Welcome to Season 5!
Things kick off with a big time criminal enterprise in “Death Is a Company Policy” and we get introduced to Kono’s replacement Ben Kokua and Duke begins his recurring run in earnest.
And then Five-O untangles a web of lies in “Death Wish on Tantalus Mountain”. Ricardo Montalban is back (but not in yellow face!). Diana Muldaur returns. And a race car sort of returns.
Listen on Soundcloud, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify.
The team is ready for a new season. Are you?
I was initially inspired to write this post by Miss Simpson in the Season 5 Hawaii Five-O episode “Death Is a Company Policy”, and what I was actually going to confess was that I liked ruthless women. Miss Simpson was a representative of a criminal enterprise so vast it oversaw the work of numerous smaller scale criminal bosses. It’s at first thought that Miss Simpson is nothing more than an accountant sent to audit the criminal books of one of their branch managers, Piro Manoa. However, as the episode progresses, we come to understand that Miss Simpson is more than just an accountant. She’s an important part of their organization and makes the tough, crucial decisions when she has to.
And then just two episodes later came Joyce Hensley in “You Don’t Have To Kill To Get Rich, But It Helps”. The only female exec in a blackmail insurance business, she has a keen eye for good insurance prospects. She also reads Sam Tolliver for filth after only a five minute chat. Cool, calculating, and, well, ruthless.
But in that same episode is a character named Dollie. She’s a madam with amazing fashion sense who takes no shit from Ben. You get the sense that she’s good at her job and she takes care of her girls, but she’s no soft touch. She’s not ruthless. She’s just takes care of business.
And that’s what I really like. A woman who can take care of business. Miss Simpson and Joyce Hensley both displayed that even though their business is on the criminal side of the tracks.
So, let’s flip the script. What about Callie Duquense on CSI: Miami? Here is a woman who brings down the bad guys with same sort of efficiency and ruthlessness as her criminal counterparts I just mentioned. She’s not intimidated when challenged and she has remarkable emotional control even in the most stressful situations. She gets shit done.
Della Street on Perry Mason also comes to mind when it comes to efficient women on the right side of the law. To the untrained eye, she’s just a secretary. But Perry wouldn’t be able to vex Hamilton Burger by beating him in court if Della wasn’t on top of her game. She even keeps Paul Drake in check and that’s no easy task.
Women don’t have to be in law enforcement -or on the opposite side of it- to take care of business. When I was thinking of all of the women I admire, two nurses immediately popped into my mind: Major Margaret Houlihan on M*A*S*H and Dixie McCall on Emergency!.
Dixie is the head ER nurse. There were actually episodes that showed how things went to shit without Dixie in charge. She’s the one choreographing intricate dances of life or death with her staff. Doctors might be running the show, but it’s the nurses who have to anticipate their needs. Dixie got shit done because lives depended on it. And she was good at it.
The same can be said for Major Margaret Houlihan. A career army nurse. She’s in charge of a group of nurses in a war zone. She’s orchestrating order in devastating chaos. Even when taking into consideration her early season shenanigans, Margaret never messed around when it came to nursing. Taking care of those soldiers was her job and she took care of business.
What’s interesting about most of the women I’ve listed in this post (as guest stars we didn’t really see enough of Miss Simpson, Dollie, and Joyce Hensley) is that even though they could be considered strong women because of how effectively they got their shit done, it didn’t preclude them from having emotions. Sometimes the stress or the situations got to them, but they handled it, just like they handle everything. And they handled it in such a way that it didn’t stop them from taking care of business.
And I unabashedly love women like that.
When Episode 49 of Book ’em, Danno came out, I mentioned that I had to edit a chunk of conversation between Dan Budnik and myself out due to the fact that it contained spoilers outside of spoiler territory.
I also threatened to release it as a minisode.
Well, here it is.
Enjoy!
WARNING: It should go without saying since I already said it, but I’m going to say it again…This entire little minisode contains spoilers for the episode “Goodnight, Baby- Time to Die!”. So if you haven’t seen it, you may want to skip this. And if you haven’t listened to Dan and I chat in Episode 49, you’re not going to have any context for this and you may want to skip it.
Okay? Okay.
Season 4 comes to a close with “R&R&R”. A killer is murdering the wives of soldiers who are meeting them in Hawai’i for R&R. It’s a tricky case of vengeance that Five-O must unravel.
