Tricks Are Not Treats

Tricks Are Not Treats. Episode # 127, Season Six.
Originally aired: October 23, 1973.

You see an episode of 5-0 like this and you can't believe your good fortune you decided you felt a touch of the "Dublin flu" and didn't go into work. A classic in its own way. Apparently, in the Chinatown area
of Homolulu, there's a vibrant prosititution trade run by black pimps. We've never seen them before in 5-0, but there they are in low-riding, decked out caddies and dressed in the stereotypical style of the blaxploitation pimps. It's like Ron O'Neal had a sale at the saturday flea market in the Aloha Bowl! All the pimps hang out at a groovy soul food restaurant and, like all TV pimps, know incredibly funky ways to high five one another. The action starts when one of the hat-wearing flesh traders, J.Paul (Ron Glass - Barney Miller's Harris), is wacked by
loan shark, Lolo (Gregory Sierra! - Barney Miller's Chano) who has long taxed the pimpsand is looking for compliance to his latest increase. Lolo is unpeturbed and calls them all "pimples" but another big-hat weraing pimp, Harley Dartson (Glynn Turman, who played the math teacher on A Different World), who also has a life at home with a white wife and two kids, has a plan to take out Lolo for good. 5-0 follows the trail of this plot, including interrogating a local bartender played by Pat Morita and trying to protect Lolo with a cop's six-shooter. McGarrett is at his swingin' best showing how he is down with the slang of the superpimps. Classic.

Highlight: Duke telling McGarrett: "The hos are back on the stroll."

The Sunday Torch

The Sunday Torch. Episode # 125, Season Six. Originally aired
October 9 1973.

Somebody's setting fires every Sunday in Honolulu. As the fire investigator suggests it's a sexually frustrated pyro doing the job, McGarrett sees a shrink and contemptuously asks to see the files of all she's treated for fire-lovin'. The shrink is axiomatically athiestic and McGarrett angrily tears into her: "Doctor, I've got a job to do. There's a psycho trying to burn down this city. McGarrett's contempt proves utterly well founded as the shrink and a local pharmaceutical dealer were cooking up a scheme to frame a local match-sniffing patsy to a murder.

Highlight: the pyro's sad staring at a little sterno flame.

Jury of One

Jury of One. Episide #120, Season Five. Originally aired March 13, 1973.

Not so much 12 angry men, but a willing-to-convict crowd beset by a corrupt jury. It starts out with McGarrett seeming uncomfortably chummy with Duke, then it turns to the court house drama, where they all try to find out who the insider is on the jury and why he's doing it. Though, in the end, it shouldn't have been that hard to figure out and the legal system seems awfully indulgent of McGarrett's dragnet.

Highlight: Che Fong calmly taking the stand.

The Listener

The Listener. Episode #112. Originally aired: Jan 16 1973

Pretty classic episode which features the lunatic babblings of a completely crazy postal worker who is tormenting a local shrink, bugging his home and office. It's a level of audio surveillance which probably surpasses anything the CIA could do and part of the Conversation-era paranoia about bugs. The poodle-permed shrink seems a disaster (his patients one bad call away from suicide) and is played by the character actor Robert Foxworth who has worked forever playing these professional characters--just the other day I saw him as the Gilmore's family lawyer in The Gilmore Girls. With a complex, almost submarine-like mechanism, Che Fong and Dan-o ensnare the psycho, but McGarrett makes the collar with a savage right hook. Again, McGarrett's basic intolerance for psychological "excuse" rules Oahu.

Highlight: McGarrett's visible anger when the shrink finds it hard to heed his command to be quiet.

Infinity

Infinity

McGarrett slams the wad into the heroin,
McGarrett confronts Wo Fat on the deck,
McGarrett goes uncover as a hippie,
McGarrett says "Where's the ego? What's his mark?"
McGarrett takes a secretary out,
McGarrett negotiates surrender;
McGarrett is suddenly in Thailand.
McGarrett seems to appreciate jazz;
McGarrett sent his poems to Ring Clone,
McGarrett was stung by their rejection;
McGarrett knows he’s bested by sweet ‘ono,
McGarrett fucks her in the gas station.
McGarrett’s Navy tats are most sincere:
McGarrett est saturam non scribere.

Journey out of Limbo

Journey out of Limbo. Season 5, episode 104. Originally aired: Oct. 31 1972.

What's funnier than Dan-o with amnesia? Chin Ho's and Ben's disbelieving laughter at his murky suggestions as to what he remembers. "A boat indoors! Ha!" This ep starts out with Dan-o being dumped out in a truck full of sand, suffering a brain concussion. As he slowly regains his memory, he realized he was being hunted down by a group of people who were planning the assassination of a Chinese official (played by Philip Ahn, famous for his turn as the demanding Master Kan on Kung Fu) who was visiting Hawaii. The chase of Dan-o is great: he's in slo-mo on a horse, pursued by maniacs in a jeep. Naturally, it turns out Dan-o ended up in the snad truck because he dove right into it as it was passing by. There may have even been ethnic dimension to Dan-o's recovery as Steve kind of calls Chin Ho and Ben off from their disbelief and has in faith in Dan-o as he peels away the plot by a father (Keenan Wynn) of a soldier killed in Korea by the Communist Chinese "dignitary." It's one of the more odd-ball turns in Five-O, but a good turn all the same.

Highlight: When McGarrett starts interrogating Dan-o as if he was held under indictment--McGarrett's famous impatience with psychology.