Copyright ©1994-2008 by Mike Quigley. No reproduction of any kind without permission. Original air dates are taken from information supplied by the Iolani Palace Irregulars and Karen Rhodes' Booking Five-O.
= One of the very best episodes, a must-see. = Better than average, worthy of attention. = Average, perhaps with a few moments of interest. = One of the very worst, a show to avoid. An outstanding episode with an especially good script and powerhouse acting by Herbert Lom as the philanthropic industrialist Mondrago, the babely France Nuyen as his daughter Sirone and Jeff Corey as painter Andrew Duncan (not to mention Jack Lord). Morton Stevens' lyrical theme connected with the alluring painting of Mondrago's wife is also a plus. McGarrett appears in a Hawaiian shirt at the beginning. There is overlapping dialog during the main credits and the Five-O main theme appears in a different arrangement for the first time. "William" Edwards appears briefly as Doctor Ventnor, whose car (licence number 9C-3322) blows up in spectacular fashion. Duncan says that Mondrago's wife wasn't one of those "country club broads." Herman "Duke" Wedemeyer is a judge at an exhumation inquiry. A newspaper shows part of a headline -- "moon landing" which is in lower case type (see #71/72). Wilfred (later Moe) Keale appears as Mondrago's brusque servant Akea who engages in some interesting karate moves with McGarrett near the end of the show.
Henry Darrow plays the greasy gangster Johnny Oporta who arranges to have his enemies murdered and then burned in an incinerator (this was based on an actual execution which happened in Honolulu around the time of the show). Al "Ben" Harrington is Ray, one of this thugs. A garbage dumpster containing murdered people's bodies is dumped twice ... with exactly the same garbage. The same happens to a load of trash which is dumped into the incinerator. The license number of a Five-O car is 1A-3954. A good fight at the end between McGarrett and Ron Feinberg. It costs eight cents to a mail a letter to McGarrett in Honolulu! The stock shot of McGarrett running down the steps of the palace by tourists appears. What are the cops doing at the end before they book Oporta?
Vic Tanaka (Soon Taik Oh, who does not get featured credit at the end!) is on the rampage murdering women and painting their faces to look like a prostitute he once knew -- who is now married and living a respectable life. During an investigation at the beginning of the show, it is determined that the latest victim "was not sexually assaulted." Danny Kamekona as Dr. Holmby (!) says the killer may be "a single man without much use for women," to which McGarrett suggests "a homosexual?" Holmby says he "could be impotent." McGarrett asks the Five-O team to "cover the prostitute angle." As McGarrett and Danno interview Kwan Hi Lim as a taxi driver with important information, you can see a crowd behind watching the filming!
Five-O is on the trail of a gang cashing travellers' checks in Hawaii led by the wily Professor Pierce (Buddy Ebsen). McGarrett says that "fencing this stuff is like trying to sell hot badges at a policeman's picnic." As the gang approaches Hawaii by plane, one of their members, Whitney Davis (Glenn Cannon) suffers what appears to be a heart attack. Davis' real name is Floyd O'Neill. Winston Char is one of the two Physicians ambulance attendants meeting the plane. Tom Fujiwara is Frank Okawa, boss of the WORLD WIDE TRAVELLERS CHECK $ CO [sic -- this is on their letterhead] at 103 N. King Street, Honolulu 96817. A scene where a cop car passes people going to church is from #36. Galen Kam appears as a cashier who is talking to Mr. Chang (Yankee Chang, uncredited): "She's a groovy chick but she's got all these hairy hangups." When Okawa is brought to Five-O headquarters in a cop car, he is first seen sitting alone on the left in the rear seat. In subsequent shots he is in the middle, the left, middle, left and finally as they arrive at the palace there are two people in the back seat! A restaurant is called the Grog and Sirloin. Some interesting flashbacks and editing. McGarrett's final line to the plane load of crooks is a classic: "Aloha, suckers."
