Hawaii Five-O (1968-80) — Season 7 Episode Reviews

INCLUDING ODDITIES, GOOFS AND TRIVIA

Copyright ©1994-2023 by Mike Quigley. No reproduction of any kind without permission.


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RETURN TO THE SITE'S MAIN PAGECOMPREHENSIVE INDEX


SEASON SEVEN - 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).

S07E01 (145) - The Young Assassins (Scott Marlowe, Larry Wilcox, Will Seltzer)
S07E02 (146) - A Hawaiian Nightmare (James Olson, Felice Orlandi, Sheree North)
S07E03 (147) - I'll Kill 'Em Again (Danny Goldman, Ivor Francis)
S07E04 (148) - Steal Now--Pay Later (Ray Danton, Jacques Aubuchon, Casey Kasem)
S07E05 (149) - Bomb, Bomb, Who's Got The Bomb? (William Windom, Melody Patterson, Marc Singer)
S07E06 (150) - Right Grave–Wrong Body (Charles Cioffi, William Watson)
S07E07 (151) - We Hang Our Own (Leslie Nielsen, Perry King, Bruce Boxleitner)
S07E08 (152) - The Two-Faced Corpse (Jessica Walter, Alan Fudge, Abe Vigoda, Sam Elliott)
S07E09 (153) - How To Steal A Masterpiece (Luther Adler, George Voskovec, Gail Strickland, Michael Anderson, Jr.)
S07E10 (154) - A Gun For McGarrett (Carol White, Ivor Barry)
S07E11 (155) - Welcome To Our Branch Office (Cameron Mitchell, Frank Gorshin)
S07E12 (156) - Presenting...In The Center Ring...Murder (Khigh Dhiegh, James Hong, Richard Yniguez, Corey Rand)
S07E13 (157) - Hara-Kiri: Murder (Ossie Davis, John Fujioka)
S07E14 (158) - Bones Of Contention (Keene Curtis, Vic Tayback)
S07E15 (159) - Computer Killer (Jeff David, Robert F. Simon)
S07E16 (160) - A Woman's Work Is With A Gun (Patricia Hindy, Petrecia Wynand, Dale Morse, Eugene Roche)
S07E17 (161) - Small Witness, Large Crime (France Nuyen, John Kerry, Bert Convy)
S07E18 (162) - Ring Of Life (Don Knight, William Prince, Harvey Jason, Penelope Windust)
S07E19 (163) - Study In Rage (Richard Hatch, Gretchen Corbett)
S07E20 (164) - And The Horse Jumped Over The Moon (Ed Flanders, Bruce Boxleitner, Jo Ann Harris)
S07E21 (165) - Hit Gun For Sale (Nehemiah Persoff, Tommy Sands, Sal Mineo)
S07E22 (166) - The Hostage (Dane Clark, Linda Purl, Scott Brady)
S07E23 (167) - Diary Of A Gun (Ramon Bieri)
S07E24 (168) - 6,000 Deadly Tickets (Jack Hogan, Jack Kosslyn, Kwan Hi Lim)

Previous Season (Six) • Next Season (Eight) • COMPREHENSIVE INDEXSeason IndexSite's Main Page


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

145. (S07E01) “The Young Assassins” ★★★½

Original air date: 9/10/74 — Opening CreditsEnd Credits
Director: Bruce Bilson; Producer: William Finnegan; Writer: Bill Stratton; Music: Morton Stevens
Timings: Main Titles: 1:00; Act One: 11:56; Act Two: 13:56; Act Three: 13:58; Act Four: 9:01; End Credits: 0:36; Total Time: 50:27.

QUICK PLOT:

Danno and a college professor are kidnapped and held as hostages by a revolutionary group which previously assassinated a tourist on a crowded Honolulu beach.

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

REVIEW:

The opening of this show is not good promotion for the Hawaiian tourist industry. A middle-aged guy from the mainland named Chuck Miller (David Palmer) gets drilled with a bullet from a chrome-plated revolver on Queen's Surf Beach by one of the "People's Attack Group" (PAG), right through his surfboard in front of his horrified wife Marcia (Jo M. Pruden). The shooter, Mike (Larry Wilcox), runs away through the crowds quickly, and, like in last season's "Mother's Deadly Helper," which had a very public assassination at its beginning, no one does anything to stop him.

The PAG are typical of the "revolutionaries" that the Five-O writers had difficulty creating. These "terrorists" are full of B.S., uttering banalities like "You are we. We are power. The power to be."

Scott Marlowe plays their leader, Richard Stanwood, also known as "Army," who considers himself the "colonel" of the group. Rather than coming from a background which includes political science at a university and/or contact with left-leaning types, he is a hard-time criminal who escaped from Joliet and has offenses like manslaughter, robbery, narcotics, rioting and rape on his rap sheet.

His fresh-faced but determined followers are described as "campus radicals" and "dopers" by HPD policeman Nick (Danny Kamekona). University professor Kurt Metzger (Wright Esser) in recent articles in the Honolulu papers says the killing on the beach and two others which have preceded this in the last 10 days are "initiation rites" into the group.

When Mike returns to the PAG's hideout, Stanwood tells him, "You've shown your courage, brother. You're a member in full, brother. You belong." The members of the group celebrate the tourist's murder by swilling some beer, some generic movie brand, the label of which looks similar to Budweiser.

Shortly after this, two other PAG members decide to wreak havoc in one of the local malls. Victor Bonner (Will Seltzer) is on his way inside with the same gun Mike used, but he has an altercation with some guy in the parking lot which is witnessed by a cop in a squad car, played, uncredited, by stuntman Chuck Couch. Victor and Joseph Paluski (Donald Roessler, Jr.), the driver of the car, are quickly boxed in by several other cops who suddenly show up and bust them as they attempt to escape.

At HPD headquarters, McGarrett and District Attorney Manicote talk about making a deal of some kind if these two will drop a dime on their confederates. Bonner looks like he might crack, but Paluski gives them a lot of mouth about their constitutional rights. McGarrett tells Manicote, "Let's get out of here, the stench is getting to me," and they leave.

Danno goes to lunch with Metzger, who appears to be a psychologist or a criminologist, and asks if they can expect more terrorism. Metzger replies, "The more terror, the more publicity. It's their way of getting their message to the people and gaining recruits, or so they rationalize. You see, their warped egos need public attention. It's their equivalent of shooting heroin." Metzger describes the leader of the PAG as "a father figure with an expertise in calculated violence," whereas "the others may have been picked up in campus riots or for narcotics, the usual credentials of the modern militant."

When Danno and Metzger leave the restaurant, they are kidnapped by Mike and a woman from the group. I'd like to know how the PAG figures out that Danno and Metzger are having lunch and its location. The two PAG members are hiding down in the back seat of Danno's car and, of course, the two men do not see them.

When they are taken to the PAG's hideout at 4759 Kolahala, owned by their member Vera Marie Strickler (Genevieve Ann Nelson), Danno is described as a "flunkenstein" who is employed by the rich who own the government to be "on sentry duty defending their millions." Stanwood reads excerpts from Metzger's newspaper articles back to him: "These terrorists, in their childlike pseudo-innocence, must remain ignorant of history in order to pursue their strategy for power … Like many heroin addicts, these people suffer from a lack of significance that's festered since childhood. Sexually, they are often inept, if not impotent." To the last comment, Stanwood says, "I don't know about you, professor, but this one doesn't have any problems."

Danno's badge and Metzger's drivers license are soon received at Five-O headquarters, accompanied by a cassette tape where Stanwood wants to make a trade of Danno and the professor for Paluski, referred to as "Driver," and Bonner. Stanwood says, "If you don't accept our offer, your fascist pigs will be executed, and our retribution will not stop there. As long as Victor and Driver remain in chains, we will continue to take prisoners of war and execute them. No man, woman, child on this island will be safe from our vengeance. Now, you release our brothers, or the lid will blow on this thing like a volcano."

McGarrett and Manicote meet with the Governor, who is the only person who can release the two from jail. When Manicote asks if the Governor should give into to the terrorists, McGarrett screams "Never! Never, never. I say that we draw the line right here and now. We don't give an inch. Not one inch. You cannot deal with people like that. And you know what Danno's life means to me … When Danno signed on as a cop, he knew the odds and he bought them." The Governor agrees, though there is consensus among the three that Metzger's involvement with this is regrettable. McGarrett later goes to see Metzger's wife Elizabeth (Patricia Lee Herman), but she is disconsolate.

Ben has been canvassing gas stations after some prints were found on the the gas tank of the PAG's car which was impounded after the incident outside the mall. He gets lucky at one station where the attendant, "Jolly George" (Yankee Chang, uncredited) recognizes a photo of the car, which belonged to Vera, and remembers the woman driving it: "One good-Iooking haole wahine. Extra cutie." Ben does surveillance at the station, hoping she will appear, and Vera soon shows up for a dollar's worth of gas.

Ben alerts HPD cop Nick, who is nearby and who tails Vera. She stops and telephones Stanwood from a phone next to the Dillingham Fountain, saying she has "negative vibrations" because George was acting kind of squirrelly. Stanwood tells her, "You go for a ride. If he follows you, take him for a tour." After Vera continues driving, Nick tries to pull her over, showing his badge, but she takes a shot at him and speeds away, and the chase ends when she runs into a truck's trailer containing a bulldozer near the under-construction Aloha Stadium. Her car blows up violently and she is barbecued.

In response to this, Metzger is murdered by the PAG and his body is dumped at the Governor's residence, which has the street number 4659. Having abandoned their hideout at Vera's house, the PAG relocate to the abandoned military Battery Harlow which we have seen in previous episodes like S02E02, "To Hell With Babe Ruth."

Because Stanwood has asked for communications with McGarrett and the Governor to be made via channel 8 on citizens band radio, McGarrett requests the participation of civil defense trucks to do triangulation on Stanwood's signal. An approximate area where the PAG might be located is determined, helped by clues quickly obtained by Che Fong from the dead Metzger's clothing which include fungus and gunpowder dating back many years. McGarrett almost immediately figures out the PAG's new location is likely Battery Harlow. The topography of this part of the show is of the nature "don't think about this too hard."

McGarrett, with the help of Colonel Eckworth (Alan H. Birdsall), is soon in a tunnel which leads to the battery from the back, and other members of the team go to its front entrance where the PAG group's Foxer (James A. Simpson) and Natalie (Ruth Ann Seal), are put out of action, leaving only Mike and Stanwood inside the building.

McGarrett and the Colonel arrive at a metal door in the tunnel which is locked, but at that moment, Mike is preparing to flee through this door because outside, a SWAT team is peppering the building with bullets. As Mike opens the door, he is quickly taken care of, and, because of the SWAT team outside, despite the Governor pretending over the radio that Bonner and Paluski have been released, Stanwood realizes his terrorist activities are at an end. He goes to the powder magazine where Danno is imprisoned with the intention of killing him, but as Stanwood opens the door to this room, Danno attempts to knock him down. McGarrett arrives on the scene and beats the crap out of Stanwood.

The show ends with a tear-jerking moment as Danno emerges to see McGarrett and they leave together, similar to the end of S01E05, "…And They Painted Daisies On His Coffin," another rare instance of male bonding between the two men in the show.

This first episode of the season is scored by Morton Stevens, who did 10 of the series' 12 seasons' first shows. It is kind of unexceptional. There are a couple of passages, however, which sound a bit like Bernard Herrmann's score for Taxi Driver, a film which was released almost a year and a half after this show was broadcast.

EPISODE PROMO:

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

CASUALTY LIST:

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

MORE TRIVIA:

GALLERY:

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OR...

Click here for a slide show of all the large images.

Return to Quick Index


146. (S07E02) “A Hawaiian Nightmare” ★★½

Original air date: 9/17/74 — Opening CreditsEnd Credits
Director: Charles S. Dubin; Producer: William Finnegan; Writers: William Bast (teleplay), William Bast and Tom Philbin (story); Music: Morton Stevens
Timings: Main Titles: 1:00; Act One: 15:55; Act Two: 9:01; Act Three: 17:11; Act Four: 6:47; End Credits: 0:35; Total Time: 50:29.

QUICK PLOT:

An expert in geothermal energy, plagued by financial problems, plots an extortion scheme involving a volcanic eruption which would wipe out the city of Hilo.

Click here to read Full Plot.

REVIEW:

James Olson is Bernard Brown, a geothermal dynamics genius working for the Consol Oil Corporation on the island of Hawaii. During the Korean War, he served in the air force ordnance branch where the specialty was "demolitions."

In his personal life, Brown has gotten "involved in fly-by-night quick-buck schemes" and has "lost his shirt several times," according to a guy in his company's personnel department. In fact, Consol Oil bailed him out from one of these messes "when the shylock promised to put him in an intensive care ward." One of the reasons Brown was moved to Hawaii from the mainland was to avoid any more problems like this.

This did not work, however, because one day when Brown comes home, he finds an oily bagman for Honolulu loan shark Sam Kaina named Vince Bonner (Felice Orlandi) has dropped in regarding a $25,000 loan and $45,500 interest that Brown owes. Brown promises Bonner that he will have the money for him in a couple of days. Brown's shrill blonde wife Doris (Sheree North) is skeptical that he will meet this deadline. She is fed up with his get-rich-quick lifestyle and all of their conversations turn into screaming matches.

To come up with this payment, which totals $72,500 (presumably including a couple more days' interest) and have some bread left over, Brown has planted a detonator and explosives to trigger a volcanic eruption from Mauna Loa which will result in lava destroying Hilo unless the Governor pays a huge ransom. To purchase the components for the explosion and help Brown plant them, he had help from two local laborers who hired out by the day: David Kalani (Liwai Napuelua, Jr.) and Peter Herberts (Richard George Carter). After their work with him was finished, Olson murdered both of them and dumped their bodies in a volcano steam vent.

The Governor calls McGarrett from Kona on the Big Island where Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, site of this impending disaster, is located and says "Some damn fool is threatening to ... wipe out half the island of Hawaii unless we come up with $500,000."

The Five-O chief with Danno, Ben and Chin Ho leave Honolulu by Hawaiian Air and arrive on the Big Island quickly. They talk to Dr. Rogers (Seth Sakai), director of the volcano park's observatory, who tells them "Your blackmailer knows his business. He's picked the best possible site. The northeast rift lies directly upslope from Hilo. A large lava flow could easily reach the city. I'm afraid a massive eruption would destroy Hilo in less than one day."

Five-O immediately go to work to find out information about the explosives, where they are located, and so forth. McGarrett tells the Governor that "infrared aerial photography might reveal the explosives are placed," but I am very skeptical that this can be done from the air. When Rogers is asked if they have anyone who is an expert that can help them, he says, "Consol Oil Corporation has someone. They sent a man out last year to survey the possibility of developing geothermal energy. He's one of the best in his field."

Of course, this expert is Brown himself. Danno, whom we have seen disarming bombs in previous episodes, explains how an explosion can be made by combining thanatine nitrate fertilizer with heavy diesel fuel and dynamite (shades of the Oklahoma City bombing over 20 years later). Brown has to bite his tongue as he listens to this explanation, since this is exactly what he has done.

Chin Ho tracks down where the fertilizer to be used in the blast was likely sold, at Krider Chemical Company. He says "It sold enough thanatine nitrate in the last few months [40,000 pounds, 1,000 pounds at a time] to blow this whole island out of the water." This was purchased by the now-dead Kalani and Herberts. Ben finds that at Kona Maritime Fuel, a non-commercial user — which was Brown — "bought enough to run an aircraft carrier for a week."

Bonner returns to Brown's house to check up on him and Doris sees him as her ticket away from her husband. They engage in some heavy smooching and there is a suggestion that they "do it." Eventually, Bonner leaves.

Meanwhile, the "psychotically desperate" Brown freaks out, because he senses that he is close to getting caught. When he returns home with his clothes covered with fertilizer from bags he has disposed of, Doris angrily says she is through with him. Brown shows her a copy of the letter he sent to the Governor, and outlines his plans for their escape to Hong Kong. When he leaves to set the detonator for the explosion, Doris phones her new lover Bonner, who soon picks her up.

After having started the chain of events which will lead to the explosion (all of which is monitored by Danno flying in a helicopter which you would expect Brown to surely see or hear), Brown goes to the boiler room at an abandoned sugar mill on the Homa Kuoa coast where the ransom money was to be delivered. McGarrett has already done this.

Bonner and Doris also show up at the mill, though you do not see their car outside or know which direction they came from. Doris calls her husband a "loser" to his face and when he tries to leave, Bonner shoots him in the back and takes the attaché case full of cash. However, Danno has been monitoring what's going on at the mill from above. Bonner and Doris attempt to flee, but Danno gets the helicopter to ram head-on into Bonner (literally). This scene is kind of dumb. Why doesn't Danno shoot at Bonner on the ground? Or, for that matter, why doesn't Bonner shoot at the helicopter? I'm surprised that the helicopter doesn't decapitate Bonner considering the angle at which it is flying.

McGarrett, who quickly came back to the mill, gets to the badly wounded Brown, who promptly passes away, not telling him anything. McGarrett then goes back to the park headquarters with Danno, even though there is only about an hour left before the deadline for the explosion. Since Danno has seen where Brown was activating the timer for the detonator, he returns there with a demolition team to find it and deactivate it. (He finds that it is "double-wired ... that thing's gonna be tough.")

While he is watching TV at the park headquarters, perhaps to see if the Governor is going to order an evacuation of Hilo, McGarrett suddenly has a huge brainstorm that the timer for the explosion is controlled by a remote like the one he found in the fancy Mercedes convertible outside Brown's place which he used to get into Brown's garage and then his house when he and Chin were snooping around the place earlier. (When he was there, McGarrett immediately recognized the dust on clothes Brown was disposing of was thanatine nitrate. Don't ask me how he knows this chemical substance.)

The actual remote that Brown used was in his Mazda pickup that he used to drive to the sugar mill after starting the timer, which will activate the detonator at 2 p.m. McGarrett handled this remote briefly after Doris and Bonner were busted, but it is most likely that this Mazda has been hauled away to the police impound yard.

McGarrett flies by helicopter to Brown's house where he gets the garage remote that he tossed back into the Mercedes after he and Chin looked around Brown's place. Then McGarrett takes a huge chance, flying to the area where Danno is trying to track down the timer and the detonator. He orders Danno to get out of the way and pushes the button on the garage remote, and the timer stops ticking.

There are a lot of "uh-huh" issues with this show. Would an explosion like Brown planned really be able to make Mauna Loa destroy Hilo? Danno is flying all over the place watching Brown and surveilling the sugar mill as if no one would notice a helicopter hovering above. (McGarrett tells Danno, "Don't let him spot you," which is laughable.) Why would the supposedly clever Brown use his garage remote control to start the countdown to the explosion and why would he leave one of these remotes in his car outside his place? Surely he would have reprogrammed the control so the passcode for the one which activates the timer would been different! Let's face it, Brown was kind of dumb.

At the end of the show, it looks like McGarrett stops the timer in a last-second Goldfinger-like finale, but it's hard to figure out what the "hands" on the timer mean. When we first see the timer at the beginning of the show, it looks like it is at 20 minutes to 2, which is virtually the same as it is at the end of the show. Considering McGarrett looks at his watch — a Vulcain Cricket which is "waterprotected" — where the time is 20 to 2 before he rushes by helicopter to go to Brown's house and get the remote and then fly to the site where Danno is, it's almost as if time stands still!

The score for this show is by Stevens, not a lot of music. There is a stern brass passage at the beginning as we fly over a volcano bubbling away with lava. It merges with some very quirky, dissonant woodwind lines as Brown camouflages his work and then knocks off his two helpers. This quirkiness returns later as Bonner sticks his tongue in Doris's mouth and we cut to scenes of Chin finding the fertilizer (in very large bags "packed by Brewer Chemical") and Brown is trying to get rid of evidence.

EPISODE PROMO:

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

CASUALTY LIST:

MORE TRIVIA:

MUSIC:

Score by Morton Stevens.

Click here to hear a suite containing music cues from the show.

GALLERY:

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OR...

Click here for a slide show of all the large images.

Return to Quick Index


147. (S07E03) “I’ll Kill ’Em Again” ★★★★

Original air date: 9/24/74 — Opening CreditsEnd Credits
Director: Charles S. Dubin; Producer: William Finnegan; Writer: Tim Maschler; Music: Morton Stevens
Timings: Main Titles: 0:59; Act One: 15:32; Act Two: 10:53; Act Three: 11:50; Act Four: 10:39; End Credits: 0:36; Total Time: 50:29.

QUICK PLOT:

Postcards from a psychopath preceding a series of re-enacted murders taunt McGarrett to remember victims of past crimes.

Click here to read Full Plot.

REVIEW:

Danny Goldman stars as Eddie Josephs, who is the series' creepiest killer. He murders people in a manner duplicating cases solved years before which were written up in a local magazine series called The Hawaii Five-O Casebook. For the first two of the four killings we see in the show, he also poses the victims' bodies in a manner similar to these cases. Eddie taunts "Mister" (usually said with a stutter) McGarrett with postcards and phone calls, calling him "Supercop." The mail service must be pretty efficient, since McGarrett gets Eddie's eight cent postcards almost immediately.

Eddie works at a bookstore run by Harry Beecham (Ivor Francis), where he is considered a valued employee because he has a photographic memory; you can ask him where any book is located in the store, and he knows exactly where it is. However, he is habitually late for work or leaving the place unexpectedly during the day because he is obsessed with recreating crimes. When asked by "Mister" Beecham, his boss, if the reason he is acting strange is because he is on drugs, Eddie yells: "Drugs? Only filth and scum put rotten things in their bodies! That what you think I am, Harry? Scum?" When Eddie is fired and his job is taken over by Sheila Young (Lei Kayahara), he is super pissed.

The first of his victims is 25-year-old Sally Pomeroy, daughter of a local district court judge. She lives in the same apartment as Ann Remington, who testified against two men involved in a bank robbery which resulted in them going to jail with no chance of parole. Pomeroy is found with her body draped in a flowered kimono, with her phone off the hook and the shower running, just like the crime scene Five-O discovered after Remington was murdered in November 1970 in retribution for her court testimony.

Eddie's second killing duplicates the murder of a wino named Benny Fortuna, an informant who was executed by the Kahiki Gang exactly four years ago. He entices a down-and-out guy named Sam Palley into his car with an offer of booze and cash, and soon after shoots him in the head and dumps his body near the "James Hong Corner" near the Diamond Head Tunnel, referred to as "Crater Road." A silver dollar is placed on Palley's lips, just like happened with Fortuna. The coin is from 1972.

McGarrett is frustrated, asking Danno, "What's the motive? Even a sick mind manufactures one, however twisted. And why these particular kinds of crimes, so dissimilar? What's the connection?" Shortly after this, he has a brainstorm flashing back to the magazine series. Trouble is, there are a total of 20 different homicides, and it is impossible to predict what the next one might be.

