Season 8 box artwork

There is something weird about this shot of Jack Lord on the cover of the season 8 box set, due next month. I'm not talking about the uncharacteristic smile. It looks like Lord's head as been vertically compressed a bit ... and maybe even horizontally expanded. What season or show is this from? It is very strange ... not even like Jack Lord! Go to amazon.com (http://tinyurl.com/ykvzpll) and look at the blown-up version of the cover. This looks more like Monte Markham!

The new time-compressed Five-O

The guys making this new show have a real serious problem to overcome -- the fact that they only have 42 minutes (including beginning and end titles) to play around with, unlike the old days, where Five-O was usually over 50 minutes, and sometimes even over 51.

If you ever saw any of the Five-O Family Channel episodes, you will know what I am talking about. Most of those shows were severely edited so in many cases, the plot didn't even make sense. (Click here if you want more specific details.)

I recently was watching the Alex O'Loughlin episode of Criminal Minds, where he plays this twitchy killer who has OCD. You think that there are a lot of "brainstorms" on Five-O; they are nothing compared to Criminal Minds (at least based on this show), which had a slam-bam-thank-you-ma'am kind of plot development.

Alas, this is all too typical of TV shows today...