Air Cargo...Dial for Murder

Episode 79, season 4. Original air date: 11/2/71.

Whenever there's an Asian version of Hollywood Shuffle made, someone will have to note how every single recognizable Asian character actor spent time in the 70s between playing monks or railroad coolies on Kung Fu or criminals on Hawaii Five-O. Jimmy Wong (perhaps most known for his role in Seinfeld as the unhelpful restauranteur in the famous Chinese restaurant episode) has definitely played both. Early on in this episode, he's quaking before McGarrett and shivering before his superior who has implicated him in a murder stemming from their cargo-insurance scam. "Whatever happened to our inscrutable oriental?" the crime boss asks. Jimmy Wong trembles and says "You don't understand! We're on a collision course with McGarrett." The plot is pretty convoluted but it has a hilarious part about the fancy new invention of telephone answering machines, which McGarrett quickly masters to his advantage as well as a classic interrogation of the implicated secretary played by Marion Ross (who looks older here than she did on Happy Days--but not as old as the grandmother she seems to play on ever single sitcom today).

Highlight: McGarrett quoting Thoreau into the answering machine--"If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer."

Wednesday, Ladies Free

Wednesday, Ladies Free. Episode 75, Season 4. Original air date: 9/28/71. A sicko at a carwash makes copies of women's keys while their cars are being washed and then murders them in their homes, leaving them dressed up like a blonde prostitute he once knew. Things are complicated by a detestable private eye and a hooker who has long since gone straight. Yet again, a junkie's weakness proves helpful to 5-0.

Highlight: Chin Ho protesting his trustworthiness to a local working girl "This is Chin!"

3,000 Crooked Miles to Honolulu

3,000 Crooked Miles to Honolulu. Episode 76, season 4. Original air date: 10/5/71. They may have filmed the opening scene in Hawaii even though it's supposed to be happening outside of Denver. At any rate, when those guys blow up the armored vehicle with a bazooka, it doesn't quite look like Colorado. The complex travelers-checks scheme is launched by Buddy Ebsen, a bow-tied professor leading a group of seasoned criminals. It's fun to bob along to the crazy over-emplained details of the case. But, come on, how can I accept Uncle Jed and Barnaby Jones as a villain (albeit a less bloodthirsty villain than some of his cohorts)? That's awful. It all boils down to where McGarrett traps them all aboard the plane and he gets on the pilot's mic and says the immortal words "Aloha, suckers!" How could that not be the name of the episode? The name of a spin-off? Highlight: Russ Meyersesque montage sequence about the passing of the checks, including a frame of the "Grog N Sirloin" restaurant.

Two Doves and Mr. Heron

Two Doves and Mr. Heron. Episode 077, Season 4. Original air date: 10/12/71. Five-O was excellent for unselfconsciously wandering into the tensions of Vietnam. McGarrett is, to me, always a force against psychological reductions in favor of military code and honor. In this one, John Ritter's an obnoxious hippie trying to impress his chick with his panhandling skills, but the guy he puts the touch on turns out be quite lonely and quite gay and he wants to get "friendly," so Ritter knocks him cold with a 2X4 and discovers the guy's carrying a sack of cash he embezzeled from an insurance company. Perhaps Ritter's future as Jack Tripper is some kind of karmic equalization for this wanton act of homosexual panic. Anyways, Ritter steals the cash, makes an accomplice of the chick who is now confused and saddened by the Ritter's anti-hippie interest in material things. Meanwhile, Dan-o is looking for a girl who he knew when he lived in Berkeley (O, Dan-o, you closet hipster!) who is a missing person, maybe in Hawaii. This girl is Ritter's hippie-chick, so Five-O better find her soo because the old "closet queen" Ritter knocked out is after them too--the guy even torches an o.d'd junkie's pad he mistakenly thought the hippie chick. The dramatic climax comes at the airport: Ritter goes to get snacks for a flight they are lamming it to Hong Kong, but when Ritter comes back, two snack bags in hand, the embezzler has kidnapped the chick and has Ritter paged to the phone; he tells Ritter he'd better give back all his money or the girl'll be dead, so once he hangs up, Ritter throws ONE of his snack bags in the garbage and gets on the plane. What does he care? Luckily, McGarrett, Dan-o and Chin Ho catch Ritter before the actual plane takes off and McGarrett gets to shoot the "friendly" embezzeler in the leg. The girl is safe, happy to see Dan-o and is alerted to Ritter's treachery. Still, one thing I don't understand is Ritter's throwing away of the second snack bag. I mean, it's a long flight to Hong Kong--why wouldn't Ritter want two snacks all the same? Highlight: Chin Ho says "Yo."

