is located on or near a beach where people can go surfing, there are huge waves, etc. Was there a chain in Hawaii in the late 1970s called "Surf Hotels," including the Naniloa? (I am making inquiries.)
• Quotes from Professor Kalei: "Hawaiians take their oaths seriously." "Truth is always the victor."
• At the end of the show, Philomena says she is abandoning the dig to go to Palmyra Island, "just south of here" (a real place), where she will continue her investigation of "nomads."

GALLERY:

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Rama Maline brought an episode of Perry Mason — The Case of the Feather Cloak (S08E19, broadcast February 11, 1965) — to my attention as having has some connection to The Descent Of The Torches.

Parts of this Perry Mason show, one of two in the entire series which didn't take place in Los Angeles, were actually filmed in Hawaii. (The other was The Case of the Fugitive Fraulein, S09E12, which took place in East Germany — where it was obviously not filmed.) At the beginning of this show, two characters are driving in a Jeep down the road to Hanauma Bay which we have seen in Classic Hawaii Five-O's S01E15, Face Of The Dragon, for example. A bunch of boys and girls rush over to the Jeep when it stops on the beach. It's a guessing game as to what may have been done back on a beach in California or in the studio there with process shots (projected backgrounds).

The two characters in the Jeep are Anona Gilbert and Auntie Hilo. Anona is played by Wende Wagner. Her ancestry included Native American, so there is some vague resemblance to "Hawaiian," sort of like how Al Harrington could play an American Indian during his career. However, the older character in the Jeep, Auntie Hilo (some reference to Hilo Hattie?) is Miriam Goldina, a Russian actress born in 1898 whose appearance and Eastern European accent bely any Hawaiian connection. Goldina's acting, which consists largely of her overpronouncing everything she says, is very bad.

The two women have come to the beach to celebrate Anona's betrothal to Doug Kelland, but the groom-to-be is not there. One of the young people says the event was to be a surprise, but they left Doug surfing at Kamehameha Point. Auntie suggests that location is very dangerous, but a beefy beach boy tells her that Doug was once the "world's surfing champion," though he is now "a beach tramp [involved with] liquor, gambling, divorcees from the hotels, [and] living in that shack by the Point."

We see Anona driving the Jeep away from Hanauma, and she arrives soon enough at the Point where Doug (Michael Dante) is surfing. She yells to Doug from the beach, but he cannot hear her. We see a closeup of a rifle, but not who is holding it, on a hill above the beach. It looks like Anona sees the rifle (or at least the end of it), though she doesn't really turn around. The rifle is fired, and Doug falls off his surfboard, though he soon swims up to the beach none the worse for wear. A bullet hole in the surfboard is discovered, which doesn't make sense considering the angle involved.

Doug doesn't know someone was shooting at him, and when Anona tells him about this, he says to her, "Wahini, have you been smoking opium or something?" (Seriously.) He is annoyed about the attention given to their pending marriage at the beach earlier, because this was supposed to be a secret. He says he intends to find out who put a hole in his surfboard.

It's now about 5:30 into the show, and we finally see Paul Drake and Perry Mason in a car, except in long shots I don't think it is Raymond Burr in the passenger seat, since he either has a large bald spot on the back of his head or is looking away from the camera. When we do see the two actors together, there are some laughably bad process shots with the road behind them.

The two men soon arrive at the house of Jarvis Logan (John Van Dreelen, a debonair European-accented Dutch actor who specialized in Nazi roles). Logan's servant Choy is played by Keye Luke. Mason is dressed in his suit, incongruously un-Hawaiian, like Steve McGarrett on Five-O, whereas Drake is wearing a Hawaiian shirt.

Drake's "job" is to pretend to be an ornithologist and take pictures of how a nearby beach is split in two by Kamehameha Point, which is not Logan's property. Mason is in Hawaii to help Logan with leasing his beach to the Pan Pacific Hotel Corporation though he says the hotel is his actual client.

Doug shows up looking for Professor Heller (David Opatoshu), who is inside Logan's just as Logan, Mason and Drake head to the beach to check out the Point. Logan describes Doug as "our local beachcomber." Why Heller is staying at Logan's is never explained. (In Classic Five-O, Opatoshu, who was white, played Asians badly in two episodes.)

Doug accuses Heller of being the one who took a shot at him, which Heller denies. The professor says he knows that the Point is held under a trust for Anona which her marriage to Doug would terminate, giving her and Doug joint possession of the property.

Only Doug and Heller know that the point is "not a worthless mass of barren rock." There is something of considerable historic significance connected with it, which we will learn about later. The only clue we have is a feather that Doug gave to Heller that he found on the Point. Heller says that "this feather was the culmination, the crowning achievement, 30 years of Polynesian research … years and years and years, a lifetime of searching and working and hoping." Although Heller wasn't the one who shot at Doug, he would be willing to kill Anona so Doug would take total possession of the property after their marriage, but he has "discovered a better way to prevent the marriage, a far better way."

When Drake returns to the hotel where Mason and he are staying, he mentions that some surfers found Doug's perforated board and told him about the engagement to Anona. Mason says that Anona is "the complication that brought us out here. From the courthouse records today I verified a rumor that had reached Pan-Pacific Hotels. While Jarvis Logan has title to the beach on either side of Kamehameha Point, the point itself is held in trust for Anona Gilbert. She's the lineal descendant of one of the great Hawaiian warrior chiefs, who sold his land to Logan's ancestor but for some reason withheld the sale of the Point."

Mason tells Drake to find Doug and "get his theory on the shooting." Meanwhile, Mason goes to a nightclub where Anona is doing a dance for tourists. Mason talks to Anona and tells her why he is in Hawaii, to resolve the issue of her property which is in the middle of the land for the hotel development. She tells him that Logan is "trustee of my estate, such as it is, and if the Point were to become part of the lease, then he said I would receive a share of the money ... Since my parents died when I was five, Mr. Logan has been like a father to me. I've always done everything he said."

Mason tells her, "I have to report on the availability of the land, and when you marry Douglas Kelland, it's quite possible he may have something to say about it." Suddenly their conversation is interrupted by Doug, who appears to be very drunk and is with some blonde bimbo (Joyce Jameson). Doug loudly refers to Anona as "my little kanaka cutie … the best little number on the island if you happen to like the natives." He says to Anona, "Want you to meet my lady friend, baby... Dolly Jameson, a real swinger. [I] decided marriage was for the birds, so I started out on the town, and who did I run into but Dolly. Told her all about you. Said I ought to let you know... [I'm] breaking off the engagement, so letting you know."

After Doug leaves, Anona is shocked. She goes to Auntie's where she lives to find the old lady playing a hymn on a harmonium (pump organ). Anona says, "Doug and I are finished." But Doug soon phones her (which Auntie listens to on the extension), telling her to come to his shack to discuss something. When Anona arrives at the shack, she finds Doug is dead with a spear in his back. Clutching a feather which she finds, she runs out of the place, just as Drake arrives to see Doug. She drops the feather, which Drake picks up.

Drake goes to Logan's place nearby to call the cops, but after the police arrive and deal with Doug's body, Lieutenant Kia (Jon Hall) tells Drake — who mentioned Anona rushing from the scene when he arrived — that there is something fishy, because the spear and spear gun which were seemingly used to kill Doug have disappeared. Kia trips up Drake by mentioning a bird which is now extinct as if it was still around, and Drake falls for this, acting like investigating this still-alive bird is part of his quest, thus exposing Drake's cover as an "ornithologist."

Back at the hotel when he talks to Mason, Drake is freaking out, thinking he will go to jail because of his deception, but Mason says, "As a private detective, you're justified in preserving the confidence of a client, in this case me."

Mason takes a call from Logan, who says he wants Mason to act as Anona's attorney if she needs one. Out of a pack of Morley cigarettes, Drake brings the feather that he picked up at Doug's, realizing that he unintentionally held back this evidence from the cops. Mason and Drake go to Auntie Hilo's, wanting to speak to Anona. Kia is already there, and he says that she "has vanished a second time." Jon Kakai (Tony Scott), one of the beach boys, is also at Auntie's. The old lady tells Mason that she will lie about Anona's whereabouts on the night of Doug's murder, but he cautions her that this is not a good idea.

Mason tracks down Doug's "girl friend" Dolly Jameson, who, it turns out, is Doug's former wife. When she offers Mason a drink, he says, "No thanks." (Shades of Steve McGarrett.) Dolly yaps away about her marriage: "When Dougie-boy was living in California, running that surfboard school, I was married to him. Married? Two worst years of my life." It turns out that because Doug never followed through with conditions of their divorce agreement, they are still married. After Mason leaves, Heller emerges from the next room. The significance of this is hard to understand considering what happens later.

Mason and Drake go to Logan's place again. Logan is concerned that Mason blabbed to Kia about "our business." Mason says that he did reveal details about the property dealings to Kia, but "he's agreed to keep it confidential, unless, of course, it proves to have something to do with Kelland's death."

Anona, who is hiding at Logan's, appears, and puts her self in Mason's hands. He wants to know everything that's happened to her and Drake says they are "a jump ahead of the police." But Kia suddenly shows up!

In the next scene, Drake is seen in front of the Aliʻiōlani Hale Judiciary Building in Honolulu, in real life the home of the Hawaii Supreme Court, seemingly waiting for Mason, who is inside talking to District Attorney Alvarez (James Frawley). Anona's local lawyer is Roberts (Tom Palmer) but Mason tells Alvarez he has been allowed to help with Anona's defence "through the courtesy of your Bar Association." Since the lawyers will not accept a plea bargain on Anona's behalf for manslaughter, Alvarez tells them the charge will be first degree murder adding to Mason, "When the trial is over, I have a feeling I shall be glad not to be in your shoes."

The first witness in court we see is Drake, who says he tried to give the feather he found at the murder scene to Kia, who wouldn't accept it, saying "Horsefeathers!", which causes laughter in the courtroom. This was presumably at a meeting held the next day after Doug's body was found and Drake was worried he was going to end up in the "Honolulu hoosegow."

The spear gun used to kill Doug belonged to Kakai, and his fingerprints are on it with those of Anona. After the murder, Kakai, who had been following Anona, took the gun and spear and hid them on the beach nearby. He tells the court he knows this was a bad thing to do. Mason tries to object to the introduction of the spear gun as evidence, but is shot down by Alvarez.

Mason and Drake go back to Doug's shack to have lunch and brainstorm the case. He says that Anona used the spear gun the previous day, which could account for her fingerprints on it, something which we are just finding out about now.

Mason suggests that the feather which Drake still has is "a lead" to Doug's killer. He tells Drake to check it against a bird that Logan owns, as well as Dolly Jameson's feathered housecoat. But the issue of this feather is becoming annoying. First, why didn't Kia accept this as potential evidence? There could be some issue with the "trail of evidence" for this thing, though, especially after Drake never talked to Kia about it when he first met him at the murder scene. And there are questions about how one can compare this to feathers from other birds and make a determination about what kind of a bird it came from!

When the issue of why was Doug scuba diving late on the evening he was murdered, it is established that his ex-wife used to use this kind of equipment when she was working with dolphins at some aquatic park on the mainland. So what? This is a red herring, just like the constant cutting to people in the courtroom as if to say "Who is the killer?"

Choy tells the court that after Doug was killed, Anona came to Logan's house, looking for him, but he wasn't there. Heller, who is next on the stand, says that he took care of Anona, giving her a sedative. Huh? Is this guy a doctor too? We still don't know why he was at Logan's in the first place.

In his following examination of Logan, Mason is kind of brutal, bringing up the business about selling the two chunks of his land with Kamehameha Point in the middle, which Logan wanted to keep secret. Mason has found out that Logan wanted the Point so he could sell all the land to the hotel company because he has overdue mortgages on his land to the tune of half a million dollars.

But Logan replies to him, "Why should I kill Kelland to prevent a marriage that had already been prevented by Mrs. Kelland [because their divorce was not final]?" When Mason says, "But you didn't know that," meaning the business about the divorce, Logan replies, "Oh, but I did. You see, I was the one who sent for her, paid her fare here from the mainland." But how would Logan have found about Doug's previous marriage? And why was Heller the one in his wife's hotel room? Were Logan and Heller in cahoots?

Drake meets Mason in a restaurant, to update him on the feather comparison. He says it doesn't match the wife's housecoat — but how would he know? They go to a pet shop and find out that from its owner that the mysterious feather is actually from a bird which is extinct (though it really is not, and never was, according to Wikipedia) called the ʻiʻiwi bird, "the sacred scarlet bird of the Hawaiian kings, no specimen of which has been seen in more than 75 years."

Back in court, when Mason shows the feather to Heller, the professor says that despite the fact he is "a renowned expert on ancient Polynesia," he cannot identify it. However, without getting Auntie Hilo qualified as an expert in Hawaiian history, she is suddenly on the stand telling everyone that from the feathers of the ʻiʻiwi bird "and from the yellow feathers of the mamo and the crimson feathers of the apapani, the women wove the shining feather cloaks the ancient warrior kings wore when they were entombed."

Auntie knows that this ʻiʻiwi bird comes from the cloak of King Kamehameha and that she swore an oath to her mother never to reveal the secret place of his burial (which is a secret in real life, by the way) "to anyone not of the royal bloodline." When Doug phoned Anona and told her to come to the beach, Auntie somehow intuited that Doug had found the location of Kamehameha's tomb and she actually wanted to kill him rather than have this secret exposed! Auntie says, "I am now prepared to break my oath if it will help Anona."

Provided with this top-secret information, the trial adjourns to the beach near Doug's shack, where Kakai dons scuba diving gear and goes underwater to an entrance to the Hawaiian king's resting place. He returns to the beach, to tell the judge and the lawyers, "The opening was deeper than Auntie Hilo said … I swam to where steps had been carved in the rock. I climbed to a great cavern. I saw a war canoe and gods carved in wood and polished rolling stones, and then, lying on a flat rock at the far end, the king in his feather cloak. I took only one photograph. When the bulb flashed, the cloak became a flame of crimson and gold fire."

Back in court, Heller, shown the picture of the cloak, says it is "virtually priceless." However, he still denies being able to identify the feather as being from the ʻiʻiwi bird. Choy testifies next, saying that that "It was a similar feather the professor took from an envelope when Mr. Kelland came to accuse him of firing the rifle at him. He knew then what it was." But how does Choy know this? In the scene earlier in the show, Choy was not in the room when Heller took the feather out of the envelope. Was Choy hiding behind the door or something? Choy then tells the court he knew that it was Logan who fired the rifle at Doug.

But Logan, on the stand again, denies killing Doug. He said he shot at him "partly to frighten him and partly because I knew it would bring him running to the professor, who would thereupon scotch the proposed marriage." (This still doesn't explain the relationship between himself and Heller.) Logan says he knew that Doug had told Heller about finding the tomb, and he didn't tell Anona about this because he wanted to share in the proceeds of the cloak's sale. When asked about "how could either of you [presumably meaning Logan and Heller] expect to share in something found on her property," Logan says that "We planned to move the contents of the tomb to another cave ... on my property." Logan still denies killing Doug: "I had no idea he [Doug] was going to tell her [Anona] [about the tomb], nor would I have really cared if he had. It wouldn't have affected the leasing of my land, which was the really important thing to me. Unlike the professor, to whom the feather cloak was all important."

Heller is back on the stand again. "I didn't kill Douglas Kelland. The very importance of the feathered cloak to me precluded that. You see, even though he brought me the ʻiʻiwi feather and I'd paid him the money, he never told me the actual location of the cloak. I had every reason to wish him alive, until I knew that."

Finally, Mason gets Doug's wife on the stand again. He has hotel phone records that show that Doug called Anona to come to his shack from his wife's hotel room, and after he left, she made another call. Mason starts grilling her, but Logan stands up and admits, in a typical Perry Mason finale, that yes, he was the one who killed Doug: "The discovery of a royal tomb would mean Kamehameha Point being taken over by the state as a memorial park. I couldn't have that, because without the Point, I couldn't lease my land. So I... I had to to silence him, before he ruined everything."

This seems kind of lame after all we have gone through!

The show ends on a beach where not only Drake but Mason are wearing Hawaiian shirts, and Alvarez apologies to Mason, "I would be most happy to be in your shoes now, even though you aren't wearing any." Mason explains to Alvarez why he came to Hawaii: "[It was] Logan's idea. He was afraid the arrival of company attorneys to confer with him would tip off the fact he was trying to lease his land. And give the people to whom he owed money a tip-off as to what bad financial shape he was in."

Alvarez tells him, "Anona will be adequately recompensed, as I've told her" for when the State of Hawaii takes over the Point. Anona gives both Drake and Mason a lei and a kiss, and Mason suggests that although Doug is now gone, she might find happiness with someone else, i.e., Jon.

Now that I have dragged you through this interminable retelling of the show, what does this have to do with the The Descent Of The Torches? Well, in that show, two guys attempt to find King Kamehameha's grave which is in a lava tube, except one of them dies an unpleasant death with his head bashed in!

MORE TRIVIA:

• The score for this show, which is nothing special, is by Richard Shores, who did 23 episodes of Classic Five-O.
• Jon Hall, who plays Lieutenant Kia, starred in several films with Maria Montez in the 1940s. According to IMDb, his mother was "a Tahitian princess." He was also a nephew of writer James Norman Hall, co-author (with Charles Nordhoff) of the 1932 novel Mutiny on the Bounty.
• Drake smokes, which I think was normal for the series.

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220. (S10E06) The Ninth Step ★★½

QUICK PLOT:

The search for two fugitives involved in an armored truck robbery is complicated by the return of the disgraced Honolulu cop whose drunken behavior seemingly permitted the robbery.

Click here to read Full Plot.

REVIEW:

Gil Gerard, later of "Buck Rogers in the 25th Century," gives a very good performance as Marty Cobb, a former HPD cop who screwed up 18 months before the show during his involvement with an armored truck robbery because of problems with alcohol, after which he was dismissed from the force. Unfortunately, the episode has a mediocre script where there are a lot of things not explained or things explained not particularly well.

Cobb was supposed to set up a roadblock that had some connection to the robbery. Exactly what this connection was is never stated, and you have to wonder if Cobb was the only cop involved in the operation. Cobb was heard blabbing about his police work, including that which related to the roadblock, while he was getting drunk in bars and this information eventually got to a trio of crooks, Vic Salazar (Emilio Delgado — yes, Luis from Sesame Street) who was a friend of Cobb's girl friend Mavis Tracy (Lynne Ellen Hollinger), Sakai (Seth Sakai) and Harry Kegel ("Cagel" in the subtitles, played by Five-O stuntman Chuck Couch).

At the beginning of the show, Kegel, who worked for Flynn's, the armored vehicle company where he rigged the truck from the robbery so the exhaust fumes would go into its air conditioning system, knocking out the driver and guards, is absconding with the robbery cash which he has been keeping in a safe in the wall of his apartment. He lives in a very dumpy place which looks like a motel. It seems unusual that such a room would have a safe in the wall, but maybe Kegel installed it there himself.

Salazar and Sakai show up just as Harry is leaving. Had they planned to get together on this day at this time to divvy up the loot? Or did they find out that Harry was quitting, a major clue that he suddenly might be trying to run away? Salazar and Sakai are waiting for Harry when he comes out his front door but where does Harry expect to go, considering he's on an island, duh! The two pursue him but Harry eventually drives the wrong way on to a freeway exit ramp and his car flips over in a sequence taken from "Target – A Cop." The car explodes and both Harry and most of the money burn up. Not all of it, though, because Five-O can identify some of the serial numbers on the bills as being from the robbery.

Cobb, who has moved to San Francisco, gets motivated to return to Hawaii after he sees an item on the local news about Harry's fatal crash. But why would this be an item in the news on the mainland, with very specific details, even including Harry's name? To get back to Honolulu, Cobb takes a Pan Am 707, but after it lands, it has changed into a United Airlines 747 (thanks to Kurt and Bobbie).

The first guy Cobb goes to see when he returns is Eddie (George Herman), a bartender in a place where Mavis used to work. Eddie says he has no idea where Cobb's girlfriend is now. Eddie immediately goes to see Salazar and Sakai to let him know that Cobb is back and snooping around.

Cobb has straightened himself out by going to Alcoholics Anonymous and wants to make amends with McGarrett, who is still pissed about the robbery, where one of the guards died.

The title of the episode comes from an Alcoholics Anonymous recovery program, the ninth of twelve steps being "Make direct amends to ... people [that you had harmed through your drinking] wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others." The Hawaii Kai Branch of AA has the phone number of 555-2499.

When McGarrett shows up later at the AA center, taking a chance that Marty will be there, he shows his badge to some bearded hippie-like guy named Charlie, and the part of the badge with his name is upside down. McGarrett seems to be getting his shirt in a knot with Charlie over the fact that people at AA are on a first-name basis, and there are certain protocols to be observed. This center is on some very nice beachfront property.

Marty gets Five-O to help him locate Mavis. When he finds her, she seems very edgy. He suggests that she was the one who set him up, but she denies this. Mavis slipped Cobb a Mickey Finn which kept him out of commission for 36 hours during which the robbery took place, but Mavis insists that she was only trying to protect Marty, who would have likely been killed by the bad guys.

Marty's old partner Barney at the Pearl City branch of HPD helps him find Salazar. A clerk at the Blaisdell Hotel, located at 1154 Fort Street (still there today), tips Cobb off that Salazar's former girlfriend, Melia (Elissa Dulce), works at a lei stand nearby. She sets up Cobb to meet with Salazar at The Blue Mirror, a local bar, but when Cobb goes there, he is punched out by Salazar and some other guy who at first pretends to be Salazar, and the two of them almost immediately overpower Marty, who offers little resistance — surprising, since he used to be a cop. They force a bottle of booze down Cobb's throat and get him to reveal that Mavis told Marty after his return to Hawaii that Salazar was one of the robbers.

There is a great freeze-frame at the end of act two which catches Cobb spitting up whiskey that Salazar and his friend are pouring into Marty. When the show returns, there is another interesting shot with a moving camera when Cobb wakes up drunk in an alley where the two guys dumped him. The shot starts at a booze bottle in a garbage can and then dollies over to where Marty is lying in the gutter.

Mavis ends up in hospital, brutally beaten, presumably by Salazar. She is unconscious and will need plastic surgery. Marty is suspected of the attack on her by McGarrett, especially after he returns to his rented room reeking of booze which Salazar poured over him as well as down his throat and having subsequently hung out in a local bar, much to the horror of his AA handler Gloria (Linda Redfearn).

Meanwhile, Salazar and Sakai are obsessed with fleecing Flynn's again, using the same method of connecting the engine to the air conditioning and knocking out the driver with carbon monoxide. Don't they think someone might clue into this, especially because it is no secret that this was done before? I don't understand why the two are shown driving before Sakai infiltrates Flynn's dressed as a welder while the other employees grab a bite to eat from a lunch wagon. Where do Sakai and Salazar live — right across the street from Flynn's, where they took a room to keep an eye on the place!

Sakai sneaks around the side of the building from the rear (I guess) and manages to elude a guard and no one else from the place sees him. Inside he fixes the exhaust on another truck in the same manner as the previous one, no one noticing. I don't know how he knows that this is the particular truck that will be driving a route soon and will pick up a lot of money. Sakai modifies the vehicle in record time, and then presumably leaves the building and no one pays any attention again. This whole sequence is stupid. But at least the mods on the truck are soon noticed by the maintenance chief (Wallace Landford), who was familiar with those done by the late Harry when he worked there.

Five-O shows up at Flynn's the next day. Cobb wants to help McGarrett, despite the latter saying no thanks, and suddenly appears at Flynn's as well. How did he know that the boys from Five-O would be there? Distracting one of Flynn's employees, Cobb jumps into the particular truck that Duke was going to drive and then pretend to pass out in, hoping that Salazar and Sakai will follow him. McGarrett tries to stop Cobb, jumping towards the front of the truck in what seems like a very dangerous move as it is exiting the garage (he is immediately thrown to the side).

Cobb somehow knows the exact route the truck is going to take, likely because he heard McGarrett talk to Duke about it in a very loud voice, looking at a map on a wall nearby in a script twist designed to let Cobb escape with the truck. Marty turns a couple of corners and is suddenly driving along beside the beach at some place far from Honolulu, being followed by Salazar and Sakai. He is swerving across the road to give the impression the fumes from the engine are kicking in. Cobb pulls off the road and gets shot in the leg for his troubles when he confronts Salazar. McGarrett and Danno have been tailing all of them, and the two crooks are busted.

The music is by Cacavas and is not bad (don't expect an earthquake by my saying this!). It is kind of low-key and the waves are not some finger-biting suspense cues, but the score works in the context of the story. There is some passage near the end which sounds like it has been heard before, though.

WHAT DOES THE TITLE MEAN?

As mentioned above, the title of the episode comes from an Alcoholics Anonymous recovery program, the ninth of twelve steps being "Make direct amends to ... people [that you had harmed through your drinking] wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others."

CASUALTY LIST:

Death: Harry Kegel dies in explosion after crashing car going the wrong way on a freeway ramp.
Injury: Marty Cobb gut punched then forced fed alcohol by Vic Salazar and thug.
Injury: Mavis Tracy severely beaten by Salazar.
Injury: Cobb shoves guard out of the way in order to steal armored truck.
Injury: McGarrett almost hit by armored car truck driven by Cobb; he recovers quickly.
Injury: Cobb hits Salazar with truck door, throwing him several feet.
Injury: Cobb shot in the leg by Salazar.

MORE TRIVIA:

• Mavis Tracy's old address was 1625 Loana.
• McGarrett misprounounces the word "autopsy" with the emphasis on the second syllable (again). He also has an attack of "suppose," and manages to figure out that Harry flipping his car was not an accident, and had some connection to other people who pulled off the robbery with him.
• When McGarrett forces the fallen-off-the-wagon Marty to take a cold shower outdoors by his beachfront house, he almost manages to avoid getting his suit wet. In this scene, we see a bit of the old "McGarrett fire" as he harangues Marty about telling him the truth. He also quotes the 10th AA step to Marty: "Continue to take personal inventory, and when we're wrong, promptly admit it." One web site suggests that step 10 may be one of the least popular of all the 12 steps, because it's simply no fun to be wrong and then have to fess up.
• The Pearl City police station where Marty meets his old partner is located at 1100 Waimano Home Road in the show, it is still there today.
• At the end of the show, McGarrett's car is parked inside the armored car warehouse rather than in the parking lot outside for some reason.

