#MadMen ends perfectly

There was no way I was going to stay up until 10 at night to watch anything, but that doesn't mean it wasn't the first thing I did when I woke up. The show I have loved and found almost flawless did not disappoint at the very end.

All good things....

The opening episode found Don continuing his Western adventure, Joan at the end of her idyllic, post-"retirement" vacation with her older lover, Peggy practicing her elbowing skills at McCann and Pete bidding farewell to McCann and New York. That might have been everyone's happy ending- Peggy only acts annoyed when she has to struggle; the truth is that she lives for the fight- but something was going to give. In this case, that something was Sally's confession to Don that Betty was dying of lung cancer. Her plea to her father: convince Betty that her brothers should stay with their stepfather Henry, not go to live with their Uncle William. Don is indignant and calls Betty; the boys should live with him. Betty, who with age has developed nobility, tells Don that the boys need the presence of a woman, and her sister-in-law Judy is the only one who can provide that. She also quickly lets him know that he's been a failure as a father, and spending more time with them now will let alarm them. Betty has never been a great mother, but it was touching that she wanted to provide her children with stability, even if keeping them in the dark was a complete failure. The scene where Sally came home to find her brothers struggling to make dinner broke my heart; she wanted to maintain the facade that everything was okay, but her little brothers knew better than she did how sick their mother was. She told Bobby that she wasn't going to Madrid that summer, and started taking care of everyone by making dinner- and teaching him to make it in the process. Not surprisingly, this was one of the most tragic arcs of the entire series; as long-time viewers may remember, the second episode of the series explored the beginnings of Betty's unraveling in response to her mother's recent death.

The news about Betty's health sent Don on another bender- what a surprise- and he asked the race car drivers he was sponsoring to drop them off in LA to visit his niece Stephanie. He hoped to reconnect with the only family he had left that he hadn't disappointed, but Stephanie, who had been compared to a Madonna earlier in the series, wasn't able to give anyone absolution as she was struggling with her own feelings of worthlessness. She convinced Don to come with her to a retreat that featured proto-group therapy in addition to yoga and tai chi. (How awesome was Don's face when he saw people performing forms?) Don was highly skeptical about the whole thing, but when participants were told to express their feelings about the person closest to them without using words and an older woman shoved him, Don's defenses came down.

Meanwhile, Ken reached out to Joan from Dow, in desperate need of a producer who could create some industrial commercials. Joan quickly realizes that she could produce the commercials. She also realizes that she knows the perfect writer and calls Peggy. At lunch, Joan asks Peggy to not only help her write one commercial, but to come into business with her. Harris-Olson, because two names are better than one- and Joan wants Peggy. Peggy is flattered, but frazzled, and later takes out her angst on Stan, her long-suffering colleague/confidante. Fed up, Stan tells her she'd better be really drunk, because she's going to need an excuse.

Meanwhile, after a particularly difficult session in which Stephanie is reduced to tears over her abandon of her young son, Don realizes that Stephanie has left him at the commune and taken his car. It'll be a couple of days before he can get a ride out. When he berates the young woman at the desk because people leave without saying good-bye, the young woman smiles and shrugs. People can go as they please. Don realizes that's exactly what he's done his entire life, and staggers over to the phone to call Peggy. Peggy, the person who has most consistently seen his decent side, reminds him of the good things he's done and tries to remind him of the creative opportunities he still has- "Don't you want to work on Coca-Cola?" but to no effect.

This image made a lot of people predict that the show would end with Don committing suicide; really, this only showed what happened to Don in every episode.

After Don hangs up, Peggy calls Stan in a panic, telling him where Don is and then apologizing for what she said. Stan confesses that he doesn't want her to leave after she tells him she already made up her mind to stay, then rambles out that he loves her. Peggy comes to her own realization that she loves him too, and the scene ends when he comes running to her door and they share a loving, passionate kiss. I must say, I've loved their relationship since Peggy put younger, sexually harassing Stan firmly in his place, and it's been clear for the last several seasons that their friendship was based on mutual respect. When she confessed that she'd given up a baby years before two episodes back and Stan was not only understanding but kind, I was jumping out of my seat, hoping that the two would get together, but I didn't think there was time in the series. So this was a wonderful, romantic surprise; Peggy deserves a happily ever after as much as- if not more than- anyone else on the show, and part of the HEA is a man who treats her like an equal.

Roger, Madison Avenue's would-be Peter Pan, is now engaged to be married to Don's former mother-in-law, Marie. The two have a passionate argument after what looks to have been exhausting sex and Roger ends up on the couch. But this is Roger's version of a happily ever after; just like Peggy needs to fight in order to thrive, Roger needs not a mother to take care of him (his first wife Mona) or a child to pamper (his second wife Jane), but a fierce, independent woman who has enough dignity not to tolerate his shenanigans. He's at peace when he tells Joan that he's getting married, during the same conversation that he tells her that he insists on leaving half of his estate to their son, Kevin. Joan cares a little less about appearances now and gives her blessing. It was a nice final scene between the two of them; Joan would have made a good wife for Roger, but Roger wouldn't have made a good husband for her. To see him graciously accept that they were better as good friends was satisfying.

