Copyright ©2013-2015 by Mike Quigley. No reproduction of any kind without permission.
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Despite the deluge of annoying hype and spoilers over this show for weeks prior to its broadcast, I found it pretty enjoyable. This was a major kick-ass episode.
The show began with a "previously on Five-0" teaser, including glimpses of the Danny/Gabby and Adam/Kono romances, as well as McGarrett freaking out over his mother's past history with Wo Fat. A repeat of Kono's big farewell was a highlight of the teaser, and the sound either seemed to be remixed or looped so you could actually hear things being said like Chin Ho's "Follow your heart" to Kono and her reply which included the title of last season's final episode. This all led up to where we left off with McGarrett confronting Wo in his maximum security cell as guards outside were mowed down by unknown forces.
After these unknown forces cut through the thick steel door and started peppering Wo's plate glass window with bullets, McGarrett handily wiped out three of the four of them in a scene which was filmed to look like a shoot-em-up video game. The remaining gunman, Ricardo Cosi (Luis Carazo), later determined to be a member of the National Liberation Movement (NLM) featured in last season's finale, was the nephew of NLM leader Esteban Luna, a.k.a. El Condor, played by Nestor Serrano, who was Navi Araz on season 4 of "24."
The show continued from last season with Kono and Adam on the proverbial slow boat to China. Fortunately, McGarrett's mother, accompanying them, was not seen. As Kono gazed out over the ocean, she felt Adam's pain over killing his brother Michael, and looked very sad. (I am a sucker for scenes like this with Kono.)
Back in Honolulu, a bunch of Cosi's compatriots entered the building where Five-0's offices are located. The offices were on the second floor, which I thought strange. I thought they were on the first floor. Whatever. The boss of these heavily-armed types was Ernesto, played by Henry Ian Cusick, formerly of "Lost," now speaking with a mixed-up Spanish accent. The terrorists knocked off the guard at the metal detector and took a bunch of hostages. Two of the NLM members broke into the actual Five-0 office where they quickly siphoned data out of the Supercomputer using some kind of USB-like connection and then reduced the computer to a pile of rubble with their automatic weapons. It's a mystery how they knew EXACTLY how to hack into the Supercomputer -- it's not like you can pick up one of these at Best Buy. Chin Ho, who was in the office, managed to avoid them, becoming more and more pissed off as the show progressed.
Tons of cops, including the HPD SWAT team led by the new-to-the-Islands Captain Lou Grover (Chi McBride) arrived very quickly and surrounded the building with barricades. I don't understand why they didn't tell all the gawking spectators to get lost, because the terrorists had very powerful weapons including rifles and bombs. McGarrett and Danno were grilling Cosi in the blue-lit room, but quickly abandoned this when they realized something was amiss upstairs. They then dragged Cosi through the basement of the building. In one hilarious (sort of) scene, Danno started blabbing away about his relationship with Gabby as McGarrett performed CPR on Cosi, who looked like he was about to expire. (Was this a CPR-gument?)
Around this time, Catherine was seen jogging on the beach. Some military guy showed up to tell her there is a "a situation at the [Iolani] palace," which was not correct, since the building which houses Five-0 is in the Ali'iolani Hale, across the street from the palace where the offices of classic Five-O were located. This military guy's presence was very fishy, and as she was on her way back to downtown Honolulu, Catherine's blue Corvette suddenly crapped out, no doubt sabotaged by Mr. Mysterious Military Guy. But there are questions. For example, what is Catherine's current status with the Navy -- is she still working for them, on leave, a member of Five-0 or what? How would the military guy know where she is? Is he her bodyguard or something? Wouldn't she recognize this guy or ask to see his ID if she doesn't?
Back at the palace (NOT), Chin Ho overpowered one of the NLM terrorists who was snooping around the office. Outside, Grover was getting fed up and tried some unconventional strategy when he stripped down to his socks and underwear and knocked on the door where Ernesto and his pals were inside with the hostages, asking if they wanted to order some Chinese food. This scene was kind of weird. Typically you would see a hostage negotiator do this when the hostages or their captives needed some food or medical attention, and usually after the negotiations had gone on for a very long time, like several days. The cops would send in some guy dressed minimally so the villains wouldn't freak out that the guy was armed or wired. But in this show, we are talking about an hour or less. It's pretty obvious that Grover is a cop, minimally dressed, and it's equally obvious that he is coming to the door to scope out what is happening inside, though from the camera angle, I don't know how he could have seen as much as he reports back to his team a few minutes later. Since Ernesto just tells him to get lost (no pun intended) instead of shooting him dead on the spot, this tells me that the NLM types are PRETTY STOOPID.
When Ernesto threatened to start executing the hostages and shot one of the women in the leg, McGarrett and Danno appeared with Cosi, who was shot dead by Ernesto, presumably to prevent him from telling his uncle Condorman what a screw-up the operation with Wo was ... and then the NLM types all surrendered! Instead of being removed from the scene in a paddy wagon, they were taken away by Grover in the armored SWAT truck. Almost immediately McGarrett got a call from Condor, who had Catherine held captive somewhere in the middle of nowhere. Condor wanted all of the arrested NLM members to be released ASAP in exchange for her life. Fearing a repeat of what happened to his father, McGarrett jumped into Danno's Camaro (with Danno) and managed to find the SWAT truck, even though it was going in the opposite direction from them. They forced it off the road and made the very annoyed Grover and several other cops get out and then freed the four bad guys, who skedaddled away in Danno's car. Having completed his part of the exchange, McGarrett and Danno rushed to the middle of nowhere (actually Ka'ena Point, the westernmost tip of land on Oahu) in the SWAT truck. Catherine was OK, with a few bruises.
Meanwhile, Chin Ho was following Danno's Camaro with the four NLM terrorists in it. They stopped and riddled Chin's car with bullets as he ducked down, then took off with El Condor, who appeared out of nowhere driving a black SUV. Danno's car got blown up while all this was going on, which later made Danno very depressed. The NLM members headed to Aloha Stadium where a stolen TV news helicopter awaited to spirit them away somewhere -- probably not to the mainland, though. A spike belt on the road near the Stadium put a quick end to this plan, with the SUV flipping over in spectacular fashion. Three of the terrorists, including Ernesto, were killed, but El Condor rushed towards the stadium on foot, pursued by McGarrett.
What followed was a stunt even more mind-bending as McGarrett shot El Condor, who was helped on to the copter by an NLM compadre. As the helicopter took off, McGarrett grabbed on to one of the landing skids. He hoisted himself up into the cabin, threw one guy out, fought with El Condor who fell to the ground and accidentally shot the pilot dead. Since, as we all know, McGarrett is capable of flying the copter, he managed to land the thing barely short of a crash.
The show sounded like it was going to close with the usual beers-on-the-beach, but McGarrett visited Wo Fat one more time before his arch-enemy was whisked away to a Supermax prison on the mainland, demanding to know what was going on between Wo and his mother. When Wo refused to talk, McGarrett bashed Wo's head on the bars of his "cage" in the large plane where he was housed, whipped a Q-Tip out of his pocket and grabbed a sample of blood which he later gave to Max to analyze to determine if he and Wo are related.
Back at the Five-0 office, Danno's geeky computer nerd friend Toast (Martin Starr) worked on reconstructing the Supercomputer. He got it to the point where he realized that its data has been compromised, including a "search request for satellite data transmitted to an unknown third party," meaning Kono's secret location in China (not Hong Kong as some web sites suggested). The show ended with Chin contacting Kono via satellite phone to warn her just as some guy was snooping around the hideout where she and Adam are staying.
MORE TRIVIA:
- After four years, the famous Five-O theme is heard for the first time during the show itself (as opposed to the beginning and end titles) in this episode. You can see this here.
- As I have pointed out ad nauseum on this and other sites, the character of Grover, as announced in a CBS press release, was not (as it said there) "a character that first appeared in an episode of the original 'Hawaii Five-0' series." Executive producer Peter Lenkov was quoted in July as saying "It's always fun to dig back into Five-0 mythology and resurrect a character " and in this case, Chi McBride plays SWAT Captain Lou Grover. Recently transferred to Hawaii from Chicago, Grover isn't easily sold on Five-0's tactics, referring to the task force as: "McGarrett and his merry band of do-whatever-the-hell-they-want." What Five-0 does conflicts with Grover's own style of law enforcement. And that creates good conflict, so prepare for some combustive tension between the two this season." Lenkov is creating a "mythology" where none exists. Grover was not like August March, the Ed Asner character, who was the same character (sort of) in both the old and new shows. The character of Captain Grover appeared in the original show's seventh season episode "The Hostage." Gravelly-voiced character actor Scott Brady portrayed Grover, who was actually named "Glover" as opposed to "Grover" in the end credits. "Glover" is what he calls himself when he is using a bullhorn to address a building where Ruth Martin, a young girl (Linda Purl), has been confined by an aggrieved veteran. This vet was trying to sponge money off his commanding officer who lives in the building, and things go very wrong when a cop (played by Dennis Chun, the current Duke Lukela) confronts him. In the original show, the character did not come from out of state, was not named "Lou," and only appeared in the one episode. Grover/Glover was at odds with Jack Lord's McGarrett on how to resolve the hostage situation, using "old style" police methods versus McGarrett's attempts to negotiate. This sounds similar to the "resurrected" character of Vince Fryer (played by Tom Sizemore). Though no one has talked about this too much, he was presumably based on Internal Affairs cop Bernie Fryer, featured just once in the original's tenth season episode "The Friends of Joey Kalima." That show's Fryer went after a rookie cop and friend of McGarrett's who was present at a luau where some bookmaking activity was going on. There are some parallels to Sizemore's Fryer going after the rookie Kono, though Kalima was not a member of the Five-O team. In the earlier show, Fryer's focus was much more on McGarrett, who he seemingly had a grudge against. By the way, at least one WWW site, who didn't bother to check their facts, suggested that Chi McBride had played the original Grover/Glover. This is interesting, because he was 18-19 at the time, and, according to IMDb, didn't start acting till he was 30. (They amended their story after I complained about this.) Despite all the above, I liked McBride's character -- and in fact, I was kind of disappointed because I thought he would have a lot more screen time like Scott Brady did in the original "Hostage." McBride's Grover will reportedly be appearing in future episodes, though.
- The main title features several new scenes, including a clip of the Fabulous Four replacing the one taken from the pilot episode where Kono nods her head.
- At the beginning, why does the maximum security guard bring up the fact that McGarrett's mother was visiting Wo? Isn't this kind of a "security" issue to be telling someone about other visitors, even if they seem to be related? (I should have noticed this last May!) Of course, all prison employees in Hawaii are corrupt, we know this.
- While McGarrett is grilling Cosi, Danno brings him a clean shirt, giving O'Loughlin a chance to exhibit the usual beefcake. But this replacement shirt gets messed up pretty quick.
- Cosi's date of birth is 11/04/1989, he was born in Cusco, Peru and his number on the criminal record Chin Ho looks up is 179462443.
- Pua Kai (Shawn Thomsen), the Marriott Hotel security guard from Season 3, Episode 17 (Pa" ani (The Game)), appears, now an HPD rookie. When Kamekona shows up at the barricades outside the Five-0 offices wanting to help, Kai tells him to forget about it.
- There were two sequences of tourist shots: surfing (approximately 22 seconds) and windsurfing (10 seconds). If these had both been eliminated, I would not complain.
- Catherine's Corvette Stingray's license plate number is EOY 603. While she is driving to Honolulu, an announcer on the radio says "Drama continues to unfold at the Iolani Palace," compounding the earlier error.