The next case has something to do with HPD Officer Brian Tanaka. There are no details on exactly what this case was about. Eddie drives through a red light in downtown Honolulu which officer Jimmy Wong spots and subsequently pulls him over. Asked for his driver's license, Eddie pulls out a gun and shoots Wong, who is rushed to Manoa General Hospital, spelled "Monoa" in the subtitles.

Eddie goes there and dresses like a lab technician, perhaps thinking he can get past the guard on Wong's room, but around this time the cop is rushed into Intensive Care where he dies. The sequence where nurses and interns try to revive him is lifted from S05E03, "Pig in a Blanket," including Seth Sakai, unbilled, as the doctor in charge.

The last victim in the show is Mr. Beecham, who comes to Eddie's apartment feeling bad about having given his employee the chop. He interrupts Eddie, who is talking to McGarrett on the phone where McGarrett is trying to get under his skin after a series of calls where Eddie knew exactly how long the calls should be timed to avoid them being traced. Eddie accuses Beecham of being sent by McGarrett to spy on him and murders his former boss in a particularly brutal way. He dumps Beecham's body at the Ala Wai Marina, duplicating the killing of Benjamin Warfield who was found there bludgeoned to death years before, a case also covered in the magazine series.

Five-O has been working hard to figure out who Eddie is, not with much luck. Che Fong found fragments of Eddie's hair that Pomeroy had pulled out of his head when she was being strangled. He also has estimated Eddie's approximate height from his footprints. A knife that is part of the murder scene in Pomeroy's apartment is traced to a pawn shop where the owner is Wan Soo (Galen Kam), but he can't recall who purchased it a couple of months back. Che got a graphologist named Dr. Leonard at the university to suggest that the writing on the postcards was probably written by a man who overemphasized the word "Mr." when writing the address.

Psychiatrist Judith Patrick, played by Linda Ryan, tells McGarrett that Eddie is a "desperate, paranoid schizophrenic for openers. It's all there, the loose associations, illusions of grandeur. Lot of anger, hatred, of himself mostly. You're just the object, a way to blow off steam … [His victims are] just pawns, agents for his delusions… [B]y duplicating the exact crimes that you and Five-O solved, and presumably getting away with them, in his own mind he triumphs over you. Now, it's very important for him to deny his unconscious feelings of inferiority, so it's very important for him to beat what he feels is the best. In the popular language of these articles, you and Five-O are invincible. You're heroes." Are far as his hang-up on the word "Mister" is concerned, she says, [I]t's not uncommon for emotional problems to be expressed in writing or speaking difficulties. Most likely a conflict with a parent or guardian, some kind of authority figure." Patrick is not optimistic about what will happen with Eddie: "[H]e could quit now, yeah, today, disappear into thin air. But I wouldn't bet on it. No, I think his anger runs very deep. I wish I could be more optimistic."

Once the murdered Beecham is identified from fingerprints (it is not said exactly how this is done), the show wraps up far too quickly. Five-O goes to the bookstore where they talk to Sheila Young and get Eddie's address. Arriving at his apartment, they find a copy of the magazine containing the casebook with a page torn out of it which McGarrett suspects details the next murder. He tells Danno to call Chin and "Find out what crime was featured in this issue and where."

This is done almost instantaneously, because within seconds the team is in the low-rent district where "Carmen Granet, a Honolulu prostitute, was the victim of a bizarre murder on July 15, 1968, [when she was] strangled to death with a string of heavy black beads." Eddie has already purchased beads like this at a thrift shop. Knowing exactly the room where the murder took place and where Eddie will be found, Five-O breaks the door down. They pull him off the hooker, but she tries to get free and attack Eddie, saying "You bastard!", at least according to the subtitles on the season seven DVD. This is pretty rank language for 1974 TV and predates the much more obvious use of this word by McGarrett in part two of S11E13, "Number One With A Bullet."

Eddie tells "Mister"McGarrett, who says "It's all over, Eddie boy," "Over? Oh, no. No. That means you win. You can't win!" and dives through the closed window in the room, committing suicide! McGarrett rushes to the window with a shocked look on his face as he looks at cops and members of Five-O rushing to Eddie's body amid fragments of glass all over the street below.

The acting in this show is exceptionally good. As well, Harry Geller provides an outstanding, dissonant score using a harpsichord with Bernard Herrmann-like ostinatos and quirky percussion touches. There are even a couple of brief references to the Five-O theme.

EPISODE PROMO:

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148. (S07E04) “Steal Now--Pay Later” ★★★  BOOK HIM, DANNO 

Original air date: 10/1/74 — Opening CreditsEnd Credits
Director: John Peyser; Producer: William Finnegan; Writer: Jerome Coopersmith; Music: Richard Shores
Timings: Main Titles: 1:00; Act One: 18:02; Act Two: 7:44; Act Three: 9:24; Act Four: 13:37; End Credits: 0:36; Total Time: 50:23.

QUICK PLOT:

A suave crook peddles stolen goods to legitimate businessmen.

Click here to read Full Plot.

REVIEW:

Ray Danton, who was a slimy real estate salesman in S04E20, "Cloth of Gold," in this episode is the slimy Ron Colby, a "jobber" who provides local retailers with various goods ... all of which have been stolen. Colby's company is Wide World Merchandise, but it changes names and moves the goods around from one Honolulu warehouse to another "like checkers on a board," using different invoice numbers to avoid detection by the cops.

The show begins with a shipment of refrigerators being stolen near Santa Rosa, California. I find it hard to believe that the multi-wheeler truck has 110 of these appliances in it. The driver, Lloyd Donaldson (Donald Boyd), is a federal agent working undercover as part of a hijacking investigation. He is shot to death after he is pulled over by some guy named Dave (Robert Howard Harker) pretending that his car has broken down and his wife is sick.

Donaldson's body is stuffed in one of the fridges, serial number XN53921. When this arrives in Honolulu as part of a shipment, Colby tells Puni (Nephi Hannemann), boss of a gang of thugs in his employ, to "deep six it." They don't do a very good job, because it is found "in a net" by some fishermen, which immediately gets Five-O's attention. (Donaldson's body seems to be in pretty good shape considering what it's gone through.)

Six dozen fridges from the shipment which included the one that contained Donaldson are tracked down to a local department store. Larry Swift (Casey Kasem), buyer for this store, purchased several of the fridges. But when he is called to the Five-O office along with his very annoyed boss Rogers (Howard F. Gottschalk), Swift is tongue-tied as he tries to explain doing business with Colby, who doesn't even have a phone number. Instead, Colby's standard operating procedure is "I'll call you."

Subsequent investigation by Five-O finds that checking "with the telephone company, the real estate board, and all the utilities, there is no listing for Colby or Wide World Merchandise." Considering the scope of this operation, McGarrett says "We're used to a different kind of fencing: jewelry, watches, cameras, things that are sold in an alleyway from inside a hustler's coat." Of Colby, McGarrett says "He's got a million-dollar fencing operation and no capital investment. Just a man and a telephone."

Colby drives a Porsche 914, and almost everywhere he is seen in the show, whether at home by his pool or in restaurants and bars where local merchants congregate, he is accompanied by some hot-looking dame. During one of these get-togethers, Swift introduces his uncle Charlie Portman (Jacques Aubuchon) to Colby, who immediately strikes up a deal for women's swimwear, first quality, about 40 gross, the "Fashions In Swimwear" brand, which is "only the best."

Because his name was mentioned earlier by Swift, Colby is hauled into the Five-O office where he is grilled by McGarrett. But Colby has all the right answers and his lawyer soon shows up with a writ of habeas corpus so they have to let him go. As he leaves, Colby tells McGarrett, "I can't say it's been a pleasure."

Swift soon runs into Colby at a bar, and chews him out for selling him fridges which were on a list of stolen merchandise. When Swift says there will likely be a grand jury probe and he will be called to testify, Colby tells him, "Where do you think I was getting the stuff from, the Salvation Army? You know what's going on. They all know what's going on, but they don't wanna admit it. No, Larry, you're an accomplice, right from the very beginning. But don't worry about it. The only link between you and I is your memory, and your memory is going to fail. And if it doesn't fail, then I have friends that can help to make it fail. Permanently."

Soon after this, a warehouse managed by Robert Luck is robbed of the shipment of the swimwear destined for Charlie's store by Puni and his gang, during which undercover HPD cop Ralph Heolani is shot dead. The goods are moved to another warehouse and then delivered to Charlie the next morning. When Charlie reads about the robbery in the paper, he freaks out, telling his nephew, "We can't deal with [Colby] anymore." Swift tells his uncle to keep his mouth shut, "because it just might save our lives."

When Colby phones later, Charlie says he doesn't want anything to do with the swimwear, telling Colby to take it back. Colby replies, "You better put a check in the mail, because you might not like the people I send to collect. Not you, and not your family." Five-O soon shows up to talk to Charlie, who flees as McGarrett, Danno and cops chase him. He eventually drives off a dock into the water and drowns.

Shocked by what has happened, Swift co-operates with Five-O to entrap Colby and those who are working for him. He orders five thousand Tranasonic tape recorders, "a promotion thing, it's Hawaiian music week." Colby is leery of doing business with Swift, but after Swift burns a letter in front of him supposedly from his uncle which spilled the beans, the order is placed.

As Five-O prepares to bust Colby at the end of the show, the shipment of cassette recorders arrives by air and is then transported in an Asiam Air Cargo truck (same company as in S04E07, "Air Cargo — Dial For Murder"). Chin Ho, who is driving, is followed closely by Danno undercover. Chin is stopped by Puni and the truck and its contents are stolen. Fortunately Chin is not knocked off by the gang.

The recorders are delivered to Swift's company and he goads Coady to show up at the store, saying that they were never received. When Coady gets there, plenty of recorders are being pawed over by customers. Coady threatens Swift, but their conversation is recorded not only by McGarrett, but also Chin Ho, Danno and Duke, all using the recorders. Coady is busted.

Of course, the big question here, aside from how McGarrett was able to play back Coady's threat without even rewinding the tape, is whether these recordings can be used in court.

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149. (S07E05) “Bomb, Bomb, Who’s Got The Bomb?” ★★

Original air date: 10/8/74 — Opening CreditsEnd Credits
Director: Allen Reisner; Producer: William Finnegan; Writer: Martin Roth; Music: Jerrold Immel
Timings: Main Titles: 0:59; Act One: 12:33; Act Two: 13:12; Act Three: 13:37; Act Four: 9:26; End Credits: 0:36; Total Time: 50:23.

QUICK PLOT:

Handwriting analysis and psychiatric profiling are used to track down who is threatening the life of a state Senate crime committee chairman.

Click here to read Full Plot.

REVIEW:

William Windom is Senator Harlan Henderson, a chairman of the Senate Crime Commission which investigates organized crime. He is working at home, and when he discovers some papers he needs are at his office, his secretary Midge Evans (Lynne Ellen Hollinger) offers to go and pick them up. When she turns on the ignition in Henderson's car which she is using, it explodes.

After Five-O quickly arrives, Henderson shows them a threatening message that he received recently. He never reported this, because "People in public life are always getting crank notes." However, he mentions the first of two red herrings.

His son-in-law Randy Stelf (Marc Singer), with whom Henderson has "never gotten along very well," visited that morning, expecting to find his wife and the senator's daughter Kathy (Melody Patterson, Mrs. James MacArthur at the time of filming), from whom he is separated, but she was away in Maui. Randy and Henderson had words. Henderson tells McGarrett, "He does blame me for the breakup of their marriage, which is ridiculous, but, then, so is the idea that Randy would go around planting bombs."

Danno and Chin go to visit Randy, who is the owner of a construction company. He has access to dynamite and plastic charges, the latter of which has already been identified by Che Fong as a component of the bomb which blew up Evans. In fact, a shed with explosives is right across from Randy's office where he is being interviewed. Danno tells him, "No one's making any accusations," but suggests to Randy, "I wouldn't make any travel plans."

On the recommendation of Che Fong, McGarrett goes to see Dr. Leonard (Winston Char), a professor at the default University of Hawaii Manoa Campus's department of criminology, to whom Che forwarded Henderson's threatening message for analysis. Leonard uses graphology (the study and analysis of handwriting) to make some observations about the psychological state and personality characteristics of the writer: "Notice the slanting of the letters. Some forward, some back. A good indication that the writer of the note is very changeable and subject to uncontrollable and unpredictable moods. Now, look at this. See how far back the E goes. Whoever it is is real cool on the outside. Inside, watch out. A regular volcano about to erupt … I can tell you the writer is left-handed. I can also tell you the writer is a very forceful person. You can see for yourself. The heaviness in the writing, the way the pen bears down. The crammed, angular letters also exemplify a very determined mind. Almost inflexible. That's indicative of his personality … The large capital I. That large inflated loop. It's a definite bid for attention. Whoever it is you're looking for is someone who wants to be heard from."

After the explosion, a car parked outside Henderson's place was seen leaving "wikiwiki" by the gardener, who was actually thrown back by the blast. Somehow, he saw the last three numbers of the car's license plate which was reported to Five-O, who put out an APB. This car, a 2-door Lincoln Continental, a tank as big as McGarrett's Mercury Marquis, was driven by local hood Nick Landis (Beau van den Ecker, uncredited). It is spotted by and pursued by a patrol cop played by Chuck Couch (also uncredited), so this is a case of one Five-O stuntman chasing another.

Landis, spelled Landos in the subtitles, is pursued to the "James Hong" area near the Diamond Head Tunnel where there is a roadblock, an area identified in the show as the "Johnson Tunnel" at "Manu Ridge." Couch's patrol car flips over, as a result of spectacularly bad driving up a wall of rock, and when McGarrett's car suddenly appears, Landis, trying to avoid him, plunges over a nearby cliff, with his car "blowing up real good" in a stock shot from the fourth season's opener. This fiery explosion is totally unrealistic in that it starts as soon as car goes over the edge.

McGarrett goes to see Landis's boss, local mobster Seth Sakai, who is played by Seth Sakai (duh!). When McGarrett suggests that "Lanos" (who was driving a "2-door Ford" — NOT!) had something to do with the bomb blast, Sakai tells him, "Use some common sense. You don't lower the temperature of a senate hearing by burning the chairman … Sure, [Landis] was there. To keep tabs on any visitors who might have gotten the bright idea of spilling their guts, and that's all. I'll tell you this, McGarrett. It's too bad for Nick, but it's also lousy luck for both of us. If anyone was there to see who tinkered with the senator's car, it was Nick, and now he's not gonna tell anybody anything anymore."

A second bomb is found in an attaché case in Henderson's house, and his daughter was knocked out when she almost saw whoever was planting it. This explosive device requires intervention by the HPD bomb squad who manage to disarm it only after a complicated procedure which involves X-raying the case with a portable X-ray machine and cutting it open with a saw.

Shortly after this, the bomber calls McGarrett at his office to tell him, "I'm only gonna say this once. You can't save Harlan. He must die. I didn't want to kill Midge Evans. I don't wish to kill anyone. Anyone but Harlan. He must pay for what he did." Of course, the call is too short for Danno to have it traced.

After Randy is eliminated as a suspect because his army records show that he was "incapable of committing any act of violence" and was discharged from the military, McGarrett visits Henderson to play him the phone message which he taped. McGarrett notices that Henderson is left-handed, something that Dr. Leonard mentioned earlier. McGarrett surreptitiously gets a copy of Henderson's handwriting and gets it to Leonard, who compares it to the earlier threatening letter which Henderson received. Leonard says, "They both were written by the same hand, but not the same man."

Che Fong further disqualifies Randy as the bomber because the explosives used by his construction company do not match those in either of the bombs from Henderson's place. McGarrett phones Henderson to apologize for his behavior when he was at his house earlier just so he can make a recording of the senator's voice on his "case-sette" recorder. He gives this to Che to compare to the anonymous message received earlier from the bomber which he also taped; nothing comes of this comparison, though.

McGarrett has a brainstorm ("Suppose ... just suppose...") about Henderson, that he has a split personality, meaning he is the bomber, but "he doesn't know that he is doing it." When Danno is skeptical, McGarrett exclaims, "I know it sounds far-fetched, but it's a possibility!"

McGarrett's theory is reinforced by Dr. Judith Patrick (Linda Ann Ryan, also seen in S07E03, "I'll Kill 'Em Again"), here identified as "Five-O's consulting psychiatrist." She provides McGarrett with a lot of medical gibberish when explaining Henderson's possible condition and offers a disturbing film of Anita Richfield , a woman who was totally bonkers in the past but has now become a "normal" person who is "very religious" after being treated by Patrick.

Patrick has also amassed some information on Henderson and his father Roger. The son was a very happy boy, very close to his father, who was a military hero and a distinguished public servant. Some thought Roger had a brilliant political future. And then he was killed while cleaning one of the guns in his private collection. His son was the one who found him and he took it very hard. Patrick speculates: "Now, think of how Harlan's success threatens the image he carries of his father. We call that a self-ego conflict. Now, he mustn't permit himself to surpass his father, so he must destroy himself before, in his own mind, he kills his father again. If, for some reason, he felt he was responsible for his father's actual death."

Henderson, who is not at home when McGarrett and Danno go there, was being tailed by HPD, but the person doing this lost him. Randy and Kathy, who seem suddenly very chummy for a couple having marital problems, say that Harlan has an appointment for a luncheon at a Waikiki restaurant. McGarrett and Danno take it upon themselves to track him down, and with the help of HPD, they find Henderson in the neighborhood of the Ilikai Hotel, carrying a radio which they figure contains another bomb. This is where things start to get kind of stupid.

Henderson takes the outdoor elevator which goes to the restaurant at the top of the Ilikai. It stops close to the top for no logical reason (it's not as if Five-O or even Henderson intentionally stopped it). Henderson then pushes the "Emergency Stop" button, which causes an alarm to ring. With the help of two firemen with rappelling ropes who have suddenly appeared, McGarrett descends from the hotel roof to the top of the elevator to convince Henderson to give up the radio. Electra Gailas Fair as a woman in the elevator with Henderson comes forth with a particularly loud scream when she hears about the bomb. The long shots of McGarrett dropping down to the elevator roof are obviously a stunt man.

While McGarrett is pleading with Henderson to give him the radio from the door in the roof of the elevator, he transforms into Henderson's father Roger, played by Norman Dupont. We see a flashback where the father was not killed while cleaning his gun. Instead, the son was holding the gun and turned to face his father, then tripped and accidentally shot his old man.

Danno appears above the hotel in a helicopter which has suddenly appeared out of nowhere and after McGarrett finally gets the radio, he attaches it to a rope and Danno flies out over the ocean and drops the radio into the water as it explodes.

This is where the story ends! There is no closure to the story — we don't find out what happens to Henderson, whether he is cured of his malady, etc., etc.!


Margaret Dukore, who played Anita Richfield, the mental patient with two different personalities, and became a published novelist (Margaret Mitchell Dukore) sent me some interesting comments on her role in this show:

"My screaming (greasy hair) shot was the first shot of the episode [to be filmed], so they could send it back to the mainland to be processed, so it would come back before they shot the scene where Jack Lord says something like, 'Amazing ... two different personalities!' He felt that his reading would ring truer if he actually saw the footage. I was thrilled with this, because the scene where I'm 'normal' was the last shot of the episode, so — because I was in SAG — they had to pay me for the entire week. I didn't live far from the studio, so I went down there every day (with a doggie bag ... I was poor then) for lunch. Finally, they had shot every scene but that one, and the screaming film hadn't come back from the mainland, so they made me stand behind the camera and scream for I don't know how many takes, so Jack Lord could get, 'Amazing ... two different personalities!' with the correct sincerity. (It was hard for Jim MacArthur and me to keep from laughing.)" When I asked her if the "insanity" scene was scripted, she replied: "My crazy screen scripted? Yes, and no. I believe the script said something like 'She has an insane screaming fit and says something about 'The Resurrection'."

WHAT DOES THE TITLE MEAN?

It is a play on words from the children's game "Button, button, who's got the button?"

EPISODE PROMO:

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150. (S07E06) “Right Grave – Wrong Body” ★★★  BOOK HIM, DANNO 

Original air date: 10/15/74 — Opening CreditsEnd Credits
Director: Paul Stanley; Producer: William Finnegan; Writers: Glen Olson & Rod Baker; Music: Don B. Ray
Timings: Main Titles: 1:00; Act One: 19:38; Act Two: 15:36; Act Three: 7:37; Act Four: 5:58; End Credits: 0:36; Total Time: 50:25.

QUICK PLOT:

Liquor store robberies are connected to a five-year-old bank robbery where neither a gun involved nor the $250,000 stolen were ever found.

Click here to read Full Plot.

REVIEW:

This episode is sort of like "Diary of a Police Gun."

Five years before this show, three men, Al Triplett, Duke Skelly and Jess Kaneko robbed the Oahu National Bank and got away with a quarter of a million dollars. During a shootout with HPD, Triplett and Skelly were killed, but Kaneko got away.

HPD patrolman Dean Lyman (Charles Cioffi) was coming home from work when Kaneko drove past him "going like hell," so he pursued him. After Kaneko spun out, there was an exchange of gunfire where Lyman killed Kaneko. A suitcase Kaneko was carrying broke open, exposing the money from the robbery. Lyman decided to bury Kaneko in a cemetery, dump his body and keep the money in a closet at home.

Two years after this (three years before the show), Lyman lost his police-issued revolver when he "was jumped in the Star City robbery." There no specific details provided about what happened. This lost gun found its way into the hands of Don Hobart, a low-level thug who soon after this went to the mainland, because "things got a little warm around here for me." While on the mainland, he was involved in four murder-robberies from New York to Texas, all currently unsolved.

As of the time of the show, Hobart has returned to Honolulu, where he has been holding up liquor stores using the same gun that Lyman lost. While driving through Chinatown where Hobart robbed a store and murdered the owner, Lyman noticed Hobart fleeing and unsuccessfully pursed him. When Lyman came to the Five-O offices shortly after this where the store owner's wife had produced an Identi-Kit sketch of the robber which was reasonably accurate, Lyman lied and said that the sketch didn't resemble the man he was chasing.

Kaneko's body was recently found buried in the ground in the cemetery which was being dug up so the coffins could be relocated. Kaneko's skull had a bullet hole in it, later determined by Che Fong to be from a .38. Told by Five-O that the gun which killed Kaneko, based on the bullet dug out of the skull, was the same one which killed the liquor store owner that day plus another one the month before, Lyman is troubled. As he tells his Asian wife Marge (Josie Over): "I have to find that gun before somebody else does." When he shows his wife the quarter million he has hidden in the closet unknown to her for the last five years, his reasoning for not telling her about this is peculiar: "I knew that if I told you that I'd lose you."

Lyman appears to be a "nice cop"; he is friendly with McGarrett. I think that Lyman has probably never fired his gun while on duty before, at least to the extent that a bullet could have been recovered from someone's body or where it was shot into a wall or whatever, because if this was the case, I'm sure that a comparison with the bullet which killed Kaneko five years ago and store owners killed recently could have been made and the episode would have been a lot shorter.

