Sun 8 Nov 2020
A TV Episode Review by Jonathan Lewis: HAWAII FIVE-O “…And They Painted Daisies On His Coffin†(1968).
Posted by Steve under Reviews , TV mysteries[10] Comments
HAWAII FIVE-O “…And They Painted Daisies On His Coffin.†CBS, 07 November 1968 (Season 1, Episode 5). Jack Lord (Det. Steve McGarrett), James MacArthur (Danny Williams), Zulu, Kam Fong. Guest star: Gavin MacLeod. Writer: John D. F. Black. Directed by John Peyser.
A tense, well written episode from Hawaii Five-O’s first season, “…And They Painted Daisies On His Coffin,†has two intersecting storylines. The first and central one concerns Danny Williams (James MacArthur) who, after a night of light drinking, confronts and kills a teenager who he witnessed trying to break into a car. The kid was hardly an angel, having had fired a gun at Dano.
The problem is: when the rest of the police arrive at the scene and find the kid’s body, the gun has mysteriously disappeared. What Dano and McGarrett (Jack Lord) don’t immediately know, but the audience does know is that the deceased’s seventeen-year-old girlfriend was in the apartment and absconded with the weapon while Dano wasn’t looking.
A good part of the episode is devoted to exploring the devastating impact that killing a suspect has on Dano. The media has already judged him as guilty. And so, it would seem, has the District Attorney who has him booked for murder. It’s up to McGarrett and his team to find the gun and the girl.
This is where the episode moves squarely into the realm of what could only be called “hippiesploitation.†McGarrett tracks down the girl he’s been looking for. Turns out she’s a junkie and getting her supply from a flamboyantly deviant dealer named Big Chicken. Portrayed by Gavin MacLeod, who would go on to appear in The Mary Tyler Moore Show and star in The Love Boat, Big Chicken is the type of over-the-top counter-cultural criminal figure omnipresent in late 1960s crime television. It’s a solid memorable performance.
All told, this episode is a rather cynical exploration of societal darkness in brightly lit Hawaii and still packs a bit of a punch.
November 8th, 2020 at 5:43 pm
I remember this one. Once seen I don’t think you’ll ever forget Gavin MacLeod’s performance as one of the nastiest guys in a white sports jacket you’ll ever want to meet.
November 8th, 2020 at 8:34 pm
A year before, a hippie chick, while high, let her baby drown in the bathtub in a memorable DRAGNET ’67 episode. There seems to be a retro backlash against hippies, again, in recent movies like ONCE UPON A TIME . . . IN HOLLYWOOD and DOCTOR SLEEP.
November 8th, 2020 at 9:25 pm
I have always preferred Jack Lord as Stoney Burke, with Warren Oates in remarkable support, to anything I ever saw him do subsequent to that. Not to be interpreted as anything other than personal preference.
November 8th, 2020 at 9:47 pm
I always thought of this as Dick Tracy in Hawaii rather than a serious cop show, and on that level with the often comic strip villains and Lord’s one note McGarrett it was fairly satisfying what with the scenery and over the top storylines.
Prior to Hippies it was Beatniks and before them JD’s and briefly Zoot Suiters and in between Jazz Babies, but there was always someone in the culture that was an easy target for the cop story audience to demonize.
November 8th, 2020 at 9:48 pm
Barry,
Agree about STONEY BURKE.
November 8th, 2020 at 10:26 pm
That Dragnet where the baby drowned …
MeTV ran that one not long ago.
The stoned mom and dad weren’t hippies.
They were well-dressed, well-spoken, very well educated – they were yuppies, a term that wasn’t around in the ’60s, but that’s what they were.
This episode is famed among Dragnet buffs as Tim Donnelly’s entry into Jack Webb Repertory, where he maintained long-term residency.
He was the stoner dad; the mom was Brenda Scott, who according to IMDb is now 77 years old and retired from the biz.
Something to think about …
November 9th, 2020 at 9:45 am
In an odd coincidence, I just happened to watch this episode last week. Something I found interesting is that, as an early episode of the series, it maintains a sense of camaraderie and light humor among the Five-0 team that would quickly disappear as the show became The Jack Lord Show and the personalities of Lord’s co-stars were diminished.
November 9th, 2020 at 11:29 am
Mike, thanks for correcting me. Brenda Scott is 77? Yeah, that would be right. Now that’s depressing.
November 9th, 2020 at 2:19 pm
Martin, Because I was away at school, I wasn’t able to watch the series after the first or maybe the second season, but I have heard that as time went on, Jack Lord took over the series in more ways than one.
December 8th, 2020 at 8:06 pm
Ditto for me, on the chops of ‘Stoney Burke’.
Hawaii 5-0 is extremely odd, in retrospect. Not to slight in any way, its power. It is definitely powerful.
I agree “Steve McGarrett” was a ‘one-note’ character …but I often think the world would be a better place if we still had guys like that around. It would be refreshing.
At least that was one guy for sure who absolutely, utterly, 100% always knew who he was, knew where he came from, knew what he was doing, and knew why he was doing it. Hard to find these days.
Curiously, Jack Lord himself, seems also to have been of this same stripe of man. A perfectionist who exerted laser-like control over his popular hit show.
My overall impression: the original 5-0 series is almost painfully poignant, and even marvelous, at this late date.
The muscular, fearless, gas-guzzling, chrome-laden ‘big American cars’ in the show alone, recommends it be kept in the forefront of our communal memory. Since today all we ever see are wretched plastic, imported, wedge-shaped, bumperless blobs on our roads. I know what I prefer.
p.s. a good Jack Lord feature film: ‘Walk Like a Dragon’ with Mel Torme!