Hawaii Five-0 presents a hyper remake of original pilot

A still from the Cocoon remake.

Hawaii Five-0 began its ninth season with a remake of the original show’s pilot.  While it was pretty close to the 1968 TV movie in places, the 2018 version was more hyper.

Part of it couldn’t be helped. The original (written by Leonard Freeman and directed by Paul Wendkos) has more time to work with. It filled a two-hour time slot. In those days you got around 50 minutes of show after excluding commercials.

The 2018 version filled a single-hour time slot, and these days you get 40 to 43 minutes or so without the commercials.

The remake also gives McGarrett 2.0 (Alex O’Loughlin) more of a personal motive. (Of course.)

In the original, McGarrett was a friend of Hennessy, a U.S. intelligence operative (he wasn’t identified as working for the CIA) who turns up dead. It turns out he was one of several agents who had mysteriously died. In the remake, McGarrett had known all of the dead men.

With the remake, McGarrett puts things together really, really quickly. Still, the show faithfully recreates the sensory deprivation tank torture of the 1968 pilot. In that TV movie, the pilot was supervised by Wo Fat.

The Wo Fat of the current show was killed off back in 2014. Nevertheless, Wo Fat 2.0 (Mark Dacascos) makes an appearance in the form of a hallucination while McGarrett is being tortured. There’s a new villain, part of a “rogue” faction of Chinese intelligence. He happens to have a shaved head like the original Wo Fat (Khigh Dhiegh).

The 2018 version also retains (understandably) the style of the current series. So, we still get arguments between McLaughlin’s McGarrett and Scott Caan’s Danno. In the remake, McLaughlin and Caan are together where Jack Lord’s McGarrett was by himself in the 1968 pilot.

Also, of course, the fight scenes are faster paced and violent than what viewers got in 1968. In the original, the climatic fight is between McGarrett and a traitorous U.S. intelligence agent. (They had to let Wo Fat go so he’d spread false information McGarrett had been programmed to say.). In the remake, McGarrett fights several guys, including the lead villain.

To be honest, I haven’t watched the current series that closely for the past few years. The remake held my interest. It was interesting to see what would be included.

Finally, the writing credit read, “Written by Leonard Freeman and Peter M. Lenkov.” Lenkov is the executive producer of the current series. The script of the remake used a surprising number of lines from Freeman’s original script.

So it was nice to see Freeman share in the full writing credit and not be relegated to a “story by” credit. Freeman died in 1974, after production of the original show’s sixth season had ended production. It would run another six seasons without him, although it was never quite the same.

Hawaii Five-0 reboot gets renewed for 6th season

Cast of the 2010 Hawaii Five-0

The rebooted Hawaii Five-0 series, which has done occasional homages to James Bond movies, was renewed by CBS for a sixth season, according to A STORY ON THE DEADLINE HOLLYWOOD website.

The show has had episodes that evoked the 2012 007 film Die Another Day as well as one 2012 story that appeared to have homages to You Only Live Twice and Licence to Kill.

The original Hawaii Five-O (with a capital O instead of a 0) ran for 12 seasons, debuting in the fall of 1968 and finishing its run in the spring of 1980. With the renewal by CBS, the rebooted series is guaranteed to last at least half as long.

The highlight of the fifth season, which had its last episode on May 8, was the demise of the rebooted Wo Fat. Wo Fat 2.0 was a revamped version of the arch enemy of the original show, who appeared in the 1968 pilot and was featured in the final 1980 episode.

Wo Fat 2.0 in addition to being a mastermind (like the original Wo Fat) also did his own dirty work. Also, Wo Fat 2.0 had a personal motive for striking back against Steve McGarrett 2.0.

Anyway, Peter M. Lenkov, the co-executive producer, co-developer of the series, took to Twitter to celebrate:

Phew! I can finally wear this… pic.twitter.com/8BVgU7Vk1e

— Peter M. Lenkov (@PLenkov) May 11, 2015

New Hawaii Five-0 borrows from 007 again

Last season, the new Hawaii Five-0 televisions series seemed to borrow quite a bit from the 2002 007 film Die Another Day in an episode where Steve McGarrett 2.0 (Alex O’Loughlin) ended up going to North Korea and was tortured by arch-nemesis Wo Fat.

For the third-season premier on Sept. 24, the CBS show was at it again, this time paying an homage (if you can call it that) to You Only Live Twice and Licence to Kill.

Wo Fat, captured at the end of last season was supposed to be transferred to a super-maximum security prison on the Mainland. He’s in an armored car (not unlike, say, Franz Sanchez in Licence to Kill). A helicopter swoops out of the air. Instead of using a giant magnet (as the Japanese secret service did in You Only Live Twice), it uses a giant claw and takes the armored car away.

The helicopter then, once over the Pacific Ocean, lets go of the armored car, as in Twice (except it appeared to be GCI rather than the real thing). After the armored car is submerged, there are thugs in scuba equipment ready to rescue Wo Fat (again similar to Licence to Kill where the armored car carrying Sanchez goes off a bridge and into the water).

As we type this, the episode is still being broadcast, so maybe the script by Peter M. Lenkov has more 007 homages in store.

UPDATE: No other 007 homages (at least not as obvious), but the episode also showed how the new series is different than the 1968-80 original.

In the third season of the original Five-O (spelled with a capital O instead of a 0 as in the new series), the girlfriend (Anne Archer) of Dan Williams was killed by a murderer wanting it to appear to be the work of a psychopath. Danno eventually caught up with the culprit and could have let him fall off a cliff. Danno was tempted but brings his man in alive.

In the third-season opener of new Five-0, the wife of Chin Ho Kelly dies. When Chin Ho catches up to his man, he shoots him dead. There are no witnesses and he gets off without repercussion.