Hobart, on the other hand, is a very nasty guy, and he is played by the menacing William Watson. Hobart is friends with Kelly Mitsui (Carole Kai), a "ho" who hangs out at The Glade, a local bar. When he sees her there for the first time in a few years, he tells "a deserving war vet" she is hustling to go to the "USO … down the street," threatening to kill him. Later when Cas Eva, a bum played by Lippy Espinda, tries to hit Kelly up for some cash, Hobart tells him to "get lost" in no uncertain terms.

Lyman searches for Hobart, and when another liquor store is robbed, another Identi-Kit portrait is created by the clerk. This "software" which used plastic sheets with facial composite information and was first introduced in 1959 (today it just uses "software" on a computer) is seen so many times during the show, even in the field, that its appearance is like a major product placement. Lyman visits the Five-O offices again and thinks that the most recent picture is almost there. In fact, it is exactly correct, but Lyman makes some minor changes in it designed to throw Five-O off the track. Only after the next robbery, when another picture is created, does Five-O realize this. (Interestingly all four of the pictures of Hobart which are created look very much alike. I don't understand why even a small discrepancy in the size of the lips, hairline, the presence of a dimple or not, etc. would make that much difference.)

There is great atmosphere in the Chinatown section of Honolulu in this show, combined with the usual non-process shots as Lyman drives his patrol car in the area. There seem to be a large number of liquor stores within a few blocks of each other, and the Wo Fat restaurant is seen very briefly in one shot. The bartender in the Glade bar is Walter Omori, "the mysterious actor." Ewa, who is also a stoolie, later ends up dead, shot by Hobart just as he is about to tell Lyman where Hobart hangs out which leads to a chase through the neighborhood with Hobart escaping yet again.

The way the gun is connected to Lyman by Che Fong is far-fetched, at least to me. Hobart smashes the last liquor store owner in the show, played by Terry Plunkett, on his head with the gun, which causes part of its butt to break off. Given this piece of the gun which was found on the floor of the store, Che tells Chin Ho, "There was something attached to it, a replica of an HPD badge." When Chin says, "The badges have numbers riveted on them," Che adds, "And the holes have penetrated the grip."

Che does some anal-ysis and figures out what the numbers are, writing a bunch of dots on a piece of paper. He tells Chin, "What do you think?", Che looks at the paper and says, "I think it's great," then looks at Che dumbfounded, "What is 'it'?" When McGarrett shows up at the office, Che tells him, "These are standard rivet patterns used on replicas of HPD badge numbers. I compared them with the broken handle and got this: Eight-four-eight." This number is traced back with help from Nick of HPD (Danny Kamekona) to determine that Hobart's gun once belonged to Lyman.

Lyman gets help from another bum where he can locate Kelly Mitsui, and further information from Walter Omori's bartender, who has one of Walter's two lines in the entire series when he tells the pushy Lyman, "What do you want her [Kelly] for?" The subtitles leave the word "for" out and Walter is only seen from the back, unlike earlier when he poured a "half a shot" for Ewa.

Lyman locates Mitsui who tells him that Hobart's place is in the Pauahi Hotel. Lyman goes there, where he doesn't find Hobart, but he starts tossing stuff around. Hearing the sound of cop cars outside, obviously coming to find him, Lyman commits suicide!

This seems like an extreme solution to Lyman's dilemma in light of what we have seen of him earlier in the show. Lyman shot Kaneko in self-defense and burying the body and keeping the money for five years would hardly get him a life sentence!

Incidentally, Sandra St. Victor sent me an e-mail pointing out an interesting mistake in the episode. From approximately 27:53 to 27:59 on the DVD of the show when Hobart and Kelly are hanging out at the Glade Bar (the second time we see them there), a waitress is walking and she is walking backwards! (You can see this by clicking here.

However, analyzing this part of the show led to other interesting issues.

For example, when Hobart comes to the bar earlier on to see Kelly, who he used to hang out with years before, he is wearing kind of a "loud" shirt and she is wearing a crocheted high-necked top. Hobart threatens to kill the military man that Kelly has been with and when Cas tries to hit Kelly up for some money, Hobart tells him to take off. After Cas has a drink served by Walter Omori, he seemingly leaves the place. Following this, we see Hobart robbing another liquor store.

Lyman, who is not dressed in his HPD uniform, but his street clothes (so the question is whether he is off duty or "undercover"), finds Cas and gives him $50 (seems like quite a lot of money for the date of the show) for info on Hobart. Cas returns to the bar where he observes Hobart and Kelly again. But the two of them are wearing different outfits now. (This where we see the backwards-walking waitress.) Kelly is wearing a round neck/no sleeves dress and Hobart is wearing a purple shirt.

The question is: is this supposed to be taking the same day as the previous sequence where the two of them were in the bar, or the next day? Did Hobart go home after he robbed the liquor store and changed — and so did Kelly? Considering how the two of them had major hot pants for each other during their first encounter, I would have thought they would have gone back to Hobart's room in the fleabag Pauahi Hotel and "done it like wild animals." Why would they still be in the bar?

This is probably the same day, because we have seen the H50 team at McGarrett's office earlier and at the scene of the second liquor store holdup in the show, and they are wearing the same outfits in both sequences.

Anyway, Cas recognizes Hobart from a copy of the Identi-Kit picture which Lyman gave him along with the $50 and leaves the bar and calls Lyman from a pay phone, who shows up almost immediately, still wearing his street clothes but driving his cop car. Before Cas can tell Lyman where Hobart is living, Hobart shoots Cas dead. Lyman pursues Hobart, but loses him.

Hobart seems like an unusually stupid criminal, sort of like criminals these days that can do bad things like vandalism and worse who don't seem to realize that everyone has cell phones and there are surveillance cameras all over the place which will catch them in the act.

After the first robbery, the only reason Hobart comes to Lyman's attention is because he is running down the street, maybe because he thinks the wife of the murdered store owner will call the cops on him. (During the second liquor store robbery, the employee steps on a silent alarm button on the floor and the cops are there within seconds.) If Hobart wasn't running away after leaving the first store, then Lyman probably wouldn't even have noticed him!

Hobart doesn't consider that someone might connect him with the robberies, and he hasn't exactly been in hiding, because there is mention of yet another robbery he was involved with which happened "a month" before.

EPISODE PROMO:

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151. (S07E07) “We Hang Our Own” ★★★½  BOOK HIM, DANNO   BOOK HIM TOO, DANNO 

Original air date: 10/22/74 — Opening CreditsEnd Credits
Director: Douglas Green; Producer: William Finnegan; Writer: Walter Black; Music: Richard Shores
Timings: Main Titles: 0:59; Act One: 18:21; Act Two: 11:37; Act Three: 12:05; Act Four: 6:42; End Credits: 0:36; Total Time: 50:20.

QUICK PLOT:

A powerful Hawaiian cattle baron takes the law into his own hands to avenge the death of his son.

Click here to read Full Plot.

REVIEW:

Leslie Nielsen is "Colonel" Farraday, who runs a 200,000-acre cattle ranch on the Big Island — "one of the world's largest" — in a despotic manner. During the show, he tells McGarrett "my land was here a long time before the state of Hawaii. It was a royal grant from King Kamehameha dating back to 1810." (McGarrett replies, "Thanks for the history lesson.") The Colonel says his ancestor Isaiah Jeremiah Farraday (1769-1847) was "a man" who had "the eyes of a fanatic, some people say, which I don't agree with, unless fanaticism is believing in yourself and your God."

Farraday has two sons. Jay (Perry King) is the impulsive "dumb son," who walks around with a perpetual smirk on his face knowing that he can get away with anything because of his last name. Cam (Bruce Boxleitner, he of the flashy teeth) is the "smart son," who has been away for some time at college, but has returned to the ranch because "I got tired of trying to pound knowledge into my thick skull." Cam has been primed to take over ranch operations from his father, though there is no indication that the Colonel is incapable of running the ranch by himself.

Jay picks up Cam at the airport and the two of them stop in at the "cheap" Punatali bar before returning home. Cam sees his former girl friend Carmen, who is working there, and wants to reconnect, not realizing she has gotten married in his absence. The two of them go outside, and Carmen starts to explain what has happened with her life, but Cam starts kissing her just as her husband Larry Kahela (Gerry Waialae) comes on to the scene, having been directed there by Jay inside. Larry attacks Cam and gives him a savage beating, but leaving him still alive (or so he thinks).

When Jay reports Cam as dead following this altercation, Larry is jailed and shortly after this, has a preliminary hearing. Farraday is furious, anticipating a charge of manslaughter, even though he considers Cam's death to be first degree murder, given Jay's description of aftermath of the fight (Jay actually witnessed the whole fight from close by).

Danno and Chin Ho are already on the Big Island after the local police chief Larry Ohano (James J. Nishimura) asked Five-O for assistance. When Judge Hing (Masanori Kushi), who is in charge of the preliminary hearing, says the anticipated charge will indeed be manslaughter, Farraday, who has put in an ominous appearance in court, vows to deal with matters in his own way. As well, he tells Jay, "Now that he's gone, you're gonna have to take his place … and you're gonna have to start to do some thinking like you've never done before. It's not gonna be enough that you know how to rope a cow, not anymore. You're gonna have to have brains, education. Two of the things that you've had no respect for."

Kahela gets out on bail, but is soon kidnapped from his house by some of Farraday's men. Because this seriously complicates matters, McGarrett soon arrives in Hilo, and the three from Five-O go to the gate for Farraday's ranch, where Jay and a couple of other cowboys soon show up, though you have to wonder what kind of ESP they have to arrive at almost the same time. McGarrett doesn't have any trouble riding a horse back to the ranch house, though Jay and the other two men originally are snickering at whether this tenderfoot can do this. (Of course, Jack Lord's previous experience with Stoney Burke would have helped!)

When he arrives at Faraday's stables, the Colonel can only give McGarrett five minutes of his time, so McGarrett heads back to town to get a search warrant. Returning soon after, as the men from Five-O and Hilo police unsuccessfully search the grounds around the ranch house for Kahela, Farraday continues to come across as a formidable adversary for McGarrett, but the Five-O boss keeps his cool.

Che Fong, who also arrives in Hilo, is the man who breaks the case in Five-O's favor. After analyzing information supplied to him by Chin Ho — autopsy report, police report, photographs and x-rays of the victim — Che discovered that while Cam hit his head on a steel-rimmed wheel at the scene, "that someone hit the victim on the head with a heavy object, possibly a rock, and that was the blow that caused death, not the fall on the steel rim." It is surprising that Che Fong would be the one to come up with these conclusions, I would have expected Doc to be the one!

Five-O and the cops search the field close to the place where Cam met his death, and come up with a rock which is a likely suspect, because of the presence of blood on it. Not only is there blood, but also Jay's fingerprint, which is connected by Che Fong to Jay via the NCIC (National Crime Information Center) database, which suggests that Jay had trouble with the law in the past. Considering how much rain is seen in the show, finding a good fingerprint on this rock, which has been thrown into the field far away from where Cam was killed, really verges on being far-fetched.

The men from Five-O return by helicopter to the ranch, huge as it is, and arrive just as Farraday is about to execute Kahela, hanging him from a tree after reading some verses from a Bible. McGarrett breaks the news to the Colonel that Jay is the guilty party in Cam's death, but the way Farraday takes this is hard to accept, given his disdain for McGarrett in their previous meetings. Cam says nothing in reply, but points a rifle at Danno as he moves forward to book him on a charge of murder one, then points the rifle at his own father. Farraday grabs the rifle away from his son and knocks him to the ground, saying "So you killed him, huh? You stand beside the grave with me, you pray for him and you grieve with me for him, but you killed him? I loved him and you hated him?"

Cam still says nothing, but lies on the ground snivelling, as his father threatens to shoot him, something which McGarrett can fortunately stop. In addition to the charges against Cam, Farraday is busted for the kidnapping. It is interesting that Jay is suddenly close-mouthed at the end, very much like when his father was confronted by McGarrett earlier and said nothing, which McGarrett commented on: "I've noticed that whenever we discuss the subject [the kidnapping of Kahela], Colonel, you are most careful never to say anything that could later be branded a lie. A tribute to your upbringing."

The music is by Richard Shores, and there is an appropriate western-sounding theme, but it is overused. The music changes towards the end of the show, which gets more dramatic, including some Morricone-like spaghetti western touches, and also includes the Five-O theme.

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152. (S07E08) “The Two-Faced Corpse” ★★½

Original air date: 10/29/74 — Opening CreditsEnd Credits
Director: Douglas Green; Producer: William Finnegan; Writer: Bud Freeman; Music: Don B. Ray
Timings: Main Titles: 1:00; Act One: 16:27; Act Two: 7:50; Act Three: 10:49; Act Four: 13:48; End Credits: 0:36; Total Time: 50:30.

QUICK PLOT:

A gangland-style execution investigation takes a bizarre turn when an autopsy reveals the victim had two physical identities.

Click here to read Full Plot.

REVIEW:

As the show opens, Howard Crystal (played by Jack Lord's stunt double John Nordlum), a successful businessman behind Island Thrifty Stores, "a wheeler-dealer outfit," is shot dead while he is checking out a real estate opportunity. Although this location seems out-of-the-way, some kid who is playing finds the body within a couple of hours.

Danny and Chin, who are soon on the scene, figure this looks like an "execution … the whole syndicate bit" based on circumstances surrounding the body: 'Weapon, the rope, the way he was tied."

Back at the office, McGarrett gets a visit from Paul Hamilton (Alan Fudge), a Fed connected with some unnamed government entity identified only as "the bureau" (probably the FBI). Hamilton says, "You're looking into a homicide, a character named Howard Crystal. We'd like you to work through us … It just could tie in with something we've been working on. Just put it in our hands, and you'll come out smelling like a rose." McGarrett's attitude is "my way or the highway," telling Hamilton to "put it through channels."

McGarrett goes to see Crystal's widow Carla (the very attractive Jessica Walter). She seems cool to her husband's demise, but this all boils down to "different people grieve in different ways." She drops a few clues, like Howard came to the island five years ago and she met him three years ago. When grabbing some booze (which she offers to McGarrett; he, as always, refuses), she says her husband once said, "After the second drink, I got less sexy and more verbal than any woman he ever knew." She knows nothing about her husband before he came to the islands, and responds negatively to McGarrett's probes if Howard had "no visits from old friends, no reminiscences, no hometown talk."

Saying that "Howard was a nut," she shows McGarrett a room where there is exercise equipment and a lot of pills plus what look like health supplements. She tells him that there was "nothing" between her and her husband for almost a year. She accused him of having an affair, which he denied, while refusing to give her a divorce.

Carla tells McGarrett about an interesting incident: "I used to see him, now and then, looking at this nutty picture. It was of an old football team. Two rows of those grubby losers. Anyway, I wanted to get him something special for his birthday. So I snuck that old picture out of his desk, had it blown up about yay big, tinted and framed. When he saw it, wow, pure rage. Went right through the ceiling. I've never seen anyone so mad. It was kind of neat … He stomped on it, tore it up, and threw it into the fireplace [as well as the original] … Couple weeks later, I asked him what was so important about that picture. He laughed, patted me on the behind, said it was just one of his fantasies."

McGarrett also goes to see Jack Houston (Sam Elliott, sans moustache), Crystal's business partner, who bought in to "a little nickel-and-dime thing" that he had going five years before. He describes Crystal as "a very private guy" who "built kind of like a little wall of pleasantness around himself." Houston claims he doesn't know much about Crystal's wife: "I talked to her on the phone. She seemed pretty shaky. Yeah, it's tough. That was one of the few really good marriages around."

Working late at his office, McGarrett gets a call from the Governor, who says the federal attorney general has asked for McGarrett to co-operate with "the bureau" and report to Paul Hamilton personally regarding the Crystal case. McGarrett says this will create "a dangerous precedent," but the Governor says he trusts McGarrett to handle the matter his own way.

Visiting Crystal's place again, McGarrett gets a copy negative that Carla found of the destroyed picture; it was made by a local photo finishing place that did the enlargement. After getting this developed and blown up, the Five-O team go to work to get details about its significance based on the date, the type of football equipment seen, the photographer, the geographical area where the photo was taken and information about the team.

Doc Bergman and Che Fong have uncovered interesting information about Howard Crystal. Doc says he was a "retread," with a nose job, a bone graft to change the shape of the jaw, deep sanding of the skin, very extensive hair implants and a partial face lift. Che reports that Crystal was using anabolic steroids to put on extra pounds which could have negatively affected his sex life. He also had signs of being tattooed.

This information is sent to Washington, D.C. and a report comes back quickly that suggests Howard Crystal was Julio Bocher, a syndicate informer, though the corpse's fingerprints do not match Bocher's, but Crystal's.

McGarrett visits Abe Kemper (Abe Vigoda), a a retired underworld figure, who Ben and Chin already tried to talk to, but were called "punks" and menaced by Kemper's nasty dog, which looks like a Great Dane. McGarrett plants a bug in Kemper's ear, offering to set up a meeting with Bocher and news soon comes back which suggests that Crystal's death was not a gangland hit, because Kemper's pals do not know that Crystal was killed.

After this, McGarrett goes to see Hamilton, and a screaming match ensues. Hamilton admits that the reason they are interested in this case is because someone leaked Bocher's cover, perhaps someone in their own office. McGarrett gives Hamilton the usual line about how, despite any federal issues, a murder in Hawaii is still under his jurisdiction. McGarrett wonders if the "hands-off" attitude from Hamilton is "because you're super-fuzz, and we're supposed to content ourselves with the chicken fights and illegal parking?" To suggest how easy it would have been for someone to track down Crystal's real identity, McGarrett tells Hamilton, "Without any cooperation, Five-O cracked Howard Crystal's cover in less than four days and came up with Julio Bocher."

Back at the Five-O office, the team looks at information they have so far. People at Crystal's funeral were checked out; nothing there. The football team in the picture was the Utica Grizzlies, semi-pro team from upstate New York. This picture was made 15 years ago by a photographer named George Simon. A little more than a year ago, someone sent Simon a copy of the picture asking for the names of the players. He remembers the inquiry came from Hawaii. Julio Bocher's name is listed on the original roster. McGarrett says, "We have to figure some shrewd character ran the picture down step by step, just as we did." But Chin comments, "Someone else has to figure Julio Bocher and Howard Crystal [are] the same dude. That's too big a jump if you're not sitting where we are."

McGarrett agrees, but then there is an attack of "Suppose …. just suppose." He says that someone who suspected Crystal had something to hide could track down Bocher in a manner very similar to Five-O. McGarrett suggests they focus on Houston and Crystal's wife: "They're the ones most likely to have stumbled upon the double identity."

Soon after this Danno and Chin start tailing Houston; Ben and Nick from HPD (Danny Kamekona) follow Carla. Chin, the master of close tailing, is pretty funny when he tells Danno, "Don't tighten down on him too much." Despite the fact that Nick says to Ben that he "can't keep his eyes off" Carla, they lose her. Houston parks his yellow Mercedes and takes a Bernie's cab, and he and Carla end up at a hotel (room 3C) where they are probably "doing it like monkeys."

Hamilton comes to Five-O to listen to the theories that they have developed, but he finds them "far-fetched." As far as Carla and Houston fooling around now, he says, "Adultery? Man, to these people, that is a status symbol." Complicating matters are the way Crystal's will was set up. Carla is the sole heir and beneficiary to all property and insurance. In addition to a policy on his wife, Howard Crystal had a sizable policy made out to his friend Jack Houston. Bocher insisted on the policy, it was part of the original protected witness deal. Through their company, Crystal and Houston purchased a policy which gives the surviving partner the face value of the insurance. In other words, if Crystal gets knocked off, his wife and partner are rolling in loot. Hamilton emphasizes again, " You've got it all figured out, and there isn't 6 cents' worth of evidence to prove one damn thing."

Despite this, McGarrett has an attack of just "suppose" when he is out playing golf. He rushes back to the office to discuss a new theory with Danno, that if Bocher could have been remade into Crystal, he also could have been remade into Houston because "Houston is practically the same height, and he has the same general build that Julio had before the anabolic steroids." Danno says "Why not?"

Alas, this theory is stupid. But it has a purpose and the show continues…

Five-O enlists the help of two undercover HPD officers, Luisi (Robert S. Sandla), who becomes Todd Jelke a.k.a. Jellyroll or J.R., and Feders (James Kenneth Grahlman) who becomes Francis Martin, a.k.a. Frank Morris. McGarrett and Hamilton go to talk to Carla and Houston, and tell them that (a) Crystal had an entirely different identity, that of Bocher, who was "a hood, an established member of a loosely knit organization or brotherhood we sometimes call the syndicate," and (b) two men, both "professional killers" – Jelke and Martin — are on the islands, and have been paid $100,000 on an "open contract" to knock off Julio. Houston says "they must have been paid for killing Howard," which sounds like a slip up … but then at the beginning of the show, it is suggested that Crystal's killing was not released to the press. If the two killers had already done the job, why would they be interested in only Crystal's wife or partner?

The two hitmen follow Houston and Carla around and make them very nervous. When they are outside Carla's place, Houston finally goes to talk to them, and Feders pretends to be an old pal of Bocher's, and addresses Houston as Julio. Houston denies that he is Bocher. Inside Carla's place, Houston finally admits to killing Julio, but whether the conversation is recorded via a wire that McGarrett has in his car is debatable. Feders tells Carla, "It's all over, lady. We have it on tape." Houston shoots Luisi as Five-O and HPD come storming into the place. McGarrett finally captures Houston, despite getting "a little crease in the deltoid."

Hamilton figures the lawyers for Houston and Carla are going to scream entrapment, but at least they have Houston for "assault with intent to commit murder." Another Five-O case where the results in court are probably up in the air!

I found the end of this show to be hideously complicated.

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153. (S07E09) “How To Steal A Masterpiece” ★★★★  BOOK THEM, DANNO 

Original air date: 11/12/74 — Opening CreditsEnd Credits
Director: Charles S. Dubin; Producer: William Finnegan; Writers: William Bast (teleplay), William Bast and Tom Philbin (story); Music: Morton Stevens
Timings: Main Titles: 1:00; Act One: 17:15; Act Two: 11:49; Act Three: 9:09; Act Four: 10:38; End Credits: 0:36; Total Time: 50:27.

QUICK PLOT:

Irreplaceable artworks mysteriously vanish from a millionaire's private collection despite multiple fail-safe electronic security systems.

Click here to read Full Plot.

REVIEW:

Veteran actor Luther Adler, seen previously as Vashon the Patriarch, stars as cantankerous art collector Charles Ogden who is victim of a theft when a $1.5 million Gauguin as well as a sketch by Toulouse-Lautrec are stolen from his palatial estate despite three independent alarm systems: TV, radar devices and sensors.

