Post #531080 by aquarj on Tue, May 18, 2010 8:28 PM

The Five-O theme is not a Ventures' original. The original score used in the show is composed by Morton Stevens and played by the CBS orchestra. The Ventures made a record covering the song, which sold very well. (That's NOT a criticism. They did an outstanding cover - so much that it's more often associated with them than the real original.) Also BTW, Morton Stevens appears in at least one episode.

I agree with every single point that ErichTroudt made earlier on this thread. Unless there's some unprecedented break with Hollywood's recent baffling trend of remakes-in-name-only, this will almost certainly have nothing to do with the Five-O that some of us love. A look at the cast screams out "a new take", in a way that brings us back to the question of why they're even calling it Five-O. I think a spoof would be even worse in the cloying way such things are done these days. But why not just make a unique, new, interesting crime series set in Hawaii? Someone's gotta have an original creative idea!

As a fan of the original, I'd disagree with some of the comments here. I think the youth culture in Hawaii is often presented in a sympathetic light. There are bad guys from the youth culture, but also from every other walk of life - businessmen to bums, locals to foreigners, cops to mobsters, parents to kids. It's always about the individuals who are greedy, reckless, or corrupt. And when a hippie kid is the bad guy, the show often bends over backwards to trace their corruption to parents or other figures - a much more sympathetic treatment than the ruthless business crooks typically ever get. Even the "counter culture" causes are often presented with some sympathy, to a point just short of when crime is involved.

But, yes, in some ways the characters from the original could be called caricatures. All the same, they still seem much more real to me than most characters in modern crime shows like CSI. Those are mostly caricatures of the tanned "hard body" Hollywood actor look, and they're totally unbelievable as crime lab detectives (at least, unbelievable when the WHOLE staff looks like that). Sure, McGarrett has his suits and bandanas and hair, but with all that he still seems to fit with the elements around him, which include many local actors and even Chin Ho, who was actually a real cop before.

And one more thing - tikis and such actually appear pretty regularly in the show. Every scene in the governor's office, there they are on his desk set. But lots of other scenes too, even sometimes part of the plot. Maybe we could at least hope for 2.0 to toss in a tiki now and then, although sadly I doubt I'll be watching.

-Randy