_______
50th Anniversary Catch-Up Viewing
_______
Hawaii Five-O
"Samurai"
Originally aired October 17, 1968
Wiki said:
McGarrett must protect an underworld kingpin (Ricardo Montalban) he is trying to convict of racketeering activities.
The kingpin's name is Tokura...yes, they're trying to pass Montalban off as Japanese American with only a slight makeup job to his eyes and no discernable attempt at a different accent. Tokura is arriving at the courthouse, swarmed by a mob of reporters, when a would-be assassin shoots him multiple times. The assassin is shot down, but Tokura gets up unharmed thanks to a bulletproof vest.
In the courtroom, the prosecution presents its surprise witness, a bookkeeper formerly in Tokura's employ named Mary Travers (Karen Norris), but she seems ill and acts dazed and confused on the stand. The state's attorney tries to lead her through the questions, but is reigned in. Travers then dies on the stand. The Five-O team, who have been protecting her, are mystified both as to how she was killed and as to the motives of Tokura's would-be assassin, a factory worker from Japan.
A retaliatory hit is quickly made on enforcers of one of Tokura's rivals, following which McGarrett, now under pressure from the Governor, visits Tokura to confront him with a small bushido sword (roughly the size of a broken cavalry saber) that was found on the assassin, for killing himself after the job was done. Tokura seems certain that Travers was poisoned, though he tries to pass it off as an educated guess. Forensics determines that it was indeed poison, in her lipstick (the one thing that Dano didn't taste-test). Meanwhile, another attempt is made on Tokura, but by a man with a hand grenade, the blast of which is taken by a bodyguard who jumps on the assailant.
McGarrett is making another visit to Tokura, who swears that he's never been to Japan in his life, when a sniper makes an attempt on him. While McGarrett's attempting to make his way to the sniper, Tokura is grabbed by a couple of other men. When McGarrett gets back to him, he's dead, killed by a shotgun at close range. But McGarrett becomes suspicious of the now-faceless corpse when a ring that had fit Tokura very tightly falls right off its finger.
A Five-O alias check turns up that Tokura was atually Eshiami Mashito, a Japanese sub officer who was reported killed in action in 1942. Consulting with a Navy sub chief, McGarrett figures that Mashito was half the crew of a mini-sub at Pearl who deserted, found the real Tokura hiding in a cave in Molokai (part of Tokura's backstory, when he was hiding after escaping internment), and took his identity. The sub having recently been found, McGarrett thinks that Fake Tokura staged his own death to evade the bushido, using a body double. Confronting Tokura's daughter, Deedee (Carolyn Barrett), with this knowledge, he bets her a million dollars that he can prove it.
Deedee subsequently donates $1 million to a university. Tokura then approaches her in a movie theater to reveal that he's alive, but he's clearly more concerned about whether she can stop the check than about how faking his death affected her. When he learns that making the donation was McGarrett's idea, he realizes that it's a trap, and sees uniformed officers closing in on him. He's taken to a dock for deportation, and spots Asian men waiting for him on the ship. He tries to cop a plea but McGarrett won't take it. Terrified of boarding, he loudly confesses to Mary Travers's murder. Then McGarrett has the two officers whom Tokura had assumed were bushido assassins take him away.
_______
Dragnet 1969
"Police Commission (DR-13)"
Originally aired October 17, 1968
Xfinity said:
Friday and Gannon are called in to track down tow truck racketeers operating on Los Angeles's freeways.
From Martin Luther King to tow truck racketeering...that's a bit of slide. On the plus side, Friday's opening spiel is vaguely on topic this week...
Sgt. Joe Friday said:
This is the city: Los Angeles, California. In the 1890s, freight and passenger travel from the San Fernando Valley to the Los Angeles plain came by wagon over the Cahuenga Pass. Thirty years later, hundreds of automobiles turned out for the opening of the Mulholland Highway, bumper to bumper--a hint of the future. By 1928, there was one horseless carriage for every two-and-a-quarter people. Today there are over four million cars in the county, and seven freeways have replaced the dirt roads of yesteryear. With hundreds of thousands traveling these freeways daily, there are bound to be some problems. Most are accidents; occasionally they get more involved. That's when I go to work. I carry a badge.
Monday, August 12 (still 1968): Friday and Gannon are working the day watch out of Los Angeles Police Commission, Investigation Division, when they're assigned to crack down on dishonest tow truck operators, known as "wildcatters". The detectives and Captain Milemore (Art Gilmore) give each other a circle-jerk infodump on the subject, which includes how, lacking a regulatory agency on the business end, the LAPD is establishing an Official Police Garage certification, which will indicate for citizens which operators are working honestly.
