The Steve McGarrett Story – No #1 (Pilot)

For the past four years, we have been following the events in the life of Steve McGarrett, Lieutenant Commander in the Navy and a member of the SEALS, now part of the reserve forces. Circumstance leads him back to the place where he grew up – Hawaii, where he has been the head of a Special Task Force for the state for this time. I thought it might be an appropriate time to recall his story……

We meet 33-year-old Steve McGarrett on 20 September 2010.  Steve is part of a military team transporting Anton Hess. When we first see him, it is minutes before his last conversation with his father, and minutes before he hears his father being shot and killed at the hands of a man called Victor Hess. In an escape attempt, Steve shoots and kills Anton. Steve thinks his dad is shot in retaliation for Anton being killed. He later learns that John McGarrett (age 68), was actually assassinated by order of a man called WoFat.

What we also only learn 3 years later, is that Steve tragically lost his best friend and Navy SEAL buddy Freddie, while on a mission to capture Anton in North Korea, just a few days before.

These tragic events bring our hero to the island paradise of Hawaii……

Just as a sidenote at this stage in my story – whenever we meet an interesting character, who also die during this course of the story, I will share the time and manner of their death with you. The first person: Victor Hess – His throat is slit by WoFat a year later, while he was defenseless in prison.

Continuing with our tale, we see Steve arrive in Hawaii and all dressed up in his Service Dress Blues after his dads funeral, meet the Governor of Hawaii. The Governor offers him a job as head of a task force to find his father’s killer and to help clean up Hawaii of dangerous criminals. (Gov. Pat Jameson – in about a years time, she is shot and killed in her own study at home, by WoFat, while our hero Steve McGarrett defenselessly witness it.)

At this time, Steve is not very impressed with her offer and he declines. While walking away from his meeting with the Governor, Steve runs into Chin Ho Kelly, a former police partner of his dad, now working as a security guard at Pearl Harbor. Chin tells him that a detective formerly from New Jersey is handling his dad’s murder case. Detective Danny Williams moved to Hawaii six months before, to be with his daughter Grace. Danny’s ex-wife Rachael, moved to Hawaii with her new husband, Stan, and he followed them.

Steve goes to his dad’s house to see if he can find any evidence that can lead him to Victor. During their last conversation, John called Steve, Champ and when Steve see a toolbox with the word Champ on it in his dad’s garage, he realises that it was a clue his dad gave him. We “meet” the red “champbox”. It seems to have a lot of hidden secrets inside. At this stage I thought we will have many mysteries coming from it and that we will see how Steve get to solve some of them…… boy, was I wrong. 😦

Inside the box, Steve finds an old tape recorder…….

I can’t continue this investigation into the police department from the inside. I don’t trust the people I work with. So I’m gonna have to do this on my own. It’s all about the key. I don’t know what it’s for. I’ve only been able to find a source……

Voice recording of John McGarrett

Finding the box and the message in it from John, Steve realises that he can’t have the HPD (Honolulu Police Department) investigate his father’s death. And while being confronted my Det. Williams, he phones the Governor and except her offer to head up her special task force.

Steve: I, Steve J. McGarrett, do solemnly declare upon my honour and conscience, that I will act at all times to the best of my ability and knowledge in a manner befitting an officer of the law.

After looking into the evidence from the initial investigation into his dad’s murder, Steve realises that with his history, the one policeman he can trust at the moment, is Danny Williams. Under protest from Danny, Steve makes him an offer he can’t refuse – to be the first member of his team.

The two of them continues with the investigation and Danny gets a flesh wound in the arm, after being shot by the gunrunner, who sold Victor the gun that killed John. In the guys house they find a girl who was smuggled in from China. Realising they need help to find the people who smuggle these people (who most probably also smuggled Victor onto the Island), Steve and Danny sets off to recruit Chin as the next member of their task force team.

