Sex

In an early scene in Monday's episode of Hawaii Five-O, McGarrett is in bed with a woman. We would never have seen this in the original Five-O. In that series, we knew nothing of McGarrett's personal life. In fact, he seemed rather monkish in his dedication to fighting crime without entanglements.

Agatha Christi, the Grande Dame of mysteries, proclaimed that mysteries should have no sex. Her famous detective, Hercule Poirot, was a lot like the first McGarrett in that regard. In the all the many stories, he appears to have been smitten by only one woman, Countess Vera Roussakoff, but nothing appears to have developed from it.

Sex appears often in modern mysteries, sometimes gratuitous, but sometimes to a point. I happen to like characters with passion and messy lives. I like plots which are complicated by the main character's personal story. In Monday's episode, the sex was probably more gratuitous than pointed. It gave McGarrett a backstory, but didn't complicate the plot. In fact, the sex provided an easy out. When he needed a military satellite retasked for surveillance, he simply called his paramour, who conveniently works in a naval communications center. I'm hoping to see more of this particular backstory, but with some real complications.

I find sex hard to write about, so I tend to avoid the graphic. Instead, I try to inject it with some humor and then turn out the lights as in this passage from Pilikia Is My Business:

He gestured to the table set for two. “Do we really want this now?” he asked.

“I think it can wait.”

“Race you to the bedroom?”

“Okay,” I said, “but it’s the only point you’ll get for speed.”

So, as a reader, how do you feel about sex in a story? As a writer, how do you handle it?

Mark Troy

Hawaiian Eye

New Hawaii Five 0

     I don't normally get excited about new television shows,
preferring to wait until they become established before tuning them in, but
when I learned this summer that a reboot (not a remake) of Hawaii Five-0 was in
the works, I got excited.  Now, I
have to admit that I saw little of the original series when it first aired
(1968-1980). College, graduate school, marriage, Peace Corps, starting a family
and return to graduate school didn't leave much time for television. I didn't
even own a television before 1982, so I have only seen the original in reruns.
     The original series struck me as a straight-forward
police procedural in an exotic setting, but featuring a special unit with
extraordinary powers that reported only to the governor. We knew little about
the background of the main characters. Their personal stories rarely entered
the series.
     Having set my own series in Hawaii, I was anxious to see
how this new one measures up to the old one, to other series set in Hawaii such
as Magnum and Lost, and to other cop shows. 
     The new series re-imagines the classic. The cast of
characters are the same, but different. As the show opens, Steve McGarrett is a
Navy SEAL commander escorting a prisoner out of South Korea. He receives a call
from the prisoner's brother, Victor Hesse, who has taken McGarrett's father
hostage and wants to trade father for brother. Before Steve can agree to do
anything, the convoy is attacked and the prisoner killed. Victor, in turn,
kills McGarrett's father. McGarrett vows to get Victor.
     So right from the start, we have a personal backstory as
part of the main plot, albeit a somewhat tired backstory. ("Hello. My name
is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.") I even used that
backstory in my latest book, that's how tired it is. McGarrett returns to
Honolulu, his hometown, to bury his father where he is approached by the
Governor with an offer to head up the special police unit. Now, unless I missed
something, it is never explained why this assignment was offered to McGarrett.
Sure he's a SEAL, but his last mission was a complete failure. He lost his
prisoner and most, if not all, of his men. He refuses the call, naturally, as
all post-Writer's Journey heroes do.
     The relationship to his father had me confused at first.
I was expecting the father to be the Steve McGarrett from the classic series
and this series to be taking up where the other left off. However, that's not
the case. The father is John McGarrett, The new series is not, in any way, a
continuation of the old.
     While looking for clues at his father's house, McGarrett
encounters police detective Danny (Danno) Williams who orders him away.
Incensed at being told what to do, McGarrett calls the governor on the spot,
accepts the job, and receives the authority to investigate his father's
murder.  That makes Williams his
subordinate and first member of his new team.
     There is continuing friction between McGarrett and
Williams, which promises to play throughout the series. Williams brings his own
backstory. He is a mainland cop who transferred to Honolulu to be near his
daughter who was taken to Honolulu when his ex-wife remarried. This devotion to
his daughter is something we can expect to see coming up in future stories. In
how many police stories have we seen this happen? There is a certain
fish-out-of-water aspect to Williams that we're also certain to see more of.
He's from the mainland, unfamiliar with the Island culture, prefers big cities
to rural areas, and doesn't like the water.
     McGarrett, himself, is half-in and half-out of the
culture. He grew up in the Islands, but he's a haole, a Caucasian, so he's
treated with some distrust by the locals, even though he demonstrates an
ability to speak pidgin. There is a very funny scene where a local who runs a
shave ice stand puts one over on the two haoles, McGarrett and Williams. I
think I'll steal it for a later story.
     The next member to be added to the team is Chin Ho Kelly,
former star quarterback (The finest quarterback to come out of Kukui High,
naturally). Kelly is also a former cop (naturally) who was kicked off of HPD
for suspicion of taking bribes (naturally). But he didn't do it (naturally).
How do we know? He tells McGarrett he didn't. How do we know McGarrett can
trust Kelly? McGarrett's father trusted Kelly. Kelly is a local and his
knowledge of the local culture helps McGarrett and Williams track down a man
who can lead them to Hesse, but that man is involved in human trafficking, and,
to get to him, they need a woman.
     The woman is Kono Kalakaua, Kelly's cousin, played by
Grace Park. The  Kono role was a
male role in the classic series, making this one of the greatest sex changes
since Tootsie. Kono is a former pro surfer  and wet-behind-the-ears graduate of the police academy, who
dons a bikini and kicks ass in the finest Charlie's Angels tradition. It may be
another Hollywood trope, but this is one I hope I never tire of. Naturally,
there is the obligatory scene where Kono goes undercover and has to strip to
prove she's not wearing a wire. Some cliche's just keep on giving.
     McGarrett finally meets Hesse, the man who killed his
father. They fight on a ship in the harbor and Hesse falls overboard. Is he
dead? Hah! The three-blind mice could have seen that coming. McGarrett is left
with a box of clues from his father containing a tape recorder and a strange
key. This quest is just beginning. 
     The pilot of a series has a tough task. It has to tell a
compelling story, but it also has to set up the back stories of the characters.
In this case it has to provide backstories for four characters that many
viewers think they know already, but which they don't really know because this
is not a remake of the previous one. The writers and producers can be forgiven
for using some cliches and shorthand to get the series rolling. There's plenty
to build on. The setting is great. Cameras love Hawaii and the series takes
advantage of it. Lest you think it's all green mountains, blue seas and white
beaches, however, the producers do a good job of brining in the seamy side of
the state.
     Did any of you catch the premiere? What do you think?
Mark Troy
Hawaiian-Eye Blog (See a picture of the original Wo Fat.)