The Sleeper (#239) -- Dr. Sonya Hanson has been brainwashed and is subject to hypnotic suggestion. One particular phrase triggers her criminal actions: "Oh, what a tangled web we weave/When first we practice to deceive." It's from Sir Walter Scott's "Marmion," introduction, stanza 17.
A Distant Thunder (#244) -- McGarrett mentions that "Oliver Wendell Holmes said the right of free speech ends when one tries to yell 'fire' in a crowded theater." This phrase, which has become a cliche, comes from the decision in Shenck vs. the United States, handed down in 1919. Holmes wrote: "The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theater and causing a panic.... The question in every case is whether the words are used in such a circumstance and are of such a nature as to create a clear and present danger that they will bring about the substantive evils that Congress has a right to prevent."
Death Mask (#245) -- McGarrett says to Mrs. Warren, "Isn't there an old cliche about no one being a prophet in his own home town?" It comes from Matthew, chapter 13, verse 57, and reads, "A prophet is not without honor, save in his own country."
Gazing admiringly at the Tut death mask, McGarrett says, "Can you imagine what Carter must've thought when he saw that for the first time?" Carter is Howard Carter, who discovered and opened Tut's hitherto unviolated tomb in 1922.
Speaking of Mrs. Warren's wrath, Dan quips, "Hell hath no fury like a society sculptress scorned." The phrase comes from William Congreve (1670 - 1729), appearing in "The Mourning Bride." "Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned,/Nor hell a fury like a woman scorned." It has become a cliche in our language.
Jill asks Mik why they're tailing the garbage man. He says it's for "the ancient secrets of the Pharaohs." "You make it sound more like the Riddle of the Sphinx," she replies. The Riddle of theSphinx is Greek, not Egyptian, mythology. King Laius and Queen Jocasta of Thebes [the Greek Thebes, not the Egyptian one] had a son, Oedipus. The Delphic Oracle predicted this son would murder Laius. Laius bound the child by the feet and left him on a mountain to starve. The baby was found, and adopted into the household of King Polybus of Corinth and raised as his son. When Oedipus learned of the prediction of the Oracle, he left Corinth so that the prediction would not come to be. Unfortunately, he headed toward his true home, Thebes. On his way, he was accosted by the Sphinx, who asked everyone this riddle and killed all who could not correctly answer: "What creature goes on four feet in the morning, on two at noonday, on three in the evening?" The answer: Man (in infancy, youth, and old age). Oedipus, of course, answered the riddle and the Sphinx killed herself.
There are two references in the episode to "the curse of the pharaohs." Museum Director Miles says to McGarrett that an event like the theft of the mask makes him wonder "if there isn't some validity to the curse of the pharaohs." At the end of the episode, McGarrett says he knows the true curse of the pharaohs: Paperwork!
Actually, the curse of the pharaohs may be cited as an example of the dictum "If the facts do not fit the theory, they should be discarded." In 1922 Howard Carter, working under a commission granted to Lord Carnarvon, discovered and opened the tomb of Tutankhamun. After the tomb was opened, the hype began. Reporters and tourists by the score flocked to the Valley of Kings. Then, on April 6, 1923, Lord Carnarvon succumbed to an infected mosquito bite which had not been properly treated in time. Rumors began to fly: How could a robust man die from a mosquito bite? It must be the curse of the Pharaohs. The origin of this 'curse' could never be specifically traced, but the death of anyone remotely connected by the most tenuous of threads to the openers of the tomb became grist for the rumor mill. According to C. W. Ceram in Gods, Graves, and Scholars: The Story of Archaeology, German Egyptologist Georg Steindorff subjected the legend of the curse to rigorous examination and concluded that many people whose deaths had been attributed to the curse had no connection with the tomb whatsoever. "After piling up exhaustive evidence of irrelevance, [Steindorff] adduced the most telling argument of all: the 'curse of the Pharaohs' simply did not exist. No such thing had been uttered or inscribed." Carter himself wrote, "So far as the living are concerned, curses of this nature have no place in the Egyptian ritual. On the contrary, we are piously desired to express our benevolent wishes for the dead." Carter himself died of natural causes in 1939.
The Pagoda Factor (#246) -- The governor, in talking to McGarrett about Joey Lee, refers to the youngster as "Pal Joey." That was the title of a Broadway play of 1940. The book was written by John O'Hara and the music and lyrics by Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart,and is about a womanizing night club owner.
A Long Time Ago (#247) -- Dan Williams, chastened by his devastating experience with his old girlfriend Melissa, says to Steve, "That guy's right. You can't go home again." You Can't Go Home Again was the title of a book by Thomas Wolfe (1900 - 1938), an American novelist. The book was published two years after the author's death.
