Hawaii Five-0: It's place in the firmament of red-state politics
... “Hawaii Five-0,” with Jack Lord as McGarrett, aired on TV for 13 years, fading away just before the Reagan era. Its fans, who have had to survive on reruns and bootleg videotapes, are now bingeing on DVDs. The first season was released in March; the second came out on Tuesday.
This is not an ordinary fix of classic TV. Because the show was shot on location, the DVDs are a time capsule for a lost Hawaii of flower children and bold-print muumuus, when G.I.’s from Vietnam were common on beaches and barstools and construction cranes dotted the skyline. From the Banzai Pipeline wave that opens the show to the evocatively seedy downtown, the 50th state never looked lovelier or more sinister.
But what is especially striking is seeing how “Hawaii Five-0” was far more a product of the heartland than exotic Honolulu. It was a topical, political cop show that wore its conservative heart on McGarrett’s sleeve. If red-state baby boomers wanted to summon their own 1960s pop-culture heroes, who were responsible but not repressive, hip but not flaky, they wouldn’t unearth Richard Nixon or J. Edgar Hoover. They’d remember Steve McGarrett, who was beyond cool but still so square he could have been Lawrence Welk’s cop brother-in-law....
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This is not an ordinary fix of classic TV. Because the show was shot on location, the DVDs are a time capsule for a lost Hawaii of flower children and bold-print muumuus, when G.I.’s from Vietnam were common on beaches and barstools and construction cranes dotted the skyline. From the Banzai Pipeline wave that opens the show to the evocatively seedy downtown, the 50th state never looked lovelier or more sinister.
But what is especially striking is seeing how “Hawaii Five-0” was far more a product of the heartland than exotic Honolulu. It was a topical, political cop show that wore its conservative heart on McGarrett’s sleeve. If red-state baby boomers wanted to summon their own 1960s pop-culture heroes, who were responsible but not repressive, hip but not flaky, they wouldn’t unearth Richard Nixon or J. Edgar Hoover. They’d remember Steve McGarrett, who was beyond cool but still so square he could have been Lawrence Welk’s cop brother-in-law....