- When cornered in the basement by NLM member Tomas (Vancamp Popese), McGarrett kills him by firing through Cosi's right shoulder, a technique similar to the one used by Danno with his ex-wife's husband Stan in show 15 of season 2, Mai Ka Wa Kahiko (Out of the Past).
- Of McGarrett's unconventional plan to free the hostages in exchange for Catherine's life, Danno says "it's stupid -- off the goof-meter."
- The teaser notwithstanding, some of the sound mix in the show was pretty bad, with important dialogue buried amidst the music and sound effects.
- Wo Fat tells McGarrett that Doris came to see him "to apologize for killing my father" and any other questions regarding her visit should be directed to Doris herself. What is this leading to?
Once again we have a typical Five-Zero story where the writers are trying to be clever, making things very complicated. As usual, there are is someone suspected of committing a crime who turns out to be innocent after a grilling in the blue-lit room, a formula which is used far too often. Also as usual, it was almost impossible to concentrate on the plot with the offensively noisy background score which, in this show, was particularly bad. Aside from the usual red herrings, the clues that you need to understand what went on during this show are scattered all over the place. In the end, it sort of makes sense, but the effort to have it make sense becomes more and more overwhelming.
The show got off to a bad start by rehashing the big finale from the end of last season AGAIN, wasting about 36 seconds of everyone's time. Ma McGarrett was seen for only a fraction of a second, which was a good thing. But then we cut to Kono and Adam's middle-of-nowhere hideout in China, with scenes that were full of horribly banal dialogue focusing on issues like whether Kono could wash dishes and clean house. There was a good shoot-em-up with Kono taking charge when some gunmen presumably hired by the yakuza invaded their space, but this was sandwiched between goopy scenes of the two of them looking obnoxiously happy, smiling in a glazed fashion like a commercial for beer or shampoo. Terrible!
The whole show was framed by little league baseball games featuring Danno's daughter Gracie, with Kamekona as umpire, McGarrett and Danno as coaches of Gracie's team and Catherine as coach for the other team. To top this off, Billy Harrington, McGarrett's old military buddy (and Catherine's former boyfriend as per the last episode of last season) showed up at the Five-0 offices, telling his old pal McGarrett that he was starting a private security firm and wanted Catherine to work for him. Catherine did NOT want to take the job, but McGarrett convinced her at the end of the show to do so, followed up by more emotion than we usually see between these two. The result was far too much "ohana" soap opera.
Guest star for the episode was Tim Daly, playing Ray Harper, a Texas Ranger and overprotective single father. His daughter, Amanda (Kristi Lauren), had a boyfriend -- Carl Jacobson (Brando Eaton) -- who got an offer from some crooked pals in San Antonio to deliver $75,000 to gangsters on Oahu's North Shore for "two grand, a limo and a couple of plane tickets [to Hawaii]." Amanda told her father that she was going to Hawaii with a girl friend's family, but when she didn't contact him after arriving there, Harper got overconcerned and, according to him after he was arrested by Five-0 for taking the law into his own hands in a big way, "I did some digging. I found out she didn't go with her girl friend. She went with this Jacobson kid and I followed his trail."
Harper somehow figured out that Jacobson and his daughter were picked up at the Honolulu airport by Pacific Isle Limousine driver Michael Maki (Bobby Foley), who, it turned out, had a shady past. When Harper arrived at the airport where Maki was waiting for him at his request, Harper punched Maki out and pushed him into the trunk of the car, right in the open where anyone could see this (but, of course, no one did). He then took Maki somewhere where he persuaded him to talk, assuming that Maki was connected with his daughter's disappearance. Harper continued: "[H]e [Maki] told me he picked the kids up. They were supposed to drop off a bag of money when they got robbed [at a stop light by a guy wearing a ski mask]. Then he drove them to his middle man [Tom] Akuna's [Marcus Natividad] house to figure out what to do." So I have to ask here, why is there a "middle man," and isn't it kind of odd that Jacobson and Amanda are taken to see Akuna, who we find out later was the guy who just robbed them (albeit wearing the mask)? Since Maki's limo is later discovered at Akuna's, we can assume that Maki drove Harper there (or vice versa), then took off, leaving the car, when Harper broke into the house and confronted his partner.
To get information from Akuna about Jacobson's whereabouts (as if Akuna would know this), Harper overpowered and hog-tied him and drove him to a sugar cane field in the middle of nowhere, where he covered him with PEANUT BUTTER to attract rats (I am not making this up). Predictably, Akuna quickly blabbed the information that Harper wanted, rather than becoming some rat's midnight snack. How did Harper figure out this interrogation technique? While he was flying to Hawaii, he read some in-flight tourist magazine which told about how mongooses were introduced to the islands years before to get rid of rats, which are a-plenty on Oahu.
When Five-0 raids Akuna's place early on in the show, we see a large bag containing lots of money, which McGarrett looks at and says in a near-psychic manner, "We've got at least 75K here." This confirms Akuna was the robber in the ski mask, assuming there was no one else involved in the scheme that we don't know about. After Harper is determined to be innocent, a naked Akuna is confronted by McGarrett and Harper when he's trying to wash the peanut butter off in the shower at his house. Akuna, who looks very annoyed, spills lots more beans, telling how he and Maki were working for the big boss, who is presumably Frankie Choi (Ajax Maharlika -- Choi is never named in the show). Despite the fact that Choi and his gang are very nasty people, Maki and Akuna decided to rip them off for the 75 grand, which later resulted in Maki being murdered and dumped in the ocean by Choi's people because he "talked to a cop," meaning Harper. But how would anyone know that Maki "talked to a cop"?
Much of the above is speculation, because IT IS NOT EXPLAINED IN THE SCRIPT and you are left to "fill in the blanks" on your own!
Later on, things get equally confusing when Five-0 sets up Jacobson to deliver the money to Choi and free Amanda. They prepare Jacobson for the money drop a mile away from "the suspect's house" (it says this right on screen: ONE MILE FROM SUSPECT'S HOUSE - WAIMANALO), Choi being "the suspect." Jacobson drives to the house and shows the money to the people there, but Choi says there has been a change of plan: he SOLD Amanda (oooh -- how VERY bad!). Although there is a cut to a commercial at this point, the action then resumes with Choi pointing a gun at Jacobson's head. Despite the fact that Five-0 and Harper were seen ONE MILE AWAY, following the sounds from Jacobson's wire on a computer placed on top of Danno's new Camaro mere seconds before, they immediately show up at Choi's place and start shooting the hell out of everyone.
It's too bad that the script was so mediocre, because Daly actually gave a very good performance, full of menace. He came across as a guy who could give McGarrett serious competition in the "doing things my own way" department.
MORE TRIVIA:
- Before they take possession of Danno's new black Camaro, McGarrett and Danno are seen driving through Honolulu in the classic 1974 Mercury Marquis Brougham used by Jack Lord (and, in this show, owned by McGarrett's father).
- McGarrett gets the results of the DNA test on Wo Fat's blood that he asked Max to run: he and Wo are NOT related. Danno says this is surprising, since Wo Fat, according to McGarrett is a psychopath, a personality trait that Danno says that McGarrett shares.
- Chin Ho looks like he has a new haircut. He also has a new Supercomputer, which was shot up in the premiere episode. Danno makes some smart crack along the lines of "if it's so great, why don't you marry it?"
- Chin gets his new toy to run facial recognition to determine who Harper is, based on surveillance photos taken at the airport. The choices the computer runs through before it makes a match are pretty funny. Most of the pictures, which flash by very quickly, have little similarity to Harper's face. One of them is a black guy!
- Catherine says that she has left the navy, but, on the other hand, hasn't submitted her "letter" (presumably of resignation).
This show introduced conspiracy theorist Jerry Ortega, high school chum of Chin Ho, played by Jorge Garcia, former co-star of Daniel Dae Kim on "Lost." There were some funny lines from Jerry, especially in response to Danno's acerbic comments, as well as from McGarrett who attempted to keep his partner in check. There was also some serious acting and emoting by Michelle Borth as Catherine finally resigned her Navy commission, and also from Scott Caan, once again playing the concerned father Danno. There were no signs of Ma McGarrett or the shampoo-commercial Kono, both plusses.
Following some outstanding night time photography of Honolulu, the show began with a glimpse at the lives of the city's idle rich, specifically the philanthropic Doctor Phillip Van Horn and his wife Kaylea, who was preparing a meal while wearing a sexy negligee. Unfortunately, shortly after this, the two of them were brutally murdered by three guys dressed like V for Vendetta ninjas, leaving their infant daughter heard crying in a bedroom nearby via a baby monitor.
The race is immediately on to figure out who is responsible, considering the Van Horn family has "a past shrouded in mystery." A major suspect is Van Horn's brother Hewitt, a dissolute dope addict whose trust fund ran out of money several months before. Turns out that he sold his brother's alarm security password to help fund his cocaine habit for $15,000 to a guy he met in a club who wanted to "steal something" from Phillip. The jerky editing in Hewitt's apartment was interesting, suggesting Hewitt's drugged-out state of mind.
HPD's investigation shows that the only thing missing from Van Horn's house is a scrimshaw, a small sculpture in the shape of a leaf which McGarrett immediately recognizes as being made from whale bone. This not-particularly-valuable piece has an inscription on the back from the Royal League, a secret Hawaiian society which Van Horn's great-great-grandfather Jonas belonged to in the 19th century.
Because of the mysterious nature of this society, Chin Ho suggests that Five-0 consult with his old pal Jerry, who lives in his mother's basement. When they meet him, Jerry says that the Royal League was like the "Hawaiian Illuminati." He comes forth with a conspiracy story about how the league was suspected in the theft of some valuable rings from the Italian Medici family around the time that Jonas Van Horn was in Europe in the late nineteenth century. When shown a picture of the scrimshaw, Jerry immediately considers it to be "the key"to figure out what has happened to the rings.
Hewitt's talking to a police sketch artist produces a link to Griffin More, who has a rap sheet including counterfeiting, art fraud and felony assault according to Duke, who phones McGarrett. McGarrett and Danno immediately leave for the warehouse district where More is easily located. But he is dead and has been almost cremated in a kiln.
Jerry later meets with Danno and McGarrett in an "undercover" fashion, telling them that letters written to Jonas van Horn from Daniel Frost, an apprentice to Thomas Gould, the sculptor of the famous Kamehameha statue in front of the Five-0 offices, were recently stolen from an auction house in Florence, Italy. Jerry figures there is a connection between this and the theft of the Medici rings, despite the fact that these letters contain "nothing about the scrimshaw key or the rings " just some boring stuff about living in Florence." Jerry suggests that the rings are in the first Kamehameha statue which was lost at sea off the Falkland Islands during its voyage to Hawaii (the one in front of the offices is actually a second statue, the first one having been later recovered and sent to Hawaii years later). This first statue is on the Big Island, so the three of them head there by helicopter, piloted by Kamekona. McGarrett has no hesitation in smashing this statue, which is revealed to be a copy. I can't believe the way McGarrett damages the replica ... surely there would be someone from the nearby civic center freaking out over this!
Security camera footage of the swap of the first statue with its replica is analyzed, and three bad guys, former associates of More's, are identified as Ellis Gregory, Peter Sibbald and Aaron Durley, all of whom were involved in the violent robbery of a museum in Prague a few months before. All of them were in Italy three weeks ago, just around the time the letters were stolen from the auction house.
When McGarrett and Danno track them down to yet another warehouse, Sibbald is found there and, after some serious persuasion by Danno, reveals that the other two men are at the Honolulu Museum of Art where there is an exhibit of scrimshaws. It turns out that Van Horn's artifact was not in his house, but in the museum all along, unknown to the crooks.
