Once Upon A Time - review
Related to Joanne Linville's recent passing, this is a review of Once Upon a Time by long-time fan Inglewolf from 2000:
I bring up this episode for discussion again after watching it this past weekend, for the first time in quite a while. Since WGN showed it, I guess it's no longer a popular dub request. So for a change, I watched it for myself.
I think it's safe to assume that everyone on this list is well aware with the plot, especially the relationship between McGarrett and his sister Mary Anne, the tragedy of Mary Anne's infant son's death from cancer, and the "naturologist" scumbag Dr. Fremont and McGarrett's mission to put her behind bars.
The ending, with Fremont's machines and herself being unable to tell the difference between human blood and vegetable dye and McGarrett alone and silently leaving the courtroom for the parking lot (where Mary Anne catches up to him and tightly hugs him), leaves me with a question: what was the fate at that point of Dr. Fremont?
From the start McGarrett wanted her in jail. At first he contacts the FDA to go after a charge of interstate fraud or something that will only punish with a thousand dollar fine and one year in jail at the most. But McGarrett really wants the "quack" (a word used at least a dozen times in this episode) behind bars for murder.
We think he's got her for murder when he's able to exhume the body of a man who died most likely of diabetes but has a death certificate signed by Dr. Fremont claiming a vitamin deficiency as the cause of death. These elements meet the requirements Zipser lays out for McGarrett at the start of act one as to how McGarrett can get Fremont for murder. This all falls apart though when the casket of the deceased is defective and the coroner (one Dr. Pastor I noted) cannot determine a cause of death. This is where McGarrett says "we'll have to find another way".
The other way of course is the switch of a vegetable dye sample for the one of McGarrett's blood. This exposes Dr. Fremont as a complete fraud causing her exposure and humiliation....but does this get her for murder, or would it in the future? This is the point where McGarrett walks out of the courtroom, which is now in a state of near-chaos. There is no final conversation with Zipser or any indication as to what would follow.
I guess this shows how into this one I got. After the depression of the first half hour of the act one and especially Dr. Fremont's final remark to McGarrett at her office, I would've loved to see Dr. Quacker share a cell with Victor Reese's wife ("Full Fathom Five" the only woman booked by Five-0 for murder--I'm pretty sure--to that point). Still I'll take that moment when the judge reads the note regarding the "blood" sample and what follows as ample reward.
As for my remark about the first act being depressing, well that kid suffering from cancer really gets to me. As the father says "poor little guy...eating less and sleeping more". McGarrett has obviously accepted the little guy's fate as he asks the father "what happens...when the baby dies?" Then Mary Anne, convinced her baby is hungry, gives him a bottle but all he wants to do is roll away from it. As a friend of mine who watched the episode with me said, it almost makes you want to find out the infant who played Tommy Whelan Jr. is alive and well today.
And the music by Harry Gellar, which Mr. Mike is perfectly accurate saying it's "first class", has a lot of violin strings to cement that mood of gloom. There's also the fitting piece of music for Dr. Fremont's hyper-dramatic autobiography she acts out for McGarrett. Here the strings are alternated with a church organ playing what sounds like "Amazing Grace"
I also noticed that this one doesn't jump around like some of the Five-0s do (season one examples: "Samurai" and "Twenty-Four Karat Kill"), with some acts being of one entire scene with none being more than three or four. You don't have to waste any time trying to figure out what's going on, except maybe the teaser if you saw this one before the story. What I mean here is if you watched this for the first time and didn't know who the red-headed woman with the baby was, which I admit wasn't the case with me (first time I ever saw this, I missed Part 1 which of course is summarized in the teaser of Part 2).
Of course the reason there aren't a lot of different scenes has to do with this being a nearly all-McGarrett episode. Chin Ho and Kono only appear in the opening scene of act one, Part one. They both manage to get in memorable lines. McGarrett reassigns a speech he was going to give to Chin. The speech is about law and order, and Chin asks "For...or against?". Kono is assigned to watch a gas station suspected of being involved with counterfeiting. Kono remarks "He (Chin) gets to make a speech and I get all the legwork". Danno reappears in the fourth act; this of course is probably the deepest moment of the whole series when McGarrett cries. I hate to say this, but I don't understand Danno's comment of "Steve...just this once...couldn't you back off?" If he meant back off the way his sister meant as far as prosecuting Dr. Fremont and stopping her treatments that his sister thought was curing the child, what difference what it make now that the baby has died? Did Danno think McGarrett's sister is suffering enough and putting the woman she thought was a saint on trial would destroy her further? I fear I maybe missing the whole point, but still I ask.
A couple of final remarks: McGarrett has a good line when he gets out of the cab in LA: "This smog could choke a skunk!" Then of course his line to his sister regarding Dr. Fremont: "She couldn't cure a ham". Then his lines to Fremont herself: "I'd rather take up housekeeping with a cobra" and after her life story: "Like watching an auto wreck".
The get-up Zipser was wearing when he met McGarrett at the FDA office, dark blue shirt and orange pants. He could ONLY have been playing golf that afternoon, which he was.
I still think about the scene in the LA records building where McGarrett gives the blonde who helped him go through the records a kiss. How many takes did it require for her to get her glasses to fall down her face like that?
What is that hand gesture Fremont makes to McGarrett at the finale of Part 1? Looks like the thing the Geller siblings do on "Friends" in place of flicking the bird.
I like Bill Zuckert as the LA judge who's a toughie. Fremonts followers disrupt the first hearing so much that the judge says he's too pee-od to have any judgment and postpones the hearing--which gives McGarrett the day he used looking for the evidence to get Fremont for murder. At the second hearing, the last half of Part 2, he's a good referee between Zipser and Fremont's attorney, Mr. Herbert. I like how he tells Zipser "...you know better".
For the record Joanne Linville played Fremont, Nancy Malone played McGarrett's sister Mary Anne, John Carter plays Mary Anne's husband, and David Sheiner as Zipser. All give outstanding performances. The episode was directed by Michael Caffey and written by Leonard Freeman, of course the series creator.
<my apologies for this review not being chronological sequence-wise. I never do plan out how I write these things...I just do it>
