...And They Painted Daisies on His Coffin

Season 1, Episode 5
Original air date: 11/7/68

Written by: John D.F. Black
Directed by: John Peyser

One of my favorite early episodes. We see the team pulling together to help Danny after he's indicted for first degree murder and McGarrett is on the war path. We also meet Big Chicken for the first time which is worth the price of admission on its own.

The episode begins with a vigorous foot chase through what appears to be the Hotel Street district, possibly the most filmed section of Honolulu on the show.

Danny leaps over a moving car. I want to do that someday. It's on my bucket list.

The lighting in the stairwell foreshadows the jail cell Danny will soon be sitting in.

Danny calls out the boy and checks the door which is locked. He fires into the lock and accidentally shoots and kills the boy. Do police officers actually shoot out locks? Danny doesn't notice the girl who picks up the boy's gun and leaves. I guess she doesn't like goodbyes.

McGarrett arrives on the scene. Nice advertising for the coffee shop.

Danny is stressed out. It's the first time he's killed anyone in the line of duty. What he does in his off time, I don't know. I think he's smoking a cigarette in this scene.

Another day, another dead body. How many times did McGarrett kneel over a corpse like this? What a job.

It's a smart touch that McGarrett uses a pencil to poke around so he doesn't screw up the evidence. I also like it when he just happens to have a plastic bag in his pocket to collect evidence. Of course, then there are the times he just handles evidence carelessly, but that's the exception, not the rule.

They find a presumably stolen carburetor in the fridge. McGarrett cracks, "I can hear him now - I'll keep this on ice." Crime scene humor; it's not for everyone.

I think they did a great job in this episode showing a more realistic crime scene with all sorts of personnel doing their part to preserve and collect evidence. This set is especially claustrophobic, which is fitting for the bind that Danny is in.

Danny is indeed smoking a cigarette in this scene. Can't blame him.

The girl who fled with the gun sits destitute and desolate in the middle of Waikiki, people all around her. She is harassed by a passing tourist.

The HPD detective, Nat, takes Danny's statement.

This is a very unsettling scene as they cart the body away while Danny is giving his statement. Danny is shaken, and McGarrett cuts him no slack, saying, "Don't bleed, Danno. Think. You're making an official statement."

Steve goes over the events again with Danny. "I'm not doubting you, Danno." McGarrett tells Danny that when a cop shoots and kills someone, "every single fact better jive or he's nailed to the wall. He's guilty until proven innocent. Now that's backwards, ugly, and unfair, but that's the way it is."

"Think it through." That could be the official motto of the Five-O team.

It's hard to keep McGarrett in the dark.

Che Fong, played by an unbilled actor in this episode, finds a suspect bullet.

Yes! Yes, I will marry you!

Steve manages to get a laugh out of Danny. He says they're looking for a small blonde woman. Danny glumly retorts, "that's not much to go on." Steve offers, "Well, it eliminates all the tall red heads."

We meet greasy Big Chicken as the girl begs him for drugs. "Everybody has to pay, Annie."

A local newscaster (named Vox - get it?) grills Five-O and "King McGarrett" for the shooting of an unarmed boy.

"What'd you expect him to say?"

The AG adds to the heat. He asks McGarrett what he should tell Vox. McGarrett says, "You wouldn't say what I'd like you to tell him." I'm pretty sure that's true.

McGarrett tells Danny to get back to work. Danny says, "It's a stinking job!" McGarrett replies, "Who told you it was anything else?"

"You learn to live with it but don't get used to it." Paradox much?

Kono and Chin tell Steve maybe he was too hard on Danny.

Steve doesn't agree.

A wonderful scene in which Kono tries to coax one of his contacts to confess to witnessing the boy shooting at Danny. He wasn't able to massage the truth out of her. Scenes like this were unique to Five-O and add much of its flavor.

Chin has more luck finding a forthcoming witness but he doesn't help Danny's case at all.

McGarrett gets the bad news. Danny has been indicted - murder one.

Danno books himself.

 

The AG spies a wild Irish bull charging him.

McGarrett is enraged about the indictment. He vents to the AG.

The AG, having known McGarrett since their Navy days, treats him with a cool hand. And a pencil.

McGarrett only hangs out at class establishments. Five-O could be quite seedy, possibly more so than any other show at the time?

McGarrett visits Big Chicken's woman to see if she can tell him where he is.

She invites him to come see her "act" sometime.

He'd be honored.

Kono visits Danny in the clink. He brings him some chow mein. The highest chopstick-per-episode ratio in the history of American TV must be on this show.

Every Five-O fan knows what this is. Matching ballistics, of course.

Che Fong tells McGarrett, "look at this" at least a hundred times over the twelve seasons of the show.

Kono and McGarrett roust things up at the beach. Beau van den Ecker spotting!

Possibly the greatest shot in the history of the show.

Big Chicken-McGarrett showdown.

"You don't need me to help you find a girl, McGarrett. You do all right."

McGarrett tells Big Chicken, "You stay smug and I'll stay patient." That's McGarrett's mantra - time is on his side.

McGarrett tracks down the blonde girl at a hippie house where he encounters a problem child.

"Unless you want to swallow that chain, you better sit down."

The girl confesses to taking the gun.

McGarrett asks her if she wants to go on like this as a junkie. She says, "It's not always like this."

Big Chicken learns it's unwise to taunt McGarrett. He will come back to haunt you. And arrest you. And draw blood.

Danno sees the light of day.

Pau.