GALLERY:

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221. (S10E07) Shake Hands With The Man On The Moon ★★½  DANNO, BOOK HIM 

QUICK PLOT:

McGarrett has to crack the façade of a U.S. astronaut turned real estate huckster to help convict a developer of two murders.

Click here to read Full Plot.

REVIEW:

John David Knight (David Palmer), an investigative reporter working on an exposé about sleazy real estate developer Frank Devlin (Alan Miller), is lured to a bar called Napleons by someone supposedly with information to sell. After he takes a call, a bomb in the pay phone he is using is set off. Devlin's two goons, Reed (Bob Golden) and Otis (John Gracciano), are responsible for this.

Devlin is planning a peculiarly-named project in "paradise" (i.e., Hawaii) called Moonstone Ranch Estates, and has hired Richard Royce (James Wainwright), a washed-up Apollo astronaut to help him promote it. Royce looks old in comparison to Devlin, but Wainwright was born in 1938, whereas Miller was born in 1929! (The Apollo program ran from 1961 to 1975. Two of its most famous astronauts, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, were born in 1930.)

Royce has a girlfriend, Chris Harmon (Christina Hart), who McGarrett describes as young-looking enough to be Royce's daughter. (Hart was born in 1949.) She is in cahoots with Devlin, who used to be her boyfriend. She was arrested the previous summer in Phoenix for trying to blackmail a state senator and Devil bailed her out of jail.

When we first meet Royce in this show, he is dressed up in a spacesuit and helmet and is glad-handling prospective customers for Devlin's development which has streets with names like Apollo Drive and Sea of Tranquility.

McGarrett is curious why Royce has fallen so low, and talks to another astronaut named Richmond, who lives in Hawaii (newsman Bob Sevey, whose last name is spelled Sevney in the end credits). Richmond tells McGarrett, "I never really understood what happened. Life just turned sour, I guess. [Royce] was a celebrity, signed with a talent agency, but he just couldn't cut it." Richmond has no love for Royce, because while Royce was walking around on the moon, Richmond was only flying the mother ship and Royce got all the glory.

Devlin assigns Royce to go and visit Ramos (Kwan Hi Lim), an old cowboy who owns a ranch with a spectacular view that Devlin is interested in purchasing. Royce returns to Devlin saying "It would be a shame to make him leave even if he did want to sell."

Devlin sends Reed and Otis to go and persuade Ramos to part with his land, and they end up murdering him. Royce, who took a fancy to the old guy, is seriously shaken up and figuring out Devlin's complicity in the murder, attempts to get back at him. He asks for more money to keep him from blabbing and tapes his conversation with Devlin which he intends to take to McGarrett

There are continuity errors with this taped conversation. It originally goes like this:

Royce: I know why you had John Knight killed.
Devlin: Well, if you were sitting on evidence, that makes you an accomplice."

When Royce plays back the tape in his car a few minutes later (of course, the tape stops exactly at the spot where he rewinds it to), the conversation goes like this:

Royce: I know why you had him killed.
Devlin: Well, if you've been sitting on some evidence, it makes you an accomplice."

Royce gets a pretty brutal lambasting from McGarrett, who tells him, "You graduated among the top ten in your class at Annapolis. You were selected out of hundreds by NASA for astronaut training. You've had all kinds of honors heaped upon you, so please, don't give me that loser act. It won't work … What about your skills? What about your expertise? God, you're pathetic. Other men have had bad breaks, but I can't think of anyone who has handled them any worse than you. What do you plan to do? Hang around Devlin for the rest of your life and be his flunky?"

He also gets a reality check from Chris, who has feelings for him despite her connection to Devlin: "Did you really think I could love you? Did you ever really look at who you are? Richard, you are a freak. You belong in a real circus with your funny suit and your little flag. Did you really think I could love a joke? … You're always gonna be somebody's robot. Frank Devlin winds you up, and you go out there and lie to the people. You've got no guts, Richard, and he's absolutely right, you are nothing … Look, I've been hustling since I was 13 years old. I'm not always proud of what I am, but at least I'm not lying to myself. You go out there every day as the great American hero. People trust you, Richard. Don't you know that they're gonna let Devlin steal from them because you say he's A-OK?

Royce has an epiphany-like moment near the Diamond Head Lighthouse where he flashes back to what these these two and Devlin have told him. He finally gets enough guts to get his self-respect back at the end. At Devlin's place, he beats the crap out of the two goons, then throws the developer into a swimming pool and is just about to shoot him, when Five-O appears on the scene, giving McGarrett an excuse for another late-season big speech, saying "Commander, think of the man you were ten years ago. You can be that man again. You've got the same mind, the same character, same talents. Sure, we've all had some bad breaks, and I know you've had more than your share, but for God's sake, pick up the pieces."

The show is pretty logical and Wainwright plays the role of Royce well in kind of a laid-back manner. His voice reminds me of some other actor which I can't place … I think it's a combination of Sam Elliott and Kris Kristofferson. Unfortunately, the music by John Cacavas is really awful, constantly making banal "heroic" statements which fall totally flat. This score seems completely wrong.

CASUALTY LIST:

Death: John David Knight dies in explosion set by Reed and Otis on orders from Frank Devlin.
Death: Ramos killed (shot?) by Reed and Otis on orders from Devlin; his body is mounted on a horse and falls out of the saddle, dragging him on the ground as the horse runs across a field.
Injury (x2): Reed and Otis punched by Royce.
Injury: Royce pushes Devlin into pool.

MORE TRIVIA:

• The name of the episode on the Season 10 DVD label is "Shake Hands With The Man In The Moon."
• Watch the way McGarrett gives the newspaper with the article by Knight in it to Danno at the beginning of the show — he throws the newspaper over the top of his Grand Brougham and it starts to slip down the windshield. A partial headline is seen as Danno reads the paper: "Kracke you up."
• The place where Devlin meets his two goons after he gets a visit from McGarrett looks like the place where the Canadian politician is bumped off the cliff in the upcoming S11E10, "Why Won't Linda Die?"
• McGarrett quote to Royce: "Death is always upsetting, especially when a good man is taken before his time." Devlin gives McGarrett a good quote, too: "You would made a hell of a king."
• When Royce pulls on a new shirt in front of his girlfriend, he says it "could shock a guy into male menopause."
• McGarrett meets Richmond on the Falls of Clyde, the four-masted sailing ship anchored near the Aloha Tower Marketplace.
• The "bookem" is "Danno, book him. Two counts murder one."

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222. (S10E08) Deadly Doubles ★★  BOOK HIM, DANNO 

QUICK PLOT:

A female Russian tennis star decides to defect during a match in Honolulu at the same time as a coach from her team is murdered.

Click here to read Full Plot.

REVIEW:

This is a deadly dull episode about international intrigue at an East-West tennis tournament in Honolulu with Peter Valchek (Kurt Russell), one of the visiting Russian stars, involved in smuggling and murder, while his American counterpart Brent Saunders (Tim Matheson) tries to help Valchek's teammate Katrina Bukowski (Carole Tru Foster) defect.

This show is passable at a basic level if you ignore one big issue, the fact that the Russian characters speak English to each other. Sergei Borzov (Stefan Gierasch), the "cultural liaison" who is accompanying the team, addresses the defected and in-hiding Katrina on TV in English even though her mother appears and makes a tear-stained plea in Russian. But "furriners speakin' English" is the way things were done in the old days, not like now, when the show would probably have subtitles.

The quality of the TV transmission of the mother from Russia is pretty bad. As usual, there are several instances during the show where what's happening in relation to the current case regarding certain people and messages on TV aimed at those people are seen by those people who just happen to be watching when the local news or similar programs are broadcast.

The writing in this show is sloppy. In a storage room which is seemingly near or accessed via the stadium's locker room, Valchek is threatened by Denisovich (Earl Boen), a Russian security officer pretending to be a coach, about diamonds he brought with him from Amsterdam. After Denisovich says he wants a cut of profits from the sale of the diamonds (He suggests they have already been sold: "You delivered them and got your fee."), Valchek murders Denisovich, clubbing him with a wrench.

After her set, Katrina goes to the stadium locker room to take a shower. She gets a matron supervising her to go back outside to the arena to get her jacket and racquet which she "forgot." While the matron is away, Katrina escapes with Brent's help through a skylight in the room by climbing up on some shelving. When the matron returns a few minutes later, you would expect the first thing she would see would be the shelves, which is a clue that something fishy is going on, but this doesn't happen. Instead, she sees Denisovich's body in the shower and screams loudly. The shelves are there later when Five-O is investigating.

It seems odd that Valchek dragged Denisovich's body into the shower just after Katrina escaped. Although the matron was distracted watching the game back on the court, was there enough time for him to dump the body in that location? Obviously it was not there when Katrina was in the shower, because I'm sure she would have freaked out.

Later, Valchek meets with a local man named "Mr. Funai," same last name as actress Helen, who will appear in the show "Invitation to Murder" later this season. Funai says to Valcheck, "I'm ready to conclude our business," but earlier Denisovich suggested that Valchek had already sold the diamonds. This guy gives Peter a suitcase full of money and says he wants him to deposit it in a Swiss bank account when the tennis tour is in Geneva in a couple of weeks. Huh?

When Funai leaves, Peter is busted by a couple of Soviet stooges we have seen snooping around, tailing Brent and Katrina earlier. The two escort Valchek to a nearby car where Borzov awaits. Peter says that he will help Borzov get Katrina back if he just forgets about the money ... but was he dealing in jewels or in cash, like money laundering? This is not clear. Borzov opens one of the tennis ball cans; the bottom has a round metal box in it.

Valchek and Borzov go to the Five-O office where Valcheck rats out his friend Saunders, accusing him of killing Denisovitch. (Peter actually told Borzov he would help to find Katrina, presumably Saunders will spill the beans about her location if he is busted.) Saunders is picked up on a charge of murder and hauled down to HPD. Katrina calls McGarrett as he is interviewing Brent, but she hangs up when McGarrett tries to transfer the call to Saunders, saying it is a "trick." When Five-O goes to Katrina's hideaway (a room in the Mahani Kai hotel) using info from Saunders, they find that she has split.

Valchek is tracked down and taken back to the office. When McGarrett examines the bottoms of the tennis ball cans, all they find is money, including $500 bills which have been officially discontinued since July 14, 1969. Valchek tries to play dumb, but the big "aha" which seals the case against him is the fact that he left footprints in the shower room from two tennis shoes which looked the same on the top, but had different treads on the bottom (talk about a desperate plot device).

As the show comes to an end, McGarrett and Borzov play a game of cat and mouse over the phone, with Borzov saying that Valchek is in the consulate while he is actually sitting right in front of McGarrett. For an all-knowing "member of the intelligence community," one would expect Borzov to be a little more savvy about Valchek's whereabouts.

At the finale, there is a scene in front of "The Eastern European Consulates," including that of Russia, with Katrina unable to decide whether she wants to return to her homeland via Borzov or stay in the USA. When Borzov steps outside of the consulate grounds, McGarrett arrests him for falsifying a phony confession from Valchek which Borzov claims was made in the consulate. Borzov claims he has diplomatic immunity, which is baloney, because this would only apply if he was a diplomat or a consular officer.

I can imagine Jonathan Kaye will have an aneurysm trying to sort this all out diplomatically.

McGarrett in this episode seems very tired. As well, Stefan Gierasch as Borzov is an uninteresting villain; he can't hold a candle to Albert Paulsen as the sinister KGB handler in S03E05, "The Guarnerius Caper."

I got a big surprise regarding the music, expecting it to be stock or credited to Ray at the least. It is by Morton Stevens, probably the most forgettable score he did for the series. According to IMDb, this was supposed to be Stevens' last outing as composer, but he was convinced to return for the final season where he provided music for five out of the 19 shows, including the finale, "Woe To Wo Fat."

CASUALTY LIST:

Death: Carl Denisovich hit in the head with a wrench by Peter Valchek.

MORE TRIVIA:

• During the opening, the Governor describes Katrina as a "pretty girl." You really have to wonder why McGarrett is spending his time at this tennis tournament at all, unless the Governor needs protection or he is just lonely.
• This is the second show this season which mentions the 1976 Montreal Olympics. McGarrett talks about a diver who tried to defect.
• When Denisovich goes into the locker room and motions for Valchek to follow him, we see Kurt Russell start in that direction, going behind Les Keither, who is the referee for the tennis tournament. But then Russell completely disappears!
• Lydia Lei Kayahara is Charlie the lab assistant once again. Danny Kamekona is an investigator at the murder scene in the shower room whose name is "Wong."
• When Saunders asks McGarrett if he would like a drink, McGarrett replies, "No thanks, I never use it."
• Borzov tells Katrina over the phone that if she doesn't co-operate, she will let her lover Saunders "hang." Presumably he means this figuratively, since capital punishment in Hawaii was abolished in 1957.
• Danno gets to interview a blonde babe named Wendy Hillman (Kerry Sherman) who is a member of the American tennis team at poolside. Duke is seen briefly in the Five-O offices helping out with the investigation.
• McGarrett makes a very lame joke to Borzov, referring to Katrina before she disappears: "That little girl is your best kept secret since Sputnik." But Kerry, the girl Danno interviewed, said that Katrina's game was off because of her involvement with Brent!
• A unnamed taxi is seen with the phone number 732-5577 on its roof. A Manoa Cab is also seen.
• Katrina has her hair in a very boring "Russian" fashion for most of the show, but near the end, when she calls Borzov to say that she is "coming back," it looks like she just took a trip to the beauty parlor.
• Use of McGarrett's stock phrase: "May I remind you that this is a murder investigation."
• During this episode, Danno wears a necktie which has the insignium or logo of the US Army.
• When McGarrett is talking to Valchek in the stadium, he shows Valchek his Five-O badge, and then keeps holding on to it, rather than putting it back in his jacket.
• A television reporter on the scene at the show's finale refers to "embassy row," but there are no embassies, only consulates.

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223. (S10E09) Deep Cover ★★  DANNO, BOOK HER 

QUICK PLOT:

McGarrett goes on reserve duty with the U.S. Navy to help an investigation into the murder of a submarine officer.

Click here to read Full Plot.

REVIEW:

Dastardly types from some foreign country which is never specifically identified are up to no good in this episode.

It begins with Maria Robles (the very sexy and sometimes James Bond girl Maud Adams) knocking off Lieutenant Commander Dominic Rizzo (Joe Moore), a Navy man who goes skin diving at seven in the morning every day on an Oahu beach. She speaks to him, much to his surprise, and then shoots him dead with a pistol. When a couple of stooges working with her appear immediately to take care of Rizzo's body, there is no sign of blood on his shirt or anywhere else, rather odd since he was shot at point blank range.

No one makes a fuss about what happened, maybe because the beach was kind of deserted, though about an hour and a quarter after this, a scuba diver (Dale Robinette) who we have seen emerging underwater from a submarine from the so-mysterious-it-cannot-be-named country manages to struggle to shore. Maria goes to meet him, and the guy immediately starts pretending to have the bends. When he goes into his act, it's surprising that none of the many swimmers on the beach realize he only started doing this when he came out of the surf, and not before. Maria yells for a concerned spectactor to "get an ambulance."

He does not get an ambulance, but a Coast Guard helicopter from Barbers Point, which transfers him to an US Navy ambulance which then takes him to "Pearl," where he is placed in a decompression chamber. He is admitted under the name of Gregg Campini and is accompanied there by Maria, "his very pretty wife." Just around this time, Rizzo's body is found in some bushes by one of two kids playing with a Frisbee.

McGarrett is summoned by his pal Commander Chris Nolan (Geoffrey Lewis, costar with Clint Eastwood in several films) to a meeting with Captain Fitzsimmons (Don Rockwell), who is in charge of the Navy's Submarine Training Center on Ford Island. Fitzsimmons wants McGarrett to "work very closely" with Nolan in investigating Rizzo's death. He was one of a group of 140 men from all over the world who are receiving a complete indoctrination on a new anti-missile system. Just around the time Rizzo was killed that morning, the mysterious submarine which dropped off the diver was detected surfacing off Oahu, also suspicious. The diver's pseudonym is "Campini," real name Michael Trikonis; his last name is only given in the show's end credits.

McGarrett will have to forego his civilian garb "to attract as little attention as possible," but since he is a Commander in the Naval Reserve, he is ordered to "consider yourself on drill status" and outfitted appropriately.

First order of business for McGarrett is to talk to Lieutenant Commander David Harner who is at Tripler Medical Center, taking his annual physical which is "like going through the Mayo Clinic." Harner arrived to join the special training mission with his pal Rizzo from the fleet ballistic facility at Rota, Spain only a week before.

Then McGarrett talks to Iolani (Lydia Jade) at the forensics lab, who tells him that on Rizzo's body she found volcanic sand which can only be found at Sandy Beach just below Makapu'u Point — very close to where the submarine surfaced.

Meanwhile, Campini is released from treatment, though asked to stick around in the hospital just to make sure he doesn't have any side effects. There is some confusion here because Trikonis was taken to the decompression chamber at "Pearl," but he is suddenly in Tripler, which is the place where Harner is having his checkup. These are two different places, but later on McGarrett tells Duke to "go out to Pearl and [get an artist's sketch] at the decompression unit in Tripler Hospital," suggesting they are the same place as far as the show is concerned.

Already at this point we can see that see that Trikonis is a dead ringer for Harner, especially once he shaves off his silly-looking beard which looks like it is pasted on. Maria outfits herself as a nurse and goes to see Harner to give him an injection of Vitamin B12, but instead it is some potion that knocks him out within a few seconds. Harner isn't the least bit suspicious, instead chatting up Nurse Maria ... after all, she is Maud Adams!

The two stooges who got rid of Rizzo appear dressed as hospital orderlies and take real Harner out of the place in a wheelchair, and Trikonis (fake Harner) takes his double's place in his hospital bed and later joins the training class. Later, Trikonis goes to some middle-of-nowhere house where Harner is being kept in a room which is a duplicate of one in the hospital. This house is not some dump, considering where it is located.

Trikonis is worried, because a newspaper article has appeared with a headline "Body of Slain Naval Officer Found Near Waeleii," referring to his pal Rizzo. Maria tells him there is nothing to worry about, and there is some tension between the two of them. Trikonis' imitation of Harner is a bit too perfect; he does not lapse into an accent from whatever country he is from and seems to have mastered speakin' American.

Back at the base, Trikonis is shown participating in an intensive underwater exercise, and later when McGarrett sees him and wants to talk to him, doesn't recognize McGarrett, which later makes McGarrett curious. Five-O tracks down an apartment where the "Campinis" were staying which turns out to be a dead end and artists' sketches of the couple are created.

Trikonis' undoing begins when he has his teeth checked up by Captain Kemp (Bob Basso) as part of his physical. Kemp says it looks like his previous dentist must have gone to school at "the University of Moscow," because he has a lot of stainless steel in his mouth. Trikonis tries to explain this as a result of his father having worked for the foreign service, and the dental work was done in Yugoslavia. Kemp says he will send for Harner's dental records, because he didn't bring them with him from Spain. Fearing what will happen, Trikonis manages to figure out where Kemp, who considers himself to be a swinger, will be frequenting a certain bar. Maria meets Kemp there, though Trikonis is beside her hiding his face. She leaves with Kemp who later is found dead.

Trikonis gets a bit too worried about what will happen because of the fillings, and when he comes home from shopping for groceries, Maria gives him an injection of "sodium pentothal." This is typically used to knock someone out like in anesthesia or even prepare them for a lethal injection.

After this, Maria drives the real Harner back to the base. There is a guard at the gate, but he doesn't pay much attention to the two of them when they enter in a brown Ford Mustang. As Maria drops him off near his quarters, she tells him, "Now, remember, when you leave the sub, you go back to the telephone booth outside your quarters and wait for my call ... I'll leave the car waiting for you here." Looking zombie-like, Harner says, "I understand." But having been revived from the dead at the hideout, he does not act in a near-comatose manner after this like someone who is drugged or under hypnosis. He takes part in another training session where he and several other Navy men save a "ship" which has sprung leaks and is in danger of sinking. This exercise looks like the end of a major step in their training, and the men, including Harner, are in a celebratory mood.

Harner's dental records having arrived, he goes for another examination, and the records totally match what is in his mouth — no surprise there. The dentist tells McGarrett, "The records from Washington make no mention of stainless steel fillings. They're either acrylic, gold or silver." Considering this does not match the "stainless steel" that Kemp found, McGarrett asks him, "Doctor, are you telling me that David Harner really isn't David Harner?" The dentist replies, "All I'm saying is that the records show that David Harner does not have stainless steel fillings in his mouth."

McGarrett starts brainstorming that there was a duplicate for Harner, which is why "Harner" didn't recognize him earlier, Rizzo was killed because he was "the one person on this island who knew Harner well enough to expose an imposter," and Kemp was murdered because he wanted to get the dental records.

Because it seems that the dental examination two paragraphs before this one was not ordered by McGarrett, McGarrett goes and grabs Harner before his training class will board the USS Puffer to check out the new guidance system. He gets the dentist to check Harner again and the results are exactly the same — in other words "David Harner is David Harner." Harner doesn't have any bad reaction to being escorted back to the dental office by two armed MPs or the examination itself, merely saying, "Haven't we done this before?"

McGarrett tells Admiral Dunn (Jeff Kennedy), the big boss in charge, that "There's a double. There has to be two lookalikes, and somehow, they've switched back to the real Harner," adding, "We're dealing with people who are both deadly and extraordinarily resourceful. Now, I don't know how they've done it, but they've programmed Harner to act as their tool. And so the guidance system has got to be their target."

As Harner leaves the building later, he is contacted by Maria through a pay telephone right beside his car, which Maria left parked outside his quarters, but how she would know he is at that exact location at that exact time? She later says, "Timed my call to catch him just as he was leaving the training mission," but this is baloney, because he also went to the dentist! Harner answers by saying "I understand," again in a robotic voice.

Harner is then tailed by Nolan and McGarrett to a beach where Maria, the two stooges and Trikonis are waiting for a submarine. There is a Zodiac boat there which they will use, in a scene with some similarities to the end of S02E22, "Nightmare Road." Harner drives to the beach using the brown Mustang which prompts some questions about what Maria did in the interim after she drove him to the base. Did she leave there by foot or by cab? She is outdoors when she is speaking to Harner on the pay phone. When she arrived at the beach, she was driving the brown Mercury Marquis which was used by the stooges at the beginning of the show.

McGarrett and Nolan pull up behind Harner as he parks behind Maria's Marquis. Harner is clueless as to what he is doing there, saying "I think I'm supposed to meet someone. I don't know who or why," but he recognizes McGarrett from earlier, which is a good sign, because it means he is the "real Harner." In a move similar to the end of the upcoming S12E08, "Voice of Terror," McGarrett, who is outfitted the same as Harner, pretends to be him, walking down a hill to meet Maria while trying to keep her from seeing his face. Maria gets the stooges to knock off Trikonis, telling him, "We'll be leaving shortly. Too bad you can't join us … There's one more service you can perform for us, Michael. You can play Commander Harner as a dead man."

McGarrett moves quickly to literally grab Maria literally and prevent her from swallowing a poison pill. The stooges are also busted. As to why Trikonis was shot, McGarrett speculates that they were going to take the real Harner back to the mystery country and when Trikonis was found, "We were supposed to ... think it was Commander Harner." But this is totally stupid, because Trikonis had stainless steel dental work and would have quickly been identified! As well, would Harner know what further information Trikonis assimilated during the exercises? Was the plan to kill Trikonis and kidnap Harner the one the bad guys had all along, or was it an act of desperation because their plot had begun to unravel?

The end of the show totally makes me think like the writer got up to a certain point, and then wrote himself into a corner that he couldn't get out of easily.

The business about Harner being under the control of the bad guys, either because of the influence of drugs or mind programming or whatever, is not elaborated on at all and his reactions to what is going on around him are inconsistent.

How Trikonis' instructors and handlers in the mysterious country (which, let's face it, is probably Russia) knew in advance that Harner was going to be chosen to participate in the program, that he would be sent from Spain to Hawaii at exactly a certain time, he would have very specific knowledge about submarine matters and would have learned a lot between the time he arrived from Spain and the time Trikonis got there, and (deep breath here for this long sentence) that a lot of effort would be expended creating a doppelgänger for him (or do them Russkies just have a huge pool of duplicate Navy men to draw from?) is extremely far-fetched.

The score to this show is by Ernest Gold, who won the Academy Award for Exodus in 1960, which beat out Alex North's superb score to Spartacus. It is nothing special, and seems kind of distant from the typical Five-O score.

WHAT DOES THE TITLE MEAN?

Spies have a "cover" — an identity and back story that allows them to function in their assigned area. A "deep cover" is for a spy that is really undercover, probably for years. It's an identity and back story that is minutely detailed right down to the ground. It might involve dental work or even plastic surgery. (Thanks to Karen Rhodes)

On the phone: Get me Admiral Dunn at Pearl please and set up a conference call with Commander Nolan.

To Danno: You get his name and address?

To Harner: I was wondering if you recalled anything else that might be helpful.

To Danno: Find out where this Campini works. I wanna talk to him.

Duke, see that landlady again and get a composite sketch made of Mrs. Campini. Then go out to Pearl and do the same thing at the decompression unit in Tripler Hospital.

We've got to find that woman.

You got something, gentlemen?

Danno, get a court order. I want the Campini apartment searched immediately.

To Nolan: Let's go over to Kemp's office. I wanna look at his records. We should check every patient he saw at least a week before he was murdered.

To Kemp's nurse: Will you let us know as soon as they [the dental records] come in?

All right, Danno. But have the lab boys go over the place anyway.

To Nolan: I wanna look that horse in the mouth.

Danno, take Duke and Chin with you. You know what to do.

Chris, you better notify Pearl that the unidentified submarine they've been shadowing out there is about to surface.

To Maria: Hold it. Open it [your hand]. Open it.

