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Thread: Forty Feet High and It Kills!

  1. #1
    Rewatching this episode and a few things strike me:

    1. Will Geer is really entertaining to watch. i remember him as Grandpa Walton the most and found him very funny in the latter role. As Dr. Lochner, he does not disappoint one iota. I know we talked about it quite a bit on Mr. Mike's forums about how Leonard Freeman and company hired him when most wouldn't due to the aftermath of McCarthyism. I still growl at that senator even though all that happened before I was born.

    2. Is it me, or is James MacArthur ambidextrous!? My dad was, due to being left-handed and being 'broken' of it. This is the second episode I remember him using the radio with his left hand while driving with his right. The first being "Yesterday Die And Tomorrow Was Never Born." The latter one, he looked like he wanted to throw the radio mike out the window because it got caught up with the steering wheel! There are also several instances where he holds the .38 in his left hand. Of note, Jack Lord does the same thing throughout the series. Were both of these guys ambidextrous? Later on, Jack Lord held the gun with both hands. I notice because I'm a southpaw myself.

    3. McGarrett has a poker face that won't quit! He stands stoic as Wo Fat comments about the stalemate and how they will meet again. No wonder McGarrett is so hard to read in the series, especially Season 12!! There are a few times in the last season he is so tough to figure out what he's really thinking!!

    This episode was really enjoyable, the second/third time around. (I'm doing yet another count - I must be insane!) It definitely deserves the four-star rating it got on Mr. Mike's site. Of note, I'm not a big fan of the Wo Fat episodes but the banter between the two in this one proves why that particular rivalry endures. So for me to give this one a high ranking, that's saying a lot!

  2. #2
    Will Geer’s and McGarrett’s chess maneuvers with Wo Fat, and the professor’s witty comebacks, are a huge element in this episode’s success. Not to mention Richard Shores’ jazzy score in the pre-title sequence, the use of the series’ theme in the score, and McGarrett’s shameless flirting with the gorgeous Sabrina Sharf—all these elements serve to make this episode one of my favorites of the series. There was a kinetic energy to this episode that really wasn’t found in a lot of the later episodes.

  3. #3
    JeffH nailed it, I agree to the point of not needing to add anything to his comments.

    As for Will Geer I really liked him in The Waltons too. As for the whole black list thing I've always had mixed feelings, on one hand I never like government power (the less the better) and McCarthy had a mean spirited feel about him. On the other hand Communism (responsible for the murder of over 100,000,000 people and tens and tens of million other deaths in wars around the world) was a grave threat to our free way of life and there was substantial subversive elements in the media that were communist agents, spies and/or propagators of propaganda. Hollywood really did need to be cleaned up, it was handled wrong (as usual) but the threat was real. I don't know what Geer did in all this or what happened to him during the hearings.

  4. #4
    5O@50 - Agree with your comments. Not to get too much into the weeds on the political front but you hit it all the way around.

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