by Mr. Mike » Fri Jan 20, 2017 9:29 am
http://www.hawaiinewsnow.com/story/34301004/nation-of-hawaii-struggles-featured-in-upcoming-episode-of-hawaii-five-0
"Producers say they wanted to tackle a real issue with a storyline that has relevance in today's world...."
!!!!!
by Vrinda » Fri Jan 20, 2017 8:55 pmOnly after seven years, do they realize that Hawaiian sovereignty and cultural identity are relevant issues. That's sad. They've ignored or trivialized it so far.
Review of this show: It's about "respect"
by Mr. Mike » Thu Jan 26, 2017 1:11 am
http://fiveohomepage.com/2010-log7.htm#14
by honu59 » Thu Jan 26, 2017 5:02 amI agree completely with your comments about respect, specifically the various way the new series throws respect right out the window. I think you have expressed the core reason why I don't like this show - it's a lack of respect!
by Mr. Mike » Sat Jan 28, 2017 9:38 amFollowing my review of S07E14 above, I received the following lengthy response. The sentiments here fall under the category of "I couldn'ta said it better myself."
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I think talking about the hypocrisy angle is appropriate at this point. It is becoming more slanted and visible in the show. The writers seem to have lost interest in anything remotely real. The Danny rant to McG's driving tester was WTH? That's a friend? But we're supposed to giggle? The Fed was ridic. LDP was wasted in that mannequin role. These too are respect issues. And yes the denying perps' civil rights in the age of Trump isn't funny, not anymore.
As to the women issue, what has ALWAYS, from the show's beginning bugged me is that women are indeed second class citizens on this set, afterthoughts, or always the Eve character, the one that is fallen, who sins, who isn't up to the honor and merit of the male heros.
It begins by there being so few women. 5-0 began as 3 guys and woman, she being the least of the quartet. Danny's wife, always a villain bitch. McG's GF, at first a booty call but eventually a regular, who the McDanno fans went after mercilessly. Even as a show regular, she had less screen time AND, turns out Cath was only a replacement for Kono during Grace's maternity leave cos GOD FORBID 2 women on the damn team. Eventually we also get Abby ... but she too starts off as a villainess ... she is spying on 5-0 for Feds, Chin redeems her, cos he's a magic man. His first wife died, BTW, so he could have an emo storyline. Cath gets written out so McG can have one. Girlfriends blithely come and go for our boys. Kono, however, HER BF becomes a regular with SLs [second lifes] of his own, cos he's a male actor and we like to keep those.
Rachel is a douche. Cath is a what? She's suspect now cos they can't write her as a hero cos woman. And now fans hate on her. Jenna was helpful but ... dun dun dunnnn ... like all Eves, was a betrayer. Lori was portrayed as incompetent half the time. Doris is certainly not trustworthy. Aunt Deb died to give McG more emos. Must ruin women to give the guy empathetic SLs! And Mary has been a flake, a joke, from the start.
Soooo many male sidekicks are quirky, but actually quite reliable in and respected for, their particular geniuses ... Max, Jerry, Kamekona, McG's barber dude, UncleJoe, Sang Min (a damn criminal but now ohana ... few women are ohana but a crime gets into the frat), and Jimmy Freakin Buffet! How many of the women I noted are allowed to be respected for their foibles and particular genius? Zero?
And to end, no one liked 5-0 having 5 members when Lori, Jenna, or Cath was that 5th. But bring in another dude, Grover (and maybe even someday Jerry), and the fans gooooo wiiiiiiiild with joy!