All right, Danno, book her. Murder one, three counts. -->

CASUALTY LIST:

Death: Dominic Rizzo shot by Maria Noble.
Death: Kemp, Naval dentist, stabbed (killer unknown, possibly Maria).
Death: Michael Trikonis shot by thugs working with Maria.

MORE TRIVIA:

• When Maria as a nurse comes into Harner's room to give him his "shot," he is reading Some Pleasure There To Find, a book by Elizabeth Rossiter published in 1977 by Avon Books. I think this is a romance novel aimed at women. It is worth a fair amount of money these days, probably because it seems very "rare."
• In this show, McGarrett is said to have "a Naval top secret clearance," aside from being a Commander in the Naval Reserve.
• Sometimes Maud Adams' character has a slight accent, other times she has no accent at all.
• There is a scene which drives me nuts where McGarrett is watching Harner in a car mirror — I'm sure there is something wrong about the angle of this scene!
• Interesting quote from Admiral Dunn talking to McGarrett near the beginning: "The arms race today is really a computer race."
• When Trikonis pulls up to the hideout in act three, he opens the door of his Ford Pinto and some beeping noise goes off inside, until he eventually shuts the door. Usually this sound happens when you leave the keys in the ignition in the car. But it looks like he takes the keys and puts them on the dashboard.
• I asked a friend who has been in the U.S. Coast Guard if someone pretended to have the bends whether this could produce any side effects, and she pointed me to an article discussing this. Whether this could apply to what happens in the show is a good question.
• This is the second show this season where "lava sand" provides an important clue, the other being S10E04, "The Friends Of Joey Kalima." The lab technician who figures this out is named "Dolani" in the subtitles and end credits, but both McGarrett and Danno address her as "Iolani."
• The "bookem" is "All right, Danno, book her. Murder one, three counts."

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224. (S10E10) Tsunami ★★½  BOOK THEM 

QUICK PLOT:

Students engineer a phony tidal wave alert to cover up their heist of millions of dollars worth of jewellery.

Click here to read Full Plot.

REVIEW:

In this episode, clever students with 130-plus IQs known as "The Brain Trust" who live in a communal house engineer a hoax about an impending tidal wave to cover up their robbery of a jewellery store. The plot has some similarity to S02E03, "Forty Feet High and It Kills!" where a bogus tsunami alert was also manufactured, in that case by Wo Fat to cover up the kidnapping of a genetic scientist. The trope of "clever students" has been used in S02E08, "King Kamehameha Blues," where a quartet of same plotted to steal a priceless Hawaiian artifact, and in the yet-to-be seen S12E15, "The Flight of the Jewels," more students team up to grab other priceless artifacts, Hawaiian royal jewels.

At the beginning of this show, the Brain Trust students steal a Pacific Ambulance. During their getaway they run over one of the ambulance attendants played uncredited by stuntman Chuck Couch. This causes friction between one of their members, Kenji Tatsumo (Ron Nakahara) and the group's leaders, Ted Bonner (Leigh McCloskey) and Shirley Collins (Ayn Ruymen). Collins looks similar to Charles Manson follower Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme, and is described by Tatsumo as a "thrill crazy chick." When Tatsumo announces he is pulling out of the plan and drives to the Iolani Palace to spill the beans to Five-O, Collins follows him and shoots him dead, right on the palace's front steps. When McGarrett hears about this, he is apoplectic.

Collins gives a few hints that she is sexually excited by pulling one over on the people of Honolulu on such a grand scale. She and Bonner, who she calls "sweetheart," have hot pants for each other, something the screenwriter might have explored more fully.

As part of their scheme, these two Brain Trust leaders enter the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration office where the Tsunami Warning Center is located and force Ron Bradford (Sid Clute), the boss of the place, to send out a phony alert via telex. They are first masked when they enter, but take Bradford's glasses and smash them on the floor, somehow knowing that he cannot see anything past his nose without them. If this is the case, it is curious as to how they can make Bradford type out a warning which will be sent "by teletype to all stations" and which will be believed by its recipients because everything Bradford reports is "taken as gospel." It will take about two hours for the military to confirm that the resulting tsunami from a major earthquake, in this case with a magnitude of 8.5, is really happening, which is just enough time for the other members of the group to pull off the robbery.

When the sirens go off for people to get to higher ground, Five-O is ordered by the Governor "to coordinate with military and civil defense." This seems unusual — surely there would be more "professional" people connected with civil defense who would deal with the evacuation like the mayor of Honolulu or even the Governor himself.

On a live TV broadcast, McGarrett joins geophysicist, geologist, seismologist, hydrologist or oceanographer (pick one) Dr. Dimitri Sartain (Lyle Bettger), "responsible for the tsunami warning system of the entire Pacific area." Sartain gives an unconvincing demonstration of the effects of a tsunami using the metal tray from a paint roller. McGarrett acts like he is the host of the show, addressing the TV audience, and Chin Ho and Duke are seen manning phones nearby in a scene that looks like it's taking place on a charity telethon.

Historical footage is shown of the tsunami which destroyed or damaged more than 500 homes and businesses and killed 61 people in Hilo on May 22, 1960, said to have happened in 1958. You have to wonder if people would really be watching this broadcast, when they should be heading for the hills!

With the streets of Honolulu pretty well now deserted, the remaining students break into Staddler's Jewellry — but why did they choose only this particular store, and how did they know that it had $6 million worth of jewellery for the taking on its shelves and in its safe? Using a police car which they have painted to look like an HPD cruiser and wearing HPD uniforms, some of the Brain Trust pretend they are cops arresting their members who broke into the store, so real HPD cops who respond to the jewellery store's alarm won't get suspicious. This demonstrates that the students are not only geniuses in their respective fields, but also in auto body work. Even Duke comments, "Somebody did an expert job painting that blue and white."

The way McGarrett and Danno have a dual brainstorm at the end of the show to determine that the Brain Trust is behind the hoax is far too easy, and the closing scene has the typical later season peters-out kind of resolution, despite a few moments in the students' house where McGarrett's blood pressure rises a bit and he indulges in a bit of speechifying.

McGarrett's claim that the Trust's one big flaw in their plan was the fact that Tatsumo "had a conscience as well as a high IQ," and as a result had to be killed on the steps of the Iolani Palace is not correct, though I'm sure he was just saying this to get under their skin. Their big flaw was the fact that the three people who knew about why Kenji died – Ted, the big boss, Shirley and Larry (Jim Simpson), who drove Shirley in the car that followed Kenji — never told the other members, which they discussed, but obviously never followed through, saying "What they don't know, they can't talk about."

McGarrett's ruse works very well, because Adrienne (Kathy Yano), who acted like a bitch earlier, suddenly freaks out, telling Ted she is "not gonna take any fall for murder." Shirley goes psycho, threatening to kill McGarrett with her gun, but Danno disarms her and a couple of shots go wild, one hitting a nearby fish tank with no fish in it where the jewels are buried in the gravel at the bottom.

There are some unanswered questions at the end of the show.

Could the population of Honolulu really have been evacuated to the extent that there was no one seen driving on local roads in less than two hours?

And where did the students expect to fence all the jewellery? In a later episode, S12E13, "For Old Times Sake," an aged counterfeiter connected with some residents of a home for wayward girls who also steal some jewellery suggests that for a bracelet worth $10,000 they would be lucky to get $1,000.

Still, despite the show's flaws, it is entertaining. The music is by John Cacavas and is OK, though the score at the end sounds like it is taken from Broughton's music to the "pirates" movie earlier this season.

CASUALTY LIST:

Injury: Ambulance attendant run over when he tries to stop Larry Marsh, Shirley Collins and Kenji Tatsumo from stealing his vehicle; later reported to be in "critical condition."
Death: Tatsumo shot by Shirley on the Iolani Palace steps.
Injury: Bradford hit in the head and temporarily knocked out by Ted Bonner or Shirley when they leave his office.

MORE TRIVIA:

• The sign outside the office where Bradford works reads "U.S. Department of Commerce, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, National Weather Service, Honolulu Observatory, Tsunami Warning Center, Geophysics." A further sign says "U.S. Government Property, No Trespassing, Entrance restricted to residents, guests and personnel on authorized business only."
• McGarrett asks Five-O to "check every militant organization on the [university] campus" to find information on Tatsumo. The Brain Trust plants things in Tatsumo's room like a heavy-duty rifle plus various literature connected with terrorist groups to divert Five-O away from any connection between them and his murder. Che Fong is mentioned (but not seen) in relation to checking the rifle for clues. He determines "it was stolen from a collection a few months ago."
• When Danno shows up at the Brain Trust's pad to grill the students about Tatsumo's murder, Adrienne smiles at him and says "You can arrest me any time."
• The civil defense trucks appear broadcasting in multiple languages, including English, Hawaiian and Japanese. A shot of one of these trucks going up a hill is repeated from S07E01, "The Young Assassins" (thanks to Bobbi).
• When people in Kapiolani Park seen from above via a helicopter are evacuating, the footage comes from S06E12, "Anybody Can Build a Bomb."
• It is interesting that Tatsumo parks relatively far away from the front steps of the Iolani Palace, which gives Shirley more time to pursue and shoot Kenji. As Shirley is walking towards the palace, Larry gets back in the car, uttering the word "bastard," according to the subtitles. You can barely hear this. If this really is that word (click here, you have to listen quickly), it would be the second of three times this word is heard in the series. Click on the arrow to hear it again if necessary.
• In the command center after the alert is sent out, McGarrett is briefly seen on a TV set where his image is the video that is actually being broadcast, not the usual technique of matting footage into the picture tube area on the monitor.
• "Kahala" in the subtitles is spelled "Kohala."
• McGarrett mispronounces "helipad" as "hellopad."
• The "bookem" is "Book them, murder one, all of them." I would suggest that McGarrett is going to have difficulty making that charge stick, since most of the students could just be charged with other things that he mentions, like "assault and battery, assault with a deadly weapon, impersonating a police officer, kidnapping [who gets kidnapped?] and grand theft."

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225. (S10E11) “East Wind, Ill Wind” ★★★  BOOK THEM 

QUICK PLOT:

After an exiled foreign leader dies in a swimming mishap that looks accidental, his widow is convinced it was murder.

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REVIEW:

This show starts out very much like "Deep Cover" only 2 episodes before. In that show, a woman at the beach freaks out because some scuba driver emerging from the surf who is really a Russian operative is pretending to have the bends and she appeals to people nearby for help. In this episode, a woman freaks out because some guy who tried to rescue her after she fell off her 16-foot Sunfish is "drowning." She appeals to people to help rescue him, but he has actually been murdered by a scuba diver who was nearby underwater and working in cahoots with her.

The guy who got knocked off is Salgi Sandanarik (uncredited actor), a candidate for the Nobel Prize in literature. For a short while he was the political as well as moral leader of his unnamed nation. He found refuge in Honolulu three months before after being exiled from his native land for his "symbolic poetry on freedom of the human spirit."

One question immediately pops to mind regarding this guy: If he was a controversial person, why was he wandering around on the beach by himself? Surely he should have had bodyguards or some security people making sure he didn't get killed!

It is also very odd that Pete Colby (John Allen), the scuba diver who pulled Sandanarik underwater, comes to shore and tells Helen Macy (Mary-Angela), the woman from the Sunfish, "[go] into your act," and then sneaks away with no one seeing him. This is similar again to "Deep Cover" where a Navy man was murdered early in the morning when there was seemingly no one on the beach (there was an hour later) and his body was then "disposed of." No one "saw this" either. Later, Colby's equipment is discovered where he abandoned it near the beach, though.

Kati Parisa (the emaciated-looking Sian Barbara Allen), who is watching on shore, though hidden, is a witness to Sandanarik's drowning. She is a student of his, and he arranged for her escape from their country to Hawaii. She is mute because she was horribly tortured by the dreaded secret police of her home nation. Kati freaks out and runs away, almost getting run over by a yellow Ford Bronco, perhaps the same car which has appeared in numerous other episodes. She goes to see Charlie Davilo (Michael Durrell) to let him know what has happened. Davilo's relationship to most people in the show is not made clear until much later in the show.

Soon after this, McGarrett and Danno go to see Sandanarik's widow (the attractive Marisa Pavan). She seems emotionally detached, considering what has just happened to her husband, and McGarrett treats her like he is walking on eggshells. She does not waste any time in telling him "I know in my heart that my husband was killed by the secret police from our country." He was slated to present a report at the upcoming Pacific Conference on Human Rights which was to alert people to "the torture, the unspeakable atrocities that are inflicted on innocent people in our country." A dossier describing these abuses with affidavits and photographs which were smuggled out of her country at great cost has been stolen from the safe-deposit box at the hotel.

Mme. Sandanarik tells McGarrett she is suspicious of Kati, who "may well have been with my husband," meaning around the time he died, wondering if she was a witness to or an accomplice in his murder. As well, she is skeptical that Kati's inability to speak is genuine. McGarrett tells her, "We'll look into it." After they leave, McGarrett tells Danno that things are more complicated than it seems. Mme. Sandanarik is not only her husband's widow, but the sister of Generalissimo Samacara, "the strongman who overthrew the Sandanarik government." Her demeanor make you wonder if she really is playing both sides of the fence.

Five-O launches an investigation into Helen Macy, who is seen on TV telling what happened at the beach. It's discovered that she "used to be a beach bunny [who] hung around with the top surfers of the Pipeline in Waimea Bay [and] could swim like a barracuda." Five-O is also searching for Kati.

At Sandanarik's funeral which takes place in pouring rain, Kati wants to leave flowers, but watches from a distance with Davilo, whose connection to Sandanarik is never specified. He tells her, "We can't trust anyone down there." Macy is at the funeral, but she leaves the ceremony before it is over. Danno tells McGarrett that she is "taking it awfully hard," but McGarrett points out that "Her only problem is ... there were no tears." When McGarrett asks Mme. Sandanarik after the funeral if she recognizes Macy, she says that she knows who she is from her pictures in the paper and suspects that "she is one of the assassins."

McGarrett gets a phone call from Jonathan Kaye who says how the American government will respond to recognition of Sandanarik's country's new regime "will depend, to a great extent, on you and what you can find out about Sandanarik's death." At Kaye's request, McGarrett meets with Derek Hoffman (Bo Brundin), "one of many professional diplomats the generalissimo found need of when he took power." Hoffman has a very mysterious accent which sounds Irish (the actor is actually Swedish). If the part was played today, it would be played by Christoph Waltz, who resembles Brundin vocally.

Hoffman tells McGarrett, "Sandanarik was a fine writer. But as an administrator, I'm afraid his dreams were just that. You are undoubtedly aware of the bad effect the press coverage of Sandanarik's death and Madame's statement have had on my government's image. Especially in light of this week's conference on human rights … I merely ask that you explain that our government, in spite of their differences with Sandanarik, is willing to offer all assistance in clearing up the matter." McGarrett finds this suggestion perturbing, saying, "Are you telling me that intelligence agents of your country are operating here now?" which seems like he is extrapolating a bit too much. Hoffman is equally perturbed: "I am saying nothing of the sort. The generalissimo would not dream of sending agents into a friendly country." McGarrett keeps prodding: "Unless you supply me with the names of your agents, I'm afraid there is nothing further for us to discuss, Mr. Hoffman." When Hoffman tells him, "But I have no names. All I have is the best interest [of] twenty million unfortunate people who will see themselves more and more isolated from sources of help if the soiling of their country continues," McGarrett recommends that Hoffman employ "a public-relations firm … a damn good one," and Hoffman leaves.

We switch to Colby's place where we find out that he was not only in charge of knocking off Sandanarik, but also stealing the dossier from the hotel as requested by Zadak, who is the dreaded boss of the secret police in Sandanarik's former country. Five-O has discovered a connection between Macy and Colby; she was paying for certain "services" which Colby received like a hospital bill. When Colby gets paid for the dossier, he turns it over to Hoffman, who discovers that the pages are all blank.

Kati shows up at McGarrett's office and takes him to where Davilo is staying, because he has been badly beaten up. Later in the hospital, Davilo tells McGarrett the dossier in the hotel deposit box was intentionally the blank one, and he has the real one, which is in a safe place. But how did the bad guys know that Davilo was the one who had the dossier, and not Colby? This is never explained at all! Davilo also tells McGarrett that Kati witnessed Sandanarik's death but "she doesn't know who did it." Davilo intends to present the dossier at the human rights conference. He knows that Zadak was responsible for him getting beaten up, but has no idea what Zadak looks like, because he, like most people, has never seen him.

McGarrett goes to see Macy, who works as a manicurist in a hotel. He keeps staring at her while she is working on his nails, and finally reveals who he is, mentioning Colby's name and saying "Ambitious girl tackles more and more and more, and then murder. That's when they always get caught." Before he leaves, he tells her, "Sometimes, the ones who confess first suffer the least," as he slips her his business card and some cash to pay for the job on his nails. He tells her, "My office is at the Ililani Palace [!]." Macy rushes to a phone and calls Colby (who is still alive!), telling him she wants to leave town ASAP for Hong Kong that evening "with a bag full of bills." Chin and Duke tail her — closely as usual — to her home, where she is shot dead on the street outside by an unknown assailant.

Hoffman comes to see Mme. Sandanarik, saying "I am only here as a representative to your brother, Madame. Please. Consider the plight of your people and the irreparable damage the dossier could do to them, not to mention, your brother." She basically tells him to get lost: "I think my brother and I understand one another … I can offer you no help." Finally we know what her real feelings are towards the current regime in her husband's former country! Unfortunately, McGarrett does not hear this conversation, and he still has suspicions about Mme. Sandanarik despite her enthusiasm after hearing that her husband's assassin is in custody.

Colby comes to the hospital where Davilo is getting ready to leave. Suspecting that something sinister might soon happen because he feels Zadak is "still in the islands," McGarrett pulls a scam pretending to be Davilo in a wheelchair, and when Colby shows up on the fourth floor, he is busted, along with some other thug. McGarrett is curious about why Colby came to the hospital, since he only told Mme. Sandanarik that Davilo and Kati were there, but his curiosity is soon satisfied, thanks to a court order to check her hotel room for bugs and one is found.

Davilo arrives at the conference and delivers the presentation from Sandinarik. While this is going on, Kati is horrified to see Hoffman and tells McGarrett (finally managing to speak for the first time in the show) that he is the dreaded Zadak, who was responsible for her torture. Hoffman is pursued by Five-O and HPD cops, and rather than return to his home country where his fate would be a very bad one, he commits suicide. Davilo's speech is a big success.

I really wonder what was the point of Zadak coming to the conference as a delegate, sitting at the table with representatives from various countries. Was he going to kill Davilo there?

CASUALTY LIST:

Death: Dr. Salgi Sandanarik pulled underwater and drowned by Pete Colby and Helen Macy.
Injury: Charlie Davilo beaten by Zadak’s thugs.
Death: Helen shot twice by Zadak’s thugs.
Death: Zadak/Derek Hoffman shoots himself in the chest.

MORE TRIVIA:

• It's seen raining during Sandanarik's funeral, so much so that the the camera lens gets wet. The windows of McGarrett's Mercury are soaked when seen from the inside, but a view from the outside shows the windows to be completely dry. As McGarrett and Danno arrive at the funeral, McGarrett has his hand on Danno's shoulder.
• The beach where Sandanarik is killed is near Makapu'u Point, same location as the beach scene in "Deep Cover." One of the extras, a blonde guy with thinning hair, seems to appear in both shows.
• Jonathan Kaye is played by Bill Edwards. He tells McGarrett "I understand that his widow came to visit you claiming it was a political assassination," but this is not correct. McGarrett went to see her. McGarrett then remarks "I've told no one of her visit."
• A Manoa Cab is seen with the ubiquitous phone number 732-5577 on its side.
• Don Ray's score has its good points, especially a scene where McGarrett confronts would-be assassins in the hospital. When Colby comes home in his Jaguar XK150, there is some weirdness in the music which sounds like a marimba or a vibraphone with the vibes turned off. The photography of this show is above-average as well.
• A nice touch where Macy is killed outside her house which is on a DEAD END street.
• There are a couple of scenes where McGarrett and Danno are driving which look like process shots (of the kind used in the "new" Five-O)!
• Che Fong is mentioned (but not seen) as having checked some scuba tanks which belonged to Colby. Later, Colby hides the dossier inside a scuba tank, which Hoffman's stooges can not find.
• When McGarrett is getting his manicure done, we get a brief glance at Jack Lord's hairy hands.
• McGarrett snaps his fingers a few times during the show.
• Is Danno drinking on duty when he is interviewing some babe at the Girl Watcher's Bar? Shame!
• Madame Sandanarik speaks French.
• After Colby and some other guy are arrested in the hospital, McGarrett says "Okay, book them, both of them." A Pacific Ambulance, same company seen in "Tsunami," takes Davilo from the hospital to the conference.

GALLERY:

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226. (S10E12) Tread The King’s Shadow ★

QUICK PLOT:

At the Governor's order, McGarrett has to locate a young girl who has run away with her Hawaiian boyfriend her rich father detests because of his "native" background.

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REVIEW:

Sixteen-year-old Debbie Cameron (Deirdre Berthrong) has fallen in love with David Kaluna, a native Hawaiian boy played by the David Cassidy-like Michael Mullins. David's mother Sarah (Emma Veary) is the cleaning lady for McGarrett's office who talks to him about her son because he has been acting "jumpy" recently and she fears he is "in trouble," especially after a detective named Chick Fletcher (Robert Harker) has been seen hanging around their neighborhood spying on David.

Fletcher is employed by Debbie's rich father, George Cameron (James B. Sikking), a friend of the Governor, to whom he has given large political donations. Cameron finds the idea of his lily-white and pampered daughter associating with David, "a Kanaka with brown skin," repugnant.

After showing Debbie pictures Fletcher took of her recently mingling with David, which was forbidden, Cameron pulls out an airplane ticket for a flight that evening which will take her to Switzerland where she has been enrolled in a boarding school. However, Debbie escapes from her father and Fletcher in her car (a Mercedes-Benz 450 SL!) and picks up David at the gas station where he works with the intention of fleeing together to somewhere. When the two of them stop near the ocean to discuss their future, Debbie drops a bombshell on David: she is pregnant.

Soon after this, McGarrett is summoned to the Governor's office where he is assigned to find Debbie because her father thinks that David has "kidnapped" her, saying that David "had his eye on Debbie ever since he came to work at my house." (There are no details as to exactly what David was doing there.) McGarrett can't believe this, responding, "We simply have two young people missing. That hardly constitutes a kidnapping." He tells the Governor in no uncertain terms he doesn't like being used in this manner, and says if David went to the top-rated private Punahou School or belonged to some local country club, Cameron would feel differently. The Governor replies, "Nobody's accusing Mr. Cameron of bigotry," which is baloney, because Cameron is a total prick.

Incorrectly calling the Governor "Phil" twice during the ensuing acrimonious exchange, Cameron tells McGarrett that he has "done more for these natives than you or the Governor." After he leaves, McGarrett refers to Cameron as arrogant, adding "I'm not gonna railroad a kid just because moneybags there resents the color of his skin." The Governor tells McGarrett he is "out of line" and suggests that the case is "political dynamite," harking back to "the Martin case" forty years before which involved a girl from a prominent family and an island boy. This is likely intended to refer to the notorious Massie Case in the 1930s, where a young white Navy wife was gang-raped by several young Hawaiian men. McGarrett is fed up: "Sure. The Martin case. Haole girl, underage. Native boy, brown skin. Works in Kahala instead of lives there. Yes, sir, I read you. I'll handle it. But I do it my way. I don't want any interference … You hired me to run this department. I run it or I leave it." The Governor replies, "Would it do me any good to expect otherwise?"

Debbie and David leave Oahu and flee to the Big Island with the help of David's uncle Noah (John Marley, who played another Hawaiian in S01E23, "The Big Kahuna"). They stay in a shack where David's mother once lived and David helps his uncle with his fishing business. David is sad when he finds a picture of his parents, because his father abandoned his mother without ever marrying her.

When Debbie's Mercedes is located, her father is hanging around while Five-O investigates, making himself a pain in the ass. He suggests that they check for "bloodstains," and directs Fletcher to drag a nearby cove on the assumption that his daughter has been murdered. When McGarrett tells Cameron, "Don't you think [David's] mother is just as worried and he's her only child?", Cameron replies, "I don't care about them. They're not my concern." McGarrett says, "Obviously not. I wonder if that they're Hawaiian has anything to do with it?" Cameron doesn't appreciate McGarrett putting words in his mouth, saying "In the old days, I wouldn't deal with you. I would've handled this my own way." Their war of words ends for the moment with Cameron telling McGarrett, "Just don't make any mistakes. You're vulnerable, you know?" McGarrett tells him, "Cameron. We're all vulnerable. Even you."

Five-O continues their investigation, though Fletcher is seen following Danno at one point. At the garage where David worked, Danno talks to Mike (David Simmons), another employee, who says that before the couple left Oahu, Debbie traded her clothes at a "commune," where "lot[s] of kids live … and many of our friends would just go … when they wanted to get away." Mike says she did this for "a lark" (dictionary definition: an activity that you do not take seriously), but he held on to her dress because he wanted to contact the cops "after the ruckus started," which Danno says was the "right thing" to do. In this dress, very prominently revealed, is an appointment slip for the Mission Clinic at 246 Pauahi Street, Honolulu 96813 for "Mrs. Jane Thompson," age 18, who lives at 142 Seaside Ave. at 3:30 p.m. on 7/17/77.

McGarrett flies to Kona and talks to Noah, but doesn't find out much. On his return to Honolulu, he and Danno go to the clinic, but the receptionist there also doesn't reveal a lot because of privacy issues. She does tell them that Debbie did visit the clinic; David did not. McGarrett figures her visit was connected with "the maternity ward." At his office, McGarrett pleads for information from David's mother, who says that Noah called her (though earlier she said that Noah didn't have a phone), and said that David was helping him on his boat, while Debbie got a job at a nursery picking "pumelia" ("hamelia" in the subtitles).

Back on the Big Island, David is getting frustrated with his lot in life. He and Debbie visit an abortion clinic. When the doctor (Kwan Hi Lim) leaves to prepare for the operation, confronted with a lot of paperwork, David crushes it up, which makes Debbie look relieved. The two of them leave and frolic in front of a gorgeous sunset, with David saying "My kid is going to have a father! My kid is gonna know his father!" However, soon after this, after seeing an article in the newspaper "Debbie Cameron, Runaway or Kidnap Victim," the doctor phones Debbie's father to tell him that she is alive and well and seems "quite happy."

