Goodnight, Baby - Time to Die!

Season 4, Episode 93
Original air date: 2/22/72

Written by: Abram S. Ginnes
Directed by: Alf Kjellin

An episode so compact it could readily be a stage play. The audience as well as the main guest character in the episode, Carol Rhodes (played beautifully by Beth Brickell), are taken into a fun game of cat-and-mouse, McGarrett's favorite ploy. The "villain" of the piece is L.B. Barker, played by William Watson, who left his mark on the show in the episode "Elegy in a Rainforest" in the ninth season.

The episode begins in darkness and we hear a persistent banging on a door. A woman wakes and, perplexed, makes her way to the door. She asks who it is. McGarrett. So we know she's already in deep trouble. He says "it's urgent" that he speak to her. She lets him in and though she tells him "just a moment," he strides in, in his usual gentlemanly way, and cases the apartment. The episode is full of great small moments between McGarrett and Rhodes. She fumbles with her robe while he begins looking around, beginning with the bedroom.

A frightening or comforting view in the middle of the night?

The man flashes the badge. An iconic McGarrett move.

He closes the drapes, literally and figuratively casting her into darkness.

He explains to her that a man named L.B. Barker has broken out of prison. She is upset by this news and imagines L.B.'s escape as McGarrett explains how it happened.

She frantically begins to pack. McGarrett tells her to stay put as that's the only way they can protect her. She's startled when the phone rings, her nerves quickly starting to get the best of her. McGarrett tells her to answer it.McGarrett listens in, of course. L.B. is calling to rattle her cage. It works. He tells her he's going to kill her.

McGarrett lets Barker know he's ready for him. Barker just hangs up. Showing his thoughtful side, McGarrett asks Rhodes, "Still want to try for the airport?"

McGarrett, apparently having a huge budget, rolls in carts of equipment and several patrol cars and patrolmen to cover the building where Rhodes lives. His penchant for using maps is heavily indulged in this episode.

Rhodes wanders in only to have McGarrett order her to stay in her apartment. She coyly replies that she feels safer with him. He lets it go and shows off his maps. He points to one push pin and says, "This is where we are. This is the Sheraton Waikiki." As if she doesn't know that. Exposition is a pain. He then points out the jail where L.B. began his homicidal trek.

Rhodes and McGarrett return to her apartment and he begins to interrogate her about why L.B. wants to kill her. She has a (very early) drink. She opens the curtains a bit and he scolds her. She says, "Don't use that tone of voice with me...The criminal is out there, he's not in here."

McGarrett begins going over files on the case, which gets under Rhodes' skin, especially since one of them is hers. Another is about a museum heist that Barker was involved in. We learn some information about McGarrett. He says he was away when Barker killed his associate McCabe. She asks why and he answers that he was tired. She says she never thought about cops getting tired. He says that Hawaii became a state in 1959 which is when the Governor appointed him head of Five-O. By 1968, he was tired, so he went as far away he could, to the snow in Switzerland. This seems an unusually personal fact to discuss with her. He's trying to draw her out with his moment of openness and sure enough follows up with, "Tell me about you."

Rhodes explains that her parents abandoned her and she was raised in foster homes. She got by on "men away on convention." She decides to get another drink and mutters, "You don't like your girls drunk, do you?" She tells him about an older gentleman who took her in, Alfred Townsend. He was the curator of a museum that was robbed. L.B. was jealous of him. The plot thickens.

McGarrett presses her on the robbery. Townsend died after the robbery and McGarrett wonders if L.B. was involved. She's not comfortable with this line of questioning and is spared for the moment when a loud sound distracts McGarrett. To add to the nerves, they get information that Barker has stolen a gun and is moving closer.

Rhodes plays the scared victim.

Later on, Rhodes is getting drunker and calls out for McGarrett and asks if everything is all right. He comes in and says, "Yeah, just checking your service entrance," which is one of my all-time favorite lines in the show. Cue the seduction move by Rhodes which has little effect. She says, "I just can't imagine a guy with a name like McGarrett not having even one drink...You're so serious. Look at me. I know I'm not that hard to look at." He replies, "You're not hard to look at at all" but makes it clear he has more pressing business.

When his questioning about who killed Alfred gets too uncomfortable, she drops her seduction attempt and becomes more unhinged. She insists L.B. killed Alfred but McGarrett has proof he couldn't have. He theorizes that Alfred was behind the heist, to get the money to keep her. She breaks down, flinging herself on her bed like a pouty teenager and tells him the "truth." She says Alfred did plan the robbery and L.B. and McCabe helped.

Another call from L.B. rattles Rhodes. She begins to freak out and McGarrett impresses upon the thorough security he has set up.

 

Back in the apartment, McGarrett listens to a tape recording made recently of a junkie talking about the killing of McCabe and stating that someone else came in. Rhodes accuses McGarrett "snapping on and snapping off" people's lives and tormenting her (no, McGarrett would never do such a thing!). She snaps and lunges for him.

Well, now she's pissed him off. It's all downhill from here.

As imagined by Rhodes, Barker is closing in.

I love this shot. They are both exhausted from the relentless drama of deception and the knowledge that L.B. is very close.

McGarrett suddenly jumps up, saying he thought he heard something. Barker knocks out McGarrett.

Barker and Rhodes have a heart-to-heart in which she confesses that she put blanks in McCabe's gun to set up Barker for his murder. She thinks she has convinced him to go away together. He asks what they should do about McGarrett. She wants to kill him which she begins to do with a knife (or a letter opener?). He stops her and says she wants to kill him because he's on to her. She says no "dumb cop" would be on to her. He tells her to turn around and look.

She tries to say that no one heard her confession but the two of them but McGarrett got it on tape. Just to rub it all in, he shows her the blanks in L.B.'s gun. She lashes out at McGarrett one last time, throwing Alfred's photo at him.

Steve loves pissing off the bad guys.

Pau.