"Hawaii Five-O" Cloth of Gold (1972)

User Rating:

6.7/10   

Director:

Michael O'Herlihy

Writers:

Bennett Foster (writer)
Leonard Freeman (creator)

TV Series:

"Hawaii Five-O" (1968)

Original Air Date:

15 February 1972 (Season 4, Episode 20)

Genre:

Crime | Drama | Mystery

Plot:

At a birthday party, the guest of honor suddenly suffocates after getting a card saying this is his last birthday...

Plot Keywords:

Hawaii | Police | Investigation | Book Em Danno | Archenemy

Cast

Jack Lord	...	Det. Steve McGarrett
James MacArthur	...	Det. Danny Williams
Zulu	...	Det. Kono Kalakaua
Kam Fong	...	Det. Chin Ho Kelly
Jason Evers	...	Stu Wallace
Ray Danton	...	Fred Akamai Loy
Jay Robinson	...	Ralph Mingo
William Valentine	...	Manoa
Al Eben	...	Doc Bergman
Harry Endo	...	Che Fong
John Hunt	...	Dr. Pell
Arte McCollough	...	Officer Paul Nakamura
Cathy Musket	...	Donna
Shannan Kincaid	...	Eadie

Runtime:

60 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.33 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono

Certification:

Canada:PG (video rating)

Filming Locations:

Hawaii, USA

Company:

Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS)

Gloomy Episode Partially Redeemed by Some Eye-Catching Backdrops

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

If ever there were an episode of the show that would make real estate salespeople squirm, it's this one. While is has perhaps even more than the usual complement of outdoor shots of steep, vegetation-covered cliffs, blue skies, crashing surf, and palm trees -- and some underwater shots too, along with scenes filmed on a sailboat -- it's also about a trio of shady real estate salesmen (Jay Robinson, Ray Danton, and Jason Evers -- three familiar character actors who routinely played heavies) who have gotten wealthy by selling marginal Hawaiian land sight-unseen to gullible purchasers, while always managing to stay just this side of being legal.

In some ways, this episode resembles the previous season's "Paniolo," another segment that showed off the islands' natural beauty but was weighed down with a sense of foreboding. Each of the trio gets a death threat of some kind, and as the bodies pile up, there's palpable gloom hanging over the proceedings -- even as, ironically, the principals are surrounded by such lovely backdrops.

The producers go out of their way to lace the narrative with some fairly heavy-handed clues, and the killer's identity, along with an equally-depressing motive, is also revealed relatively early for a "whodunnit" episode. For once, though, it's Kono who figures out the cause of the mysterious deaths, way ahead of our usual forensic specialists Che Fong or Doc Bergman -- despite being the target of some surprisingly racist comments by Evers' character. Gilbert Zoulou (as 'Zulu' later came to give his name) took on a more prominent role in his later episodes on the show, and it's regrettable that he was dropped from the cast (for reasons never definitively explained) just as his character was coming into his own.

A few other oddities: first, Jay Robinson's character 'Mingo' is killed in the teaser, and his foot is later shown in the medical examiner's office with a toe tag reading "8/3/71" (which might have been about when this episode was really filmed). The second death threat goes to Fred Akamai (Ray Danton's character) with the warning that he's going to die on September 10, which we're told is "tomorrow." That means that more than a month in "story time" elapsed without Five-O developing a single solid lead! Also, in contrast to Kono, Danny Williams (James MacArthur) seems surprisingly obtuse -- not only does he denigrate Kono's theories about marine toxins that ultimately prove correct, he also doesn't make any effort to examine some videotapes that turn out to contain an important clue -- and this despite being told by Evers' Stu Wallace character that the videotapes might get Wallace "pinched for pornography."

Maybe that's why, after McGarrett spends the middle portion of the episode off-camera doing things like attending a budget hearing, he elbows Kono and Danny aside and takes the helm to pursue the suspect in the closing moments (including a showy leap from one boat to another). All in all, despite the more prominent role for Kono, this is a downer of an episode, up to and including its final freeze-frame.