“You know how some guys go out on a tightrope, even though they know how dangerous it is?”
“So, this guy’s some kind of tightrope walker”
“Symbolically, yes.”

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Years:  1973, 1974
Genre:  TV series, Cop, Drama
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Starring:  Jack Lord, James MacArthur, Kam Fong, Al Harrington
Guest stars:  Slim Pickens, Lew Ayres, Don Porter, Ed Flanders, Victor Buono, Andrew Duggan, Peter Strauss, Peter Donat, Anthony Zerbe, William Devane
Creator:  Leonard Freeman
Run time:  20 hours 9 minutes
DVD distributor:  Paramount Home Entertainment
Related reviews:  Hawaii Five-O Season Four, Hawaii Five-O Season Five, Hawaii Five-O Season Seven

    I really can’t help seeing David Caruso every time I look at Jack Lord in Hawaii Five-O.  The similarities are just too glaring.  Only Lord and Caruso could have delivered a line like “symbolically, yes”.  Lord has just finished making a comparison between a thrill-seeking thief who almost lets himself be caught before making his escape, and a tightrope walker who does his act miles in the air for the thrill of it.  It’s terrifically obvious to everyone that he is making a comparison, speaking metaphorically.  Yet he feels the need, after making this statement, to hammer it home.  “Symbolically, yes.”  EVERYONE watching the show, EVERYONE in the room with him, knows he was referring to the tightrope walker “symbolically”, and not to a real tightrope walker.

   But, much like his latter-day counterpart, David Caruso on CSI: Miami, Lord feels the need to spell everything out, assuming that those around him, and those watching the show, would have a hard time wrapping their puny intellects around his fancy talk.  And such is the nature of Hawaii Five-O, which feels incredibly dated thanks to Nash Bridges, the CSI series, and numerous other followers in recent years.  The show still has the greatest theme music of any cop show ever (unless you count the music provided by The Who to the CSI series).  And it still manages to entertain.

   Paramount Home Entertainment is releasing Season Six of Hawaii Five-O on April 21st, and it’s worth the purchase.  Just because something has become very, very dated in recent years does not mean it isn’t fun for an hour at a time.  Like Hawaii Five-O, or Madonna.  It’s fun.  And I don’t mean that “symbolically”.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 21st, 2009 at 4:45 am and is filed under 1973, 1974, Cop, Drama, TV series. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.