Hawaii 5-0: Pass or Fail?

Here we go again, Q watched another TV cop show about roller derby.  Yes, I did, and I am going to try to watch any and all "entertainment" media dealing with our sport.  So far, I've watched the CSI episodes, part of the Bachelor, Whip It, Bones, and now Hawaii 5-0.  TV has really taken some ugly liberties with our sport over the years, so I didn't go into the Hawaii 5-0 episode with high hopes, but what I saw wasn't what I expected.

 By the way, this is an action shot.  They aren't standing on the jammer line.

Yes, the episode was riddled with ridiculous interpretations of derby, as to be expected.  The victim was a derby girl, and the cops immediately jump to the conclusion that she has been abused because she has bruises.  As soon as I heard the words "domestic abuse victim" I rolled my eyes and missed how they discovered she had a secret identity as a roller derby girl.  I also rolled my eyes when I heard that her boyfriend had no idea that she was involved in roller derby; it's kind of difficult to hide your derby career from your significant other.  Your pad stench would be a massive hint, not to mention all of the time you were spending there; in this day and age of social media, I highly doubt anyone can hide their secret identity.  Also, what derby girl doesn't want to talk about derby?  TV often likes to treat derby as if it is some weird gang and the derby girls have to hide their associations with derby.  I guess they do this to make the plot more exciting, and to have one of their own detectives "infiltrate" the team by trying out.  More eye rolling.

At least this time, the detective in question had some skating in her background, so it was a teensy bit less far fetched than the Bones episode.  What made me laugh out loud was the fact the derby victim was "the team's only jammer".  Uh....what?  Did I hear that correctly?  I know it was done for TV and for the plot, but really?  Because their one jammer was dead, the team was forced into having try outs for the championship game, which was the next day.  Sigh.  At least in this episode, the undercover officer came in second instead of being "a natural."  When she does get chosen to be on the team, she introduces herself to a teammate as "I'm your new jammer."  More giggling ensued in the Q household. She also apologizes to one of her blockers while she's jamming. "I'm sorry I didn't block for you."  At least the blocker sets her straight and tells her that blockers block for jammers, not the other way around.  Hey, I've heard fresh meat say similar silly things.

There were glaring issues with the treatment of derby; the one that really made me crazy was the fact that they weren't wearing mouth guards.  I don't know why that was left out, since all talking was done on the bench, but it bothered me only because they got so many other things almost right.  Of course, this time the coach was the killer, and of course he was creepy as hell, but the thing that made me snort derisively was when he was giving his players cortisone shots.  Snort!  Hell, after some practices I WISH my coach could give me a cortisone shot, but I'm pretty sure that's a universal no no. 

The bright points in the episode were many; none of the derby girls were deviant, sex crazed psychos.  Yea!  Two of the characters featured had normal jobs; the victim was a teacher and one of the suspects was a doctor, so that felt real.  When the cops interviewed some of the derby girls about their teammate, they used her real name and one of the derby skaters said "who?"  I don't always know everyone's "real name" on my team, so I thought that was a nice touch.  They showed the undercover cop take a normal hit and tweak her knee when she fell, which is ever so much better than getting punched in the face or elbowed in the chin.  When they introduced the team, they showed some flat track scrimmaging going on; I saw people skating backwards to block, hitting with hips, and people falling down, but nothing excessive and crazy.  Nobody was rolling through blood or throwing egregious elbows, even though I did see some forearms.  I was impressed they showed some real skating.  Unfortunately, when they showed the "Championship game play" I thought that it felt really slow and boring, but I think that was because they were focused on the actresses skating, instead of editing them in.  The packs were moving slow, and not in a good way.  It wasn't very intense.

So, there it is.  If I were giving this episode a grade, I'd give it a B.   You could tell they tried to keep it in the realm of realism, but screwed up on some basics.  It kicks the crap out of that Bones episode though; that one is a definite F.