"Hippie freak" Ryan Moore (John Ritter) begs money from embezzler Edward Heron (Vic Morrow) who then tries to feel him up. Ryan bonks Heron on the head and steals his wallet, later commenting, "He deserved it, the closet queen". Meanwhile, Danno is trying to find Ryan's girlfriend Cleo Michaels (Dianne Hull), the daughter of his landlady when he lived in Berkeley. Ryan spouts various period clichés about "middle class morality" and generally carries on like an obnoxious jerk (which he is). A scene where a cop car turns by a bank is taken from #36. Chin says "Yo" to McGarrett at one point, and Jenny refers to him as "chief." The electronic music (by Ray) when a woman dies of a drug overdose is weird. When Heron inquires in a hippie bar as to Ryan's whereabouts, listing off various elements of Ryan's clothing, the barman says "Isn't there anything unusual about him?" The barman then offers Heron some licorice-flavored cigarette papers for "rolling your own." In the final scene, Cleo's hair keeps blowing in her mouth! How does Heron know the location of the hideout at the airport? The old lady that Ryan tries to hustle for money in the opening scene also appeared in #66-67, F.O.B. Honolulu.
Wacked-out Vietnam vet and ace marksman William T. ("Billy") Shem Jr. (Michael Burns) buys a rifle, signing the registration papers as "George C. Patton" (pretty dumb of the clerk not to catch on to this). He then chooses a spot up on a hill in an old bunker and proceeds to shoot out the tires of a woman's car. When she hails two cops, Shem shoots both of them, which promptly brings out not only McGarrett and Five-O but seemingly much of HPD. Beau Van Den Ecker appears as Ryder, the cop who dies instantly. His face is hardly seen, but he rates a credit at the end! The position of the woman behind Ryder suggests that she should also be shot, but she disappears, never to appear again. Though both cops drop beside her car, after the main titles they are back beside their own car. The view through Shem's scope seems wrong (as usual), as do numerous other angles from his point of view and that of the police throughout the show. Herman Wedemeyer appears in uniform as Duke, but his last name is Kanaha instead of Lukela. Shem's car license -- IB-1113 -- is easily seen by Danno in a helicopter. As Shem adjusts his radio to listen to crappy rock music, he is singing the theme from the Howdy Doody Show. McGarrett freaks out when Shem's shrink, Dr. Fernando (William Croarkin), tries to explain his patient's "unstable personality" as motivated by "guilt over an incestuous drive towards a mother, sometimes a sister." McGarrett screams: "What's the reality of it?" Shem's mother is flown in by plane and/or helicopter from Maui in record time. Played by Jeanne Cooper, she is an utter bitch who describes Oahu as a "pesthole" and Shem's wife (Annette O'Toole) as a "tramp." The final assault on Shem is total overkill -- compare this to later situations where McGarrett employs a negotiatory as opposed to confrontational approach. Interesting camera work in this episode. The teaser and first act are quite long compared to normal. One scene where the helicopter with Danno in it takes off is used twice. When the copter arrives with Dr. Fernando, if you look carefully, you will notice only two people in the cockpit. The passenger is wearing a sport shirt, but when Danno gets out of the cockpit in the next scene (with Dr. Fernando), he is wearing a suit. See also #116, where much of the footage from this show is re-used.
