NxNWRocks

A lot of the double episodes of this show don't have enough story to justify the extra run time. Also, far too many episodes of this show feature Wo Fat.

In this case, it's nice to get the Hong Kong location, but the story is interminably boring and drags on. By about the midway point I couldn't care less what was going to happen with the stolen toxins.

I have also noticed, starting with the previous season, that Jack Lord looks really tired. I don't know if that is an effect of age, or fatigue from making the series since he had been doing it for eight years by this point. It's disappointing because he always had an energy and air of invincibility that made the character so appealing.

The problem with doing a pastiche of classic hardboiled detective noir is it's almost always a poor imitation with dialogue that is trite. This is the case here, where the constant voiceover framing is extremely irritating and the story is hackneyed. Nicholas Corea wrote much better episodes than this.

Cameron Mitchell just isn't really suited to this role, and his performance grates. By around the 30 minute mark I couldn't stand to watch any longer, and yet I stuck with it but had to concede defeat and fast forward through the last ten minutes. This makes two clunker episodes back to back with the lame Fast Lane episode preceding it.