Guest Who: Giving "Hawaii" Some Punch!

As a lover of classic TV, especially 1960s and '70s drama series, I have eleven seasons (out of twelve) of Hawaii 5-O on DVD. The show ran from 1968-1980. It was enough of a cultural touchstone to warrant a reboot in 2010, this time called Hawaii 5-0 (as in, with a zero.) It loosely reinvents characters from the original series, but with a modern touch, and has become a considerable success on its own - now in its ninth season. And I had never, ever seen it before. Not even a clip!

Watching a recent installment (for a reason which will soon be made quite clear!) I was happily surprised to find that the show - unlike practically every other contemporary television series - has retained the old-style opening credits, complete with a re-orchestrated rendition of the legendary theme song. I say "old-style" merely in relation to the way the actors' faces and names are shown as the somewhat truncated music plays. There's nothing old fashioned about the lightning fast editing and showy graphics (though in some cases more than one performer in the now-unwieldy cast is shown and there's no chance to actually take in their names and faces with one viewing.) Still, it was neat to see the new Steve McGarrett (played by Alex O'Loughlin) shown on the very same balcony on the very same building as the original. The new (and, yes, I realize that now that close to a decade has passed, neither is really "new" anymore!) Lt. Danny "Danno" Williams is played by Scott Caan.

The crime story for this episode concerns the death of a young bodybuilder who'd been slipped some tainted steroids. That invest- igation is handled by the supporting members of the team and is full of the type of slick story-telling and over-the-top action that everyone (except me!) seems to not only like, but require. The story line I was tuning in for concerned O'Loughlin and Caan being talked into providing personal security for a famous romance novelist who's come to Hawaii, but whose bodyguard was detained back home in the U.K. The writer in question also happens to be the ex mother-in-law of Caan, one who never approved of him as the husband of her daughter.

This romance novelist, one Amanda Savage, turns out to be played by none other than one of our lifelong favorites, Dame Joan Collins! Collins wants Caan and O'Loughlin to accompany and protect her during a busy book-signing.

She's distraught because the seven pieces of luggage she brought for her two-night stay has gone missing, but - first things first - a glass of champagne is in order. Thing is, she offers one to O'Loughlin, but not to Caan!

She barely gives Caan, her former son-in-law the time of day, but really turns on the charm for his associate, the head of 5-0.

I know that Ms. Collins does not like to have her age continuously thrown out there. She lives in the now and does so with gusto and a wellspring of personal vivacity and energy, but honestly... she's eighty-five and it's mind-boggling! Think about some of the taut, plastic faces of people ten or twenty (or thirty!) years younger than her and then take a look at this woman...

Anyway, she has to head off to find something to wear to the signing and in an instant the two investigators become glorified bag boys as she parades down the street in front of them. (Caan even has her purse on his shoulder, I do believe?!)

In the limo, she bestows a pair of expensive cuff links on O'Loughlin as a thank you. This is quite a bit more than she affords Caan, which is to say that he gets zippo. She even tells O'Loughlin that she has an idea for a new book, all about an older woman ("well, not that old") who is guarded by a handsome, younger policeman.

Later, as the book-signing is about to commence, there are throngs of people waiting to catch a glimpse of her and get their tome inscribed by the authoress. She mutters to her escorts that they are a bunch of "mouth-breathers" and that when she gives them the code word, they are to get her out of here. When asked what the code word is, she replies that it is "Get me out of here!" LOL

Note the tropical print fabric of the dress she obtained on the island. And for heaven's sake don't miss the ring on her index finger (which seems as if it would make signing countless books one after another more painful than it needed to be!)

In real life Collins not only had a very famous and successful sister (Jackie Collins) who wrote hugely best-selling novels, but she is no stranger to the page herself, having written a variety of autobiographies, beauty books and several of her own works of fiction. (She famously sued Random House for reneging on a book deal between them and - in a moment of staggering vindication - won!)

Caan has selected three expensive restaurants and even made reservations at each one for lunch, but she only has eyes for O'Loughlin and decides to defer to his judgement. Caan tries to steer things to the direction he believes her tastes will run, but it falls on deaf ears.

The trio ends up at a beach picnic table with lunch from a food truck that the detectives enjoy patronizing! Surpris- ingly, she hasn't got the slightest complaint about it and devours bits of roasted vegetables from a shish-kabab. Caan, though, has had his fill of being slighted and finally departs.

Later, Caan is unwinding at a bar when out of the blue appears La Collins. She's got something she wants to talk to him about...

What I'm about to tell you is probably one of the gayest things that has ever been revealed on this blog (and that is REALLY saying something!) I had seen a couple of pre-air photos of Collins taken during filming, so I had an idea of how she was going to look on Hawaii 5-0. However, I had not seen her in this final guise with all the black fabric and jewelry and when she emerged from the left, even though I knew she was coming, I gasped.

I also happen to have a "thing" about melodramas in which someone who's been behaving badly suddenly feels repentant. It gets me nearly every time. (On a personal note, when I played Brick in "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof," there was a point after he'd been belligerent to his father when he finally said, "I'm sorry, Big Daddy" and, well, let's just say I had no trouble at all dredging up the emotion for that scene.) So combining that sort of emotional element with the dazzling way that she was dressed and made up, I got really choked up!

Something about seeing her on TV more than forty years after first witnessing her in the TV miniseries Arthur Hailey's The Money- changers (1976) when I was nine, wherein she and Christopher Plummer conspired to control millionaire Lorne Greene with whatever means were at hand, if you get my drift, and noting that she was still looking sensational and still able to make us all sit up and take notice... It was just emotional to me. (I'll try in vain to pull myself together now.)

Just a few of the truly stellar cast from The Moneychangers.

A look at the type of self-done makeup that helped make Collins a worldwide sensation as Alexis Carrington Colby on Dynasty.

In lesser hands, the piled up wig, heavy makeup and dripping diamonds could have come off as too "Miss Kitty" from Gunsmoke, but somehow our Joan pulls it off (and has done for decades!) In Poseidon's Underworld, and elsewhere, Joan Collins' style NEVER goes out of style!

Collins never acted with James Caan (one of the few people that she hasn't!), though they likely rubbed elbows at one time or another, whether at one of the Variety Club events or during Night of 100 Stars, but it was still fun to see her work with his son, now a success in his own right.

By the time the sequence is over, the two of them are, if not friends, at a place of better under- standing. At last there is even a bit of levity between them as the episode fades out.

I can tell you that since I was younger than ten, I've been fascinated - let's face it, during Dynasty I was OBSESSED - with Joan Collins. For too long she was away from U.S. television screens, finally making a return recently on American Horror Story. She was great on that and looked terrific (including a period wherein she sported this uncharacteristic, but quite flattering, white wig), but it was generally a darkly-lit, gloomy type of show.

Here, she gets all the lighting and sparkle that a star of her accord deserves and she's wonderful. You can see from these pics how terrific she looked, but you have to watch the episode to find out how enjoyable her performance was. She really gave the show, as the old slogan for canned fruit drink used to say, "a nice Hawaiian punch!"