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I don't think the Hornet could get away with it

posted 9 years ago by Metafizzypop
13 replies | jump to latest

I don't think The Green Hornet would be able to get away with his method of operating if he did it in real life. Here's what I mean.

The way he works is that he pretends to be a criminal in order to gain the trust of actual criminals. After doing business with them he
double-crosses them, and they end up arrested, generally by Scanlon and crew.

He might be able to pull this off on his first gig. Possibly his second and maybe his third. But after that, the crooks would start talking. The criminal underworld would figure out that everyone who has dealings with the Hornet ends up in the slammer. And then the Hornet's career would be over. No one would ever trust him again. (This is aside from the fact that no crook would willingly do business with someone who wears a mask in the first place, but let's suspend disbelief on that for now.)

The Hornet wouldn't last long if he worked this way, because everyone would catch on. If he rats out criminals all the time, what criminal would have any involvement with him?

I do love the show, and I've been a GH fan for years, but I find his methods to be unfeasible. He could never, never get away with it. Could he?

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[–] vpilutis 9 years ago

Well some people feel that crooks as a group are not too smart.
Here's another item how about how most folks know he (GH) works with a short Asian
Chauffeur, Reid also has a short Asian Chauffeur/butler.

Wouldn't some 1 put 2 & 2 together and figure they're 1 & the same people?

[–] Metafizzypop 9 years ago

Well some people feel that crooks as a group are not too smart.

I guess that's true. I do recall some of the crooks being shown as a bit dense. But there were also a lot that weren't. In the real world, I can't imagine that people running criminal operations could afford to be dumb. They'd never stay in business.

Here's another item how about how most folks know he (GH) works with a short Asian Chauffeur, Reid also has a short Asian Chauffeur/butler.

Wouldn't some 1 put 2 & 2 together and figure they're 1 & the same people?

Asian butlers were common in the 50s and 60s. It was pretty much all the work they could find. The TV show Bachelor Father also had an Asian butler. Inspector Clouseau in the Pink Panther movies also had Asian help, even named Kato!

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[–] vpilutis 9 years ago

Yeah u got me with that 1.

Another Asian butler was in OCEAN's 11 1960

[–] Metafizzypop 9 years ago

Another Asian butler was in OCEAN's 11 1960

Was there? Interesting. I never saw the whole movie though, just some of it.

But from what I did see, that was a sharp bunch of guys trying to pull off the heist. They never would have done business with the Hornet. They'd have seen through him in a minute.

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[–] srb-3 9 years ago

I don't think The Green Hornet would be able to get away with his method of operating if he did it in real life. Here's what I mean.

The way he works is that he pretends to be a criminal in order to gain the trust of actual criminals. After doing business with them he
double-crosses them, and they end up arrested, generally by Scanlon and crew.

He might be able to pull this off on his first gig. Possibly his second and maybe his third. But after that, the crooks would start talking. The criminal underworld would figure out that everyone who has dealings with the Hornet ends up in the slammer. And then the Hornet's career would be over. No one would ever trust him again. (This is aside from the fact that no crook would willingly do business with someone who wears a mask in the first place, but let's suspend disbelief on that for now.)

The Hornet wouldn't last long if he worked this way, because everyone would catch on. If he rats out criminals all the time, what criminal would have any involvement with him?

I do love the show, and I've been a GH fan for years, but I find his methods to be unfeasible. He could never, never get away with it. Could he?

Sure he could. You're forgetting the obvious ... that the crooks do *not* trust him and he is counting on them trying to double-cross him.

[–] Metafizzypop 9 years ago

Obvious? What's obvious? It the crooks didn't trust the GH, they wouldn't do business with him in the first place.

The kind of thing I'm talking about, as an example, happens on the episode "Eat, Drink and be Dead." It's about illegal moonshiners operating out of a dairy farm, and run by a dude named Dirk. Dirk does trust the Hornet, and decides to do business with him. They make arrangements to get Britt Reid into Dirk's hands. The Hornet also wants a share of the financial take, as usual. But at the end, the Hornet moves the goalposts; he changes everything that they'd agreed on.

That's most typical of what I remember happening on the show.