Follow the White Brick Road

Follow the White Brick Road. Episode 95, season 4. Original air date: 3/7/72.

Why would anyone suspect a tattoo parlor called "The White Horse" of being a front front for a heroin ring? Next thing you know, they'll be raiding massage parlors. It's amazing how many junkies there are in the world of 5-0. If you measured the cases in the 5-O files (esp. the incidental cases where a junkie turns out to be an important stoolie etc.) vs. the population, Honolulu would make Seattle look like Prince Edward Island.

Good shot of Chinatown in Honolulu circa 1972. The staggering junkie falls in the street which sets in motion an elaborate sting where Dan-o, and eventually McGarrett, are undercover on a naval ship being used to import smack. The science angle seemed strange (all that fingernail stuff) but you got to love old 70s shows with lots of drug slang. "I thought I was just chippin' but I'm hooked!"

Highlight: The final scene, where McGarrett sngrily slams the wad of bills into the heroin powder, is one of my favorites of the entire series.

Good Night, Baby, Time to Die

Good Night, Baby, Time to Die. Episode 93, season 4. Original air date: 2/22/72.

The backgrounds of the apartments, the crazy 70s fashions--Hawaii Five-o often resembles the most ambitious 70s rec rooms and that style is why it's still so eminently loveable. This episode runs a lot like a teleplay, highlighting the perfs of Jack Lord, W. Watson and Beth Brickell. An old heist is talked over as McGarrett is called to protect a woman whose old boyfriend has promised to come back and get her. Of course, McGarrett has a plan up his sleeve and that plan is "deus ex machina." No wonder he was so stoic to her stumbly, drunken advances! I think if this case went to trial that she would get off. McGarrett's old tape recorder not as foolproof as it might seem. Blondie in the yellow baby-doll would say anything if she thouht her life in danger. Highlight: The villainess saying "I just can't imagine a guy with a name like McGarrett not having one drink."

Cloth of Gold

Cloth of Gold. Episode 92, season 4. Original air date: 2/15/72.

An outrageously effiminate man named "Mingo" (a kind of mix between Hugh Hefner and Charles Nelson Reilly) dies at a big party for his benefit. The low-lifes at the party are the suspects and some of them are knocked off as the ep goes on. The murder weapon, the "cloth of gold," is a toxic shellfish, and ultimately weilded by a sympathetic character who was after the low-lifes for getting his daughter hooked on dope and sragging her into pornography (One of the low-lifes has a Bob Crane-like prediliction for home-made porn). Strange scene where Dan-o confronts the auteur. Strange episode insofar as there not much McGarrett, except, of course, for the final dramatic scene.

Highlight: When Kono notes "Dead fish, dead man", Dan-o dismisses it as "Hawaiian symbolism."

Skinhead

Skinhead. Episode 90, season 4. Original air date: 2/1/72.

I saw the ending of this episode a long time ago: McGarrett's great closing remarks, "A man? Do you even know what that means?"

Started out all 70s kooky--a big shindig with jumpy cameras and close-ups of hot-pants--but turns into one of the heaviest of all H50 episodes, replete with a Law and Order like insight into the cruelty of cross-examinations.

Highlight: Kono going after the Skinhead for his racial crack.