Fletcher traces this call, saying he has his "ways" of doing this, finding out in 25 seconds that it originated on the Big Island. (Compare this with the numerous times when McGarrett gets a call in the office which he wants Danno or someone to trace and they can't do it in a couple of minutes.) Meanwhile, in the little church close to Noah's place, David and Debbie get married. (Whether this would be legal is a good question; currently the minimum age to get married in Hawaii without parental consent is 18, 16 if the parents give the OK.)

McGarrett and Danno return to Hilo, and as they leave the plane, they see one of Cameron's company helicopters parked on the tarmac nearby. Fletcher has somehow tracked down the area where Noah's boat might be at present using some ruse saying that David's mother is sick (I don't know who he would have told this to). The two men from Five-O go to the nursery where Debbie works. She tells him she doesn't have anything to say to her father. When she tells McGarrett that she is pregnant, he says, "Well, you're not the first one." Danno interrupts to say that someone has reported that Cameron and Fletcher are "running down the Lily B" (Noah's boat).

When David on the boat sees Cameron in his helicopter and Fletcher in a speedboat pursuing them, he leaps overboard and swims to the nearby City of Refuge (Pu'uhonua o Honaunau), a place were those who broke kapu (taboo) in olden times could be pardoned. This has been the subject of conversation between Noah and David previously, especially since, according to Noah, David's mother's lineage extends all the way back to none other than King Kamehameha himself.

McGarrett, Danno and Debbie arrive at the City of Refuge in the nick of time, but so does Cameron. He starts to rough up David, who is now on shore, and tells his daughter he wants her to "take [her] away for good." When Debbie says to her father "Davie's my husband. I'm carrying his child," Cameron looks like he has been hit in the face with a mackerel. The show degenerates into a bunch of banalities as McGarrett says "She's talking about your grandchild," and Cameron just wanders off in a daze. Danno says, "Think he'll come around?" and McGarrett replies, "Yeah, in time, Danno. In time. Wait till he sees his first grandchild." End of story!

I have thoroughly disliked this show since I first saw it, primarily because the music by John Cacavas is mind-bogglingly bad. There is a sappy main theme for the two young lovers which sounds like The Carpenters' "Close To You" and some grunting chant-like sounds trying to evoke images of Hawaiian history whenever the City of Refuge is seen. Terrible! This episode would get a much higher rating if the music was better!

I think this is the only show where the music was so bad it seriously lowered the rating. I previously had it at the "BOMB" level, but I have put it back up to 1½ where it was years ago because at least the show is kind of topical with things like teenage pregnancy, generation gap issues, abortion and racism. And there is McGarrett's major bitch-out with the Governor, probably the most "insubordinate" he is to the Gov in the entire series. As someone who grew up in the Sixties, during my re-view, I am beginning to dislike the Governor more and more because he is far too "establishment"!

CASUALTY LIST:

No injuries or deaths!

MORE TRIVIA:

• The nursery where Debbie is working is in Mountain View on the east side of the Big Island. To drive from there to the City of Refuge, on the west side, is over 90 miles, estimated to be a 2 hour trip in Google Maps. But McGarrett, Danno and Debbie get there very quickly while David is being chased by Cameron and Fletcher.
• Close examination of the window at the gas station where David worked reveals a promotion for a "Free Big Mac Sandwich at McDonald's in Hawaii." When David splits with Debbie, he throws his squeegie to Mike, telling him "Thanks, brah," the correct term instead of "bro."
• The company helicopter that Cameron is using is a stock Five-O copter with the number N9014F, flown by Bill Lacy, who is seen ferrying McGarrett around in other episodes.
• When David and his uncle capture a huge fish, it is auctioned off on the docks, with the auctioneer referring to it as "sashimi and all that stuff." Elsewhere, Noah calls a fish "aki" whereas the subtitles refer to it correctly as "aku."
• The Naniloa Surf Hotel gets credit at the end, but is referred to in the show itself as just the "Surf Hotel."
• Another headline in the paper with news about Debbie is "Eight Judges Selected For Brotherhood."
• The word "kanaka" is heard three times; "haole" twice.

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227. (S10E13) The Big Aloha ★½

QUICK PLOT:

A young doctor is suspected in the murder of an elderly surgeon.

Click here to read Full Plot.

REVIEW:

This episode starts out promisingly. An elderly over-the-hill doctor, Gideon Webb, a legend in his own time described as "haole hao" (iron man), is found shot to death in the ocean just as people are getting ready to celebrate his golden jubilee –- "50 years a doctor." Suspicion falls on John Palahana (Cal Bellini), a younger doctor who was intending to report Webb for negligence which resulted in the death of a patient who suffered a fatal hemorrhage during an operation.

Webb was employed at the Kincaid Ranch Hospital which is where Palahana also works. The ranch itself is located somewhere out in the sticks on Oahu (exactly where is never specified), a large concern which raises cattle and also has sugar and pineapple operations. The boss of the ranch is Constance Kincaid, played by Eleanor Parker, whose movie career began in the early 1940s. She is probably best remembered for her role as The Baroness in The Sound of Music.

Kincaid is being pressured to donate some of her property to create a public park, and her son-in-law Kelly Trahune (John Reilly) is in league with Paul Weaver (Carleton Smith), who wants to make a multi-million dollar development on adjacent land.

There is plenty of local color in the script, ranging from Palahana's mother, played by Irmgard Aluli, using the expression "maika'i" (good) when talking to her son, the singing of "The Hukilau Song" and Webb's burial in a traditional ceremony which is where the episode's title comes from. Color is also on display in the show's outstanding photography, especially when the episode is seen on the remastered DVDs from the 2013 complete set. (The 2010 release of the tenth season DVDs, as well known, was not remastered and had mediocre video quality.)

Other examples of local color are specious, however. When McGarrett grills Palahana on the beach over his involvement with Webb's killing, the younger doctor tells McGarrett, "You're barking up the wrong palm." Julie Kincaid Trahune, Kelly's wife and Constance's daughter, played by the Toni Tenille-like Lara Parker, who also starred in the twelfth season all-time bomb episode "A Bird in Hand," uses the expression "Are you out of your coconut?" When Constance tells Palahana to watch his mouth regarding the accusations against Webb at the beginning of the show, he tells her "I am not one of your paniolos [cowboys] any longer," referring to his humble beginnings working on her ranch.

The show goes seriously downhill when it ventures off in several directions with too many red herrings. The night before he died, Webb had a mysterious meeting with Julie. He also had a peculiar accounting system where he kept entries in a bankbook for "services rendered" and "services received."

A private investigator named Frank Lahani hired by Webb snooped around and found out about the development plans of Trahune (exactly how Webb found out about this, which motivated him to hire Lahani is not explained). After this, Weaver (or was it Trahune?) knocked off Webb with Palahana's shotgun which hadn't been touched in years though Palahana tells McGarrett "The doors are never locked out there. People come and go all the time." How Weaver got the rifle out of and back into Palahana's place is also not explained, and neither is how either Weaver or Terhune found out about Webb being interested in what they were doing

Chin Ho goes to Hong Kong, where he finds out Lahani the P.I. was looking into the Cathay Corporation where Trahune owned 40% of the stock (another head-scratcher). This outfit was set up to construct the resort complex next to the park. Lahani was found dead in Hong Kong, a "very professional hit," on the same day that Webb's body washed up on the beach, according to Chin.

Adding to the already-thick plot is the fact that Palahana and Julie "did it" when they were younger, and their love child Kai has been raised by one of the ranch hands, Pete Luana and his wife, without either Palahana or Constance knowing. (Did Luana know the boy's background when he was brought to Hawaii?)

When he found our Julie was pregnant, Webb sent her to the mainland where she gave birth to the boy, but how did they get the baby back to Hawaii to be "adopted"? This past relationship boils to the surface with John and Julie having a loud argument which is interrupted by McGarrett. It turns out that in addition to Webb covering up Julie's pregnancy and the birth of her son, he also falsified a medical report to avoid a scandal after Constance's husband committed suicide by saying that the husband died while cleaning his gun. (No explanation is given as to why the husband killed himself.)

So it turns out that the saintly Doctor Webb was a hero with "feet of clay," as McGarrett tells the Governor at the beginning of the show.

By the time we get to the end, there is far too much information to absorb, and especially considering how bland the villains Terhune and Weaver are, I started yelling a lot at the TV. I felt like Julie, who tells McGarrett, "I don't understand this."

The finale, with Terhune trying to anger a temperamental horse to kill Constance, who he has knocked unconscious, and Julie telling McGarrett that it's "truth time" regarding her son and relationship with Palahana, something Webb talked to her about during their final meeting, is majorly disappointing.

The show would have been a lot better if its script was. It's not just a matter of its circuitous meanderings, but the actors have a lot of difficulty delivering some of their lines convincingly — particularly Cal Bellini, who tends to overemote at the best of times (see the ludicrous S12E08, "Voice of Terror") and Lara Parker.

McGarrett is just doing his job during the show, but he constantly rubs Constance and some of the others the wrong way. Although he is doing a lot of pussyfooting around, which set me on edge, because he was being the Governor's stooge dealing with rich jerks, at least he lived up to what he told the Governor at the beginning of the show: "I only know one way to handle a murder case, and discretion and diplomacy may not be part of it."

Parker gives a good performance playing a Big White Momma type. She accuses McGarrett of being "a bleeding heart liberal who believes the Hawaiians were exploited by the missionaries." She describes the local people as "childlike as far as responsibility and initiative are concerned," telling McGarrett that she and her ancestors, going back to her great-grandfather who "established his mission here," have done a lot for "my people," giving them " pension plans, a hospital, a school for their children." McGarrett responds: "How are they going to learn responsibility if everything is taken care of for them? ... I think initiative is like a muscle. Unless you're allowed to use it, it atrophies." (Augh, such speechifying!)

CASUALTY LIST:

Death: Gideon Webb shot, found at beach drowned, tangled in fishing net.
Death: Frank Lahani killed in "professional hit" in Hong Kong ordered by Paul Weaver.
Injury: Constance Kincaid shoved by Kelly Trahune resulting in head injury.
Injury: Trahune punched by McGarrett after Trahune riles horse named King Kam to stomp Constance.

MORE TRIVIA:

• The music has been changed in two places compared to the original TV broadcasts. I have uploaded brief clips, taken from an old TV dub and the DVDs themselves. The first clip is after Palahana has a fight with Constance and comes out of the house to where people are dancing. There are two guys playing guitars and another playing a bass fiddle, and in the TV version, that's the music you hear. In the DVD version, there is what sounds like a Hawaiian version of "Happy Birthday to You," played by a steel guitar and flute alternating the melody accompanying the dance. The second clip takes place at the funeral of Gideon Webb. In the TV version, Palahana's mother sings the song Hawai`i Aloha, described on a WWW site as "one of the many songs composed by the Reverend Lorenzo Lyons, known as Makua Laiana, who had a church for many years at Waimea, Hawai`i. He died in 1886 [!]." So you would suspect this song is in the public domain. But in the DVD version, it is cut out.

  E Hawai‘i, e ku‘u one hanau e
  Ku‘u home kulaiwi nei
  ‘Oli no au i na pono lani e
  E Hawai‘i, aloha e

  In the TV version, you hear and see the Palahana's mother singing the song and there is a closeup of her as Webb's servant Akino (Yankee Chang) behind her pulls out a hanky and wipes away a tear. But in the DVD version, this shot of Akino is eliminated and there is no closeup of the mother. After this clip on the DVD, Constance says "Beautiful song," but no one has been singing. Instead, there is some generic music. Whether "Happy Birthday," which was substituted for the music in the first clip, was in the public domain at the time of the show is a good question.

• Trying to track down the shotgun that killed Webb, McGarrett picks up a bunch of shells from the area where Constance is practising her skeet shooting on the beach. Later in the Five-O office, McGarrett throws a bag containing these shells at Duke for him to take to the lab. McGarrett throws the bag fairly low, but Duke catches it as if it were flying high up in the air. Duke tells McGarrett that another shell that was found on the beach was fired by Palahana's gun. You have to listen carefully in this sequence to hear Duke say, as he shows McGarrett this recently-acquired evidence, that the shells in the bag will not be necessary: "This [the subtitles say "the"] shell we found on the beach [using metal detectors mentioned earlier] are [sic] a perfect match for the gun owned by Doctor Palahana."
• Constance addresses the Governor, who shows up at the celebration for Webb, as "Philip," suggesting that writer Gerry Day did not check the "Bible" for the show too carefully to see that the Governor's name was Paul Jameson. In S01E06, "Twenty-Four Karat Kill," Richard Denning made a one-time appearance as U.S. Treasury Agent Philip Grey.
• Karen Rhodes points out in her book on Hawaii Five-O that in the scene where McGarrett talks to Palahana on the beach, the doctor has just come ashore after surfing. But if you look at the ocean behind him, there is no surf! McGarrett wears a dark blue suit when he talks to Palahana, but in the next scene, assuming it takes place shortly after, McGarrett visits Constance and is wearing a light blue suit.
• When she is talking to the Governor and Terhune at the beginning of the show, Constance is wearing a light pink lei, but when she rushes to the shore to see Webb's dead body, the lei has changed to a much darker pink color. Terhune is behind her but the Governor is nowhere to be seen.
• This is the second episode in a row where the word "pregnant" is heard.
• The stock music is eminently forgettable. There is a shot of the Iolani Palace window where the Five-O office is located; this shot is overexposed and out of focus.
• Che Fong is sorely missed in this episode. Surely he could have tested Palahana's gun to determine that it was recently fired!

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228. (S10E14) A Short Walk On The Longshore ★★

QUICK PLOT:

McGarrett goes undercover in the guise of a merchant seaman to find the killer of a labor-union reformer.

Click here to read Full Plot.

REVIEW:

Anton Krebs (Rod Aiu), a longshoremen's union president candidate who is making a lot of noise about corruption on the docks involving the theft of liquor, cigarettes, cosmetics and drugs, is knocked off at the beginning of the show after being interviewed by Les Keiter for KGMB news.

McGarrett shows up shortly after wearing cool Felix Leiter-style sunglasses. He seems very edgy, because when he orders Chin Ho and Duke to get on the case in a big way, checking "Hotel Street, bars, betting joints, every place where longshoremen hang out," Chin replies, "That sounds like a week's work to me." Normally, McGarrett would come back with some snappy comment, but this time there is nothing.

The Governor is under a lot of heat from the current longshoreman's president Jackson Croft (Jim Demarest) who threatens to shut down the port with a strike if Krebs' killer isn't found, because his reputation is being smeared and the outcome of the upcoming election is in doubt, suggesting that Krebs was not the only other candidate.

Croft has some choice words for the Governor, but so does McGarrett, who goes to see him after this. When the Governor says, "I can't let him pull a strike, Steve. Krebs' murder isn't just a homicide now. It's political and economic dynamite. It's imperative that you find out who killed Krebs, and quickly," McGarrett replies, "All right, Governor. Let me give you the facts. There are no eyewitnesses. Nobody is talking on the docks. They're afraid. Now, even if we could nail the man who pulled the trigger, that's just more window dressing for the newspapers. I want the man who ordered the hit. Have you given any thought to the possibility that it might be your friend, Jackson Croft? Now, that would be political dynamite, wouldn't it?"

As the Five-O investigation kicks into gear, Duke and Chin hang out at some of Honolulu's sleazier locales to get information. (A strip club advertises "Live on Stage: Act of Love" on its marquee.) Chin visits a bar where Melveen Leed makes her first appearance as the smart-talking Sally, and Duke tries to get some information from a hooker who he says he knows has been hustling since she was twelve.

Shortly after, McGarrett fakes leaving town, ostensibly for some "family business" in San Francisco, talking about his plans to Danno in a loud voice at the airport. You have to wonder why, since no one seems to be listening. He soon reappears in the low-rent part of town in disguise as "Reilly," sporting a wig and moustache and looking like John Beck, star of S06E21, "Nightmare in Blue." It's difficult to comprehend how he can keep the wig and moustache on, considering what happens next.

McGarrett drinks in this show, which he never does in real life, and stuffs money down the cleavage of Darlene (Kathy Paulo), a B-girl at a bar called Doxy's as advance payment for information on where he can find Krebs' girlfriend. His comment to Darlene that he wants nine dollars in change when she can't tell him what he wants to know suggests he is kind of cheap with his payoff, which is probably only ten dollars.

One major problem with McGarrett's "underground" performance in this show is that, aside from the opening scenes where he fights off Beau Van Den Ecker as "The Knife" and then gets drunk with the one-armed Arthur (Michael Conrad), he questions and lectures people just like a cop, rather than playing a character like he did in S01E07, "The Ways of Love."

It's hard to believe that Arthur is the man who knows everything that is happening on the waterfront, including what kinds of shipments are arriving so thefts of goods can be planned and how to locate people. Through Arthur, McGarrett tracks down Frankie Demara (Sharon Farrell), Krebs' mistress, who has turned into a dope fiend. He wants to pick Frankie's addled brains and find out who was behind her lover's assassination. As he is trying to enter an opium den in some ramshackle building where Frankie has almost passed out, McGarrett is stonewalled by an old Chinese man who won't let him into the room. Confronted by a couple of thugs, he suddenly opens up a door behind him, trying to distract them, just as the place erupts in a full-scale police raid that he had nothing to do with.

McGarrett then grabs Frankie and tries to get out of the building. In the ensuing chaos, McGarrett as Reilly encounters Danno who he slugs, nearly breaking his hand. As a result of the raid, McGarrett and Frankie are booked into jail. McGarrett, with his hand soaking in a bucket of water, proposes a far-fetched theory to Danno that Frankie tipped off the cops herself, resulting in the raid, and also got involved with opium so she would be assured of being locked up away from people who were after her because of her association with Krebs.

After intentionally being released from jail, Frankie wants to go back to McGarrett's place where she tells him "we'll make it and then we'll sleep." As he tucks her into bed there, she grabs his hand and pulls it in front of her, seemingly grasping her boob.

Script-wise, the remainder of the show goes downhill rapidly. McGarrett is kidnapped by Arthur and a couple of goons who take him to a shack in some location that looks like Sand Island, because they finally figured out who he really is and were just using him to locate Krebs' girlfriend. McGarrett is soon joined there by Frankie, also grabbed from McGarrett's room where he was trying to hide her by some other punks.

Then Nick Gentry (Al Avalon), the big boss who is behind all the corruption on the docks, finally shows up. Gentry spends a couple of minutes arguing with Arthur about wasting the two hostages, making sarcastic remarks about the fact that Arthur only has one arm. McGarrett tries to convince Arthur not to co-operate, saying "They're gonna set you up. They're gonna bury you. You know too much. They have to kill you."

As a punk named "Korean" in the end credits, played by Reggie ("Reginald") Ho, slaps McGarrett in the face, Frankie grabs Korean and pushes him across the room. Grabbing Korean's gun which has fallen to the floor, she shoots both him and Gentry and in turn is shot by Gentry himself. Arthur suddenly becomes McGarrett's friend, freeing him from the ropes binding his wrists, and McGarrett holds Frankie as she expires, saying "She's gone."

What a stupid ending! At least you can say that Sharon Farrell gives an exceptional performance under the circumstances.

CASUALTY LIST:

Death: Anton Krebs shot twice by "security guard".
Injury (x5):: McGarrett/"Riley" jumped by two thugs in hallway outside opium den, fistfight ensues. Two other thugs soon join in.
Injury: Danno slugged by McGarrett/"Riley".
Injury (x3):: Duke and HPD officer fight with McGarrett/"Riley" before subduing him.
Death: Dr. A Ghoriades tied up, gagged and shot in his office.
Injury: McGarrett slapped by "Korean".
Death (x2): Nick Gentry and "Korean" shot by Frankie after she grabs gun from the floor.
Death: Frankie dies after being shot by Gentry.

MORE TRIVIA:

• The character who, in the guise of a security guard, knocks off Krebs at the beginning of the show is the actor with major complexion problems who accompanies Keene Curtis' character at the beginning of S06E23, "Killer at Sea."
• Several cases of Valium are seen in a truck, part of an about-to-be-stolen shipment. One of the packages seen is destined for Martin's Drugs in Wahiawa, the other for Pharmaceutical Products Hawaii in Pearl City.
• Milton Seltzer has a near-cameo appearance in this show as Ghoriades, a dentist who is in league with federal types who enlisted McGarrett to go undercover. He is supposed to help McGarrett, but he winds up brutally murdered.
• There is a character named Karl Magruder in the end credits, but does he actually appear in the show? Danno comes to Magruder's apartment, wanting to ask him questions, but Magruder, from behind the door, tells Danno to get lost.
• The second and final score by Ernest Gold, a relatively minimal effort, is garbage.
• "The Knife," played by stuntman Van Den Ecker, is hardly the stupidest name in this show — Al Waterson plays someone called "Hawaiian" (duh!).
• The strip club with a flashing arc above the entrace at the end of the ramp and Saturday Night Fever-like lights under the floor looks very similar to the one seen in S11E18, "The Execution File."
• Frankie smokes (a cigarette). When she wants to go get some sleep after getting released from jail, she quotes Shakespeare's Macbeth –- "That knits up the raveled sleeve of care" — wondering "What's that from?"
• There is some exceptional color photography in the alley where Reilly fights off the two guys before he is rescued by Arthur and later as Frankie is dragged from the car to the beach shack near the end of the show.

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229. (S10E15) The Silk Trap ★★½  BOOK HER, DANNO 

QUICK PLOT:

An aspiring politician considered prime presidential material is being blackmailed in an effort to force him to abandon a congressional investigation that he is directing.

Click here to read Full Plot.

REVIEW:

This episode was like a time warp. I kept saying throughout, "WHAT?!? — did they actually have BEAUTY CONTESTS back then?" Well, the answer is yes, and they still have lots of them, including one called Miss Asia Pacific International, which is probably the closest to the one in the show, Miss Pacific Islands Beauty Contest. The Asia Pacific International one has been going since 1968, formerly known as Miss Asia Quest and Miss Asia Pacific Quest, though it was suspended between 2006 to 2016 after there was a scandal caused by one of the contest winners participating in another competition.

What to me is even more astounding than the existence of these pageants is the idea that a politician would be connected with one of them! Four of the five judges are from South Korea, Japan, the Philippines, and Hawaii (no indication what their occupations are), but the fifth, from the US mainland with seemingly no connection to Hawaii, is Congressman John Richard Carr (David Birney). There are plenty of opportunities for "bribery, blackmail and murder" if a politician is involved and, guess what … all three of these things happen!

At the beginning, as beauties in bathing suits are paraded on stage, the Governor is in the audience with McGarrett, grinning at the women, though I guess his presence falls within the realm of normal gubernatorial duties like opening shopping centers and so forth. When McGarrett describes Carr as "a knight in shining armor" and asks the Governor, "Think he has a crack at the White House?" the answer is "He can give Teddy a run for it in 1984." However, in real life, Ted Kennedy declined to run for president in 1984 and the choice was between George H.W. Bush and Walter Mondale, with Bush emerging the winner.

In Washington, DC, Senator Carr is investigating a Malaysian businessman named Wing Tai Lee who is suspected of bribery. He is described as "the Tiger of Sumatra ... the guerilla leader, the warlord of sorts that gave the Japanese such a fit during World War II." Soon-Teck Oh plays David Chung, a Singapore-based "journalist" who is connected to Lee and wants Carr to lay off him. Jane Kuan (Carmella Letman), 19, who represents the Malaysian Federation in the pageant is in cahoots with Chung. She gets chummy with Carr, calling him "a few times" and getting together with him "a couple of times," to the point where Carr gets serious hot pants for her and buys her a silk dress.

Kuan invites Carr to a hotel room where Chung is next door with a movie camera spying through a hole in the wall between the rooms behind a one-way mirror. After Kuan puts something in Carr's drink, he passes out. Then Chung's two goons Otis and Reed (Ben Jaus and H. Lee respectively) come into the room and throw her off the balcony. The idea here is that because Carr was incapacitated, there is no way of knowing whether it was he who murdered Kuan. Chung has film of whatever went on in the room prior to this, which is probably a lot more serious or sexual than what we see prior to him passing out.

Following Kuan's death, McGarrett has to deal with Andrea King (Shannon Wilcox), head of the pageant, who is a harsh bitch. When she comes to the hotel room to find out what happened to "one of my girls," McGarrett doesn't help matters by calling King "Ms." and then putting his foot in his mouth when she tells him not to be patronizing, prompting him to reply, "I didn't mean to be condescending. I was just using a term women-libbers seem to prefer." (The motivation for this remark is peculiar — does McGarrett think that the beauty contest is like a meat market? There is no indication to suggest that King is a "women's libber." Prior to this, McGarrett even tells Danno to avoid the term "Miss" when talking to King!) King suggests that McGarrett has a bad attitude that "beauty contests are some kind of joke," which he does not address. She tells him that the pageant "is not a joke to these girls, nor to me."

Carr, who was taken back to his own hotel room by Otis and Reed after Kuan's plunge, is awakened from his drugged stupor by Chung to tell him to watch the TV news for footage of the aftermath of Kuan's death. Chung must have some inside scoop that the footage will be shown, not to mention the exact time it will appear in the newscast.

Following this, the two of them meet in Kapiolani Park just west of the War Memorial Natatorium where Chung tells Carr, "I want a favor. You're one of group of individuals who are persecuting a good friend of mine [Wing Tai Lee] … As a chairman of the subcommittee, it will be a simple matter for you to de-emphasize Mr. Lee's role in any possible wrongdoing … I'm sure you will find a way." Carr says, "It's my word against yours that I was ever in that hotel room," but Chung lets him look at a section of the film which shows Carr and Kuan making out.

Danno, appropriately, is delegated to talk to some of the pageant contestants about whether they could sneak out of the hotel to meet someone and is told that despite the fact there are chaperones, the girls are "grown women [and] if one of us wants to be with a man, no chaperone is going to stop us."