Five-O in the person of Chin Ho and Danno is quickly on the case, but they have to deal with Ogden's secretary Melissa Forbes (Gail Strickland) and his grandson Jeff Koestler (Michael Anderson, Jr.), who are taking an inventory. Jeff has kind of an abrasive personality, perhaps due to having been a medic in Vietnam (though with "a good combat record") as well as having a mother who is on her sixth marriage. (Danno says "He might get a little confused around Father's Day").

Chin checks out a bell from the alarm system which the crooks sprayed plastic foam into to prevent its ringing. Whether the foam would really get inside to the extent we see is questionable. Jeff calls Chin "Sherlock," adding, "It must've been an inside job."

Chin and Danno meet art appraiser Jacob Durkin (George Voskovec), who has been called in to evaluate Ogden's collection, along with his assistant, Sills Anderson (George Herman). Durkin has a high opinion of himself, saying, "I know all the big auction houses. I have here the most recent catalogs and the latest prices. So your IRS people listen to Jacob Durkin."

Danno makes a peculiar slip of the tongue when he says Ogden "gives [a painting] away or has it stolen" (meaning "it is stolen") when discussing the tax status of Ogden's art. Danno quickly corrects himself when Durkin looks disturbed by the suggestion that the theft was arranged. Durkin explains to Danno, "Mr. Ogden gives his collection to the university and takes a write-off, but he may keep the paintings here until he dies. The university offered him that privilege when the title passes." Danno comments, "It's kind of neat," to which Durkin says, "It's a very good law." Danno tells him, sarcastically, "One of my favorites."

Chin gets a copy of the security system plans which were left in a hall cabinet that anyone could access. When Danno asks Jeff if someone signed for these plans that they are taking away to examine, Jeff says, referring to Chin, "Yeah, your friend Charlie Chan took care of them." Danno is at a loss for words and Forbes draws Jeff away.

McGarrett shows up just before Danno and Chin leave and meets Ogden, who doesn't appear until 10 minutes and 21 seconds into the show's first act. The old man says, "The governor speaks well of you," then gets philosophical: "Ten thieves are born every hour on the hour in all the cities of the world, but sometimes in a whole century, only 20 masterpieces are created. I think you get my drift. … Now, we must have law and order, I know, but ... If it comes down to a choice, I'll let the thieves go, pay them off. Sometimes it's cheaper … There's gonna be a lot of publicity. You know, the media. Now, I don't want any of your people trying to make a name for himself. Is that understood?" McGarrett says, "Anything else, Mr. Ogden?" to which Forbes reads a pronouncement which she has written up at the old man's request: "Mr. Ogden has been made aware by the governor of the superior work Five-O has provided the state. As a law-abiding citizen, Mr. Ogden wishes to express his gratitude."

Ogden leaves, promising that there will be "teamwork" to help solve the case, but his attitude is more like "Yeah, yeah … whatever." Forbes assures McGarrett, "He's really a very decent man." McGarrett says, "They're hard to find."

On his way out of the place, McGarrett runs into Evvy Bernstein (Danielle), the Star-Bulletin's "art expert." Pressed for a comment on the case, McGarrett gives her a line of high-falutin' B.S.: "I think I could tell you that leads developed by the department are being carefully guarded so as not to interfere with the ultimate solution of the crime." When she looks at him with goo-goo eyes, he calls her "good girl."

A reel-to-reel tape from the robbers is received by TV station KGMB along with the Lautrec sketch, and it is delivered to Ogden's where he is totally opposed to getting the cops involved: "I have dealt with more successful thieves and pirates than McGarrett'll ever see. I'll run this show." Despite this, Bob Sevey from the station brings a copy of the tape to the Five-O office, where it turns out to have music recorded on it. The same exists for Ogden's original, but Jeff figures out that based on a related note received in the mail which says "Gauguin lives on the wrong side of the tracks," the thieves wrote a message on the tape asking for a ransom of $250,000 in small bills.

Knowing that he is being watched by Five-O, Ogden tells Jeff and Forbes, "Mr. McGarrett presents us with an interesting challenge which we shall accept." The three of them drive around town in Ogden's Cadillac Fleetwood as Chin and Danno follow them very closely. At one point, Forbes gets out and takes a Bernie's cab and soon after this, Ogden gets out and takes a white limo. The three vehicles all end up at the Iolani Palace, with the camera approaching the place in a stock shot which usually portends something very serious. In the Five-O office, Ogden tells McGarrett this game of follow-the-leader was a diversion while his "houseman" paid the ransom, and that the painting has been promised to be returned within 24 hours.

The painting is returned, but despite the fact that it has a coded staple on the back previously placed there by Durkin which proves this is the art that was stolen, Ogden knows now that it is a forgery, based on what Durkin has just told him. McGarrett, who has had to give up time on his boat, comes to the house where Durkin explains that "the greatest experts" and museums have been fooled by forged paintings, and that Ogden bought the painting 35 years ago when "techniques of detection" were less sophisticated. No one noticed that it was a phony despite the fact that it "was loaned and traveled extensively in several major Gauguin retrospective exhibitions," and when it was purchased, "it was authenticated by a museum and several private experts."

Later on, Jeff examines this forgery, and discovers that some almost undetectable cracks in the lower right hand corner where he damaged the painting when drunkenly fooling around while demonstrating the alarm system with an army friend just before they "shipped out to Nam" are no longer there. To make a sentence which is a lot shorter, this forgery is not the painting which was stolen, which was actually the real McCoy. Jeff tells this to Durkin, which is a big mistake, compounded when Jeff catches Durkin trying to duplicate the cracks later, similar to those in what we now know, or suspect, was the original Gauguin. Jeff is taken away at gunpoint and killed.

After finding out about Jeff's demise, McGarrett, obviously thinking something fishy is going on, finally figures out what Durkin's racket is when he talks again to Evvy, the art expert. She says that twice in the past Durkin discovered that some well-known painting was a fraud, but years after both of these occurrences, he was vindicated after the real paintings turned up, making him a celebrated character in the art world.

McGarrett gets Ogden, who is bereaved because of Jeff's death, to phone the two appraisers and tell them that their services are no longer required. Five-O subsequently goes to the hotel room where Durkin and Anderson are preparing to leave town. Five-O searches through the place with a fine-tooth comb, but can't find anything.

As they leave the building, McGarrett realizes that Durkin stuck a low-budget painting from the hotel room wall in his face, saying "Perhaps this is what you're looking for." They return to the room and remove paper from this painting which reveals the Gauguin underneath. Durkin and Anderson are both busted, the charge is "murder one and grand theft," though, again, I think that the former charge may be difficult to prove unless Anderson implicates his boss.

The show is directed by Jack Lord. The ending is my nominee for the saddest Five-O episode ending of all ... guaranteed to bring tears to your eyes when Ogden tells McGarrett, "I'd trade it all, all the paintings, all the money, to get my Jeff back." What fantastic acting by Luther Adler!

One of the highlights of the episode is the outstanding score by Morton Stevens, who thought highly of it, because it was included on a demo tape that he made of his favorite scores (see below). Unlike the music to "Hookman" (also on that tape) which contains a lot of heavy brass, the music for "Masterpiece" is full of quirky woodwind writing. There are two extended sequences. The first, during the opening theft, is nearly three minutes long and the one where Ogden, Forbes and Jeff lead Five-O on a chase goes on for over four and a half.

EPISODE PROMO:

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MUSIC:

Score by Morton Stevens.

The two times at the beginning of each line in the list below are when the cue appears in the show and the length of the cue. Click the arrow in the player to hear a suite containing these cues. To finish before the end, click the stop (‖‖) button. The number in red is the approximate time you will hear the cue in the suite.

#1, 01:00, 03:06, 00:00, Two crooks disable alarms and overpower guards at Charles Ogdon's house, then steal a priceless painting.
#2, 13:05, 00:53, 03:06, McGarrett talks to Ogdon.
#3, 18:04, 00:10, 03:59, After Ogdon is furious over involvement by the police, Wave leads to end of Act One.
#4, 19:41, 00:08, 04:09, Brief excerpt of music on reel-to-reel tape containing info from the art thieves.
#5, 21:31, 04:52, 04:16, Lengthy cue, Ogdon and family lead Five-O on a wild goose chase involving Ogdon's car, a taxi and a limo.
#6, 28:14, 00:18, 09:08, The painting has been returned, Durkin wants McGarrett to come to Ogdon's.
#7, 29:54, 00:11, 09:26, Durkin tells Ogdon that his painting is a forgery; Wave leads to end of Act Two.
#8, 35:52, 01:49, 09:37, Jeff confronts Durkin and Anderson because they switched the real painting with the forgery.
#9, 38:11, 01:01, 11:26, Jeff is taken away at gunpoint, to be killed; Wave leads to end of Act Three.
#10, 41:58, 00:25, 12:27, McGarrett clues in on Durkin's deception; he goes to talk to Ogdon.
#11, 43:25, 00:37, 12:52, Ogdon phones Durkin to tell him his services are no longer required; this is part of McGarrett's plan.
#12, 44:27, 00:36, 13:29, McGarrett and Five-O go to Durkin's hotel room, hoping to find the stolen painting, but are unsuccessful.
#13, 45:02, 02:39, 14:05, McGarrett flashes on Durkin confronting him with the disguised painting; they return to Durkin's room where the real painting is found; Durkin and Anderson are busted; Ogdon is sad because Jeff was killed.

From Stevens' demo tape

Part 1 • Part 2 • Part 3

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154. (S07E10) “A Gun For McGarrett” ★★★  BOOK HER   BOOK HIM, DANNO 

Original air date: 11/26/74 — Opening CreditsEnd Credits
Director: Bruce Bilson; Producer: William Finnegan; Writer: Alvin Sapinsley; Music: Don B. Ray
Timings: Main Titles: 1:00; Act One: 10:15; Act Two: 12:39; Act Three: 12:26; Act Four: 13:33; End Credits: 0:36; Total Time: 50:29.

QUICK PLOT:

McGarrett is the object of an assassination attempt by a crime kingpin from England who wants to take over the local rackets.

Click here to read Full Plot.

REVIEW:

The episode starts in an explosive manner with a bomb being detonated in the Five-O office inside a just-delivered plaque for the "The International Montaigne Society Man-of-the-Year award," a bogus-sounding achievement if there ever was one. We can see this coming a mile away! After the bomb in "Blind Tiger," surely you would think H50 would invest in some scanning equipment in their workplace. The explosion is very strong; McGarrett rolls over his desk on fire. An HPD cop named Leland Opaha (Arte McCollough, uncredited) is killed.

The person behind the blast is S.N. Savage (Ivor Barry), a sophisticated Englishman (the actor was almost 60 years old) who is one of the top 10 crime figures on Interpol's wanted list, "kingpin of all of London's gambling, prostitution, and dope." Savage has come to Hawaii to help four local racketeers increase their operations: Tanaka (Rudolfo Aquino), Lin Wu Choy (Gerald Lau), Tasi (Robert F. Lee) and the thuggish Sig Meer (Jim Demarest), who is the only white guy among the three Asians. Savage shows the locals a fancy map highlighting their present territories on Oahu. He proposes to expand this to a large area currently under no one's control. For his help with this "expansion," he wants "thirty-five percent of all profits derived from any new enterprises I'm able to develop in your various territories."

With these four and his henchman Tony (the shifty-eyed John A. Gracciano), Savage views live TV coverage of the aftermath of the bombing from the Iolani Palace where the reporter is Bob Sevey. When Opaha's covered body is taken out, Savage tells the assembled, "As you've just seen on the telly, your common enemy, Steven McGarrett, is no more." However, minutes later, Sevey reports, "Steve McGarrett, who was in the office at the time of the explosion, has escaped serious injury." This causes the volatile Meer to leave the meeting in disgust, ripping up Savage's map, followed by the other three men. Savage comments, "That man is clearly no respecter of the graphic arts."

Tanaka, Choy and Tasi soon return for further discussions with Savage, however, after Meer is assassinated by Tony with his body ending up floating in the swimming pool of his palatial house.

Savage says, "I'm sure you won't disagree with me when I point out that every commonplace way to eradicate McGarrett has been attempted and none has succeeded." What is he talking about, were there other attempts by him on McGarrett's life prior to the show that we are not aware of? "Additionally, I'm informed that McGarrett is currently being guarded by a force roughly the equivalent of a brigade of the Coast Guards." This is according to the subtitles; he actually says the "Coldstream Guards," a regiment of the British army.

Savage tells the three, "I can assure you, there is only one reliable way to kill McGarrett, and that is to take him completely by surprise. To do that, we must put him off his guard. The moment he believes himself secure from attack, the moment he allows himself a second's relaxation, that is the moment I'm planning to achieve."

McGarrett, who ended up in hospital from the bomb blast with a few burns and bruises plus a "chunk of tin" in his arm, is soon back at work. Savage starts a campaign of intimidation against businesses in Waikiki to get Five-O's attention. A bomb is thrown into a travel agency, producing an explosion which is used again in the season's final show –- "6,000 Deadly Tickets" — filmed mostly from a different angle. McGarrett says that this is "somebody saying, 'Okay, you fat cats who run the Waikiki hotels, nightclubs, and restaurants. Now it's your turn. Pay up or get blown up.' And they'll pay up. And shut up. Unless we can find ourselves a hero who's willing to risk his hotel lobby to tell us who's trying to move into Waikiki."

Not unsurprisingly, a "heroine" is found, Marni Howard (Carol White) who is connected with Kapiolani Galleries. She got a phone call demanding protection money in the amount of $2,500, and that was only the first payment. When McGarrett and Danno go to visit her, she says if payment is not made, she was threatened that "my shop would be damaged, and if I continued to refuse, I would be damaged … the implication was the damage would be severe." Danno does some checking on Marni, and finds out that she appears to be legit, having purchased the gallery "from a Mr. Kalahai hardly three months ago." Meanwhile, Frank Kamana (Doug Mossman) is getting tips from an informer Yosh (Jack Morris) who tells him about meetings between the late Meer and the three Asian gangsters with "some kind of European with muscle."

Soon after this, Marni phones Five-O to report that further instructions have been received regarding her payment, but before she can deal with this, they get another call that she has been taken to Queen's Hospital after being badly beaten up and things in her gallery smashed and broken … which we saw being done by Tony, Savage's goon. I hope it won't be too much of a spoiler to say at this point that Marni is in cahoots with Savage, so hopefully he is paying her a good salary considering the abuse that she has to put up with, resulting in some facial bruises which fade away fast, unlike those on McGarrett which last until the end of the show.

Marni is totally rattled, and doesn't intend to go back to the gallery. She will stay at her house (a very nice house, by the way), and gets lots of police protection. She acts very chummy towards McGarrett, telling him to call her by her first name. He tells her that his middle name is Aloysius (not true) and kids with him about the fact that he is a Capricorn, describing him as "a robot who lives and breathes police work." She seduces him into taking her to a fancy restaurant for dinner, and while they are dining, she peppers him with a lot of questions about his daily schedule, which includes jogging, getting his hair cut, and so forth. When McGarrett takes her home, there is a suggestion that he would probably end up "doing it" with her if it weren't for the fact that people like Chin Ho are outside guarding the place. He ends their evening out with "Good night, pretty girl," giving her a kiss.

Kamana gets more information from Yosh that a hit man from the mainland has been hired, the suggestion being this is part of Savage's plan to take care of McGarrett, though details about this in the show are very sketchy. This guy is Hugh Bensinger, "very expensive and very accurate … the major hit man in 18 gangland killings over the last seven years … the last of the independent operators … responsible for the death of Meyer Stronsky … and paid 50 big ones for it by Whitey Doyle." But he is played by George Herman, who is not a particularly menacing guy! After Yosh and Kamana follow Bensinger to Savage's house, Kamana takes pictures of the two of them which are forwarded to the appropriate authorities.

Savage's identity is quickly confirmed, and McGarrett goes to his place where he shows Savage the picture. Savage tries to play dumb, saying his name is Dempster, "a real-estate developer … here on vacation in your beautiful state … are you, by any chance, with the Chamber of Commerce?" McGarrett is in no mood for any crap: "Savage, when I put this case together, I'm going to nail you for murder, for attempted murder, and for extortion. Now, you may have come here to kill me, but you're going to end up in Oahu State Prison for good. That's a promise." As he leaves, he takes off Tony's sunglasses, "just so I'll recognize you in case I see you again."

A tail is set up on Marni, and Kamana follows her to HPD where she gets a permit to carry a gun and then goes to a gun shop. McGarrett phones the owner of the shop (Edward Shonk) and has a few words with him. Bensinger is tailed to the Kapiolani Park Rose Garden where he is expected to make the hit on McGarrett, except that before this happens, Bensinger himself is knocked off by Tony. Chin and Kamana watch Bensinger get hit, and rush over from their surveillance location, which seems very dumb … maybe Tony would knock them off too, duh! McGarrett rationalizes Bensingler's killing by saying, "If the man who's supposed to hit me gets wasted before the job is done, I could feel very secure for a while, wouldn't you say? Secure enough to go out without a bodyguard. It's possible that the whole thing had been planned that way."

Soon enough, he gets a call from Marni, who says there is a man outside her house. He goes to her place and lets himself in. She appears and start shooting him … except her new gun is full of blanks, as per McGarrett's request to the owner of the gun shop. He tells Marni, "You're in a lot of trouble, honey. I could hold you for the attempted murder of a police official, and I can show probable cause that you were an accessory to the murders of Hugh Bensinger and Sig Meer. You could go to prison until you're a very old lady, unless you decide to cooperate."

Of course, she cooperates, and Five-O and HPD raid Savage's place, where he just announced to the three racketeers, "The population of these islands has just been reduced by the 900 lives of Steve McGarrett," based on a call that Marni made that she had knocked McGarrett off, while the top cop was standing right beside her, monitoring her "cooperation." Having already booked Marni, Savage and the others in the room are also busted: "Book him, Danno. Murder one, two counts, and all the rest of his accessories for openers."

This episode is pretty good, though you have to wonder why doesn't McGarrett clue in to Marni working for Savage. When McGarrett is visiting Marni in the hospital, Savage calls him there to say, "Mr. McGarrett, this is just a small example of what happens when a client of ours goes to the authorities. Keep it in mind," and hangs up. How would Savage know that McGarrett is there at that time ... and both Savage and Marni have English accents!

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155. (S07E11) “Welcome To Our Branch Office” ★★★  BOOK THEM ALL   BOOK ME 

Original air date: 12/3/74 — Opening CreditsEnd Credits
Director: Charles S. Dubin; Producer: William Finnegan; Writer: Jerome Coopersmith; Music: Bruce Broughton
Timings: Main Titles: 1:00; Act One: 16:31; Act Two: 10:05; Act Three: 9:02; Act Four: 13:05; End Credits: 0:36; Total Time: 50:19.

QUICK PLOT:

Two mainland con men duplicate the Five-O office in minute detail and use a quartet of Five-O look-a-likes to extort money out of Honolulu businessmen.

Click here to read Full Plot.

REVIEW:

This relatively light-hearted episode is amusing if you don't think about it too hard.

Con artists Jeffrey Bowman (Cameron Mitchell) and Stash (Frank Gorshin) construct an exact duplicate of the Five-O office in an abandoned building and then shake down local businessmen for money with a cast of characters very similar in appearance to the Five-O crew who they have carefully chosen. Bowman and Stash have pulled off similar scams on the mainland, including one in St. Louis where they built a phony hospital wing with "beds, nurses [and] everything to make an old man think he was dying [to] fleece him out of his savings."

Thorwald Boie, a cine-technician on the show, plays McGarrett's double, Bernard C.K. Ching is Chin Ho and Ralph P. Hanalei is Ben. Danny's look-alike is James MacArthur, except in the final scene where he is played by Lowell Larson, a University of Hawaii engineering student (thanks to Karen Rhodes for this info). When I asked MacArthur at the 1996 Mahalo Con if his double's voice was dubbed, he said it was, but couldn't recall who did it.

To duplicate the office, Bowman and Stash enter Five-O's premises through an Iolani Palace skylight using ropes. But in order to do this, wouldn't they have to go to the roof of the building first … and use a ladder to get up there which might have been seen by someone? Terry Plunkett is Charlie, a security guard who sees the flashes from their cameras going off from outside the building, and when he investigates, they lock him in a closet. For some reason, Charlie doesn't just immediately use his walkie-talkie to alert the cops.

The people who are getting extorted are all new businessmen to the Honolulu area who would not be too familiar with Five-O's operation or the members of the team who have been working there now for several years.

The first victim of the scam, building contractor Herman Walker (John N. Stalker), wears an old-fashioned hearing aid which has an earpiece connected to a small box inside his shirt pocket which contains a microphone. As he leaves his house, Walker is shot at by Fake Chin using a machine gun in a brown station wagon driven by Bowman. The gun sprays bullets (probably blanks) at Walker as it passes his driveway, but continues shooting as it goes behind a fence.

Walker rushes into his house and starts to call the cops, holding the telephone against the microphone in his pocket, but he puts the receiver up to it, not the mouthpiece, which doesn't make sense. The bogus Danno and Ben show up at the door almost immediately, saying were tailing the other two guys. They take Walker to the fake Five-O office, driving in a black Mercury Marquis. Fake McGarrett is busy when they arrive, and Fake Danno interviews Walker in a squeaky, obviously dubbed voice, referring to Walker's hometown of Seattle as a "nice city ... clean."

We don't actually see the procedure used to extort money from Walker, or any of the other businessmen taken to Five-O HQ on the show.

Next on the list of victims is Travers (Mitch Mitchell). When the bogus Danno and Ben go to visit him, they see a package Travers has received, which contains a bomb. "Danno" throws it out the window, and it explodes. Travers is taken to headquarters to meet "McGarrett."

The last victim that we see in the show is nightclub owner Al Shatner (Doug Mossman), a "male Caucasian" who weighs 220 pounds and is 6 feet 4 inches tall (Mossman is about this height). This actor will play Five-O team member Frank Kamana in two episodes this season before this one and 11 more after. As Shatner gets into his car – a yellow Mercedes, license number 2F-4323, seen in S07E08, "The Two-Faced Corpse" – Danno tells him not to move, because it also contains a bomb. This is disarmed by "our demolition man" which is Bowman, wearing a helmet.

After Shatner gets the payoff money from his bank, he is visited by Fake Danno and Ben. He complains, "I got clubs in Miami, Chicago, and Vegas, and I pay my dues. Christmas list that would blow your mind. But no squawks from me because I know wheels gotta be greased, but this? This is no greasing. This is putting a gun to my head, and I don't like it." When he pulls out a gun, Bowman and Stash suddenly appear. They overpower him and shoot him up with some drug, then leave his body in a freighter in the harbor. Soon after this, Shatner is reported "missing." Note the character's name, similar to guest star William from S05E03, "You Don't Have To Kill To Get Rich, But It Helps."