I also do my usual inadequate season wrap-up. I think in all of my ramblings about my tallies and such I forgot to mention that Season 4 is a strong season. There’s a nice variety of cases, the two-parter was bonkers in a very good way, the return of Lewis Avery Filer was fabulous, and there was a balanced mix of fun and serious. Did not disappoint.
You can listen to me not say any of that on Soundcloud, iTunes, Spotify, and Stitcher.
As always, there will be a hiatus in August, but I will be back in September with Season 5.
Until then, please enjoy Steve doing a Superman-change on a plane.
Season 4 is fast coming to a close. But we’re riding high all the way out.
In “Didn’t We Meet at a Murder?”, an unusual trio comes together to assassinate a mob boss from Chicago. Five-O has their hands full with this clever plot.
And then Five-O goes gloriously undercover to bust a heroin ring in “Follow the White Brick Road”. So many beautiful aloha shirts and we all know that undercover aloha shirts are my favorite things.
Listen on Soundcloud, iTunes, Spotify, and Stitcher.
For your enjoyment, Steve and Danny playing sailor and a magnificent selection of the undercover aloha shirts. Not pictured: Steve’s fabulous white pants and Kono’s shirt because I couldn’t get a good shot of it. Yes, this pains me, too.
Season 4 is almost over, but couldn’t end before I talked with Dan about my favorite episode. Between “Cloth of Gold” and “Goodnight, Baby- Time to Die!” we’ve got a whole lotta comeuppance happening.
Just a couple of heads up. Minor trigger warning for watching “Cloth of Gold” as it has mentions of sexual assault. This happens in spoiler territory, so I don’t discuss it. But just be warned if you’re watching the episode. Which you should.
Speaking of spoilers, Dan Budnik of Eventually Supertrain joins me to talk about my favorite episode of Season 4, “Goodnight, Baby-Time to Die!” and that means were talking spoilers. So, if you don’t want to be spoiled, avoid listening to us from about 1:02:18 to about 1:19:49. Also, both Dan and I strongly suggest that you watch this episode before listening to us anyway because it’s kind of hard to talk about without talking spoilers and really, it’s my favorite episode of the season for a reason.
Listen on Soundcloud, iTunes, Spotify, and Stitcher.
I also want to mention that when it comes to chatting with Dan, I don’t usually edit us too much, but this time I had to cut a lot of spoiler talk out because it came outside of the spoiler warning. I’m going to have to make a special spoiler minisode. Our brilliance deserves to be heard.
Look at Ray Danton. He’s shocked to death that I did that.
No worries, though. Steve’s on it.
Season 4 is winding down. First, Five-O attempts to put away a man who attacked a woman in “Skinhead”. Major Trigger Warning! This case is a sexual assault and though we don’t see it, the implication is upsetting enough, as is the treatment of the victim by the justice system after the fact. If you’re going to watch/listen, prepare yourself accordingly.
No prep necessary for “While You’re at It, Bring in the Moon”. Is wealthy recluse being framed for murder by his friends and associates, or is he banking on his bucks to get him out of trouble? This is a fun one, folks.
Listen on Soundcloud, iTunes, Spotify, and Stitcher.
When it comes to fake blood, ’70s TV is unmatched. Please enjoy this cherry slurpee crime scene.
Television takes liberties with reality for the purpose of storytelling. It requires a certain amount of suspension of disbelief. As a result, it ends up creating its own set of rules. My favorite set of these TV laws relates to being shot.
The real-life physics of gunshot wounds is too wild to properly translate to television. First of all, dying instantly isn’t something people do under most circumstances, let alone gunshots. We simply don’t have time for the necessary lingering unless there’s a confession or plot point to convey. Second of all, millimeters and luck play into the survival rate in such a way that people would likely struggle to find it believable if they saw it on their favorite procedural.
However, what does translate to screen is somehow easier for viewers to swallow. In addition to the prevalence of instant deaths, there’s also the understood notion that getting shot blows you off of your feet depending on the weapon used. I think it’s generally known that this doesn’t happen (more fascinating is the range of physical reactions gunshots survivors describe), but it’s something we as an audience have come to expect, especially when it’s the bad guy getting blown away. We prefer that dramatic liberty.
When it comes to the survivability of a gunshot, it’s guaranteed that our good guys will survive any wound inflicted unless they’re leaving the show. Bad guys, unless they’re a recurring threat, are probably dying instantly no matter where they’re hit. Westerns are my favorite example of this. Bad guys do not survive gut shots; good guys do. In reality, surviving a gunshot wound to the abdomen is a toss-up. There’s a lot of organs, arteries, and blood vessels packed in there. If you don’t bleed to death because the bullet nicked an artery or hit an organ, you just might die of sepsis, peritonitis, or some other kind of infection due to a perforated bowel. And then of course, the bullet might miss everything vital and you’ll be just fine.
