Reviewing shows...

[Mr. Mike]

Re-viewing Classic H50 shows has resulted in some demotions as far as the ratings is concerned. Not a big deal in most cases. I am not at Hookman and Nine Dragons yet, but I think they would both no longer be 4 stars, though they are still my favorite episodes.

Recently I did Trouble in Mind, which I thought was outstanding. But I had to go back and check something and then I realized there is a "flaw" in this show.

The big deal about this show is there is contaminated heroin going around which has killed 5 people already. The drummer at a jazz club (played by Morton Stevens) is then one of the victims. But the question is, who supplied him with the bad heroin?

One of the major suspects is this guy named Harry Partch, who was in the club early in the show. When McGarrett and Chin Ho go to this guy's place later they find heroin, but Che Fong checks it out and he says that it is not contaminated. In fact, he said it is crappy, cut with milk sugar.

Later, Eadie Jordan (Nancy Wilson) goes to see Milton Selzer who has some heroin. Selzer is seen at the club at the beginning of the show. Rags, this guy at the club knows that Selzer has heroin, and he sends Eadie to Selzer's place. Eadie and Selzer turn on together, but he doesn't take any of the dope. And it turns out this dope is the stuff that is contaminated with arsenic because some rat poison accidentally fell into the smack. As a result, Eadie dies.

BUT ... the big question is, where did the other 5 people who died get their contaminated heroin? It wasn't from Partch, and it is very unlikely it would be from Selzer, who says that he kept some heroin around for his "friends." These people who died were not jazz aficionados who hung out at the club, as far as is mentioned in the show.

[Todd]

I was always a big fan of "One Born Every Minute" and thought it was 4/4 stars, but when I watched it again last year, I thought 3-3.5 was more appropriate. Still enjoyed it, but I didn't quite find it as enjoyable as I did in the 1990s when I saw it originally (and then rewatched a short time later).

Maybe I will watch Trouble In Mind again. Haven't seen that one since the 90s, and I think I only watched it once, so it will be almost fresh to me.

[Todd]

To answer your question, Mike, it would make sense that the drummer died, because the Milton Selzer character is at the club, as you said, and could have had contact with the drummer.

However, I agree that the other 5 people dying are perplexing, as it's not clear how they could have had contact with him, especially the 17-year-old girl.

I didn't love this episode as much as you did. It bothered me that McGarrett cared so little about Kono being assaulted pretty brutally by Martin, and seemed to forget about that pretty quickly. Laughably, they actually let him go based upon his "I didn't know Kono was a cop" alibi, even though that would be really hard to believe, given that Kono pulled him over (why else would he have stopped) and that the officer's word is typically believed in situations like this. At the very least, McGarrett should have held him and attempted to squeeze him for more info about the smack, and not let him off for the assault unless he gave something useful.

It's also never made clear how they located Martin when he was about to buy that smack off the 13-year-old kid.

The whole episode was kind of weird, and seemed to be somewhat of a showcase of Nancy Wilson's talents.

Wilson, by the way, was alive all the way until December 2018. She died at 81.

[Mr. Mike]

I agree that McG wasn't too concerned about Kono in this episode. Down goes the rating another ½ point!

He seemed much more perturbed about Chin Ho in "24 Karat Kill" where Chin got bonked on the head. And in "Daisies" and "The Young Assassins," he was concerned about Danno.

He was more interested in Kono's welfare at the end of "The Ransom," actually.

I don't think he was ever really concerned about Ben, because Ben never got himself in a pickle!

[Mr. Mike]

I just did a re-view of F.O.B. Honolulu (http://fiveohomepage.com/5-0log3.htm#66).

This episode requires a lot of thinking about stuff behind the scenes as well as relationships and other connections that are not well defined.

There is something very stupid about this show.

There is an assault by McG and Danno flying around in helicopters on Wo Fat's "secret hideout" which is on top of a mountain near Honolulu (duh!) with machine guns. (This is not the stupid thing, though it might be.)

After they land, one of Wo's stooges attempts to burn incriminating evidence before he is killed, but Danno manages to recover a tiny piece of reel-to-reel tape from a garbage can which was set on fire. Despite being recorded at a speed which makes it sound like The Chipmunks, Five-O manages to decipher this at TV station KGMB where they have had similar technical help before. All that is on this tape, which is only a few seconds long, is some Chinese dialog which is the letters "ZIL MA," translated by Chin Ho.

Using this tiny fragment of dialog, taken from somewhere on a tape which is either 1200 or 1800 feet long, Five-O can begin to crack the case, figuring out that the plates for the US $20 bill which are the main object to track down during the show are connected with a ship the BRAZIL MARU. They go to investigate and find out the plates were taken from a crew member, "Zagor, the third engineer," who was murdered by McGarrett's pal Nicholson! DUH!

This bit of detective work hearkens back to the pilot, where the name of another ship, the S.S. ARCTURUS, was determined by examining scraps of paper which were found in the ashes of a burned notebook.

The thing I liked the most about this show was seeing Sabrina Scharf lounging around in a bikini. In fact, I seriously considered making the Gallery pictures accompanying this show with my review just those of her...