The only one of these three who makes an issue about his shakedown is Walker. He goes to see Manicote and complains bitterly. When he confronts McGarrett, Walker swears that he is the "head of the operation" despite McGarrett's protestations that he has never seen Walker before and he has sworn statements and other proof that Walker was never in his office. However, Walker recounts miniscule details about the place and takes a polygraph which he passes with flying colors. I think that instead of making Walker someone who is hard of hearing, it would have been better if he had been someone with vision problems, since it is obvious that the real McGarrett, not to mention the other members of the Five-O team, are not the same as their bogus counterparts.

The phony Five-O office is finally located with the help of Walker, who is taken for a ride by the real team with his eyes closed. (During his original trip to the phony office, he was kept low in the car's back seat after the machine-gunning Chin Ho took a few more shots at him.) Although Walker says as a building contractor he can remember details, how can he remember exactly where he was taken on his earlier journey?

I think there were quite a few more businessmen who were taken for a ride by the two con artists, because when they finally decide to wrap up their operation, they pay off the four imposters with $250,000 in cash to be split between them, which Stash, out of their line of sight, quietly exchanges for a case of banknotes made out of newspaper. Bowman and Stash's take is also $250,000 based on what we hear at the end of the show, but Bowman locks his partner in a phone booth on their way to the airport. When he arrives there, the ripped-off foursome are there to meet him, and Bowman tries to flee but stumbles into a pile of luggage. The locked-up Stash called Five-O, who hasten to the airport and bust Bowman and the four.

Back at the real Five-O office, the real Five-O characters grill Bowman in the bogus crew's voices. He finally gives up, and tells McGarrett: "Book me."

Too bad Frank Gorshin, well-known for his impressions, didn't get to use any of these talents in this show. (Gorshin was originally intended to be the character played by Rich Little in season nine's "The Bells Toll At Noon.") The score by Bruce Broughton is interesting.

If you want to "think hard about this episode," this is another example of too many people involved in some criminal set-up, similar to S05E17, "Here Today … Gone Tonight" and S11E14, "The Meighan Conspiracy," where the danger that someone will blab is almost not worth taking the risk for the masterminds in charge. Duplicating the office, estimated by an incredulous McGarrett to cost in the neighborhood of $50,000, involves a lot of tradespeople and others to reproduce furniture, hangings on the wall and so forth with the most minute detail — not to mention the members of the phony Five-O team.

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156. (S07E12) “Presenting...In The Center Ring...Murder” ★★★  BOOK THEM   BOOK THEM BOTH 

Original air date: 12/10/74 — Opening CreditsEnd Credits
Director: Charles S. Dubin; Producer: William Finnegan; Writer: Jerome Coopersmith; Music: Bruce Broughton
Timings: Main Titles: 1:00; Act One: 12:05; Act Two: 9:43; Act Three: 10:13; Act Four: 16:47; End Credits: 0:36; Total Time: 50:24.

QUICK PLOT:

Wo Fat returns to Hawaii to kill the visiting Red Chinese foreign minister who is under the protection of Five-O while at the circus with his grandson.

Click here to read Full Plot.

REVIEW:

I've always referred to this episode as "Wo Fat Goes To The Circus." When I saw it on KVOS TV in the 1990s, the first two minutes of the show were completely missing! In this section, Chin Ho is pretending to be the Chinese foreign minister Ling (later played by Norman F.C. Tan), soon to be visiting Honolulu for bilateral discussions with American officials, including Jonathan Kaye (Bill Edwards). This is a test-run of the meeting for security purposes, where Five-O stuntman Chuck Couch, playing a waiter, enters the room and attempts to garrote Chin. He is not successful and the cops at the door are told to next time "take into account the unconventional weapon." Chin tells Couch's character, "You could have killed me."

At the airport soon after this, McGarrett, the Governor and Kaye greet Ling when he arrives with his grandson (Shawn Sherman). There is an interesting tracking shot as McGarrett walks past various people. A woman named Janet Wong (Luanna Costello), seemingly a teacher from "fifth grade, Nauilnie [sic] school" who is there with a bunch of students, wants to give the minister a bouquet (which contains a bomb) but is rebuffed by one of the HPD cops. She tells the kids "Ice cream on the way home?" but on the way home the school bus stops and she gets out and goes to a limousine, where she meets with … Wo Fat. When she tells him "I failed," he says, "No need to worry, my dear. There's always an alternate." This is first time we have seen Wo since S05E05, "The Jinn Who Clears the Way."

The alternate is Wo's number-one man, Mr. Chong (Robert Nelson) who is waiting with a rifle in a building that Ling's motorcade will pass by. It looks like Chong is supposed to knock him off when the cars pass on his left, but the route has been changed by McGarrett, turning at an intersection just before this and the limousine passes right in front of Chong — so why can't he assassinate Ling then? Chong is identified in the credits by his last name, rather than the previous shows' "Assassin #1."

Just before this unsuccessful hit, the motorcade passed a circus which was being set up on the grounds of the Honolulu International Center (HIC, now called the Neal S. Blaisdell Center), and Ling's grandson wants to go there. The Governor says this can be arranged, but when McGarrett — who was not in the limo with Ling — hears about this plan, he is furious, telling Kaye it is "stupid." Kaye says that when he ran the idea past the State Department, they told him, "You gotta keep him [Ling] happy, gotta show him we're not afraid of our people." McGarrett says they will announce that Ling is going to the circus on Thursday, but he will really go on Tuesday.

Five-O gets co-operation from the International 3-Ring Circus, which is a joint production of E.K. (the circus ringmaster (Philip D. MacDonald) says "Connie") Fernandez and Ralph Yempuku, two real promoters who brought such entertainment to Hawaii, though I wonder where they got the acts from — somewhere on the mainland? McGarrett wants "the names and addresses of all HIC personnel. Management, box office, technical crew. And the circus acts. Bios down to the last detail."

Danno and Chin check out acts in the show who might pose a problem like Zoltan the lion tamer (Hans Strasser) who "tames lions in the show, ladies outside," and Paul Stanwick, a laborer, who "can't hold booze" and "once … almost killed a guy in a bar." They are both cleared. Two high-wire artists, Juan and Miguel Rinaldo (Richard Yniguez and Corey Rand respectively), on the other hand, give out odd vibes. They hail from Havana, and have an H-1 immigration permit, a non-immigrant visa in the United States which allows U.S. employers to temporarily employ foreign workers in specialty occupations and have also applied for asylum in the U.S. When Danno tells McGarrett the Rinaldos "seemed very uptight, nervous," McGarrett says, "remember that they come from a country where a visit from the state police can sometimes mean the end of the line." McGarrett still gets Frank Kamana to check out the Rinaldos through Interpol.

The Rinaldos get a request to meet with Wo, who has heard about them from Enrico, "a mutual friend in Havana." The two men are not who they say they are. They have taken the identity of their father and uncle, who trained them in their craft. When the father and uncle, now retired, were requested to come to Hawaii and perform with the circus, the two younger men took their place. Enrico was responsible for modifying their documents and passports as part of this deception. Wo threatens to expose all this, which would totally discredit their application for asylum, among other things. Wo has big plans for both of them — he wants them to knock off Ling, "that foolish dove who comes here to make peace on bended knee."

Wo goes to visit a local bicycle shop owner named Rikoto (Seth Sakai). He designed the bomb in the bouquet which could not be delivered at the airport. He is asked to produce a crude rifle, the components of which can be incorporated into the seat of the bicycle in the Rinaldos' high-wire act. Rikoto says that he can produce this quickly for a lot of money. We are talking about a time frame of next Thursday after the current weekend.

Much to the annoyance of Ling and his slimy translator Soong Chien (James Hong) who is in cahoots with Wo, McGarrett pulls "Tuesday instead of Thursday" out of his hat with a "my way or the highway" look, and Ling says OK. The big day comes and the Ling, the grandson and Chien go to the circus where HPD and their bomb-sniffing dogs are giving the place a good inspection. The Rinaldos are happy about this date change, because they figure they will be off the hook for having to kill Ling on Thursday, until they return to their dressing room and find Mr. Chong has the bicycle seat rifle waiting for them. (A good question — how did Rikoto find out about the change in dates, especially since it was all done at the very last moment — from Chien?)

During the show, the Rinaldos do their act, which involves skipping, a "human pyramid" with one of them on the other's shoulders, and riding a bicycle, all on the high wire. There are some serious continuity problems with all of this.

When we first see them, it is a view from in front on the platform up in the air with the bicycle presumably behind them. In the next shot, while one of them skips, the bicycle is on the left side of the wire, facing left. When they do the "pyramid," there is no bike on the left of the wire, it is on the right when they are finished this part of the act. When one of them is riding the bicycle, it starts on the left and crosses to the right of the wire. Maybe the views (obviously mixing the real high-wire artists with those of the actors themselves) are taken from different sides of the tightrope? It seems peculiar to me that after their act is finished, the two men do not come down from on high, but stay up there where Juan assembles the rifle. (Where did he learn how to do this?)

Having told his brother that he knows "what to do" in order to avoid them becoming murderers, Juan looks around the arena and almost immediately finds Wo Fat, who is there, dressed in a circus employee's uniform. He takes aim at Wo, but when he pulls the trigger, nothing happens. Wo looks up and yells "That man up there, he has a gun! He has a gun! Look out!" which causes McGarrett, Five-O and HPD to immediately spring into action. (Strangely, McGarrett does not recognize Wo's voice, which is very loud.)

Whether the rifle not firing was a part of Wo's plan all along is a good question — maybe Rikoto was not able to finish the job? As before, there is an "alternative" solution to killing Ling, again Chong, who is also at the arena in the guise of a cotton-candy vendor. He gets a revolver from Wo and aims it at Ling, which McGarrett sees just in the nick of time and knocks Chong to the floor. BUT … there is yet another "alternative" when Chien whips out a gun and points it at Ling, screaming in Chinese. Juan Rinaldo comes flying down (literally) from his perch above the arena on a wire which just happens to enable him to run into Chien, who is knocked on his ass. Chien and Chong are both busted. The "bookem" at the end is "Book them both, conspiracy to assassinate." McGarrett figures Five-O will soon get another opportunity to confront Wo, which will happen in S08E01, where Chong, supposedly going to jail now, will be free as a bird!

According to Karen Rhodes' Booking Five-O, "this episode progressed a backdrop of real drama." Jack Lord objected to the presence of a visitor to the set, brought there by producer William Finnegan, so strongly that he was on the verge of being removed from show until Hawaiian governor George Ariyoshi intervened and convinced Lord to stay. I suspect that this altercation did not happen during filming of the circus part of the show, which would have been between August 8-18, 1974, but on a set like in McGarrett's office.

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157. (S07E13) “Hara-Kiri: Murder” ★★½

Original air date: 12/31/74 — Opening CreditsEnd Credits
Director: Paul Stanley; Producer: William Finnegan; Writer: Norman Lessing; Music: Don B. Ray
Timings: Main Titles: 1:00; Act One: 17:36; Act Two: 12:38; Act Three: 9:28; Act Four: 9:07; End Credits: 0:36; Total Time: 50:25.

QUICK PLOT:

McGarrett wants to know why a shamed Japanese banker ritualistically killed himself.

Click here to read Full Plot.

REVIEW:

Mitsuru Matsukata, a "big honcho," head of the Honolulu branch of the Nippon International Bank of Tokyo, is perceived to have committed hara-kiri or seppuku, Japanese ritualistic suicide at the Byodo-In Temple. This bank is one of the largest in the world dealing in foreign trade, handling "exceptionally large transfers of cash," usually by coded cable.

When McGarrett visits the Japanese Consulate in Honolulu after a call from the World Bank, Mr. Hata (Andrew J. Sato), the consul-general, tells him that Matsukata "occupied a unique position in international trade," without going into details. Also present is Professor Ramon Borelle (Ossie Davis), "one of the few close friends Matsukata had in this country," whose friendship with Matsukata dated back many years to when the two of them were at the London School of Economics. Borelle's name is pronounced "Borelli," like he is Italian, though actor Davis is black.

Borelle suggests it is "unthinkable" that Matsukata took his life because of some irregularities at the bank, Hata adding that the banker was a "direct descendant of the samurai," which places Matsukata "above suspicion."

Danno and Ben go to talk to Andrew Shibata (John Fujioka), who has taken over Matsukata's responsibilities at the bank. He has been assistant manager to Matsukata for five years and has "never known him to do anything that was even slightly questionable." When Danno asks Shibata what is his view on suicide, Shibata replies, "I was born in this country. Matsukata belonged to the older generation of my people. They don't regard suicide as a crime."

Back at the office, McGarrett is suspicious about Borelle, and asks Chin to look into his background. Borelle is actually the bad guy of the show, as we quickly find out. He has already transferred $250,000 from the bank to his own "Afro-American Trading Company," using forged cabled messages with codes only Matsukata had access to. These codes were stolen from a safe by Matsukata's secretary Ann Whitmore (Lynne Ellen Hollinger), who is working in cahoots with Borelle and whom Borelle had recommended to Matsukata for her job several years ago.

Borelle and his associate Walter Hutchins (Nelson D. ["Dick"] Fair) want to transfer another $2 million, but they fear this will not work, because the very complicated codes to do this were likely changed after Matsukata's death. When they get another of their co-conspirators George (James S. Ishida), to try and transfer a mere $30,000 using a Telex machine in the same building as the bank which taps directly into the bank's communications system, the codes indeed do not work. Shortly after this, Borelle visits Shibata to ask him for the new codes which are expected to arrive from the bank's head office shortly. If Shibata doesn't turn them over, Shibata's wife Marika (Helen Yamato), whom Borelle is holding captive, will be killed. Borelle has been planning this caper for five years.

Shibata goes to visit the Five-O offices, which seems kind of a risky thing to do considering the peril his wife is in. He talks to McGarrett about the $250,000 which was transferred with the fake cables and explains the coding system. He still doesn't know which company transferred this money, because it was wasn't sent in a lump sum, but in smaller parts which added up to $250,000.

McGarrett gets Che Fong to go and see what he can dig up at the bank. Che uncovers what looks like the remains of a bug under the safe which contained the codes: "Spectrographic examination revealed the residue of silicon and germanium." This is very far-fetched, in my opinion, especially the fact that Che can determine exactly what kind of a transmitting device this was, which he demonstrates to Danno. This microphone supposedly allows someone listening to figure out the safe's combination. I couldn't see how this is done, because when Danno tries listening in, the clicking noises from turning the safe's dial come a mile a minute.

This is not the only thing that is fishy about the case. When Danno and Ben go to talk to the monk (Shinsho Jo) who found Matsukata's body at the temple, he says that a mat which should have been under Matsukata to avoid soiling the floor with blood was not used. According to Doc, who seems to be an expert in hara-kiri techniques, the method Matsukata used to disembowel himself was not correct, leading Danno to speculate that this was not a case of suicide, but murder. As well, there is screwiness the way the phony cables were dated which didn't take the International Date Line correctly into consideration.

Shibata starts to get nervous because Borelle is getting very greedy with his final request for $300,000, which he tries to justify, in case anyone gets suspicious, that "Afro-American is expanding." Borelle says that this request should be granted because "I have an international reputation. Like Caesar's wife, I am above suspicion." Shibata approves the request. Borelle says that this amount is destined as a reward for the two men — George and Shigo — who are holding Shibata's wife.

This large transfer is reported to Five-O, and a dragnet ensues, following Shibata, who is a suspect as is Whitmore, whose connection to Borelle has been established. This leads to the Hawaii School for Girls in the "La Pietra" area (this is all real), closed for the summer, where Shibata's wife is being held. Shibata and his wife are regarded as liabilities, and are about to be killed when Five-O saves the day. In this case, McGarrett is back at the office, having been kept preoccupied with things involving the Japanese consul and the Governor, though his mug is the last thing we see in the show!

This episode isn't bad, though the whole business about the bug under the safe makes me roll my eyes. I seriously don't understand why Borelle insinuates himself into the story, since he was merely Matsukata's friend and is currently a university professor with an "international reputation" in banking matters. At the beginning, when McGarrett goes to the Japanese consulate, Borelle is there, commenting on various things which have happened. Borelle's presence should make McGarrett very suspicious, especially since he doesn't give any details about his presence at the consulate. Obviously he doesn't live in Hawaii, because he is staying at the Hawaiian Regent Hotel. Did he suddenly show up after Matsukata died? Considering Matsukara had "no life" and all of his family was in Japan, who would have contacted Borelle to come to Hawaii?

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158. (S07E14) “Bones Of Contention” ★★½  BOOK HIM, CHIN 

Original air date: 1/7/75 — Opening CreditsEnd Credits
Director: Douglas Green; Producer: William Finnegan; Writer: Alvin Sapinsley; Music: Don B. Ray
Timings: Main Titles: 1:00; Act One: 11:58; Act Two: 17:34; Act Three: 9:16; Act Four: 9:58; End Credits: 0:36; Total Time: 50:22.

QUICK PLOT:

Five-O digs into a 34-year-old mystery when a Honolulu murder is linked to a valuable missing human fossil that disappeared before Pearl Harbor.

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REVIEW:

This episode is based on some historical facts.

Professor Dobbs Burke (Keene Curtis) comes to Hawaii to broker a deal for the bones of Peking Man which were being smuggled out of China during World War II. These and other bones were discovered in the late 1920's/early 1930's and are "celebrated as a major step forward in the theory of human origin and evolution," according to one WWW page. Burke, a professor of anthropology at Wessex College, Boston, acting with the approval of the US state department, wants to purchase the bones which will then be returned to China in the interest of improving relations between China and the USA.

According to Wikipedia, in real life, "The fossils were stored at the Union Medical College in Peking. Eye-witness accounts state that in 1941, while Beijing was under Japanese occupation, but just before the outbreak of hostilities between Japan and the Allied Forces during the Second World War, the fossils were packed into two large crates and loaded onto a US Marine vehicle bound for a port in northern China. From there they were to be sent by ship to the American Museum of Natural History in New York, but the fossils vanished en route."

Burke is in Hawaii, and he is contacted by Herbert Southwood (uncredited actor), who wants $80,000 for the bones. Southwood was released from San Quentin three weeks ago where he was serving one to five for armed robbery. There is no indication how Southwood, a young guy in his mid-twenties, would have known about Burke or his quest for the remains.

Southwood is not the only person interested in the bones, however. A check by Five-O to determine who might have been a cellmate of Southwood's at San Quentin turns up one Raymond E. Parmel (Vic Tayback). He was a soldier with the US Marines during the war, a member of the detail transporting the bones out of China. Parmel had a lengthy history with the US prison system after the war, spending time for armed robbery and an escape attempt. Ten days ago, he broke out of San Quentin and somehow managed to also get to Hawaii.

At the beginning of the show, we see Parmel tailing Southwood, who is calling Burke from a pay phone regarding the bones to arrange for payment. Parmel obviously blabbed while the two of them were prison pals about what he had done during the war, which included his plan to transport the bones to Hawaii (not New York) and switch them with another soldier's body interred at the Punchbowl Cemetery. It seems odd that Parmel knew exactly what was in the box containing Peking Man, because when Danno goes to Parris Island, SC, to talk to another member of the Marine squad, Sgt.-Major Joseph F. Danvers (Joseph Monteleone), Danvers is totally clueless as to what the boxes contained. (Sending Danno all the way to South Carolina seems odd, why couldn't he have just phoned?)

Southwood isn't aware of Parmel's presence watching him. It is a stretch that Parmel made it all the way to Hawaii considering he was a wanted fugitive who was perhaps kind of short of money for plane fare. Parmel tails Southwood to his fleabag hotel room and murders him, just before Burke shows up to pay. Parmel then contacts Southwood's uncle, who is the oily local fixer Mauro Sunyako, an entrepreneur, self-described as an "entrepren-you're," played by Kwan Hi Lim. This is also a stretch, because Southwood was very white, and Kwan is … uh … Asian, though such a relationship is not improbable.

Parmel obviously wants the $80,000 for himself, though, again, there is no explanation as to how he knew Burke was after the bones at this time. Parmel has a scheme to get the bones back to the mainland. He gets Sunyako to hire Joanne Summerville (Jana Lindan) to pose as the daughter of Corporal Ed Crowe, in whose grave Peking Man's bones are currently buried, to arrange for the remains to returned to the mainland. (This is being done almost 34 years after the original internment. No one finds this odd, especially the guy in charge of the paperwork at the cemetery, who is played by Joe Moore.)

Parmel starts to play "let's make a deal" with Burke, despite McGarrett cautioning Burke not to get involved in something like this because of Parmel's criminal background. Burke pays $20,000 of the total, but later Parmel, anticipating the remains will be exhumed after his "daughter's" request and sent to the mainland, tells Burke by phone that he has to soon come to the Westland Society's Crematorium in Long Beach, California with the remaining money, or Peking Man will be "cremated to a cinder, flown out to sea, and dumped."

Based on what Danvers told Danno during his visit to Parris Island, the crates containing the bones were to be sent to Honolulu. Incredibly, the boxes are still in a military warehouse on Oahu after all these years, and when Five-O goes and checks it out, they find a body instead … but it has a bullet hole in the skull, from when the soldier (Crowe) was shot during the attack on Pearl Harbor.

There are large gaps in logic with some of the previous. Danvers said, "[In November, 1941] B Company was located in Tongxian. About 6 that morning, we got orders to move south to Tientsin, where a couple transports were waiting. The Japanese attacked the supply train around two the next morning. Lieutenant Groves came out yelling for Parmel to get those crates and move them down to the transports [on] the double … [We g]ot the crates on the transport and moved them all the way to Honolulu."

When asked by Danno for the exact date "when this happened," Danvers says, "Two days before Pearl Harbor, 5 December … Well, once we dropped hook, Parmel and Crowe, Ed Crowe, another member of the squad and a buddy of Parmel, told us to send the crates to Pearl Harbor. And that's the last I seen of them. Two days later, the stuff hit the fan, most of us were shipped out." This description is kind of unclear as to exactly how the crates were moved from China to Honolulu. If this was by ship, there is no way they could have got there in two days, Pearl Harbor being on December 7th. Maybe they were flown there? They especially couldn't have gotten there in two days if Crowe was killed during the Pearl Harbor attack!

Anyway, Five-O has Crowe's grave dug up to hopefully reveal Peking Man inside, but Parmel has switched the marker from Crowe's grave with that of another soldier nearby in the cemetery named F.H. Heller. There is a big stink after "Crowe's" coffin is opened, revealing Heller's body — ribbons on his uniform suggest he died in the Korean war! This doesn't make any sense, because on Heller's grave marker, it says he died in 1945.

Anticipating an even bigger stink because there are rumours in the press which upset veterans' relatives that McGarrett wants to dig up every grave in the cemetery, Jonathan Kaye (Bill Edwards) arrives very quickly from Washington, seemingly within a few hours. Now you might expect that the cemetery would keep records as to who was buried in which grave in a certain section of the place, but this is not the case. According to Danno, "About 15 years ago, graves registration began a rearrangement of the cemetery. They moved about a quarter of the plots, and then the plan was abandoned. All we've got left is a mess." And then there was a torrential rainstorm the night before which would have covered up any digging that Parmel did. How inconvenient!

