Five-O Oddities, Goofs, Trivia -- Season 8

Stars Susan Dey as the young-looking but attractive Susan Bradshaw, a money-runner for Las Vegas gangsters. Andrew Prine as the hitman Wally Hatch pursuing her after she murders her "connection" is a total prick. Hatch refers to his partner, Kimo Yoshihara (Jake Hoopai) as "Kimo Sabe." Both of them have to answer to Charles Brolin, played by the bearded Robert Witthans, who usually appears as a clean-cut military type. When he meets McGarrett, Brolin refers to the top cop as "master of the oblique." When Yoshihara pursues Bradshaw at the beginning of the show, they are going the wrong way down a one-way street. Much of the music in this show (by Ray) is banal, especially the scene in the surfboard manufacturing shop. When Danno is talking to an L.A. cop, he asks "How's the smog?" and then winces at the reply. McGarrett knows too much in this episode. He asks the boys to check all incoming flights for one of the suspects ... a previous show said there were around 200 flights a day! Interesting stunt work when "McGarrett" drops from helicopter to a boat during the final pursuit. What kind of a Ford is Jeff Heywood (Marc Singer) driving? Its license number is D-86-A, suggesting it's not registered as a normal car.

Stars George "Sulu" Takei as a cop who goes undercover to infiltrate the "Campanesian Liberation Front." Although this "radical" group is supposedly people opposed to this Asian country, why are almost all of them white with the exception of an Oriental contact person referred to in the credits as "Mystery Man"? At the beginning, why is the Takei look-alike (actually him, no doubt -- not specified in the credits) trying to grab a cab seemingly outside the airport where he is conveniently hit by a car? At one point when McGarrett and Pete Masters (Lou Frizzell) are talking, their dialog seems to overlap! Chin uses the moniker of "Mr. Iolani." McGarrett addresses a female suspect as "honey." There is mention of using a "telfax" to send information. When the "Hilo airport" blows up, it looks rather low budget. Danno has an incredible stunt at the end when "he" falls out of a truck while wrestling with John Colicos. By the way, when Colicos is shooting at the plane, with Danno driving along side of him, the bazooka-like missile launcher seems horizontal to the ground, i.e., aimed at Danno!

McGarrett freaks when the obnoxious Dr. Ormsbee (Pat Hingle) wants to smoke in his office, saying "It's my air space, don't pollute it." Ormsbee later denounces McGarrett for "fascist tactics." Features stock "defence" shots of missiles launching. Why is it that someone always finds the bodies in Five-O, even though they are in the middle of nowhere (like the guy that Soon-Teck Oh knocks off at the beginning of the show)? Soon-Teck asks for a "555" phone number at one point. McGarrett and crew suddenly bursting into the bad guys' hideout at the end seems rather reckless. But not as much as when McGarrett picks up Soon-Teck's cyanide capsule!

Lois Nettleton's song at the opening is horrible! When Julene (Karen Ericson) falls off the balcony, she falls sideways. Danno says "one of the chicks told me," referring to the party guests. Shelly Novack as Oliver McDougall (formerly with the LAPD) makes a comment about dope smokers: "Some of those people left the party awfully fast because they were either carrying hash or pot. They get brown stains on their fingers from biting down the short roaches." Nettleton's mother is played by Jean Tarrant, who often appeared during the series as a doctor or psychiatrist. Nettleton's daughter is obnoxious. The gangster faking illness in the hospital refers to his nurse (a Hawaiian woman) as "a brass-headed bimbo." McGarrett hides Nettleton at his rented beach-house and is into health food: "I'm one of those nuts who eats dates, figs, wheat germ and yogurt."

James MacArthur's real-life adoptive mother, Helen Hayes, gives a delightful performance as Danno's Aunt Clara who comes to Hawaii for a visit but ends up helping Five-O crack down a scam fleecing senior citizens out of money in expired bank accounts. Ian Wolfe appears as Edgar P. Miller, who meets Aunt Clara on the plane. He lives at 42 Brandon, Minneapolis and his hotel room in Hawaii is 2504. He places two phone calls, one to Clara at the Rainbow Hotel (555-4956) and the other to a "retirement home" run by Charles Durning as Havens (555-3770). When Clara takes a taxi, it has the phone number 555-2099 on its roof. Stock shots of cop cars. When Ellen Sutherland (Lynne Ellen Hollinger) terminates one of the bank accounts, the date -- Sept. 26, 1975 -- is seen. Peggy Oumansky plays Mrs. Crenshaw.

