Killer Bee turns 50!

Many thanks to Mr. Mike for the reminder, I've had a lot going on today. :)

Tonight, CBS aired "Killer Bee" 50 years ago.

The premise is pretty good with a Vietnam veteran (David Arkin) trying to cover up his crime of killing everyone in his unit. He does this by trying to drive the lone survivor (Jeff Pomerantz) insane through the use of drugs, kidnapping two kids and stabbing himself making it look like the survivor did it!

Mr. Mike has a great review here: http://www.fiveohomepage.com/5-0log2.htm#41

There are a few takeaways including the mother (Doreen Lang) of the survivor who is a total "B" by herself! She's so selfish ... dysfunctional is an understatement. Another takeaway is the medical/psychological mumbo jumbo that I do agree with Mr. Mike takes up a bit too much time. If McGarrett was the one receiving the information it would have been, "English, doc" and the end of it. They would have been left to fill the episode with something else. I do like the end where Danno tells McGarrett, "The bee's a rare psychological term, Steve, which takes a lot of studying to understand." I found that particular exchange funny.

It takes the team awhile to put the pieces together with the veteran trying to throw them off the track by lying that he met the survivor at the VA hospital but really knew him at the unit. At the final confrontation, we see McGarrett in an Army uniform because the veteran is the one really going insane because he's carried the guilt for killing the platoon for too long.

War is hell and this episode does a pretty decent job of showing that. Happy 50th! :cool:

Just watched this one tonight, as I've been hitting Season 2 lately.

This was a solid episode. Not great, but decent. The acting of Jeff Pomerantz (who played Ted Frazette) wasn't very good, and was distracting at times. It's actually not that hard to play a crazy person, but Pomerantz overacted and I had a hard time taking him seriously. David Arkin, who played villain George Loman, also didn't put in a very good performance, though his final dramatic scene was done pretty well.

I wish they explained why Loman killed everyone in his unit but only wounded Frazette when they were in Vietnam. Were they trying to imply that he also tried to kill Frazette, but somehow he survived and was found later?

Mrs. Frazette was an awful woman whose coldness was never really explained. At one point Ted mentions that she was also cold to his dad until he died, but "shows up to his grave every Wednesday, even if it's raining". Too bad we didn't get to learn more about her. It's unclear if Ted's problems were because his mom was so awful and uncaring, or if he had psychological problems and his mom handled them really badly.

The CBS-released DVD cut out part of McGarrett's line near the end to George, where he asked, "What did you do to earn those medals, George? Did you make a sweep of some gook-infested hill?"

The removed the "Did you make a sweep of the some gook-infested hill?" part, and instead quickly cut to George running away. I hate edits like that. Yes, such language would be inappropriate today for a "good guy" character like McGarrett to use, but dialogue like that informs us of the norms of the time, which is part of the joy of watching old television shows and movies. I hate when old works are censored because of concerns of offending modern audiences.

Todd, that line is on my DVDs and in the subtitles:

00:48:12:09 00:48:14:22
Did you make some sweep
of some gook-infested hill?

Do you have the official DVDs of the season with a cover like this?

http://fiveohomepage.com/images/five-o-2.jpg

You might want to check some of the other "bad words" in the show and see if they have also been censored:

http://fiveohomepage.com/badwords.htm

By the way, I just discovered the word "bastard" is supposedly said in the episode Tsunami. Check out my recent re-view of this show:

http://fiveohomepage.com/5-0log10.htm#224

Ah, looks like I bought some ripoff version of the DVD, and it wasn't actually the CBS version. Got it cheap off eBay, so that probably explains it.