There is an air of "a bad horoscope" about this episode about a scheme to steal air cargo and sell it on the black market. The script, direction and continuity all suffer from some problems. For a start, some of the character development is annoying. Eric Ling (James Hong) has a major attitude towards McGarrett during their first meeting. Anita Putnam (Marion Ross), receptionist at the air cargo company, seems ill-suited to answering the phone (she seems more concerned with primping her hair), although she does emote well later when she reveals to McGarrett that she had to get involved in the scheme because her 18-year-old daughter got into sniffing coke and taking LSD. And Hal Sullivan (Don Chastain), mastermind of the scheme, is just plain snotty! There are several boo-boos as well. One of the phone numbers used as a "drop" is APele 79247 (why the use of word phone prefixes?), but later when Putnam is being grilled by McGarrett, she recalls it as 79277. Another phone number -- KAwena 20699 -- is mentioned. The number for the Aloha Hotel has only 6 numbers: 589850. Joanna Grayson (Sheri Rice) dies and a sheet is pulled over her face, but just before it covers her, you can see her eyelids move! There's a stock shot of Tokyo airport (complete with what looks like student demonstrators), but in the following scene where airport employees (one of them white) find James Hong's frozen body, this is obviously not in Japan. James MacArthur seems to be having memory problems in the sequence following this: "Chalk up another murder for the [pause] ring. He died about eight hours of [pause] ... uh ... before he turned up in Tokyo." A few moments later he continues: "If the Tokyo police hadn't checked with ... the ... Interpol, we'd still be looking for him." While the cops film John Malcolm (Bill Bigelow) forging invoices, a negative view is shown. When Eric Ling gets cold feet re his participation in the scheme (prior to his murder, of course), Sullivan asks, "Whatever became of our inscrutable Oriental?" Chin Ho makes inquiries of Kim Wong (Myrtle Hilo), and she says, "You sound as if you just came off the boat." Chin also comes forth with a Chinese proverb in a discussion with McGarrett. Bill Bigelow must have been annoyed after this episode aired -- although his role is fairly prominent, he gets no credit at the end, unlike Sheri Rice, who doesn't have a single line! There's a classic quote from Che Fong to McGarrett: "Very clever ... and you're not even Chinese!" McGarrett himself comes across with a snappy quote from Thoreau's Walden when testing some answering machines in Che Fong's lab: "If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer." I like the way the scream at the beginning leads into the main titles. The "memories" theme is heard a couple of times as is the "trombone interval" theme.
McGarrett is at the trial of Johnny Oporta on Maui (see #74) during this show, Danno is in charge. When McGarrett talks to Danno on the phone, the connection is terrible ... was the long-distance system in Hawaii really that bad? (Usually calls to the mainland or overseas suffer from these problems.) Al Harrington is Fred Noonan, one of the crooks. Glenn Cannon appears briefly as the owner of Carlson's Printing who is shot and Seth Sakai is seen as a lab assistant who utters "don't hold your breath" to Kono in Japanese (see the next show, where Che Fong does the same in Chinese). Sakai says there are only 40,000 combinations of the letters collected from the floor of the print shop, but it seems there should be many more. A good quote from McGarrett: "I thought the computer was a policeman's best friend." When one of the armored car guards is shot in the face, the results are particularly gory. The address of Tiki Gods Inc. is 15 Kakaako Road, Honolulu, Hawaii 96802. A date -- August 23, 1971 -- is seen, and a "real" phone number (944-1212) is mentioned. The way Danno figures out the bogus invoicing scheme at the end is a bit quick for my taste. The motivation of Hawkins (Sam Melville), the gang's leader, for the robbery is that he is an aggrieved Vietnam vet ("We'll set things right in this country ... we'll stop them from burying us with peace and poetry and pot") but this is not really developed. Danno's take-home pay is said to be $184.50 during the final banal phone conversation with McGarrett.
The score by Ray features numerous musical motifs which will be used in future episodes. It's raining near the beginning of the show. A good quote from McGarrett: "The obvious always bothers me." There are stock shots of Sea Life Park. When David Harper (Lou Antonio) dies, the "memories" theme is heard. There is mention of his son being at a school for retarded children. Act two is very long -- over 21 minutes. McGarrett and Chin Ho dine on saimin, described by Chin as "Japanese chicken noodle soup." Che Fong tells Kono in Chinese: "Don't hold your breath." (Compare to Seth Sakai saying the same thing in Japanese to Kono in the previous episode.) The gimmick in this show -- shavings from the killer gun which was rebored -- is a bit much. One wonders why Kono goes to the garage to get the evidence, since he was seen at the beginning of the investigation digging a bullet out of the garage wall. The music at the very end of the show does not end on the note we expect!
Bill Cameron (Norm Alden), a cop who was kicked off the force and blames McGarrett, plots to kill the Governor, taunting the Five-O crew in truly sinister fashion. McGarrett is kind of dumb in a couple of scenes. First, he opens his desk drawer at Cameron's request and second, he opens the trunk of Danno's car to find a fish inside (he should call the bomb squad in both cases). Chin Ho's house is different than the one seen in #43, Cry Lie, where he has a long driveway and a pagoda at the entrance. In this episode, Chin's garage is right on the street! Chin is very pissed at his wife being harassed by Cameron. A typewriter with a bent and chipped letter provides an important clue. Danny Kamekona appears as Dr. Rosenstadt [sic], but he is also referred to as "Dr. Kamekona." The governor's license plate is number one (1), and his residence is Washington Place. When told by McGarrett that Cameron was "first in marksmanship" at the police academy, the Gov replies, "That's not a comforting thought." Journalist Eddie Sherman, a real newspaperman, appears as himself. A real-looking phone number -- 732-2144 -- is seen on the business card of Joe Mona, the blind owner of the key shop.