Unfortunately, Joan's lover Richard was much less sanguine about her new business venture, and walked out when she answered a business call. Joan was heartbroken, but it's one of those things that she would surely be thankful for sooner rather than later. Richard didn't want an equal partner, he wanted a playmate. Joan had surely earned her playtime, but she had a lot more to do before she was ready to take up permanent residence by the beach or in the mountains. Peggy didn't take her up on her offer of a partnership, so Joan's firm was called Holloway-Harris, her maiden name plus her married name. And that's just fine, because Joan has always been the most capable person on the show.

One of the leaders of the retreat found a devastated Don slumped by the phone and convinced him to join her in the next session. Don was moved when a man who looked just as out of place as he did talked about his longing to be seen and loved, and then his realization that maybe he had been getting love all along but didn't realize it because he didn't know what it was. As the man sobbed, Don crossed the circle and knelt down beside him, embracing him and then sobbing himself. It was one of the many epiphanies Don had through the course of the show, but this was the most human response Don had ever had to it.

The end scene featured Don chanting "Om" with his fellow participants in Lotus Pose, and then smiling before the famous "I'd Like To Buy The World A Coke" ad was shown. It looks like Don got to work on Coca-Cola after all. Perfect, because that was as close to enlightenment as Don Draper, the soulless narcissist, was ever going to get.

Thank you, Matthew Weiner, for some of the best, most consistent characters I've ever watched, and thank you for giving your loyal viewers a realistic closure to a compelling story. I do not feel cheated one bit by anything that happened (although I'm always going to wonder what happened to poor Sal), and at the same time I'm done; I don't feel any need to watch this again, and I don't wish anything had been done differently. Like the best of great stories, I feel richer for having heard it.

But...now what am I going to watch?!

I Totally Saw That Coming...and sometimes that's not bad

Kerrie did a great job talking about the good side of predictability. Despite the snark implied in the title of this blog hop, I don't always think predictable is a bad thing.

My husband and I watched a great little show broadcast by BBC America last year, The Game. It was set in early 1970s London, and it was about a group of agents from MI-5 who were trying to forestall a Soviet plot. The main character is young but jaded agent Joe Lambe played by Tom Hughes. Even though he's barely in his late twenties, the viewer can tell that he's already starting to lose his conscience and is willing to be more and more ruthless.

Whatever happened to corrupt young Agent Lambe so? He lost the love of his life, of course- or did he? (SPOILER ALERT) From the first time I saw a flashback of Joe remembering the murder of his lover Yulia years before, I knew that she wasn't dead. (And if I hadn't known that, the fact that they showed the flashback in almost every episode would have given it away by the end.) More importantly, because Yulia was an intelligence agent for the Soviets, you knew the bad guys were going to use her as leverage. But what you didn't know: would it work?

You could guess what happens next and then what happens right after...but could you figure out why?

There was another big twist I could guess within two episodes, and that was the identity of the mole. It was a small team: Joe, director "Daddy" (yes, that is kind of creepy), young assistant Wendy, proto-techie Alan, his brilliant wife Sarah, Bobby, a to-the-manor-born agent who needed to hide his homosexuality and Jim, a detective on loan from the London police department. (SPOILER ALERT) It didn't take much to figure out that Sarah was the mole, although they did do a very good job for a few minutes of making it look like her husband Alan was. Why did he confess? Because he figured it out first and he wanted to protect Sarah.

Really, only one of these people could have been the mole. The real question was whether the rest of them could get on in spite of it

So why did this make for really good television viewing anyway? A couple of reasons: first, the viewers knew who the real mole was before the team did; would they figure it out on time? And what were the Soviets planning? Even more importantly, the credibility of everyone on the team was compromised in some way: that which made it plausible for them to be the mole also made it possible that they weren't going to be able to do their jobs even though they weren't.

The look on Joe Lambe's face: that's what The Game was really about

Further, being able to suss out a plot twist isn't the same as being able to figure out why. As predicted, Joe was reunited with Yulia at the end, but he was tormented as to what, if anything, her role in the plot was. Did she willingly go along with a charade to make it appear that she was being killed, or did the Soviets spare her at the last minute so they could use her as leverage against Joe? While the viewers may have had a pretty good idea that it was the latter, it didn't matter: the end frame of the final episode made it clear that Joe was always going to be tormented by his doubts. As Jim pointed out a few episodes back, there was no way Joe could be the mole they were looking for: he didn't believe in anything. That was what the show was really about, and predictability wasn't going to ruin that.

