Retire in Sunny Hawaii... Forever (Season 8, Episode 9) Review
I hadn't seen this episode since my first-time watching of all of Five-O in the mid-1990s. For some reason, despite having the entire library to watch all this time, I never re-watched this particular episode.
I was reminded of it when Mike posted earlier the top rated Five-O episodes on IMDB, and this was #7. I had remembered it being good, but not great, so I was a bit surprsied it was #7. I didn't remember all that much about the plot.
The most memorable thing about this episode -- which definitely stuck with me over the years -- was the fact that Helen Hayes, the adoptive mom of James MacArthur, played Danno's "Aunt Clara". Clara was somewhat based on Hayes herself, a former stage actress whose character named early 1900s actors she actually worked with in her real life.
The episode mostly revolved around Five-O attempting to solve the mystery of the murder of Edgar Miller, a nice old man with Parkinson's Disease, who was befriended on the plane to Hawaii by Aunt Clara. Miller called Clara in a panic when men were attempting to abduct him from his hotel, which eventually led to Five-O investigating, after initially doubting the elderly Clara regarding her claims.
Clara got to "act" in the episode twice -- once when accidentally running into a fake version of Edgar Miller at the real Miller's hotel room, and once at the end, when she worked undercover for Five-O as a new crippled nursing home resident.
Hayes was charming, and had nice chemistry with her real life son, and the story was fairly interesting.
However, writer Jerome Coopersmith's execution of the plot left some to be desired. The murder took place because the real Miller inadvertently interrupted a scam using his name. A nursing home operator (Mr. Haven, played by Charles Durning) was convincing various elderly residents to pretend to be old people with large unclaimed property bank accounts, and this scheme was assisted by a corrupt woman managing that government office. However, it was never clear how Miller knew his bank account had been transferred to unclaimed property, as the newspaper notice was always in the local Hawaii papers, and Miller had been in Minnesota for about 15 years. I suppose it could have been a sheer coincidence that Miller showed up to get his money at the same time the scheme was taking place, but this was never fully explained.
However, the biggest hole in the story came from the need to murder Mr. Miller. Five-O concluded that Haven and his accomplices scammed $1.7 million worth of unclaimed property, without anyone being the wiser. Miller had around $100,000. As the money had not been claimed yet, once Miller came looking for it, why not just let him take it, and move on to the next victim? The $100k was only about 6% of the total take of the scam. Surely they could have let that one go, rather than commit murder!
As Mike noted in his review, Haven was a "bland villain". Aside from the murder of Miller, he never came off as particularly cruel, and seemed to treat his (sometimes annoying) nursing home patients well. A few of the old ladies there remarked that he was "such a nice man" before he quitely threw away a flower arrangement one had made for him. As Mike pointed out, that was the full extent of him shown being "mean"! Haven seemed a lot more like an opportunistic scammer than a cold-hearted murderer. In fact, it was even implied at one point that Haven was mainly running this scam in order to support the nursing home. They should have made him a lot more of a reprehensible character.
It also didn't make sense why they dumped Miller's body on the beach. Wouldn't this create huge suspicion regarding their operation, which had gone undetected thus far? It looked like Coopersmith simply wanted a dramatic scene for the viewer, where Miller's body would shockingly be found in public.
The pretty Lynne Ellen Hollinger played female villain Ellen Sutherland, who was Haven's accomplice at the Unclaimed Property Bureau. Hollinger played ten different guest roles on Five-O, from 1970 to 1980:
School for Assassins (1980) ... Idra Dassan
The Bark and the Bite (1979) ... Laura Conover
The Ninth Step (1977) ... Mavis Tracy
See How She Runs (1977) ... Liana (as Lynn Ellen Hollinger)
Loose Ends Get Hit (1976) ... Madeleine
Retire in Sunny Hawaii... Forever (1975) ... Ellen Sutherland
Hara-Kiri: Murder (1974) ... Ann
Bomb, Bomb, Who's Got the Bomb? (1974) ... Midge
Tricks Are Not Treats (1973) ... Semantha
Three Dead Cows at Makapuu (both parts) (1970) ... Shirley Harris (as Lynn Ellen Hollinger)
As you might guess from her frequent appearances, Hollinger was a Honolulu local who never acted on the mainland. Her other acting credits were "Jake and the Fatman" (during one of the seasons it was set in Hawaii, in 1990), the little-known Hawaii-based drama Raven (1992), One West Waikii (1996), and the new Hawaii Five-Zero (2016).
Most of the frequently-used local actors on Five-O were Asian or Native Hawaiian, but Hollinger was caucasian. She was only 28 years old when this aired in 1975, and is still alive and 74-75 years old today.
Here was Lynne Hollinger in 2016 when she played a librarian on Five-Zero", side-by-side with an undated photo of her as a much younger woman, from her Five-O days (courtesy of Mike):
http://www.fiveohomepage.com/images/hollinger.jpg
Despite being overweight in his 50s and having the appearance of someone who wouldn't live a long life, Charles Durning (who playeed Haven) lived to almost 90, passing away in 2012.
I give the episode 3 stars out of 4.