Because Carr was seen at the hotel late the previous evening, McGarrett talks to him, but the Senator is evasive. When McGarrett follows up with Jonathan Kaye (Lyle Bettger) to discuss what King called potential "international consequences" concerning Kuan's death, he is told, "I know that I cannot tell you how to do your job. But unless you're absolutely sure that Carr is involved in that girl's death, I'd appreciate it if you could keep him out of it."

After this conversation, McGarrett relates some stuff to Danno that we did not hear: "[Kaye] told me some very interesting things about Congressman John Richard Carr … In spite of the fact that he claims to be a happily married man, he has the reputation of being somewhat of a player around Washington's party circuit."

McGarrett has to endure more mouth from "Miss [sic]" King, that "you and your people are disrupting our entire pageant," but he gives her his stock line: "You may not be aware of it, but I'm investigating a murder charge here." She finally apologizes because she had asked her secretary, Karen Bauer (Jo Pruden) to type up some letters, which took Bauer away from her chaperone duties and allowed Kuan to slip out of the building on the night of her death. You have to wonder if King has changed her tune because she wants to ingratiate herself with him, realizing that he is getting a bit too snoopy.

Chung has already established himself as a pretty sleazy guy, but he exceeds himself by sending Carr's wife Kathleen (Penny Kunard) some prints from the film (by special delivery mail?)showing her husband fooling around with Kuan. Kathleen arrives quickly from the mainland and shows up at her husband's hotel room. Carr later tells McGarrett that his wife will "stand by" him after he confessed everything, and McGarrett says, "You're a lucky man."

Concerned about the depths to which Chung will sink to get his way, Carr meets with him again at the same location as previously where Chung provides "new evidence" on how to deal with the investigation into Tai Lee, which will completely exonerate him and put the blame on another "Malaysian businessman who actually attempted to bribe your congressman" and who just happens to have died recently. Chin Ho and Duke have tailed the two men to the park, sneaking around behind walls like characters in a Pink Panther cartoon. Carr later complains to McGarrett that this tailing was "an invasion of privacy ... I know the law." I don't think so!

Disturbed by the way things are going and trying to get Carr to help him out, McGarrett drags Chung into the Five-O office, throwing various accusations at him, all of which Chung denies. In what is supposed to be a surprise move, he brings Carr into the office to ID Chung as the guy who is blackmailing him, but Carr clams up, because his wife has just been kidnapped by Reed and Otis, and she will be killed if he doesn't follow the script which Chung laid out for him earlier. Carr has already announced a press conference at the Convention Center where he will supposedly make a big announcement about abandoning the investigation of Tai Lee.

Five-O's investigation continues behind the scenes, and we find out that Andrea King hung around the same circles in Washington as Carr and also Tai Lee. We also find out the room with the hidden camera was rented by Bauer on King's orders, Bauer thinking that "[Andrea] wanted it because she was having an affair with someone."

The fact that King is in a hotel where the numbers of her outgoing phone calls are recorded leads McGarrett, Danno and two HPD cops, a bit too quickly, to a motel where Carr's wife is being held by Reed and Otis. King earlier called the two thugs, telling them not to contact Chung again and to "take good care of our guest." Kathleen is rushed back to where the press conference is happening, battling obstacles like a large truck in the way, and arriving with split-second timing.

Chung and King are busted, the latter for "murder one" as an accessory in Kuan's murder, though once again, I think this will be very difficult to prove in court unless someone like one of the two kidnappers drops a dime. (You also have to wonder — what was in it for King in this elaborate plot?) Chung is also arrested, though no charges for him are specified.

Carr makes his speech to the assembled reporters: "It is my duty to report to you tonight that yet another congressman has been ensnared in the intricate web of bribery, blackmail, and now murder. Spun by Wing Tai Lee. It is my duty to report to you that the name of that congressman is John Richard Carr. I must acknowledge that I would not be standing here speaking to you, if it weren't for the support, the help of others. Steve McGarrett of Hawaii Five-O. And most especially, my wife, Kate. I'm not asking for your approval, but I am asking for your understanding."

This show has a lot of potential, encompassing such trendy topics as beauty pageants, sexism, international relations, hanky-panky with government types and inter-racial sex. With a bit of tightening up of the script as well as better characterization and acting, it could have been much better.

I don't understand why McGarrett acts the way he does when he is dealing with King, other than the scriptwriters' idea to drag the show into the "new reality" of feminism, which doesn't make sense because beauty pageants are hardly part of that world! For much of the episode, McGarrett carries on like he is sleepwalking. He finally shows some of the old fire during the failed confrontation between Carr and Chung near the end where he asks "Is this he?" Oblivious to the kidnap scenario, McGarrett slams the door to his office very loudly, goes ballistic and starts yelling until Carr tells him what is happening.

The music by Cacavas is OK with some sleazy saxophone passages, though the ending with a brief piano melody is banal. There is an "Oriental" sounding tune interrupting the beauty pageant orchestra's stock material as Carr gets the eye from Kuan during her appearance during the swimsuit part of the competition.

CASUALTY LIST:

Injury: John Richard Carr knocked out with drugs in drink by Jane Kuan.
Death: Kuan thrown off balcony by David Chung's two thugs, Reed and Otis.

MORE TRIVIA:

• McGarrett quote to Carr: "I make it my business to know about a lot of things."
• Doug Mossman appears as Jimmy Keno, the host of the beauty pageant, which takes place in the Honolulu Concert Hall. One of the twelve finalists has a banner across her swimsuit which says "Miss Philipines." There are reportedly 82 "Pacific beauties" in the contest, but assuming only one per country, that number seems very high.
• McGarrett mispronounces the word "autopsy" with the emphasis on the second syllable (again).
• The Australian contestant in the pageant gives a performance of Meditation, a song popularized by Frank Sinatra (augh).
• Near the end, Chin and Duke stop in one of the hotel parking lot's entrances in a manner which would probably get them a ticket.
• Chung is seen smoking.
• The "bookem" is "Book her, Danno, murder one."

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230. (S10E16) Head To Head ★★★

QUICK PLOT:

In pursuing a protected witness suspected of murdering an HPD officer, McGarrett finds himself in conflict with a federal agent.

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REVIEW:

This show begins with preparation for an undercover drug operation. Barney Kawala (Ernest Chan), an HPD cop for 15 years, is wired and provided with a large amount of cash. Although this is Barney's third drug buy connected with this specific case, he says it will be "a piece of cake." At Tantalus Lookout, McGarrett and Five-O surveil the operation from nearby. Unfortunately, things do not go well.

Barney meets Sammy (Ron Nakahara), the "mule," and tells him, "I do business direct with Number One." He is taken to meet with Eddie Rizzo (John Russo), who says he is the main man, but then he is knocked out from behind by Jack Fabian (Charles Cioffi). Sammy is busted after Danno (or his stunt double) leaps over a picnic table and runs along the top of parked cars. The money is thrown into a pickup truck which is going down the mountain, but is quickly recovered by McGarrett and Duke. The unconscious Barney is loaded into the back of Rizzo's Mercury Marquis. When Fabian prepares to execute Barney, who he says he "knew in Denver, a long time ago [where Barney was a cop for 10 years]," Barney escapes, but Fabian shoots him twice.

Barney dies after being taken to the hospital. There is a sense of déjà vu to what happens, because McGarrett consoles Barney's wife, just like he did after HPD cop George Tatupu was killed by bad guys in S09E16's "Dealer's Choice…..Blackmail." The actor playing the cop in that episode was the same as Barney – Ernest Chan! In both cases, the expiring cop wants a message passed along to his wife that he loves her, and in both cases the expression "without a scratch" is heard, referring to the cop's ability to avoid getting injured or shot on the job for his entire career. Barney also tells the doctor, "Tell Steve it was Fabian."

Fabian is well-known as "the guy whose testimony brought the syndicate biggies down a few years ago." When he later arrives back at his girlfriend Luana Watkins' place, he makes a call to "Marsh," telling him, "You'll have to come over here. But listen, it'll be worth your while." Fabian shaves off his moth-eaten beard which looks as phony as the one on Don Porter at the beginning of S06E06, "Murder Is A Taxing Affair." Luana (Joanne Nail) says, "Five years I've been trying to get you to clean up your act. You know, you're not a bad-looking guy."

A request to match fingerprints found on the case sent to Washington produces no results as far as Fabian is concerned. Duke reports, "Washington has no rap sheet on Fabian. No mug shots, no prints, nothing. As far they're concerned, Jack Fabian never existed." However, the Hawaii Department of Motor Vehicles comes up with a match. "The prints on the case belong to a man named Fred Jackman."

Five-O goes to Jackman's place, and there is odd camera work looking up at McGarrett and Danno from below as they are knocking at the front door. Jackman is not there, but Marsh is. Marsh (George Grizzard) is from the US Department of Justice. When McGarrett says they are looking for Jackman, who is a murder suspect, Marsh says, "Wherever he is, McGarrett, he's off-limits to you. He's under a grant of immunity from the federal government … Five years ago, Fabian agreed to testify before a federal grand jury. In return for his help, we granted him immunity from prosecution. We also provided him with a change of identity and locale … sometimes you have to let one bad apple get to market in order to pick up a whole barrelful."

When McGarrett says that the immunity provided to Fabian was for "past crimes," Marsh says "Fabian has come forward voluntarily with some information that could be very valuable to us … names and dates that we've been wanting for a long time." This is vaguely described later as "leads," "kills," "bodies" and "murder one." McGarrett, who is obviously pissed, says, "What better way to avoid a murder rap than to have the United States government serve as your protector?" Marsh replies, "If you have any hard evidence that Fabian has committed a murder, you bring it to me, and I'll turn him over to you. Meanwhile, for the record, he does not exist." McGarrett tells him, "Very well. Then we'll just have to go to work and prove murder, won't we?" and leaves.

After Barney's funeral, McGarrett talks to Jonathan Kaye (Lyle Bettger) in Washington, who he tried to get to override Marsh. But Kaye tells him, "Don't take on the government — you can't win … If the government starts to renege on its commitments, no one will come forward again." McGarrett tells Danno, "I said I'd leave Fabian alone. We're gonna concentrate on a man who's not off-limits: Jackman."

Fabian is being kept hidden by Marsh on a boat at the Ala Wai Boat Harbor, #17. Meanwhile, Luana finds the gun used to kill Barney which Fabian dumped when he was at her place. She contacts Rizzo, who comes to her flower shop and shows him the gun which he says he will take care of. She insists that Rizzo tell him where Fabian is, and he writes the location at the harbor on a piece of paper.

Rizzo has been ID'd from an artist's sketch which Sammy provided earlier; Duke and Chin are tailing him (closely as usual). After Rizzo leaves Luana's, they follow. When they first start, they seem to be parked the wrong way on the wrong side of the street. During the pursuit, Rizzo makes a right hand turn according to Chin, but when you see their car following in Rizzo's mirror, they are making a left hand turn (I think)! They are temporarily held up by a moving van from Y. Higa Trucking Service (a real business). Every time we have seen Rizzo, he has been popping some kind of pills, and he has a heart attack just beyond this point, and runs into a fire hydrant, causing it to spray water all over the place. Duke looks in the wrecked car, getting drenched, and finds Fabian's gun that was used to kill Barney earlier in the show — but how does he get the gun out of the car without it getting soaked with water and ruining any fingerprints? (And why don't Chin and Duke have a siren in their car?)

Harry Sunday (Beau Van Den Ecker), a criminal associate of Fabian's from the past, arrives in Honolulu, likely tipped off by "Fabian's friends in Detroit." He goes to Luana's and just misses her, but tails her to her apartment where he attempts to strangle her to find out where Fabian is staying. She doesn't tell him, but he finds the piece of paper which Rizzo gave Luana where he wrote the berth at the marina.

Five-O just missed Sunday at Luana's, but they tail him to her place (somehow knowing where she lives) and find her in rough shape. Sunday escapes. With multiple contusions, Luana is sent to the hospital, where Marsh suddenly shows up with no explanation. Did Five-O request his presence there?

Marsh tells McGarrett, "Fabian's been Mr. Anonymous for five years. Once we've set up an informant's cover, we don't go near him." McGarrett is still annoyed about what has happened, but Marsh says, "I'm not your enemy. I'm only trying to do my job, same as you … I've got five kids, three in college, two coming up. I should be running a bureau by now. For 22 years, I have watched other guys take my collars and move up. And when I turned Fabian, I thought I was moving up too. I was moving, all right, to a town that doesn't even have major-league baseball, while my supervisor ended up in D.C. Do you know what I'm saying?" McGarrett says, "Yeah, I think so. But you're not gonna get the brass ring this time either, Marsh. Fabian is using you."

At Luana's flower shop, Chin and Danno are investigating. Chin finds a package of "laundry" which Fabian asked his girlfriend to pick up the day that Barney was shot and store it there for safekeeping. This package, in addition to clothes, contains envelopes of dope, described by Chin as "the stuff that dreams are made of."

Back at his office, Marsh gets a telex from Washington that confirms that Fabian has been jerking him around. Because of Luana's condition, McGarrett has a great deal of difficulty in extracting information from her, complicated by the insistence of her doctor (Electra Gailes [sic in the end credits – should be Gailas] Fair) that he leave her alone. Finally, McGarrett gets what he wants, Fabian's current location.

McGarrett, Sunday and Marsh all arrive at the yacht harbor around the same time. After Marsh confronts Fabian, telling him, "McGarrett was right, Jack, you were just stalling for time. But time's run out," Sunday shoots Marsh, who responds in turn, killing the hitman. But then Fabian shoots Marsh again and attempts to flee on a dinghy which McGarrett leaps on to, followed by a fight with some interesting close-up camera work. Marsh expires, and McGarrett is sad.

The show ends in kind of a banal fashion, with McGarrett talking to Luana, still in the hospital, and then telling Danno he is going to the airport to pick up Marsh's wife, and intends to tell her that "my friend Al Marsh was one hell of a man."

The score for this episode is stock; the show would have better if it had some original music. But overall, the show is not bad, considering it is in the tenth season, though McGarrett often does seem awful quiet and low-key compared to episodes of time past.

WHAT DOES THE TITLE MEAN?

Marsh tells McGarrett during their first meeting, "We're head to head on this." One dictionary definition says this means "in a direct confrontation or encounter usually between individuals."

CASUALTY LIST:

Injury: Barney Kawala hit over the head by Jack Fabian (a.k.a. Fred Jackman).
Injury: As Sammy is attempting to flee from the scene of the drug deal, he is jumped by Danno.
Injury: Kawala shoves door toward Fabian, knocking him back.
Death: Kawala shot twice by Fabian, later dies during surgery.
Death: Eddie Rizzo dies of a heart attack and crashes his car into a fire hydrant.
Injury: Luana Watkins severely beaten by Harry Sunday.
Injury: Al Marsh shot by Sunday.
Death: Sunday shot by Marsh.
Death: Marsh subsequently shot by Fabian and dies of his injuries soon after.
Injury (x2): McGarrett and Fabian fight on dingy –- McGarrett punches Fabian to the point he falls into the water.

MORE TRIVIA:

• McGarrett says "Easy, easy...," twice to the widow of the murdered cop, four times to the shot Marsh.
• When Harry Sunday arrives at the airport, he takes some stuff from a locker, including what looks like a car rental agreement. It is for a yellow Volvo, but he drives a typical Ford product around Honolulu.
• At around 17:20 on the original unremastered tenth season DVD (and an earlier TV print I have), there is some kind of honeycomb-like filter on the main camera used as Steve and Danno pull up to the apartment where they think they will find Fabian. This has been cleaned up on the remastered video for the season which is included in one of the complete box sets.
• At the end of the show, when Duke is watching McGarrett and Fabian "duke" it out in a rubber dingy, there is an inexplicable close freeze-frame of Duke's face similar to the shot used for Herman Wedeyemer in the main credits. Thanks to GK for pointing these out.
• Luana's flower shop is located at 3046 Monsarrat Ave. with the correct ZIP code of 96815.
• When Marsh talks to Fabian about the "help" the latter is offering him, he asks, "We can pin these kills on Bellini?", as in actor Cal, who appeared in "The Big Aloha," only three episodes before this one.
• The sound of the intercom in McGarrett's office alerting him to a phone call near the beginning of Act Three has a rather abrasive sound.
• Barney's widow says that they were going to go to Kona for the "Billfishing Tournament." Billfish, according to Wikipedia, refers to "a group of predatory fish characterised by prominent bills, or rostra, and by their large size; some are longer than 4 m. Billfish include sailfish and marlin … and swordfish."
• The last car that "Danno" runs across the roof of is a Park Lane, similar to ones used earlier in the series.

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231. (S10E17) Tall On The Wave ★★½  BOOK HIM, DUKE 

QUICK PLOT:

After a surfer is involved with a woman's death, he plants evidence to make the cops and Five-O think that one of his competitors and a friend of Danno is her killer.

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REVIEW:

Danno, wearing a tank top as well as hideous blue bell bottom pants and high-heeled shoes, is one of the judges at the Sandy Beach Pro-Am Surfing Classic held at Sunset Beach on the North Shore where the top prize is $5,000. The "surfing" music (NOT) on the soundtrack is crappy. McGarrett, whose participation in this episode is rather peripheral, cautions Danno to "judge the surfers, not the bikinis" after asking him, "Aren't you getting a little old for that sort of thing?"

One of the contestants and a friend of Danno's, Ben "Ricochet" Hanakea (Kimo Kahoano) becomes a suspect when his girlfriend Lorca Davidson (Valerie Charles) is found dead after the two have an argument. Lorca actually meets her end when a competing surfer, Gavin McNabb from Malibu, California (David M. Young), with whom she had a relationship with in the past, tries to get their romance back on track while referring to Ben as a "no-neck gorilla" and a "kanaka." Lorca rebuffs McNabb, uttering the unusual expression "Your macho is bleeding." She calls him a "big surfer type, super stud," and then ridicules his virility, saying "You're tall on the waves, but you're short on the beach." This leads to a fight, with Lorca ripping McNabb's T-shirt, after which she slips off a cliff and falls to her death on rocks far below. She is found clutching a piece of the shirt when her body is recovered later.

After McNabb plants his ripped shirt in Ben's garbage where it is discovered by the cops, Ben flees into the backwoods of Oahu with the help of two friends, Keo (Jake Hoopai) and Looloo (Alan Naluai). In a funny scene, Danno ends up meeting these two smart-asses during his investigation and talks pidgin to them: "Hey, saw your truck come down from Ricochet's place. You give him ride, bumbye, maybe you catch plenty jail. You savvy, bigmouth?"

Although Danno considers Ben to be a "hothead," he is sure that he is innocent, but the new assistant district attorney Sunada (Luella Costello), who is a snotty bitch, does not agree, saying, "Whether he's innocent of this crime or not, he has demonstrated a conditioned reflex, a violent response to authority," based on Ben having resisted arrest during an incident with the cops in the past. McGarrett says that Danno should really be removed from the case because he is "emotionally involved," but he realizes that Danno is probably the only person who can convince Ben to come in quietly.

There is yet more tenth-season feminism in this show, where Sunada insists on being called "Ms." When Danno leaves McGarrett's office after annoyedly listening to her theories about why Ben is guilty as hell, he tells her, "Nice to meet you," adding "Ms." in a very sarcastic manner. For someone who works in the court system, Sunada's outfit is not very professional looking — in fact, she looks more like a Japanese school girl.

Later, there are continuity problems when Danno is chasing Ben by car through a forest near the beach trying to persuade him to surrender. Ben's two pals tail Danno as he drives like a maniac. They somehow manage to get ahead of him and, coming back towards Danno, force him off the narrow road. Between two shots of their Ford Bronco is another which seems to go back into time. The Bronco has license plate 3B-4743 which has been seen in earlier shows; I'm not sure about the vehicle, which is a different color. At one point, the spare tire carrier on the back of the Bronco looks like it has come loose and is flapping on one side, but in the next shots it is back to normal.

Forced off the road, Danno's car flies up in the air and down into the sand on the beach, revealing frontal damage. When the car is seen just before this, however, some of the damage on the front was already there. Following this, the car is seen on a relatively flat part of the beach where its front is undamaged and you can see the hood ornament which was previously missing. This is because the car with the damage is the 1968 Park Lane used early in the series, whereas the car at the end is a 1975-1976 Ford Galaxie sedan, a totally different vehicle (thanks to Mike).

Though things don't look good for Ben, who is busted and locked up in a cell, there are two "aha" moments which give him some hope.

The first is after lab technician Charlie (Lydia Lei Kayahara) does "anal-ysis" of some surfboard wax on the T-shirt found at Ben's. It looks like she has difficulty not breaking into laughter when Danno, McGarrett and her are discussing different fragrances of this wax. At least McGarrett avoids making some stupid sexist remark to her.

McNabb gave some wax to Ben earlier in the show which was his "own creation" with "sweet mango" scent. Ben flashes back to when he got the wax and he suggests that the shirt, which he has so far maintained is not his, is also McNabb's. Ben is outraged when Danno, who says "the evidence keeps stacking up the other way," doesn't seem to "get it."

The other "aha" relates back to earlier in the show after Ben and Lorca had their fight. Lorca went to work at her job, a waitress at the bar in the Promontory Point Hotel, and McNabb, trying to reignite the flame between them, phoned her there, pretending to be Ben, calling himself a "coconut chaser." Lorca didn't take the call, but her friend and fellow waitress Elaine Sebastian (Lisa Eilbacher) did.

Later, as several surfers are having drinks at the bar, Elaine overhears McNabb use this same expression — "coconut chaser" — and almost drops her tray of drinks. Realizing that this is something that Ben would never use to refer to himself, she goes to Five-O where she tells McGarrett about her suspicions that it was McNabb pretending to be Ben on the phone.

There is a big question here, by the way: what would have happened if Lorca had taken the call? Would McNabb have continued pretending to be Ben? Or would have he admitted that it was just a deception to get Lorca's attention?

Things get complicated, because just when Elaine finishes talking to McGarrett and Danno, Sunada interrupts to tell them that Ben has escaped. WHAT?!? There are no details about how this happened; for example, did he do this while he was being transferred somewhere from his seemingly very solid prison cell? This leads into the end of the show, which is kind of stupid.

Without any transitional dialogue, McGarrett and Danno end up at the surfing competition beach where the crappy background music is heard again. Ben is also there, and he grabs a board and paddles out to where McNabb is waiting for the next wave. Using binoculars and without saying anything like "Holy crap, there is Ben!", McGarrett sees him swim near McNabb. As the two of them start fighting, McGarrett says to Danno, "My God, they're gonna kill each other. We've gotta get to them." McNabb bests Ben, and it looks like Ben is going to drown. Danno directs lifeguards to take care of things.

McNabb flees the scene by swimming to a beach which looks far away from the competition. McGarrett, on the other hand, gets in his car and seems to drive off in the exact opposite direction. McNabb goes to the place where he is being billeted and Elaine, who was at the beach only a few minutes before, is in his room (she knows exactly which room this is) and going through his backpack to find a picture of McNabb with Lorca, thus proving that the two of them were previously "a number."

McNabb bursts into the room, and Elaine stabs him with some fishing spear-like device which is handily nearby. She runs out of the room and the bleeding McNabb pursues her, down the same path along the cliffs where Lorca met her death. Hurrying down the narrow path, Elaine slips in a clichéd manner and is about to also fall over the edge. McNabb isn't going to offer her any help because he knows Elaine talked to the fuzz and is going to implicate him in what happened to Lorca.

Elaine is not in any danger of falling off the cliff when seen from above, though the camera angle from below suggests things are a little more perilous. Just at this moment, McGarrett and Duke suddenly appear out of nowhere, having managed to figure out exactly where McNabb and Elaine could be found. This is the second time within a short time frame that Five-O seems to have developed ESP-like powers. How did they know the escaping Ben would go to the beach to get his revenge on McNabb?

Elaine shows McGarrett the picture she found and McNabb is busted by Duke, the charges being "suspicion of manslaughter and attempted murder," charges which are very unlikely to stick, in my opinion.

The last scene, with McGarrett and Danno saying they'll put in a good word for Ben at the police academy where he wants to be a member of the force, despite his recent lack of co-operation and past record, is very sucky, accompanied by some sentimental-sounding music.

There are serious topographic issues in this show, like how close the dangerous cliffs are to the place where the competition is taking place and where the characters in the show either live or are staying.

There is also a sequence at the show's beginning which makes no sense. Moe "Truck" Keale appears as the pimp-like Charlie, who's into "dope, prostitution and shakedowns," looking very much like his character Wunton in S06E07, "Tricks are Not Treats." Why the scene with this character is in the show at all is a mystery, aside from giving McGarrett a good excuse to ridicule Charlie about his outfit — which is pretty funny considering some of McGarrett's wardrobe choices.

Overall, the episode isn't bad, aside from the finale. Kimo Kahoano gets a large-sized credit at the end, unlike usual when he is just a member of the Five-O "stock company."

CASUALTY LIST:

Injury (x2): Lorca Davidson slapped by Gavin McNabb; in turn she punches him in the stomach.
Death: Lorca falls from the cliff onto rocks far below after struggling with McNabb, tearing off a piece of his shirt.
Injury (x2): Ben Hanakea and McNabb fight in the surf, Ben almost drowns.
Injury: Elaine Sebastian slips on cliff trail, hangs on to edge and McNabb threatens to let her fall.

MORE TRIVIA:

• I'm pretty sure that the closeups of the actors surfing in this show are process shots. When we see Ben close-up, he is wearing white swim trunks, but in long shots (obviously not him), the trunks from the surfer supposed to be him are yellow. Same thing for the Australian surfer Roger Divitt. Closeups have him wearing black trunks, the long shots are brown.
• I find it strange that when Gavin and two other surfers are discussing Lorca in a bar after her death, no one seems to say anything about the fact that she is dead. Surely this would have been major news.
• Danno offers to let Ben stay at his place, to which Ben says, "Might do it, bra," which the subtitles again translate as "bro."
• When Elaine looks at the surfers through a powerful telescope near the end of the show, the view is further away than McGarrett's binoculars. On the other hand, McGarrett's binocular view of the surfers is very close up, just like the camera filming the scene in the water, something which happens elsewhere in the episode.
• Puddles from a rainstorm are seen on the ground when Danno stops outside an IGA store looking for Ben.
• A shot of people watching the competition is very similar to one from S09E07, "Heads, You're Dead," which dealt with a yacht race.
• Doc Bergman is spoken to on the phone, but not seen.
• Ben's mother says she is making laulau, which is pork or chicken meat wrapped in leaves and steamed.
• When Ben takes a letter off a public bulletin board outside the Waimanalo Snack Bar that Danno left trying to convince him to give himself up, a woman walks by. A few moments later, Ben rips up the letter, and the same woman walks by him again in the same direction. Waimanalo is a long way from the North Shore where the competition is.
• Fred Hemmings, the announcer at the competition, plays himself. He is described by one web site as a prolific Hawaiian surfer, event promoter and politician. He began surfing at the age of 8 and started competing four years later. He won the Makaha International contest in 1961, 1963, 1964 and 1966, and then captured the World Surfing Championships in 1968. Hemmings eventually turned his attention to promoting professional surfing, and also created Hawaii's Triple Crown of Surfing in 1983 by uniting three prestigious North Shore contests.
• Lani, the Five-O receptionist, is played in this show by Connie Kissinger.

