Five-O casting mistakes

[Todd]

The casting of guest roles was rather flawed on Five-O, to say the least!

Among the problems:

1) Actor/actress is too young for the role they're playing. Martin Sheen in "Cry, Lie" was a good example.

2) Actor/actress is too old for the role they're playing. Beverlee McKinsey in "The Joker's Wild, Man, Wild" was a good example.

3) Actor/actress plays an Asian when they're actually caucasian. Mark Lenard in "To Hell With Babe Ruth" is a good example.

4) Actor/actress plays a Native Hawaiian when they're actually caucasian. Paul L. Smith in "A Lion in the Streets" is a good example.

5) The acting is bad. This occurred many times throughout the series. It was forgivable when they used inexperienced locals for some small roles. It was less forgivable for some of the major guest roles, such as the two main guest actors in "Killer Bee".

6) The child's skin color doesn't make sense given the skin color of the biological parents. One that comes to mind is Paniolo, where the child of a light-skinned Hawaiian woman and an unseen "haole", has very dark skin.

7) The actress playing the role of someone plain or unattractive is actually very pretty. A good example was Loretta Swit, who played awkward telephone operator Wanda in "Three Dead Cows at Makapuu". (Incidentally, the character itself was very realistic, and the entire telephone operator center was authentically done. Swit was just too pretty for the role.)

[AJ from NY]

You think Martin Sheen was too young for his role in "Cry, Lie"? Eddie Calhao (Sheen's character) was presented as an aggressive young hotshot lawyer - no? I even recall Danny Williams making a point of just that.

[Bobbi]

The casting of guest roles was rather flawed on Five-O, to say the least!

Among the problems:

1) Actor/actress is too young for the role they're playing. Martin Sheen in "Cry, Lie" was a good example.

I got one for you in this category: Katherine Cannon in "A Long Time Ago". Her character, Melissa Cole, was supposedly born in 1949 (not too far off from Cannon's real birth year of 1953). The problem ensues when she supposedly went to to high school with Danno. Even if you separated the pair by 4 years, that puts his birth year at around 1945 and puts the character at about 23 in 1968 (Season 1).

While this is possible, Danno acts like he has a bit more police experience than a single year (he has a 4-year degree from Berkeley after all according to "King of the Hill") even when considering the events in "...And They Painted Daisies on His Coffin". A direct contrast is "Yesterday Died and Tomorrow Won't be Born" when he has to take over when McGarrett is fighting for his life. I doubt very seriously they would put a rookie in the position of second in command at such an elite unit. The other point to be made, is that Danno was in the service at one point, a tidbit we discover in "Deadly Persuasion" (his automatic service weapon killed Harry Oakland). This is something the Army used to do and depending on the unit, still does.

When it's all said and done, the pair, in real life, were actually closer to being 15-16 years apart in age and he would have graduated high school years before she even started grade school! While it could be pulled off because James MacArthur looked younger than he was and Katherine Cannon tended to be cast in older roles, the disconnect is...nuts. By the way, the school they mention attending together was O'Fallon High...it's an all-girls school in San Francisco!

[Todd]

You think Martin Sheen was too young for his role in "Cry, Lie"? Eddie Calhao (Sheen's character) was presented as an aggressive young hotshot lawyer - no? I even recall Danny Williams making a point of just that.

I thought he was presented as a sleazy lawyer with a bunch of experience already. He was only 29 at the time of filming, and looked it.

Anyway, from the season, there was another casting of a guest star who was too young. Melody Patterson, who played Tot Kee's (James Hong) assistant Missy, was only 20 at the time. There's no doubt Patterson was very pretty (she was one of the best looking female guest stars of the series, in my opinion), but she was still only 20. The Missy character was supposed to be a semi-experienced criminal who acted both as Tot Kee's personal assistant and partner in crime. This was not a role for a 20-year-old girl! They attempted to make Melody Patterson up to look older, but the entire time I was distracted by her very youthful appearance which didn't fit with the role.

They should have switched Patterson with Beverlee McKinsey, who was a 36-year-old playing a wild young girl in "The Joker's Wild, Man, Wild!" McKinsey looked her age, and would have been a much better assistant for Tot Kee than Patterson, whereas Patterson would have been a much better wild, young, spoiled girl than McKinsey!

Both women were pretty, so they could have still fit the bill for the characters being attractive.

[Mr. Mike]

The trouble with Martin Sheen was he ALWAYS looked "young" early on in his career. In the 1973 movie Badlands, he played a character who was modelled on the serial killer Charles Starkweather (1938-1959). Sheen was born in 1940, so when he played this character who was executed when he was 21, Sheen was 33 -- yet he still looked young!

A really bad example of an actress who is looks too young playing a part is Gaye Nelson (born 1952) in Chain of Events, S05E07. Her character, Linda Rynak, who had sex with not only her boyfriend (Dirk Benedict, born 1945) but also a politician played by Linden Chiles (born 1933!), is supposed to be 18, but looks more like she is 14. The actress was actually about 20 years old when the show was broadcast, which is unbelievable.

I don't want to watch The Joker's Wild again just to prove a point, but is it said anywhere that McKinsey's character is a "young chick"? I have always considered her to be more of a "young cougar."

I already dealt with whites and other non-Asians playing Asians on this page: http://fiveohomepage.com/yellowface

[Todd]

Mike this was from your own review of "The Joker's Wild, Man, Wild":

While Jo Louise is supposed to be 25 years old, she looks older, more like the 35 years old the actress actually was. Whether this makes her more like a cougar than the young Heather Locklear, who would have been ideal to play this role more recently, is debatable.

You can't be a cougar at 25!

[Mr. Mike]

OUCH!

[Bobbi]

What if the boyfriend was 20? I thought a cougar was an older woman dating/marrying a younger man. Am I wrong?

[Todd]

What if the boyfriend was 20? I thought a cougar was an older woman dating/marrying a younger man. Am I wrong?

The common usage of it has usually involved women over 40 who are interested in men in their 20s.

[Todd]

Here's another one:

Actress Elaine Joyce in "Just Lucky, I Guess" was too old for the role of the murdered young prostitute. She was 26 in 1969, yet her character was supposed to be barely 18. When McGarrett revealed her age, hapless Sloane was taken aback, muttering, "She looked at least 25!" I agree! In fact, the actress was even older than 25!

[Mr. Mike]

If you Google search

cougar woman

you will find lots of WWW sites defining the ages.

One site says this term refers to "women who pursue sexual relationships with men who are over eight years younger than them."

Another one says, "Although there are no precise ages, the woman is usually 35 years or older with the man more than eight years her junior."

Yet another says, "'Cougars' are popularly defined as women in their 40s (or older) who date significantly younger men, generally at a 10-year age gap or more ... The generally accepted age group for cougars is 40-plus; however, some people go as low as 35 in their definition."