In real life, Jack Lord was in favor of severely restricting handgun ownership and the show "Hawaii Five-O" was set in one of the toughest states in the US to own a gun, so it isn't a surprise that the series did a couple overtly anti-handgun episodes. The first, from season seven was episode 23 "Diary of a Gun"--and it was an excellent show--whatever your beliefs are about gun ownership. However, here in the final season, they reworked this previous episode an injected all sorts of speechifying about the evils of gun--and ended up creating a horrible episode! Even the title, "Use a Gun, Go to Hell" is terrible, as it's anything but subtle!!
Like in "Diary of a Gun", a single handgun is passed from one hand to another to another through the course of the show and lots of folks end up getting hurt--and three killed. However, there is an interesting subplot involving a senator that was very interesting--but it seemed like an afterthought and really needed an entire episode on its own instead of just being one part to all the killings by this one apparently demon-possessed 9mm! It's all a bit confusing--as they tossed in too many plot elements, shamelessly ripped off their own prior episode AND had McGarrett making speeches that were obvious speeches to the audience. Subtlety was in no way present in this episode--and that's what had made "Diary of a Gun" so good. This earlier episode had much of the same content but without the obnoxious speeches that ruined this season 12 clunker--it allowed the audience to understand the message without hammering it home in such a ham-fisted manner. All in all, this is a great example of how far the quality of the episodes had dropped during the last couple years of the show. Truly terrible compared to what the show had been.
By the way, if you don't believe me about this particular episode, read through the summary by Peter Harris. It ends with the comment "Inspires a McGarrett tirade at the end". That it did!
Like in "Diary of a Gun", a single handgun is passed from one hand to another to another through the course of the show and lots of folks end up getting hurt--and three killed. However, there is an interesting subplot involving a senator that was very interesting--but it seemed like an afterthought and really needed an entire episode on its own instead of just being one part to all the killings by this one apparently demon-possessed 9mm! It's all a bit confusing--as they tossed in too many plot elements, shamelessly ripped off their own prior episode AND had McGarrett making speeches that were obvious speeches to the audience. Subtlety was in no way present in this episode--and that's what had made "Diary of a Gun" so good. This earlier episode had much of the same content but without the obnoxious speeches that ruined this season 12 clunker--it allowed the audience to understand the message without hammering it home in such a ham-fisted manner. All in all, this is a great example of how far the quality of the episodes had dropped during the last couple years of the show. Truly terrible compared to what the show had been.
By the way, if you don't believe me about this particular episode, read through the summary by Peter Harris. It ends with the comment "Inspires a McGarrett tirade at the end". That it did!