Misogyny on set, in casting, in the scripts, and in the damn fandom.
by honu59 » Sun Jan 29, 2017 5:47 amWow! Very well said. Thanks for sharing this commentary. At least back in the 70s they had Jenny Sherman, who was indeed an important part of the team even though only the office manager/secretary. Even though she didn't get much screen time, her character was trusted and respected by the all male team. Far more trust and respect that I see for women in the new show. Jenny did get more screen time in "The Bomber and Mrs. Moroney." I love the end of that episode - after the crisis in which she could easily have lost her life, Jenny wipes away some tears, gets a comforting hug from Danny then gets right back to work!
by ktscarlit » Wed Feb 01, 2017 5:50 pmI'm fine with the show being majority male. It's why I watch. This fan has made this complaint ad nauseum on many occasions in different forums. If there was a viewership for a predominantly intelligent female crime drama there would be one. This isn't that show. Not from the start and not now. The holes in plotlines bother me a bit as well as dropped storylines. Could the writers do better. Yes. By Friday night I'm ready for a fun show. I want to see Alex if I'm perfectly honest. The rest concerns me little. When McGarrett's storyline is minimized, I'm bored. I really couldn't care less about Kamekona or Grover's backstory. Jerry for me is unnecessary.
by todd » Mon Feb 06, 2017 1:01 amA lot of things to say about this episode.
Overall, I liked it. It followed episode 13 (the "Farewell Max" episode) which was one of the worst of the series.
I felt that the native Hawaiian plot was done respectfully without being too preachy. This is where it was far superior to the original series' "Strangers in Our Own Land" episode from 1968. "Strangers" beat you over the head with the plight of the native Hawaiian people, and their objection to the heavy development of Hawaii. This episode gave the viewer a look into the tiny sovereign government of the Nation of Hawaii, and created a confrontation while painting neither side as unreasonable.
I agree with Mike that Bumpy Kanahele, leader of Nation of Hawaii in both real life and this episode, did a great job playing himself. Most non-actors do a fairly poor job when given an acting role, but Bumpy actually seems to have some acting talent. Who knew?
Mike didn't like the filler segments of Steve's driving test and Jerry's roommate interview. While I agree that neither were necessary or particularly interesting, they were SHORT. Almost the entire episode dealt with the crime of the week, which was a refreshing change. In fact, the prior episode was one of the WORST I'd ever seen with unnecessary (and often boring) filler. This episode actually reminded me of how much better this show could be if they just stuck to the main plot and excised the extraneous garbage. This was one of the few Five-Zero episodes I've seen where I wasn't restlessly waiting for a dumb segment to end.
I liked how Kanuha (the original villain under protection of Nation of Hawaii) turned out to be neither a good guy nor a ruthless killer. He was somewhere in between, which was again a refreshing change on a show where most characters are either totally good, totally bad, or lovable petty criminals (think Hirsch, and formerly Kamekona). When Kanuha's parole officer visited, stating, "This is one of a handful of guys I thought would make it" (referring to how he was turning his life around and was likely never to re-offend), I winced a little at the TV trope of the falsely accused ex-con turning out to be a great guy. But wait! Turned out that Kanuha was right back to burglarizing homes once he was out of the slammer, and in reality was the same criminal he had been seven years prior when he got busted. At the same time, he was actually innocent of the murder, While Kanuha hadn't reformed, he also hadn't gotten worse.
This also figured into the confrontation between Nation of Hawaii, Five-0, and the feds. Had the Nation of Hawaii been protecting a completely innocent man, this again would have looked like a tired TV trope where the oppressed people are always right, perceptive, and just, while it takes everyone else a lot longer to come around to accepting what they've claimed all along. Here, it was a nice middle ground. Bumpy was right that Kanuha was innocent of murder, but incorrect in that Kanuha ran from the police "just because he was afraid of unjust treatment."
Speaking of TV tropes, unfortunately this show did have one, and that was US Marshal Lincoln (Lou Diamond Phlillips).
Federal authorities clashing with local authorities, and taking over jurisdiction? Check.
Federal authorities being too overzealous, stiff, and militarized? Check.
Federal authorities lacking the tact and wisdom to avoid escalating a situation? Check.
However, I didn't hate the presence of the US Marshals as much as many of you. While their initial reason for showing up so quickly ("getting word from the DOJ about a murder suspect being harbored") was laughable, they did at least provide a reasonable foil for Five-Zero's soft-shoe handling of the Nation of Hawaii.