To solve this grave dilemma (pun intended) which includes a request from Parmel for the full $80,000 payment and a full pardon, Five-O gets a metal detector and Che Fong, with the help of soldiers and HPD cops, figures out that Heller's grave is now the one which contains what was formerly in Crowe's, in other words, Peking Man. There is a huge blunder in the show at this point, because when we see Heller's grave marker, it is flopped, i.e., horizontally reversed! Perhaps at the time the episode was broadcast, people didn't notice this — it's not like these days when you have giant-screen TVs with DVD players that can freeze-frame things. And we do see Heller's grave marker correctly soon after this.

The ending of the show is annoying, because even after the coffin with Peking Man is dug up, Kaye refuses to let it be opened, saying it will be taken back to the mainland "to have the contents examined and tested under government supervision in Washington and its proper ownership established"! WHAT?!?

At least Parmel is busted — this time Chin Ho gets the honors. There is a "cute" ending, with McGarrett and Danno speculating that this is perhaps the oldest missing-person case of all time.

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159. (S07E15) “Computer Killer” ★★★½

Original air date: 1/14/75 — Opening CreditsEnd Credits
Director: Alf Kjellin; Producer: William Finnegan; Writers: Tim Maschler (teleplay), Larry Brody & Tim Maschler (story); Music: Don B. Ray
Timings: Main Titles: 1:01; Act One: 17:16; Act Two: 14:25; Act Three: 6:45; Act Four: 10:22; End Credits: 0:36; Total Time: 50:25.

QUICK PLOT:

A computer genius manipulating data to get someone off a murder rap takes a sharp turn when his scheme involves him also committing murder.

Click here to read Full Plot.

REVIEW:

Computer whiz Charles Aarons (Jeff David) uses a laptop in his car with an acoustic coupler (modem) in this episode, which features the interesting use of early computer technology. It's obvious the speed of the modem is very slow judging by the way data appears on Aarons' monitors.

Aarons, who lives at #534-27 Oneno Place (phone number KL5-4983, mobile phone 555-2199, office phone 923-6291, car license number 7E-7610), is, according to his business card, a "Consultant, Computer Systems" who works for World Business Machines ("A Multinational Company") where Honolulu journalist Dave ("David Lee") Donnelly plays Kinsell, Aarons' co-worker.

Aarons has a black "Classified By-Pass Code Book" which allows him to access many Honolulu business computers because he was involved with the design of both their hardware and software. A lot of the secret telephone numbers in this book start with "555" or "KL5", but many of the numbers, including the Department of Motor Vehicles, look like "real" phone numbers (note the duplication with some of them):

Dept. of Auditoriums ........................... 555-9821
Dept. of Budget ................................ 555-7665
Dept. of Building .............................. KL5-4647
Dept. of Civil Service ......................... 555-5221
Dept. of Corporate Counsel ..................... 287-1299
Dept. of Data Systems .......................... 277-9277
Dept. of Finance ............................... 355-1499
Dept. of Health ................................ 786-2300
Dept. of Motor Vehicles ........................ 932-6291
Dept. of Public Works .......................... 522-0699
Dept. of Recreation ............................ 589-0599
Dept. of Transportation ........................ 794-5799

G.B.D. Elec. Serv. ............................. 555-5858
Gadson Dept. Stores ............................ 555-5221
Galaxy Boiler Chem. ............................ KL5-4647
Gascher & Co. .................................. KL5-9090
Gavin & Gavin .................................. KL5-5666
Gazebo Shops ................................... 555-6613
Global Airlines ................................ 277-9277
Gold Electronics ............................... 786-2300
Grady Bros. A/ctnts. ........................... 287-1299
Green Dart Del. Serv. .......................... 552-0699
Griffield Med. Supls. .......................... 794-5999

Honolulu Board of Water ........................ KL5-4983
Honolulu Electrical Code ....................... KL5-4983
Honolulu Fire Department ....................... 555-7936
Honolulu Information Office .................... 277-9277
Honolulu International Center .................. 555-8357
Honolulu Police Code ........................... 955-3500
Honolulu Police Department ..................... 355-1499
Honolulu Police Department ..................... 955-8111 (a second listing)
Honolulu Police Department Computer Division ... 786-2310
Honolulu Social Services ....................... 555-5858

Makiya Gen. Repairs ............................ KL5-5666
March & Olson Inc. ............................. KL5-6980
Marshall of Honolulu ........................... 589-8599
Mason Dept. Store .............................. 589-0599
Matsuki Hotels Inc. ............................ KL5-5666
McCrea Construction ............................ 555-8786
Meutirian Dem. Co. ............................. 355-1499
Mike of Oahu ................................... 277-9277
Moala Chem. Corp. .............................. 555-8543
Molina, James & Assoc. ......................... 794-5709

After Maureen Tillis (Ava Lyn Readdy) is murdered by her estranged husband Tony (Alfred D. Goldman) during a violent argument, Tony is arrested for murder because Maureen's next door neighbor William Allen Curtis (Norman E. Dupont) saw him leave the place after the fight. Curtis becomes the prime witness in the case against Tony at the ensuing trial where John Manicote (Glenn Cannon) is the prosecuting attorney.

Aarons, who is following the trial, approaches Tony's rich father, Hugh Tilles (Robert F. Simon), the boss of an electronics company, and convinces him to pay $500,000 to get his son off the hook with a verdict of innocent. Aarons uses some of his black book's numbers to change phone company information to make it look like Curtis was more friendly with Maureen than he has claimed, having made a long-distance call in Maureen's apartment, thus discrediting his testimony.

Taking his scheming to the next level, Aarons knocks off small-time criminal Timothy J. Palmer (address 824 Maakapu, DOB 5/15/37, with crimes on his rap sheet including forcible entry, theft, assault with a firearm — a total of 10 arrests and 4 convictions).

Aarons, who doesn't believe in credit cards, pays cash for a bracelet at the Mason Department Store (address 4 Kalapal, phone 589-0599), then manipulates the store's database to make it look like Maureen bought it before she was killed and plants this bracelet in Palmer's house. Then Aarons murders another woman named Harriet Brigham and leaves sunglasses with Palmer's fingerprints on them at the scene so Five-O will think that Palmer murdered both women.

Aarons buys a ticket to Los Angeles and changes the name on the flight to Thomas L. Pittman, one of Palmer's known aliases, so it looks like Palmer left town. Danno, Chin and Doug Mossman are assigned to check the passenger list on this plane for suspicious characters. There are plenty of them:

Foxton, Mr. & Mrs. N. ("Try to Die on Time")
Lukela, Mr. & Mrs. D. (!!!!)
Bromley, Dr. ("Try to Die on Time," John Stalker character)
Suyama, Mr. & Mrs. P. ("Try to Die on Time," Yankee Chang, his name is "Suyam")
Miss Hill ("Try to Die on Time")
Rowan, Miss Betty ("Murder is a Taxing Affair")
Rowan, Mr. Will ("Murder is a Taxing Affair")
Saunders, Mrs. Alma ("Murder is a Taxing Affair," stewardess)
Bishop, Dr. Angela (shrink, "Draw Me a Kille"r)
Lott, Mr. John G. (murdered lawyer, "Draw Me a Killer") VPalmer, Mr. Lowell ("Draw Me a Killer," he draws Judy Moon comic strip)
Gish, Mr. Arthur ("Draw Me a Killer," presumably the lead character)
Klepper, Mr. & Mrs. Otis ("The Sunday Torch," Lyle Bettger/Jo Pruden)
Stokely, Mr. & Mrs. Ray (Michael Anderson Jr., "The Sunday Torch")
Darston, Mr. & Mrs. Harley ("Tricks are not Treats," where it's spelled "Dartson")
Gelding, Mr. J. Paul ("Tricks are not Treats," presumably "J. Paul")
Privit, Mr. & Mrs. J. (Jeremy Privit, "Why Wait Till Uncle Kevin Dies")
Ambrose, Miss (Why Wait..., the busty babe interviewed by Danno in "Uncle Kevin")
Cutler, Mr. Calvin (Ditto)
Stoner, Mr. & Mrs. Curt (Hookman himself)
Stoner, Miss (Hookman relative?)
Brown, Miss T. (Teresa, "Charter for Death")
Stack, Mr. Harry (taxi driver in "Charter for Death," thanks to Inglewolf)
Pittman, Mr. Thomas L. (Palmer's alias)
Webber, Mr. & Mrs. H. ("Flash of Color, Flash of Death")
Willis, Mr. Jake ("Flash of Color, Flash of Death")
Taylor, Mrs. Maxine ("The Finishing Touch")
Cargill, Mr. N. ("The Finishing Touch")
Rojas, Mr. & Mrs. C. ("A Bullet for El Diablo")
Salazar, Miss Rita ("A Bullet for El Diablo")
Ramos, Miss Maria ("A Bullet for El Diablo")
Haig, Dr. E. (Lew Ayres, "Anybody Can Build a Bomb")

Five-O seems totally stumped by Aarons' manipulation of data. The head of the telephone company's computer division says "in all his years of working with computers, he has never seen an error like that made," referring to the call which Curtis denies making from Maureen's phone.

You can hear the wheels turning in McGarrett's head as he tells the team, "There is something very strange about this whole thing" because "every bit of evidence that we've uncovered so far has somehow been related to a computer."

McGarrett talks to Larry, a cop at HPD, who, in response to a question about whether someone from outside the department could tap into the "Iron Brain," says there is "No way … unless he knew how to program through our security codes. That would take a real expert, someone with specialized knowledge … All he'd need is a terminal, a telephone, an acoustic coupler. Then he'd simply dial up the computer center. The call would come in here, punch up the proper sequence to get by security, and he's in. But I wanna emphasize with the security system we have here, what you're suggesting is... I won't say impossible, but damn unlikely." When asked who could be an "expert" who could hack into the computer, Larry says, "The only possibility would be someone who had a hand in the design of the computer software."

Five-O goes to World Business Systems, who sold HPD their computers and they get a list of geeks who worked on them, including Aarons, who already gave his notice to the place, obviously expecting to be enjoying a nice vacation soon thanks to Tillis' father's half a million bucks. However, the old man is disturbed to find out that the murder of Palmer and Brigham has been part of Aarons' plan. Aarons is not particularly sympathetic, telling the father, "You make me sick, you and your moral indignation … Guys like you [have] been using me for years. Using my brain to make millions of dollars and chalking it up to the miracle of a computer. Well, Jack, I am your miracle. I make guys like you."

Given the red herring Aarons set up involving Palmer, supposedly having him flee to Los Angeles under one of his old aliases, which McGarrett describes as "a pretty dumb thing," the Five-O chief's brainstorm continues, going "at it from the other end", checking Tillis Senior's bank account, which was moved to another bank which could not be traced easily because Aarons had no connection to it. Five-O gets a search warrant to snoop in the bank's computers, an unusual move, because it will "invade a man's privacy," according to Manicote. After a $100,000 transfer from Tillis to Aarons is noted, Aarons is very quickly rounded up and a deal is made for him to testify against Tillis father and son.

McGarrett's final comments in the courtroom are surprising — obviously the judge is tolerant of such outbursts. It is the usual "big speech": "All we can expect from a computer is information. It's just a piece of hardware. No values, no sense of morality. But our society is concerned with people. People. And we expect much more from them. Much more."

One Web page has a comment that this episode may show the first ever portable computer or data terminal on a TV show. Much of the interesting score by Don Ray sounds like computer music, some of it very weird. Jeff David is excellent as Aarons, a combination of superiority, arrogance and contempt.

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160. (S07E16) “A Woman’s Work Is With A Gun” ★★★  BOOK THEM 

Original air date: 1/21/75 — Opening CreditsEnd Credits
Director: Douglas Green; Producer: William Finnegan; Writers: Glen Olson & Rod Baker; Music: Bruce Broughton
Timings: Main Titles: 1:00; Act One: 14:23; Act Two: 10:03; Act Three: 7:36; Act Four: 16:41; End Credits: 0:36; Total Time: 50:19.

QUICK PLOT:

A desperate female junkie short of funds asks two friends to go on a crime spree with her to rob tourists on sightseeing buses.

Click here to read Full Plot.

REVIEW:

Three women in need of money who met during empowering rap sessions at the Oahu Women's Center decide to rob tourist buses. Dina Hale (Patricia Hindy), a strung-out dope addict, knocks off "James J." Borges, playing drug pusher Lew Chang at the beginning of the show when he refuses to feed her habit any more without paying him some of the money she owes. After this, Dina's appearance changes for the better and her addiction is only mentioned briefly.

The other two women are fairly middle-class: Fay Scott (Patrecia Wynand, whose accent seems to flip-flop between American and English — she was born a Canadian) is divorced from her husband Lyle and has a son Johnny who needs expensive medical treatment including an operation, and Maggie Hudson (Dale Morse) suffers with a couch potato husband Ed (Eugene Roche) who looks much older than her and treats her terribly. When she doesn't make his dinner, he complains "You've been forgetting an awful lot lately since you've been going to them bull sessions with those dames," and tells her, "You go to one more of those hen parties, I'll give you something to bellyache about."

The first robbery, where the women, disguised with wigs, join tourists on the bus which they direct into the Sherwood Forest area, nets them about $10,000 in jewelry and cash. Their friendship starts to fracture almost immediately when Fay and Maggie realize that their initial hesitation about joining Dina in this enterprise was well justified.

A second robbery does not go well. Dina snaps when one of the tourists throws a watch which he was hesitating about giving them on the floor. Dina fires 8 shots through the bus windows. The other two women really want to give up their objective of making $10,000 each now. Dina is apologetic to them, but her words are hollow.

Five-O's investigation of the case is helped in a big way by Che Fong, who "computer enhances" some pictures of the women which an elderly tourist snapped after the first robbery. But when Che says these pictures "are made up of a composition of small spots or dots called 'reseau marks'," I am very skeptical about this technique. It sounds like he has confused some component of these out-of-focus pictures with the "dots" which result when pictures are screened for reproduction in a newspaper. Using some equally unorthodox procedure, Che also manages to blow up a picture of foliage and enhance it so that Fay, the driver of the getaway car, can be seen. He later performs more enhancements so the model of Fay's getaway car can be determined.

A third robbery is attempted, and Tom Kamaka, an HPD cop only a year on the force, who has found the bus which has been directed to the "old Diamond Head Road near the tunnel," in other words, the ubiquitous "James Hong corner," shoots Maggie dead as she emerges from the bus with her unloaded gun. Kamaka is then killed by Dina. When Danno and Chin bring news of Maggie's demise to her husband, he is stunned and disbelieving, but hardly sympathetic: "I worked my butt off ten hours a day for that broad but it wasn't enough for her." He says his wife was "yakking all day with a bunch of broads about how tough their life was."

To track down Fay's computer-enhanced car, Chin Ho and Frank (presumably Kamana, played by Doug Mossman), acting on McGarrett's request to "get a copy of the driver's license of every woman who owns a '64 Comet" have to check out 200 licenses in total. The numbers on the licenses that we see are all the same: 546 10 8740. They finally find Fay's license with her picture which matches the one that Che produced. She lives at 891 Hikani Walk in Honolulu. She has brown hair, weighs 128 pounds, is 5′6″, blue eyes and was born on 9/5/37.

Desperate to get away from Dina because the robberies are becoming more and more violent, Fay tries to get Maggie's husband to kill Dina, promising him lots of money. He goes to Dina's place and lets himself by picking the lock and starts to steal some of the stolen jewelry which Dina has hoarded. Dina catches him, and knocks him out after he confesses he is a gun for hire. Dina races to Fay's place in her Econoline, where Fay is preparing to leave town, but Dina is captured by Five-O who have beat her there.

The show closes with McGarrett telling Danno to "read them [Dina and Fay] their rights [!!!], then book them ... murder two counts for this one [meaning Dina]."

The score by Broughton — briefly featuring what sound like muted trumpets electronically amplified — is excellent.

WHAT DOES THE TITLE MEAN?

The title is a play on words with what some web sites say is a traditional rhyming couplet, found in at least two forms: "Man works till set of sun, / Woman's work is never done," and "From rise of morn to set of sun / Woman's work is never done."

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161. (S07E17) “Small Witness, Large Crime” ★★½  CHIN, BOOK HIM 

Original air date: 1/28/75 — Opening CreditsEnd Credits
Director: Bruce Bilson; Producer: William Finnegan; Writer: Bill Stratton; Music: Harry Geller
Timings: Main Titles: 0:59; Act One: 19:57; Act Two: 13:46; Act Three: 7:23; Act Four: 7:37; End Credits: 0:36; Total Time: 50:18.

QUICK PLOT:

After McGarrett arrests a young boy who was a witness to a murder for the kid's own protection, he receives harsh criticism from a deputy public defender.

Click here to read Full Plot.

REVIEW:

In this show, a sniper up in a tower on Sand Island using a high-powered rifle knocks off a man half mile away from him on a yacht. As this happens, a kid named Moki Kanihelu (Joshua N. Farin) is sitting on the tower steps below, drinking some chocolate milk and eating donuts which he has stolen from Rosalei Kahala (Elizabeth Smith), an "auntie"-like woman who lives in some ramshackle house nearby. When the shot is fired, the surprised kid knocks over his milk bottle on the steps which gets the sniper's attention, despite the fact a 747 is taking off from the Honolulu airport nearby which masked the sound of the rifle shot.

Considering how professional the sniper is, one would expect him to be at the tower well ahead of the yacht. Instead, he drives up just as the yacht is passing in front of a large freighter opposite, and the position of the yacht relative to the freighter has a few continuity problems. The 747's departure at exactly the same time that the shot is fired seems too much of a coincidence. The sniper looks at his watch as this happens (the time is 8:04), suggesting that he was expecting the plane's departure, but how would he know that the sound of the rifle, the yacht and the plane would all "line up"?

The sniper chases Moki into a nearby junkyard, which is where the kid lives, but loses him. About 13 years old, Moki was abandoned by his father about 5 years before and his mother committed suicide after the father left. (The father, who has a rap sheet for fraud and petty theft, split to the mainland.) Where the kid gets his food from is a good question, other than stealing it from people like the "auntie."

The sniper's target is Chun Hong, head of the Sino-Hawaii Trust Company, a "real big apple, all the way from Honolulu to Hong Kong." Hong was also "chairman of a youth foundation, civic clubs, business interests all over the Pacific," regarded as "a sharp operator [with] a good reputation, a man of his word." His executive assistant Arnold Hubbard (Bert Convy) is McGarrett's handball partner at the YMCA. Hubbard doesn't understand why anyone would want to knock off Hong.

Frances Chai (France Nuyen), a public defender for the court's juvenile divison, is connected with Hong's youth foundation, and upon hearing of his demise, comes to see Hubbard, just as he is leaving the Y with McGarrett. She is relieved to hear that Hong created a perpetual trust fund to support the foundation which means that it will continue. She has some words with McGarrett, whom she doesn't particularly like, saying "Children can't be treated as criminals ... You put them in jail, and I try to get them out."

Since the kid spilled chocolate milk on the tower steps when he was fleeing, a manhunt for Moki by HPD and Five-O begins, since the kid is a likely witness to the shooting. He is nabbed in the junkyard, but when he is brought to the Five-O office, he clams up, despite getting fed multiple hamburgers, fries and a malt. McGarrett, who is particularly unsuccessful at getting Moki to talk and identify the sniper from some photos of known marksmen trained by the military, decides to hold the kid in juvenile hall on a charge of stealing the food for his own protection.

Chai hears that Moki is in the lockup from Hubbard, which pisses her off, since she thinks McGarrett is acting in a heavy-handed fashion and this is an "obvious miscarriage of justice." She gets the kid sprung, which, of course, pisses McGarrett off! Called into the office of Judge Keona (Ted Nobriga) at the judge's request, Chai explains why she took this course of action, primarily because she was totally oblivious to McGarrett's witness protection plan. Chastised and on her way out of the judge's office, Chai mentions that she heard the kid was confined from Hubbard.

McGarrett goes to see Hubbard, disturbed by the fact that Hubbard told Chai that Moki was being held, since Hubbard never heard about this from McGarrett himself. Five-O has already talked to a banking official (Richard L. Villard) to get opinions about why Hong might have been up to something fishy, and Frank Kamana (Doug Mossman) got some scoop from a stoolie named Tommy (Tommy Fujiwara) who "works in a brokerage office in Waikiki," who said that he heard "Hong was into hot paper ... stocks and bonds stolen on the mainland and smuggled onto the island."

Hubbard comes up with some complicated explanation for McGarrett as to why Hong was killed, which McGarrett of course sees through, because it was Hubbard himself, as the "executive assistant," who arranged to transfer stolen securities into accounts at the request of a professional robbery ring, substituting them for bearer bonds in customers' accounts which were then redeemed, and making it look like Hong did all of this.

There is a big flaw in Hubbard's explanation that Hong ordered this to be done, because at the time it happened, Hong was a thousand miles out at sea. An audit on one of the tampered-with accounts just happened to find something awry, and the auditor contacted Hong on the yacht, who promptly set course back for Hawaii, where he would meet his end. It is interesting that when Danno was talking to the banking official about the possibility of something like this occurring, the guy told Danno "although things of this sort can happen on occasion, it is extremely rare in the banking business." (Danno said "Of course," and bit his tongue while smirking.) It is also interesting that in addition to the sniper maybe "lining up" various events connected with Hong's return as mentioned above, he also knew exactly when and where Hong was returning on the yacht.

Anyway, McGarrett is very annoyed that his pal has turned out to be a jerk, and tells Hubbard that "you are as responsible for Chun Hong's murder as if you had pulled the trigger yourself." When Hubbard starts babbling away that he doesn't know who or where the hit man is, McGarrett says "Chin, Book him. Murder one."

Another manhunt by HPD and Five-O is mounted at the junkyard to find Moki, where he has likely returned, and Chai is there looking for him too. The sniper, who has been desperately trying to find the kid to knock him off, is also nearby, and takes a shot at Moki, but misses. (This is pretty funny, considering he can kill someone from a half a mile away with a rifle, the scope of which doesn't even have crosshairs.) The kid sneaks up behind the sniper and throws something at him, distracting him, which gets the attention of McGarrett nearby, who kills the sniper, shooting him four times.

The kid, who, like the sniper, also hasn't said a word for the entire show, is happy to see that his father has returned to Hawaii, because he suddenly appears (it is kind of odd that Five-O would have brought him along). Moki says "Papa," which leads to a very lame conclusion to the show with McGarrett telling Chai, "Sure makes a difference, doesn't it?" When Danno says, "What?", he replies "Papa."

The acting in the show was good, but both Danno and McGarrett seemed like everything was a bit too easy, and Danno had these annoying facial tics when reacting to other characters, sort of similar to his reactions in "The Skyline Killer." Although Joshua N. Farin did a good job playing Moki, I kept thinking this was the kind of role that would normally be played by stock Five-O "kid," Remi Abellira.