This show, where McGarrett has to deal with conflicts between four ethnic gangs, is the ultimate in Race-o-rama! Things start off at the beach, where a visiting gangster from Miami is found dead after being staked below the tide line. When his body is brought to shore, McGarrett notices the guy's left hand little finger has been chopped off (this is depicted in nauseating detail both then and later in a photo blow-up). The Five-O team bust up a pool game (a front for a gambling operation) run by the Samoan Tasi (Manu Tupou). Referring to Chin Ho, Tasi says, "I know my rights, and one of them is not to be felt by this fat-handed Oriental." Danno comments, "All men are brothers," and Chin frisks Tasi, saying "He's clean." Tasi comments, "Not any longer!" As they leave the pool hall, Danno comments, "In case you hadn't noticed, one of you sank the cueball." Things take a turn for the worse with the appearance of David Opatoshu as gang boss Li Wing. Unlike in episode #15 where Opatoshu, also doing a Peter Sellers and playing an Oriental, was given some moderately passable makeup, here he has no makeup at all, aside from his white hair. Trying to accept this guy as Chinese really pushes "suspension of disbelief" into another galaxy! The other two bosses are Seth Sakai playing Afuso and Marc Marno as the Korean Kim Lo Lang. When Tasi is brought to the Five-O office and McGarrett suggests he will contact the other three bosses, Tasi says "I'll not go visit that stupid Jap, or that powdery Chinaman, or the Gook slob." McGarrett says "Wait a minute ... this is Hawaii, U.S.A. It's time for your English lesson. Repeat slowly after me -- Japanese, Chinese, Korean." Tasi turns and says, "You know what you can do with your English lesson, McGarrett," and gives McGarrett the raspberry! After Tasi leaves, Kono comments, "Are those lizard shoes he wears, or does he go barefooted?" McGarrett and Kono then drop in on Li Wing. At the front gate, Kono tells the guard, "Lock up those dogs ... if they bite me, they're gonna get rabies!" Li Wing's nephew Lai Po (Michael Leong) gives McGarrett a lot of mouth, saying that his uncle "doesn't know anything ... he just told you that four times. Is there a prize for five times, Mr. McGarrett? If not, get off his back!" McGarrett refers to the local gangs as "bush leaguers" compared with the Miami mob whose man was knocked off. During a meeting of the gangs, Kim Lo calls Lai Po "second banana" and remarks to Afuso, "I bet you even put water in your saké." He later calls Afuso, "Sukiyaki." Tasi tells the assembled that he "doesn't dirty his mouth lying to cruds and foreigners." Afuso throws up his hands saying "Twenty-four hours from now we'll be street fighting with [Miami mob boss] Uncle's soldiers and I'm in the middle of inventory!" Danno is sent to Miami, and when he calls McGarrett, as usual the phone connection is terrible. The Miami gang sends a thug who looks like an Elvis impersonator (Nick Nickolas) to Honolulu. McGarrett and Chin Ho meet him at the airport, engaging in various banter with him about his constitutional rights. When the thug heads back to his plane, he says "Aloha to you, pal, and ram it!" McGarrett muses: "Someone is trying to run Five-O up a palm tree." There's a great chase with the cops and Tasi swerving dangerously in their boat-like cars around the docks. When he's caught, Tasi says to McGarrett, "Speedometer goes to 120 ... couldn't get it past 90." McGarrett replies, "Tell Ralph Nader." The plot comes down to a confrontation at Li Wing's place with the Korean ready to drill the old man in bed. McGarrett appears suddenly and plugs Kim Lo. As the Korean gangster expires, he mutters "You lousy Chink!" McGarrett whips out a ticket to Taiwan for Li Wing. Incidentally, the chopped finger at the beginning is described as a "Samoan custom," but this is also a common practice with the Japanese Yakuza (Mafia) as well.
