|
Serpico
|
 |
« am: 17. Juli 2006, 21:39:03 » |
|
A Thousand Pardons -- You're Dead!***1/2
Original air date: 9/24/69
A very good "contemporary issues" show. Army Sergeant Simms (Harry Guardino) and municipal employee James Watanu (James Hong) have a scam forging marriage certificates so local bar girls will receive G.I. benefits after soldiers who are their fictional husbands are killed in Vietnam. Then Simms murders the women, motivated by feelings for his brother who died after a similar encounter with a gold-digging "prostitute." The first victim in the show is Loretta Swit as Anna Stockton Shroeder. In the opening bar scene where she shares a bottle of champagne, the camera angle up through the glass looks the same as a shot at the end of the pilot episode. McGarrett grills Betsy (Barbara Nichols), owner of the club where the murdered women hung out. He lights her cigarette and says "I need some answers, Betsy baby." (As McGarrett drives up to the club, you can see the used car lot and U-Drive business of sometime Five-O character actor Lippy Espinda in the background -- thanks to Mike Granieri for pointing this out. By the way, the name in the parking spaces beside the bar suggests it is called Charley's.) In the Five-O office, McGarrett uses his transparent board. In addition to Anna's name, there are the names of two other victims -- Maria Apu Anderson and Sheila Gordon McKay. Danno goes undercover as a G.I. named Danny Carson. He drinks heavily with Yoko, one of the bar hostesses, and takes her home (do they "do it"?) Barbara Luna, who plays Yoko, gets my nomination as Top Five-O Babe of All Time! When Danno grills Yoko about her murdered friends, she starts to say, "I don't give a rat..." (sounding like it was going to be "rat's ass"). She tells Danno, "Don't expect me to act like Miss All-American choir girl from Nebraska ... or wherever it is you're from"! The two of them frolic on the beach and Danno gives her a big kiss. (Careful examination reveals some continuity problems with sand on her shoulder at one point.) Luna in a bathing suit is sexy, but even more so later on with her clothes on as she taunts Simms: "I think I'm in the mood for a screwdriver." As Simms picks up Watanu (a bogus Japanese name), the camera is at weird angles. Later, when confronted by McGarrett about the death of Watanu with a casting of a tire tread from the murder scene, Simms says "I don't have any Jap friends, Mr. McGarrett." (How McGarrett connects this piece of evidence to Simms' jeep is not made clear.) Simms subsequently refers to Watanu as "This Jap ... excuse me, this Japanese gentleman...." McGarrett shoots pool and spars verbally with Simms in an interestingly-photographed scene later on. At the end, Chin Ho is shown monitoring a reel-to-reel tape recorder which is bugging Simms' confrontation with Yoko. But if you look at the reels, the tape is moving from right to left (the opposite of normal) and the take-up reel is almost full (the scene was probably flopped). Simms abuses Yoko verbally, saying his brother "died for trash like ... because of trash like you." The cops' blasting of Simms at the end is unusually violent, similar to the film Bonnie and Clyde. More continuity problems as Betty Boop reveals: "Looks like they had to re-shoot the last scene where Sgt. Simms gets shot (to put it lightly) for whatever reason, and there wasn't time for a change of clothes. His uniform is soaked before ever hitting the pavement. Then, in the scene where he is lying on the ground his uniform is drier than when he was standing." Weird rock music during a bar scene is later used in #90, Skinhead. The score for this episode won Morton Stevens an Emmy as did his score for #121, Hookman (the only two Emmys which Five-O ever won). A good McGarrett quote: "Death always bugs me."
------------------------------------------
Als McGarrett den Mord an Annie Schrder untersucht, fallen ihm Parallelen zu drei anderen Fllen auf: Drei Animiermdchen aus Betsys Bar hatten vom Militr 10.000 Dollar Versicherungsprmie kassiert, als ihre Mnner gefallen waren. Und alle drei waren erst kurz verheiratet. Allerdings konnten sich die Witwen nicht lange mit dem Geld trsten: Kurz darauf hatten sie alle einen tdlichen Unfall.
|
