Hawaii Five-Oh-Yeah!

My new routine is, I wake up at 10:00, turn on the TV, and watch Hawaii Five-Oh. There's two episodes back-to-back... sometimes I watch them both. What a terrific show. 60's cop fun... it's like a hip version of Dragnet. There's so many reasons to love the show that I'm going to have to present them in list form. So here they are--the top 7 reasons to love Hawaii Five-Oh. Here we go:

7. The fact that I've watched a lot of episodes and I still don't know the name of the hero. It's something like McGarnet, but it might by McBarnet, or McGarkle, or McCornell, or even Mayor McCheese. I think his name is actually different every time they say it.

6. The fact that half the episodes are about hippies. I've seen a bunch of episodes about little groups (or "communes") of scruffy, rope-smoking, confused young men and women. In the end, one of the hippies goes too far, he kills (or is killed) and the other hippies realize the error of their ways and return to the morals of mainstream society.

5. The fact that the other half of the episodes are about the Japanese or Chinese (used interchangeably). These episodes usually feature ninjas, who wear ninja outfits, conducting sabotage on the islands; or samurai, who for some reason wear suits, acting as assassins on the islands. The token Oriental, Chin Ho, on the Hawaii 5-0 team, always gets to explain things to McGargle:

CHIN HO: McFlurpicle, these look like shuriken.
MCSOCIAL: (Quizzically) Shuriken...?
CHIN HO: Yes, an ancient weapon used by the mysterious clan of the Ninja.
MCPORTABLE: (Quizzically) The Ninja...?
CHIN "EXPOSITION" HO: Yes, an ancient society of assassins... (conversation continues in the same vein indefinitely)

Apparently those were the concerns for Hawaiian flatfoots in the 60's: the hippies and the Orientals, and the flatfoots' neverending struggles to keep these forces from combining into one Mega-Evil: the Hippido, an ancient society of confused teenagers who slip silently through the night, questioning traditional mores and wearing outrageous clothing with the stealth of shadows.

4. (You forgot this was a list, didn't you?) The fact that one of the cops is named Dan-O and McArticle actually says, "Book 'im, Dan-O!"

3. Seeing as how they're on Hawaii, they decided to put a token Hawaiian on the force. And to combat any stereotypes that the mainlanders might hold about Hawaiians being particularly interesting or intelligent, they chose a big dumb boring Hawaiian.

2. The little pearl of wisdom always dispensed by McFarcical at the end of the show. It usually involves gardening. The "Love Theme from Hawaii Five-Oh" plays, and McShatneresque says, (according to the nature of the episode,) "Someone once said that the flowers of all the tomorrows are in the seeds of today. Well, in those reformed hippies, I think we've found some pretty good seeds." OR "Your people have a saying, don't they, Chin Ho. 'Whether in a palace or a desert, The Lotus flower blooms once a year.' Well, Toshiro's lotus flower is going to be blooming for the next ninety-nine years... in jail."

1. The theme music, which is not only the best thing about Hawaii 5-0 but possibly about TV in general.