And a Time to Die... (#49) -- The title comes from Ecclesiastes, Chapter 3, verses 1-8:
To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven. A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted; A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up; A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance; A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing; A time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away; A time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak; A time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace.
Trouble in Mind (#50) -- This episode which centers on music has a character named Harry Partch. There is a contemporary 'minimalist' music composer of that name.
Eadie (Nancy Wilson) is listening to herself on tape singing "Spinning Wheel." McGarrett enters and she asks him what he thinks. "Full of sound and fury," he says, indicating that he thinks the brass orchestration is too heavy. She laughs and completes the phrase: "signifying nothing." This is from Shakespeare -- Macbeth, Act V, scene 5. Macbeth's attendant Seyton has told him that Lady Macbeth, driven insane by her crime of murder, has died. Macbeth responds with:
She should have died hereafter;Beautiful Screamer (#60) -- The title, of course, is a twist on the Stephen Foster song title "Beautiful Dreamer." In the story, we learn that Dan's murdered girlfriend Jane Michaels (Anne Archer) and her schoolmates had a poem they adopted as 'theirs' to express their feelings about being children of divorceand of unhappy homes. The poem is The Giaour by George Gordon, Lord Byron. Two couplets from the poem are used by murderer Walter Gregson (Lloyd Bochner) as a 'signature' in his attempt to create the impression that a serial killer is at work, to divert attention from him. All the while, of course, it is a plot to murder his wife for her money. On Linda Marsh's body, police find written in lipstick the lines: And every death a tear can claim/ Except the sinning sisters shame.
The actual lines from the poem are: And every woe a tear can claim/ Except an erring Sister's shame.
On the body of Jane Michaels, they find the lines: She was a form of life and light/ That seen, enters into night.
The actual lines from the poem are: She was a form of Life and Light,/ That, seen, became a part of night.
The Giaour was written in 1813 and, along with other poems of Byron's Oriental tales, a swashbuckling cycle, they present the archetype of the "Byronic hero," an alienated and tragic figure. At the end of the episode, Dan Williams is the "Byronic" hero of the tale, alienated from love by Jane's senseless death, a tragic and lonely figure. We know, however, that he is strong enough to survive.
3,000 Crooked Miles to Honolulu (#76) -- At the end, McGarrett has the entire tour group/gang trapped on the airplane. He comes out of the cockpit, picks up the public-address handset and says,"Aloha, suckers." This harks back to Prohibition-era saloon owner Texas Guinan (for whom the bartender in Ten-Forward Lounge on Star Trek: the Next Generation is named), who would greet her customers every night with, "Hello, suckers!"
Two Doves and Mr. Heron (#77) -- Ryan Moore (John Ritter) begs from two elderly female tourists, reciting, "Spirit of beauty, that dost consecrate/With thine own hues all thou dost shine upon/Of human thought or form." When one lady asks, "Do you write poetry?" Ryan answers, "All the time. Percy Bysshe Shelley is the name." Shelley (1792-1822) was a primary English Romantic poet. The quoted passage is from "Hymn to Intellectual Beauty," written in 1816.
Later, rationalizing to Cleo (Dianne Hull) his having robbed Heron(Vic Morrow), Ryan quotes Buddha: "If a man speaks and acts with pure thought, happiness follows him like a shadow and never leaves him." In the 1960s, hippie culture adopted many of the ideas and temporal trappings of Eastern religions, including Buddhism. But like Ryan, many adopted the shell without realizing the core. Ryan, in this instance, has at best a hazy idea of "pure thought".
Ryan and Cleo argue about keeping Heron's now twice-stolen money. Ryan says, "You want Shangri-La? I give you Shangri-La. You want Nirvana? I give you Nirvana." Shangri-La was a land of peace and eternal youth high in the Tibetan mountains in James Hilton's 1933 novel Lost Horizon. The tragedy of Shangri-La was that anyone who left it aged rapidly, losing the magic of the place. Nirvana, in Buddhism, is the ultimate goal of meditation and prayer. It is a transcendent state where individual consciousness and earthly desires are overcome in achieving spiritual peace. Alas, it is not this Nirvana Ryan dreams of, but a thoroughly material one.
...And I Want Some Candy and a Gun That Shoots (#78) -- Sniper Bill Shem buys his rifle and ammunition under an assumed name: 'George C. Patton'. This is a mixed reference: General George S. Patton (1885-1945) was a US Army General famed for his tank-warfare tactics in World War II, as well as for his colorful demeanor which earned him the nickname "Old Blood and Guts." General Patton was played in a popular motion picture by actor George C. Scott.