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[–] srb-3 9 years ago

Obvious? What's obvious? It the crooks didn't trust the GH, they wouldn't do business with him in the first place.

Wrong. They don't trust him but do business with him anyways.

The kind of thing I'm talking about, as an example, happens on the episode "Eat, Drink and be Dead." It's about illegal moonshiners operating out of a dairy farm, and run by a dude named Dirk.

Yes.

Dirk does trust the Hornet,

Not at all.

and decides to do business with him.

He correctly feels that the Hornet has left him no choice *but* to do business with him.

They make arrangements to get Britt Reid into Dirk's hands. The Hornet also wants a share of the financial take, as usual. But at the end, the Hornet moves the goalposts; he changes everything that they'd agreed on.

Right and Dirk tries to kill the Hornet in retaliation.

That's most typical of what I remember happening on the show.

Right but you forget that the Hornet usually *forces* a partnership which basically guarantees a double cross which he has already anticipated.

[–] Metafizzypop 9 years ago

Right but you forget that the Hornet usually *forces* a partnership which basically guarantees a double cross which he has already anticipated.

I'm not forgetting anything. I don't have Alzheimer's. Yes, I know he often forces himself on the crooks.

But as far as I can tell, Dirk does trust the Hornet -- at least in as much as he expects the Hornet to keep his side of the bargain they made.

Britt Reid, when he's delivered to Dirk says, "You'll never get away with this."

And Dirk says, "Yes I will."

When Dirk says this, he sounds completely confident. Dirk believed the Hornet, and felt that their agreement was solid. He thought that everything was settled. But it wasn't.

This is the kind of thing I was talking about when I started the thread. I thought that Dirk (and others in his position) should have known better. He should have anticipated the Hornet would not keep his word.

As you say, he does try to kill the Hornet in retaliation, but that seems only normal after someone has been betrayed. If Dirk had any brains, he'd have tried to kill the Hornet before that point.

Like as soon as he walked in the door.

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[–] srb-3 9 years ago

This is the kind of thing I was talking about when I started the thread. I thought that Dirk (and others in his position) should have known better. He should have anticipated the Hornet would not keep his word.

As you say, he does try to kill the Hornet in retaliation, but that seems only normal after someone has been betrayed. If Dirk had any brains, he'd have tried to kill the Hornet before that point.

Like as soon as he walked in the door.

Considering that the Hornet caught Dirk and his buddies by surprise that wasn't going to happen.

[–] Metafizzypop 9 years ago

I guess that's true.

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[–] Darren (1462) 7 years ago

The way he works is that he pretends to be a criminal in order to gain the trust of actual criminals. After doing business with them he double-crosses them, and they end up arrested, generally by Scanlon and crew.

If you watch the show, he doesn't really operate that way. He always comes at the crooks as a rival, trying to push them out of their operation so he can take over, or at least muscle in on their action and force them to take him on as a partner, which then leads them to try and have him killed. Thus, he can always claim they moved against him first , and he just dealt with them out of self-preservation.

Of course, it's still not tenable, long term. But this was a TV show, with all kinds of reality-bending aspects that were necessary for the entertainment. For instance, the Green Hornet was allied with the District Attorney, but did all kinds of things that were criminal, and the D.A. could never be a party to. For example: in the episode "Ace in the Hole" Britt Reid holds Mike Axford incommunicado at his house for about a day, and he does so with the knowledge of DA Frank Scanlon. Legally, this is abduction, and it's a felony. No DA would sign off on something like this. In "Corpse of the Year" Britt Reid persuades a rival newspaper editor to hold someone at gunpoint, which is an even more egregious case of abduction, and while Scanlon wasn't directly a party to it, he gave Britt Reid latitude to act, and the rival newspaper editor willingly cooperated. This is just NOT what would happen in real life.

But it's a TV series, and not one with any pretensions to ultra-realism. You have to make certain allowances to maintain suspension of disbelief.

[–] Darren (1462) 5 years ago

[deleted]

[–] kenburke (2398) 3 years ago

Nowadays he would go after white collar criminals and Kato would be a super-savvy computer hacker.