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232. (S10E18) “Angel In Blue” BOMB – NO STARS!

QUICK PLOT:

An undercover woman cop used during an investigation becomes emotionally involved with a young man connected to the case.

Click here to read Full Plot.

REVIEW:

I hate this episode. It exemplifies what went wrong with the show after the ninth season and things just got worse. Not only is this episode bad, but so is the next one, which to me is the worst of all. That "honor" used to go to the twelfth season's "A Bird In Hand…", but these days, "Bird" just seems stupid. This one and the next one both insult your intelligence.

The major problem with "Angel In Blue" is guest actress Carol Lynley. I haven't followed her career extensively, so it's quite possible she generally wasn't as bad an actress as she is in this episode where she and her character have this huge "I don't give a shit" attitude. The major problem is the role calls for an actress who is playing a policewoman who is also acting the part of a small time crook, and Lynley fails on both levels, because of her totally disinterested manner.

At the beginning of the show, a water skier in Honolulu Harbor loses her grip, and as she swims back to her friends' boat, beating what are odds of several thousand to one, she encounters a body floating in the water and screams loudly. The body is that of Bradley, a "good friend" of McGarrett's and an HPD cop who was working undercover with Five-O to help crack a dope-smuggling ring.

Bradley's murder prompts McGarrett to get seriously distraught. The generic forensic "Doc" (Douglas E. Barden) who has replaced Al Eben's Doc but is identified in the subtitles as "Bergman," says, "I've never seen him take it so hard." Lacking a corner to huddle in when he is upset, McGarrett withdraws to the hallway, where his jaw clenches briefly. You expect him to say "I got him killed, Danno," but he is saving this line for the finale of this season when Chin Ho gets knocked off.

Bradley was killed by "three entry wounds at the level of the third and fourth thoracic vertebra" with "soft-nosed Magnum loads" which McGarrett recognizes as the M.O. of the "slimy" Surfer who is played by Nephi Hannemann. As we shall soon find out, there is a problem with this actor as well. He appeared on the show 11 times, often in a criminal role, but never as a stone-cold killer, resulting in a performance in this show which is hard to accept.

Surfer was high on Bradley's radar for his involvement with an incoming shipment of heroin worth an estimated $25 million. He is working with local mob boss Martin Lynch who has syndicate connections (the gravelly-voiced Vic Tayback), Kimo Hameo (Mexican actor Enrique Novi), and a seaman named Thaler (William P. Ogilvie).

In order to continue Bradley's investigation but without using a cop from Oahu, McGarrett flies to Maui where he asks Chief Sato (Ernest G. Chan) for a volunteer. When that person is "Bates," specifically Valerie Bates (Lynley), Danno starts rolling his eyes after she comes in the room to meet McGarrett. The scene that follows is cringe-inducing.

McGarrett stammers, "No, no, I'm sorry, chief, there's been some misunderstanding here. This case is much too heavy for a lady." Chan tells him, "Officer Bates is no novice. She's had three years with L.A.P.D. Two years with vice, each one with homicide, narcotics and robbery. And a degree in criminal psychology." McGarrett, who had attacks of sexism in "The Cop On The Cover" and "The Silk Trap" earlier this season, tells her, "Ms. Bates, I've already lost a very close friend on this case. An experienced police officer. And it's going to be even more dangerous now for the person who goes in behind him. Even more so because we have to move so quickly."

When Bates says, "Yes, sir, I know. Chief Sato told me before I volunteered," McGarrett continues, "No, no, absolutely not. This is not gonna work." McGarrett cracks a lame smile, "Chief, I'm sorry. I'm sorry." Bates reassures him, "If you care to look at my file, you will find that I am an expert marksman and that I came in second at the academy in self defense." But he still can't accept this. "I'm not questioning your qualifications." Bates rubs it in: "Is it because I'm a woman? A woman may be the head of Hawaii Five-O one day, Mr. McGarrett." McGarrett goes on, "Ms. Bates, I'm concerned only for your safety." Bates says, "So am I. You can count on it. I knew the risks and the responsibilities when I chose this profession. And I assure you, I am a damned good cop." McGarrett finally relents, saying, "I have a feeling you are. All right. Okay, you've got the job." Lynley already comes across as bored in this first exchange.

Incidentally, James MacArthur and Lynley have a "history," having appeared together in the 1958 Disney film, The Light in the Forest, which was Lynley's first film role. Nothing is made of this in their brief scenes together in this show, an opportunity wasted.

Having relocated to Honolulu, Bates hangs out on the beach at Waikiki and hooks up with Kimo where, using the name of Karen Baker, she becomes his friend almost immediately at a beachside bar, probably because, as Surfer tells Lynch later, Kimo is "a dummy with women."

Despite the fact that McGarrett didn't want anyone from Five-O involved with the resumed undercover operation, Danno keeps his eye on Bates in the bar to make sure that she has connected with Kimo, and reports to McGarrett who is outside, saying "She's playing him like a ukulele."

A couple of HPD cops show up looking for Bates at the bar at McGarrett's request to help build her backstory of being involved with drugs. She is not there at the moment, changing. Overhearing the cops, Kimo leaves in a hurry and almost drives away without her. Bates rushes to his car (interesting she would know exactly where it is parked) and when the two of them leave the scene, they drive right past McGarrett and Danno who are parked near them in the Mercury Brougham, duh!

Kimo is disturbed by why the cops were looking for Bates. She tells him in an emotionless voice, "I bought some drugs, cocaine. Some friends of mine on the mainland gave me some names to contact. I was just trying to bring it back to them … I was just doing a favor. I don't even use the stuff." She whines, asking him for help and he says OK.

Within what seems like a very short time, Kimo brings Bates to Lynch's place where she joins assorted associates and bimbos lounging around his swimming pool. Lynch, who is a professional criminal, so to speak, is not stupid and is very suspicious of Bates. When he finds cocaine in the compact in her purse, he gets Surfer to taste it. It's the real McCoy and you have to wonder how Five-O got a sample of the drug for her to use as part of her "disguise."

Lynch tells her, "You're a very pretty girl, Miss Baker. Very pretty. But you're not too bright. Carrying drugs around in your purse while the cops are looking for you is one sure way of winding up behind bars. Besides that, this is my home. You realize what could happen if drugs were found on this premises?" Still whiny, Baker tells him, "I'm sorry, sir. I just didn't think." Lynch leers at her, "It's a good thing you're a pretty girl." Surfer later checks out Baker and finds that "She's got two arrests in California. One in Oregon. Got one conviction, and one six-month term for dealing."

Meanwhile, in yet another example of McGarrett not trying to keep the operation as unrecognizable as possible, Chin Ho does surveillance across the street from Lynch's house in a "Matzo Cable TV" truck. (Is this some kind of in-joke?) In one scene, you can see Chin looking through what should be a one-way window in the truck with binoculars! Chin seems to be phoning McGarrett every five minutes to bring him up to date on developments in the case, especially after Bates installs a bug in a phone at Lynch's.

Lynley's performance continues to go downhill. The script does not help, especially when Bates starts asking Kimo a lot of questions about what his "business" is with Surfer and Lynch, which should arouse Kimo's suspicions. Despite this exchange, their whirlwind romance develops more, and Kimo introduces Bates to his mother, who puts her up overnight. There is no suggestion that Kimo was sleeping with her at his mother's. I think this is very unlikely, because his Mamma seems kind of straight-laced. After they leave his mother's, Kimo tells Baker, "She thinks you're okay for a haole.

When Kimo takes Bates to his Uncle Kale's place where the old man (who is never seen in the show) has a business making tiki carvings, Bates gets pushy about Kimo's relationship with Lynch and Surfer, feeling that there is something which is keeping Kimo from realizing his dreams: "It's narcotics, right? That's what they're into, isn't it? I knew, as soon as I saw your face when I mentioned cocaine. Now, I know those two are into something heavy. They're not out stealing hubcaps." Kimo tells her that he is indebted to Lynch who "picked up some gambling markers" for him, and when the shipment of heroin comes in, it will be put in the tikis which are then sealed and shipped to the mainland where even "dogs and X-rays" will not be able to detect what's inside them. Once the dope gets to the distributors, Kimo will be "off the hook."

When Kimo says this method of transporting the drugs is "perfect," Baker then goes into a preachy rant, saying, "Yes, except for the people that get hurt, and maybe even the children." WHAT?!? Bates tells him, "When you're through, Lynch will own you … Kimo, I don't wanna hurt you. But it's not too late to do something about it." Kimo and Bates go back to Lynch's place where Kimo tells Lynch that he and Baker are now partners, so he won't have to "take the rap alone." Lynch says this is OK, but Baker's cut will come out of Kimo's share. Shortly after this, Kimo finds the bug in the phone, when he sees its bottom reflected below the glass table where it sits. He wants to show this bug to Lynch, but suddenly changes his mind, suspecting that Baker is connected with it. This bug is very large, and it seems to fit in a hole on the phone's underside.

Kimo doesn't spill the beans about who Baker might be, but the two of them go to the beach near Lynch's place where they engage in a loud discussion where Bates admits she is a cop, but tells Kimo, "I think you're a very kind, decent human being who has gotten himself in circumstances beyond his control. Look, you saved my life in there. You know what would have happened to me if you had shown Lynch what you found. Now, look, just play this one through with me. And I will go to court for you. And nothing will happen to you, I promise." However, almost at the same time back at Lynch's, Surfer reports that "That record on Karen Baker, it's a phony. Her name's Bates, not Baker. And she's a Five-O plant … That's straight. Phil just got a tip in from Maui." So much for McGarrett's secrecy!

Kimo goes to the beach where the heroin finally arrives via a raft from a ship. Lynch and Surfer are nearby watching this. Kimo takes the drugs back to the tiki shop where he is supposed to put it in the idols, followed by Lynch and Kimo. But McGarrett and Danno have been monitoring the drugs' arrival, having figured out which ship they were on thanks to when the bug was still working, and they are flying overhead in a helicopter (number N9014F)! Doesn't anyone notice this? At the shop, Lynch says he will take the tikis and the drugs back to his place because "I believe in doing my own mailing service." He leaves Surfer behind, who tells Kimo he has to knock off Bates, because she works for Five-O. Surfer hands Kimo a crowbar with the idea he should mess up Bates, but Kimo attacks Surfer instead. Although Bates supposedly knows martial arts, her attempts to deal with Surfer are useless, and she ends up hitting him over the head with a tiki.

Kimo and Bates attempt to flee, but they are followed by Surfer, who shoots Kimo fatally in the back. HPD cops nab Lynch and Thaler, who came on the dinghy from the freighter with Kimo and Bates to the shop. McGarrett leaps from the helicopter on top of Surfer and subdues him. Lynley almost engenders some sympathy in the last scenes as she sheds a tear over the shot and dying Kimo, but it is hard for viewers to respond in kind, considering what a disappointment the rest of her performance is.

The episode is directed by Alan Reisner, who did some of the series' best, including "Hookman," "Skinhead," and "Man in a Steel Frame." The writer, Irv Pearlberg, gave us "The Bells Toll At Noon"! The music, mostly using strings and brass, is by Stevens, surprising for such a run-of-the-mill episode. There are a few echoes of "Hookman."

CASUALTY LIST:

Death: HPD Officer Bradley shot three times at close range by Surfer.
Injury (x3):: Surfer, Kimo Hameo and Valerie Bates fight in the woodworking shop. Kimo hits Surfer with a crowbar. Bates is thrown to the side, almost hitting her head on a beam. Bates hits Surfer over the head with a wooden tiki god.
Death: Hameo shot twice in the back by Surfer.
Injury: Valerie rolls into a ditch after Hameo is shot.
Injury: Surfer tackled by McGarrett when he jumps from the helicopter.

MORE TRIVIA:

• The lighting in the coroner's office is a very peculiar green.
• Because the heroin shipment expected soon on Oahu could arrive on any one of several ships coming from Hong Kong, McGarrett says he wants Duke to "get up a list, all ship arrivals from Hong Kong the next three weeks. Every passenger ship, tanker and freighter. Anything that floats." Later, when he doesn't want any interference with the drop off of the heroin near Barber's Point, he says "I don't want anyone in that area, Danno. Not a surfboard, a dingy, or a kid floating in an inner tube."
• Doug Mossman plays Jimmy Akana, a reporter from Channel 9 in Honolulu. The subtitles also spell his name "Hakana." In "The Silk Trap," he was Jimmy Keno.
• Watch the ash on Lynley's cigarette in the bar scene where she first meets Kimo — it looks like she is smoking pretty fast.
• Surfer refers to Kimo as "Kimo Sabe" and Kimo refers to himself as a "dumb kanaka."
• Lynch smokes.
• McGarrett doesn't put on his seatbelt when the helicopter takes off, but he has it on and unbuckles it just before he jumps onto Surfer.
• Carol Lynley wears a top which sometimes shows she has a very bad sunburn, causing continuity issues.
• Nephi Hanemmann's first name is misspelled Nehphi in the end credits.

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233. (S10E19) When Does A War End? BOMB – NO STARS!  CUFF THEM, DANNO 

QUICK PLOT:

A man bombs companies owned by a Japanese-American who he feels was responsible for his father's death in a prison camp during the Second World War.

Click here to read Full Plot.

REVIEW:

An execrable show, my nomination for worst episode of all, replacing the final season's dumb "A Bird In Hand...".

Willy Barker (David Dukes) is seeking revenge on Honolulu businessman Yuhio Muromoto (Bennett Ohta), who he believes was commander of a Japanese camp on Bataan in 1942 during World War II who was responsible for the death of his father, William Barker Sr. (similarities to S03E08, "The Reunion"). His father was "tied to a stake along with a lot of others for some minor infraction of the rules" before he collapsed and was bayonetted.

At the same time he is bombing companies owned by the respectable "pillar to the community" Muromoto, Barker becomes friendly with the tycoon's daughter Nancy (Donna Benz) who teaches an adult education photography class which he has joined. Despite knowing him for only a couple of weeks, she actually tells him, "I really like you and I want to share with you." Later she tells him "You're a nice man" and they smooch! Nancy invites Barker to her house where he meets the object of his revenge, her father, and when a cannery owned by Muromoto is bombed, Barker goes there with Nancy where he meets McGarrett and Danno.

One wonders why Nancy would even have the remotest interest in Barker, since he is kind of a creep who drives an Ed's Taxi for a living and she is a hot-looking high-class society "babe"! Owning expensive-looking camera equipment, Nancy looks like she pursues her hobby with aspirations of becoming a professional photographer.

Finding out that Muromoto is well-regarded in the business community, having come to Hawaii in 1950 at the age of 29 and built up various enterprises where the employees are treated fairly, as well as being a man with no enemies who belongs to the Chamber of Commerce and someone who socializes with the best families, McGarrett suspects something shady in Muromoto's past. He goes to the Japanese consul to investigate Muromoto's wartime records, where Sakata (Tommy Fujiwara) says that when Tokyo was firebombed, "tons of records were destroyed." (This was not the case in the episodes "Samurai" and "The Reunion.")

This show is almost passable up to a certain point. But almost like an omen of what is to come, something weird happens during one of Nancy's classes: she is demonstrating a certain camera technique and wants to take a picture of Barker, her "handsome model," and he is seen standing in the middle of several students in the classroom. He was not standing there mere seconds before and seemingly appeared out of nowhere.

Throughout the show, Dukes' acting as Barker is bad and it just gets progressively worse. When his character first telephones threats to Muromoto, he acts all twitchy, saying "I want you to sweat," which is pretty funny, considering he is drowning in perspiration. But Dukes is joined in the bad acting department by Anne Francis, who plays Alicia Wade, Muromoto's secretary of twelve years, as well as Barbara Kelly as Mrs. Allen, Barker's gum-chewing, slutty landlady who tells him that she boinked Charles Mitchell, Barker's mentor-like "uncle" who witnessed Barker's father being killed in the death camp and was "a celebrity who testified at the Tokyo War Crimes Trial" and had his name in the paper when he was doing a story on World War II.

Barker drives Nancy to an abandoned building out in the sticks which was bought by his "uncle" and which he helped fix up and ties her to a post. He calls Muromoto, telling him to come to this location or else his daughter will be killed. (It seems very odd that there is a phone in the building.) After this, Barker briefly morphs into his father tied to the pole in the prison camp in a scene that has to be seen to be believed, affirming his transition into a Class A nut job.

Meanwhile, McGarrett, Danno and Duke go to Barker's place which he took over from his "uncle" when the old man died recently. Iolani from the crime lab determined that grenades used in the first bombing we see in the show (actually the third such bombing in two weeks) were stolen from an army warehouse near San Francisco. Chin Ho goes to the mainland to look into this, and he reports back that the cops recovered the munitions that were stolen, and the crooks kept records (pretty dumb!) which revealed their only customer in Hawaii was Charlie. The suggestion here is that Barker's "uncle" wanted to take revenge on Muromoto originally, and when he died, Barker Junior took over for him.

At Barker's apartment, Five-O finds a picture of him with Charlie. The landlady IDs both of them, and McGarrett and Danno recall Barker from the bombed cannery. Danno calls someone in the military and almost immediately finds out that Charlie and Barker Senior were Japanese prisoners of war in the Philippines. McGarrett quickly starts brainstorming: "Could it be that Barker was trying to avenge his father's death?"

McGarrett and Danno go to Muromoto's place, but he is not there, being on his way to rescue Nancy. His butler (William Valentine) remembers where his boss was going, having overheard the conversation he had with Barker earlier where Muromoto conveniently repeated everything out loud. Not only that, Valentine knows what Muromoto's car license plate number is — what a great servant! And the school where Nancy teaches classes knows that she and Barker left for somewhere on the windward side of the island at 9:30 that morning. Talk about handing Five-O information they need to solve the case on a silver plate!

Muromoto arrives where Nancy is being held and is disarmed by Barker, who is dressed in combat fatigues. Alicia has appeared there out of nowhere, assuming an evil bitch persona and bitterly complaining that Muromoto led her on ("I was good enough to make love to"), then decided to marry a woman named Sumiko who is supposed to be arriving from Japan any day now. Alicia knows that Muromoto was really a Japanese war criminal: "Years ago, he broke down and sobbed to me that the war had made him a monster."

Alicia and Barker together have planned what has happened, each of them with their own agenda for revenge. But how did Alicia and Barker know each other to plot this scheme? Alicia found a picture in a book entitled Death March at Bataan about the war where one of the characters supposedly resembled Muromoto, which she then gave to Barker with a signed inscription — "May our hunt be successful."

McGarrett and Danno follow Muromoto to where Nancy and her father are in peril with the help of cops in a helicopter who have been tracking Muromoto from the air. They could see Muromoto's rear license plate (D1803A) that is conveniently bent upwards and looks like it is made out of cardboard. As the two approach the building in their car, of course no one can hear them, and McGarrett "just happens to have" some wire cutters in the trunk which enable them to easily enter the "compound" from the place behind where Nancy and her father are tied up and they can hear everything that is going on. (It looks like it would actually take quite a while to cut through this fence.) Then there "just happens to be" a box of hand grenades nearby from the munitions that Charlie ordered and McGarrett gets Danno to explode one as a distraction.

The final scenes are appalling — the "programmed" Barker, in combat gear, instead of bayonetting Muromoto, goes into a crouch which looks like he has diarrhea. I wish he would have stabbed Alicia. Anne Francis's wretched performance is reminiscent of a bad high school drama production.

We're not over yet, though Barker and Alicia are taken away. McGarrett makes a big speech to newspaperman Joe Boyd (Joshua Bryant) who has been dogging him throughout the case. Boyd suddenly appears at the abandoned building out of nowhere (this is the third time I have used this expression in the review), McGarrett speculating that he figured out their location from the police broadcasts.

When we were introduced to "Honolulu's leading investigative reporter" Boyd earlier, Danno drove him to the Japanese consulate to meet McGarrett, who was having lunch there, using chopsticks. Then McGarrett offered to give Boyd a ride somewhere else. Didn't this hot shot reporter have his own car? He obviously has a car at the end of the show.

Boyd, who is a smug individual, says, "I was right, huh? World War II vengeance." McGarrett tells him, "It's not the real story ... the real story is about people who can't let go of hate and what hate does to them and others ... When do all wars end? When people stop hating and start loving?" Bryant asks: "You think that'll ever happen?" to which McGarrett replies, "It better. Oh, God, it better." Augh! What crap!

The music by Cacavas is so-so, turning either Asian or militaristic at appropriate moments. It is hardly memorable, and certainly not enough to save this train wreck of a show.

CASUALTY LIST:

Injury: Clerk in office overlooking pier taken to hospital after explosion set by Willy Barker — extent of injuries not specified.
Death: One man killed in explosion at cannery via land mine set by Barker.
Injury (multiple): "Several injured" when explosion set by Barker happens at cannery.

MORE TRIVIA:

• When Barker and the photography class go on an expedition to a location near 1100 Spencer Street which Nancy says has "everything from skyscrapers to … pretty flowers," Barker sneaks away to a nearby cemetery where his "uncle" Charlie (1919-1977) is buried. He talks to his tombstone: "It's working, Uncle Charles, just like you said it would. Psych them out, scare the hell out of them. Make them suffer a little. Then move in for the kill. You wanna know something funny? This time he offered me money. Can you beat that? Money. I really wish you could have been there, Charlie. You would have been proud of your Willy." Considering the location, this graveyard is the Makiki Cemetery, where all of the other tombstones near Mitchell's ironically are for Japanese people.
• As a result of the explosion on the dock at the beginning of the show, some worker in an "office overlooking the pier" is supposedly injured, but there doesn't seem to be a building that close to the hut that explodes, the flying debris doesn't go very far, and the explosion does not seem so violent that it would blow out windows.
• On the wall in Barker's apartment is a framed photo cut out of the book which Alicia gave him about Bataan. On the back of this is a list of names with a title "I survived Bataan," which looks like it was typed with an old-fashioned typewriter. You might expect this to be a list of typical Five-O in-jokes, but almost all of the names in this list are gibberish, as if they were typed by the proverbial monkeys using typewriters. However, at the bottom of the middle column, it says "NOW IS THE TIME FOR ALL. BOO HOO I LOVE YOU." The entire left column is repeated on the right (thanks to Bobbi).
• The view from inside Muromoto's car does not match the exterior shots as he drives down the hill outside the place where his daughter is being held captive.
• When Boyd tells McGarrett in the Five-O office, "There's a story here," McGarrett replies "I'm not in the 'the story business,' I'm in the crime-solving business."
• Tommy Fujiwara's name of "Sakata" is the same as that of the actor who played Oddjob in the James Bond movie Goldfinger. Harold Sakata played a hoodlum in S05E13, "I'm A Family Crook – Don't Shoot!"
• The first two people seen in the show (including Barker) look at their watches to see what time it is.

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234. (S10E20) Invitation To Murder ★★½

QUICK PLOT:

McGarrett is caught up in a series of puzzling deaths immediately following the death of a famed artist.

Click here to read Full Plot.

REVIEW:

In this show, McGarrett gets involved in the affairs of rich people, not because the Governor is asking him to, but because the lawyer for the Barlow family, Malcolm Rhodes (Lyle Bettger) is asking him to. McGarrett and Rhodes are pals; they are seen having lunch at the beginning of the show. The presence of Bettger is annoying; he has three different roles this season including Dr. Dimitri Sartain in "Tsunami," this one, and multiple appearances as Jonathan Kaye in "The Silk Trap," "Head To Head," and "A Stranger In His Grave."

A six million dollar inheritance is at stake with unusual "conditions." Addison Barlow, the autocratic patriarch of his family, "one of the finest of our contemporary artists," according to Rhodes, passed away recently, and the money from his estate is not to be distributed until a year after the lawyer reads the will. The way the will is worded has nasty remarks about all the beneficiaries, guaranteeing they will try and knock each other off to increase their share of the money. According to Rhodes, this is "almost like an invitation to the heirs to kill one another," and I suspect the reason McGarrett is asked to attend the reading of the will is because of the eventuality that this will happen.

Most of the dispositions in the will are accompanied by brutal comments about the people who are attending the reading: "To my sister, Laura, a foolish and gullible woman who, against my wishes, brought David Thorpe into my house, to David Thorpe, her husband, an untrustworthy scoundrel and crafty opportunist, to Carolyn, their indecisive, fearful and cowardly daughter, to my brother, Thomas, a bumbling parasite without ambition or pride, to my son, Lawrence, a weakling, a gambler and wastrel, to my wife, Riah, a secretive, disloyal woman who coolly, patiently and successfully waited me out, and to my daughter, Eugenie, the full complement of all who have, with ill-concealed impatience, waited like vultures to pick my bones, I bequeath this house and property and the balance of my estate to be divided equally among those heretofore mentioned and surviving on the first anniversary of my death."

Thorpe, played by Anthony Caruso, well-known for roles as gangsters and racketeers during his 50-year career, is quick to react: "Why, that vindictive, evil old man. Winner take all, huh?" The beneficiaries start kicking the bucket moments later, when his wife, Laura (an uncredited actress), keels over. It is later determined that her pillbox, which McGarrett finds in her possession, contained 11 tablets, eight of which were aspirin and three of which were "a virulent poison." (It is an interesting coincidence that, considering there were odds that she would take one pill out of the 11 that killed her, that her death happened exactly at the time the will was being read.)