If predictability can be a good thing, the converse is also true; sometimes, there's such a thing as too much surprise. No, I'm not talking about Scandal this time, but rather the 2014 novel The Big Hit. I went into this expecting to find out why Hollywood star Catherine Delure was murdered by a sociopathic hit man. If you look at the cover and read the back cover, you'd most likely think that the murder had something to do with the victim's job. You know what else makes you think that? The fact that more than half of the book is spent following NYPD Detective Jeb Barker into the corrupt warrens of some of Hollywood's producers- that, and the fact that said hit man just happens to hail from LA as well. (SPOILER ALERT) But no. As it turns out, Delure's profession is just one big red herring that gives birth to a slew of others. (An early tip should have been that she wasn't killed anywhere near LA.)

The question of a mystery should be something like Who Dun It? and then Why?, not What Is This Story About?

That kind of a "twist" might have felt clever if it had taken up fifty pages, but when it takes up more than 200 out of 400 pages, it feels like a manipulative way of drawing out what would have been better as a compact murder mystery. If you're going to be unpredictable, it should make the story better, not completely derail it.

What have you watched or read that wasn't hurt by predictability or that was greatly harmed by a lack of it?

Thanks for stopping by! Please be sure to visit Karin Cox tomorrow for her take on when predictability works and doesn't.

Aloha, Hawaii Five-O

My parents watched the original Hawaii Five-O when I was very young. I remember my father staring intently at the screen when it was on. This, I think, had something to do with the fact that there were so many Asian-American actors and characters, and in the 1970s that was a novelty on a major network.

When I was on the cusp of eighteen I saw Dr. No for the first time, and while young Sean Connery was as magnificent as you’ve heard, I couldn’t keep my eyes off of Jack Lord every time he was onscreen as Felix Leiter. Suddenly Hawaii Five-O seemed a lot cooler to me.

Before Jack Lord was a badass super cop, he was a badass CIA agent who could outsmart James Bond himself 

I’ve written elsewhere about the revival, but the shorter version: it isn’t nearly as well written, conceived or acted, but nostalgia is a powerful thing. (Also, Hawaii is just as beautiful.) When I realized that Netflix had every episode (well, almost) of the original series, my mission was clear: I was going to watch each one.

As of four nights ago, I am done. In many ways I’m better for it, but in some ways I’m ruined.

The show began in 1968, and it was gritty and nuts. Steve McGarrett is already the head of an elite state police force (there was never an origin story on the series) and he has a doozy of a case: a federal agent that he was in the Navy with has been found dead on a beach. The official story is that he drowned during a swim, but the audience knows that hours before he was killed he was in a sensory deprivation chamber (and that scene was genuinely frightening). McGarrett knows something’s wrong: the victim never went to the beach because he was too fair and burned too easily. He died some other way. His investigation leads him to Chinese Super Spy Wo Fat, as ruthless as he is intelligent. McGarrett intentionally puts himself in harm’s way, then goes on to spite Wo-Fat by remaining in full control of his senses long after his other victims broke; McGarrett is a determined son of a bitch. He’s playing a game of cat and mouse with Wo Fat while his team (Dan “Danno” Williams, Chin Ho Kelly and Kono Kalakaua) rush the Chinese agents guarding the facility where he’s being held. Wo Fat gets away, but Five-O captures the American double agent who was helping him. Suspense, international intrigue, investigation of minute details, gut instinct: welcome to Hawaii Five-O.

Jack Lord as Steve McGarrett. Is it just me, or does his hair look even better here than it did several years before?

McGarrett was supported for the first four seasons by Danno, Chin Ho and Kono. All of them were dedicated and skilled, but Williams and Kono were younger and in some episodes needed more of McGarrett’s guidance. In a very early episode, Williams accidentally killed a young addict (or junkie, as they frequently said on the show) in the line of duty. The audience saw exactly what happened, so this wasn’t a mystery. The story was the investigation into what the victim had been doing before, and that ended up clearing Danno. But this was not a happy ending, and McGarrett had to sternly remind Danny that no one said “this was anything but a lousy job”. That episode, out of all of the early seasons, set the tone: this was not a glamorous profession filled with beautiful people, but one that was filled with tragedy and not for the faint of heart.

James MacArthur as Dan Williams, the guy immortalized in the line "Book 'em, Danno" 

Of all of them, Kono had the smallest part. A native Hawaiian, he had deep connections to others in that community and had a lot of street sources. He was also the one most likely to fly off the handle and rush in before thinking. Sometimes that was useful- see his opening credits- but more often he needed to be pulled back. But as far as his personal life, viewers never had a clue.

Zulu as Kono Kalakaua, the young, impetuous cop who worked the native Hawaiian connections

The person on the team we got the longest glimpse at was Chin Ho. A very early episode found him being framed for corruption and accepting bribes. When he came home to his family, we saw for the first time that he was married with five (or was it seven?) children ranging from older teenager to kindergartener. As a fellow Asian-American, I was shocked to see his family presented so...normally in the late 1960s. For Chin, the most painful part of the attack on his reputation was the effect that it would have on them. He begged McGarrett not to talk to his teenage son even though he could have alibied him; like many parents and teens, they were going through a rough patch. In an episode that aired several years later, we saw his oldest daughter as a college student, dating the scion of a crime family (a young Erik Estrada!). Family was huge to Chin Ho, and he had uncles and cousins that provided him with information about both sides of the street.

