Season 7-A Study In Rage And Season 7

[John Chergi]

Mr. Mike and Classic HFO Forum Regulars.
I was wondering what do you think about A Study In Rage as a quality or not quality episode and what was your view on Season 7 overall? It wasn't 1 of my FAV seasons. I did like How To Steal A Masterpiece and A Gun For McGarrett. The Young Assassins is 1 of those episodes I enjoy with more viewings. Very suspenseful! I remember Mr. Mike had given A Study In Rage a low mark or star rating. Anapo/Opano I wish they had given more of a background on Opano. It's usually said in the episode about him not being totally accepted in either Hawaii or Haole community. How would you make A Study In Rage better? I thought the painting was very creative and liked how McG tried to write down things in each little picture. The HFO team all chip in on the painting picture meaning. JC

[epaddon]

As a fan of "Battlestar Galactica" (the ORIGINAL!) I admit it's a little disturbing for me to see Captain Apollo (Hatch) playing perhaps the most obsessively disturbed individual in the history of the series, because his murderous obsession is all tied to the possessive want of a single woman. Gretchen Corbett's presence is always welcome.

[Mr. Mike]

I remember Mr. Mike had given A Study In Rage a low mark or star rating.C

Yes, and that review is on my site:

http://fiveohomepage.com/5-0log7.htm#163

I also updated my Classic H50 ratings (though there were not that many changes) here:

http://fiveohomepage.com/ratings/

[Todd]

BUMP

I just watched this again. I saw Mike really disliked it and gave it 1.5 stars. I think it gets 2 -- barely, because at least I was interested in the plot.

The "detective work" by McGarrett and company wasn't particularly impressive! The painting in the murdered doctor's house (surmised to be about the murderer) gave away a massive clue -- two initials, of which one was likely the murderer, and a high school class associated with at least one of the two people.

Indeed, Frank (was he a Five-O member or not?) interviewed the "CH" from that high school class, a girl named Connie, and she quickly identified the murderer! The rest of the time was spent locating him.

Furthermore, Five-O was not very bright when it came to identifying the "tennis" connection! One of the doctors was killed by a tennis racket string, the other died while playing tennis after being poisoned with some kind of nerve agent. Didn't take a genius to realize that the killer had to work there, and must be someone with access to the doctor who got poisoned.

It was like they threw a ton of potential clues at us in order to make it look like McGarrett connected a lot of dots, but in reality very few dots were needed to solve the crime!

Like Mike, I also was perplexed how a tennis pro was able to afford an expensive car and expensive, custom-built home, on a lot with an incredible view. This reminds me of the Five-Zero reboot, where seemingly all the guest characters shown living on the island had impossibly expensive homes.

I'm glad Mike mentioned the weird "Chin calls from a pay phone" scene. It's almost like they shot the scene without bothering to clear out anything else going on there normally. Chin was in a weird alley near an apartment building. There's what seems like a stray dog on the stairs of the building. A guy in a red shirt is seen milling around suspiciously, almost looking like he's going to attack Chin at some point. Just before the scene ends, the guy approaches Chin, but simply walks by him. Weird! What were this guy and dog doing there? Was something cut?

The tear gas scene at the end was very bizarre. At one point, McGarrett says they can simply storm the place, but he'd rather take Mike alive. Why was McGarrett concerned about taking this particular murderer alive? Shouldn't Glynis' safety have been the most important?

Not only was this a weird final scene, but it would have been much more dramatic for Five-O to bust into the place and kill (or at least disable) Mike, just as he's about to kill Glynis. Instead, we get to see Mike simply fall limp due to the tear gas, yet McGarrett punching him out for good measure!

I was surprised to see Gretchen Corbett, whom I had forgotten was in this episode. Five-O and "The Rockford Files" were on competing networks, and in fact would later go on to compete head-to-head during Five-O season 8. (This actually harmed both shows' ratings, by the way, as they attracted a similar audience.) Given that Corbett was a frequent guest on "Rockford" (close to being a series regular), I would have thought perhaps she would have been contractually forbidden from appearing on a CBS show.

Corbett is still alive and acting today. She was only 27 in this episode, despite looking a little bit older. She left "Rockford" near the end of the series, due to some contract dispute.

[ringfire211]

Todd, I like this episode too. Never understood the hate. It’s not a classic but still very good.

What you say about the season 8 ratings makes sense when taking into account that it was on Friday night at 9pm during this one season only, with Rockford being on at the same time on NBC. I often wondered why it dropped so suddenly in the Nielsen ratings from season 7 (where it was ranked #10) to falling completely out of the top 20 during season 8. Then rebounding back during season 9. Now, granted I do have a slight preference for seasons 7 and 9, but 8 was still very good. So its competition with Rockford makes sense that it was affected by it.

The curious thing about Rockford is that it was only in the top 20 during its first season. Then it never cracked the top 20 after that, despite the fact that critically the show was more popular as it went on and garnered (no pun intended) a series of Emmy’s. I just thought that was odd. And it didn’t really have much competition either, except for Five-O during that one season and Incredible Hulk and Dukes of Hazzard during its last 2 seasons. The only other competition I see is either the ABC Friday Night Movie or the CBS Friday Night Movie. Not sure if that affected things. But then looking at the Tuesday 8:30pm slot where Five-O was soaring high during its seasons 4, 5, 6, 7 I see that it also went up against the ABC Movie of the Week and that didn’t seem to affect Five-O at all. So I’m not sure what to make of all this. Maybe it was just a case of Rockford being more popular with the critics than the general public.

[epaddon]

I was surprised to see Gretchen Corbett, whom I had forgotten was in this episode. Five-O and "The Rockford Files" were on competing networks, and in fact would later go on to compete head-to-head during Five-O season 8. (This actually harmed both shows' ratings, by the way, as they attracted a similar audience.) Given that Corbett was a frequent guest on "Rockford" (close to being a series regular), I would have thought perhaps she would have been contractually forbidden from appearing on a CBS show.

Corbett is still alive and acting today. She was only 27 in this episode, despite looking a little bit older. She left "Rockford" near the end of the series, due to some contract dispute.

Gretchen's contract was with Universal, not NBC, so she wouldn't have been barred from appearing on other network shows and if she could get jobs on shows done by other production companies she could do them too since she also did "Wonder Woman" when that was on ABC during her "Rockford" period (not being a full-time regular gave her that flexibility). I remember reading in the book on "The Rockford Files" that she was dropped when Universal refused to pick up the tab for letting the show use her services any longer (meaning Garner's production company would have been on the hook to pay her for any further guest appearances which they couldn't afford) so that was why she was dropped from the show.