Filmed with the "assistance of the Coast Guard," this episode features Jack Cassidy as Morwood, a high school vice-principal and boys' counsellor who enlists the help of students in smuggling drugs. His salary is reportedly $14,000 a year. I found this episode unusually dull.

Simon Oakland plays Jose Mendoza, owner of several waterfront warehouses which are being ripped off (by Mendoza himself). As usual, Oakland rants and raves a lot, especially during his meeting with McGarrett and the Governor. McGarrett at one point finally has enough of this bluster, saying "go to the governor, go to the president, I don't give a damn!" Mendoza's daughter, the top-heavy but very young looking Elena (Kathy Beller) is dating local boy Tommy Lin (Richard Hatch). Mendoza refers to Tommy as "trash." Tommy is involved in the warehouse thefts and brings Elena along to watch (unaware at first of her father's connection with the operation). Tommy Fujiwara plays Danno's friend Luis Kimura, who is murdered by Harry Opala (Ric Marlow) when he comes upon a warehouse being robbed. (Interestingly, "opala" is the Hawaiian word for "garbage.") Kimura's license is 7F-7129, his body is removed in a Physician's Ambulance. At the end of the show, an American Ambulance takes away Tommy who is wounded by Kimura. David "Lippy" Espinda as pawnshop owner H. Kaneho has a touching scene when Danno comes to redeem a ticket (#8518) of the now-deceased Kimura. When Opala and Zeno Kohana (Alan Naluai) are escaping from cops, the action seems sped up. Of course, when their car plunges onto some rocks, it explodes. There are continuity problems with the scene behind McGarrett's car driving near the end. McGarrett is a sparring partner at the beginning of the show. The music (stock) has a very annoying cue with descending violins.

James Olson is Travis Marshall, muckraking author who digs up a grave to expose Five-O's incompetence during the investigation into the disappearance of the rich Henderson family's son several years before. Marshall says that he has appeared on several major talk shows, including "Johnny Carson, Mike Douglas and Merv Griffin." When McGarrett interviews Marshall, the latter says that "kooks" often call him up wanting to share secrets ... "and more," giving McGarrett a kinky grin. When Chin Ho later says he is reading one of Marshall's books, McGarrett asks him: "Can you read English, Chin?" Chin replies: "Only when it's translated into Chinese." Later, when McGarrett comes up with some clever remark, Chin says that it would "make a nice bumper sticker." (Touché, Chin!) Chin also has a good pun when he and Danno are in the cemetery and the Henderson's aged servant Koji shows up. When Danno wonders why, Chin says, "Maybe he digs graves." While the Five-O team are looking at some old pictures taken during the investigation, Chin says, "Who's the chick?" Danno replies she was considered "the sexiest number in town." The excellent score by Morton Stevens sounds like at times Bernard Herrmann's Psycho. There is a black and white flashback scene as well as talk of rape and sexual matters. During the main titles there is an inexplicable freeze-frame. Moe Keale appears as the Henderson's butler Kono, Elissa Hoopai is Maru (McGarrett addresses her as "honey"). The episode is directed by Jack Lord.

Ed Asner plays the sleazy industrialist August March who is involved with smuggling Oriental art objects into Hawaii. He fabricates a frameup using a tiny netsuke collectible which McGarrett bought in Japan in 1951 during the Korean conflict. Asner's performance is delightfully oily, as is that of Kwan Hi Lim as his deadpan henchman Suzari. When the two are together, it's sort of like Mazola meets Olestra! A notable quote by March to McGarrett: "You are correct, sir!" There is a long exposition at the beginning when McGarrett and Danno are walking.