Kam Fong Chun as Chin Ho Kelly, the one supporting player who actually got a send off when he left.

As for the personal life of Steve McGarrett, other than two episodes at the very beginning and very end of the series, we got very little insight into his early family life. (For the record, he had a sister named Mary and their father was shot by a criminal when Steve was young.) He was a Navy man and then he was a cop, and his jobs were his life. (He also never drank- not once- and he was frequently seen working overnight in his office.) He was “involved” with someone a only handful of times throughout the show, and in the middle of the series it was clear why: what kind of a woman was going to accept for a husband a man who was already married to his job?

For most of the twelve years, the show did a good job of marrying pop culture to crime solving. And when the case was a mystery, they tended to be very good. One of the episodes featured a serial killer who would break into the homes of young women, strangle them and then put blonde wigs on them- after he applied makeup to their corpses. Incredibly creepy to watch. While working the latest development on the case, a crime reporter whose wife was one of the victims insists on tagging along. McGarrett tells him to stay away because he can’t be objective, but the man persists. While investigating the man’s dead wife, they’re tipped off by a cabbie that she was having an affair. Meanwhile, the reporter picks up a tip that the murderer might be making the dead women up in the image of a prostitute he used to patronize. When he tracks down the woman, who’s since gone straight and is pregnant and married, he uses her “black book” to lure the killer to her, then kills the man as he is strangling the woman. McGarrett arrives in time to cart away the dead body, then has the reporter arrested too: he and Danny had figured out that the killer was able to access the women’s apartment’s because he got their keys when he was working for a car wash. As soon as McGarrett picked up on that detail, he knew the reporter had killed his wife: she never learned how to drive, which is why she always took cabs, and that was the real reason he needed to silence the serial killer. Nicely done.

McGarrett reported directly to the governor of Hawaii, and for the most part they worked well together. However, around Season Ten there was definite tension in the air, kicked off by speculation that McGarrett would make a great governor himself. It did not improve when the governor started complaining about Steve’s “Irish temper”. I was shocked when that line was first uttered, in part because viewers knew McGarrett was a very measured character, and in part because it was a shockingly prejudiced thing to say on television, even for the late Seventies.

Richard Denning as the long-serving governor of Hawaii

Five-O was supported by other people outside the force, most especially Che Fong, their forensics expert. The analyses he performed was cutting edge for the time, although I’m told that much of the ballistics information they used has since been discredited. In addition to forensics and the medical examiner, they also called in psychiatrists, and those episodes were guaranteed to be either a spooky or very silly.

Over time, all of the supporting characters cycled out (with the exception of the governor). Kono was replaced by Ben (the story is that the actor used a racial slur and Jack Lord had him fired) and officer Duke Lukela was added as a regularly recurring player. When Ben left, Duke stepped in to join the force. Chin Ho left at the end of the tenth season, and we actually did see him sent off (he was executed while undercover by a Hawaiian mobster who resented him for working for a white boss) and Williams was gone by the beginning of the twelfth. (Given that the show’s most famous line may very well be “Book ‘em, Danno,” it was pretty jarring that his departure wasn’t acknowledged at all.) He was replaced by tough Boston cop (of course…) Jim “Kimo” Carew, Hawaiian native Truck and, for the very first time, a female officer named Lori Wilson. When the writing was good, all of the supporting players were able performers, but when the writing wasn’t there...well, at least they didn’t flub their lines.

Al Harrington as Ben

Herman Wedemeyer as Duke Lukela

The final cast of Hawaii Five-O, including new additions Sharon Farrell as Lori, William Smith as Kimo and Moe Keale asTruck. If the final season wasn't that great, it wasn't their fault.

While the show kept up with the trends (Vietnam, spies, parade bombings, psychics, dreams, handwriting, grifters, gambling cons, Agatha Christie- really, music, past life regression…), there was an undercurrent of racial awareness through the run of the series. While there were plenty of white villains, victims and cons, many of them were Hawaiian. It was impossible not to watch the show and sense the production team’s discomfort over how the Hawaiian people were getting screwed over. To the extent he could, McGarrett stuck up for them. As much as he was a tough, clever cop who believed in the rule of law, he also wanted to make sure the little guy didn’t get the short end of it along the way. As someone who has watched almost every episode of the Law & Order franchise (at least as of last year), it was pretty amazing to see a cop so concerned about making sure everyone got due process. Notably, the show also had two separate episodes about how dangerous guns were; not, in any way, an episode you would see on today’s CBS.

