Hawaii Five-O (TV Series) A Bullet for McGarrett (1969) User Reviews

Psychologically ludicrous...but interesting.

[planktonrules · 6/10 · 17 November 2009]

For this episode to work, you need to accept the show's premise--a premise that is impossible if you know much about actual hypnosis. In the show, an evil Communist mole (Eric Braeden) is able to hypnotize people like a Svengali--making them do ANYTHING--even kill or possibly kill themselves. Apparently it also makes them amazingly good shots, as the way the young lady kills her classmate is an tough shot--but she gets him. The problem is that you CANNOT do things like this with hypnosis. You cannot make people do things they don't want to do. Besides, with all my training in hypnotherapy, I would do LOTS of evil things if it really worked that way! Believe me, though, it doesn't.

The show is in many ways like a reworking of the original MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE. In this film, Khigh Deigh (Wo Fat) plays a Chinese hypnotist (who is much like Wo Fat) who uses his brainwashing techniques to turn innocent American soldiers into killing machines--just waiting to be activated. In this episode, which is almost like a sequel to the movie, Wo Fat had trained the psychology professor (Braeden) and Braeden is now doing Fat's bidding. But why would a Communist agent be posing as a professor in Hawaii?!? This doesn't make any sense. You'd think that he'd at least be teaching in Washington, DC or some place a little more important than on Oahu, Hawaii!! Later in the film, Wo Fat asks the professor to hypnotize an undercover policewoman (who McGarrett put in the professor's class--though WHY they suspected the professor is unexplained). And WHAT do they force her to do?! Yep, try to kill McGarrett! It's all very entertaining....really. But it's also a load of crap.

An undercover cop can be so easily manipulated and hypnotised?

[lukebernstein3 · 7/10 · 6 December 2019]

The idea behind this episode is the idea that someone can be hypnotized to kill. In this case a female cop mcgarrett sends undercover. First of all they make her look weak by how easily she is manipulated and hypnotised to kill mcgarrett. I won't go into how this happens but it's redicules. They really make her look weak in this episode and on top of that she just doesn't act like a cop at all. Also her name is Joyce. How many undercover cops named Joyce has mcgarrett used at this point, all played by different actresses. It's kind of stupid. Also wo fat appears in one scene. He's the one behind it. This is the worst Wo fat episode so far becuase he's just in one scene and mcgarrett never even figures out he was involved.

A Little Disappointing

[RedbirdCraig · 6/10 · 6 March 2022]

This is an interesting episode because it shows a very 60's way of understanding psychology and hypnosis. This policewoman gets hypnotized pretty easily and ordered to kill McGarrett. It's a snapshot of how people thought hypnosis could get someone to do anything with just a tape recording and some trigger words.

What's disappointing is, besides some of the inconsistencies of the story (if the hypnosis is supposed to make her a remote control killer, why is the prof hanging out at the scene to egg her on? And why would she be acting so suspiciously when she's not in "activation mode"?), is that it's a Wo Fat episode with almost no Wo Fat! If you've got him on the set use him!

An uncharacteristically weak "Wo Fat" episode

[lindner-02671 · 1/10 · 30 January 2024]

Typically, the Wo Fat episodes are a cut above the average Five-O episodes, but this one falls flat with factual errors. This is especially surprising when a solid actor like Eric Braeden co-stars.

Wo Fat, last seen on a boat bound for China, makes his return, in a cameo appearance in this episode. One might first ask how did Wo Fat return so easily? Where was Five-O's intelligence. Further, he has a plant inside Five-O that McGarrett is totally unaware of, something this storyline seemed to overlook completely. Braeden's character, Dr. Farar, is working for Wo Fat, but we learn nothing about the connection. Is Farar a Soviet, an East German (most plausible given Braeden's German birth), but once again, the writers offer no clue. Then there's policewoman Joyce Bennett who becomes a twenty something college student in Farar's psychology class. Wouldn't an instructor realize there's a new student in his class that deep into the term?

The whole hypnosis theme is weakly developed. Bennett lures McGarrett to the University of Hawaii campus at night. Oddly, there is no campus security. She unloads a full gun yet no sirens are heard, no people screaming or shouting. She shoots McGarrett at point blank range hitting him between his heart and shoulder, but he's still strong enough to fight off Dr. Farar. Bennett then shoots and kills Farar from 30 maybe 50 feet away and kills him with one shot. Still no sirens. Then the oddest scene of all, McGarrett and Bennett walk off together leaving Farar's dead body behind. Inexplicable. There are just so many missed opportunities throughout the show.

Clearly, this episode begged to be a two-part show, but it wasn't. The writers took too much time on less important elements like the death of the Chinese student, and overlooked too many gaps in the plot to cram this into one 50 minute show. So many times Wo Fat and McGarrett play their intellectual chess game that the Wo Fat episodes became hallmarks of the series. This one fell flat. I had to give it one star, and that was generous.