At the museum, there is a shoot-out between McGarrett, Danno, Durley and Gregory (the last being the boss of the three crooks and guy who the girl with the Hello Kitty backpack bumped into earlier). Some people have commented that Danno seemingly gets outside the museum in a few seconds. The editing in this sequence is not very good. There is gunplay on the second floor, which destroys at least one precious vase, then McGarrett says "Got him." It looks like McGarrett is pursuing Durley, but it is actually Danno who chases him. Things continue on what seems to be the main floor where Durley tries to get out a door like an emergency exit, which is locked. Danno knocks him out by bonking him on the head with his gun. McGarrett pursues Gregory and chases him down the stairs. Gregory jumps on a motorcycle which is part of an exhibit called History of Motorcycles 1867-2013. Why there would be a key in the motorcycle to start it (assuming that is what he uses) is a good question. Gregory then goes through a door on the bike and out on to the lawn as McGarrett shoots at him, which causes Gregory to fall off the bike, providing us with the usual cool stunt work. Then Danno immediately shows up and secures Gregory. How did Danno know that McGarrett needed his assistance and how did he get outside so quickly, especially if the emergency exit was locked?
There are quite a few more questions that can be asked about the plot in this show:
- Why do the three bad guys kill the Van Horns at the beginning? They should have tortured them or threatened their daughter to find out where the scrimshaw was located. As mentioned, it's not in the house at all. How did the bad guys later figure this out, and why didn't they just go to the museum in the first place?
- Why are these Medici rings such a big deal? I guess stealing them would be like stealing the Mona Lisa -- it's not like you can sell them on the open market.
- The way the foot of the statue opened reminded me of like the scene in the first Indiana Jones movie where he puts a bag on this mechanism that causes rocks and stuff to start falling everywhere. In this Five-0 show, suddenly there is this thing that pops out of the foot, even though you don't see this prior to the scrimshaw being placed into the foot. And does it make sense that the place where the scrimshaw is placed is totally perfect and able to receive it? Wouldn't the foot have been glued or welded to the base of the statue and the bottom of the foot would be far from "perfect" after it was detached?
- How did the three crooks know that the letters which they stole from the auction house in Florence had some information relating to the rings? The letters DO have information, but it is encoded in such a complicated way that Catherine later says that it would take months" to figure out what it really says without a computer. As a result, how could these guys know that the rings were in the foot of the statue?
- What is the relationship of the three bad guys to More? Was he a member of the gang, the former boss, or just someone they hired?
- Isn't it peculiar that the fact that the scrimshaw is in the museum isn't picked up by the Five-0 Supercomputer? I guess it was still short-circuited after its bad experience in episode one. The insurance company submitted a list of items from the house which said the scrimshaw was the only thing missing, but the list didn't say that it was elsewhere. How would the museum have known that the Van Horns had the scrimshaw in the first place? Was it famous or something? Do rich people with cool artifacts which might be in a museum normally send out lists to museums saying "we have this stuff that you can borrow"?
- Why or how does the reclusive Jerry get access to the top-secret room in the Navy's cryptography center?
- Finally, how does Jerry know that the scrimshaw is "the key" to the mystery of the missing rings when he first sees the photo of it? Is he just guessing? Are scrimshaws normally regarded in this manner?
MORE TRIVIA:
- Why doesn't McGarrett wear his full dress uniform during the ceremony for Catherine at the end of the show? And why does Billy give her a cake prior to this? I thought that he had left the Navy too. Why does he come back to the Navy office (assuming that is where they are) to do this? Why isn't McGarrett in on the cake-giving (well, we know the answer to that, check out the nudge-nudge-wink-wink looks between Catherine and Billy as McGarrett looks nervous at the end!)?
- There are three X-Files references in the show. When we first meet Jerry, he is behind a sheet which has some " er-documentary being projected on it. Jerry is seemingly narrating the documentary, saying "The proof is out there." Later, he exclaims "Holy Fox Mulder!" and tells Danno "You're totally my Scully."
- McGarrett has some good lines to Danno including "Max, ignore him" and "The only way to get you to shut up is to let you speak." When Chin Ho overrides Danno in how to deal with the descendants of the Royal League, McGarrett thanks him.
- The teaser to the show is interesting, because Van Horn's wife has a large knife that is being used to prepare the food (the food has some erotic close-ups). Not knowing at first who these people are, we can't tell if she is going to use this knife on him or not.
- With regard to the LP record of the group Chicago that Max gets via Ebay at a cost of $1326.41 for McGarrett to give to Catherine as a "retirement" gift, this is -- as Max says -- a "hot stamper, a limited pressing." The expression "hot" has nothing to do with the temperature of the machines making the record, but more along the lines of "Michelle Borth is a hot actress," meaning ... well ... HOT. A Google search reveals that this term seems to originate with one record dealer in the States who listens to multiple copies of the same record to determine which "stamping," meaning which pressing sounds the best. Records which are identified as "hot" in this manner are sold for astronomical sums, though the amount McGarrett pays seems really out of line, both for this particular store and Ebay, where most of the people selling records with "hot stamper" in the title or description seem to be misappropriating the term.
- The name of Van Horn's alarm company is Lintherine Security Systems, kind of an odd name which no doubt has some special significance.
- The scene with McGarrett, Danno and Jerry at the Kamehameha statue in Honolulu produced a reaction in me like "Did I just hear that come out of McGarrett's mouth?" He says "If the treasure is inside this statue, there is no way More can get to it without being seen." In other words, because it is SO OBVIOUS. But then he says "Swapping this statue with a fake is the only way that he can get to whatever is inside the statue." Huh? Like they are supposed to remove the statue and replace it in front of everyone driving by on the street? What is the difference? Talk about "obvious"!
- Danno tells Hewitt Van Horn that he is going to "spend a very long time in jail." But what would he be charged with? It's not like he intended for his brother to be murdered, though that's what happened because of his stupidity.
- Dennis Chun as Duke Lukela is listed in the end credits, but doesn't appear in the show. He talks, unseen, on the phone to McGarrett when Five-0 is at Jerry's place. I don't understand how they figure out how to locate the warehouse where Griffin More hangs out (and is found, dead).
- When McGarrett says they will give Jerry a call if they need him on any future cases, Jerry says "Handwritten letters are better, I don't do phones." It looks like he doesn't use a computer either, since he compiles a list of the Royal League members on an old manual typewriter.
- Chin and Jerry attended high school band camp in 1985, which, assuming Chin was 15 years old at the time, would make his current age in his early 40's.
- The people with access to Van Horn's security system are:
01 Phillip Van Horn
02 Kaylea Van Horn
03 Hewitt Van Horn
04 John Di Novera (lawn care)
05 Mary Hepanza (housekeeping)
06 Peter Blanderse (maintenance)
07 Allan Mandalar (maintenance/pool)
08 Pauline Nuali (nanny)
09 Jerry Quichera (friend)
10 Linda Minditksy (friend)- The song heard at the beginning prior to the murders is Come and Get It by Selena Gomez.
- Dates of birth for the bad guys are as follows: Gregory " 2/1/67; Sibbald " 3/3/65; Durley " 9/6/68. They all have outstanding warrants: MURDER EU Prague Museum (Interpol Case) (-78 days); ASSAULT EU London (Interpol Case) (-401 days); FRAUD EU Paris (Interpol Case) (-1245 days). They were all seen in Italy 23 days ago. Gregory is ex-British military.
- The peculiar cryptography method used in the stolen letters to disguise the location of the keys is called a scytale.
For this review, I'm going to go through the back story first.
- When she was 14 years old, both of Nicole Dixon's (Briana Lane) parents died and her older brother Brad (an uncredited actor) became her custodian. Brad ran sweetheart scams against rich bachelors throughout the EU using female accomplices as bait, specifically Nicole, threatening to abandon her if she didn't go along with his schemes.
- Brad and Nicole were arrested in 2008 on charges of embezzlement and extortion. German prosecutors became aware of the case only when Nicole turned herself in. Brad received a five year prison sentence, Nicole got only six months, because she testified against her brother.
- Nicole changed her name to Dahlia Swain and came to the US, where she fell in love with Nathan Cotchin (Alex Asbaugh), "heir to one of the largest real estate fortunes in New York." She says she didn't find out about Nathan's money until they were engaged. There is nothing mentioned about where and how they met each other.
- Brad was released from prison in Munich six weeks before. He comes to Hawaii, using the alias of John Fitzpatrick, and buys a gun from Ty Amano (Lawrence Kao), some local low-level punk who is a friend of a friend of Brad's from Germany.
- Dahlia and Nathan are to be married in a lavish ceremony on Oahu. While she is marching up the aisle, Dahlia spies her brother in the crowd. She freaks out and runs away.
- In a scene which happens at night, seemingly several hours later, Dahlia drives away from the wedding location in a "Just Married" Mustang, heading up Tantalus Drive. She just misses running into a truck, and her car flips over and is poised on the edge of a cliff. Her brother, who has been following her, pushes the car over the cliff.
- Allen Kingston (Bruce Nozick), the lawyer for Nathan's mother Barbara (Rebecca De Mornay), tracks down Brad and kills him.
This is where we are when the show opens.
There are already several questions:
- How did Brad know where to find his sister after he got out of jail? News of the wedding was "all over the tabloids," but would this have been something that Brad would have noticed or followed, especially considering Dahlia wasn't using her real name?
- Though Kingston did a background check on Brad and Dahlia and probably recognized "John Fitzpatrick" (i.e., Brad) from the photo of his dead body which McGarrett shows to him, how did he how know how to find Brad in Hawaii after Dahlia ran away from the wedding ceremony? Danno doesn't specifically say what hotel Brad was staying in, he just says "a hotel room," not the same hotel where all the people connected with the wedding were staying. Should we assume that he was staying in the same hotel, or did Kingston call every hotel on Oahu trying to find Brad?
- How did Kingston use Brad's gun against him (the gun Brad bought from Amano)? Did the lawyer snoop around Brad's empty room, find the gun and confront the brother when he returned?
- During the show's teaser, Dahlia is driving very fast on Tantalus Drive, but what is the point of this? Where did she think she was going to escape to? This road, in combination with Round Top Drive, leads away from, and then back to Honolulu! As well, they are on an ISLAND. Where were she and Nathan going to go with this "Just Married" car to spend their honeymoon? The north of Oahu? (I would have assumed that they would stay in the lavish resort where the wedding ceremony took place, wherever that was.) Whether her brother is following her is not made apparent up until the point where he pushes the car over the cliff (and he is not identified until later), though it looks like someone is trying to phone her on a cel phone while she is driving.
The story itself was sort of interesting if you don't think too hard about it. And judging by the comments on various forums, most people are not thinking too hard about it or suggesting that others not think too hard (especially in response to criticism of the show). The general consensus is that the show is improving over previous seasons, bolstered by ratings which are much better than expected, considering the show's new Friday night "graveyard" time slot. But there was far too much soap opera in this episode, especially at the end, which was awful.