Air Cargo--Dial for Murder (#79) -- McGarrett and Che Fong are in the lab figuring out how to "rob" the self-erasing tape used by thetheft ring's telephone answering machine. Che Fong has McGarrett use another phone to call the lab extension, which has been set up with an answering machine, and say something to be recorded. McGarrett quotes, "If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer." This is from Walden (1854) by Henry David Thoreau. It is often, when quoted, followed by the next sentence in the work: "Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away."
Rest in Peace, Somebody (#82) -- "Mona" is bedeviling Five-O. He lures Steve to the State Senate hearing room with a fake message to Jenny, then calls Steve on the phone there to taunt him further. Steve returns to the Palace and tells the assembled team, "Just gotthe latest word from our boy. He knew I was to address the Senate Appropriations Committee, so he faked a call and got me down there during recess. Then he called me there. That's what you call'chutzpah'." It's Yiddish, and is pronounced 'hkhootzpah' with the accent on the first syllable and a rattling sound at the beginning of the word. Leo Rosten, in The Joys of Yiddish, defines chutzpah as "Gall, brazen nerve, effrontery, 'guts'; presumption-plus-arrogance such as no other word, and no other language, can do justice to." The classic definition of chutzpah is the man who murdered his parents, then begged the court for mercy because he was an orphan.
The other literary allusion in the episode is obvious. "Mona"taunts Steve in another phone call with, "How you doin' so far, Sherlock?" 'Nuff said.
A Matter of Mutual Concern (#83) -- Chased down in his car by McGarrett, Samoan hood Tasi (Manu Tupou) complains that the speedometer registers to 120 m.p.h., but he couldn't get it past 90. McGarrett says, "Tell Ralph Nader." Ralph Nader was in the 60s and still is in the 1990s a crusader in consumer advocacy. He founded the movement and became most prominent with his book Unsafe at Any Speed (1965), which led to the discontinuation of the manufacture of the Chevrolet Corvair, a rear-engine automobile of the 1960s.
Is This Any Way to Run a Paradise? (#85) -- McGarrett, needing citizen help in setting a trap for the environmental terrorist calling himself Kaili, approaches businessman T. Emory Grace. Grace refuses, telling McGarrett he has a business to run and that"The business of American business is--" McGarrett finishes the sentence cynically: "--money." This is a twist on an utterance of President Calvin Coolidge, a Republican and staunch supporter of American business in the twenties. In a speech to the American Society of Newspaper Editors on January 17, 1925, he said, "The chief business of the American people is business."
Odd Man In (#86) -- Lewis Avery Filer has snookered McGarrett again. Five-O has been following him and a couple of crooks he's dealing with, and is closing in. Filer sees the flying wedge of Five-O men headed in his direction, and leaves a partial mannequin, dressed as himself, in his place. McGarrett, chagrined, takes the papier-mache head of the mannequin, and says, "A man of infinite jest." This is a play on a scene from Hamlet. Hamlet and his friend Horatio are in the cemetery watching the gravediggers dig the grave of the unfortunate Ophelia. A skull is tossed up and Hamlet knows whose it is: his father's old jester, Yorick. Holding the skull in his hand, he eulogizes: "Alas, poor Yorick. I knew him, Horatio; a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy..."
Bait Once, Bait Twice (#87) -- With what looks like overwhelming evidence against him, mobster Barry Bonamo (Malachi Throne) is led out of McGarrett's office to be booked after giving a histrionicplea of innocence and a demand that McGarrett clear him of the murder charge. Chin Ho says, "If they ever need a guy to play King Lear, they should hire Bonamo. What an actor!" King Lear, of course, is one of Shakespeare's great tragedies, written in 1605-1606. A play which leaves many with a sense of pessimism and nihilism, it requires strong acting.
Follow the White Brick Road (#95) -- The title is a parody on "Follow the Yellow Brick Road" from The Wizard of Oz. The white brick referred to is heroin smuggled aboard a U.S. Navy vessel, aboard which Dan Williams goes undercover.
Literate Five-O, part 1 Literate Five-O, part 2 Literate Five-O, part 4 Literate Five-O, part 5
Literate Five-O, part 6 Five-O Fandom Return to Karen Rhodes Home Page