A few days ago, I explained why I thought the new Hawaii Five-O's title no longer fit the show. Perhaps the producers heard me, for in tonight's episode they provided a tacked-on reference to the famous "five-oh" reference.
During the denoument, the protagonists watch some of McGarrett's old football games over the internet. Apparently McGarrett was a pretty good quarterback, but one of the other characters asks "What kind of number is fifty for a quarterback?" (I have no idea why they would object to this number...some sports thing, obviously.)
"No, not fifty," McGarrett says. "Five-oh."
"Five oh?"
"Yeah, when my family moved here, we felt like outsiders and we started calling ourselves the five-ohs...like the fiftieth state...it made us feel like we had a place we belonged."
"Huh. Five-oh. I like that..."
Approving nods all around, but no reference to "five-oh" being slang for police, which is at least consistent, since as I explained in my last post on this subject, the characters inhabiting this fictional universe should have no reason to identify "five-oh" as such. You could sure see the writers struggling to come up with an alernative reason for the reference, though...
Yes, as you surmised, the number reference is a football thing: certain numbers are only allowed for certain classes of positions. I believe Quarterbacks can only have numbers from 1-19 and possibly one other range.
ReplyDeleteA quarterback wearing 50 would be roughly analogous to Dr. Crusher being seen working at the controls of the phase inhibitor induction coils on the bridge of the Enterprise.
ReplyDeleteShouldn't happen unless the writers get backed into a corner.
Also roughly analogous to the SS Lakul (Whorfin class Federation transport) wearing an NSP-17938 badge (SS T'Pau Vulcan transport) instead of its NFT-1327. Everyone would be like "Whaaaaa - are we in a parallel universe with a good Kirk and a bad Kirk??? Is Han Solo going to appear now? Madness!"
ReplyDeleteActually "Who Mourns For Jeffonais"?, it'd more analogous to Dr. Crusher wearing a security uniform.
ReplyDelete