Hawaii Five-O - The Fourth Season
by Alf Kjellin, Allen Reisner, Beau Vanden Ecker, Bob Sweeney, Bradford May
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: David Opatoshu, Jack Lord, James MacArthur, Kam Fong, ZuluDirector: Alf Kjellin, Allen Reisner, Beau Vanden Ecker, Bob Sweeney, Bradford May
Brand: HAWAII FIVE-0
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown), Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono; Spanish (Subtitled); Portuguese (Subtitled); English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono
Format: Box set, Color, DVD, Full Screen, NTSC, Subtitled
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 405 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2008-06-10
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: Paramount
Movie Reviews of Hawaii Five-O - The Fourth Season
Movie Review: "There's been some changes made"
Summary: 5 Stars
The fourth season of Hawaii Five-0 marks the beginning of the era where Jack Lord looks very different than he did in the first three seasons.
There is much debate about this among Five-0 "junkies", of which I am one. Most people I've talked to really don't seem to notice it. But being naturally picky, and having worked in television myself and having married a man who worked in television for 34 years, I tend to notice things that others don't.
But whether anyone has a background in television or not, all one needs to do is place a closeup of Jack Lord in either Seasons One, Two, or Three next to a closeup of Jack Lord in Season Four.
There's been some changes made.
Personally, my belief is that he had cosmetic surgery at the end of Season Three. I don't see that there's any problem with that, but lots of fans get angry when this idea is voiced. But women do it all the time, and actors who star in a long-running series and are bandied about as some sort of sex symbol have pressures put on them [and put pressures on themselves] to maintain an image that the star is younger than their chronological age indicates. And this certainly had to be the case with Jack; the series was so popular when it went into its 4th season -- and Jack by then was over 50 -- there had to be pressure to maintain his looks, and that only could be done cosmetically.
My response to all that is: So what?
Female stars have been doing it for decades, and often when the choice was to have cosmetic surgery, shift to playing characters who were older women, or stop appearing in movies altogether. And in many cases women DID stop acting. Few female actresses permitted themselves to age on camera and do it gracefully -- Bette Davis and Joan Crawford come to mind. Others, like Greta Garbo,simply vanished from public view for the rest of their lives.
The same decisions face male actors, and it seems naive for people to refuse to consider that it could be otherwise.
All that said -- Season Four contains many of my favorite Five-0 episodes. "Highest Castle, Deepest Grave" is one of them, and for years I've been trying to find out who wrote the piece of music Mr. Mondrego was playing on the piano when McGarrett shows up early in the show. It's definitely a classical piece, but not a piece with which I'm familiar. It could be Liszt or Rachmaninoff, for example. It's NOT Chopin, Beethoven, or Mendelssohn. And it's certainly not Bach, who always uses a light touch.
If anyone knows the answer, please tell me!
Season Four was really a great year for Five-0. There are no bad shows, period. [To me, bad shows are those in which we barely see McGarrett. I'm not a Danno fan, and all the Five-0 "junkies" out there who know me know I've never been a fan of James MacArthur -- and it's too bad; I keep looking for a show where he looses his persistently wooden manner, but it happens only rarely -- "Beautiful Screamer" is probably the only show where he delivers a really good performance [and lots of people disagree with me here].
But to me, a show without McGarrett, or with very little McGarrett, 9 times out of 10 will be a show I rarely watch.
But Season Four doesn't fall into this category -- it's Season Six when we begin the period, mercifully short, when there were too many shows with too little McGarrett. It's perfectly understandable at the time -- Jack was tired, and Five-0 was an extremely physically demanding show -- and prior to that time he appeared in virtually EVERY scene within a single show. Although Jack kept in very good physical shape, he was discovering that his body wouldn't take the pounding energy that the show had always demanded. And the "joys" of growing older are NOT fun; our bodies simply will not do what they used to do with practically no effort.
Fortunately for fans, it was a temporary move because McGarrett fans objected wildly, and the show soon returned to lots and lots of McGarrett in almost every show. I'm not sure how fortunate that was for Jack.
It is important to remember, too, that during the mid-1970s through the time the show ended in 1980, there was very powerful pressure on all TV series to cut down, or preferably cut out, violence.
One has to remember what it was like to live during those years. Television was receiving LOTS of overwhelming congressional pressure -- and pressure from viewers who found themselves with young children -- to cut out violence. In a crime series, this is a directive that is very hard to do.
But these are subjects for reviews of the pertinent seasons; I just want to comment here that the middle and later years of Five-0 were written with very powerful, very vocal pressure to curb TV violence. If one is not familiar with the culture of the 1970s, one cannot possibly understand the way Five-0, and many other shows, went through such a dramatic sea change during this period.
That pressure had yet to hit TV series shows. And for me, when it comes to Season Four, my recommendation is: If you're a fan of the show, GRAB SEASON FOUR QUICKLY! It's a season full of real winners!
Summary of Hawaii Five-O - The Fourth Season
Genre: Television: Series
Rating: NR
Release Date: 10-JUN-2008
Media Type: DVD
Could it be that with Hawaii Five-O?s fourth season, a third of the way into its remarkable '60s-'70s run, the show has gotten... well, cool? Actually, there are signs throughout this six-disc set of 24 digitally-remastered episodes that point to yes. Let?s not get carried away here; Five-O is still basically as square as Tiananmen and Trafalgar, and as long as Steve McGarrett (portrayed, as ever, by Jack Lord) is in charge, its groove factor will never rival that of, say, CSI: Miami, or any other glossy new millennium cop drama. Indeed, the show?s corniness and utter lack of irony remain integral to its charm. But there are a few interesting developments in this ?71-?72 season. There?s a good complement of snappy dialogue (one particularly large perp is "so big he could go bear-hunting with chopsticks"). And although the pacing can be pretty stodgy, the editing is a bit more deft; many scenes flow more naturally, and in at least one instance ("I Want Some Candy, and a Gun that Shoots," wherein a sniper is picking off cops on a coastal highway), the entire episode is more exciting than the Five-0 norm. The direction and lighting are also more stylish, while the music (not just Morton Stevens' classic theme song but the incidental sounds as well) and location scenery, two elements that have always been among the series? strong suits, are as good as ever; in fact, the islands look so lush and inviting that one wonders why the bad guys can even get motivated to commit their dirty deeds.
But they do, of course, and McGarrett and his faithful team (James MacArthur as Danno, Kam Fong as Chin Ho, and, in what remains one of the great TV credits ever, "Zulu as Kono") are there to stop 'em. This time around they?re dealing with everything from a big money travelers check scam ("3,000 Crooked Miles to Honolulu," with Jed Clampett... er, Buddy Ebsen as a guest villain), eco-terrorism ("Is This Any Way to Run a Paradise"), political assassination ("Rest in Peace, Somebody"), and racism-rape ("Skinhead"), along with the usual murders and encounters with Red Chinese nemesis Wo Fat (Khigh Dhiegh). McGarrett is for the most part still as stiff as his hair, but Lord occasionally displays considerable passion, as when he breaks down in tears upon being informed that a nasty car accident did not leave him paralyzed (in "The 90-Second War," a two-parter). As always, bonus material is limited to brief, previous-week promos for each episode. --Sam Graham
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