Hi, I'm wondering where I can find "Bored, She Hung Herself". I hear that it is just a scant bootleg copy, but I'd like to be able to say that I've officially seen every episode.
Where do I get my hands on a copy?
Would like to see it, too. Always figured it would be eventually released in DVD collections.
shareWas it only shown just the one time? I know this has probably been discussed to death but I'm very interested in it and always hoping to see it.
shareI believe it was only shown once. To me, it was a dumb idea not to include it in the DVD set. The show aired 40 years ago. I found a copy on Ioffer. I would suggest checking that site.
shareThere was a link to a site that showed it on this forum a few years ago.
I don't know if the link is still available or for that matter if the site still exists, and if it does that it still has the episode.
I watched the episode because I wanted to see the whole series, it was the only episode I hadn't seen.
I'm glad I saw it but it wasn't that good of an episode. It was okay at best.
I can't seem to find it with a search, but maybe another poster has a link that might help.
To quote from the FAQ on my site:
Why has the second season episode "Bored She Hung Herself" not been seen since the original broadcast in 1970 and is not included in the second season DVD box set?
The late Mrs. Leonard Freeman, wife of the series creator Leonard, speaking to fans at the 1996 Five-O convention in Burbank, CA, said that a viewer tried the hanging technique seen at the beginning of the show and killed themselves.
This was confirmed by an e-mail exchange I had more recently with Joel Berliner, who played Hank, the 13-year-old neighbor's son in the episode. (See http://fiveohomepage.com/season2/Berliner.htm) He wrote to me: "Somewhere in America, someone hanged themselves after watching the show. Their parents sued CBS, and shelving the episode was part of the settlement. The first [and only] broadcast in January 1970 was the first time Hawaii 5-0 cracked the top 10 in TV ratings. I was 12, and I was dismayed when it didn't rerun that summer."
The DVD release of season 2 does not contain this episode. There are bootleg copies of it floating around, which sometimes appear on YouTube, but are quickly taken down. An early dub of the show looks like it was projected on a wall and filmed with a camcorder. Viewing this is not recommended if you are an epileptic because of the strobe-like flickering. A second dub of the show is more watchable, though the color is faded and the print is not in the best of shape.
The show has also been removed from any syndication packages, though there is a suggestion that prints were prepared for this purpose because of Viacom logos at the end of the second dub (which is taken from a 16mm print) mentioned above.
According to an executive at CBS Home Entertainment I spoke to in late 2011, this episode will not be seeing the light of day on DVD -- ever. There are "legal" issues connected with this episode as per the lawsuit. The person didn't have exact details of the "issues," but every time the possible release of this episode came up, the CBS "legal" department had a say in the matter (i.e., NO).
The box for Hawaii Five-O - The Complete Series, a 73-disc DVD set released in late 2013, has the following line on the back: "Due to viewer reaction following the original telecast of the episode 'Bored, She Hung herself' (Season 2, episode 16), that episode has not been re-broadcast or released in any manner since its original airing and is not included in this collection." There is a similar line on the back of the season 2 DVD box set.
Wikipedia at one point claimed that the episode was included in the Region 4 (Australian) season two DVD set. Fan David Farley contacted me regarding these claims: "I didn't believe this, so I went on Ebay Australia www.ebay.com.au. I emailed two sellers of the Australian R4 release and asked them if there was a disclaimer about a missing episode on the back. Both wrote back to me and said the disclaimer was there. In fact, it matched our R1 release word for word. I was 99% sure Wikipedia was wrong and as far as I'm concerned, this confirms it."
Don't know how this question is gonna sound but why did this suicide prevent this episode from ever being aired again?
There were a couple of episodes of the 60's Dragnet series where that happened.
Adam-12 which like H-5-O also debuted in 1968 the episode "We Just Can't Walk Away From It." the kids in which Malloy & Reed were trying to arrest barricaded himself in his bed room threatening to kill himself though he didn't succeed.
Even Emergency which debuted 4 years later had a couple of cases of attempted suicides and I wouldn't know if anyone was inspired to copy from those shows though it could of happened and all of those episodes have never been shelved.
I searched for it last year and was able to find it. It wasn't easy and the copy I saw was a poor quality. I just did another quick search and couldn't come up with it for you.
Keep looking- if it is out there, I am sure you will find it. There are a few scenes that are easy to find. I just did two searches- "bored, she hung herself" and "bored she hung herself" (with and without the comma revealed different results) You could also try "lost Hawaii five o episode" and such.
Good luck. It wasn't a great episode but like you, I wanted to say I saw every episode.
Dailymotion.com
I watched the entire lost episode, 2 months ago.
I thought it was about a 6 or a 7 out of 10.
Now I have seen every episode, from all 12 years, many 6 times each.
While I can understand the desire to see every episode, I did manage to get a copy of "Bored, She Hung Herself" a few years ago and it was almost unwatchable. The DVD, that is, not the episode, although the episode was no prize, either. The copy I obtained looked like it was the video that someone shot of a film print that was projected onto a screen or a white wall. Just awful video resolution . . . and as I said, the episode itself is, to use Mike Quigley's description on his wonderful Hawaii Five-O website, "pretty crappy." (Quigley gives the episode one and-a-half stars, which is about right to me -- it's not as bad as some of the worst episodes, but if they had to leave one out, at least it was as marginal as this one.)
For those who are curious and can't put their hands on a copy, Quigley gives a pretty good account of the episode among his detailed plot summaries (it's episode no. 39 in the second season summaries), and he gives an accurate summation. Don Miles (Don Quine) is a hippie-type guru who, among other things, likes to hang by the neck from the ceiling as some kind of yoga practice. I can understand why the Powers That Be are nervous about this -- apparently someone tried to emulate Miles' "yogic" practice and ended up hanging themselves for real. Quigley notes that despite the issuance of both the second season on DVD around 10 years ago, and the entire series in 2013, the CBS legal department keeps putting the kibosh on including this episode. It may have been that as part of a lawsuit over the episode, CBS agreed to withdraw the episode permanently from public view.
There certainly are risks of encouraging imitative behavior, especially among, e.g., teenagers. A kid at my high school back in the 1970s tried to imitate Alice Cooper's hanging stunt, and instead accidentally hanged himself, so the dangers are far from imaginary or overblown. There was a similar "copycat" incident involving the rape scene in the 1970s movie Born Innocent (the 1970s were just a barrel of laughs, weren't they?) But on the other hand, like showing older cartoons with disturbing racial stereotypes and the like, you'd think that they could include the episode and put a brief disclaimer at the beginning along the lines of "Do NOT try this at home -- it's not a real yoga practice and can lead to accidental death" etc., and then let anyone with the the wherewithal to pay for either a full season's worth of episodes or the whole series take their chances.
I do feel a bit torn about this. On the one hand, lawyers are generally conservative risk-avoiders, and deferring this to the legal department seems a bit extreme; after more than 40 years and all of the notoriety, putting in a disclaimer and letting the public make the decision seems to be the most "adult" approach. On the other, it really is a low point as an episode even without the hanging incident (among other things, as Quigley points out, the title is hugely misleading, because it has absolutely no grounding in the plot.) Having had the opportunity (?) to have seen the episode, though, I don't feel as if I'm really the better for it, and not much is missed much by its absence. The loss would have been much greater if the missing episode were "Highest Castle, Deepest Grave," "Over Fifty? Steal!" or "Full Fathom Five," among many others. Best, perhaps, to count our blessings for all the truly fine shows that are still out there.