#h50 dvd special features

[trickster-archangel]

Random thoughts about Hawaii Five-0 rewatch: part 2/?

Still trying to make sense, in sparse order, of some things I noticed and that made me question the mental stability of whoever decided determined plot points...

Thought #3: missed chance to be a fucking adult, evolved human being and not a caveman about divorced couples, or: if you had started with the intention of showing how Danny and Rachel could rebuild affection and understanding, why fucking slaughter her character that way?!?!

At the end of s1, I suppose it's in the Shorelines extra? anyway, the authors talk extensively about how it was their endgame since the pilot to portray the subtle change and the evolution of the relationship between Danny and Rachel, meaning: they wanted to show how two people, who once loved each other enough to decide to share a lifetime together, had fallen apart and started hating each other just as much because that's what happens in life, but in the end, slowly, thanks to life's twists and turns, they managed to find back the chemistry, the trust, the support, the love they had lost, creating a new kind of bond.

~~~~~~follows under the cut~~~~~~

Which....cool, really. It's fantastic. I obviously don't like the idea of no-mcdanno, but in a way I can really appreciate the intention of portraying something clearly fictional but way better, healthier and more hopeful than what happens in reality like, 70% of the times. My parents would immediately slaughter each other even after more than 30 years after the divorce. I have friends and ex colleagues who are just the same and cannot even be decent enough not to shit over each other in front of their children, making them part of their feud. In Italy, every three days a woman is murdered by her husband, ex husband, fiancee, partner, ex partner. The other 30% is barely civil enough to pretend NOT TO want to murder the other ex spouse.

So, cool. Good intention, I appreciated it, even if I don't agree with Danny sleeping with his ex wife behind her rightful husband's back.

Then 2x01 happened and ok, everything between them fell apart. Probably Danny didn't really believe the baby was Stan's, but it didn't matter because in the end he trusted Rachel and that was enough. He helped her deliver Charlie. He was a good friend. They could've kept this storyline, show how ex spouses can become civil and affectionate again, share a different love, explore the nuances of an extended family. Everything could've been normal and healthy.

So what the fuck happened with the whole "Stan wants to move to Vegas" and then "Rachel always knew Charlie was Danny's but had decided to keep him in the dark because she wanted to decide for everyone"?!?

Ready? The answer comes, plain and simple, in the following seasons' Shorelines commentaries.

They wanted to put Danny through an emotional grinder and imagine how he'd react, but most of all, they wanted to throw a curveball (multiple curveballs including Steve's storyline) at the audience, to hook them, shock them, and make sure they'd be unable not to be there for the next season to see what will happen.

That's it. That's the great mastermind masterplan.

Cheap shocking for the sake of audience ratings.

Ok, I get that after all the mess Rachel did, she probably didn't get much of a saying in Stan's relocation purpose...even if she could've been the friend Danny had been, and left Grace with him, moving only with Charlie and maybe getting Grace for school breaks. Anyway, that's a normal and believable kind of shock/curveball.

But the whole "Charlie’s paternity clusterfuck"?? I mean, it's not even realistically believable! In my 44 years, I've witnessed THIS EXACT SITUATION TWICE!! And in both cases, first thing the cheated husband did, apart from asking immediately for a divorce, was asking for a paternity test! That's what normal, real people do, if they KNOW their wife had an affair and suspiciously GETS PREGNANT immediately after!!

Unless you're a complete idiot who has no experience whatsoever of how the real world works, there's only one explanation for this mess: that you wanted us to imply that Rachel didn't even tell Stan about the cheating, that she simply told him, generically, that their marriage wasn't working anymore and she wanted to go back home, and made him believe that the baby had been conceived during their last-effort trip before Danny was poisoned....right after she'd made sure she'd get pregnant with Danny's kid to trap him with guilt AND need, and then lied to both men. FOR YEARS.

I call this clusterfuck one name only: character's assassination.

There were so many ways, even after s2 and s3 events had happened, they could've brought that shocking curveball forward, because the path they chose only managed to depict Rachel as a mean, cheating, liar bitch who managed to play both men. It's horrible, and chauvinist, and toxic.

She could've been genuinely sure Charlie was Stan's, and only with the disease outbreak and the test both Rachel and Stan had learnt about the truth. Stan could've kicked her out and Danny could've swept in like a real hero to help a friend who once was his love, or maybe they could've explored the difficulties of rebuilding a family.

More simply, Charlie could've been genuinely Stan's but Stan could've given her an ultimatum about Vegas and they could've divorced because Rachel couldn't bear the situation anymore, and made Stan go through what Danny had suffered with the move to Hawai'i.

Charlie could've been Danny's, and she could've decided to come clean with both instead of the whole shared custody arc (this situation, of course, implies that they could've been so far-sighted to imagine a several-seasons arc for Danny and Rachel, instead of improvising for the sake of shock).

Stan could've died, and Danny could've found himself suddenly in charge not only of his daughter and ex wife, but also acting as a father figure for a little kid who wasn't his, but who was his daughter's little brother thus deserving love and protection, making his genuine amazing humanity shine.

These are just some things I'm coming up with, right now, while I'm working and not even plotting, and avoiding any hypothesis implying both Stan's and Rachel's timely death to allow Danny the troubling experience of being a single father of two kids, maybe suddenly discovering that Charlie is his.

There were so many interesting nuances they could've explored, to make sure that they could've followed their initial masterplan about rebuilding a human bond between Danny and Rachel, AND granted them enough shock and emotional distress to hook the audience to the following seasons. Kinda like what they did, more respectfully, with the reveal of Harry's paternity.

They simply chose the cheapest route: harpy, bitch, whore ex wife cheats on both husbands and ruins everyone's life.

Good job.