The retromania of contemporary pop culture permeates music, movies and television. In the last camp are old shows, resuscitated (“rebooted” is the industry buzzterm) for a new audience. They carry name recognition and familiarity from long runs on vintage cable channels into the war for ratings, an increasingly losing or at least disorienting campaign in the age of Tivo and an audience pie cut into a thousand slices. The reboots also have characters in clear definition with firm if sometimes hackneyed story lines.
“Hawaii Five-O: The First Season,” out Sept. 20 on DVD and Blu-ray, is a good example of retro in our time. Not only are all 24 episodes packaged for repeated home viewing, but the set gets the Criterion treatment, complete with deleted scenes, making-of (and promoting-of) documentaries, on-air promos, even a gag reel. At the heart of all the marketing and merchandizing is the series itself. Buttressed with a largely faithful rendition of the Morton Stevens' theme from the long-running original show (1968-1980), it features stubble-faced GenX versions of such original characters as McGarrett (Alex O'Loughlin), Danno (Scott Caan) and Chin Ho (Daniel Daekim), plus a tough-as-the-guys native Hawaiian female member of the elite police squad, Kono (Grace Park).
The remade “Five-O” is sexually steamier than its predecessor and plot lines have been updated for the era of pervasive surveillance cameras and disposable cell phones. The new McGarrett's interrogation methods suggest he was a big fan of “24” and owns all of its early seasons on a deluxe DVD set (complete with deleted scenes of water boarding). Unlike “Dragnet” and a few other rebooted cop-show contenders, “Hawaii Five-O” redux has found a wide audience. A new season will debut on CBS on Sept. 19, the night before the Season One DVD goes on sale.
