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Serpico
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« am: 17. Juli 2006, 21:26:24 » |
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Bored She Hung Herself**
Original air date: 1/7/70 -- Plot -- Opening Credits -- End Credits
This episode has never been seen on TV since the original broadcast, presumably because of an issue with some of the subject matter. One of the lead characters, Don Miles (Don Quine) engages in various hippie pursuits like yoga, natural foods, chanting "Hare Krishna" and -- particularly objectionable -- hanging himself by the neck from the ceiling, this supposedly being yoga-related. (Some viewer allegedly tried this at home and died, according to Mrs. Leonard Freeman.) When his girlfriend Wanda (Pamela Murphy) is found hanging and dead, McGarrett is on the case. At first it looks like a suicide, but the coroner (played by casting director Ted Thorpe) says "It's possible she was assaulted," adding, "the victim was already dead when she was hung." Her father, psychiatrist Warren Parker (William Smithers), seems very chummy in an almost incestuous manner to Wanda at the beginning of the show when he dries her off with a towel. He obviously has a good practice, because he is later seen driving a Jaguar XKE. Herman ("Duke") Wedemeyer appears at the crime scene as Lt. Grayson. When he shows some drugs from Don's pad to McGarrett, the Five-O boss comments "Let the good times roll!" The 13-year-old next door neighbor kid (Joel Berliner) is precocious, full of hip sayings like "Wanda was getting bagged all the time" and "outta sight". He describes Don as "a health freak ... he doesn't believe in dropping anything unless it's organic." The boy's father (Eugene McDunnah) is worried his son would turn into a "dope fiend" by associating with Don. When Parker gets heavy with McGarrett, McGarrett blames his problems on the "generation gap." Parker's response is to threaten to get McGarrett fired! The father of the kid next door is revealed as the real killer ... he says that Wanda "was making a big play for me ... she kept leading me on, then she turned me down." For people trying to collect a complete set of episodes, this one is the most difficult to find. There are bootleg copies of it floating around; some of them look like they were projected on a wall and filmed with a camcorder (not recommended if you are an epileptic because of the strobe-like flickering). The DVD release of season two does not contain this episode.
MORE TRIVIA:
* Near the beginning of the show, Wanda's body is taken away in a Physicians Ambulance. Her corpse is NOT covered with a sheet, which means that when McGarrett looks in the ambulance window, he can identify her (leaving the dead body uncovered in this manner is not standard procedure).
* Although Weatherly's alibi falls apart when McGarrett and Danno point out inconsistencies between it and what the security guard at Weatherly's company said, the other big "clue" that Weatherly murdered Wanda is fragments of cashmere found under Wanda's fingernails, from when she struggled with her killer. Weatherly owns several cashmere sweaters, but how does anyone know this? Because of the mediocre quality of the bootleg prints in circulation, it is difficult to see if Weatherly is wearing a cashmere sweater when he is being interviewed by Five-O early on in the show.
* When Weatherly makes his big confession to Five-O, his wife is nowhere to be seen.
* Don and Wanda are hardly "hippies," but the usual Five-O version of what a "hippie" was like.
* Don's writer friend Boswell seems to be hardly the "freak" as described by Parker or the "way-out guy" as described by Hank. He acts in a very "swish" manner, however. Boswell is uncredited and is played by director John Newland.
* The title of this episode does not make any sense. Wanda is hardly "bored"!
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