Hawaii Five-O Up Tight (1968–1980) Online

"Up Tight" was an episode which held great promise for about 30 minutes, then is teeters on the edge like the hapless hophead Eadie Hastings. Does it eventually take the plunge?

The episode opens with Danno's ill-fated attempt to save 18-year-old Eadie Hasting from walking on a cloud and leaping from a rocky seaside crag. Danny was just inches away from grasping her hand and is having difficulty getting over it. The young woman's best friend is suffering no such difficulties, however, as McGarrett discovers. At the time of McGarrett's visit, Donna Wales is in a bikini swimming in her pool and provides viewers some eye candy (who says "jiggle TV" started with CHARLIE'S ANGELS?). As attractive as Donna is on the outside, inside she's self-obsessed, insensitive, and a hypocrite, bashing the system while enjoying the fruits of it, living large at her parents' seaside home. She refuses to cooperate with McGarrett, who makes his contempt clear.

After McGarrett left, Chin Ho Kelly followed Donna to the home of David Stone, a disgraced chemistry professor from the mainland living in self-imposed exile in Hawaii. Stone is a thinly disguised Timothy Leary coupled with the faux-profundity of Leary's comrade Richard Alpert aka Ram Dass. Leary's catchphrase "Turn on, tune in, drop out" is even cited by McGarrett and Stone in their impromptu establishment-meets-the-counterculture dialogue. Stone is no fool, and knows Steve is trying to entrap him. Despite his back-to-earth pose--cooking outdoors, washing his plate in a pail of water--Stone is worldly wise enough to send Steve packing with a warning not to return without a warrant.

Steve's plan is to try to sneak someone into Stone's circle that could nab Stone either producing or distributing his homemade psychedelics. Kono is MIA this episode, and Chin is too long in the tooth, so the lot falls to Danny, who with some bare-chested splashing in the surf (providing some beefcake to balance the cheesecake) and outdoor cooking conveniently and quickly draws the attention and affections of the beach-strolling Donna Wales. She's smitten by Danny and eager to introduce him to Stone, but somehow Danny is known to be Five-O by Stone, who refuses to open his door.

Stone, who earlier sneered at McGarrett about the "sordid little games you people play," proves he is not above such sordidness himself. He suddenly shows up sitting in Donna's backyard, slaps her face when she joyously embraces him, and then slips a psychedelic drug onto her tongue and declares she'll have to take this trip alone without his guidance. He strides out leaving Donna pleading and fearful.

Here is where the infamous yet iconic DRAGNET 1967 drug episode "Blue Boy" ("The LSD Story") sprang into my mind like a bad green acid of Woodstock flashback (though this episode aired eight months before that long strange trip). Donna freaks out, inexplicably hops on a motorcycle and laughs maniacally while driving down busy streets, all while the screen pulses and blurs to the tune of psychedelic music. It all ends anticlimactically, with Donna simply wiping out in the sand. But she wakes up in a drug rehab hospital that may shake if not stir up memories of Ray Milland in LOST WEEKEND. Donna is surrounded by young women like herself on neighboring beds, each in various drug-induced hazes, doing strange things like sucking their thumbs and twirling their hair while unblinkingly staring into middle space. The object lesson is not lost on Donna.

A fatal flaw in the episode is the ham-fisted performance by John McLiam as Eadie's distraught dad, Ralph Hastings. Like a proto-Archie Bunker, he's always yelling while his beleaguered wife is slowly collecting her thoughts into coherent sentences. In one scene, he comes all the way to McGarrett's office, barging past May, just to toss onto Steve's desk a high school portrait of Eadie. A symbolic gesture that nonetheless galvanizes Five-O in its zeal to stop Stone.

Where the episode starts getting silly and where it dropped from a nine to an eight for me was when Hastings shows up at Stone's place with a pistol. He forces Stone to read passages from Eadie's diary, in which she gushes about her love for Stone (and implies he was her lover and not just her drug dealer). Then Hastings compels Stone at gunpoint to pop some of his own pills, which Stone reluctantly does, even though at numerous times Stone could have overpowered Hastings and taken the gun from him, as he does only after taking the pills and proceeding to run wild in the streets.

The episode's nadir is when the hallucinating Stone goes to the very same cliff from which Eadie leapt. He's planning on doing the same thing. And here is where my long-held suspicion that McGarrett is Hawaii's answer to Captain Kirk was confirmed. Stripping off his jacket, McGarrett strides to the cliff's edge and thrusts an arm at Stone. McGarrett's gravitas and authority is undeniable, as is Kirk's, but each can take it over the top; for example, this episode's closing scene of McGarrett standing on the cliff's edge, basking in unabashed self-congratulatory awe of himself, and even scanning the sky as if expecting the gods to applaud him.

