Hawaii Five-O

I enjoyed Hawaii Five-O back in the sixties.  I watched it on an unreliable black-and-white TV sprawled on the rump-sprung Salvation Army couch along with my husband, Robert, our cat, Little, our dog, Roonie, and disorderly bits of my master’s thesis liberally intermixed.  It was a good bit of fun, with all these exotic people and sunny beaches. Nobody got seriously killed, and even the felons had a sort of wholesome beachboy aura. There were some car chases, of course, but they were mostly just a noisy rip around the block in a couple of convertibles with bad mufflers.
So imagine my pleasure when CBS announced its return. Then imagine my disappointment when I actually watched it.  There may have been a plot, but mostly what I remember was a lot of explosions and people getting beaten bloody, and of course the obligatory 100-pound bimbo whose proficiency in the martial arts is unmatched on 3 continents, except maybe by the 100-pound bimbos on all the other cops or soldier shows that vie for our prime-time attention.
The original NCIS, for example, is amusing, largely because of the spiky-haired lab technician who can make a gas chromatograph sing and seldom leaves the building.  The 100-pound bimbo on that one is a transplanted Mossad agent who learned all these tricks Over There whilst being trained, by her father who is the head of Mossad, to be a whiz-bang assassin.  She is drop-dead gorgeous, speaks half the world’s languages flawlessly, can strip down and reassemble a nuclear warhead in 3 minutes flat, and has a huge crush on her handsome colleague who is a slobbering idiot.  So you can see why I like the lab technician.
NCIS Revisited is in its second year and has a 100-pound bimbo trained by  Navy Seals or somesuch – a home-grown whirlwind who is the equal of any six bouncers fully armed with flame throwers and grenades.  This show also offers up another techie who shares the Most Appealing Character slot with the resident psychologist and has a thing going with the spiky haired siren from the other show.  Are you following all this?  There will be a quiz.
Then there is Flashpoint, a relative newcomer. There is a 100-pound bimbo in this one too, but it is sometimes hard to tell because you almost never get to see the protagonists out of their spooky black riot gear outfits, with full face-plates, massive body armor, 150 pockets in their vests and pants full of spare ammunition clips, several different kinds of grenades, a couple of knives, a spare pistol or two, spools of garrote wire, a selection of exotic poisons, 2 or 3 pounds of C-4 explosives with blasting caps, and of course a highly sophisticated communication center and visual aid complex in their helmets. I watched 10 minutes of one show during which something like 10 of them, including the bimbo, surrounded a building using mincing little quick steps so as not to trip over their shoelaces, not conspicuous at all in their black moon suits on a bright sunny afternoon, and then with much shouting and trumpeting they kicked in both the front and back doors and were all over the place.  They got their guy, of course, trying to flee down the fire escape as who wouldn’t? A scrawny latino who had been seen jaywalking or something, and there he was face down on the sidewalk surrounded by gum wads, dog turds, and black-suited, heavily armed goons, all congratulating one another on a job well done, while the remaining tenants of the building are left to fix the hinges.
And now there is a new show whose main character is a 100-pound bimbo.  She is apparently a bounty hunter of some sort with superhuman martial skills and the tenacity of a honey badger.  In the few minutes I watched by accident, triggered by a terse phone call, she transformed herself from Susie Creamcheese taking simple pleasure from an innocent birthday party or wedding or something into a snarling Klingon, fondling her automatic pistol while squealing away from the curb toward some situation that will no doubt involve kicking down doors in some grubby neighborhood.
It is hardly surprising that the violent prime time dramas are becoming bloodier, the crimes more horrible, the disembowelments more graphic.  After all we are a bloodthirsty nation.  Our heroes are bulked up goons that “…don’t take no crap from nobody,” confusing courage with homicidal rage.  However, I am mystified with this recent popularity of anorexic women with grenades.
For that matter I mourn the passing of the innocent dramas of times gone by in which all the hangings took place off screen and shootings did not produce a red mist.  Where Marshall Dillon always got his man and we didn’t have to watch while he exchanged body fluids with Miss Kitty.
Where the lantern-jawed Steve McGarrett would stand on a dock overlooking the wide Pacific, that carefully coiffed curl lifting in the gentle onshore breeze, a noble determined expression on his handsome face, assuring us that yet another criminal had been dealt with and that we could all sleep safe in our beds for yet another week.