While the viewer was likely to side with Five-Zero's handling of it, it's not at all unreasonable to see how an outside agency would believe it was ridiculous to allow a tiny sovereign nation within Hawaii to harbor a murder suspect who had fled from police. It would have been better if they tied in the US Marshal's presence to something more reasonable (say, the crime was committed on federal land), but I tried not to let that bother me. In reality, the US Marshal would not have interfered in a situation like this unless the local authorities asked for help -- something which did NOT happen in this episode.
They did attempt to humanize Lincoln a bit, both by his statement to Chin of something like, 'You may not believe this, but I also want to avoid escalation", as well as the traded "nods of respect" between him and Chin at the end.
All in all, I liked this episode, and I would like the show a lot better if the writing of other episodes were this good.
Last edited by todd on Mon Feb 06, 2017 1:57 am, edited 1 time in total.
by todd » Mon Feb 06, 2017 1:29 am(Lengthy response from above is repeated…)
Sorry, but I must take issue with most of the [lengthy response] above, and in fact I'm surprised that Mike is nodding in agreement here.
When you strip away the veneer of drama coating the show, Five-Zero is, at its core, an action show.
There are many professions once occupied primarily by men which have since seen a massive influx of (competent) women. Think of the number of female physicians and female attorneys compared to, say, 60 years ago, and you can applaud the growing progress of our society toward gender equality.
At the same time, we must concede that men and women are indeed born different.
Men, on the whole, are physically stronger, while women tend to be more nurturing.
I watch the NBA instead of the WNBA not because of sexism, but because I simply want to see the best basketball players in the world competing, and those players happen to be men.
When I dropped my young son off at preschool, I was happy to see that all of the teachers were female, both because females are more nurturing and are FAR less likely to be pedophiles.
Similarly, I find it much more believable to watch men in action roles. While I like Grace Park's Kono character, I do sometimes cringe when I see little Grace beat up three large men at the same time.
Five-Zero is primarily a male action/buddy show. Attempts to integrate females into the cast (aside from Kono) have mostly been a failure, as these females tended to either lack chemistry, a well-defined role, or both. This is because females don't really fit into theme of a male action/buddy show, so they're left kind of hanging without a purpose after a few episodes where they are introduced with a specific plot line.
To be honest, I like Alex O'Loughlin's McGarrett being single, much like I enjoyed seeing Jack Lord's McGarrett being single. O'Loughlin has never had much chemistry with any women on the show (even though they attempt to force such chemistry with Catherine), and I think is much better off being "married to the job" much like Lord's version of the same character.
I see this commenter above was also concerned that the goofy/semi-shady male characters (Kamekona, Hirsch, Sang Min, Jerry, etc) manage to become Ohana, while most of the female characters do not. This is actually due to a longstanding reverse-sexist convention (pre-dating Five-Zero) where it's okay to portray a male character as someone you can derisively laugh at, whereas female characters tend to be good or bad, but never buffoonish. I don't agree with this convention, but it developed out of a fear of offending female viewers -- basically in fear that women would be seen as portrayed as stupid or incompetent.
Personally I never liked any of this "Ohana" garbage, and feel that the new show could learn a lot from the original. You didn't need to see cutesy "hangout" segments to understand that the characters cared about one another, but instead it was simply implied by their very close working relationship in a very dangerous profession.
Does the show portray civil rights of suspects being trampled upon by McGarrett and others? It sure does. However, they are careful never to show Five-Zero abusing an innocent man, and it's always portrayed that the fear/abuse heaped upon the bad guys is the only way to get the truth out of the bad guy. This might be disturbing if it were a depiction of real life (because there would undoubtedly be abuses of innocent citizens, as well as overly abusive behavior in relatively minor criminal investigations), but given that this is a fictional TV program where we are only seeing the bad guys get abused, it shouldn't bother you too much.
This show is basically action escapism. It annoys me as much as it does Mike when they resort to lame time-waste fillers or lazily fail to plug gaping plot holes. At the same time, I try not to think about anything too heavily, and simply enjoy the action, the characters, and the beautiful (albeit color-enhanced) scenery.