I wasn't too crazy about the score by Harry Geller, which used a theme played on a recorder for Moki. This was much too simple, considering the kid was 13. It would have been more effective if the kid was about 5 or 6 years younger. Geller's score seemed far too "different" and relatively light-hearted, so when we suddenly get one of the stock cues normally heard on the show, it is kind of jarring.

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162. (S07E18) “Ring Of Life” ★★½

Original air date: 2/4/75 — Opening CreditsEnd Credits
Director: John Peyser; Producer: William Finnegan; Writer: Tim Maschler; Music: George Romanus
Timings: Main Titles: 0:59; Act One: 14:52; Act Two: 12:54; Act Three: 11:01; Act Four: 10:02; End Credits: 0:36; Total Time: 50:24.

QUICK PLOT:

The million dollar reward offered for the return of five rare Indian figurines touches off a global trail of murder and robbery that leads to Hawaii.

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REVIEW:

Motivated by a million dollar reward posted by the Indian government for the return of the Kashmiri Ring of Life, a set of five historic figurines of "immense cultural significance" and itself valued at an estimated one million dollars, Colin Nichols (Don Knight) arrives in Hawaii.

He is a nasty piece of business, resorting to torturing local art dealer Avery Marsh (Don David Lev) with a lit cigar before shooting him dead after finding out where the missing fifth and final piece of the Ring, which Nichols is assembling, is located — at the Museum of Asian Art in Honolulu. One wonders why Marsh, who is sweating something fierce, doesn't attempt to resist, since Nichols doesn't have his gun out yet, but just burns Marsh's hand.

With the help of Paul Albrecht of Interpol via the usual bad phone connection, Five-O is able to make a link between Marsh's murder and that of art dealers in other cities who had the other components of the Ring and were also killed. One major clue is the gun that killed Marsh was a "not too common" English Webley .38, which was also used in two of the other murders. At one point McGarrett says: "There's more to this bag of snakes [meaning cobras?] than meets the eye."

William Prince plays the oily Willard Coleman, director of the Asian Art Museum, who bought the fifth Ring piece from Marsh. Coleman has to listen to a stern admonition from McGarrett against dealing in antiquities which have been plundered from archaeological sites. This is a great "don't give me any crap" speech which has some "McGarrett is almost going out the door" moments. Coleman also puts his foot in his mouth when he mentions "other murders" connected with the Ring when McGarrett hasn't mentioned any "other murders" at all.

Having been told by Marsh that the missing figure is likely in the museum's safe, Nichols hires Ben Clark (John Chappell), a chunky boxman (safecracker) from the mainland. The interaction between Nichols and Clark, who is all business, is amusing, though Nichols specifically asked for someone who didn't talk much. That evening, a guard on the late shift at the museum is overpowered by the two men and the fifth figurine is taken from the vault there.

Nichols contacts Ram Bushan (Harvey Jason) of the Indian government Ministry of Cultural Affairs, who quickly arrives in Honolulu to take possession of the now-complete set, meeting Nichols at the Indian consulate there. Two East Indian actors portraying the consular employee Badar Vasanti (Murlin H. Manghnani) and receptionist (Meherunnissa Ramani) are amateurish, but not in a bad way. English character actor Jason, playing Bushan, seems more "East Indian" than they are.

Nichols, having delivered a "complete" set of the Ring to Bushan is shuffling through some wrapped bills from an attaché case full of his reward, but Bushan notices that one of the figurines is a fake based on a character on the back of it, because his country's "alphabet changed in certain respects" and "the character ... on the back of that torso was not drawn in that fashion until after the year 300 A.D.," something which Nichols would not have known. Annoyed, Bushan smashes the figurine on the floor. That this is specifically the piece that Nichols has gone to a great deal of trouble to obtain locally is not mentioned off the bat.

The plot thickens as Nichols thinks Coleman was the one who left the bogus figurine in the safe. He later follows Coleman to his home with the intention of motivating him to come up with the genuine piece, but is interrupted by someone, later revealed to be Dr. Sheila Cramer (Penelope Windust), the resident antiquities expert at the museum, who has already knocked off Coleman.

Cramer seems to be involved in a plot of her own to get the fifth Ring character to Bushan. Unfortunately, this part of the plot is not particularly well developed. Also, Windust's part isn't very well written, with the result she ends up as a bland villain. We are shown that Cramer is in cahoots with Bushan in some way, but was it her who switched the figurine in the safe with a substitute after the piece was sold by Marsh to the museum? Bushan came to Honolulu around the time of the sale of the Ring piece to the museum, but no special significance is made regarding this.

It seems highly unlikely that Cramer would take advantage of the fact that Nichols left the other four pieces with Bushan after the fake was exposed so she could then bring him the fifth one — how would she know that Nichols would do this ahead of time? When Nichols forces Cramer to give him this "missing link" under threat of torture (Don Knight does this in such an insidious but delightful fashion), they go to her house to get it, where it is in another safe, rather than from the museum itself.

At the end of the show, Nichols makes Cramer drive him in her Mustang convertible to "Hanauma Point" where he is to meet Bushan. This fictional location is not located near Hanauma Bay as one might expect, but somewhere out in the middle of nowhere, highly reminiscent of the beginning of Don Knight's first Five-O appearance in S01E07, "The Ways Of Love," and scenes from S01E17, "One For The Money," both from season one. I'm surprised that the Moana Cab driver would take Bushan to such an isolated location which has a road barely wide enough to accommodate one car. When McGarrett arrives in the Mercury Brougham to save the day at the end of the show, busting Nichols and saving Cramer from an unpleasant end, his car can barely turn a corner.

The above-average "East Indian"-sounding score by George Romanis features a sitar and flexatone to provide exotic flavor. Some of the color photography in this show is really outstanding, and not just the exteriors.

WHAT DOES THE TITLE MEAN?

Irony alert! The title should obviously be "Ring of Death"!

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163. (S07E19) “Study In Rage” ★½  BOOK HIM 

Original air date: 1/28/75 — Opening CreditsEnd Credits
Director: Allen Reisner; Producer: William Finnegan; Writer: Martin Roth; Music: Don B. Ray
Timings: Main Titles: 0:59; Act One: 12:58; Act Two: 12:36; Act Three: 13:11; Act Four: 10:04; End Credits: 0:36; Total Time: 50:24.

QUICK PLOT:

Clues from a surreal painting help Five-O track down a psychotic killer obsessed with a woman he met while she was on vacation in Hawaii.

Click here to read Full Plot.

REVIEW:

Richard Hatch's portrayal of tennis pro Mike Anapo/Opana in this episode is lame. The first of these last names is his character's real name, the second is a pseudonym, though it is being used for making doctor's appointments and so forth. Hatch is supposed to be a hapa-haole ("half and half") native boy thanks to a coating of orange makeup and no thanks to an unsteady accent, especially during a big outburst at the show's finale.

When Anapo first met Glynis Martin (the attractive Gretchen Corbett, later featured on The Rockford Files) who was visiting from the mainland almost a year ago, he became totally obsessed with her. According to his roomate Charlie Moka (Alan Naluai), Mike went "off the deep end," wanting "the whole love scene, marriage, kids." He must be very well-salaried as a tennis pro, because he is building a very fancy house for himself and Glynis. When he goes to check it out around the 16 minute mark, he fantasizes that he has married her and they have a young daughter.

In order to get Glynis to return to Hawaii, Anapo murders her father, who is in the islands for business and a vacation. How Mike knew the father had returned there and what he was doing is a good question. The Coast Guard received a distress call from a cabin cruiser that Martin had rented for a solo voyage to Kauai, and when they arrived, they found him bludgeoned to death, with his body floating around the life raft, with debris suggesting that the cabin cruiser had been burned and sunk. Assuming that Anapo had done this (more questions as to how he would have known the father was chartering the boat) how did he get back to Oahu after he burned and sank it?

Anapo has been seeing a psychiatrist, Arthur Spear (John Stalker). After news of Martin's murder is broadcast on TV, Spear realizes that his patient Mike talked about murderous feelings toward Martin during a therapy session, blaming the father for separating him from his dream girl. Spear reviews a tape he made of the session, and then phones Five-O. Unfortunately, Anapo is sneaking into the doctor's office at this time, and overhearing the call, strangles the doctor with a piece of tennis string made from steer gut.

Later, Anapo murders another doctor at his tennis club, the one who referred him to Spear, named Chou (Mel Chow). This makes no sense at all, since this doctor is an allergist. Later McGarrett, during his default brainstorm for the show, figures that Anapo saw Chou for an allergy that he had developed which was psychosomatic, and as a result he was referred to Spear, which is far-fetched. There is nothing in the show to back up this theory.

What killed Chou is not immediately obvious to Doc Bergman, who runs some biochemical tests to discover that the doctor was poisoned with VHP, verathion phosphate, a bogus organic chemical similar to nerve gas which is used in pesticides. Anapo soaked a towel with this substance which he switched with another towel Chou was using to wipe sweat off his face after a game the two men had together at the club.

When McGarrett goes to visit Spear's widow, she doesn't seem particularly upset about her husband's passing. Spear was an amateur painter, including one bizarre picture showing "rooms" inside someone's head. The wife explains that her husband was "trying to capture on canvas what went on in the minds of one of his patients," based on his taped interviews. There is a number on this particular painting: WK-42-74.

Chin Ho later finds this number at Spear's office which is connected with a missing file that, unknown to Chin, Anapo took after he killed the doctor. This number does not correspond to the number on the actual file folder in the doctor's cabinet, which was #19543.

McGarrett takes Spear's weird painting to his office, where the members of the Five-O team get to play shrinks in a manner which is straight out of university Psychology 100 classes. They come up with interpretations like loneliness, rejection, fear and trouble. There are two sets of initials on the painting: CH and MA, as well as a reference to the 1967 graduating class of Maunalani High School.

Frank Kamana (Doug Mossman) finds the "CH" in a yearbook for the school, which refers to Connie Honaka (Josie Over). They track her down; she is living with her father (Ted Nobriga, uncredited) and a baby after her "hopped-up old man" left her. Connie tells Kamana that "Mike" was a nice guy, and she dated him until her father found out about his ancestry and told Mike to stay away from her or he would kill him because "a chop suey, half-Hawaiian, hapa haole just wasn't good enough." She gives Kamana Mike's real last name — Anapo.

Having been notified of the death of her father, Glynis returns to Honolulu and Danno meets her at the airport before driving her to the Ilikai Hotel, where she will be staying. Anapo finds out she is there and shows up to offer his condolences. She tells him "I'd forgotten what a good friend you are" and gives him a big hug, which just feeds into Mike's fantasies.

Noticing that several clues in this case are tennis-related, McGarrett pays a visit to the club where Mike is the pro. Just as he is there, McGarrett gets a call from Kamana who tells him the last name of the suspect they are looking for — Anapo. At that moment, McGarrett sees a mirror image of a poster advertising tennis lessons from Mike which sort of shows his alias — Opana.

From Mike's roomate Charlie, Danno gets information about how Mike was obsessed with Glynis and the dream house. The address of this place — 2037 Inakoie Ridge Road — is quickly obtained by Chin Ho and Danno.

Five-O is merely guessing that this place is where Mike is headed with Glynis and they are right. After Mike and Glynis arrive, he shows her the spectacular view and tells her that he "built most of it myself, just for us." Of course, this totally horrifies Glynis, especially when Mike tells her "You would have come back, if it hadn't been for your father ... It was him. He broke us up! And he won't be able to do it this time! I saw to that!" Five-O and cops from HPD are already outside, and McGarrett tells Anapo to surrender.

The ending of this show verges on being embarrassing. McGarrett orders the cops to shoot tear gas through the windows, then he and Danno go into the house wearing gas masks, which is overkill to the point of being ridiculous.

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164. (S07E20) “And The Horse Jumped Over The Moon” ★★★  BOOK THEM 

Original air date: 2/18/75 — Opening CreditsEnd Credits
Director: Douglas Green; Producer: William Finnegan; Writer: Larry Brody; Music: Don B. Ray
Timings: Main Titles: 1:00; Act One: 16:43; Act Two: 8:56; Act Three: 9:17; Act Four: 13:54; End Credits: 0:36; Total Time: 50:26.

QUICK PLOT:

An elaborate plan to smuggle heroin into Hawaii involving skydiving goes undetected until someone connected to the crooks tries unsuccessfully to contact Five-O.

Click here to read Full Plot.

REVIEW:

To bypass a clampdown on "coke, hash and horse" coming into Hawaii, skydiver Kevin Caulder (Bruce Boxleitner) teams up with pilot Bernie Ross (Ed Flanders) to smuggle heroin which has been dropped in the ocean off Oahu. From Ross's low-flying plane, Caulder uses a grappling hook to grab the drugs which are in a water-tight container floating in the drink, then he jumps back to earth on the way home with the dope. Thus Ross avoids any suspicion when he returns to Dillingham Field.

The beginning of the show has twitchy addict Mark Traynor (E.H. Marc Baxley) trying to drum up a fix from a stereotypical black dope dealer with gingham pimp clothes, a big floppy hat and huge platform shoes. Not having any luck, Traynor calls McGarrett from a phone booth, dialling 732-5577, only to be shot dead.

Traynor was living in the seedy Waikiki Palms Hotel which is where Caulder lived (room 26-B) as well as Caulder's girl friend Laurie Benedict (room 28-B), played by the sexy Jo Ann Harris. (Don't ask me why these two had separate rooms.) When Caulder hears that Traynor was killed, he is upset, because Traynor helped him and Benedict when they first came to Hawaii. Caulder is even more upset when he finds out Benedict was the one who tipped off Hollander (Robert Harker), the mob's local man in charge of importing heroin through his shipping company Trans Oceanic Line. Hearing that Traynor was about to spill the beans, Hollander had him taken care of.

All the bad apples in this show have a criminal history: Ross, a "do-anything-for-a-buck smuggler" with suspicion of smuggling gold, suspicion of gunrunning and suspicion of involvement in opium trade, though no convictions; Benedict, a 21-year-old runaway who used stolen credit cards in two states and broke her probation in the second of them; and Caulder, unspecified crimes but also violation of his probation. Traynor had an undesirable discharge from the Air Force.

Not having much evidence to go on other than a key fob for Traynor's hotel room, Five-O connects the dots through Traynor, who was working for Ross as a mechanic, though not a very good one (Ross: "half the time he didn't show up, the other half he was spaced out"). Traynor introduced Caulder and Benedict to Ross.

Ross and Caulder do a test run with the grappling hook technique which works OK, and another run which they think is the real deal with Detroit mob boss Rick Corso (Robert Sandla) having flown in to witness it. But the second attempt is yet another test. The next (and real) one goes off without a hitch as far as grabbing the drugs is concerned, except Five-O is now hep to what is going on, thanks to radar tracking of Ross's flights at the local FAA office, and McGarrett uses a helicopter to follow Ross.

Ross, however, has developed a case of the hots for Benedict, and when he diverts the plane from Dillingham Field and flies instead to the Honolulu airport, intending to take off to the mainland with the drugs as well as her, Caulder jumps out of the plane with the heroin.

McGarrett in the copter is witness to all this, and seconds after Caulder hits the ground, McGarrett is there too and Caulder is busted. The end of the show is kind of abrupt, because we don't find out what actually happened to Ross and Benedict, other than and Danno and Chin showing up at Honolulu Airport with guns drawn to arrest them. McGarrett tells Frank Kamana to "Move in on Hollander and Corso. Book them." But whether there is a case against these two is iffy, unless the others involved in the smuggling want to drop a dime on them.

The photography for this show, especially the skydiving and flying sequences, is exceptional, though in at least one place there are some serious changes from one shot to the next in the distance from the plane to the ground. The music by Ray is nothing special. Bruce Boxleitner flashes his teeth far too much.

There are a couple of things that bother me about the show:

First is why does Traynor want to call the cops? I know that Benedict ratted him out to Hollander, but if Traynor calls Five-O, and, as a result, everyone — Ross, Caulder and Benedict — are busted, he is not going to get any dope to satisfy his addiction. Benedict says, "[Traynor] said he was going to the cops if that was the only way that he could score." I don't think so, unless, as Chin Ho sort of said in another episode (and as Benedict and Ross suggest in this one), "His brains were scrambled." It would have made more sense if we had seen the thugs who knocked Traynor off following him around in their big car, watching him to see if he went anywhere near a phone booth.

The other thing has to do with the way the drugs are picked up out of the ocean with the grappling hook. This would require a lot of skill, since it is sort of like threading a needle. I am amazed that they can pick up the heroin on just one pass. Complicating things is the fact that Ross, who would be responsible for making sure the plane is flying exactly above the drugs, looks like he cannot really see over the instrument panel in the plane to what is outside and the plane seems to be tilted up at a bit of an angle. Caulder certainly cannot see where he has to drop the hook to pick up the drugs easily from where he is inside the door on the plane's right side.

WHAT DOES THE TITLE MEAN:

When the word "horse" is in the title, obviously the show involves heroin! This is bad punnery, along with "jumped," referring to Caulder's specialty.

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165. (S07E21) “Hit Gun For Sale” ★★★  BOOK HIM, DANNO 

Original air date: 2/25/75/75 — Opening CreditsEnd Credits
Director: John Peyser; Producer: William Finnegan; Writer: Martin Roth; Music: Don B. Ray
Timings: Main Titles: 1:00; Act One: 15:58; Act Two: 10:00; Act Three: 8:13; Act Four: 14:33; End Credits: 0:36; Total Time: 50:20.

QUICK PLOT:

McGarrett goes all out to keep the lid on a threatened organized crime war by tracking both an unknown hit man and his target.

Click here to read Full Plot.

REVIEW:

This show features teen idols Sal Mineo and Tommy Sands — both of whom appeared as lounge singers in the first season — as junior mobsters in the company of syndicate boss Louis Cordell (Nehemiah Persoff), who has come to Hawaii to hang out with his daughter Nina (Darcy Cook).

Nina left the mainland to live in Hawaii after her husband was knocked off. As the family members eat lunch, we find out that he was 28 when he was killed, and Cordell lapses into sentimentality, saying, "That's too young to die. Well, no age is right for that anyway. At least I'm glad that he had a chance to know what it is to have a good wife. Too bad you didn't get around to...[having grandchildren]. Hey, listen to the old man babble like a frustrated grandfather." Nina lives in a very nice beachfront place called "Sunhala," located at 4551 Kahala Avenue (value of this house in 2021 is estimated at over $12 million).

This is the most "relaxed" of Persoff's seven guest appearances during the series, six of which were mob-related. In this one, he doesn't get to act gruff or over-emote. In fact, when McGarrett comes to pay him an obligatory visit complete with accusations, Cordell tells him, "I'm here to see my daughter [and] enjoy your beautiful island," and wishes him "peace." McGarrett replies, "Shalom."

On the same day that Cordell arrived, a Chicago-based hitman, Harvey Benson, had a heart attack on an incoming plane and died before he could carry out his job. The photography is interesting where the camera is on the gurney with Benson's body moving through the hospital. McGarrett later says of Benson: "He died a natural death — isn't that ironical?" Five-O is run off their feet trying to figure out who hired Benson: was it one of the local gang bosses — Yuki Honomura (Seth Sakai), Benny Furtado (Jerry Waialae) — or maybe even Cordell himself?

Meanwhile, Louis' nephew Eddie (Mineo), is up to no good, trying to create a war between the two Honolulu gangs with the intention of ultimately taking over the local rackets, not to mention having his uncle "chopped." Eddie tells Louis, "I think Honomura and Furtado are just a couple of punks, that's all. They're all muscle and no brains. They haven't even begun to tap what this place could bring in. And you know why. Because they got no organization. Because they're small-time. And all they ever do is they fight between themselves. … I'd like nothing better than to stick my nose in their business. I'll tell you that. But I won't because you say keep your hands off. And as long as you're still the boss, that's what I do."

Plotting strategy, Eddie and his pal Joey Shea (Sands), who has come with him to Hawaii, meet with Wanaka (Rudolfo Aquino), one of Furtado's lieutenants, in a porno theater. Doug Mossman as Frank Kamana has tailed the two to this location from Nina's place in the usual obvious Five-O manner. In the theatre, Kamana watches them equally obviously with a single-lens night vision device. Some of the music in the film is the same piece heard sung by children in season two's "Kiss the Queen Goodbye." Other parts of the soundtrack are very banal.

Kamana is not the only one guilty of tailing close in the show. Chin Ho later follows Furtado, whose car blows up spectacularly. Despite the fact that Furtado's car exploded at an intersection, when McGarrett shows up soon after, the scene is taken from "Bomb, Bomb, Who's Got The Bomb" earlier this season where a car blew up in front of Senator Harlan Henderson's house.

After this, the show jumps to the intersection where Furtado's car really did blow up. Asked if there were any witnesses, Chin tells McGarrett "The street was deserted, that's why I had to hang back [!] as far as I did." Later on, Duke is also guilty of tailing close when he pursues a car which he thinks contains Eddie, Joey and Louis, but it is a decoy and he has been suckered.

McGarrett figures out, based on information from Harry Logan (Patt Patterson), a government source in Washington, D.C., that a replacement hitman, the young-looking, blonde-haired Willie Norvic (Les Freed) has likely been summoned to Hawaii, based on a pay phone call that Eddie made to Los Angeles which was also surveilled by Kamana.

There are some tense moments as McGarrett and Danno, with the help of HPD, try to make sure that Norvic doesn't complete his mission, which will likely be to knock off Old Man Cordell. However, it turns out that the one who gets knocked off is Eddie himself. Joey, after hearing Eddie's scheme to eliminate his uncle, as per the conversation with Wanaka in the theatre, tipped off Louis who arranged to "change the contract."

As the show ends, McGarrett tries to get a confession of some kind out of Eddie, but he croaks. McGarrett asks Cordell if he wants to make a statement, after showing him a family photo of Eddie which Norvic had to make sure he took out the right guy. Cordell, suddenly very serious, says, "I wanna see my lawyer." McGarrett replies with, "Book him, Danno, murder one." Another tough case for Manicote, I suspect!

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166. (S07E22) “The Hostage” ★★★½

Original air date: 3/11/75 — Opening CreditsEnd Credits
Director: Allen Reisner; Producer: William Finnegan; Writer: Bud Freeman; Music: Don B. Ray
Timings: Main Titles: 1:00; Act One: 14:46; Act Two: 12:43; Act Three: 11:53; Act Four: 9:29; End Credits: 0:35; Total Time: 50:26.

QUICK PLOT:

After an ex-Army sergeant shoots a cop and kidnaps a young girl, McGarrett is at odds with a police captain who wants to resolve the situation "by the book."

Click here to read Full Plot.