At the beginning, Kono and Adam are seen in Kowloon (Hong Kong), taking some guy out of the trunk of a car. Adam shoots him in the leg to get him to reveal that Riku Sato, yakuza big shot mentioned in episode 22 of season 3, is after both Adam ... and Kono. McGarrett and Danno are seen with their respective girlfriends, Catherine and Gabby, at a movie, watching some chick flick. McGarrett has a particularly hilarious line: "This is the most unrealistic movie I've ever seen in my life." I wondered if the movie was The Back-up Plan. While they were driving later, Danno dispensed plenty of advice to McGarrett, stuff like "People should never get married under any circumstances [because] people are never who they say they are." But at the end of the episode, Danno gets himself in a state of serious emotional turmoil over Gabby, who has been offered a 6-month contract working at a museum in Denver. He tells her stuff like "I cannot be the guy that makes you put your career on hold ... I see the way you guys [Gracie and her] are together ... I know how she feels about you ... I cannot keep taking that away from her. The whole reason I moved here in the first place was to give her some stability." At the end, it sounds like Danno is dumping Gabby -- but not definite enough to preclude this relationship from continuing later! I thought it was interesting when Danno went on about how much he hated Hawaii before he met his girl friend. You have to wonder how much these feelings parallel actor Caan's own, specifically his rant some time ago about how he thought the food in Hawaii was crap. There is a limit as to how much these plot developments are making Danno into an "interesting character," as opposed to just pissing off the audience.
MORE TRIVIA:
- Danno had a good line when he wondered to McGarrett if Billy brought Catherine to the office "to ask for her hand in marriage." At the end, when Dahlia marries Nathan (who realizes that she was innocent and not involved in a scam for his money), Danno looked very skeptical. By the way, the preacher performing the marriage ceremony asks her "Dahlia, do you take this man, etc." ... but is Dahlia her legal name?
- When they are approaching Amano, who is playing volleyball on the beach, Chin and McGarrett don't just come up to him and take him away for questioning. As usual, they announce their presence from several feet away. Amazingly, Amano does not take off.
- The music in this episode was less offensive than usual, and the original Five-O theme made yet another appearance when McGarrett and Danno broke into Kingston's room as he was threatening the wired Barbara with a gun.
- Catherine looked very nice when dressed in normal clothing. Billy's makeup in the car at the end was ghastly, no doubt thanks to the lighting from the street lights.
- The Florida driver's license for "John Fitzpatrick" that Brad is using is number F321-884-09-630-7. The address on it is 1249 Flamingo Drive, St. Petersburg 33708. The date of birth is in 1977 (the month is obscured). The license was issued on 10-26-2010 and expires four years after that date. Chin Ho cannot come up with Brad's true identity, either from this phony ID or by using the standard Five-0 methods like facial recognition ... which is odd, because Brad was convicted of serious crimes in Europe.
This show had some nice stuff in it, mostly connected with the McGarrett/Catherine/Billy relationships. Anyone wondering if Catherine was going to fall in love with Billy Harrington, her ex and McGarrett's old military buddy, got a big surprise, since Billy was knocked off early in the episode after being shot during their surveillance of John Cutler (Paul Bauer), a man suspected of having an affair by his wife Sandra (Monica Lacy). This resulted in yet more serious emoting by Michelle Borth and Alex O'Loughlin (and even Justin Bruening in his death throes). At the end of the show, Billy's funeral had a spectacular view of Pearl Harbor in the background.
Joe White (Terry O'Quinn) was in this show and I dreaded seeing him. As to why he was even in Honolulu, this was a mystery. Near the beginning of the show, he drops into McGarrett's garage as McGarrett is tinkering with the classic Mercury from the original series, and McGarrett just says "thanks for coming by." White's presence brought back many bad memories of previous shows where he jerked McGarrett around far too much, not to mention his connection with Doris who I (and many others) am glad not to have seen so far this season. In this show, he seemed to have a handle on what has happened to McGarrett's mother by the show's conclusion, telling Steve that she is not dead, not coming home soon and she is active again. My attitude to this was like "Well, if that's the end of this, this is good." But I am sure it is not.
Alas, there were several things about the show that I did NOT like:
- Catherine knows specific details about how someone cleaned inside the house where Cutler was shot to death: "There was blood here"; "John Cutler's body was right here." But there is no indication she was ever inside the house after Cutler was murdered. When she and Billy were doing surveillance, they didn't have cameras inside the house, they were looking at things from a distance with binoculars and with a camera which was not inside. When they heard the hitman Jason Kroll (John Mark Harmon) shooting inside, they came out of their van and started firing back as Kroll left. After Billy was shot, Catherine seemed to take Billy to the hospital right away. Catherine also later told Lee Benner (Larry Poindexter), the guy connected with Cutler: "I was there, I saw it happen." But she didn't.
- Cutler's wife works for some company which deals with classified data. This is never established until about 25 minutes into the show, when suddenly it becomes a big deal, because her husband was stealing this data via malware from her computer. He "repaired office computers." It isn't specified if he was a general repairman or if he was only was repairing computers for his wife's company. We never find out exactly what this company does. The company's name sounds like "Palex."
- The guys organized by Benner who cleaned the house are VERY careful to make sure they did a good job. If so, why did they stupidly leave the keys in the car which contained Cutler's body that the "teen driver" (Taylor King) hijacked?
- The big Perry Mason-like reveal at the end that the guy who hired Kroll to murder Cutler was Andrew Burns (Logan Fahey), assistant to hooker and Cutler's girl friend Abby Maxwell (Lacey Beeman) was SOOO lame! Burns did this because he was in love with her? And then he tries to commit suicide in front of this large truck as he is fleeing Five-0 outside? Puh-leeze! I'm not even going to start thinking about how he hired Kroll via the Tor "shadow" Internet network (this is a real thing, by the way). The way he tried to kill himself was very similar to a scene in the old Five-O episode "A Bullet for McGarrett." Another parallel with the old show was the business of wiping the crime scene clean -- see "Man in a Steel Frame."
- The beginning of the show with Kono and Adam in Hong Kong was awful, aside from the laughable process shots while they were driving. The dialogue was horrible, even worse than last week's show, with lines like Adam saying "I lubs you Kono, blubber, blubber," and Kono (grasping Adam's leg) replying "I lubs you, Adam, blubber, blubber." UGH!
MORE TRIVIA:
- When Cutler and Maxwell are making out at the beginning, you actually see Cutler's ass cheeks, but in the next shot he is wearing underpants.
- Once again, Catherine is running around with Five-0 as they raid Kroll's house near the end. I guess this is to be expected, because McGarrett can do whatever he wants.
- There are questions about whether Billy would be entitled to a full meal deal funeral, considering he left the navy. According to user Sgt_G on the Five-0 IMDb forum, who looked this stuff up at military.com:
Funeral Honors Eligibility
This would explain why Joe White is not in uniform, since he was drummed out of the SEALS in episode 11 of season two for his A-Team adventures rescuing McGarrett in North Korea.
- Military members on active duty or in the Selected Reserve.
- Former military members who served on active duty and departed under conditions other than dishonorable.
- Former military members who completed at least one term of enlistment or period of initial obligated service in the Selected Reserve and departed under conditions other than dishonorable.
- Former military members discharged from the Selected Reserve due to a disability incurred or aggravated in the line of duty.
- The process shots as Joe White is driving in the middle of nowhere with Danno, ostensibly to give Cutler's encrypted laptop to some "DoD contact" to crack, are about as bad as the ones in Hong Kong.
- Two numbers that Cutler called on his cel phone were 808-515-0105 (Maxwell) and 808-515-0187 (Benner).
- Joe breaks into McGarrett's garage and finds a slip of paper in a tape recorder in the Champ tool box with numbers on it -- 46 33 79 2 45 6 46 9 -- which are for an offshore account used to fund CIA black ops (supposedly including McGarrett's mother). Joe talks about this with "Sam," some CIA contact (James Brennan), a new character!
- The scene with Kono talking on the phone to Chin was filmed in Vancouver on Pender Street. Was this from the recent filming or before that?
A show with sort of an interesting crime-of-the-week, even if it resulted from "the problems of rich people," like several of the episodes of the original show's inferior final seasons.
Rich guy Henry Upton (Corbin Bernsen) has an "troubled" adult son, Brock (Yosef Kasnetzkov) who is always getting in hot water with the cops. In order to cure him, Upton bankrolls crackpot Doctor William Ellery (Kenneth Matepi) and brings him to Hawaii. Ellery believes that "the criminal mind can be cured" with the help of toxoplasmosis, introducing a parasite into people's brains to, as Wikipedia puts it, "subtly influence a range of human behaviors and tendencies [and] alter the susceptibility to or intensity of a number of affective, psychiatric, or neurological disorders."
In order to test his medical methods, Ellery kidnaps two young people in Hawaii over a period of two years -- Marshall Demps (DJ Qualls) and Lisa Mills (Dixie Rose) and subjects them to medical experimentation. After this, Demps is reduced to living in some bunker-like cave in the middle of nowhere and Lisa, who has run-ins with the law, dies a couple of days before the show in a car crash. Ellery uses the "zombification" drug scopolamine to get another doctor, Michael Besner (Scott Folsom), chief administrator of King's Medical Center, to steal Lisa's head from the hospital's morgue to see if his methods had paid off.
Besner ends up on the beach where there is a Hallowe'en showing of The Rocky Horror Picture Show at which Max is dressed up like Keanu Reeves in the 1993 film Little Buddha (seriously). After he attacks a couple of partygoers, Besner is subdued, and infects Max with scopolamine when Max is performing CPR. Despite the drug's known toxicity, Max later doesn't seem to be the worse for wear, and nothing is said of two of the other people that Besner interacts with -- some guy he bites and a cop who he struggles with before being shot.
As in the two previous Hallowe'en shows, Danno was acting up again. First, he reacted badly to finding a tree outside his house toilet papered, later telling McGarrett that this was a "gateway crime." The culprit proved to his own daughter Gracie who did this on a dare -- but how could she throw the toilet paper so far up the tree, considering how tall she is?
When they arrived at Demps' hideout, Danno pulled a jaw-dropper on McGarrett when he refused to go inside, saying "I can't do caves, tunnels or cramped spaces, anything where I feel like a rat." In other words, he is claustrophobic (and the audience is just as incredulous as McGarrett in finding this out after four years)! This announcement was peculiar, considering in episode twelve of season two, Danno was in a cave where a body was found at the bottom of a lava tube. At the end of this current show, Danno overcomes his fears, going into yet another cave in the middle of nowhere where Ellery has his well-equipped and well-powered top-secret laboratory. (The producers for the show must have got a good deal on middle-of-nowhere caves this week.)
Max figures out that Ellery is the bad guy, though it's difficult to comprehend how he does this. At the end, Brock Upton is about to go under Ellery's knife, but somehow manages to escape from the restraints holding him to the operating table and makes sure the crazed doctor meets an appropriate bloody end.
This week the Kono/Adam soap opera was only referred to as Catherine took the initiative in investigating some yakuza connected with Adam's tormenter Sato who were visiting Honolulu. This gave her character an excuse to act ditzy and dress up in a bikini. The big question, of course, is whether in order to forget about Billy, who got knocked off in last week's show, Catherine will join Five-0.
MORE TRIVIA:
- The sound mix at the beginning of the show was particularly bad, making the dialogue very difficult to understand.
- When Five-0 raids Ellery's house, it seems like the mad doctor is reacting to the sounds of Five-0 snooping around as he is dissecting Lisa's brain. But he is not in the house, because they don't find him, and Chin Ho says there are "no signs of any sort of lab" (despite the fact there is a Dexter-like room with plastic sheets on the door that McGarrett cuts through). The editing in this sequence is peculiar. It is much more effective when Chin and Danno are looking at a filmed police interrogation from a year before with Lisa, which is intercut by Demps being interviewed in the blue-lit room by McGarrett. But why would he be interviewed in this room, considering he doesn't seem like a suspect, and McGarrett is sympathetic to his plight?