While there were many aspects of the show that spoke to my liberal Democrat leanings, it was in many ways a reflection of its times, and the early shows had plenty of derogatory references to ethnic minorities. (Yes, the N-word was uttered once when Williams was undercover, as was the word “gook” in a very early episode.) Let’s not even talk about the episode that seemed to want to capitalized on the popularity of Blaxploitation films. The references to women were more pervasive and worse; I think it’s fair to see that the writers and producers weren’t early feminists. Oh, and let's not forget the earlier episodes that featured white actors playing Hawaiian roles in what I'll call Brown Face. Uncool.

The last season of the show was pretty weak and ended after only nineteen episodes, as opposed to the usual 22 to 24 the other seasons played. McGarrett finally got to arrest his arch nemesis Wo Fat, but it was among the worst written finales I’ve ever seen. None of the regular supporting cast was featured, and McGarrett ran around in a disguise for most of it. He did get to do a signature clever McGarrett move (he arranged a shadow to make it look like he’d hung himself) but it was, at best, a comic episode in a show that was never known for its comedic flair.

Egyptian-born Khigh Dheigh as Chinese super spy Wo Fat, McGarrett's archnemesis

All of which makes me re-examine the new Hawaii Five-0.

Having watched the old show, I finally understand where Duke and Lori (second season) came from. I also get why they brought in McGarrett’s sister Mary (and later had her adopt a baby). The constant cloud of supposed corruption around Chin Ho and his large extended family is a tribute to the old show, and Charlie Fong is an homage to Che Fong (but it would be nice if he came across as a little more competent). Perhaps most importantly, I’m completely okay now with the break in tradition that got rid of Wo-Fat; sending him out while he was strong was much better than dragging him back periodically to twist his moustache. And in this era of television, it’s a good thing that the supporting cast has more personality and backstory than they did in the original.

But...Alex O’Loughlin is no Jack Lord, and on its best day the writing is much weaker than the writing of the old show on its worst. Perhaps most importantly, the new Hawaii Five-0 isn't saying anything that isn't already being said on television in a lot of places (even if it's saying it in a much more attractive locale). And if there's one thing we've learned from the old show, no one's going to thank you for sticking around long after you should have left. Well, thanks for the memories, Jack Lord and company. When you were good, you bordered on great, and you're a tough act to follow.

The end of the Rockford Files, 35 years later

I hated the idea of my Netflix account until I realized that I could watch every episode of The Rockford Files and Hawaii Five-O with it. The Rockford Files was only six seasons long, so I finished that while I'm still working toward the end of Hawaii Five-O (many thoughts to come on that).

Jim Rockford as played by James Garner was a world-weary, very cautious (you're forgiven for thinking that might mean "cowardly" on occasion) and mostly too-decent-for-his-own-good private detective. But give Rockford a break: he spent five years in prison for a crime he didn't commit until he received a pardon from the governor. Not that it mattered: once a con, always a con, according to many of the people he ran into. All he wanted to do was stay out of trouble and get his $200 a day, plus expenses for honest work. He had some clear boundaries: no domestic cases, and nothing that smelled of organized crime (smart guy). Of course, most episodes found him working a case that he had been dragged into for someone who had as little as he did, which meant that he was frequently short on cash even though he lived in a trailer.

The saying "with friends like that, who needs enemies" could have been something the writers had posted on their walls. Detective Dennis Becker (Joe Santos) begrudged him a phone call and if Rockford reported being shot at he wanted him to produce a witness before he'd file a report. He was also really quick to try and book him on something, and frequently let the even less friendly Lieutenant Doug Chapman (James Luisi) listen in on their conversations for something incriminating.

James Garner as the wry (and did I mention very good looking?) Jim Rockford

While Becker became more supportive after he was promoted to Lieutenant, Rockford's friend Evelyn "Angel" Martin (Stuart Margolin), an ever-hustling con artist, would sell Jim and anyone else out for a nickel. He had no such concept of honor among thieves, and Rockford frequently found himself with a gun in his face on Angel's account.

All of that drama was made up for by Rockford's father, Joseph "Rocky" Rockford (Noah Beery Jr.). He was very simple and could be known to nag Jim (they frequently butted heads about painting and fishing schedules), but he always had his son's back. If only Jim could be convinced to settle down with a nice girl...

In that regard, Rockford was as no-nonsense as he was in the rest of his life. He was highly unlikely to fall into the trap of rescuing the damsel-in-distress (although Kathryn Harrold as a blind stalking victim was irresistible), but he wasn't immune to the femme fatale (Susan Strasberg came thisclose to getting him good). For the most part, though, he was pretty no-nonsense when it came to romance; for the first four seasons, he was on-again, off-again with his attorney Beth Davenport (Gretchen Corbett). Her departure, coincidentally, signaled the demise of the quality of the show.

