by North » Mon Jan 30, 2017 11:30 am
Working my way through season 10 and just watch Tall on the Wave. I actually enjoyed the episode, better than I remembered it to be (but I remembered it to be lousy!). Being a lifelong surfer myself you have to ignore the poor screenplay of the surfing scenes themselves, the bouncing between stock surfing footage obviously filmed at pipeline and actual new filming of the actors on what appears to be Sandy Beach and Waimanalo with near zero sized waves visible in the background. A major flub was that they kept referring to the tournament being at Sunset Beach on the North Shore but all the signage seen on the Judges platform and one or two times in the dialogue is the Sandy Beach surf tournament which is on the south side of Oahu and was a body surfing competition. Regardless it was fun to see old footage from the 70's surfing scene on the North Shore and I noticed a Montreal connection in that one of the extras in several scenes was always carrying a surfboard with the 76 Montreal Olympics logo!
The acting was quite good by the guest stars and the waitress who was a friend of the victim was very cute!
The credibility of the episode was ruined and the characters of Steve and Danny were damaged by their feel good endorsement of the Hawaiian surfer Ben! They both say they would recommend him for the HPD which is ridiculous! Did they forget that even before the events of the episode that he had a prior criminal record and a history of resisting arrest? Or that during the episode he resisted arrest again, broke out of jail and then assulted the other surfer and left him to drown unconscious in the ocean to drown before once again evading arrest!