I was tortured over Shelburne. I was tortured! Joe, Jenna Kaye paid with her life. I deserve answers. I want answers. I want them right now.
– Steve McGarrett, Hawaii Five-0, Episode 2:13
(Ka Ho’Oponopono – “The Fix”)
Spoiler alert!: Please be aware that if you haven’t seen all of Alex’s work, there might be spoilers here. It will however not spoil any of the fun you’ll have watching it eventually.
I am not really a big fan of Doris McGarrett returning from the grave as “Shelburne” in Season 3 of Hawaii Five-0. My love for the Show however will not be hampered by this little difference of creative in my opinion from those of the writers. I will embrace it and maybe they will even surprise us by what they have in store.
One of the first things I said after we started speculating about Shelburne being the “dead” Mrs McGarrett, was that I am looking forward to see Alex playing opposite a mother. This is something new to him and should be interesting to watch him do.
Although we have never seen him interact with a real ‘mother’ on screen (apart from in Black Jack Sweet Science), there has been experiences with mothers and mother like figures in his work. Most of them were not always very good and sometimes even a bit disturbed.
Let me explain:
In Oyster Farmer, Jack Flange who is in fact an orphan, has two mother like figures in his life. First there is his sister Nikki, and he told Pearl, that she (hos sister) was kind of like a mother to him. Maybe that is also why he wanted to look after her in her time of financial need.
Unfortunately, the assistance he needed to give was monetary, which lead him to robbing the fish market. Not a very wise way of helping anybody. You can see that there is a very loving relationship between the two siblings, but like most siblings, they also have their differences of opinion sometimes.
Hold still!
Piss off! I can look after myself!
Then we have Trish, separated from her husband, who is Jack’s employer. A very seductive woman described by her husband and verbalized by her Father in law as a ‘Great F/ck and a manipulator of the worst kind.’
Yes Jack.
She offers to play mother and nurse when Jack gets scratched by her son’s dog. A very “noble” and generous offer by her. Poor Alex Jack, I think he forgot to breathe while she was cleaning his wounds. She handled him like Mother Teresa would, caring for an orphan boy…. 😉 😉
Jack: “I appreciate you patching me up”
Trish: “It´s been a pleasure”
As you can see, she turns out to be much more Mrs Robinson than mother of the year.
We move onto Michael Carter in FEED. We never see Alex as Michael together with his mother, because she died while he was still a young boy. However we gather from the flashbacks that she played a very important role in what he became. As a young boy he had to be her ‘feeder’ and in the end he just cracked up and smothered her to death with a pillow (and also carved out her fat to make her skinny).
As a grownup Alex portrays Michael, a ‘feeder’ that loves his ‘gainers’ so much that he actually feeds them to death and in that way he becomes a serial killer. So in a sense, we can say that his ‘gainers’ become his mother in FEED and that just turns these mother – son relationships into the realm of the absurd and disturbed.
You’re my Jelly Baby
In Criminal Minds we have a similar scenario, but this time young Vincent Rowlings is witness to his adulterous mother’s murder at the hands of his own father. He videotaped it, but never told anyone. Alex then plays Vincent the 35-year-old serial killer that “becomes” his father, murdering his mother over and over again. So we have another rather disturbed mother – son relationship.
Watching mom die …again and again.
In Three Rivers the head of surgery is like a mother to her team. Here we find Alex as the gifted heart surgeon Dr Andy Yablonski challenging this mother on some occasions about procedures when they don’t suit the needs of his patients. They however have a good overall relationship with mutual respect. One of the best “mother” figures opposite Alex so far.
I’m asking now…
In The Shield we have another superior that plays mother to her team. This time the children are very naughty boys that do a lot of bad stuff to get the job done. McGarrett and his often over the top methods look like a boy scout, compared to what these police officers are up too. Although as Kevin Hiatt, Alex plays a much more behaved son than the rest of them, he crosses the line in a way that does not please mother at all.
WTF?
In the end, she fires him for doing the dirty with a subordinate, in the now infamous ‘chair scene’.
As you can see, the mother experiences in Alex’s past roles were not what we can call healthy at all.
This leaves us with the question of what is in store for us and Mother McGarrett. This relationship is not really starting out in the best way. Here we have a mother that has essentially abandoned her son for 20 years. His whole life was altered by her untimely (faked) death when he was only 15 years old.
“The day that car exploded, it made me who I am”
The day that car exploded, it made me who I am. Danny, I can’t just let it go.
– Steve McGarrett – Hawaii Five-0, Episode 1:13
(Ke Kinohi – The Beginning)
I sincerely hope the writers give Alex and his award-winning “mother” Christine Lahti, a solid storyline to work with. They are both great actors and deserve the best. Apparently the first episode of Season 3 is called Mother’s Day.
Goodbye Sweetie……see you soon!
Goodbye girls……
And just as we posted this story our first evidence of Mom McG and Steve and girlfriend. Looks like mom and Cath are already having issues and Steve is the bystander.
Alex O´Loughlin ~ An Intense Study 