Chin who lost his job at HPD, because he was suspected if stealing drug money, accepts Steve’s offer and he introduces them to ‘Shave Ice’ entrepreneur Kamekona. As an ex-convict with his hands still in many pies, ‘larger than life’ Kamekona deals in information at a price. From him the get the name of human trafficker Sang Min. The three men now need and unknown person as undercover to visit Sang Min and get information about his business, that might lead them to the whereabouts of Victor.

And as it happens, Chin knows just the right person (woman) for the job – his cousin who is about to graduate from the police academy. The boys set off to meet Kono and recruit her as the fourth member of their merry band. Kono chose to join the police, after an injury cut short her career as a professional surfer. Kono being an adventurous girl who is capable of holding her own amongst the men, immediately accepts their offer.

Kono masquerades as a girl trying to smuggle relatives from China to Hawaii, but with the help of an informant in the HPD, Sang Min discovers her identity as a police officer. In a shootout they apprehend Sang Min and discovers the rest of the stowaway people in a ship container at his place. Without having to worry about “red-tape” Steve and Chin, using some extortion tactics, gets the relevant information about Victor’s escape plan from him.

Sang Min: What kind of cops are you?

Steve: The new kind.

Steve and Danny “boards” a Chinese freighter ship with their car, to capture Victor. During a gun battle and a fight, the already wounded Steve, shoots Victor and he plummets into the water. Thinking that he killed Victor, Steve and his newly founded team celebrates their first success…….

And that was Steve’s Story for:

Hawaii Five-0 – Episode 1:01

Pailaka (Pilot)

Written by: Alex Kurtzman & Roberto Orci & Peter M. Lenkov

Director: Len Wiseman

(20 September 2010)

To be continued here:

730 days of fun …… We Are TWO!

 

On special occasion and also whenever I feel sick and physically down, I start to contemplate and “take stock” of things in my life. The past month was one of those periods for me. Trying to determine if what I keep myself busy with, is worth while? Lots of my time revolve around Alex, being here on the blog and roaming online, to see what is happening with other people that show interest in Alex. Question is, “Is that good or bad?” 😕

For me it is not just about Alex, but it is about what I get from it. From him personally I will most probably never get anything. Living on the other side of the world and with zero chance of ever meeting him, expecting anything like that would be a bit crazy. Maybe a dream, but with me being a realist above all, just a dream………

So what is then in it for me, to be part of social media, and also this blog? During the past 2 years, I have had endless hours of fun together with Paula, working on stories, studying pictures and everything we could find interesting around Alex. I could not even begin to express how much it enriched my life over the past 2 years. And above it all, I have made a dear friend. At this moment in time, Paula is my best friend! 🙂

 

Two and a half years ago, on my quest to find other Alex-fangirls that I can interact with, I discovered a bunch of wonderful ladies (Paula included) on a site called Sardonic. Unfortunately our funny and unusual time on there was short-lived and we all went our different ways. A few of us started our own projects – like AOLww, which me and Paula still follow and support. Fangirling is about having fun and enjoying the pretty and the talent of our “subject” and we like to support anyone who keeps the Alex-fun going.

 

Thank you to everybody who so generously like, share and retweet our posts.

Thank you to everybody who so regularly comment on our posts. You always make the fun so much better for us.

Thank you to the ladies who allowed us to share their personal Alex fangirl stories on here. Those post have all been a lot of fun!

Thank you to anybody who has ever helped us with any of our projects. And there I want to specifically thank my dear friend LuRxgirl for all the Steve-0 and Mick-0 fun during this past year. You are a great friend, close to my heart!!

 

I am hoping these words from Alex are true: “I don’t google myself. It’s awful. I’m sure you understand.”. Because  if he did google himself, Alex, might just be horrified at the idea that after 2 years, we are still around – studying him ‘intensely‘ . But while we are still having fun with him and his work, we will be here, looking at every mole, hole and bulge we can find. 😀

It warms my heart whenever I look around the Alex-world and see all of Paula’s pretty creations of Alex reposted.

