This is my first combination post, and I think the subject is particularly worthy of comment since it is probably the most puzzling thing that has ever crossed my path. Well that is not entirely true. "Female logic", Sarah Palin, Germany's anti-nuclear energy policy, American Conservative policies, Japanese card game based animes and the Winter Olympics are all things that no one has been able to explain to me to any satisfaction but in terms of Us popular culture and television, there is nothing more bewildering than the remake of Hawaii 5-O, which is now called Hawaii Five-0. Cause it's different, see?!
A little history first: Hawaii 5-O, was your grandfathers Law & Order. Spawning on US television for the first time in 1968, the show was the prototype cop show, the one that came up with the phrase "take em away", a dead horse of a cliche so thoroughly beaten that it really is just a slightly damp piece of ground at this point. The show ran for an eye popping 12 years and featured a multi-ethnic cast with extras that more or less reflected the racial reality of the island. In the 1960's that was nothing less than a Jesus getting drunk and turning a donkey into a Winnebago sized miracle. The show ended in 1980, and as we are currently stuck in the remake epidemic, television producers at CBS decided that this little hallowed piece of US television history had been resting peacefully long enough. So they pillaged the grave and cracked open the coffin to see what leftover pieces of cadaver they could stitch together into something vaguely resembling a show. This may seem I am being incredibly hypocritical in my opinions of the remaking scourge as I am on record as one of the many geeks who would willing sign up for the armed forces if Edward James Olmos made a recruitment video for the Marines wearing his Battlestar Galactica uniform. However, I feel that BSG is the very large exception that proves the rule about remaking old properties instead of taking a risk with new ones. The results often fall into the "intolerable horseshit" category. To be fair, Hawaii Five-0, isn't that bad, but it does carve out it's own niche in the remake paradigm: "bizarre". That word will crop up often.