The ending would have been better had Danno been the man to save Stone, thus redeeming himself for failing to save Eadie. And it would have been nice to see Ralph Hastings get his comeuppance, though Stone did confront Hastings with the uncomfortable fact that it was his failings as a father that drove Eadie to adopt Stone as her guru, lover, and surrogate father figure (which fact only made Hastings bluster louder and wave his gun with greater vigor).

"Up Tight" is rescued from tumbling off the cliff in large part due to outstanding performances by Ed Flanders as Stone and especially the beautiful and talented Brenda Scott as Donna. 8/10

IMDb is right--although the episode refers to the drug that the girl was using as 'speed', it really appears to be LSD (or perhaps mushrooms or mescaline or some other psychedelic drug). Speed literally speeds up the metabolism and behaviors and it's also commonly referred to as 'uppers'. Not a huge mistake (as either one can be quite nasty) but considering that the entire episode is about the drug, they should have done their research.

The episode begins with a young lady standing on a rock ledge. She's having a 'bad trip' and Danny responds to try to talk her back to safety. However, she's in her own little fantasy world and ends up jumping to her death--300 feet into the sea and rocks below.

Afterwords, Steve decides that due to a recent rash of 'speed'-related deaths that the forces of Five-O must be used to get to the heart of the problem. The trail leads to a freakedelic professor (Ed Flanders)--an obvious Timothy Leary-inspired character. The professor seems to feel no responsibility for her death--blaming it on society!! The only way to get evidence they need on the guy is to infiltrate his little inner circle. However, in the meantime the dead girl's father is running amok--demanding SOMETHING be done immediately. See the episode for yourself to see what happens next, but let's just say that Danno becomes a real hep-cat in order to try to end this drug's reign of terror (personally, I would have chosen Chin Ho for this assignment--he doesn't get do too much on the show and is the epitome of cool).

Overall, this is one of the poorest episodes of season one for several reasons. As mentioned at the top, the writers should have gotten the facts right if they were writing an episode about drugs. Second, the show was really, really goofy--with lots of silly psychedelics and plot. Never was it particularly believable and it just comes off as contrived and very weak.

An extremely accurate depiction of what our society went through, in 1968.

Excellent acting, plus the depiction of the professor, was so realistic.

Yes, he was a terrible person.

Great police work.

They mention speed, as the usual drug, but of course, it was the notorious "L", with which the professor " dosed", the lady .

Episodes like this, show the harshness of drugs, and show cult leaders as the devils that they are.

Long before he played Dr Westphall in the eighties medical drama, St. Elsewhere, Ed Flanders played among guest appearances on other television series particularly here. He played a professor in Hawaii who provides drugs to his students. When a young female college student commits suicide, Macgarrett and five-o try to bring him down. Ed Flanders takes a despicable character. He had another appearance but played another character.

I have watched all episodes of Five- O, some several times each, and this one is in my top 5.

To review properly, a person would have to have lived in that era, and be familiar with that culture, especially for a topic such as in "Up Tight".

To tackle such a subject, as is here, required great boldness and risk.

The reason they waffled on the type of drug, obviously, was due to the immense popularity at the time, of LSD, in Hollywood, being careful to not offend the powers that be, in L.A. And due to the rage, that conservative America felt toward LSD and its promoters, the writers used caution.

You can easily see at least four times, characters referred to it, as ' speed, acid or whatever it was...'

It was blatantly obvious that Edie and the others, took LSD, not speed.

Yes, Stone was a partial example of Leary, greatly watered down.

I have seem John McLiam in other TV shows, and he has the exact same style as he has here, as the father of Edie. He actually delivers a fine performance, especially displaying the precise attitude and emotions of parents in 1968 America.

Brenda Scott, is brilliant here, in every possible way, as is the great Ed Flanders, who appeared in at least 6 other episodes.

Don't forget the music. The psychedelic segments, were done by The Ventures, and greatly enhanced the already brilliant script.

The cinematography, was brilliant.

The mental ward scene, was a classic, as was the crazed motorcycle ride scene, and of course, Steve, with the Pacific Ocean in the background.

Remember, this was the first season, and the show was still gaining its bearings.

A true example of the tensions at the time.

Must see.