After McGarrett leaves, first summoning HPD and a forensic team to the house, he goes to visit Anatole Surat, "a collector, an art expert, [who] the Metropolitan Museum in New York consults … from time to time," because at the Barlow place, there was a self-portrait of Addison Barlow on the wall which McGarrett has seen previously at Surat's. Surat is intrigued and McGarrett arranges for him to examine other paintings at Barlow's, where it's determined that there are several forgeries, including one of the self-portrait owned by Seurat.

The next of the relatives to go is Lawrence (Francis Kamahele), Addison's young son by his relatively young-looking wife Riah (Helen Funai). There is a serious issue here because Lawrence doesn't look at all like he is the child of a mixed marriage between a white guy and an Asian like his sister Eugenie (Christine Kokubo). Eugenie was not present at the reading because, according to Barlow's brother Thomas (Eduard Franz, who appears in next season's "The Spirit Is Willie"), "[She] swore she'd never step foot in her father's house again," without going into details. (Kamahele, a member of the Five-O stock company, judging by his listing in the small credits at the end of the show and who appeared in three other episodes, was Hawaiian.)

Lawrence is a heavy gambler, owing at least $18,000. He has been selling his father's original paintings to the swishy art dealer Benileha (Sidney Lassick). Then where they were taken from the house, he replaces them with forgeries which were done by his artistic cousin and Thorpe's daughter Carolyn (Valerie Charles). At the show's beginning, Carolyn was driving up the one-lane road on a hill above Hawaii Kai seen in other episodes of the show like season twelve's "Voice Of Terror." She was distraught because she thought she had "palsy," a degenerative neurological disease similar to Parkinson's. She fell off a cliff, though whether she slipped while running or intentionally jumped is debatable. What we see of her fall is disturbing.

McGarrett and Danno go to Benileha's Gallery Hawaii because that's where Surat purchased his original Barlow self-portrait. McGarrett suspects something fishy is going on (which is, read the previous paragraph), but Benileha assures him that he is "highly reputable" and conducts "an honest and ethical and aboveboard business." After McGarrett and Danno leave the gallery, Lawrence is seen entering the place (which the two Five-O men observe), making it look like that there really is something fishy going on.

Danno and Chin Ho are assigned to tail Lawrence which they do in an absurdly close manner on roads where they are the only two cars. Lawrence goes to his sister Eugenie's place to switch his beat-up looking Mercury Cougar for her Jaguar XKE convertible, presumably because he thinks he can throw the guys from Five-O off his trail. But when he emerges from the private road leading to Eugenie's place, it is pretty obvious to Danno and Chin that he is driving the XKE, especially since they have been parked right next to where Lawrence emerges on to the main drag. And Lawrence looks right at them, duh!

Their farcical tailing continues, with Lawrence driving fast in a very erratic manner. On a curve, he finally loses control and plunges over a cliff. There are issues with this. First, prior to the car going over, the cliff is on the passenger side, but as Lawrence swerves to miss another car, the cliff is on the driver's side. As the car flies down the cliff, breaking up spectacularly, it is obvious that there is no one in it, but when Danno and Chin check the car at the bottom, Danno looks underneath the upside-down car and says "He's dead." As well, when the two get to the car, there is a bunch of grass from the hillside sticking up out of its underside, but when the car is seen in a long shot after it has rolled down the hill, as well as in post-crash scene photos, this clump of grass is not there.

Two paintings are found in the trunk of Eugenie's destroyed car. Lawrence put them in the car when he was at her place; they were stored by him in a box in her garage, unknown to her. It turns out the car's steering wheel was tampered with, making McGarrett surmise that someone wanted to knock off Eugenie. (But seriously, wasn't the real reason that Lawrence died was because he was trying to outrun Danno and Chin who were tailing him?)

It was suggested earlier that Eugenie was estranged from her father, but when McGarrett goes to tell her about Lawrence's death, she says this is not true, she had issues with her father because of the way he treated her mother, but "he never showed that [bad] side to me … I guess because I always stood up to him." But, because of the monkey business with her car, it looks like Addison had hatred for her as well. She tells McGarrett, "He bought me that car that Larry borrowed. I didn't hate him. But maybe now I do."

McGarrett goes to see Iolani (Lydia Jade), the forensics lab technician. She has lots of dirt for him regarding the Barlow family, based on Carolyn's and Addison's bodies being exhumed: "A drug, a systemic poison, not a disease, gave Carolyn Thorpe symptoms, symptoms that might suggest to a physician a rare form of Parkinson's … Lack of coordination and balance, blurred vision. You know, I doubt if she was a suicide. She probably fell to her death." As far as Addison was concerned: "He was terminally ill, but he died prematurely of asphyxiation, a lack of oxygen, and paralysis of the throat, drug-induced … [I]t was the same drug used on Laura Thorpe."

There is more: "Lawrence, the young man that went over the cliff in the Jaguar? Well, this was found in his shirt pocket. They're common over-the-counter antihistamine capsules, all innocent except for two, which were a deadly poison," the same poison that killed Laura Thorpe. McGarrett is appalled, saying, "My God. We're dealing with mass murder." When he leaves, he says, "Iolani, you've earned your salary."

McGarrett goes back to see Benileha, who admits that he purchased original Addison Barlow paintings from Lawrence who "assured me his father wanted to sell," and that the artistically-talented Carolyn was the one who made the copies "to help Lawrence" (though you have to wonder, wouldn't someone have noticed that the paintings were missing from the Barlow mansion while this was going on). Threatened with being charged with "grand theft," Benileha spills more beans, saying that David Thorpe was the one behind everything: "It was his scheme from the beginning. He gets half my profits."

McGarrett figures this explanation makes sense, because Thorpe was much younger (probably in his mid-50s) compared to Barlow's sister Laura (late 60s), coupled with the description of Thorpe in the will as an "untrustworthy scoundrel and crafty opportunist" who likely wasn't marrying Barlow's sister for love, but for her eventual inheritance.

McGarrett is still stumped by who is behind the rash of clever ways of eliminating people. On the way back to the Barlow estate, he even stops his car while driving with Danno to have a "philosophical moment," gazing at the view near the spot where Lawrence met his death. This sequence is noteworthy for the fact that Danno's Ford LTD changes into McGarrett's Marquis from one shot to the next (thanks to Bobbie).

When they arrive at the Barlow residence, Danno saves Thomas from being the next relative to be killed. Thomas is a boozer who Addison used to supply with wine, including the very expensive Château LaFite. In the house's wine cellar, Thomas is just about to drink from a cask of burgundy when Danno asks to taste it, with the result Danno realizes that the wine contains arsenic! As someone on IMDb suggests, this is totally stupid – what would have happened to Danno if the wine contained cyanide?

Riah is also saved from a horrible death when McGarrett realizes that a pin she is going to put in her mouth while sewing (was this her hobby that she did often?) is contaminated with some toxic substance.

Thorpe, who was not at the house, is rounded up by HPD and brought there. McGarrett lays it on heavy to him: "I know all about your dirty dealings with Benileha and with Carolyn and Lawrence, the whole dirty business. I even know where Lawrence hid the forgeries." Thorpe replies, "I was only trying to help Lawrence. He was in trouble … I admit I profited, but I did not kill my own wife or my daughter. Maybe I didn't show the proper respect in my grief, but that doesn't make me a murderer."

McGarrett tells him, "Every killing had been programmed, every one except yours. Laura's drugs, Addison's pain pills, Carolyn's medication, Lawrence's antihistamine, Thomas' wine, Riah's sewing pins. Every one except yours." But when Thorpe tells McGarrett he had nothing to do with screwing up Eugenie's car, because he hadn't been to her place ever and she only got the car just before Addison died, he is off the hook.

Finally McGarrett has a mega-brainstorm, realizing (BIG SPOILER COMING) that it was Addison Barlow himself who plotted the complicated demise of his relatives, all of whom he detested: "I should have realized that the murderer had to know in advance what was in that will in order to set up Carolyn and Laura's death. And there was only two people who knew that in advance of the reading: Addison Barlow himself and Eugenie. And because Eugenie could not have planted the poisons [because she never came back to the house], the only other person is right here. Addison Barlow, murderer from his grave. He wrote his will to set up a motive for all the heirs. Then he planted the pills, the poisoned wine, the pins, even the sabotaged sports car. All were accessible to him. But he hated you above all, Thorpe. You were to be the last one left, therefore accused of all the other murders. And I almost succumbed to it."

Case closed!

This show is definitely "different," with its Agatha Christie-like plot, but at times is like watching cells divide in slow motion. Jack Lord seems to be delivering a lot of his lines like a plumber who is dragging out a job to make more money. The classical-sounding score in this show is by Walter Scharf, and it is also "different" compared to typical Five-O music.

WHAT DOES THE TITLE MEAN?

The title is referred or alluded to four times in the show: Rhodes to McGarrett: "I can't explain it, Steve, but this will, heh, it's almost like an invitation to the heirs to kill one another." McGarrett to Danno: "The family lawyer was worried about the conditions of the will, what he feared might be an open invitation to murder." McGarrett to Eugenie: "If you knew the contents of the will, you must have realized that the will was practically an invitation to murder." Plus a flashback of the first comment near the end of the show.

CASUALTY LIST:

Death: Carolyn Thorpe accidently stumbles off cliff.
Death: Laura Thorpe dies of poisoning just after Addison Barlow's will is read.
Death: Lawrence Barlow dies when Eugenie Barlow's car that he is driving flies off cliff.

MORE TRIVIA:

• McGarrett speaks French to Thomas Barlow, saying "To your health."
• Thomas wears a hearing aid in his right ear.
• Near the end of the show when McGarrett is confronting Thorpe, he says "The killer had to have access to all the instruments of death." But if you look carefully at Jack Lord's lips, you will see this line has been redubbed, and he originally said, "implements of death."

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235. (S10E21) Frozen Assets ★★★

QUICK PLOT:

A famous mystery writer investigates happenings at a Honolulu cryogenics institute.

Click here to read Full Plot.

REVIEW:

This episode, directed by Reza Badiyi, the man in charge of Five-O's "title visualization," introduces the "old biddy" Millicent Shand (Mildred Natwick), author of 34 Hercule Poirot-like mystery novels featuring Henri Reynaud of the Sûreté.

A childhood pal of the Governor's (she calls him "Sonny"), she has come to Hawaii to investigate a fishy outfit called The Cryogenics Foundation run by Kenneth Kirk (Peter Lawford) where one of her friends, Elizabeth Hubbard, died in January 1978 under mysterious circumstances as she was thinking of leaving the place.

The Kirk Foundation is like a retirement home or "country club" where people with terminal illnesses live out their final days in deluxe accommodation including gourmet meals, and when they die, their bodies are frozen, to be brought back to life later when advances in medicine can deal with their conditions. Typically, these people leave large amounts of money to the foundation to take care of maintaining their bodies in a frozen state.

Millicent goes to see Kirk, falsely telling him that she has a heart condition and wanting to make use of the foundation's services. After this, she goes to see her old pal, the Governor, and McGarrett is there too. She tells them, "Freezing people, bringing them back to life, what rubbish." Most of Millicent's suspicions are based on circumstantial evidence, though. After she leaves, the Governor tells McGarrett, "This Kirk Foundation is a licensed, reputable, scientific organization, and the investigation must be discreet. And unless you want to find me and you and this whole situation in her next book, you'd better get on it right now."

McGarrett goes to see Kirk, telling him that Elizabeth's lawyer contacted Five-O with a letter, saying that she wanted to leave the place. But McGarrett then mentions a letter written by Elizabeth herself on the day she died in which she said that she "never felt better." Kirk doesn't know anything about this. Instead, he suggests to McGarrett that Elizabeth was mentally imbalanced preceding her death, a condition that was "symptomatic with her illness" and that she was "always hallucinating [and] fantasizing." You have to wonder how Elizabeth could have mailed a letter to her lawyer – wouldn't her mail have been screened by the foundation? It's not like she could just walk down to the corner mailbox.

Following this, McGarrett talks to Kwan (Kwan Hi Lim), someone connected with the Attorney-General's office (or is he supposed to be the Attorney General himself?) and is told that an autopsy on Elizabeth's body is out of the question, because it would interfere with the cryogenics process, and the case might eventually end up in the US Supreme Court.

When Millicent discusses the case with McGarrett, she keeps talking about how Reynaud, her fictional detective, would try and solve it. She decries McGarrett's methods as "plod along, knock on doors, police routine," which is not going to help catch Kirk, "a diabolical rascal, a very clever murderer who has devised a protective screen unparalleled in criminal history."

To "prepare a trap" for Kirk, Millicent signs up to be one of the foundation's customers, much to McGarrett's annoyance. To maintain her body after she dies, she tells Kirk that "my bequest will include all present and future book royalties." Over the phone, McGarrett cautions her, "I hope you don't end up in cold storage."

As part of the admission process, Millicent is checked out by the foundation's doctors, and she hopes that they will find the bogus "heart condition" that she told them about, so she will have proof that their whole operation is fraudulent. The results, much to her susprise, determine that there is nothing wrong with her heart, but other tests reveal that she has a tumor on her pineal gland. She tells McGarrett, "They are just more devious than I thought."

To double-check this latest diagnosis, McGarrett gets an independent medical lab, where the doctors are Winston Char and Tommy Fujiwara, to run the same tests on Millicent, and the diagnosis of a pineal tumor is confirmed. However, a more in-depth investigation reveals that Millicent was given some substance, perhaps while the foundation was taking blood samples during her checkup, which "reacts the same way a glandular infection would react," which to me is very far-fetched.

Millicent is all ready to go back to the mainland to get another opinion about her medical state, but Kirk persuades her to hold over for a day, staying at the foundation, so she can witness a "resuscitation" of James Royce (Fred Ball), a patient who has been on ice for six years after suffering from Hodgkin's disease. Millicent is in the audience for this presentation, which is watched with amazement by casually-dressed people, perhaps potential customers of the foundation. As Royce comes "back to life," the crowd breaks into applause.

Millicent becomes somewhat disturbed when nurse Wini Omella (Nobu McCarthy) wants to give her injections even though she is just staying in a guest room. Millicent sneaks around and finds where Royce is staying and asks him some questions about what it was like to be dead for six years. A big fan of her books, Royce starts explaining how "cold" it was, similar to something her fictional detective Reynaud encountered in a book which got her the Edgar Award for the best detective story of the year. There is only one small problem with Royce's recollection: this particular book was published only two years before, and Royce has been knocked out for six.

After grabbing her friend Elizabeth's file from Kirk's desk, Millicent attempts to flee from the foundation, but she is grabbed and sedated in preparation for giving her the full cryogenic treatment. Fortunately, McGarrett and HPD arrive on time to make sure this doesn't happen, and Kirk and others are busted. Back at the Governor's office after this, Millicent tells "Sonny" and McGarrett that they will be the "heroes" of her next book, The Case of the Frozen Assets.

The episode is pretty good, with the exception of a sequence where Danno and Duke disguised as power company repairman infiltrate the foundation to spy on Royce's return to life. They sneak into the amphitheater-like thawing room as the procedure is taking place and no one pays the slightest bit of attention to them. Exactly where they are standing at the very top of room is difficult to figure out, because in long shots and when the camera pans, you can't see them anywhere. There are also continuity problems with some of the people in the audience. What is even more peculiar is what created the power failure that brought Danno and Duke there in the first place, though McGarrett has some "in" with the president of the Oahu Power Company. When the two return to the Five-O office, McGarrett is incredulous over the things they saw: "What have you two been smoking? You're out of your gourds!"

John Cacavas' use of classical-sounding music to accompany Millicent, including a harpsichord, is appropriate, as is the creepy background he provides when she tours the body room. The first "wave" before a commercial does not have ominous music! Unfortunately, there is no musical suspense whatsoever as Millicent uncovers various untoward goings-on near the end of the show, an opportunity wasted.

CASUALTY LIST:

Injury: Millicent Shand captured by Norman Pryce and guard, then sedated. Saved in the nick of time from cryogenic suspension by Five-O.

MORE TRIVIA:

• Mildred Natwick appeared with James MacArthur's mother Helen Hayes in a five-episode NBC Wednesday Night Mystery Movie series, The Snoop Sisters, about two elderly mystery writers turned private eyes, which ran from 1972 to 1974. This episode has a lot in common with S08E09, "Retire in Sunny Hawaii — Forever," where Helen Hayes played Danno's Aunt Clara.
• At the 1999 Five-O reunion, Fred Ball, who plays Royce, told me that the "thawing out room" in the cryogenics foundation was one of the most expensive sets ever created for the show. It was built in the relatively small Five-O studio where the reunion was held. Ball told me that he was lying in his "coffin" and everyone on the crew went to lunch. He was afraid to open the coffin lest he ruin a take, but finally poked his head out to find that everyone had left him! Ball confirmed my suspicions that Lawford was drunk, saying that the actor was so sloshed that he kept blowing his lines. (In the opening scenes with Millicent, he looks like he might stumble into her as they are walking.) According to a tell-all biography about Lawford that I read, the actor ran up quite a large bill at the Honolulu hotel where he was staying above his normal room and board. When the hotel tried to get CBS to pay this bill, they refused. Only after a lot of heated discussion was the bill settled, and Lawford never worked for another CBS series.
• There are several lame puns and other humor in this episode to do with cold and freezing. Some examples: McGarrett and Kwan (respectively) are discussing court orders: "So I can’t get a court order to exhume? Or should I say to 'thaw out'?" "And if it is murder, I want the cold facts."; When talking on the phone with Millicent after she has signed in with the Kirk Foundation, McGarrett says, "I hope you don’t end up in cold storage."; When Danno and Duke report back to McGarrett about the resuscitation, Danny says, ”Steve, I’ll tell you, I watched the whole procedure with, pardon the expression, icy detachment."
• The color in the print used for the tenth season DVD box set for this episode is kind of grubby looking. The last shot of act one has a yellowish tinge, but that is also present in a TV dub that I have which dates back several years. The lighting in the scene where McGarrett talks to the daughter of another victim of Kirk's foundation (played by the very attractive Leann Hunley in one of her first TV roles) leaves a lot to be desired.
• In addition to the Five-O stock actors mentioned above, there are others: Lou Richards, Jimmy Borges, Daniel Cicogni and Daniel Taba. John Fitzgibbon plays Kirk's oily assistant Norman Pryce.

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236. (S10E22) My Friend, The Enemy ★★

QUICK PLOT:

An international news reporter whose unwillingness to reveal her source regarding an impending kidnapping creates an international incident involving the Middle East.

Click here to read Full Plot.

REVIEW:

In this show, Five-O deals with rich people. They are not friends of the Governor, though there is a garden party hosted at the Governor's place where Danno is in attendance, but we do not see the Governor himself. The rich people are Rashid (Aharon Ipalé), prince and "divine ruler" from some fictional Middle Eastern country, and his wife Princess Amina (Darrah Lau) who are on a world cruise and have arrived in Hawaii by yacht.

Following a sensational story in the Honolulu Star-Bulletin with World War II-style headlines on the front page — "KIDNAP PLOT RUMORED" — the princess, who is going to the garden party, is grabbed by a couple of guys who are working for people back in her homeland. McGarrett, who is with the prince on his yacht when news is received that Amina is late for the party, is totally walking on eggshells when is talking to Rashid because he can sense the international implications of what could happen.

The two kidnappers are played by Five-O stock characters. Bruce Wilson is Paul Roberts, and the devilishly handsome Geoffrey Heise is Derek Franklin. (Heise played judges in 3 episodes of the Five-O reboot and three characters on Classic Five-O.) Roberts becomes the Four Star Limousine Service chauffeur driving Amina and her bodyguard Ali (Jalaleddin Takesh) to the Governor's party. We later find out the real chauffeur was murdered and a "fisherman found the body," when it is said that this happened to "the chauffeur" without differentiating between Roberts and the real one.

After leaving the docks, Roberts drives on a bunch of under-construction-housing-development roads rather than main streets. Franklin, acting like a cop, though not wearing a uniform and driving a car which is not a police car, sets up a roadblock using a couple of flares on one of these roads, which is very lame.

A car approaches Franklin, containing a woman named Eleanor (Wisa O'Orso) and a friend. Eleanor was seen on a yacht near the prince's at the beginning of the show and she and her pal are also on their way via this out-of-the-way route to the Governor's party. Franklin discourages them from proceeding, saying there is an accident "one kilometer, maybe two" up ahead, which should be a big clue that something is fishy, because he should give the distance in miles. The two women choose an alternate route.

Roberts, Amina and Ali reach Franklin's roadblock and are misdirected to what Roberts describes as "a side road" which he tells the princess "will save time." However, they end up on a dead end street where there is what looks like a bunch of construction debris on the ground.

Roberts says there is something wrong with the limousine's engine, just as Franklin drives up behind them and Roberts says, "Ah, how fortuitous. If by chance I can't fix the engine, this gentleman can give us a push." But what is he talking about? A push to where? They are at the end of a dead-end street, duh! You would suspect the princess's bodyguard Ali would have figured things out what is going on, but he is clueless, and ends up murdered.

The show's "special guest star" is Luciana Paluzzi, whose main claim to fame was in the 1965 James Bond movie Thunderball where she played a femme fatale, a villainess who was knocked off well before the end of the show. Her Five-O character, Liana Labella, whose last name translates as "the beautiful," is an Italian scandal-mongering journalist, seemingly a guest columnist currently at the Star-Bulletin responsible for the sensational advance rumor about the kidnapping and its front-page story.

Labella, according to Danno, talking to McGarrett when he returns from a police convention at the beginning of the show, has interviewed people from Princess Grace to Henry Kissinger. She is probably based on Oriana Fallaci (1929-2006), the legendary Italian newspaperwoman, author and political interviewer. Fallaci actually did interview Kissinger, who later said having a meeting with her was one of the most disastrous decisions of his career.

Unlike Fallaci, who was similar to Mike Wallace, "the master of nailing somebody on camera," Labella comes across as a hyperactive flibbertigibbet, someone interested in tabloid scoops and making a big deal about freedom of the press when McGarrett wants her to reveal her sources, threatening her with the "no shield law, which means that any citizen is required to give information under these circumstances [like if a kidnapping or some other serious crime has been committed]." I think he is mixing this up with the shield law, which is designed to protect reporters "under these circumstances."

Labella seems to have free reign using the darkroom at the Star-Bulletin, which seems like kind of a Mickey Mouse operation, since it is in the same area as the sports editor, classified ads and city desk as well as the features and circulation departments. She walks in to the office wondering asking how everyone is doing or if there is any mail for her, and they all look at her as if to say "What the hell is she doing here?"

This mishmash of departments allows Roberts to try and get a photo identifying him as the driver of the limousine, i.e., one of the kidnappers, which was taken by Labella as he was picking up Amina at her yacht. He comes to the paper under the pretext of placing a classified for his dog which is lost, and then, totally oblivious to everyone in the room, walks into the nearby darkroom where he has seen Labella going and threatens her with a gun!

It is a good question as to how he knew Labella would be there at exactly a certain time and whether her camera would contain the picture in question. In an even more curious coincidence, Duke just happens to be nearby when all this happens and hears Labella screaming. He gets a faceful of photographic chemicals thanks to Roberts as he enters the darkroom. When Duke returns to the Five-O office later, relatively unscathed because his glasses kept most of the chemicals out of his eyes, McGarrett is very sympathetic.

The episode see-saws back and forth between comic and serious, with uneven results. When Danno meets McGarrett at the airport returning from the conference, he mentions Labella, stammering that she covers "all the beautiful ... uh ... people ... in the ... in the ... beautiful places." Danno also says that he saw her recently on the Mike Douglas Show, where Jack Lord himself appeared on January 17, 1969.

Danno's stumbling over his words is probably because Danno has hot pants for Labella. McGarrett scowls, telling Danno "get back to the facts before your libido is excited." Later, when Labella meets Danno, she refers to him as a "handsome young man." McGarrett warns Danno about mixing business with pleasure and Danno replies, "You know me, Steve." McGarrett counters, "That's exactly why I mentioned it."

McGarrett reveals his sexist side while verbally sparring with Labella, muttering "Women!" after she calls the Five-O team stupid. She goes on, "Do you still deny that you invaded me?" He says, "I beg your pardon?" She replies, "My room ... my room...," referring to Five-O's snooping there.

Her choice of the word "invaded" which causes McGarrett to do a double-take is peculiar, considering she uses a lot of other hip lingo that one would not expect from a "foreign" journalist. Presumably McGarrett misinterpreted this word "invaded" with "raped," because he says at the end of the show "I grew up with Italians," and he probably knows a lot of the Italian utterances, good and bad, which Labella comes out with in his presence during the show. It's unfortunate that none of her native language is translated in the subtitles, which just say "SPEAKING IN ITALIAN."

At the end, McGarrett invites Labella to dinner. She says, "I behaved like an idiot." McGarrett responds, "Never argue with a lady." She wonders if he will override Danno, who already asked her out. His reply is, "Have you ever heard of the old Navy maxim: 'Rank hath its privileges'?" Interestingly, Luciana Paluzzi and James MacArthur were almost the same age, both born in 1937. Maybe Danno has a thing for women his own age?

There is something seriously wrong with the end of the script to this show, which makes sense up to a certain point, despite its stupidities.

Rashid's first wife Jemilla (Kathryn Lee Scott), who is an old pal of Labella, shows up in Hawaii from Paris. Someone connected with Amina's kidnapping who "spoke German," called her in the middle of the night, figuring that if she went to Hawaii and talked to her ex-husband, she would have a powerful influence on him. She tells her ex the bad guys want him to allow "free passage across our country, from the Persian Gulf to Khorimshabar for a shipment of trade goods," a fancy way of saying "drugs." The prince agrees to this, because his wife is pregnant, and Jemilla was not able to produce a male heir for him. (Jemilla is in the room listening to this conversation with McGarrett; the prince says "I have not told anyone until now.") He hopes that McGarrett can find Amina before the dope dealers finish their journey.

There is a huge WHAT?!? moment when we find out that Jemilla is in league with Franklin, who is a former racing car driver currently her boyfriend and the two of them intend to marry. She is very likely in league with the drug dealers too! Jemilla hasn't come to Hawaii because of any sympathy for her husband; in fact, she hates his guts. As she tells the shocked Labella, "Have you not heard of the fury of a woman scorned? Discarded but held in bondage. So I lived in his houses, used his accounts, his servants spied on me. When he disapproved of anything, he threatened to cut me off without a penny."