The Rockford Files had a much more comedic flair than other detective shows. Rockford certainly wasn't the first detective to throw around clever quips, but because he worked outside of the system he was as likely to roll his eyes and sigh about it as he did so. A lot of the storylines weren't necessarily funny- call me old-fashioned, but murder isn't funny- but Garner's grumbly, sarcastic delivery of his lines would mostly get a laugh. And while Rockford might not have been a felon, he was as much a clever con man as he was a detective. While he may have been more than happy to suss out information at the library (and away from anyone who might have a gun), when he needed to be suave Jim Taggart or Oklahoma oilman Jimmy Joe Meeker in order to triangulate a bad guy, he could do it in a snap. (And someone who has a portable business card printer isn't that reluctant to get in trouble, is he?)

That's a lot of what I liked, but it wasn't perfect. First of all, in most of the episodes there was a car chase; it was as predictable as William Shatner ending up on the roof of a car in T.J. Hooker. While I would still say that the writing was better than much of what's on television now, after a while whenever that came up I'd think, "Huh, that's what they used for filler back then." The rumor is that the damage to the car was one of the things that drove up the cost of the show, which led to some friction between Garner and the network, but I'm not close to anyone involved so I don't really know.

The other star of The Rockford Files

Worse than the car was the fact that the mysteries weren't always that well-conceived. Figuring out who the bad guy was and why they'd done it was usually easy enough, and when it wasn't it was frequently a throw away. The real point of the episode, many times, was to watch Rockford clever himself out of trouble and into catching the bad guy. For four seasons that was fine, but by season five the magic was gone. To the casual viewer (like me), it looked as if Garner wanted less screen time. Understandable, but then it wasn't really clear what the show was about.

Still in all, it was a very good show, just maybe not great. It could be argued that Rockford was a Seventies version of the Forties noir detective, but I don't think he was as bitter or nihilistic. Beneath all of the sarcastic jabs, he was just a guy who wanted to get paid for the work he did, and if he could help the little guy along the way, so much the better. All in all, decent and real, and popular culture is not hurt by such characters.

More TV Do-Overs! (X-Files and Once Upon A Time)

I had so much fun talking about how Hawaii Five-O needed to be redone that I couldn't resist my thoughts on what other shows I would change. 

The X-Files

When the show started out, Fox Mulder was haunted by the memory of his sister Samantha’s abduction. He grew up to become an FBI agent who saw conspiracy theories and aliens everywhere- and he just might have been right. He was reluctantly partnered with Dana Scully, equally brilliant but far more skeptical. Scully could hold her own against Mulder, but this was his show.

And then it wasn’t, for a couple of reasons:

• Gillian Anderson, the actress who played Scully, became pregnant with her first child in the middle of the first season. To accommodate it, the writers made Scully disappear and then recover from her abduction in a hospital bed. Where was she? Kidnapped by aliens- Mulder was right!- and then her eggs were harvested for an ongoing cloning experiment. From that point on, The X-Files was as much Scully’s show as it was Mulder’s.
• Gillian Anderson was a better actor than David Duchovny, who played Fox Mulder. While Emmy awards tend to be even more controversial than others, the academy got it right when they gave one to Anderson for her role and not Duchovny. She had more range, dramatically and comedically, than he did. Ultimately, she was the better choice to build a show around, but the premise was his character.
• Some of the ways they chose to enhance his character were unfortunate. Mulder was the odd duck because he saw conspiracies, so then the writers made him weird, geeky and sometimes kind of lame. Putting someone in an odd situation is one of the quickest cheats to make them more interesting, but ultimately it doesn’t hide the original problem of a weak center.

"The truth is out there." "I *want* to believe you. Maybe you should try that again."

Actors aside (although never, really, when you’re talking about television), The X-Files created a world in which ghosts, aliens, vampires, psychics, witches and the Loch Ness monster were real, human beings could be the biggest monsters of all AND there was a big conspiracy. The only problem was that they didn’t seem to know what that conspiracy was themselves, but somehow the audience was convinced that the ultimate answer was going to be awesome. The truth was out there, but they needed to make it up as they went along. That’s exciting the first season or two, but after that your viewers start asking, no, seriously, what’s the real story? By the time we got to the very last episode, the writers put in a throw away line to explain that Samantha had died years before and was being cloned. I guess they didn't care anymore. That's okay; the viewers didn't either.

Therefore, my Do-Over recommendations are pretty simple: if I were going to redo The X-Files, I’d decide what, specifically, the conspiracy was first before I started leaving dead bodies and limbs in elevators, hallways, car trunks and the former Soviet Union and started weird scientific experiments on moving train cars. I’d also have cast a lead actor who wouldn’t be outshined by the person who was supposed to be his sidekick.

Once Upon A Time

This show had such great potential: Snow White, Prince Charming and all of their kingdom’s memories are wiped out by the Evil Queen and they’re sent to a World Without Magic (that would be our world, for the record), but not before Snow White gives birth to and Prince Charming successfully hides their newborn daughter Emma. Her destiny is to find and rescue them, and twenty-eight years later the son she gave up for adoption- who just happens to have been adopted by the Evil Queen- shows up with a magical book of fairy tales to make sure she does just that. Emma is extremely skeptical, but her dormant maternal instincts kick in and she ultimately breaks the curse. Is that all? Nope. Her parents get split up again- mom gets sent back to the Enchanted Forest, and dad is still in our world- we meet Captain Hook (he’s misunderstood- and hot) and we find out that the real reason the curse was placed was so Rumpelstiltskin could get back to his son Baelfire/Bae- who grew up to become Neal, the father of Emma’s son Henry!

