What’s Wrong With The New ‘Five-0’

Am I the only in-print opinion commentator here who’s not happy with the revived Hawaii Five-0? It sure seems that way.

I’m happy it exists because it means lots of local jobs and local expenditure. It’s great for attracting visitors who don’t know that another mammoth high-rise may be going up in Waikiki soon to block what little is left of sunshine and breeze there by the Moana hotel.

I’ve got issues with the actors and the scripts.

The old 5-0 was a state police force housed in the governor’s headquarters in Iolani Palace. The new gang is undefined. Some sort of governor-appointed special unit not especially recognized by HPD. How does a governor get to create a separate investigation unit with guns?

Danno’s always mouthing off at Steve. In the real world, someone would tell him to shut up or get out. Steve seems to like being dissed by his people. Oh, I get it. He’s the new sensitive man. So sensitive in an episode aboard Battleship Missouri that he declined to shoot a gunman holding hostages. Hey, maybe the guy was just misunderstood and suffering post-combat stress. Steve will talk with him instead.

Then there’s the police procedure. In one episode they put a bad guy in a shark cage to make him talk. Another gets a wild, downtown ride on the hood of a police car. When a bad cop is identified, Danno hauls off and punches him out right there in his chair in HPD.

The gunshot sound-effects are laughable to anyone who knows gunfire by automatic weapons of the heavy-duty variety.

I know. It’s just television. But remember when Hill Street Blues was on, how absolutely authentic that was? Are we saying there’ll be no audience unless the script is by the same people who did the Jackass movie?

Having a cop killed by roasting him in an imu was a nice, grisly touch, but wouldn’t it have been easier for the bad guy to have just shot him?

Last complaint: In the old days, they ran prominent credits at show’s end so we could see the names of people we know or have heard of. Not anymore. Just some tiny and rapidly passing production credits.

The scenery and settings are great. Maybe not those depicting a North Shore beach homeless camp as all beautiful people escaping dull bank jobs, or a local gangster sipping a Blue Hawaii umbrella drink at Hilton Hawaiian Village.

Maybe my memory’s shot because of age, and the old 5-0 was just as hokey. I was in several episodes. Still get residuals: $2.70. $3.11, once $7.22. Just complicates my income tax.

Last observation: I still watch it every week.

* Governor-elect Neil Abercrombie has started planning his inauguration. I guess we need that to make it legal.

But considering our hard times, can’t we just have a swearing in, no fanfare, no panoply, no expense?

The Abercrombie I knew in the ’60s would have said “cut the garbage and let’s get on with it.”