I’ve written quite a few posts in my Rerun Junkie Guest Star series, so I’m obviously long overdue to begin a series about the Rerun Junkie Writers. After all, without the writers, those guest stars that I love and adore have nothing to say.

It’s a shame that I was motivated to finally begin the series due to the recent passing of one of those writers.

Jerome Coopersmith only has 36 writing credits on IMDB, but most of them are for TV shows. He’s got a creator credit as well as writing credits (he wrote every episode) for the short-lived 1977 series The Andros Targets. He wrote 20 episodes of Armstrong Circle Theater and 18 episodes of Johnny Jupiter. I had to look that latter up. It’s a show about a general store clerk who invents an inter-planetary TV and befriends a puppet named Johnny Jupiter. This could be a kids’ show. Or it could just be 1950’s TV on the Dupont network.

He wrote for other anthology shows like Kraft Theatre and The Alcoa Hour; early crime-fighting series like Brenner and Harbormaster; and later popular shows like Combat!, Doctors and Nurses, and Medical Center. I’m sure I’ve seen his episodes of The Streets of San Francisco, Spenser: For Hire, and A Man Called Hawk.

But most of the TV episodes he wrote -and the work I’m most familiar with- was Hawaii Five-O.

Of the 32 episodes he wrote for the show, 3 of them I picked to be my favorites of their season. Considering there’s 12 seasons and a quite a few writers, it’s pretty impressive that he wrote a quarter of my favorites.

But he also wrote several of my runners up and other memorable ones.

He’s responsible for the excellent episode “Samurai” (but I doubt he’s responsible for Ricardo Montalban’s yellow face); put McGarrett’s life in jeopardy twice in the same season with “A Bullet for McGarrett” and “Blind Tiger”; came up with some brilliant and fun plots in “Didn’t We Meet at a Murder?”, “Death is a Company Policy”, and “Welcome to Our Branch Office”; did a little PSA-ing with “Chain of Events” and “Diary of a Gun”; and revisited a character from the second season episode “Just Lucky, I Guess” in the eighth season episode “McGarrett is Missing”.

And these are just a few of the terrific episodes he wrote for the show. The man never had a dud, at least as far as I’m concerned.

For some reason, he sometimes wrote under different names (Edit: Mr. Coopersmith’s daughter graciously provided the answer in the comments of this post). He has several TV episodes, including multiple episodes of Hawaii Five-O, credited as Jay Roberts and several TV movies credited as Ken August.

As if his resume wasn’t impressive enough, he also wrote plays and musicals that ended up on Broadway, and even earned a Tony nomination for his Sherlock Holmes musical Baker Street.

But no matter the name, the stage, or the screen, the result Jerome Coopersmith produced when he put pen to paper was always the same.

Fantastic viewing.

Thanks to Chris for linking me to Jerome Coopersmith’s obituary article.