The new Hawaii Five O is your standard Hollywood paint by the genre numbers action/adventure piece. It is clearly aimed at the 18 to 49 attention deficit disorder male demographic. As such it has lots of car chases, lots of gun play, lots of physical violence, lots of jump cut editing, lots of male buddy movie sniping, and lots of eye candy in bikinis and bras and panties (primarily Grace Park) for dudes who still act and think like they are seventeen (insert a shout out to Xander and linoleum here). For the post 9/11 generation the new Hawaii Five O has the inevitable cops who go all Jack Bauer on bad guy ass and who violate virtually every legal rule in the book including Miranda rights (which the post 9/11 Supreme Court is cutting back on anyway right on cue) all in the name of justice. For the retro or silver generation the show has a virtual remake of the old Hawaii Five O's theme song and opening credits. For some unknown somebodies the show has a lot of Koreans playing Chinese (Daniel Dae Kim of Angel and Lost fame), which makes some sense, though perhaps not casting sense, given the importance of Chinese in Hawaiian history, and Hawaiians (Grace Park), which I am not sure makes any sense at all (insert Husker Du's Makes No Sense At All here). Perhaps the casting of Kim and Park is just CBS trying to get some of the Lost and Battlestar Galactica (another remake of an older show) fanboy crowd. That said I am not sure most Americans will notice that Koreans are playing Chinese and Hawaiians in the show since, I suspect, most Americans can't tell the difference between Koreans, Chinese, and Polynesians anyway.
In sum, I found the first episode of Hawaii Five O to be your typical Hollywood, OK Mediocrity.
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