The person who gave the tip about the kidnapping plot to Labella was Pete Kalua (Terry Plunkett), who overheard Wilson and Franklin talking about it at the Garden Court Hotel where he works for room service and where Jemilla is now staying. Pete passed this info along to Labella, who got it into the Star-Bulletin. When Kalua delivers some food to Jemilla's room where she is currently hanging out with Labella, Franklin is also there and he and Kalua recognize each other — I'm not sure why, unless it is because Franklin saw Kalua talking to Labella a few minutes before and made some kind of connection.

Franklin, who has a gun, takes Labella and Kalua hostage, and together with Jemilla drives away with them in a red van. The usual high-speed dragnet with Five-O, HPD and McGarrett and Danno follows shortly, and they are soon in pursuit, ending up on a dead end by the waterfront.

But ... what has happened to the kidnapped princess and her kidnapper? This is kind of an important part of the story! There is no sign of Roberts for about the last 12½ minutes of the show and and we haven't seen Amina for the last 31! When McGarrett and Danno are pursuing Franklin and his two hostages, Duke phones him to say "We spotted the car [meaning what?] outside a house in Mauna Loa [where?]. Turned out to be the hideout. Princess Amina is okay." We do not see any of this. We also do not see what happened to Roberts, if anything. Did he just disappear? What an easy way of resolving this plot thread!

McGarrett is quick to contact the prince on his yacht and tell him that his wife is safe, so the drug shipment can be intercepted and stopped. No charges against Franklin and/or Jemilla are specified. The show ends with the nonsense about McGarrett inviting Labella to dinner, which will be either "the best lasagna" or "cacciatore in Hawaii." Blech!

If a bit more care had been taken with the kidnapping sequence, this would be a top-notch episode, because in addition to various issues dealing with sexism, there are others concerning freedom of the press: the shield law, and a reporter's right to protect their sources.

CASUALTY LIST:

Death: Ali, Princess Amina’s bodyguard, hit over the head by Paul Roberts and Derek Franklin.
Injury: Princess Amina kidnapped by Roberts and Franklin.
Injury: Liana Labella held at gunpoint by Roberts who wants her film.
Injury: Duke blinded by photo processing chemicals thrown at him by Roberts.
Death: Real chauffeur murdered by Roberts and/or Franklin. Body found by fisherman. (None of this seen by us.)

MORE TRIVIA:

• Jemilla's name, spelled that way in the end credits, is misspelled as "Jamilla" throughout the subtitles.
• Labella's rented car, a Toyota Corolla (a cheaper car than one you would expect her to drive), has a strange license number — B-335.
• Eleanor's presence approaching Franklin's "roadblock" is really necessary only so Five-O can later get her to help create a police sketch of him. Shortly after this, when Danno and Labella, who were both at the party, come to the kidnapping location, described by Danno as the "access road two miles west of the Governor's mansion," Eleanor and her friend are there, even though she originally told Franklin, "We'll have to backtrack and go around." She tells Labella about the "kilometer" business, which it looks like Labella is going to pass on to Danno, but he seems too busy and/or overcome by his lust for her to pay any attention.
• Close examination of Duke dialling up Central Dispatch from a pay phone reveals their number to be 734-4536.
• McGarrett is seen in the usual helicopter with number N9014F, trying to locate the missing limousine.
• The score by Fred Steiner (credited as both composer and conductor) is pretty good; it uses mandolins to produce an Italianate flavour.
• When Kalua phones Five-O after Labella urges him to do so, he identifies Bruce Wilson's character as "Robert Paul," not "Paul Roberts."
• There is sloppy grammar in the subtitles on the DVD set: "It would be in our best interest if you'd get the picture before she realizes it's value." However, the color of this episode, compared to other shows in the tenth season DVD set, which is notorious for not being remastered, is pretty good, though the Gallery photos below are based on the remastered version in a later-released complete set of the entire series.
• Chin Ho is only seen in a brief clip probably taken from another episode, where he is holding the microphone over his mouth as he drives, obscuring the actual words that he is saying. The Five-O receptionist Lani (Claudia Lowndes) is identified in the end credits, but she is barely seen in the background of the Five-O office a couple of times.
• McGarrett bribes Judge Maggie Parker (Keo Hughes) with a bag of doughnuts to let Labella out of jail where she has been abused by the other prisoners because Kalua brings her gourmet meals.

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237. (S10E23) A Stranger In His Grave ★½  DANNO, BOOK HIM 

QUICK PLOT:

The discovery of the body of a wealthy rancher in a cane field conflicts with the fact that his wife had him buried four months earlier.

Click here to read Full Plot.

REVIEW:

This is a double-barreled episode where Five-O has to solve the case of a dead body in a cane field and also investigate what happened to a federal agent who disappeared while on assignment in Hawaii. It turns out the two cases are connected.

The show begins with a worker finding the body in the cane field which is being burned off. According to the subtitles, he says "Oh, my God," but if you listen carefully, it sounds like something else which is abbreviated "WTF." Seriously!

Medical examiner Dr. Choi (Winston Char) says the body, which seems to be about four months old, looks like it was dropped from a plane and has a gunshot wound to the head. It also has some fancy dental work, which involves the Five-O team going to every dentist in town. Duke and Danno have no luck, no wonder, because Duke goes to see one named Westman and in the next scene Danno, supposedly in another dentist's office, walks into the exact same office that Duke just came out of ... with the name of Dr. Westman on the door again!

Chin is luckier when he goes to a Dr. Henry Beamer. The dental X-rays connect the body with Frank Kealoha, owner of "a ranch on Kenea Road in the Wahiawa [spelled Wahiawah in the subtitles] area," a large concern similar to Constance Kincaid’s property in this season's "The Big Aloha."

When McGarrett and Danno go to see Kealoha’s widow Katie (the attractive Laraine Stephens in the last of her three Five-O roles), she says that she buried her husband four months before after he was killed in a car accident. Back then, she identified his body, which was badly burned by a fire and explosion, from his watch, wedding ring and belt buckle. Katie's boyfriend, Richard Chadway (Andrew Prine), who has been with her for about four months, is obnoxious towards McGarrett. Katie has told Chadway that he is a "mystery man" to her.

Katie has been recently dealing with Nelson Bodine (John Hillerman) to sell her ranch. He has several investors interested in the place, and is offering her $3.5 million, which she is more than happy to accept, especially because life with her husband in the last couple of years of their marriage was "a life in hell," and she wants to sell the ranch and have "a chance to be free."

Bodine is a charming but very oily individual, connected with an outfit called the Gamma Corporation. He drives a car, a Lincoln Continental Town Car, which is even bigger than McGarrett's. When he goes to see a former U.S. senator named Balford (Ed Sheehan) who will be paying $250,000 towards his share of Katie's estate, Balford's wife Carla (Joyce Nizzari Hogan) starts flirting with him. Bodine is known to Five-O, having been "up twice for extortion and tax fraud," but never convicted, having "walked out on a technicality." Duke has also heard that Bodine is involved with purchasing Katie's ranch.

Bodine does much of his business in an almost-anonymous way using the phone as well as a mailbox in the Waialea-Kahala U.S. post office. In the latter case, Bodine's secretary Alice (Barbara Bingham), who he considers to be a "dumb broad," leaves messages in box 10282 which his clients also have a key for.

McGarrett has the body in Kealoha's coffin exhumed, and it turns out to be a "high roller" (a person who spends or gambles recklessly) named Harry Crayton, "a 50-year-old man who's had a heart bypass," rather than Katie's husband, who would have been "a healthy man in his early 30s."

Meanwhile, Jonathan Kaye (Lyle Bettger, the last of multiple actors to play this part) is asking Five-O to track down a treasury agent named Alan Sloan. Kaye tells McGarrett, "He was doing some undercover work in Honolulu. Then very abruptly, his reports stopped and he can't be located ... His specialty is investigating large sums of laundered money ... Unreported cash from so-called respectable sources. Politicians, professionals, entertainers, etc. They make large purchases where the seller is willing to take cash and not ask too many questions."

When Kaye suggests some of the things where this kind of money might be invested, he says, "jewelry stores, expensive boats, building developments, ranches, cattle, horses." The last three of these get McGarrett's attention, because those are things that Katie is involved with.

McGarrett goes back to Katie's place. She doesn't recognize a picture of Crayton which was faxed to the Five-O office. She says the last time she saw her husband was when he was going to a "business meeting" at the Sunset Hotel. Chadway is whiny about McGarrett questioning her. He says maybe should get a lawyer, to which McGarrett replies, "I don't think anyone needs one yet, but before this is over, someone is surely gonna need one."

McGarrett goes to the Sunset Hotel, which was mentioned in one of the early reports from Sloan, who stayed there. The hotel manager says that he saw Sloan and Crayton together, and Crayton also played golf with people including a Doctor Morrison (George Herman) who is there right now. McGarrett talks to Morrison, who says he had dealings with Crayton, who was "in investments with a man named Bodine." Morrison says these two men handled some "deals for me ... purchases, property, land," because "these days it's a problem what to do with money." McGarrett knows that the doctor is one of the people investing in Katie's ranch, but the doctor won't admit this.

Bodine, having rounded up the money for the ranch from the investors, meets Katie in the middle of nowhere, and gives her a suitcase full of cash, the entire $3.5 million. She finds this unusual. Bodine tells her this method of payment is one of his "idiosyncracies," and that she is getting 25% more than the property is really worth. Payment in this fashion is ridiculous, because there is no way that Katie could easily deposit this in the bank. Maybe the 25% overage is intended for a money launderer to take it off her hands for this amount of commission?

McGarrett goes to see Bodine, who seems genuinely surprised at the murders of Frank Kealoha and Crayton. McGarrett turns the screws on Bodine, saying he knows that Crayton acted as Bodine's representative in negotiations with Frank, and says that considering that Bodine is "in so deep" with his "dirty money schemes," maybe he would like to add murder one to a growing list of crimes.

Bodine never investigated what happened to Crayton after a meeting he was supposed to have with Frank at the Sunset Hotel. Crayton just disappeared and Frank was killed in the accident around this time. After this, Bodine says "I got a letter from someone offering to make a sales deal with the Kealoha widow. I had no reason not to go along, so I did. It turned out he was right." Bodine did business with this person, who he has never met, because "He had some information about me and it seemed in my best interest to go along. The whole thing was done by phone and mail."

Bodine, realizing his goose is getting cooked, tells McGarrett, "You understand I only act as a middle man. I don't know where my clients get their cash. It's not my business to ask questions. I'm clean." McGarrett tells him, "That, my friend, is a matter of opinion. I have a feeling that the IRS and the district attorney would like to ask you some questions." As McGarrett leaves Bodine's place, Bodine starts yelling at him, "Listen, McGarrett, I never killed anyone. I don't need the money that bad. There's always another deal."

McGarrett asked Duke to check out Chadway's past, and Duke reports that he worked for a company in Los Angeles, starting there about two weeks before Crayton and Frank Kealoha were killed. McGarrett goes to lunch with Chadway, who seems totally annoyed because McGarrett obviously suspects him of something. After Chadway leaves in a huff, McGarrett takes the water glass and cutlery Chadway was using to have it checked for fingerprints, which are forwarded to the FBI. These fingerprints reveal that Chadway is the missing treasury agent Sloan, who has turned to the "dark side." As well, a couple of job references Chadway gave to McGarrett during the lunch both turn out to be phony.

Back at Katie's place, she is still conflicted regarding the suitcase full of cash. Sloan shows up and says "Bodine finally came through," which is odd because this is the first time that Bodine has been mentioned by him in the show. It turns out that the mystery client calling Bodine was Sloan himself, and he pulls out a gun telling Katie, "I think it would be best if I handled it," meaning the cash. Sloan intends to take Katie with him and kill her later, which is dumb — why doesn’t he just kill her now? He admits to murdering her husband because "it was for a worthy cause." Katie, of course, is upset because Sloan just "pretended" to love her.

Sloan prepares to leave with Katie. Her ranch is so large it has its own airstrip and there is a plane there which will be piloted by Eddie (Ted Markland), an associate of Sloan, who has worked at the ranch for two months as its foreman. The character of Eddie has been kind of a a useless one in the show up to this point, sort of a guy in a cowboy hat who has no pretensions to being a cowboy, and it seems his only purpose in the episode has been to pick up communications from Bodine at the post office and to fly Sloan (and Katie) out of the place now. There has been no mention of the plane on the runway up to this point.

McGarrett and HPD are on their way to Katie’s ranch, and considering it is probably far out of town, they get there fairly quickly. McGarrett drives his Mercury Brougham on the airstrip, fish-tailing back and forth in front of the plane which is trying to take off. Finally, the plane runs into some brush at the side of the road and Sloan and Eddie are both taken into custody. Katie is relieved to be rescued.

This all doesn’t seem that bad, almost logical! But there is a big problem near the end of the show. The writer, having written himself into a corner, has to somehow explain how both Frank Kealoha and Crayton were knocked off. To do this, he has McGarrett have a brainstorm:

"That treasury agent, Sloan, he had to be watching Crayton and Bodine, and he must have been close to what he needed on both of them. [Danno: That would make him a prime target for murder.] Yeah, but I don't see Crayton and Bodine as murderers [of Sloan?]. Besides, we're missing a body. Just suppose that there's a third party. He finds out about Crayton's business dealings and he tries to cut himself in on the Kealoha deal. Suppose that they get in a fight [huh?], and during the fight, Crayton is killed ... And then, Kealoha walks in unexpectedly and this mysterious third party, he has to shoot him [huh? again]. [Danno: And then switches the body because of the bullet hole in Kealoha's head.] Yeah, and, Crayton's body is pushed over a cliff in a flaming car, and Kealoha's body is dropped into a cane field [thanks to Eddie and the plane, I guess]. [Danno: It would have to be somebody who knew about the offer on the ranch. That brings us pretty close to Katie Kealoha.] Yeah, or someone close to her. Chadway."

At the point he makes the above rant, McGarrett doesn’t know yet that Chadway and Sloan are the same people; the dots will be connected for him shortly. But this is a lot of "suppose, suppose" hypothetical speculation as far as how the two men were actually killed and what happened after, all of which involves a lot of planning and work!

And, by the way, how did Sloan ever insinuate himself into Katie's life? Did they meet at a church social or something?

CASUALTY LIST:

Death: Frank Kealoha found in cane field after being shot by Alan Sloan/Richard Chadway and dropped from airplane four months prior (only body being found is seen by us).
Death: Harry Crayton killed during argument, put in car and pushed over cliff by Sloan/Chadway four months prior. His body is exhumed during this show (not seen by us).

MORE TRIVIA:

• When McGarrett talks to Dr. Morrison (George Herman), he comes out with the stock line "You have right to remain silent," though he hasn't charged Morrison with anything.
• An aerial shot of McGarrett in his car shows the 4-door Mercury Park Lane, which he hasn't driven for some time.
• The "bookem" for this episode is "Danno, book him."
• McGarrett makes a bet with Danno that the body in Frank Kealoha's coffin is Sloan, a bet which McGarrett loses.
• Laura Sode, later the Five-O receptionist, the waitress in the restaurant where McGarrett takes the glass and cutlery, wonders if he has some kind of unusual fetish. Back at the office, McGarrett makes a big deal out of paying the restaurant for these items to Lani, the current receptionist.
• The music in this episode is stock, and not particularly well chosen, such as in the scene near the beginning where Bodine meets ex-senator Balford.
• What's the deal with the scene where Balford's wife suddenly gets hot pants for Bodine? Is this an attempt to make Hillerman's character out to be a stud or something? Later Bodine is having some babe in a bikini named Coco give him a massage by walking on his back as he lays on a massage table outside his beachfront house!
• The last shot of the show seems to be in slow motion. McGarrett is holding on to Katie very tightly!

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238. (S10E24) A Death In The Family ★★★

QUICK PLOT:

Chin Ho Kelly, a long time member of the Five-O team, is exposed during an undercover operation and then murdered.

Click here to read Full Plot.

REVIEW:

Chin Ho meets an ignominious end in this episode, murdered while he is taking part in an undercover operation in Chinatown. When asked about his character's demise at the 1996 Mahalo Con convention in Burbank, CA, Kam Fong said that he originally wanted Chin to "retire gracefully," and fought the idea of having his character killed. There was even talk of the production company suing Kam for breaking his contract. Then someone told him that it was an honor if you were a regular in a TV show and you were knocked off. This meant that no one else could play your character.

Chin is pretending to be the nephew of an old man (C.K. Huang) who runs C.E. Billiard Amusement, a pool hall. His uncle is being hassled for protection money by two punks, Kimo Napali (Rod Aiu) and Brian Liu (Peter Kalua). When Chin says he wants to meet with these punks' boss, they take him to see Jimmy Rego (Reni Santoni), a gangster who was born in Hawaii and has spent most of his life on the mainland, where he had six arrests and one conviction for running a protection racket. Having returned to the islands, Rego now works for the boss of the kumu (Hawaiian Mafia), Cappy Pahoa (Manu Tupou).

Rego as well as Napali and Liu, who work for him, hail from San Francisco, and Chin's back story which says he is also from that city does not line up with reality. After Rego says that they already "made" him, Chin is shot in the head and his body is dumped in front of the Iolani Palace as a couple of horrified tourists watch.

Just as this happens, McGarrett is talking to several of HPD's finest including Danny Kamekona about how the federal justice department wants them to clean up the kumu. McGarrett explains Five-O's plan is to bust nickel and dime operations "to divert kumu's attention while we establish our underground operation."

At the beginning of the show, among other minor-league arrests, we have seen Duke busting a brothel in a hotel or apartment where the madam, a woman named Rose (Maria Manville), incredulously reads the warrant with words "soliciting" and "prostitution" just as a cop rousts a hooker adjusting her bra and a guy tucking in his pants from an adjoining bedroom. There are at least four other couples in the living room of this place.

Chin was the only operative that Five-O had working in Chinatown, which is surprising because he was "one of the state's top law-enforcement officers" whose face should have been very familiar to local crooks after he worked for Five-O for the last ten years. Don't forget that eight years ago, in S02E20, "Cry, Lie!", Chin was all over the local newspapers when he was suspended after being accused of taking a bribe!

Still, McGarrett approved Chin's request to go undercover despite the fact he was "too well-known." According to Duke, "Chin wanted the job." Danno adds, "He was the only one who could get any cooperation with the Chinese community." When McGarrett says, "I should have had a backup on him at all times," Danno tells him, "It wouldn't have worked, Steve. You know how suspicious those Chinese merchants are." Clutching his wrist and facing the corner by the window in his office where he usually goes in moments of extreme crisis, McGarrett swears, "So help me, God, I will not rest until I get the man who killed him."

When Pahoa talks to Rego, Jimmy says, "That Chinese cop should have been with us, instead of trying to set our people up with that haole cop McGarrett. I think somebody did us a favor." Pahoa is not pleased: "Chin Ho is not just some traffic cop. His boss, McGarrett, is the head of Hawaii Five-O, and he is a man to respect. He will not easily accept the death of one so close to him personally … I want to keep a very low profile until I see how McGarrett will react … You are new. I wanted to have these words with you personally, Jimmy." When Rego suggests that McGarrett has a price, Pahoa slams the table and says, "I said not McGarrett." Rego leaves with Pahoa's daughter Kini (Elissa Dulce), who is his girlfriend, and Pahoa turns to his "main man" Billy Swan (Vic Malo) and says, "I'm afraid we're going to have to keep a close eye on that young man."

Chin's daughter Suzy (Jean Marie Hon) soon arrives from the mainland. During S02E20 we learned that Chin had eight kids, not all of whom we saw, including her. Chin's wife died some time ago. When Suzy tells McGarrett, "My father always said that you were the finest man he's ever met," McGarrett says, "How ironic. I got him killed," and that the Five-O team is "the only family I know." McGarrett takes Suzy out to dinner, where he explains that Caucasians in Hawaii are called "haoles," surely something that she would know! We don't see any of the other members of Chin's family, which seems odd, because his funeral is mentioned, along with the fact that Rego attended it with Kini Pahoa, who is a former school chum of Suzy.

McGarrett goes to see Pahoa, who is surprisingly sympathetic regarding Chin's demise, which he says he did not order. However, McGarrett can't accept this, suggesting that Pahoa is complicit in Chin's murder, telling him to "cut the bull." The conversation gets more intense, with Pahoa saying, "I have done nothing for which you can touch me! And if I might add, I have friends in high places." McGarrett retorts, "So have I," and leaves.

Napali and Liu go to talk to Yung Sen (Gary Kau), manager of a chop suey restaurant, a building at 1606 Gulick Avenue, Honolulu, which is still in Google Maps today (2020). Rego suspects Yung is the one who spilled the beans to Chin about the protection racket which the three from San Francisco were trying to set up, which is true. Danno and Duke also go to see Yung, who declines to help them, but suddenly has a change of heart. However, Napali and Liu, using one of Pahoa's Hawaiian Restaurant Supply trucks, deliver two canisters of fortune cookies to the restaurant. When Yung opens one of these, it explodes, killing him and two restaurant workers. Billy Swan, who has been ordered to tail Rego's two associates, witnesses all of this.

Suzy, having heard from McGarrett at dinner about her pal Kini's father being a big-time crime boss, is anxious to help with the investigation into her father's death, but McGarrett tells her not to get involved. After she and Kini hang out with Rego at her hotel poolside, Suzy snoops in Rego's room, and almost gets caught by him. It is not really clear why she should suddenly think that Rego is involved with the murder, other than the fact that he attended her father's funeral with Kini.

Rego is hauled into McGarrett's office and asked some tough questions, responding with a lot of mouth. In a classic exchange after Rego tells him, "Listen, cop, don't make any threats, okay?" McGarrett says, "Don't you ever call me 'cop'. The name is McGarrett and the title is 'Mister'." (Click here to hear this.)

Shortly after, McGarrett busts Pahoa at a cockfight (attention, SPCA!) to enlist his co-operation in nabbing Rego. McGarrett digs up information on Pahoa showing that he is indeed a "model citizen" without even a parking ticket, and who has been involved in noteworthy endeavors like the Hawaiian Native Claims Movement. McGarrett tells Pahoa, "From now on, kumu is Five-O's main target in all areas, and you're gonna be my personal target. For openers, I'm impounding all of your Hawaiian Supply trucks, all of them … One of them was used in these recent killings [the restaurant bombing, IDd by one of the place's employees]. None of them will roll until I find out which one, and that could take months."

After Napali and Liu try to knock off McGarrett as he is driving back from the scene where the truck used in the restaurant bombing is located, Suzy comes to the office where she overhears a lot of discussion about the two hoods, though I don't recall that anywhere there has been a connection between them and Rego established that she has also overheard. Nevertheless, she gets motivated to try and find the gun which killed her father, which she figures is connected with Rego.

She puts herself in extreme danger by leaping from one hotel balcony to another to break into Rego's room in a scene reminiscent of S08E08, "Sing A Song Of Suspense," where one of the characters fell from a hotel balcony to her death. Suzy finds the murder weapon, again almost getting caught by Rego. She takes the gun to McGarrett, presenting it to him in a fancy box. Despite the fact this helps to wrap up the plot, this move is totally unrealistic, because a defense attorney would have a field day with the chain of evidence, especially considering Suzy doesn't work for Five-O.

Pahoa, fed up with Rego's meddling, has already told him, "There is no place in kumu for hotheads and fools." He offers Rego an all-expense-paid vacation with Kini out of the country. When he finds that Rego is not going anywhere soon, he contacts McGarrett and basically gives Rego to him, directing McGarrett to a house at 102 Nahama where Rego and Kini will be hanging out on the North Side of the island rather than leaving town, a detail which Kini told her father about.

Five-O soon arrives at this location, where McGarrett confronts the weasel-like Rego. After beating the crap out of him and threatening him with a gun, McGarrett says, "I want to book this one ... I think that Chin would have liked that." At the very end of the show, as McGarrett gets his revenge, there is what looks like a small rainbow on top of McGarrett's right shoulder!

Although there is a certain lack of plot logic in the show, it is redeemed by the classy performance by Manu Tupou as Pahoa. Tupou renders his dialog in a slow but deliberate manner, seeming to chew over every word. At the end, Pahoa tells McGarrett, "One day we'll meet again," which unfortunately never happens. Instead, he is replaced as by the wise-cracking and scenery-chewing Ross Martin as Tony Alika, as of the eleventh season two-parter "Number One With A Bullet" and three episodes following this in seasons 11 and 12.

The music is by Walter Scharf, one of two he did for the series, the other being S10E20, "Invitation To A Murder," four episodes before this one. It has a certain quality, with a descending musical motif which is used many times, though it doesn't resemble a "typical Five-O score." As far as I can determine, by the way, composer Walter was not related to actress Sabrina, who appeared in three episodes.

CASUALTY LIST:

Injury (x4):: Chin Ho tries to fight off Jimmy Rego and his two thugs, Kimo Napali and Brian Liu.
Death: Chin Ho shot in back of the head by Rego and dumped in front of Iolani Palace.
Death (x3):: Yung Sen and two kitchen helpers killed in explosion set by Napali and Liu.
Injury: Rego beaten and punched by McGarrett several times.

MORE TRIVIA:

• At the chop suey restaurant, McGarrett uses the expression "diabolic" in response to Duke saying, "It's crazy, Steve. It seems like they know every move we make." This is a variant on "diabolical."
• Some of the scenes at the opening of the show are letterboxed.
• Why does McGarrett drag Suzy along to the final confrontation and then tell her to sit in the car?
• According to Rego, the price of marijuana in New York City is currently $2,000 a pound.
• When Pahoa meets Rego at the latter's hotel, the ground on the hotel terrace is soaked with puddles of water.
• McGarrett addresses Suzy as "honey" once; Rego calls Kini this twice.
• Vic Malo plays Billy Swan in season 11's "Number One With A Bullet." After this, this character is portrayed by Jerry Boyd in S11E17, "Stringer," S12E01, "A Lion in the Streets" and S12E05, "Good Help Is Hard To Find."

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