- The topography of Demps' abode was odd. McGarrett chases Demps after he sees him, the two of them climb over a wall, and then seemingly exit by the same route that McGarrett came in. Outside, Danno trips Demps with a two-by-four.
- The expression "what've you got?" is used far too many times during this show.
- Trying to explain about toxoplasmosis, Max unleashes a torrent of medical bafflegab, which leaves the three from Five-0 looking like deer in the headlights. I was expecting McGarrett to tell Max "English, please!" like Jack Lord's character did numerous times to Max's counterpart in the old show.
- Bemps' cel phone number is 808-555-0173.
- As per an article by Mike Gordon in the Honolulu Star-Advertiser, Jeanne Cooper, the mother of Corbin Bernsen, star of this show, appeared in the 1971 episode of the original Five-O “… And I Want Some Candy and a Gun That Shoots.” She played the mean mother of a disturbed Vietnam War vet who starts taking rifle shots at people and police. She calls Oahu a “pesthole.”
- Alas, this show cannot avoid ending without beer ... this time Aloha Lager.
Another episode with potential that was bogged down by script issues, among other things.
At the beginning, Catherine dresses up all slinky to take part in an undercover operation connected with the missing Kono and Adam. McGarrett deputizes her as a member of Five-0, pulling a badge out of a drawer in his house, like he has a drawer full of them.
Shortly after, in a "private club," accompanied by Lolo's "Weapon for Saturday," Catherine puts the mash on Hideaki Kuroda (Brian Tee), the yakuza from the previous show. He doesn't recognize her, maybe because in that episode she was a ditzy babe in a bikini with reddish hair. She arranges to meet him in the washroom, and when he arrives there, pulls a gun and says she wants to know what's up with Kono and Adam.
What follows is an incredible kick-ass confrontation straight out of Kono's playbook which totally destroys the place (and, of course, no one comes in while they are fighting). Where did Catherine learn such martial arts skills? Despite the fact they are both very much the worse for wear, Catherine manages to get Kuroda out of the club without anyone noticing and into the blue-lit room (though this grilling takes place the next day). Catherine knows far too much information about Kuroda's past and his relationship with Mr. Sato, the guy making life miserable for our couple on the run.
Meanwhile, the crime of the week takes place on a beach where an undercover ATF agent, Matt Hutchins (West LeClay), is brutally stabbed to death while surfing. Max later misidentifies the guy as Brian Carpenter, but that is his ATF alias. Chin Ho recognizes him as a former rookie cop who was kicked off the force because of his involvement with heroin, but it turns out this was just a cover-up, similar to the way Kono went bad a couple of seasons back. According to Agent Blake Kennedy (Colby French), Hutchins' handler, he had been working for the last few years to infiltrate a network of gun runners.
Around this time, McGarrett's sister Mary shows up with Joan, a baby girl she has adopted, probably because there was a void in her life since the old geezer played by Shelley Berman she was looking after last season (exactly a year ago in episode time) kicked the bucket. Mary looks pretty awful, her blonde hair now a ratty brown. There's no doubt the kid was pretty cute and a good actor considering her age, but this whole Three Men and a Baby angle to the show, as virtually every bit of promo about the show trumpeted in advance, was a big waste of time. Seriously, if I want to see people's "cute kids," I will go to Facebook.
What really annoyed me about the baby business is that once again, there is some premise set up in the show which forms a major part of the plot, and that basic premise is flawed. For example, how could Mary adopt a kid in the first place, considering her troubled past, lack of a well-paying job, and the amount of time that it normally takes to adopt a child -- usually much more than a year, assuming the show is taking place in real time. A friend of mine adopted a kid from China. This took years and she said the people in charge of the adoption were very anal about the whole thing. They even asked questions about how much my friend weighed, i.e., they wouldn't let someone who was overweight adopt a kid! When she was getting on the plane to go to China to pick up the kid, there were still questions being asked of her!
McGarrett gets to act all tough with the boss of the gun runners Hutchins was investigating, a mouthy black dude named JC Dekker (Alvin Joiner, a.k.a. Xzibit) who, of course, denies he did anything wrong and has an alibi for the time of the agent's murder. Suspicion then falls on people in the ATF office including Kennedy. According to Linda Davies (Christie Burson) who transcribed Hutchins' reports, Kennedy was dragging the case out much longer than one would normally expect.
Chin tracks down a key found in a drain outside Hutchins' place to a locker at the Honolulu Zoo, which seems above and beyond what one would expect from such an investigation. In this locker is $100,000 in cash, which Dekker had loaned to Hutchins. Danno finds that Hutchins was in the process of renting an apartment close to the zoo from where he could surveil the locker, having set up a sting to find out who in his office was providing information to a trio of crooks who were ripping off Dekker.
The whole business with the apartment did not make any sense. Five-0 gets the phone number of Cheri Tranton (Daryl Hannah), a real estate agent, from Hutchins' cel phone, but how do they connect calls to her with the specific place that overlooks the zoo? Why does Tranton show Danno that particular apartment? Does she only have one listing? When Danno is talking to Tranton at the apartment as if he wants to rent it, Tranton's conversation starts out like this is going to be a long term stay for Danno, but after Danno says "Matt Hutchins actually recommended you," Tranton then asks if Hutchins rented it for Danno (confirmed by Danno), saying that it was only for one day. As well, Danno says that Hutchins recommended her. Why would Hutchins do this? "Hutchins" is his real name which he has been keeping a secret for the last few years. Note that the day when the money was going to be available for someone to steal was conveniently a day or two in the future after Hutchins got murdered. Hannah's performance as a slutty cougar was godawful.
Turns out that the person who goes to the locker to pick up to $100,000, and therefore was the one spilling the beans about Hutchins' investigations, was Linda Davies, who was in cahoots with her boyfriend, one of the three crooks stealing from Dekker. As soon as she was introduced to Five-0 in the ATF offices by Kennedy, I said that she did it ... and I was right!
At the end of the show, Catherine gets promoted to being a full fledged member of Five-0 (as if we didn't see this coming). At this point, the Five-O theme is heard.
MORE TRIVIA:
- The business of Catherine doing undercover work at the "private club" reminds me of the old Five-O episode A Short Walk on the Longshore. Cath tells O'Loughlin's McGarrett that if he appears in a place like the club he would be recognized immediately ... like Jack Lord's McGarrett was in the earlier show!
- There were other parallels with the old Five-O. When Dekker started complaining about getting the $100,000 back, McGarrett said that he had made a donation to the Widows and Orphans Fund. There is a line similar to this at the end of the old show's episode The Ninety-Second War having to do with two million dollars that was involved in a fishy transaction. Chin Ho has a Jack Lord/McGarrett "aha" moment with the locker key that Hutchins is keeping in a drain beside a rain water tank outside his house. Incomprehensibly, they are alerted to all this by a leaking shower head inside the house.
- There was some interesting photography with Chin Ho. When he was texting Leilani, his girl friend from the prison riot, the messages popped up on the screen. In the scene where Chin located the locker key, the camera POV was inside the drain.
- Why does Max shave the beard off Hutchins? This made no sense at all, and was kind of creepy. It doesn't seem appropriate for Max, the medical examiner, to be doing this. Is there some issue with the guy's beard? After all, with or without a beard, it is the same guy. This beard trimming would probably be done by someone at a funeral home if that's what Hutchins' family wanted.
- Hutchins' wife tells Chin Ho, "You need to find the bastards who did this," first use of this bad word on the show.
- How does Davies get the key to the locker? Or does she have a key? It is difficult to tell whether she is using a key or she is just picking the lock. I don't know if it would be the latter, because Davies seems less of a criminal type than her boyfriend, though maybe he gave her a crash course in how to do this. You have to wonder if Davies is so stupid that she can't figure out that the business with the locker at the zoo is a trap.
- Davies says that she has been transcribing Hutchins' reports on the case for four years, but McGarrett says that Hutchins "put his wife and son's lives on the back burner for three years to take Dekker down."
- The transcript from Hutchins concerning the money drop is seen only on screen for a few seconds. It reads as follows:
Case #3248. Subject: Weapons Transaction - Money Drop
UC Agent #53289 reports the following in sum and substance memorialized on tape #A25798. On August 12th, 2013 approximately 75 AR-15 rifles will be purchased from sellers identified in previous reports for the sum of $100,000 USC. Money for said transaction will be secured in locker #B24 at the Honolulu Zoo at approximately 0900 hrs on this date. At approximately 1100 hrs, following the delivery of said weapons to the undersigned, subjects will be escorted to locker #B24 where the delivery payment for the aformentioned weapons will be made in full completing the sale and purchase of these weapons. A full transcript of this tape has been filed for review.- Wendie Burbridge reports in the Honolulu Star-Advertiser: "Hawaii-based actress Cathy Foy, who played Nani, Chin Ho’s favorite Wailana Coffee House waitress, was also in the original “Hawaii Five-0” in 1978 as a receptionist [episode: Head to Head] and in 1979 as a telephone operator [episode: Though the Heavens Fall]."
- Brian Tee was identified in the CBS press release for the episode as "Brian Lee."
This episode was certainly different, but the basic problem was that a lot of it was stupid, specifically stupid situations which were difficult or impossible to logically explain.
The beginning was totally weird. I know that Catherine previously figured out where Sato, the yakuza big shot who is Adam's tormenter, was located. But now, without any buildup or explanation whatsoever, Chin, McGarrett, Catherine (!!) and Kono (who was last seen in Hong Kong as Adam sacrificed himself to divert yakuza away from her) suddenly appear in Sato's Tokyo apartment, kidnap the guy, and whisk him away in mere seconds to somewhere where they persuade him to reveal what has happened to Kono's boyfriend.
Come on -- this guy has been made out to be a yakuza capo di tutti capi and he has no guards, no security cameras, nothing to protect him? How did they take this guy to their Tokyo non-blue-lit room to grill him? Did they just take him down the hall and elevator to the basement, or did they tie him up and drop him over the side of the building or what?
This whole sequence brought back very bad memories of the idiotic hijinks of McGarrett and his mother playing ninja in an elevator shaft last season. When I first saw it, I thought, "What is this, a video game? Is someone having a dream? Is someone dreaming about a video game?"
At the end of the intense interrogation, the Five-0 gang from Honolulu just leave Kono in an alley, and she is looking around for the nearest slow boat back to Hong Kong, China or wherever.
What followed was equally weird. The gruff Captain Grover (Chin McBride), who had a major bug up McGarrett's ass in the season premiere and the last episode, questioning McGarrett's authority and the way he did things and sarcastically addressing him as "Commander," suddenly becomes a pussycat, transmogrifying into Danno (who did not appear in the show at all), i.e., the transplanted-to-Hawaii father with a young daughter who had "issues." Grover catches his daughter Samantha photographically "sexting" via her computer to her boyfriend. There would have been serious implications if the daughter had been caught doing this by the law, other than her dad ... she might have been charged with producing child pornography! Obviously this would not have been a good thing for Grover's career and reputation.
Grover and McGarrett are both summoned to the Governor's residence, where the Governor reveals that he got a complaint from Grover about McGarrett. Considering that Grover has not been in Hawaii that long, you have to wonder why he would have sent this confidential complaint directly to the Governor, instead of processing it through HPD channels. To deal with this, the Governor tells the two of them "you will get along," and makes them serve a warrant for outstanding parking tickets to one Ian Wright (Nick Jonas). I can't understand why the Governor gives them this specific task to do. Does he have a hat full of warrants and he just pulls one out of the hat? Why would this kind of minor-league issue even be brought to his attention?