The detectives decide to focus on an operator named John Anzo (Larry Pennell), who has a large number of complaints against him, so they talk to some of the complainants. One of the victims, who speaks no English, was persuaded to sign what turned out to be a blank contract. Visiting Anzo's garage, they talk to the chief mechanic, Eddie Jones (John Sebastian). The garage has a police scanner with a speaker wired to it, letting the guys who work there listen to Shaaron Claridge assigning calls to One-Adam...26. Anzo drives in and initially acts like he has nothing to hide, letting the detectives look over his records.
Deciding that the episode needs another infodump scene to fill some time, Friday talks to a reporter in the HQ break room about the OPG program and why it's necessary. Then Gannon comes in with a report of an accident following which Jones got into a fistfight with an OPG operator over towing the vehicle of a victim who ended up dying. The detectives suspect that Jones towed the man without his permission because he never regained consciousness. They also determine that despite the paperwork listing Anzo as the sole owner of the business, Jones is his silent partner, having loaned him the capital to start the operation. When Friday confronts Anzo with this information and threatens a charge of fraudulent application, Anzo decides to clam up without a lawyer present. In the meantime, a check has turned up that Jones has a criminal record.
The Announcer said:
On September 9, a hearing was held before the Police Commission Examiner, City of Los Angeles....Evidence presented at the Police Commission hearing firmly established the fact that Edward L. Jones was a partner in JKA Towing & Auto Repair. The Hearing Examiner's recommendation to the Police Commission led to final revocation of Anzo's permit on the grounds that he conducted business not comporting with the public welfare. Charges of grand theft auto and assault are pending against Edward L. Jones.
The blank backdrop following the mugshot said:
California Legislature
ASSEMBLY BILL
1650
Section 21100 - Vehicle Code
Sub Section (e)
The Announcer said:
The governor of the state of California signed into law Assembly Bill 1650, which now gives the authority to all local police departments in the state to regulate all tow car service operation, including the licensing thereof.
_______
I wonder what the original airings were like. These inconsistencies may be various syndicated versions.
They don't seem to have done much work on this series for syndication. The sound quality in particular--there's a very audible background buzzing throughout. I imagine that the at least three distinct variations in opening title content were to gain or fill time in episodes.
The only explanation I can think of is lots and lots of radioactive ore.
There's a potential episode-expanding subplot...
So that seed has been planted in everyone present. I wonder if that will ever come up, or if it will just be forgotten.
I doubt that a tavern full of drunk miners is likely to make or break Jason's coast-to-coast reputation.
It's too bad everybody didn't get a chance to tell their story. I'd like to see the Professor beat the soldier with SCIENCE!
That could have been good.
I'm sure he felt he could get away with things another artist could not, which was perfectly true.
I don't feel like he was trying to get away with anything, though. He was entitled to experiment and do something different with his solo career. Listeners were entitled to not buy his records if the work he was putting out wasn't to their liking. They weren't entitled to Paul continuing to put out records that lived up to everything they'd come to expect from the Beatles.
That said,
McCartney amply demonstrates an issue that will be prevalent throughout Paul's post-Beatles career...needing to fill entire albums with his own material, and not having John to weed out his garbage and to contrast against style-wise, his albums are generally populated by too many half-baked songs that ideally could have been honed into something tighter or left out altogether.
On the plus side, Paul's post-Beatles career followed a trajectory that '70s punditry tells us succeeded in gaining him a new fandom who knew him better as the front man of Wings than as an ex-Beatle. He went back to the basics, both with this bare-bones debut album, and then with the early days of Wings, which involved touring universities unannounced--something that he'd wanted to do with the Beatles in the later days, but that the rest of them rejected--slowly gaining a reputation for the band and going on to successively bigger gigs, culminating in a world tour. In effect, he rebuilt himself as an artist, rather than just leaning on his existing fandom from when he was a Beatle. That's why his solo success was waxing in the late '70s while the other Beatles' solo careers were generally fizzling.
That's probably reasonable. But the song "Band on the Run" seems to me to be his signature hit, post-Beatles.
I don't agree. Paul fan that I am, I agree with the choices made by the contributors to both lists..."Maybe I'm Amazed" is his best solo song, and
Band on the Run his best post-Beatles album.
I was actually thinking of that scene when I read this scene..."Hey, he's in style at this point."