Moses Gunn gives an excellent performance as Willy Stone, an over-the-hill boxer who smashes the hand of Robby Davis (Henry Porter), a young contender, to keep him from ruining his life in the ring. Matty Edmonds (Albert Paulsen), the mob boss who owns a piece of the action, soon arrives from the mainland and is determined to find Stone, who is in hiding. Paulsen is his usual sinister and nasty self, but his accent is distracting. When McGarrett asks why he came to Hawaii, Edmonds says for "some sun and some broads." On the lam, Stone visits Mama (Mama Luna), a restaurant owner, and begs her for some food. She is about to give him some white bread when he says, "Whole wheat ... white bread ain't no good." Later, Chin interrogates Mama, who he suspects is hiding Stone, and she says to him "What's the rap? Selling salami without a license?" McGarrett calls Mae (Lynn Hamilton), a nightclub hostess, "honey." Seth Sakai appears as Dr. Fukata, Lippy Espinda is a janitor and Robert Costa is Davis's manager, Phelps. Another show no doubt not popular with the SPCA -- a cockfight is seen. When Edmonds and his young blonde-haired hitman are tracking down Stone, they are driving a Mercedes ... seems unusual for what is probably a rental car!
Another show with an ecological theme. Five-O has to try and track down who pulled off several stunts attacking sources of pollution (a large industrial chimney, a crop-duster) when it's feared the protestor may next knock off a bigwig from some large corporation. When he sees how the chimney was covered up with a heavy metal lid, Chin Ho says, "A guy like that can go bear-hunting with chopsticks." When McGarrett inquires about rare bird feathers on a native mask left at the protest sites, he leers at the musem ornothologist, Miss Weston (Maura McGiveney): "One of these days I might take up birdwatching." According to a suspect gas station owner, "What the Japs did to this place ain't nothin' to what the Haoles and Chinks are doin' to it since." McGarrett is visited in his office by a hippie freak (Don Lev) who wants to nominate him for "pig of the year." Chin Ho picks up a skinny hippie who is doing a yoga headstand while sitar music plays. Richard Morrison plays the Oriental Lai Han (badly). There are numerous stock sequences: McGarrett runs down the steps of the palace by tourists, McGarrett walks across the Governor's courtyard, various shots of cops driving around. The "violin" theme is heard as the protestor approaches Lai Han's room. There no "featured players" in the end credits, all the names are in the smaller print usually reserved for the "supporting cast."
A mundane follow-up to #59, Over Fifty? Steal! with Hume Cronyn reprising his role as Lewis Avery Filer, master of disguise. The opening sequence where Filer escapes from Oahu State Prison, is ridiculous. First he steals a picture off his cell wall of well-known criminal Elmo Zigler, who just happens to look like himself. One wonders why the picture was on the wall in the first place. Was Zigler the boyfriend of Filer's cellmate? He opens two locks with a spoon and escapes into a room opposite a guard's station where he makes a phone call in a very loud voice. There are stock shots of McGarrett arriving at the prison. Warden Challis is played by Richard Morrison, who was an Oriental in the previous show. Filer/Zigler then does business with Goro Shibata (Jiro Tamiya -- too bad he couldn't play some of the Oriental parts played by white guys in previous episodes). One of Shibata's "twin" bodyguards is Wilfred "Moe" Keale. The scene where Filer threatens Shibata with the bodyguards, captive in an elevator, with "ultrasonic" noise is also pretty dumb and the ending is disappointing. Music by Morton Stevens from the previous Filer episode is reused as is a shot of the Five-O team running down the palace steps (see #61). There is a scene in Shibata's office where the twins are up against the wall, but when the camera views the room from behind Shibata's desk, the duo are nowhere to be seen (it might be the camera angle).