Happy Two-year Anniversary to us!

And thank you all, for all the fun!!

#AlexOLoughlin Picture of the Day – #McBeauty

 “Anything that helps–just keep it on the air. I’ll get the whole kit off if you do that.”

– Alex O’Loughlin

Chicago Now

7 September 2010

Pic for the day – Looks nothing like #AlexOLoughlin or Mick?

O’Loughlin is refreshingly irreverent about his new status as a heartthrob as well.

Despite those ubiquitous billboards, he is convinced he is safely hidden behind Mick St John.

“It doesn’t look like me!” he laughs.

“It doesn’t even look like Mick! Between the wind machine blowing my hair around and the retouching, it looks nothing like me.”

– Alex O’Loughlin, Watch Magazine, April 2008

‘Moonlight’ Star #AlexOLoughlin Wants to be a Kinder Gentler Vampire – 2007

Premiering last week the new CBS vampire drama “Moonlight” took a cue from Joss Whedon and David Greenwalt’s “Buffy The Vampire Slayer” spin-off series “Angel”, about a vampire detective with a soul fighting the good fight in Los Angeles.

The series, originally called “Twilight” from producer Joel Silver never actually had a full pilot filmed initially, and instead presented the network with selected scenes to get a green light.

Alex O’Loughlin plays our new leading vamp named Mick St. John, a Los Angeles detective who has sympathy for human kind. He gets his blood from a fellow vamp at the local morgue and generally tries to do something positive with his immortal gifts.

His greatest temptation is the love of his afterlife, Beth, played by British actress Sophia Myles. O’Loughlin took a few minutes out of fighting the good fight to fill ‘iF Magazine’ in on the series that never was, and what we can expect from a new breed of undead hero.

  iFMagazine.com, October 2007

 

iF: You’ve said you are a big Anne Rice fan. Will that blend of blood, sex, lust, love and everything in be incorporated into the vampires on MOONLIGHT?

Alex: Yeah, I’m a big Anne Rice fan. We’re on CBS network TV and there’s only so much we can show and only so much we can do in front of the cameras.

We can incorporate anything emotionally behind the characters and how they work. I don’t think the world of MOONLIGHT is quite as erotic as the world of Anne Rice, but the levels of mysticism and the depth of character and the romanticism in her books is definitely there.

All of those things are especially present in my character.

iF: How much changed from the original pilot to the current way the series is?

Alex: There are some fundamental differences. There is a lighter touch. The original pilot wasn’t really a pilot, it was a pilot presentation. It was like a pilot with all of the extraneous exposition taken out and it was just fiery scenes back to back.

It was two hundred hours we shot in twelve days of really intense highly emotional scenes and we tied all these big storylines together in one thirty minute episode. So, what we’ve done now is brought those big storylines and spread them across the first three episodes; it’s diluted six to one essentially.

The magic of the story hasn’t been diluted and the cast hasn’t been diluted. We’ve just spread out these pinnacles of storytelling that we’re going to go into.

 

iF: So did your character change then?

Alex: No not really. Not too much. Actually, you know what, no. Essentially what has happened for me is I am now able to be lighter which is great. It’s what I really wanted.

He’s a pretty dark dude, but he was a dark and brooding dude before when I did the pilot. Essentially, it was just the way he came together and how it was cut together; like a lot of the smiles were cut from the original presentation.

It was really dark before and that’s not the most interesting way to spend a Friday night, if you know what I mean.

We want people to let this guy into their living rooms every week.

iF: So the vampire can be dark but he also has to be charming and appealing?

Alex: Yeah, absolutely. As an actor I approach this character, as a guy who just happens to be a vampire. He just happens to have this curse that he didn’t want and didn’t ask for and now it just so happens he has to live off of human blood. Other than that; he’s just a normal guy.

Here are some of the differences between the original pilot (or 30 minute pilot presentation as Alex calls it) and Moonlight, which we highlighted in a story last year.