This a topic I have discussed many times on Mike's old guestbook, and was a long time coming for me to bring up here. When the new show premiered, many people took the message boards and comments sections of online articles about it to make negative comments on Jack Lord's acting, calling him wooden, stiff, cold, distant, aloof, etc. - the latter three of which were more complimentary than the first two.

I recently read an article by a New York Times TV critic named Mike Hale, which was published in 2017 and about Daniel Dae Kim and Grace Park left, and how the new show should have had better casting of Asians from the beginning. There were 99 comments on that article, a few of which mentioned the original show negatively, as was expected: One guy said he had a distaste for the original because he found the idea of two white cops being asked to bring law and order to a group of islands predominated by Asians to be silly. One jerk said he didn't know that for the past seven years that CBS had been airing a "reboot of this braindead series," while another called the new show "a sequel to a mediocre series."

One poster said that Jack Lord was "nobody's idea of a great (or even good) actor, but generic and colorless he was not." That poster had referred to Alex O'Loughlin as generic and colorless in a previous sentence.

And how can an actor who is described as not being generic and colorless, still not be considered a good, if not great, actor? Isn't one of the purposes of acting to make your character stand out so they are not lacking in substance? That is certainly what Jack did in every role he played.

Jack was not of the same caliber Laurence Olivier, though Mr. Olivier must have thought something of him in order to allow him to take his place in a line reading during an actress' audition. But then again, how many actors are?

Just what standards do we use when he judge great, good, or bad acting?

Your thoughts, everyone.