The White Brick Road is 50!

[Bobbi]

Tonight, CBS aired "Follow The White Brick Road" 50 years ago.

Thanks to help from the US Navy, Five-O investigates a drug ring on a Naval vessel. It begins with the death of a sailor (Stephen Matthews) in downtown Honolulu. He drops dead in an intersection after leaving a tattoo parlor. The owner of the parlor (Moki Palacio) of course denies knowing anything.

During the course of the case, Danno goes undercover with the Navy in the Sick Bay and meets a ship out of Subic Bay on its way to Honolulu. It's here that the Navy's program of amnesty is highlighted. Arte Salton (Mark Jenkins) is addicted and hurting. On the verge of turning himself in (Danno really didn't give him a choice!), Salton meets up with his shipmate Dillon (David Birney) for a fix and subsequently ODs. Due to this, Five-O's best lead goes away.

However, not all is lost as Che Fong (Harry Endo) has discovered the heroin being smuggled into Hawaii is hidden in fire extinguishers. McGarrett meets the ship himself while it's still enroute. After briefing the captain what's going on, an exercise is completed showing actual Naval personnel in action.

Once the ships docks, Five-O stakes it out to find a maintenance guy (David Doyle) is the pick up guy. McGarrett yells at him pretty good and is allowed to make his drop. This is where Dillon gets busted and the tie-in to the tattoo parlor is cemented. Unfortunately, Salton has since died a needless death and McGarrett has a rare outburst due to this.

Mr. Mike does such a better job than I in describing the episode here: http://www.fiveohomepage.com/5-0log4.htm#95

I like this episode because we see Danno outside of the office. He's no less a smart aleck, holding his own with the Navy. We also get a peek at his personality as he wants to save Salton but can't due to the bigger case at hand.

Another item of interest (at least for me), NIS. We see some agents in action and this is the office that was the forerunner to NCIS (the real ones, not the fictional ones). So, it's nice to see Five-O work with them to try to end this drug ring once and for all.

Happy 50th, "Follow The White Brick Road"!!!

[epaddon]

When I think of this episode, I always keep remembering how McGarrett rattles off the number of years someone is facing three times. Oddly with Birney I thought he was being too easy on him saying "eight to ten in Portsmouth!" (The Navy closed their Portsmouth, NH prison several years after this episode aired). I would have given him 20 years for the way he manipulated Salton into becoming hooked.

Both Birney and David Doyle would be regulars in the CBS sitcom "Bridget Loves Bernie" several months later with Doyle playing Jewish Birney's Catholic father-in-law.

[John Chergi]

I would give Follow The White Brick Road 2 Stars ⭐⭐ Out Of 4 Stars ⭐⭐⭐⭐. It didn't hold too much appeal for me. I did like when Danno reported aboard ship as a Corpsman. In the 1990's, I was a Navy Corpsman and Danno joining the ship was realistic. We had a couple new personnel arrive
aboard ship when stopping at ports during the 6 month deployment. He should have taken the program Danno had suggested and later ended up dead. It's great how Hawaii Five-O worked with the military on several episodes . There's thousands of veterans scattered across the United States that probably watched these HFO episodes. Murder---Eyes Only was another one well-done working with the military. It did have a good cast with Birney & Doyle.