There is a very long musical sequence (score by Don Ray), just over 6 minutes, at the beginning of the show as Brad Stevens (Kario Salem) breaks into a laboratory and steals deadly nerve gas. Later, during a university class where Danno is a guest speaker, Stevens quizzes Danno about circumstantial evidence. Danno was instrumental in getting Stevens' father kicked off the police force after allegations of taking payoffs. It takes just over a minute and a half for Chin Ho to have a call traced that Stevens makes to the Five-O office. Danno later figures out what's going on when he flashes back to Stevens' question in the class in a black and white sequence. Stock shot of a radio on a dashboard. Danno's car license is 2H-3163. Galen Kam appears as a hotel clerk. I wonder why Stevens has to climb on the roof of the Byodo-In Temple at the finale when he is threatening the "royal family" (from some unnamed country).

As sleazy lawyer Alex Kelsey (Don Porter) pours kerosene out of a lamp at the beginning of the show to incinerate his client Minoru Tahashi, the lamp falls apart! Tahashi lives at 107 Pepeekeo Street, and was born in 1896 -- he dies in 1975. He has a safety deposit box containing information about gold bullion stashed during World War Two -- the box number is 17. Lew Ayres as Commander Reginald Blackwell speaks Japanese at Tahashi's funeral to his son Kazuo (Mako): "I'm so sorry this happened." Chin Ho seems to be having a bad horoscope day. First, Kazuo gives him a hard time for tailing in the usual obvious manner. Then two thugs flatten Chin's tire. And at the end he walks right in front of Kazuo who is about to shoot at the cops! Moe ("Truck") Keale plays local mobster Din Lee. His two goons are accompanied by cheap-sounding music. Their car license number is 9F-2161. Arte McCollough plays a cop named Tolaka. The ending is sucky.

The son of a Japanese businessman named Byong Sunahara (his first name is totally un-Japanese) is kidnapped and held for ransom underwater in a specially-constructed capsule by a gang under the leadership of the nasty female terrorist Asuko (Suesie Elene) -- more likely her name would be Yasuko. She belongs to the Japanese Red Army, unlike the typical fictional Five-O radical group, an actual and prominent terrorist organization formed in 1969 and very active through the 1970s. One of the gang members is Paul Colburn (Bruce Boxleitner, who shows his teeth less than in his previous appearance). Paul meets an untimely end. There are international implications to the abduction as evidenced by the presence of Jonathan Kaye. McGarrett calls him "sir" at one point, rather odd considering their rather chummy relationship in earlier shows. The civil defense trucks make an appearance to do a triangulation number on radio signals. Dan Stomierosky points out: "McGarrett has to draw an eight mile radius circle on the map from Sand Island. He winds up with a circle that's a mile or so radius at best. If you look at a map, an eight mile radius circle from Sand Island would cover a third of Oahu!" Robert Costa is an aquarium owner and Beau Vanden Ecker makes a very brief appearance as a diver near the end. During the investigation McGarrett tells Chin Ho to "check with the tropical fish places around the island" to find stores selling lion fish, used to make a knockout poison, and Danno to "check the local dive shops" to find the special tanks used to keep the kidnap victim alive underwater. Danno has an interesting scene where he and Chin are blocked in by construction crews and they drive around by going through a ditch in their rather large car. When the Coast Guard is looking for the terrorists, they have some special detection device which can supposedly hear a diver's heart beat under water ... hard to imagine how this is possible over the sound of the ship's engine! The speed with which the tactical squad arrives at the airport at the end is a bit quick. The Honolulu police band is shown at one point to be on frequency 123.1, the emergency channel is 121.5.

Kimo Kahoano is leader of the ecology group Earth People United that is concerned about the "rape of our land." His girl friend's father kidnaps a neighbor's wife and then frames Kimo for the crime. When McGarrett talks to the girl friend she suggests that maybe McGarrett wants to "get it on." McGarrett gives her a big pitch to clear Kimo of the crime, saying "I care about human life, believe it or not." The girl tells him to "go to hell." One of the kidnappers comes on to the wife in a creepy way, saying "I'm irresistible." Chin Ho has a tracking device in his glasses later on in the show. The trombone interval theme is heard briefly.