Speaking of our good guys surviving their gunshot wounds, they rarely suffer any negative aftereffects unless the plot calls for it. So often they’re shot in one episode and then right back to work the next episode with nary a mention. When it comes to older reruns, this is more a matter of treating each episode as its own thing rather than adhering to any serious continuity. Look no further than our Five-O heroes for an example of this. In one episode, Steve McGarrett is shot three times and left for dead. In the next, he’s back to work and well-enough to be stabbed.
Or perhaps we can consider the interesting gunshot wound continuity of Eric Delko on CSI: Miami. He was shot twice at the end of the first part of a two-parter in the fifth season. During a firefight in a parking lot, he was shot once in the right thigh. Horatio Caine dragged him behind a car where Delko was then shot in the back of the head by a different, unseen shooter. During the second part, Delko fought for his life, rallied, and lived. However, they couldn’t get all of the bullet fragment out of his head and Delko did suffer aftereffects from this head wound. He lost memories from around the time of the shooting, had some confusion issues regarding aspects of his job, and had transitory hallucinations. In the eighth season, the fragment jarred lose during a shooting/car chase/car crash and he ended up on the operating table yet again to have it finally removed. He recovered from that without any issues. So, that one incident had long-lasting implications.
However, the gunshot wound in his leg was literally only addressed once…when he was initially shot. It was never mentioned again: not when Delko was in surgery, not when he returned to work a few weeks after getting shot, nada. It was as though it never happened. Setting aside the fact that it was dubious at best he’d be returning to work so soon after being shot in the head, Delko definitely would have been limping if he had. He’d probably know every time it was going to rain for the rest of his life, too.
Many of our law enforcement leads could find themselves in a similar situation, especially if they’ve been shot in the shoulder, which is a favorite target of the writers and bad guys it seems. Shoulder wounds are notoriously nasty as there’s a lot that can go wrong in that region and not much room for it not to. There’s the subclavian artery, which could easily have someone bleeding out in minutes, not to mention all of the muscles, tendons, and bones in that area that work together to move the arm. Starsky got shot in the shoulder on the first season of Starsky and Hutch, nearly died, was back to work in the next episode without a bandage, and never had a problem using his arm to enforce the law for the rest of the series. Heroes don’t get arthritis from traumatic injuries.
Rumor has it that the best place to get shot (aside from nowhere) is in the backside. The abundance of fatty tissue is ready-made for high-impact projectiles (good luck if you have a flat ass, I suppose), but rarely do shows, cop shows in particular, have one of their mains take one for the team in this fashion. I guess there’s something less dramatic about spending the week on their stomach than taking one in the gut or the shoulder and still managing to chase down and arrest/kill the bad guy. Or maybe spending most of the episode in a coma while their besties get justice for them for maximum viewer angst.
No matter where they get shot, we all know they’ll be back and better than ever in the next episode anyway.
It’s finally time for Season 4’s two-parter and it’s a doozy! When “The Ninety Second War” starts off with a car wreck, you do not anticipate that it would end with a missile launch. The extensive frame job that dominates the first episode is exquisite, complete with doppelganger and trip to Switzerland. Who’s behind it all? Wo Fat, of course. And the second episode is all about figuring out what he wants with ninety seconds.
It’s a fun ride.
Listen on Soundcloud, iTunes, Spotify, and Stitcher.
I mention that Donald Pleasence has a moment of looking unhinged. Of course, my words cannot do it justice.
Also, here’s a picture of Wo Fat talking to Vogler in front of his kicky little sub. Just because.
Steve finds himself being used to help eliminate a witness in “Bait Once, Bait Twice”. This episode is an instant classic for two reasons: we learn that Steve gets his hair done weekly and we’re gifted an assassin with the shortest shorts known to man. Truly distracting. I ranted about them twice.
And the reboot crew tackles an assassination plot during Thanksgiving in “Hau’oli La Ho’omaika’i”. I picked this Season 4 episode because Carol Burnett’s Aunt Deb is magnificent and I want everyone to know her.
Come for the short shorts, stay for the turkey shenanigans.
Listen on Soundcloud, iTunes, Spotify, and Stitcher.
Behold the short shorts. If I had to see them, so do you.
aka KikiWrites 