Strange Things in the World+Television!! = Bizarrovision! Hawaii 5- WHHAAA???

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.

Television!! - A new segment!

It is telling that I spent an hour-and-a-half on Sunday watching a famed German show called Tatort. The show is a long (we're talking decades!) running cop drama that has multiple iterations and protagonists for every major and most minor population centers in Germany. It is what Dick Wolf dreams off, while he huffs paint and masturbates furiously to the fevered nightmare of Law & Order: Small Claims Court Tallahasse. I jest of course, Tatort is actually a fairly decent show. It tends to focus more on the personalities of the Kriminalkommisare trying to solve the really obvious cases. Call it an anti-CSI. While naturally, some series are better than others, in terms of quality the series float between your average episode of JAG and one of the best episodes of the first season of 24. The problem isn't the show. The problem is that the show is the best thing on German television.

The landscape of the German television industry is something from a post-apocalyptic sci-fi comic: blasted, lifeless, bleak and probably incapable of ever again spawning life. Most of it consists of reality shows about dreary "ordinary, everyday" people and their useless, wasted boring lives. What little original programming exists can hardly be called original, let alone good. American television may be scourged unimaginably shit shows that make you want to claw your eyes out, at least the industry is not adverse to risk taking, trying to tell new stories while German television relies on reality and game shows that are so mind numbingly pointless that you want to scream out, begging for God to release your tortured soul from this stygian neverscape.

I miss American Television.

So as part of this new segment I shall be reviewing those series, both new and returning, that I particularly enjoy and find worthwhile on a level for more than just base entertainment. How I Met Your Mother is a very funny show and I enjoy watching it, but it doesn't really enthrall me the way some of the shows do that I shall be presenting here. First up will be one of my all time favorites: Sons of Anarchy!

A Tale of Two Sherlocks

In the past year, we have been graced with two new incarnations of Sherlock Holmes. The first  was presented to us by every ones favorite London gangstarr groupie Guy Ritchee, who seems to be back on track producing witty humorous and clever "guy" flicks (*chortle chortle*) after having been lost in the wilds of Madonna va-ja-ja for several years. The second is the Sherlock Holmes television re-imagining created by Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss, the former now the head writer and executive producer for the rebooted Doctor Who series and the latter also a writer on said series who play Sherlock's brother Mycroft in this new show. Both seemed to be trying to give us a Holmes for the modern era but they go about it in such different ways that it begs the question of which one shall be the iconic Holmes of our generation. Is this a thoroughly fruitless endeavor? Yes. Will whatever arguments I construct be flimsy pablum in the face of the fact that this is an entirely subjective decision? Sure. Am I just yapping into the void of the Interwebs in a futile attempt to let the world know that I exist! I matter! And goddamit, I'm worth it! ...Probably. Will these realizations stop me from embarassing myself? Unlikely.