Thanks to Bobbi for posting these 50-year threads.

I had forgotten about this episode and hadn't seen it in a long time.

I feel it's underrated. On IMDB, it gets a 7.8 out of 10, behind a number of other Season 5 episodes. Irene Tsu, who played Chin's daughter Alia, was 26 when it was filmed. She's now 77 years old, and still alive.

Erik Estrada was over 3 years younger than her, and is also still alive. While he had a lot of notoriety due to CHiPs, his career took a downturn after that series ended, and he has made his living off nostalgia and recognition. He also got involved as the spokesman of some shady operations, of which McGarrett and company wouldn't approve!

Here is Erik Estrada in 2005, selling near-worthless land at a place called "California Pines", at a tremendous markup, and implying that it's a deal of a lifetime:




Estrada was just a paid spokesman, so he was not committing any crimes, and he was careful not to promise that he actually lived there, while strongly implying it. I don't know if he realized he was selling a scam, or if he just read a script and didn't understand how shady the whole thing was.

Anyway, I got distracted. I'll talk about the episode in the next post.