When hitman Rick Marlow (named "The Pro" in the credits) locks his bicycle at the beginning, he just puts a padlock on the chain! The footage showing the outside of the apartment where he sets up his rifle with a tripod is scratchy. When Loretta Swit as Betty appears on an 18th-storey ledge, McGarrett rushes to her aid, as does Danny Kamekona as psychiatrist Dr. Kamekona. The Five-O emergency number is 277-2977 (ostensibly a real number), but the D.A.'s office is 555-9100. This show introduces us to John Manicote, played by Glenn Cannon. McGarrett admits to Manicote, "I blew it!" after a protected witness (Betty's boyfriend) is shot and falls from the 18th floor. A poster on the wall in the city jail says "When flower children go to pot, they become blooming idiots!" There is stock footage of McGarrett arriving at the hospital, and Dr. Freeman is paged. The scene where a white car is hoisted out of the water with a crane looks suspiciously like the one from The Ways of Love (#7) and Which Way Did They Go (#37)? The ending, with the slimy lawyer Mariss (James Olson) revealed as the bad guy, is too abrupt.
The first half of this show is outstanding, especially the opening scenes with their nighttime photography. (This is where the shot of Danno looking in the broken window from the main titles comes from.) Cops (including Herman Wedemeyer as "Officer Ishi") and firemen have to extract McGarrett from a spectacular car crash, which is the beginning of an elaborate setup engineered by Wo Fat. McGarrett winds up in Switzerland to check his bank account (#55-02-695) and finds that he has a double (who dubbed Jack Lord's English voice?). However, the second part, with Tim O'Connor barking orders as Jonathan Kaye and the appearance of Colonel Toptegan (Roger C. Carmel, see #66-67) in his flight suit who is suddenly buddy-buddy to the Americans, drops in quality somewhat. At least we find out the governor's name -- Paul Jameson. (Kaye's name is misspelled as Jonathon Kaye on his nameplate.) When Wo Fat asks double agent scientist Hans Vogler (Donald Pleasance) the name of a friend used as an alibi, Wo repeats it as "Yamato," but when he phones the hospital to check on the authenticity of the name, Wo says "Yamoto." Les Keiter, usually seen as a TV announcer, appears as General Cardell, and Bob Nelson is Wo Fat's "main man," identified in the credits as "Assassin #1." At the 1999 Five-O reunion Robert Witthans told me that playing Lieutenant Commander George Smallitt, an army bigshot, in this episode, he had to introduce Steve McGarrett and said "I'd like you to meet Steve McQueen" instead of "McGarrett" to the assembled brass. The whole room broke up in hysterical laughter, even Jack Lord who was normally a no-nonsense type of guy.
This is one of the ranker Five-O shows in terms of subject matter. Lee Paul stars as Mitch Kenner, a huge skinhead soldier (he makes even Kono look puny). This is quite a change from episode #21, where he played a peacenik! At the beginning, the camera focuses on the bums of women dancing in the nightclub. Mitch approaches Nora Kayama (Miko Mayama) and tries to pick her up, asking her, "White meat too rich for your blood?". When she rebuffs him, he calls her a "lousy gook broad." In the parking lot, he rips her clothes off. McGarrett asks the doctor "Was she raped" and asks Nora, "Did you resist him, did you fight?" When Danno talks to McGarrett, a poster is visible behind him showing a Honolulu police badge with "Peace Symbol" underneath. McGarrett punches the table, saying of the rapist, "He's turned animal, he's gone rabid!" Nora freaks out when identifying Mitch in the lineup. McGarrett screams at the nightclub owner who is trying to avoid telling the truth. He says that the cops are going to put the heat on the place, watching for when "some pothead lights a joint up in the can." When the skinhead says "What are you so upset about -- she's not even white," Kono freaks out and attacks Mitch -- McGarrett has to restrain Kono. The way the computer tracks down a gas station attendant named Chris is far-fetched. Yankee Chang portrays the judge (an excellent performance), and Kwan Hi Lim plays perhaps his most oily Five-O role -- the lawyer Tosaki who confronts Nora with embarrassing questions about her sexual past, saying the defendant "extolled his own virility," and refers to "an act of intimacy" and her "physical relationship" with her boyfriend, among other things. The judge cautions Tosaki: "You're on thin ice." John Manicote is the Assistant D.A. McGarrett says "I'm getting some strange vibes" over the case and gets the Five-O team to dig up evidence that reveals that Mitch is impotent, having "ruptured his posterior urethra" in a car accident some time before on the mainland. (He was subsequently under the care of a Toronto doctor.) Gas station attendant Luke (Murray MacLeod) is revealed as the actual rapist, having stepped in after Mitch beat Nora senseless. When charged by McGarrett, Luke says "It's bull, I tell you, it's bull." Mitch reveals his shame at the end, saying he didn't want the guys in the barracks to think that he "wasn't a man any more." As the "military theme" plays in the background, McGarrett, in disgust, says "You don't have a clue [as to what 'man' means]."
