A Review

 

“The Late John Louisiana”

(Season 3, Episode 9)

 

 

Mr. and Mrs. Hollander (Don Stroud and Marianne McAndrew) appear to be an ideal couple. She meets his flight at the airport in Kahului, Maui, with a loving kiss. At home, in a delightful beachside bungalow, she prepares their dinner, which she intends to serve on a beautifully set table – until he sees a reflection of hitman Tigner (John LaBreque) looking on from outside. Hollander goes out, kills Tigner, and buries him. What a lead-in!

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Quite clearly, more is going on than we were led to assume – but what? As McGarrett & Co investigate the killing, they meet the Hollanders’ next-door neighbor, Mrs. Pruitt. She is portrayed by the beloved Hawaiian entertainer, Hilo Hattie, who extols the virtues of living on Maui with the Hawaiian saying Maui nō ka ʽoi (no place but Maui). As the investigation continues, she identifies the Hollanders from police photographs.

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Mr. Hollander, as it turns out, is Nick Pierson, who describes himself as mob boss Harry Quon’s (Alfred Ryder) “number one boy,” while Mrs. Hollander is Julie Grant, a lady of the evening, who was serving as hostess at a poker game amongst mobsters when she witnessed Harry Quon kill John Louisiana, a competitor in crime. The killing terrified Julie, who ran from the room, screaming. She has been hiding out on Maui ever since, unaware of her husband’s mob connections.

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Nick Pierson has been suspected of committing gruesome murders in the Islands. As he tells Julie, when pressures mount, he was hired to kill her – except that he fell in love with her at first sight and killed another woman fitting her general appearance, instead, in order to fulfill his contract to Harry Quon. Julie finds his words hard to believe; after all, the man she knows as Nick Hollander is a decent and loving man.

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Meanwhile, suspecting that Nick is behind Tigner’s killing, Harry Quon sends hitman Charlie Cayliss (Al Harrington – the man who would later play Ben Kokua) to keep an eye on Nick’s whereabouts. As Charlie sits in his car in front of Nick’s apartment building in Honolulu, he sees McGarrett emerge with Julie in custody. He reports the siting to Quon, who calls in Nick and tells him that he wants him to kill Julie “because a contract is a contract.”

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Nick manages to take Julie from the HPD station, where she is being questioned about Harry Quon and the murder of John Louisiana, and they speed off in his car. It is not a successful escape, for an HPD patrolman witnesses it and takes down their license number. At the same time, Charlie comes up from the floor of the back seat with a gun in hand.

 

At Charlie’s insistence, they go up the Kalanianaʽole Highway to a road behind Koko Head and overlooking Hanauma and Hawaii Kai. At the overlook, Charlie tells Nick to pull off, then instructs him to kill Julie (because “that’s how Harry wants it”). Al Harrington speaks in a strong Hawaiian accent in this scene (“Let’s do it now, Bay-bee”). Nick shoots Charlie just as Charlie shoots Nick, and Charlie falls dead. Nick and Julie try to continue their escape, but Nick’s injuries are severe; he is losing blood very quickly. He veers off the road and stops, then dies in Julie’s arms atop Makapuʽu Point.

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McGarrett and Quon arrive on the scene (Would someone please explain why the mobster is riding with the top cop en route to arrest the mobster’s hitman? If any scene in this episode makes no sense, this is it). Julie continues to defend Nick as a decent and loving man, even as she identifies Harry Quon as John Louisiana’s killer. Truly mournful music by Don B. Ray rises to a crescendo, and the scene fades to black.

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On the whole, this was one of the best written episodes of the series. Even the most heinous of the criminals had a likeable side, although like too many of Five-0’s mob bosses, Harry Quon surely did eat a lot! The plot had enough twists and turns to keep us guessing without having so many red herrings that we couldn’t sort them out. Still, that last scene, with the top cop and the top mob boss riding together, was beyond comprehension.

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Jack appeared in The Traveling Lady on Broadway with Alfred Ryder’s would-one-day-be wife, Kim Stanley. Hilo Hattie also appeared as Tommy Kapali’s mother in Season 1’s “Strangers in Our Own Land” (“Mister, you no hurt my Tommy. No?”). Don Stroud also appeared in Season 6’s “The Flip Side is Death” and Season 9’s “Target – A Cop.” Marianne McAndrew also appeared in Season 2’s “A Bullet for McGarrett.”

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