REVIEW:

I was not too crazy about revisiting this episode, because I remembered that McGarrett had to deal with a lot of complaints from a veteran police captain named Glover ("23 years experience"), played by gravel-voiced Scott Brady, an old school character actor. However, contrary to my recollection, Glover was not on screen that much, and McGarrett managed to shut him up pretty quickly.

Dane Clark plays Jesse Cooper, an aggrieved veteran, in the first of his three Five-O roles. Cooper participated in "the war," but specifically which war this was is never mentioned. We have to do some serious guessing about this, because Clark was 63 years old at the time the show was broadcast, born February 18, 1912. His character lied about his age when he joined the Army, so he was in combat at age 15. If he was in World War II, and we are considering the actors' real ages, he might have been born in 1926. If it was the Korean War, it would have been after 1935.

Sergeant Cooper (Jesse's highest rank) was a hero, because he was awarded citations, a Silver Star with clusters (for gallantry in action) and a Purple Heart (given to those wounded or killed in combat while engaged with the enemy), but was court-martialled (nothing is made of this). He is described by his former commanding officer, Colonel Chadway (Morgan Sha'an) as "A natural soldier. Quiet. Respectful." According to some recollections about Jesse under his command that Chadway prepares and McGarrett reads to Jesse to try and win his confidence: "He got a medal for saving the lives of three other American soldiers … The Army said he was wounded himself, but he held off a whole squad of enemy soldiers. He held them off a couple of hours … till a helicopter came and rescued them." Jesse sounds as if he is modelled on Audie Murphy, a famous World War II soldier who joined the army at 17 and received every military combat award for valor available from the U.S. Army, including the Medal of Honor.

On the other hand, Jesse looks like he hasn't had much education, because when he writes a letter listing his demands, he spells parachute as "parashoot." He also has fallen on hard times, losing a battle with the bottle. Recently he has been going to Chadway's health club and hassling him there as well as phoning the Colonel at his residence in the Albermarle Apartments, 1109 Euclid with the intention of mooching money off him. Chadway describes Jesse as "excitable."

When Jesse gets past the switchboard operator on the main floor of the Colonel's building, he goes to Chadway's apartment on the fourth floor. Cops are called, and when one named Wade (Dennis Chun, Kam Fong's son and later Duke Lukela on the Five-Zero reboot) tries to persuade Jesse to come away, Wade ends up shot by accident. Shortly after this, McGarrett and Chin Ho arrive and McGarrett takes charge after it's learned that Jesse grabbed a young girl named Ruth Martin when he tried to escape from the building and is holding her hostage, having barricaded himself inside an apartment where no one was home. Ruth was babysitting the son of some woman who lives in the building, but you have to wonder what kind of babysitter she is — she was playing with the kid in the stairwell of the building, which is where Jesse grabbed her! (The kid eventually gets out of the building to be grilled gently by McGarrett.)

Chin has no luck trying to look in the room where Jesse and Ruth are located using a mirror on a long pole, and a cop named Pearson (Chuck Couch) is able to crawl around the corner of the building and look through the window, but ends up dangling from the building after Jesse shoots at him with the gun he took from Wade.

Glover, who was acting in charge before McGarrett arrived, already had some words with Duke about procedures. When McGarrett shows up, Glover tells him, "What I don't want is this kook thinking he's on top of us. Gets a little confidence, he'll be ego-tripping how he pinned down the whole Honolulu Police Department. I'm going to give him an ultimatum. Five minutes, I lay down the flak…" McGarrett tells him that's not the way they are going to do things. Later, when McGarrett says they are going to "communicate" with Jesse, Glover says, "Communicate … now there's a word for you, communicate. This is going to be great. Group therapy." McGarrett straightens him out, his voice rising more and more until he smashes his hand on the table inside the Civil Defense truck which has shown up: "We're going on the experience of a lot of smart cops all over the country who have been to school on this sort of thing … Look, whoever that guy is up there, he's got a problem, but more than that, he's got a young girl hostage up there. Now, there's a life in danger. Maybe many lives, yours and mine and his included. Now, we're going to try to get through to him. That's the operational procedure! Clear?"

Chadway manages to write six pages of material about Jesse which McGarrett can use while negotiating. This seems like an awful lot of material in a very short time. Ruth's mother Emily (Joan K. Young) shows up, and says that her daughter is pretty emotionally stable. Jesse writes demands on a piece of paper and throws them out the window inside a milk bottle: "A parachute, an Army plane, clothes, suit, tie, shoes, and 500 bucks cash."

Another complication soon arises with an applicant for HPD, Richard Holden (James Kahoano Jr.), who wants to volunteer to be a "substitute hostage." This guy gets to the floor where the negotiators are barricaded behind a table. He is escorted downstairs by McGarrett, who finds that Glover has told Ruth's mother that Jesse "has a record of sex offense" and her daughter is in danger of being raped! Glover later says that he got the wrong information: Jesse got drunk and took his clothes off, the charge was merely drunk and disorderly. Holden manages to sneak upstairs again while McGarrett is downstairs dealing with Jesse's wife Louella (Wisa D'Orso), Reverend Craighill, his priest (Ed Sheehan) and Wiley Sheppard (David Palmer), a pushy anchorman on the late news for KGMB which has been covering what's been happening. Holden gets to the door of the apartment where Jesse is inside and gets shot.

When McGarrett comes back upstairs, after getting Holden escorted downstairs again, he is pissed: "Police departments all over the world pool their intelligence, their experience. We spend weeks in seminars learning the various kinds of hostage situations. Then you get to the scene, you turn your back, and some idiot tries some stupid kind of home remedy. Count on it, given the chance, some idiot will blow it for you every time! I should have locked that nut up."

McGarrett has been trying to befriend himself with Jesse by reading excerpts from the reminiscences that Chadway provided, even though it sounds like he is just reading this stuff rather than actually having a real conversation. Things deteriorate badly when Jesse is almost ready to leave, wearing the suit he asked for and holding the $500 that McGarrett personally delivered to the door of the room. Jesse has turned the TV on and sees his wife and the priest on TV, which enrages him – he shoots the TV and then smashes it with a chair. McGarrett, Danno and Kamana rush to the room, after which Jesse finally surrenders. Downstairs, Glover takes Jesse away in an unsympathetic manner after telling McGarrett, "Congratulations, McGarrett. It's not my style, but what the hell, it worked." McGarrett tells him, "Coming from you, captain, that's high praise."

The acting in this show is very good, especially Linda Purl who doesn't say too much. Although she looks very young, Purl was actually around 19 when the show was filmed.


As I'm sure most people are aware, there was a character called Grover who appeared in the Hawaii Five-0 reboot (2010-2020) starting in the first episode of the fourth season. As I pointed out at the time, the character of Grover, as announced in a CBS press release, was not "a character that first appeared in an episode of the original 'Hawaii Five-O' series."

Reboot executive producer Peter Lenkov was quoted in July 2013 as saying "It's always fun to dig back into Five-0 mythology and resurrect a character — and in this case, Chi McBride plays SWAT Captain Lou Grover. Recently transferred to Hawaii from Chicago, Grover isn't easily sold on Five-0's tactics, referring to the task force as: 'McGarrett and his merry band of do-whatever-the-hell-they-want.' What Five-0 does conflicts with Grover's own style of law enforcement. And that creates good conflict, so prepare for some combustive tension between the two this season."

Lenkov was creating a "mythology" where none existed. In Classic Five-O's S07E22, "The Hostage," under discussion here, the character did not come from out of state, was not named "Lou," and only appeared in the one episode — and then there is the Grover versus Glover business. At least one WWW site, who didn't bother to check their facts, suggested that Chi McBride had played the original Grover/Glover. This is interesting, because he was 18-19 at the time, and, according to IMDb, didn't start acting till he was 30. (They amended their story after I complained about this.)

In the eighth episode of the reboot's fourth season, Grover and McGarrett (Alex O'Loughlin) were both summoned to the Governor's residence, where Governor Sam Denning (Richard T. Jones) revealed that he got a complaint from Grover about McGarrett. Considering that Grover had not been in Hawaii that long, you have to wonder why he would have sent this confidential complaint directly to the Governor, instead of processing it through HPD channels. To deal with this, the Governor told the two of them "you will get along," and made them together serve a warrant for outstanding parking tickets. This seems like a very insignificant task and why would this kind of minor-league issue even be brought to the Governor's attention?

In the ninth episode, the appearance of Grover was odd, since, as Danno (Scott Caan) pointed out, he was the guy who "ratted out" McGarrett to the Governor in the previous show. At this point, Chi McBride was a cast regular. In the twelfth show, former adversaries McGarrett and Grover got to bond in the Oahu "forest," while searching for a criminal. In the sixteenth show, Grover took Danno's visiting mother (Melanie Griffith) on a McGarrett-authorized guided tour of "what Danno does" (which included a lot of HPD stuff, which Danno did not do). Grover started out as a hard ass, then turned into McGarrett's BFF, and by this point was almost a pussycat comic character like the shrimp shack owner and guy with connections to everyone in the Hawaiian underworld, Kamekona (Taylor Wily).

In the final (22nd) show of the fourth season, Grover was demoted by the Governor because of an incident where Grover stole $100 million to help free his daughter who had been kidnapped. In making this decision, the Governor somehow overrode HPD procedure for dealing with officers who take the law into their own hands. Being no longer gainfully employed by HPD, Grover was offered a position with Five-0, which he kept until the end of the series in April 2020.

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167. (S07E23) “Diary Of A Gun” ★★½  BOOK HIM 

Original air date: 3/11/75 — Opening CreditsEnd Credits
Director: Douglas Green; Producer: William Finnegan; Writer: Jerome Coopersmith; Music: Don B. Ray
Timings: Main Titles: 1:00; Act One: 17:32; Act Two: 8:47; Act Three: 8:37; Act Four: 13:26; End Credits: 0:36; Total Time: 49:58.

QUICK PLOT:

A cheap revolver passing from hand to hand causes mayhem as Five-O pursues its bloody trail.

Click here to read Full Plot.

REVIEW:

This is first of two shows dealing specifically with guns; the other is S12E07, "Use a Gun, Go to Hell." This one deals with the progress of a Saturday night special through various hands without some story adding complications as it does in the later-season show.

At the beginning of the episode, guns in boxes labelled as "pliers" are being offloaded from a tug-like ship, the El Greco, and delivered to a tools warehouse intercut with McGarrett reading off statistics related to a recent outbreak of gun violence. Tommy Fujiwara is Joey Rubato (an odd musical name), who is in charge of the operation, a different bad-guy role for him, though Tommy Fujiwara can never be really bad!

John Manicote is listening to McGarrett's speech, which ends with "Handguns kill 20,000 people every year in America. Half a dozen shootings or killings in the past month right here in Hawaii. And all with the same type of cheap .22 or.25 caliber handgun, the kind of weapon a punk would pick up on a weekend when the shops have cash and the tourists are ripe for mugging." Manicote tells McGarrett, "I can't begin a grand-jury probe without facts. As district attorney, I have to supply a list of suspected dealers, dates of importation and sale." McGarrett replies, "Okay, John, we'll get them for you."

Some of the guns at the warehouse are immediately taken by distributors, including Alfie (Lee Stetson). He goes to Sand Island and sells one of them for $20 to a young punk who has been participating in a crap game in a shack. Soon after this, a family of tourists who are seriously lost pull up where the punks are now fooling around outside. The father (B. Lee Gaber) asks for directions to the Aloha Tower. The punks push him around and when he knocks the one with the gun to the ground, that kid shoots him.

Despite the fact they are in the middle of nowhere, some HPD cops soon appear, perhaps because of the sound of the shot or the guy's wife (Jo Pruden) screaming, though the cops don't seem that close. The shooter flees and dumps the gun in a nearby mailbox.

The punks are rounded up by Five-O and taken to the father's hospital room for a lineup which seems highly unorthodox. The kid with the gun is IDd by the father, and taken to headquarters where McGarrett finds out where the gun was dumped.

Danno and a mail inspector go to check out the mailbox, but the mail has already been picked up by postal employee Michael Briggs (Ramon Bieri), who found the gun. When Briggs goes home, he finds his wife Louise (Lauren Levian) getting all made up like for a date, though she says she is going to her sister's to babysit her nephew. Briggs seems like an easy-going guy, but his wife gives him a lot of mouth concerning the fact that they haven't got much money and he doesn't give her a lot of attention.

After his wife leaves, Briggs finds a napkin from a bar with a phone number (555-8243) scrawled on it, which he calls and finds out it is for the Royal Palm Motel. When he goes there with the gun, he finds his wife "doing it" with some guy named Chat Farrel, a professional football player. He shoots and kills them both.

While Briggs is driving home stunned, he throws the gun out of the window of his car onto the lawn of a church. He is like a zombie when McGarrett and Frank Kamana come to his place to ask him about what he did with the gun. They already figured out he had it using information from Briggs' workplace and his dead wife being IDd at the motel. It takes some time before Briggs can explain his actions. Murdering his wife seems like a rather extreme reaction to what happened without any background as to whether his relationship with his wife was badly deteriorating.

Meanwhile, some little kid named Arthur Chang (Gregory Scott DelaDruz) finds the gun outside the church, and thinking it is a toy, takes it home, where he accidentally shoots himself, much to the horror of his mother Ellen (Susan P. Stewart). While she is trying to get help, Eddie Larkin (Richard Morrison), the janitor of their building, seeing the gun on the floor, pockets it.

McGarrett comes to the Changs' residence, which is 3151 Montserrat Avenue, Apartment 126. He finds out where Arthur found the gun, which corresponds to where Briggs said he threw it. Getting into Eddie's room, seemingly without a warrant, McGarrett finds what looks like a lot of stolen merchandise. He tells a cop with him, "Looks like Eddie's in the appliance business … and maybe just added a gun to his inventory. Check all this stuff against the HPD stolen property list." McGarrett calls the cop by his name which is "Iowa"? I don't think so.

Eddie takes the gun to a local bar called the No Limit, where a sign on the door says "Must wear dresses." Despite this, some slutty girl is dancing around the joint wearing a bikini top and jeans. Interestingly, the bartender at this dump is Alfie, who was peddling guns at the beginning of the show, though looking somewhat more scuzzy than before. Eddie wants to barter with the gun he found, but Alfie says "I want green paper with numbers in the corner."

Alfie especially doesn't want the gun because the handgrip is now busted, but he knows someone who might be interested. He calls this guy who appears very quickly. He is Frito (Beau Van Den Ecker), who buys the gun for $7.50 in the alley outside the bar, but doesn't pay Eddie, saying, "You get paid when I score," and then shoots Eddie dead.

Frito is pals with the slutty girl, and the two of them go on a crime spree committing holdups after stealing a guy's car. Five-O makes a connection to all this, first after IDing Eddie's dead body and then having tailed Alfie, who has gone home for the day, to the warehouse where the guns are stored. McGarrett has to put the lean on the skanky blonde bartender who took over for Alfie at the end of his shift to get information about him. They also have an ID of Frito and his girlfriend from someone who observed the aftermath of Eddie's shooting. At the warehouse, Danno and Chin manage to find a box of "pliers" which contains Saturday night specials.

Back at the office, McGarrett springs into action, taking over Central Dispatch to broadcast to patrol cars and using one of his boards to plot strategy to catch Frito, whose robbery rampage is all over the airwaves. Visual contact with the two fugitives is made at the Lunalilo Freeway and Lehia, which is only "a few minutes" from the Five-O office. Frito tries to escape on the freeway, which looks like it is still under construction. Shots from several HPD cops as Frito breaks through one of their roadblocks causes a huge explosion, probably from a punctured gas tank, which causes the car to skid to the side of the road.

McGarrett shows up soon and offers to broker a deal for Frito, who yells back in Jimmy Cagney style, "Come and get me, cop!" He is soon taken out by an HPD sharpshooter.

The slutty girlfriend is cuffed and taken away, and the gun which has been the central focus of the episode is finally recovered, but you have to wonder … so what? There are still hundreds or thousands of the guns still on the streets of Honolulu! They have hardly given Manicote the evidence which he wanted at the beginning of the show!

This show has its detractors, and, to me, it is not as interesting as the later episode, one of the few bright spots of the dismal twelfth season. While "Diary of a Gun" is still hardly a show to write home about, it at least gave lots of the Five-O stock company employment, and Beau Van Den Ecker has perhaps his greatest role. The music is by Ray, mostly material which is either recycled or will be soon.

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168. (S07E24) “6,000 Deadly Tickets” ★★★  BOOK HIM (2) 

Original air date: 3/25/75 — Opening CreditsEnd Credits
Director: John Peyser; Producer: William Finnegan; Writers: Leonard and Arlene Stadd; Music: Don B. Ray
Timings: Main Titles: 1:00; Act One: 16:18; Act Two: 7:04; Act Three: 17:16; Act Four: 8:11; End Credits: 0:36; Total Time: 50:25.

QUICK PLOT:

Five-O joins forces with a federal investigator to stop an airline ticket racket that has led to fraud and murder.

Click here to read Full Plot.

REVIEW:

This episode gave me serious brain damage until I stopped thinking about the tickets of the title, which Karen Rhodes in her review of the show calls a "McGuffin," a term used for "an object, device, or event that is necessary to the plot and the motivation of the characters, but insignificant, unimportant, or irrelevant in itself."

Blank airline tickets are distributed to travel agencies every three months by the Air Traffic Conference (ATC) in Washington, D.C. Once the numbers of the tickets are recorded, they must be kept in a bank vault, aside from two days' worth of them which the companies can keep on hand. Presumably the tickets are in some kind of sequential order, otherwise it would be a huge hassle to write all those serial numbers down!

There is a racket stealing these blank tickets and then reselling them to travel agencies who are extorted to buy them. Kwan Hi Lim, in a role where he gets major credit at the end of the show, plays Win Low who runs the Moana Taxi Company in Honolulu and also runs such a racket. Low makes a nice profit from this. Some of the travel companies resell the stolen tickets, which is risky, because if the cops catch them, they are in big trouble. Other companies just destroy the tickets, writing this off as the cost of doing business.

Tickets are also sold to individuals who want a "deal." Because of the level of computerization in the travel industry at the time of the show, there is no easy way that the tickets can be checked to determine if they were stolen when people come to the airport. Looking this up on the Internet, however, reveals that this may not exactly be the case, but let's not go there. If you have information on this, feel free to contact me through the e-mail link on the main page, but I don't think there are too many travel agents from the 1970s still around today.

At the beginning of the show, Marvin Wilson (Norman Wright) is taking the surplus tickets from Simpson Tours, where he works, to the bank. The owner of this company is played by Bill Edwards, who has already been seen four times in the show as Washington big shot Jonathan Kaye! Wilson is accompanied by a security guard, played by Beau Van Den Ecker. Fred Burke (Jack Hogan, in a bad guy role), who works for Win Low, corners Wilson on the street, steals the tickets and shoots both Wilson and the guard dead. (I kept thinking, who is paying for the guard's services?)

We later see Burke going to the Cacatian Travel Service, where he tells the owner, Ollie (Vernon Hayes) that he is going to have to buy 50 tickets for $50 each instead of his usual 15. Ollie is fed up with this routine, especially because business is not good at the moment, saying "I'm gonna get nailed." Burke threatens him, saying, "I know a couple of guys, they can take this whole joint apart in maybe five or six minutes. That includes a little vacation for you, in the hospital, pal." Shige Yagamato (Tommy Fujiwara), who works for Ollie, says it should be no trouble to sell these tickets to people in typical black market locations like bars.

Ollie tries to call Five-O to get free of the racket, but he hangs up after Jenny answers the phone. Later, after Yagamato goes to see Win Low about working for him and mentions that Ollie is saying he wants to "blow the whistle on the whole stinkin' business," Burke throws a bomb into Ollie's office, destroying the place and killing him. According to Karen Rhodes' book, the special effects guy on the show in charge of this bomb did his job a bit too well, with the result that businesses within a half block of the location suffered serious damage.

Harry Rosen (Jack Kosslyn), an investigator with the Air Traffic Conference, tipped off about the recent robbery, comes to Hawaii. When he and McGarrett go to talk to Simpson, whose company was the victim of the big theft, it is obvious that Simpson is hiding something. McGarrett requests that employees at the company take polygraphs to determine who might have blabbed about Wilson going to the bank, and everyone does this. Only Simpson is determined to be hiding something, but after Ollie, who was like a protégé to Simpson, is killed, Simpson starts opening up about Win Low and his racket. By the way, prior to the lie detector exams, Danno says that "Simpson's got 20 employees. Any one of them could be 'Mr. Inside'," but the only employees we see at the place aside from the owner are women.

McGarrett has a smart idea. The numbers of the stolen tickets from the Simpson theft are compiled and entered into the HPD "Iron Brain," which is then connected to the terminals at the Honolulu Airport (at least, this is what I think they are doing). Using this technique, a guy named Franklin (Robert Turnbull) who buys tickets from Yagamoto is nabbed.

Rosen offers to go undercover, buying tickets from Yagamoto. He contacts Shige through Lew (Kimo Kahoano), the bartender at the Kopiko bar, where Franklin made his purchase. Rosen says he wants to buy 1,000 tickets at $50 each. Win Low is suspicious about this, and when a meeting is arranged for Tantalus Mountain, Yagamoto recognizes Rosen, who he saw outside Ollie's bombed office earlier with McGarrett. Another meeting is arranged with Rosen, but Burke shows up there and shoots Rosen in the back.

There follows an incredible chase with McGarrett and the Five-O team chasing Burke, who is trying to escape out to sea after speeding down the Ala Wai Canal in a motorboat. It's pretty funny the way McGarrett's car slides all over the grass by the canal at one point … and you can see skid marks in the grass where they probably rehearsed this pursuit.

After the pilot of the boat is shot dead, Burke surrenders and McGarrett tells Chin and Ben to pick up Win Low and book him for "murder one, three counts." But I think he expects Burke and/or Yagamoto to drop a dime on their former boss, otherwise it's going to be a lengthy court case for Manicote to deal with!

The way a major clue to the identity of Burke is uncovered by Che Fong is gimmicky. When the tickets were taken from Wilson at the beginning of the show, Wilson grabbed at Burke and fragments of Burke's hair ended up under the fatally wounded Wilson's fingernails. Che uses a scanning electron microscope on these hair strands to discover that Burke had a hair implant which Ben then tracks down to a specific local company. This is the last show for Ben, by the way ... though this was actually the seventh show filmed this season. You can see details of Al Harrington's appearances in this season by clicking here.

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CLASSIC FIVE-O (1968-1980):
| Pilot Movie (Episode "0") | 1st Season (Episodes 1-23) | 2nd Season (Episodes 24-48) | 3rd Season (Episodes 49-72) | 4th Season (Episodes 73-96) | 5th Season (Episodes 97-120) | 6th Season (Episodes 121-144) | 8th Season (Episodes 169-191) | 9th Season (Episodes 192-214) | 10th Season (Episodes 215-238) | 11th Season (Episodes 239-259) | 12th Season (Episodes 260-278) | 13th Season |

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