When McGarrett and Grover arrive at Wright's house which is in the middle of nowhere in Waimanalo, McGarrett just sticks the warrant in Wright's mailbox. Grover tells McGarrett, "Go protect, I'll serve," taking the warrant and entering Wright's house. McGarrett gets freaked out by the sound of gunfire coming from inside, but despite having heard this noise for only a few seconds, Grover knows that this sound comes from the video game Halo, which his son (who is never seen or referred to in the show otherwise) "plays all the time."
As McGarrett and Grover are about to take Wright back downtown, there is suddenly a hail of gunfire from outside, as four bank robbers who are in league with Wright presumably react to McGarrett and Grover's vehicles, though there is nothing obvious about them indicating that they were connected with law enforcement. After a gun battle, Wright is taken by the two robbers who survive, and Wright for some reason takes Grover's daughter's computer which he has left on the front seat of his truck. (This is yet another one of those critical premises that forms a major part of a Five-0 plot which is flawed. The robbers are in a big hurry to get Wright out of the area, though their motivation for doing so or even why they came back to the house in the first place is a big fat question. Perhaps Wright wants them to help him get away in a hurry. Why would Wright stop and look in Grover's truck and take the computer?)
McGarrett and Grover shoot at the escaping truck with guns from the two dead robbers, the first of three times in the show they shoot at a vehicle containing Wright who, presumably, they want to keep alive. Since the robbers have flattened their truck tires, the two of them follow the vehicle on foot after some MacGyver-like work getting fingerprints from the dead robbers which they cannot send because there is no cel phone service in the area. Because one of their bullets penetrated the gas tank on the robbers' truck, it soon runs out of gas, conveniently near some other out-of-the-way house where the robbers and Wright just take the car of the owners. (There is no explanation as to how they easily do this, or whether the people who lived in the house were put in danger or even killed.)
This house also has a couple of horses tied up outside, saddled up and ready to go, which McGarrett and Grover "borrow," chasing the escaping car. There is kind of a "horsegument" between the two. Chi McBride is obviously riding some mechanical bull-type horse, highly reminiscent of the phony process shots seen when Danno and McG are having their in-the-car discussions. McGarrett leads the two of them up over a hill to "cut off" the car, though there is no explanation as to how McGarrett knows there is a trail over the hill and whether, topographically speaking, he would really be able to do this.
Wright and his kidnappers get away, but Five-0 manages to connect the dots, finding that Wright, who is a computer genius kicked out of Oahu State, hired the robbers to break into a local bank to help test his hacking abilities, especially since the security company behind the bank recently got a contract connected with U.S. embassies. Wright has amassed a large offshore fortune from other bank-related hacking and is connected with terrorist organizations. He was introduced to the robbers by his lawyer, Eli Diamond, who is currently under house arrest while awaiting trial for tax evasion and perjury. When Five-0 arrives at Diamond's house at 2783 Sundown Court, Honolulu 96815, they find the guy has cut off his own foot with a hacksaw to free himself from his ankle bracelet (seriously). Didn't anyone connected with this show think about how incredibly stupid this plot twist straight out of the "Saw" movie series is -- how difficult, not to mention how horribly painful and dangerous it would be to cut off your own foot?
They then track Diamond to a marina where he and the two surviving robbers are attempting to flee the country. It's amazing that Diamond has not bled to death. Wright is tracked via Grover's daughter's computer which he stole to the Honolulu Airport where he is about to flee the country. When arrested by McGarrett and Grover, Wright tells them that he has taken control of a Hawaii-bound airliner and will crash it in the ocean if they don't let him go. Using various governmental resources, Catherine manages to find a computer controlling the airplane's fate in the Oahu State Computer Science Building (at 330 North Carver Road, near where Wright got one of his parking tickets -- a location that the new cop Grover instantly recognizes). She rushes there (in less than 20 minutes -- though there is no real "Oahu State") and manages to disable the computer so the plane and its passengers will be safe. Wright has already been placed on a plane for Pago Pago which is on the runway taxiing to take off. The plane is stopped, but Wright has escaped, presumably by the same technique employed in S02E15 where two guys escaped from a plane "via the service cartway through the galley" onto the tarmac. Like in the earlier show, no one saw him escaping from the plane.
Some of the exchanges in this show between McGarrett and Grover were actually pretty funny. But now that they are grudgingly friends, you have to wonder if this is the end of their adversarial relationship on the show. There was a major "Awwww" moment worthy of Danno and his daughter between Grover and his daughter at the show's conclusion.
I was dreading seeing Nick Jonas on the show, but he played his part very well. At the end, he sends McGarrett a message via an ATM machine which suggests that he will be back on the show again.
MORE TRIVIA:
- At the beginning of the show, McGarrett takes a call from Danno (the only time he is referred to on the show), whose father (played in S02E18 by Scott Caan's real-life father James) bought a car, jokingly connected with a mid-life crisis. When Chin later asks if it was a Porsche, McGarrett says it was a "Corvette," a tie-in with corporate sponsor General Motors. Chin says that Danno's father is "60," but perhaps he is just guessing. James Caan is actually 73.
- Wright's date of birth is 12/24/92, is 5'11" and weighs 188 lb., according to his driver's license. His address is 88 Kikanaiolane, Waimanalo 96795. Nick Jonas's real birthday is 9/16/92, he is 5'8" tall, and weighs between 110 and 130 pounds, depending which WWW site you consult.
- Catherine has trouble getting data from her tablet to appear on the Supercomputer. After Chin shows her the correct way to do this and calls her a "newbie," she says "So much for my dramatic entrance [i.e., the first thing that she did in her new job as a member of Five-0]." Dumb dialogue!
- When McGarrett and Grover arrive at the Governor's mansion at the beginning of the show, they arrive at exactly the same time in a gimmicky manner, parking in front of the place. They seem to be driving on the grass, though the view from the front of each car suggests that the cars are on pavement.
- McGarrett tells Grover that he did some background checking on him and wonders why a 20-year veteran on track to becoming superintendent would suddenly want to move to Hawaii. McGarrett says Grover is "running from something." The city that Grover came from is presumably Chicago -- there is a picture of the city on his daughter's laptop.
- When Grover tells a smirking Chin and McGarrett that his daughter's laptop had evidence of her playing "show and tell" with her boyfriend, Chin says he can trace the daughter's laptop. Seriously?
- On their way to Wright's, McGarrett and Grover are stopped at a light at the intersection of the 600 block South Street and 600 block Halekauwila Street.
- When told that he has to ride with Grover back to Honolulu, Wright asks if he has XM, referring to the satellite radio service.
- The term "son of a bitch" is heard twice on the show.
- Newspaper articles reveal the extent of Wright's terrorist involvement. One, dated 10-25-2013 and written by Tamar Spieksma, talks about an event in Pune, India which is blamed on the bogus Indian Samjaden group. The second article, written by Gerard Atherton and dated July 23, 2013, is about another incident in Beijing.
- At the airport, Wright refers to McGarrett and Grover as "Crockett and Tubbs," though the first is spelled "Crocket" in the CBS closed-captioning.
- The Five-O theme is heard at the beginning of the show after the main titles. The piano music heard in the teaser is from the Goldberg Variations by Bach.
Like the previous week's episode, this one was different, but not objectionably so, despite the fact that it seemed to have a lot less to do with Five-0 and a lot more to do with the McGarrett family.
Comedy legend Carol Burnett guest starred as McGarrett's Aunt Deb, who was responsible for raising Mary years before. Deb supposedly drops in just to visit for Thanksgiving, but has a secret which is eventually revealed -- that she has an inoperable tumor and is not long for this world. Deb's part was both well written and well acted (very seriously) by Burnett.
The show opened with an everyone-but-the-kitchen-sink scene with most, but not all, of the Five-0 "ohana" playing touch football. There were two teams. Number one featured Steve, Catherine, Kamekona, Duke and Mamo (Al Harrington). Team number two included Chin Ho, Danno, Gracie, Flippa, Nicky the Kid (Larry Manetti) and Grover. (Thanks to emdoug on IMDb for assistance.) But each of these teams had some unidentified other guy who had nothing to do with the regular cast! Maybe they were to replace Max and Charlie Fong?
The appearance of Grover was also odd, since, as Danno pointed out, he was the guy who "ratted out" McGarrett to the Governor in the previous show. McGarrett told Danno that he felt sorry for the guy since it was Thanksgiving and that the rest of his family was back in Chicago. Does this mean that Grover's wife and son (the son alluded to in last week's show) are also living in Hawaii? Now that Chi McBride is a cast regular, it makes one wonder further whether he is McGarrett's BFF.
Kono appeared briefly, as Chin Ho let her know that Five-0 had taken down the rest of Michael Noshimuri's allies, and that the only thing left for her to do was figure out where Adam was. She replied that she had a line on him being in Seattle. This, of course, means Vancouver, which has stood in for the Pacific Northwest city in many films and TV shows.
The subplot of the week had to do with a suspected assassination attempt on the President who was coming home to Hawaii for the holidays, but actually returning to broker a meeting with some North Korean bigshots discussing disarmament and a possible regime change.
But it turned out the assassin, one Dante Barkov (Tom Hintnaus), was not after the President at all, but contracted to kill Andrea Hicks (Alexandra Curran), a woman who had witnessed the murder of a member of a high ranking Russian crime family back on the mainland. This woman's mother was the caretaker of a house on Oahu which Barkov rented using the name of Keith Nolan.
Five-0 is alerted to all this when they find the body of Kyle Russo, a Secret Service agent connected with the President's retinue, decomposing in a barrel full of lye dumped off the coast and picked up by a fisherman. Russo had been checking out Barkov, whose house was located close to where the President was going to be staying.
At the end, Barkov's professional skills are somewhat lacking, since he shoots at the fleeing Andrea and merely wounds her. On the other hand, Chin Ho takes Barkov down with a single shot from some vantage point on the rental house which topographically is hard to explain.
The finale takes place at Nicky the Kid's club with Aunt Deb, a former lounge singer who put her career on hold to raise Mary, persuaded to sing a song. This went on far too long (just over two minutes), especially considering how the Five-O theme during the main credits has been seriously abbreviated.
MORE TRIVIA:
- While playing football, McGarrett wears a shirt with the number "50."
- There is a goof with Russo's date of birth. Early on in the show, a report shows it to be 5/9/78, but after Charlie Fong investigates, the date is changed on another report to 3/18/79. Russo's government employee number is 36006821557.
- The beach at the end of the show where Andrea is wounded and Barkov is killed looks very much like the one at the end of the classic Five-O episode Man in a Steel Frame where Jack Lord beats the crap out of Jonathan Goldsmith, later best known as "the most interesting man in the world" of the Dos Equus beer commercials.
- When they are on the tarmac at the end, waiting for the President's plane to land, both McGarrett and Danno almost look like they have shaved for the occasion.
- This episode's Dolby Digital 5.1 mix was exceptionally good.
Without a doubt, this episode was outstanding in almost every way and the best episode yet seen on the rebooted series. The way the show was structured reminded me of a film (Spielberg's E.T. and Schindler's List come to mind) where heart-wrenching dramatic scenes follow one after the other with an especially powerful ending, so by the time it is all over, the viewer is a emotional wreck.
James Saito as David Toriyama, a Japanese-American interned on Oahu during World War II seeking revenge on Ezra Clark (Jack Axelrod), a surviving veteran he thought responsible for the murder of his father, should definitely be up for some major awards for his performance. The way McGarrett's suppositions about Toriyama's guilt and Clark's participation in the murder were chipped away, with the highly-decorated Toriyama appealing to McGarrett's sense of comradery, was brilliant.
