https://mysteryscenemag.com/24-artic...-book-em-danno
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Wonderful article, thanks for sharing. He was definitely one of the show’s better writers.
Agree, excellent article. I know it was written sometime in the past (issue #81), but I'm not sure when.
Amazingly, Coopersmith is still alive. He's almost 95!
I am trying to remember which episode I noticed a "pointless" McGarrett pay phone scene. Anyone remember?
Also, while Coopersmith's criticism of the later seasons is valid, the one element he focuses upon -- McGarrett's personal life being fleshed out -- isn't one I really saw done very much on Five-O, even in dreaded Season 12.
Am I wrong about this? I feel we know very little about McGarrett's personal life, and in fact that episode which focused upon it the most was Season 1's "Once Upon a Time" (a decent, albeit nonstandard episode), written by Leonard Freeman himself.
Coopersmith wrote about Leonard Freeman's fatal bypass heart surgery, and how it was just the beginning of those procedures. That's not really true. Those started in the '60s, and Freeman's fatal surgery was in 1974. Still, I admit I'd much rather have that surgery today than in 1974. Given his relatively young age, I think that Freeman was just plagued by hereditary heart issues, and was destined to die early. (He was already seeing doctors for heart troubles.) Freeman was only 53 years old -- just 5 years older than I am now. He was taken way too early.
I think Coppersmith is referring to the attempts to give McGarrett girlfriends (Thanks For The Honeymoon, Man In A Steel Frame) are a pair that come to mind but they're not bad. The only part of his background that we get a glimpse of is in Number One With A Bullet (S11E12, 13) where he tells the mobster how his dad died. As well, there's the computer information flashed on the screen in the Season 5 opener Death Is A Company Policy. Other than that, I have no idea but I agree Todd, at the end of the day, we don't know a lot.