The Miracle Man (#249) -- character Jim Nelson refers to "Rev. Andy" as a "Rasputin." Grigory Yefimovich Novykh (1872(?)-1916) was a Siberian peasant and mystic who rose to favor in the czarist court because he improved the condition of Czar Nicholas's son Alexis, who was hemophiliac. He gained the name Rasputin (which means "debauchee") because of a reputation for excesses and his adherence to a religious sect which believed that sinning was a necessary prerequisite to salvation. Accepted into the court and revered by Czarina Alexandra, he indulged in many affairs and seductions. It is this reputation of Rasputin's for being able to entrap women that is referred to in Nelson's remark.
The Meighan Conspiracy (#252) -- As he's about to unveil the solution to the mystery of how a locked bank vault can be robbed without the vault door being tampered with, McGarrett says "When you rule out everything plausible, the answer has to be what's left...the implausible." This observation is more elegantly expressed by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's sleuth Sherlock Holmes in The Sign of Four: "When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth."
The Spirit is Willie (#253) -- An amusing play on a phrase from Matthew, Chapter 26, verse 41, a response to the question posed in verse 40: "Could ye not watch with me one hour?" The response: "Watch and pray, that ye enter not into temptation: the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak." The episode title refers, of course, to the fact that con man Rolande's assistant Fitzwilliam, nicknamed "Willie," is behind the "spirits" which appear to the gullible victims of his seances.
A Lion in the Streets (#260) -- The title is most probably from Proverbs 26:11-13: "As a dog returneth to his vomit, so a fool returneth to his folly. Seest thou a man wise in his own conceit? There is more hope of a fool than of him. The slothful man saith, There is a lion in the way, a lion is in the streets." Tony Alika could certainly be said to be 'wise in his own conceit' and therefore a fool, as he doesn't perceive the doom which is closing in on him. And though McGarrett tells the governor there is "an angry lion in the streets," Steve is anything but slothful!
Carew goes to Andy Kamoku's house and confronts the labor leader and his cronies. As he observes the evidence of armaments among the men, he calls them "a bunch of Marshal Dillons." U.S. Marshal Matt Dillon was the central character of the television series Gunsmoke, the medium's longest-running western and one of the longest-lived series in the history of television, lasting twenty years (1955 - 1975).
Though the Heavens Fall (#262) -- The Latin expression quoted (and, incidentally, slightly mistranslated) by the vigilantes in their ceremony is Fiat justitia ruat coelum--"Let justice be done, though heaven should fall." It is a proverb sometimes attributed to Lucius Calpurnius Piso Caesoninus, who died in 43 B.C. Other forms of this expression are: Fiat justitia et ruant coeli (Let justice be done though the heavens fall); and Fiat justitia et pereat mundus (Let justice be done though the world perish).
Good Help is Hard to Find (#264) -- The Five-O team responds to a tip which turns out to be a setup for embarrassment. They find a group of keiki (children) playing 'ukulele and displaying a sign that says, "Welcome McGarrett and his Keystone Kops." The Keystone Kops were staples of silent film comedies produced by Mack Sennett. They couldn't drive straight, run straight, or shoot straight. So the Five-O team is being called a bunch of bumblers by those to blame for the sign (meaning, of course, Tony Alika and the kumu).
Image of Fear (#265) -- McGarrett's divorced friend Joan Carter is being driven off her nut, and McGarrett says that the incidents Joan is being subjected to sound like the old movie Gaslight. In that 1949 suspense film, a woman was being driven mad so her husband could get at her dough. In this episode, it's Joan's nasty little daughter trying to put Mommy over the edge.
Labyrinth (#270) -- Carew calls Lori "a regular Sam Spade" when she brings in some information. Sam Spade was a private detective of the tough hard-boiled genre. He first appeared in the novel The Maltese Falcon (1930) written by Dashiell Hammett.
For Old Times Sake (#272) -- Willie (Peter Bromilow) takes cohort Eddie (George Herman) a hibiscus and says, "You can call me the Luther Burbank of Oahu." Luther Burbank (1948-1926), largely self-taught, led to the development of plant breeding into a science. His efforts resulted in dozens of new strains of vegetables and flowers. The town of Burbank, California, is NOT named for him.
A Bird in Hand... (#276) -- The episode title refers to an expression familiar to probably everybody. Its meaning is as old as the writings of Plutarch, who said in his essay "Of Garrulity,""He is a fool who leaves things close at hand to follow what is out of reach." From there, the thought went through the Proverbs (1546) of John Heywood: "Better one bird in hand than ten in the wood;" thence to Thomas Lodge's Rosalyne (1590): "One bird in the hand is worth two in the wood." Probably the most famousexpression of this idea, and the form in which it has come down to us today, is from Miguel de Cervantes' Don Quixote (1605): "A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush." Cervantes overshadowed the later Jacula Prudentum of George Herbert (1640), in which the expression is stated as "A feather in hand is better than a bird in the air."
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