The show didn't have any shoot-em-ups and frantic action other than the very realistic attack on Pearl Harbor at the beginning, so the usual excellent production values served the relatively slow-paced story very well. The score, some of which reportedly used real orchestral instruments, was a huge improvement over normal, containing genuinely moving passages, though there was still some synthesized-sounding material.
Danno was typically annoying, but briefly and in character, wondering if Toriyama if had been brought to Five-0 headquarters because of "a bingo brawl." Interestingly, Toriyama was not grilled in the blue-lit room, perhaps the first time that a major suspect on the show got this treatment. During the obligatory cargument, also brief, Danno wondered if McGarrett was turning into "a big softie" or "becoming a human being."
There was only one thing about this show that bothered me. Why did they have the archived military material stored in a cave in the side of a mountain in the middle of nowhere? Wouldn't it have made more sense to have it kept in a warehouse (as in Bones of Contention from the old show)? Or, if they really had to have it in this cave, then establish it as being somewhere on a military reservation, and have the door unlocked by some default military type, such as usually played on the old show by Geoffrey Lewis. The way the rats had chewed up the material inside a supposedly sealed barrel made me think that whoever from the military had decided to keep it in the cave (maybe because it could be climate-controlled there) had made a very bad decision.
MORE TRIVIA:
- During the ceremony on the U.S.S. Missouri at the beginning of the show, the admiral used the expression "members of our greatest generation," referring to the veterans behind him, almost the same as The Greatest Generations Foundation, the organization seriously offended by a Five-0 crew filming at the Punchbowl Cemetery two years before. After the broadcast, I contacted a spokesman for this foundation, who two years ago had an acrimonious exchange with executive producer Peter Lenkov (co-writer of this show with Ken Solarz), to see what he thought about this episode, but he said that did not watch the show and had no comment.
- David's father was shot on May 24, 1943, not long after the Honouliuli Internment Camp opened, which was in March of that year.
- Surprising revelation about Chin Ho's ancestry, that Korean is "in the mix ... and a little Japanese as well." In fact, one of Chin's uncles spent some time in an internment camp at Sand Island (precursor to the one where Toriyama's father was killed).
- Danno's claustrophobia acted up again in the cave with the records. You have to wonder why the writers are making a big deal of this so soon after it first appeared four episodes ago. I predict that Danno will be put into some kind of situation where he has to rescue his daughter who is stuck in a tunnel in the near future.
- Although Toriyama is found to be pursuing the wrong man, he still tried to kill Ezra Clark. Will he face any charges?
- When Five-0 arrives at the cave with the records, Chin Ho says "The military's been in Hawaii since the McKinley era, that's what ... 120 years?" According to one WWW site, "The first U.S. military garrison was established in Hawaii in 1898, only a few years after the overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy." McKinley was president then (from 1897 to 1901, when he was assassinated), but that is about 115 years.
- It's an incredible coincidence that the same gun used to murder Toriyama's father would still be in the possession of his killer, career criminal Joseph Archer and used for another killing in the early 50's, after which Archer was sent to prison for murder. Not only that, the pistol was still held in evidence today at HPD headquarters.
I didn't like this show that much, which I expected, because last week's was so good. The writers fell back on the usual family goings-on, compounding this with a very nasty bad guy and the Christmas season, as if we were supposed to make some kind of English 100 interpretation of the juxtaposition of all these things.
We had Danno and his daughter Gracie bonding while voluntarily cleaning up a beach, where another kid's mother tried to put the mash on Danno. Grover and his daughter were there as well. At this beach, Gracie finds a box connected with a little girl who died in the Japanese tsunami. At the end, with the crime of the week solved and over eight minutes to go, Grover dresses up as Santa Claus, Chin Ho and his girl friend Leilani hang out, McGarrett and Catherine visit his father's grave (at Christmas?) and Danno and Gracie fly to Japan to return a locket found in the box to the girl's father. Oh yeah -- earlier on, Kono makes an appearance talking to Chin and Catherine by phone from "Seattle" (in reality, Vancouver) and follows Adam to Vancouver (really Vancouver).
The week's bad guy (very, very bad) was a serial killer, Gary Nathan (James Urbaniak), who the FBI had been hunting for some time. He was responsible for 14 killings, 12 on the mainland and 2 in Hawaii. The FBI had not arrested him yet because they were afraid of spooking him. It seemed kind strange that with all the fancy detection methods and equipment available (or is this only available to Five-0?), they couldn't have nabbed him well before. The best thing about all this was that FBI Special Agent Rebecca Conway (the very hot Monique Curnen) suddenly showed up in the Five-0 offices wanting to compare notes. Too bad she can't be the default FBI contact person for the show, but I think she is not based in Hawaii.
Chin Ho, on a case checking houses which have been burglarized, comes to Nathan's place because it was on a list connected with the deceased burglar Victor Dobbs, who is knocked off at the beginning of the episode by Nathan, who catches him snooping in his wall safe.
Poor Chin gets treated very, very badly. He gets smashed in the face with what looks like an iron bar, dragged down a flight of stairs, tied up tightly and pulled across the floor by his hair, kicked very hard, stomped on, and then slashed at and stabbed with pruning shears that Nathan wants to use to cut off one of Chin's fingers. Nathan's girl friend Emily (Heather Dubrow) shows up while this is all going on, which makes Nathan's rage even more intense, and he treats her just as badly as Chin. Only with superhuman effort does Chin manage to overcome Nathan just as Five-0 breaks in to the house upstairs. At the end of the show, Chin doesn't look much the worse for wear while he is getting patched up by an ambulance technician, providing the audience with a good excuse to see Daniel Dae Kim with his shirt off.
The beginning of Chin's ordeal, which was painful to watch, was not set up very well. Chin asked Nathan to open his wall safe, but Gary sort of went "nudge/nudge," and Chin figured there was something in the safe of a "private" nature. (There was, likely the trophy fingers that Nathan had kept from his victims.) So Chin walked away with his back to Nathan and then noticed a piece of tin foil on the ground by the window, which he realized meant that the burglar (Dobbs) had likely been in Gary's house since tin foil, as we learned, is used to short-circuit alarm systems. Nathan approaches Chin from behind, and his arms are at his sides and contain nothing. Suddenly Chin realizes what is going on, turns around and is clubbed in the face. So where did this iron bar (or whatever it is) come from?
Not to be too Grinchy, since this was a Christmas show, but the writers could really have done something different with the ending, since this was the second tear-jerking Japanese-related ending to the show in two weeks (and remember, I really liked the previous show). You really have to wonder how could Danno afford to fly to Japan to spend only a few minutes with the father of the missing girl when he gave the locket back. Maybe the Five-0 budget has a special fund for causes like this?
MORE TRIVIA:
- At the beginning of the show on the beach, Danno's hair looks like it needs a building permit.
- There are a couple of closeups of Scott Caan's hands in this show which reveal that he has tattoos on each of them. On his left hand near the thumb are three dots like a radioactivity symbol, while on his right hand in the same area is a cross.
- While Chin and Catherine are out investigating, Chin makes a bet that whoever finishes last will have to pick up the tab at Side Street, a local watering hole described on their WWW site as "O’ahu’s hidden hot spot."
- FBI Agent Conway taps into the Supercomputer with a Microsoft Surface tablet.
- While Chin was being tortured by Nathan, the music was appropriately very creepy, sounding like tapes being played backwards.
- Charlie Fong tracks down the tsunami girl using a DNA database established by the Japanese police, which really exists.
- Danno finally gets it off his chest near the end of the show when he tells McGarrett "You are cheap." Grover also gets to needle McGarrett, saying "You know you like me."
- Catherine was seen driving while she and Chin were doing their investigation. She was filmed in a real car driving on a real street with the cameraperson sitting in the passenger seat! Amazing!
Is Hawaii sort of like the Foreign Legion? For the second episode in a row, we had some criminal who had moved to Hawaii to escape from the FBI and other law enforcement agencies on the mainland.
This time the criminal was Jack Mitchell, a former Gulf War veteran who killed a woman in a car crash while escaping from a bank robbery in Dekalb, Illinois 20 years before. He came to Hawaii and assumed the name of Jack Anderson as well as a not-exactly private profile, running a local watering hole, The Hideaway Bar (an actual location at 1913 Dudoit Lane, Honolulu), supporting a kids' football team, donating bulletproof vests to HPD (albeit anonymously) and befriending Grover.
When a friend of Matt Haley (Zay Harding), the husband of the woman Mitchell killed, recognized Mitchell's photo while on a trip to Hawaii, the jig was up. Haley comes to Hawaii and hires two local punks to kill Mitchell. But the punks don't count on Mitchell's military training. When they attempt to jump him outside his bar, he stabs one of them to death with the man's own knife and leaves the second in a very bad condition. Mitchell then takes off for the wilds of Oahu.
This episode was bookended with the resolution of the Kono/Adam story. Kono tracks down Adam, working as a dishwasher in some Vancouver restaurant, though I'm sure this sequence was filmed in Hawaii, because the BC license plate on Kono's cab had the numbers and letters in a font which was not normal. As well, in the restaurant where Adam was slaving, there was a "chicken salad plate" for $3.75. This was especially humorous, because there is no way you would find a salad in a Vancouver restaurant for this price.
Danno meets a potential new love interest in this show, Amber Vitale (Lili Simmons), while filling up with gas at Waialua Service (an actual service station). After dithering about whether to help her find her way driving down the highway, he decides to act like a pilot car, and she gets hit by a stray bullet from a boat offshore nearby. Although they are both in the middle of nowhere on the Kamehameha Highway near the "Kawailoa exit," an ambulance shows up quickly and transports her to hospital where they later hold hands.
Danno investigates the shooting, and it turns out the son of the owner of the boat, the Foxy Lady, was taking random shots for target practice. Not knowing much about guns, I don't know what kind of firearm this was, whether the bullet could have gone that far, etc., etc. Maybe like the Japanese internment episode, where the writers (the same writers, by the way -- Lenkov and Solarz) were probably trying to make up for the oversight a couple of years before where the Five-0 crew dissed veterans, the writers were trying to make amends for the idiotic anti-gun rant in the Hookman remake last season, i.e., saying that if you give a gun to a kid to fool around with, something bad might happen.
Former adversaries McGarrett and Grover get to bond more in the Oahu "forest," while searching for Mitchell, though Grover is still hesitant to tell McGarrett what demons caused him to escape to Hawaii. (Grover tells McGarrett "Jedi mind tricks don't work with me.") While traipsing through the brush, the two of them make a lot of noise having a loud Danno-like discussion which Mitchell could probably hear a mile away. Grover, McGarrett and Danno also engage in a three-way cargument about Danno's overprotective attitude towards his daughter. Gracie is seen attending a cheerleading camp at the beginning of the show -- a scene which was a bit too cutesy-poo.
Once again we had a tear-jerking finale with Mitchell saying goodbye to his wife and kids for the last time in a while, then apologizing to Haley who was in the blue-lit room and the return of Kono while the crew is gathering at McGarrett's for beers while watching a football game.
