Originally Posted by Todd View Post
Bobbi has been guiding my Five-O viewing. When she posts a "50th anniversary" thread, it inspires me to go watch the episode again -- some of which I haven't seen in 25+ years.

You can count me among the people who liked this episode. Sorry, Mike! (He gave it 2.5 stars.)

Actually, I see Mike really liked the episode, yet penalized it 1.5 stars because of the continuity screwup with the name of Joey Collins/Thad Vaughn. In the words of a certain President... "C'mon, man!" That deserves a deduction of a half-star at most!

I really do think this is a 3.5 star episode, but not because of the Thad Vaughn thing (which I admit is annoying for diehard fans, and a head-scratcher as to how they could have let that happen, just two seasons after the original episode.)
I'd like to put forth an explanation for this glaring inconsistency in which it wouldn't be a case of the writers/producers being too stupid to have checked. Rather, it may have been a case of engaging in some creative cost-cutting in that if they specifically made this episode a sequel to "And They Painted Daisies On His Coffin" by name-checking a character from that episode, then that might have meant being on the hook for an extra royalty to John D.F. Black who wrote "Daisies." (or at least been forced to get his permission or pay a fee) But if they change the name of the character and just use the footage, then they can technically argue that the episode isn't really a sequel to "Daisies" and thus Black wouldn't have been entitled to anything. This sort of creative decision making has influenced many a script of other TV shows down through the years where if you use a character "created" by someone in one episode, you're potentially on the hook if you use that unique character again in another episode not written by the same writer.