The Rumpelstiltskin line of the story has remained pretty strong. When Henry was kidnapped by a mysterious magical force last year, we discovered that his abductor was Peter Pan- and that Peter Pan was really Rumpelstiltskin’s father! Good old fashioned family drama with a touch of magic- perfect.

Would that the same thing could be said for the fraught story between Snow White and the Evil Queen, aka Regina. The Queen hates Snow because as a child she inadvertently caused the death of her true love, Daniel; no, actually, Regina’s mother Cora killed Daniel after she killed Snow’s mother, Eva, and she did all of this to put Regina on the throne; no, actually, the miller’s daughter Cora really hated Princess Eva because she humiliated her in front of the court of her future husband Prince Henry; no, actually, Cora hated Eva because Cora was all set to marry Leopold when Eva outed her as already being pregnant with Zelena, whom she abandoned at birth and grew up to be the Wicked Witch of Oz.

"Why do we hate each other again?" "Let's ask our moms."

"I've sort of forgotten..."

Wait, what? None of that makes sense. Eva wouldn’t have outed Cora AGAIN to Henry’s father when those two later became betrothed? Leopold wouldn’t have recognized her years later when she arranged for him to meet her daughter Regina? You know what that’s a sign of? Someone making up a story as they went along.

My suggestion: Make a storyline bible and stick to it. And when you decide you want to integrate someone from another fairy tale or legend, be a little more creative.

What are you dying to rewrite? Hit the comments! And then jump over to my good buddy Danielle-Claude Ngontang Mba's blog tomorrow to see what she'd like to change. 

TV Do-Over Blog Hop, the Hawaii Five-0 edition

When Caroline Fardig announced that she was hosting this blog hop, I raised my hand faster than Welcome Back, Kotter's Horshack. And because it's Caroline, we both *knew* I'd have to write about Hawaii Five-0...

Yes, I watch Hawaii Five-0. No, I’m not ashamed (too much). 

Understand, I come by Hawaii Five-O honestly. My father was a fan of the original in the Seventies, and I watched along. Steve McGarrett was VERY serious, and Danny Williams aka Dann-O was his trusted right-hand man- and that was all I really knew, except that it was set in Hawaii. 

I was very excited when it was announced a few years ago that CBS was bringing back the show, and when I found out that Grace Park, an actress from Battlestar Galactica, was going to be playing a role previously played by a man, I was ecstatic. 

Let’s just say the execution has been a letdown. There’s a lot I would do differently. 

• Layoff the Bromance. Alex O'Loughlin is in great shape and he can keep a straight face; Scott Caan has great comedic timing. Neither of them have a lot of dramatic range. The answer the producers came up with is to make them *the* bromance of prime time television. I admit, for a few minutes, it can be cute, but after that...please, no. When I see them squabbling about, well, nothing for more than ten minutes, I know that the writers needed a lot of filler for that episode. Suggestion: make the crimes- and the criminals- more interesting and spare us five minutes of their banter.

McGarrett and Dann-O smirking- of course

 

...these two are less amused, possibly because they have more to do

• Develop the female characters. Oh my god! I sent a message to Caroline the day after one of the episodes featuring Jorge Garcia. He plays a brilliant but very paranoid high school acquaintance of Chin Ho’s, Jerry Ortega. He’s a great actor, but he’s a minor character. However, within ten minutes of his appearance I thought he was infinitely more interesting than Catherine Rollins, played by Michelle Borth. We know that Rollins is hyper-competent, sexy and loyal to Steve, but...that’s really it. There was virtually no character development for her, and neither was there for Lori Weston as played by Lauren Graham (although she did get to drop the occasional one-liners). The women who were interesting- Jenna Kaye (Larisa Oleynik) and Malia Waincroft (Reiko Aylesworth)- were killed off. Of course. Suggestion: next time you hire an actress, make her character interesting.

What's the point of making a core character if a woman if you're not going to develop that character? Other than putting her in a bikini?

• A little gravitas. One of the early episodes lingered on Steve and Catherine waking up in bed together. It wasn't graphic at all- hello, this is CBS- but it was silly. I remarked to my husband that we never saw Jack Lord, the original McGarrett, in bed with anyone. My husband replied that he would have closed the door. Indeed. It's not about intimacy on television- done well, it's great!- but sometimes I want McGarrett to be a little more in charge and even a little more aloof. Suggestion: watch the old show and see what they did for Lord.
• More Wo Fat! Wo Fat from the original series was dangerous and ruthless, but he didn't get his own hands dirty. The modern Wo-Fat doesn't mind killing people with his own hands. He's just as brilliant, and he has a long reach. There's also a connection between his family and McGarrett's- he ordered the hit on McGarrett's father and McGarrett's mother killed one of his parents- but he clearly wants something *more* from McGarrett. Suggestion: as the show enters its fifth season, it should think about its end game. Figure out what it is Wo-Fat wants, and make sure we see a lot of him.

