Sweet Terror turns 50!

Wow, I'm actually on time this week!!

"Sweet Terror" aired 50 years ago tonight dealing with the sabotage of the sugar cane industry in Hawaii. The man behind it is "The Beast" a.k.a. Erich Stoss played by Theodore Bikel, who I will mention again later.

Stoss has come up with a just about fool proof plan to put a fungus among the cane to wipe out the crop of not just the current year but five years in the future. But you know what they say about fool proof, smarter fools will be invented. ;) Stoss has help in Hawaii from a guy named Lao (Soon Taik Oh) and Mariana de Nava (Linda Marsh) who is on the same flight Stoss arrives on. They gain Five-O's attention because a federal agent messaged ahead but he was killed on the flight. Through all the trappings, tailing and investigating Five-O is able to avert disaster for Hawaii.

Mr. Mike's review http://www.fiveohomepage.com/5-0log2.htm#30 covers it well and I agree with the 2-star rating. It's not bad but it's not one of their best. I do like how we're able to watch the Five-O team members interact with Hawaii's citizens to stop the fungus before any real damage is done.

There are few things Mr. Mike points out:

1. The message through the pilot. Of what I know about that arena, I don't know if the men knew one another but considering Bridger (Dick Cook) was a federal agent, he may have composed a message telling the crew it was crucial to forward it to Honolulu. This could be why Stoss was onto him during the flight. I get he needs to report in but it seems pretty risky to do it in such a 'public' way. There's no guarantee of privacy, I mean they're all in a flying tube ;)

2. McGarrett being stabbed by the same umbrella that killed Bridger. I would assume it would be loaded with poison too! He should be dead :D Earlier in the episode, the coroner showed them (on Danno no less) how Bridger was killed, it was where he was hit in the back, not necessarily poison, maybe the poison was to make sure about Bridger?

3. Stoss' luggage: It's not necessarily normal for someone's luggage to come in on a different flight unless it missed its connection (happened to me on my second trip to Dubai, my bag didn't make the Seattle to Paris leg but I got it two days later - I was there a month for work). It is curious why his briefcase wasn't searched by Customs, or maybe it was and we didn't see that part?

This was Theodore Bikel's only role on Five-O and according to IMDb, he did A LOT! But where I recognized his name from was his single appearance on Star Trek: The Next Generation (S04E02 Family) where he played CPO Sergey Rozhenko, ret. who was Worf's adoptive father from Russia. It's a cool episode because it's just after "Best of Both Worlds, Pt 2," which I hate but many consider among ST:TNG's best episodes (bleh!). Essentially, the crew is trying to regroup after the big fight with the Borg.

Sorry for straying into Trek territory :) Happy 50th, "Sweet Terror"!