Misfire Casting With Montalban; Danno and McGarrett I'm watching a marathon of episodes on SPIKE TV. Hawaii- 50 is not a show I religiously watched and only caught a few episodes of it during the latter part of it's initial run as a kid. I saw a little more in rerun form and thought that the show was typical of the sort of detective show I grew up on.. Mannix, Cannon, Barnaby Jones, Rockford Files and on and on up through Magnum P.I. etc. It was an iconic show by the time I was aware of it. Seeing these first few episodes I too was shocked by the lapse of quality in this one. Of ALL actors to play a Japanese character.... though then again... perhaps Montalban violates the stereotype of the reserved Asian character and that is to the good.. but then a Japanese actor, free to play a Japanese-American a la "Harold" Sakata in his appearances in MASH or the Odd Couple, would have done this much better.
Curious to me is that Montalban's makeup here makes him strongly resemble Joseph Wiseman who played Dr. No... the James Bond film in which Jack Lord plays Felix Leiter so it must have been familiar territory for him!!! Also.. Montalban's character refers to escaping from or avoiding being rounded up by the authorities to be sent to an internment camp. Was it not the case that there was no mass roundup of Japanese in Hawaii. They made up 1/3 of the island population... their labor was considered too crucial to the island to have disrupted their lives thusly... and a large portion of young Japanese men on Hawaii enlisted in the military and fought heroically, some, like Senator Dan Inouye, becoming the most decorated American troops during the Italian campaign. Oh well.. can't win them all fact check wise.
I like the interplay between Danno and McGarrett early on too... McGarrett really jumps down Danno's throat in a way that is REALLY tough and probably a lot sharper than you'd see in a show today between characters who are supposed to like each other. Something I'd never noticed, but I think is one of the things we'll find different between the old show and the new one. More hierarchy back then and less of the all encompassing team we see today.