Barry Sullivan plays Morgan Hilliard, a Howard Hughes type who has McGarrett kidnapped and brought to his boat where he describes a plot by his associates to have him declared mentally incompetent and to take his $2.5 billion fortune. McGarrett tells Hilliard, "Nobody takes me under duress and gets away with it!" There's lots of snappy dialogue between the two of them and an excellent cast for Hilliard's conspiratorial hangers-on (Ed Flanders, Milton Selzer, H.M. Winant). The way McGarrett figures out who's responsible for the murder at the beginning of the show is a bit too quick. When McGarrett tells Chin Ho he needs a crucial seventh bullet found, Chin says, "Now that's persistence." McGarrett replies, "And the murder weapon -- that's Chinese persistence!" When McGarrett asks why the killer was using a silencer, Chin replies, "Maybe the guy hates noise." I'm surprised that Che Fong can't figure out where the bullets are coming from by analyzing the angle at which they hit the ground. The opening titles are over freeze-frames, and the way the dialog in the first scenes overlaps is interesting. Duke is played by "Harry" Wedemeyer. Why can't the approaching helicopter see the cops on the beach at the end?
One of the late Zoulou's favorite episodes. Three wheeler-dealer types all die horrible, mysterious deaths. The first of them is the faggy Ralph Mingo (Jay Robinson, who played the emperor Caligula in the film Demetrius and the Gladiators), the second is the arrogant stud Fred Akamai Loy (Ray Danton) and the third is the shifty Wallis (Jason Evers). The party during the teaser where Mingo gets knocked off is attended by "con men, grifters, pimps, and assorted playmates" according to Danno. Zoulou keeps staring at Mingo's fish and Danno asks him if there is some "deep Hawaiian symbolism" involved. Wallis calls Kono a "big kahuna" and says, "You're crazy out of your Kanaka head." The "weapon" turns out to be an extremely toxic shellfish (same name as the title of the episode) with which Jack Manoa (William Valentine), servant to the threesome, knocked them off because they corrupted his daughter ("your filth became her filth") with drugs and filmed her making home-made porno with a video camera and recorder. Wallis says to Danno, "Some like to play, some like to watch" and comments if he showed some of the video tapes, "you'd probably have me pinched for pornography." Yankee Chang plays the cook (uncredited). A surprise ending where McGarrett steps in after Danno has done most of the work! One of the musical cues before the end is highly reminiscent of the cue which usually accompanies the wave before a commercial break. A couple of real dates are seen -- the tag on Mingo's body says 8/3/71 and a threatening card says Akamai's birth date is July 6, 1929 and that he will die on September 10th. The toxic shellfish Cloth of Gold actually exists, though one web site I located with information about it suggests it is indigenous to Australia. A similar shellfish does not have instant fatal results as portrayed in the show -- it reportedly takes up to five hours to kill someone (there is no antivenin available for someone who has been poisoned).
