A Review of

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“Over Fifty? Steal”

Season 3, Episode 11

 

 

Someone is robbing jewelry stores in broad daylight. Furthermore, the perpetrator dresses in disguises that give the appearance that the robberies are being carried out by different people. He somehow knows to send a box of rejected diamonds from Kam’s Jewelry Store to McGarrett in Che Fong’s laboratory. His portrayal of an elderly shop keeper with Parkinson’s and a touch of senility is nothing short of brilliant. Yet, after his interrogation in McGarrett’s office, he isn’t smart enough to move his cache from Paradise Park. Enter McGarrett, who says, “Time is always on my side, Mr. Filer. You should know that.”

 

Well, not strictly speaking. If this case were to come up today, it would be solved as soon as Filer licked the back of the Monopoly card and stuck it on the door of the vault in the tanzanite robbery. Che would whip out his DNA testing equipment, and McGarrett would make the arrest at 15:50 on the DVD counter.

 

Now, here’s a problem with the plot. Lewis Avery Filer (Hume Cronyn) is supposed to have worked as an insurance investigator for a company that was bought out by Mid-Pacific Industries (MPI), a large conglomerate. He is supposed to be seeking revenge for his layoff by robbing MPI-affiliated businesses. Would a large conglomerate have any interest in small jewelry stores or a small cash cart store? On the other hand, what else could he rob? Let’s say MPI owns fifty percent interest in a petroleum company. How do you rob a petroleum company, unless you have a line of tank trucks ready to fill up at the end of the distillation process? Talk about implausible plots! Better to stick with the jewelry stores.

 

As for what’s most delightfully right about the episode, that would have to be Morton Stevens’ unforgettable episodic theme. It dances! It plants itself in our minds and doesn’t let us forget it. Most of all, it reflects the enjoyment Lewis Avery Filer is receiving from his efforts to outsmart McGarrett:

 

Filer:                  Ah! There you are, McGarrett!

McGarrett:        Yeah, this is McGarrett. What is it that can't be said to anyone  but me?

Filer:                  I want to report a robbery in progress. Kam’s Jewelry . . . Oh . . . Sorry, hiccups.  Kam’s

                           Jewelers, The Jewelry Mart, at the corner of South and Curtis.

McGarrett:        Yeah. Go on.

Filer:                  Go on? Isn't that enough?

McGarrett:        Well, you said "in progress." How do you know? Who is this, anyway?

Filer:                  Why, the thief, of course!

 

And, yet, the music also tells us where we are within the storyline. At the end, the two measures with a pounding beat tell us that we have reached the apex of the story. We now know where Filer keeps his cache. So does McGarrett, who is about to step through the bamboo and pounce, like a cat on a rat!

 

I asked whether the scene at Paradise Park, where Filer picks up a duck and strokes it, was scripted or ad-libbed. I find equal arguments in both directions. There, at the end, the audience may well have needed a reminder that Filer basically was a decent man. As psychiatrist Wally Emerson (John Hunt) said in McGarrett’s office, Filer seems like a man who has been kicked around his whole life. Now, deprived of his wife’s company and his career, he has been driven to the point of needing to fight back in the only way he can, by using his investigative skills to try and outsmart the smartest investigator in the Islands. This is confirmed in Filer’s second appearance in “Odd Man In.” At that point, there is no doubt but that Filer’s game is one of proving that he is smarter than everyone else.

 

Thus, it seems more likely that, as they filmed the scene, Filer walked up to the golf cart to find the duck sitting in the driver’s seat and needed to move it. The director told the cameraman to keep filming, and we received a delightful scene to enjoy.

 

“Over Fifty? Steal” gives us a delightful break from the serious crimes perpetrated by such fiends as Wo Fat (Khigh Dhiegh) in “Cocoon” and Masterson (Robert Edwards) in “Blind Tiger” and allows us to sit back and enjoy a colorful episode. After Filer calls him at Kam’s Jewelry Store, McGarrett looks directly into the camera with a curious grin on his face that draws us into the story as though he is asking us, “Just what is that clown up to, anyway?”

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Is it any wonder that "Over Fifty? Steal" is one of our favorite episodes? Hume Cronyn reprised his character in Season 4's "Odd Man In," but it somehow lacked the ingenuity of "Over Fifty? Steal."

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