Both versions of Wo Fat are pretty badass, but the one from the Seventies might schmooze you a little before he killed you.

• More Chin Ho! I wasn't a Lost fan (I'm sorry, I just couldn't make the commitment), but it didn't take long for me to know that Daniel Dae Kim is the best actor on the show, hands down. The episodes that heavily feature him are among the best in the series, and his presence in a scene usually elevates everyone in it...when it doesn't highlight how much work they need to do. Suggestion: give Chin Ho more to do.

Eerie coincidence: Daniel Dae Kim and Kam Fong Chun both played the role of Chin Ho Kelly- and they were both good actors. Weird!

• Enough with the bikini shots. Yes, Hawaii has beautiful scenery and beautiful beaches, but please, stop putting everyone in bikinis. Everyone's too thin and it's just weird. Suggestion: focus more on Honolulu's downtown.
• Stop making it the 21st century equivalent of The Love Boat. It's not that older actors aren't good actors; it's that you might as well put a sign on them that says "Special Guest Star to appeal to CBS' dominant demographic" every time they walk into a scene. Most of the people they've cast *are* good actors, so why have most of their story lines felt so silly? Darryl Hannah as a flaky real estate agent, Dennis Miller as a shock jock, Melanie Griffith as Danno's mother (REALLY?!) and, most painfully, Eli Wallach as a World War 2 veteran were wasted opportunities. Those actors should have been given more to do. Their best use to date so far has been Ed Asner as a ruthless jewel thief who originally appeared in the 70s show (the flashbacks were awesome). Now if only they hadn't felt the need to make him funny too... Suggestion: when you've got a diamond, let it shine.

 Thanks for reading! What would you do differently, or H5-0 or any other show? Let me know in the comments below, and then do me a favor and hop over to Laura Chapman's blog tomorrow to find out which show she's dying to change.

I can't handle #Scandal

I'm not alone in finding Scandal unwatchable these days. For me, the first twitches came with Mellie. They can't get this woman's backstory straight. In the first season, she started out by being gracious and even throwing Olivia at Fitz so he could get his act together. By the end of the season we discovered that she not only knew about the affair with Amanda Tanner (remember her?) but also the affair between Olivia and Fitz and had, basically, accepted it.

In the second season she and Fitz are pregnant with a baby of convenience and she's zinging bitter, passive aggressive, jealous barbs at Olivia and starts to refer to her as Fitz's whore. Er, I guess she didn't think Olivia was useful anymore...?

After Fitz finds out how complicit everyone was in fixing his election and kills a Supreme Court Justice to keep it quiet (or whatever), he reconciles with Mellie (because he's so pissed at Olivia) and when we flash forward nine months he's drinking scotch in the shower while reluctantly being serviced by Mellie. Of course he goes back to Olivia after she starts sleeping with someone else, and Mellie is Bitter Barb again until Olivia breaks if off with Fitz and he pretends to reconcile with her.

Mellie calls Olivia a whore again, yada yada yada, and then we see in a flashback that she was raped by Fitz's disgusting, lecherous father Jerry and that he might have impregnated her. She doesn't say anything because she realizes how much Fitz wants to be governor and Jerry can be very useful. Then we find out that she became frigid (for Fitz, at least), tried to kill herself because she was so miserable AND then began an affair with his Lieutenant Governor. And when Fitz finds out about the affair we discover that it was Mellie's frigidity that began the rift in their marriage, which led to his affair with Olivia.

Um, what? Sorry, when was their second child conceived if Mellie couldn't stand to have Fitz touch her? And if she was so averse to Fitz, why was she propositioning him in the shower? But more importantly, when did she decide she didn't want Fitz sleeping around?

Just...whatever.

That's just the most glaring example of why this show doesn't make any sense for me anymore. The breakneck pace has verged into ridiculous plot territory, and I don't really care about any of the people who are supposed to be the good guys. For the entire series, the two best scenes have been between Olivia and Abby. They were small scenes, but they were reminders that Olivia was a real person who was a good friend who took care of people. Abby is her confidante who humanizes her. But then there's Huck, her confidante who shows just how completely messed up she is. But at least Olivia has confidantes; a character like Quinn only has (extremely messed up) love interests, like her former mentor Huck who got off on torturing and Charlie, the clear-headed sociopath. Honestly, I don't care which one of them she sleeps with.

Do I need to go on about why Fitz is so weak I'd rather see Olivia with Jake? And yes, I know Jake is a murderer and almost strangled Olivia. That's how much I loathe Fitz.

Basically, we've gotten to the point where I'm rooting for Olivia's beyond-crazy parents to blow everyone else up. Let me know when that happens, okay?