The menacing William Watson plays L.B. Barker, who escapes from jail and threatens his former girlfriend, Carol Rhodes (Beth Brickell). McGarrett arrives at her hotel room and has the place surrounded with cops. When Carol offers McGarrett a drink and he refuses, she says, "I just can't imagine a guy with a name like McGarrett not having one drink." She also talks about her relationship with Alfred Townsend, an older man, which led to jealousy from Barker some years back: "It wasn't sex, he didn't use me like everybody else ... it was just kindness." We learn that McGarrett was appointed to Five-O in 1959 when Hawaii achieved statehood and that in 1968, suffering from major burnout, he took a vacation in Switzerland. Carol, a ditzy blonde, becomes more fragmented as time goes on, yet when Barker appears, she suddenly becomes very lucid. In order to get to her apartment, Barker seemingly has to crawl vertically up a heating vent for several stories and then rappel down the side of the building (and no one notices him, though cops are everywhere). It turns out that Barker's appearance is all part of a scam engineered by McGarrett and the D.A. to make Carol confess to a murder which Barker supposedly committed several years ago. McGarrett gets the whole thing on tape on his "case-sette" tape recorder. I imagine, as Carol suggests, the lawyers are going to have a field day with this case. This is pretty much a three-person show -- there are no "supporting players" in the credits.
Simon Oakland as the gangster Mauritany (described as a "grim Neanderthal") gets knocked off pretty early in this show accompanied by some very interesting editing. The main titles are presented one word at a time. McGarrett tells Kono to "put your ear to the coconut wireless" (local expression for "the grape vine"). The "memories" theme is heard as TV repairman Clem (Morgan Upton) eats lunch with his wife Doris (Josie Over). When the two are seen in bed later, Doris is wearing lots of lipstick! Bill Edwards, seen later in the series as Jonathan Kaye, is the sexually ambiguous Frank Wellman (described as both a homosexual and transvestite) who plunges to his death (the shot of the guy falling is taken from #87, Bait Once, Bait Twice). McGarrett looks at pictures of various women on Wellman's wall and tells Danno that these women are men! When Wellman's death is written up in the newspaper, the headlines once again have lower case type. Kwan Hi Lim, looking younger than usual, plays the very oily Chang. When Bonnie Soames (Joanne Barnes) listens to music on the airplane at the beginning, she says, "I dialed Streisand, I get Stravinsky." Chin Ho is seen doing surveillance on top of a building with a walkie-talkie -- a shot from this will be used in subsequent seasons in the main titles. When Chin reports Wellman's license number, he first says "5J5-298," then repeats it as the correct number which is just "J5-298." Danno has a weird line when McGarrett tells him to give witnesses something to read in the office. Danno replies, "What? The new pension plan?" Prior to the murder, Clem tells Mauritany that he is turning on the TV because he wants "the tubes to warm up." But wouldn't this be a transistorized TV? One of the pivotal characters of the show -- Charlie Saunders, an ex-detective -- is not mentioned in the end credits at all!
This episode starts with a blurb saying "The producers gratefully acknowledge the assistance of the Department of Defence and the United States Navy." One wonders why they were co-operative, since the show is about sailors smuggling heroin into Hawaii! Maybe the show was intended as a large-scale public service announcement, since at the beginning of the show, Admiral Sample says, "Some of our men face bigger risks from drugs than they do from bullets." (He's played by real-life Admiral Joseph McGoldrick.) Danno goes undercover on board a Navy ship posing as a doctor to try and track down the "route of the horse." There are weird camera angles at the beginning of the show when a sailor is under the influence. Near the end of the show, McGarrett and Danno are seen in civilian clothes driving a white Mustang. The "military theme" is heard briefly during the score by Ray.
A psycho named Ralston is knocking off the wives of men formerly in his army outfit. When the first of them that we see is stabbed during the teaser, she's shown lying in the shower but there is no blood. When her husband hears about her fate, he says "Oh, Jesus" to McGarrett. The show's second murdered wife gets pushed off a cliff in the middle of nowhere. Despite this, a cop finds her pretty quick! There are stock shots of McGarrett running down the Palace steps past tourists and driving past the Dillingham Fountain. Both the violin and military themes are heard. This is the last show for Kono, who speaks Japanese to a souvenir vendor at one point. He has a good line to McGarrett: "I got a photogenic memory," which McGarrett corrects to "photographic." Moki Palacio, who appeared as a dope pusher in the previous show, is seen briefly as a Telegraph Clerk. When Five-O tries to grab Ralston at the airport, Chin Ho seems to be standing in front of the same sign with Japanese characters as he was in Follow the White Brick Road, except in that episode the sign was in a hotel! At the finale, McGarrett grabs Ralston's bayonet with his bare hand -- ouch!!