MORE TRIVIA:
- In February 2017, I found some interesting information which may have inspired the writers regarding the way Amber was shot in this show. The following comes from a Wikipedia article about a legendary New York City cop, Albert Seedman. Seedman may have actually been the inspiration for the TV cop Kojak. "In mid-1967, Seedman, then chief detective for southern Brooklyn, caught the case that made his reputation as an investigator who could solve baffling cases. While driving on the Belt Parkway one summer morning near Plum Beach, a young woman named Nancy McEwen suddenly drifted off the road onto the median strip. A police lieutenant in the car behind her pulled over to see what the problem was. He found her moaning, with her head slumped forward, and called for an ambulance. She died a short time later at Coney Island Hospital, where doctors found a small hole on the side of her head that turned out to have been caused by a bullet. Since only one window in McEwen's car was open, and none of them had been shattered, Seedman knew the shot had to have been fired from Sheepshead Bay or the nearby area, and that due to the distance and the car's speed, it was probably not intentional. He ordered detectives and uniformed officers to search the dunes and marshes for a possible shell casing. After 2,400 people were interviewed and several other leads came to nothing, he pointed at a spot on the map and told his detectives to look for people who owned boats. That led to the shooter—a local gas station owner who had been on his boat that morning taking target practice at a floating beer can. One of his bullets had ricocheted off the water's surface and killed McEwen. A grand jury ruled it an accident, and no homicide charges were brought, although the shooter was fined $100 for violating firearms laws with the rifle."
- The color photography for this show was absolutely stunning.
- The FBI wanted poster for Mitchell suggests he killed Haley's wife in the car crash in 1993 (and Chin Ho confirms this), but Dekalb, IL police paperwork gives a date of June 3, 1999 for the crash.
- Gas prices at Waialua Service are $3.97, $4.07 and $4.17.
- When he is out and about around the time he meets Amber, Danno seems to be actually driving on a real road, not in front of a process screen.
- The actress playing Amber is almost young enough (20) to be Scott Caan's (37) daughter.
- Catherine is not seen in this show, she is already doing Naval reserve duty.
One of the very best episodes, with an outstanding performance by Daniel Dae Kim. The script by Lenkov and Solarz was both intelligent and logical (one exception -- see below) with yet another Five-0 team member being seriously grilled by Internal Affairs, in this case Chin Ho over how his feelings about his late wife Malia's brother Gabriel (Christopher Sean) may have compromised a homicide investigation, specifically the murder of Chin's own father 15 years before.
Gabriel was shown as being a no-goodnik, mingling with gang types, and eventually leaving for the mainland where he became the boss of a drug-smuggling cartel in Latin America. While Chin suspected Gabriel was connected with his father's "wrong place/wrong time" killing, he was never able to prove this conclusively and the by-the-book investigation which followed never produced any solid evidence to this effect.
The internal affairs cops, played by Robert Knepper ("Prison Break") and Brian Thompson ("Alien Bounty Hunter" from The X-Files) were very nasty, making comments about Malia which almost caused Chin to lose his cool and suggesting that Chin had made evidence for the case disappear in order to protect his family. Fortunately, he had both McGarrett and Kono testifying on his behalf during the proceedings, and they helped to calm him down when he bolted from the interrogation room.
The show was structured in an interesting way, almost like a stage play, with flashbacks from years before alternating with the current internal affairs proceedings and Five-0's recent investigation of the now-criminal kingpin Gabriel's return to Oahu to seek vengeance on one of his former associates who ripped him off for $2 million.
John McGarrett, Chin Ho's mentor, appeared in flashbacks in this episode, as the two of them attempted to track down the killer. Grace Park did a creditable job both appearing and sounding like Kono might have 15 years before.
MORE TRIVIA:
- The show paid a tribute of sorts to the original Chin Ho, naming the character Kam Tong Kelly. Kam Fong, father of the current Duke Lukela, Dennis Chun, was born Kam Tong Chun.
- Reference is made to "the Garrity rule," an advisement of rights usually administered by state or local investigators to their employees who may be the subject of an internal investigation (see Wikipedia).
- The teaser for this show was only 31 seconds long, a good move since it allowed the story to develop more fully.
- The flashback where the IA duo called McGarrett into the room at the end of the show seemed somehow out of sequence, since McGarrett was already seen testifying earlier.
- There were a couple of "classic" locations in this show: near the War Memorial Natatorium, where Chin encounters Gabriel, who is surfing and the Byodo-In Temple (Chin's father's police funeral).
Despite the fact that this episode had a fairly intelligent script by David Wolkove, and a great performance by the gravelly-voiced Michael Madsen as Roy Parrish (but basically playing Michael Madsen), it was disappointing.
Just before being sent to prison, Parrish, who was falsely accused of murder in connection with a sleazy real estate scam, escaped from custody in a police paddy wagon. Seemingly disappearing into thin air, despite the presence of numerous cops and police dogs searching for him, half an hour later Parrish took McGarrett and Danno hostage in Danno's car, having intentionally selected them to help him clear his name. How he would have known that this was a Five-0 car was questionable, since it didn't have large signs saying "Five-0" on the sides.
Based on advance publicity for the show, I was dreading some interminable whiny carguments while McGarrett and Danno were under Parrish's control, but this did not happen. There were some things in the show that bothered me, like Chin Ho's ability to read a huge pile of letters from Parrish to his daughter Lauren (Lyndon Smith) in a very short space of time to get information used to solve the case and how the entire team could travel half a mile in a few minutes at the end of the show to the park-like location above Honolulu where Parrish finally reconciled with his estranged daughter before being murdered by his criminal associates.
There were two places where the show could have come to an end: where Lauren finally read her father's letters which he had sent from prison and she had never read, or when Danno told his daughter Gracie that he had been too hard on her during a meeting at her school at the beginning of the show where she admitted to punching a fellow student so hard he needed stitches. (It turned out that Gracie was sticking up for a friend of hers who was being bullied. When Danno asked her why she didn't tell the truth about this incident in the principal's office, she replied with a hilarious line: "I'm no rat.")
Unfortunately, the show didn't end as I hoped, it closed with another drinks-by-the-water (in this case, a pool) finale. Depressing!
MORE TRIVIA:
- Gracie's cel phone number is a bogus 800-555-0122. For some reason, included in the contact list on Danno's phone is "Danno," which doesn't make any sense.
- The guy trying to get to the escaped Parrish before anyone else, Julian Lynch, a.k.a. Dale Sullivan (Matthew Glave), orchestrator of the real estate scheme, described Parrish as "a slippery son of a bitch." Parrish's daughter called Lynch a "son of a bitch" at the end of the show as well.
- Lauren's address was 1034 Rambutan Drive, Honolulu 96816.
- Gracie attends the Academy of the Sacred Heart school.
- When Parrish is threatening Danno in the car calling Gracie on Danno's cel phone, he puts the phone on mute, but you can still hear Gracie talking. Is this normal?
- Once again the cops on Oahu get a bad rap, with Parrish telling McGarrett that he paid off a guard while imprisoned to find out where Archie Akama, who falsely testified against him in court, was working.
This episode was three shows in one (times in brackets refer to how long this "section" was):
- Danno's mother Clara comes to visit. She is barely off the plane before she tells her son, after considerable prodding by him as to what it is that she doesn't want to discuss, that she is divorcing his father after 38 years of marriage because the old man has "hobbies" which don't include her, and she wants to enjoy the "third act" of her life. (Danno's mom's name was a tribute of sorts to the old show where Danno's aunt Clara, was played by renowned actress Helen Hayes, the real-life mother of the original Danno, James MacArthur.) (17:04)
- The crime of the week, the murder of a local real estate agent whose body is found entombed inside the wall of a house. (13:30)
- After some local newspaper reporter makes noise about exposing his past, Grover, in a heart-to-heart, tells McGarrett the reason he left Chicago: he failed to talk a distraught friend out of harming himself and his young son during a hostage situation (both of them died). This caused Grover to almost go insane thinking about "what if..." scenarios. (12:30)
I didn't like the first of these much at all. Melanie Griffith played Danno's mom. Her part was shallowly written, I didn't think much of her acting and the soap opera began to pile on quickly with parallels to Danno's own situation as well as McGarrett's relationship with his mother. As expected, there were amusing revelations from Danno's mom about her son to McGarrett as they were driving to Danno's house (a real improvement from some of his previous digs).
The Grover scenes had good acting between Chi McBride and Alex O'Loughlin, though the way McGarrett convinced the reporter, Sean Hutton (Ethan Emby), to lay off was not particularly convincing.
The crime of the week brought back Darryl Hannah as Cherie Tranton, previously seen in the seventh episode this season. She was under suspicion for a few seconds because when he was still alive, she was very competitive against Guy Ingram, her fellow real estate agent who was found behind the drywall. Turns out the killer was lawyer Gerard Burns, who discovered that Ingram was having an affair with his wife Sally Ann, who went under her maiden name of Caldwell. Burns was played by real-life Honolulu attorney Michael Jay Green, who was seen in the sixteenth episode of season one as an unnamed sleazy lawyer. There were serious questions about how Burns could have "buried" both his wife (who he also murdered) and Ingram inside the wall of the house ... not to mention why this lawyer suddenly blabbed everything when being grilled in the blue-lit room!
While Danno had little to do as far as police work was concerned with this show, Kono and Chin Ho were busy tracking down suspects as well as a gun which disappeared from HPD's evidence room and ended up in Burns' hands via George Moku (Eugene Cordero), the yard boss at a scrapyard where it was to be melted down. Kono's talking tough with Moku (as well as Burns) was pretty lame.
MORE TRIVIA:
- It seemed odd to me that when the woman's husband removed the picture hanger from the wall at the beginning of the show, a large hole was created and this was exactly in the spot where Ingram's face was located. Also, the lawyer Burns didn't strike me as a handyman type capable of hiding the bodies behind the wall (how thick are the walls in this house, anyway?) and then doing all the drywall and painting, especially considering Tranton said that she had showed the house "over 50 times in the last six months," in other words, an average of twice a week. (The Sakatas, new owners seen hanging the picture at the beginning of the show, had moved in the week before.) As well, why did no one notice the smell of not one, but two bodies in a locked-up house from August to February?
- You can also ask: why did Burns choose that particular house? Since it was one of the houses Ingram was selling, maybe Burns managed to get the key to it? Was this a new house? Whatever ... it would take time to bring the bodies to this house (unless the house was being used by Ingram and Burns' wife as a "love nest"), cut two holes in the wall, drywall the holes, paint the drywall with no one noticing ... especially if you are a sleazy lawyer like Burns with a lot of sleazy clients who have to be attended to. It is not inconceivable that Burns could have hired some criminal type to take care of all this, but then there is the possibility that person would talk.
- When Hutton, the reporter, spoke to McGarrett, he said, "[If you had known about Grover's past, Y]ou would have told the chief of police and then Grover would never have been hired." Why would McGarrett have this kind of interjurisdictional power?
- Danno had a good line when his mother wanted to whip up some macaroni and "ketchup sauce" creation in his kitchen and she pointed out that was one of his favorite foods when he was a kid: "I was fond of eating crayons too, but I gave that up."
- Ingram's driver's license number was 228A491, his date of birth 12/29/1969, his address 654 Charlton Place, Honolulu 96816. His height was 5'9", weight 155 lbs., his hair brown and his eyes blue. Ingram's business card, also found with his body, said he worked for Kahu Realty (same company as Tranton), which is located at 2387 Okaka Street, Honolulu 96812, phone number 808-555-0196. The fact that these two pieces of ID were left on Ingram's body in the wall suggest Burns, his killer, was not thinking too straight. Ingram's girl friend Sally Ann's DL number was 412K223, her DOB 08/05/71, her address 618 Leeward Drive, Honolulu 96817, she was 5'7", weighed 145 lbs., had black hair and brown eyes. Ingram's license was for the term 01/25/2009-12/29/2014; Burns' was from 08/05/07-08/05/11 (in other words, it had expired). It's odd that the Supercomputer could not figure out that Burns' maiden name was Caldwell, because this could have been used as a security code somewhere. Ingram's airline ticket to Los Angeles was 28389303091, Sally Ann's was 283893863245.
- Cherie Tranton's phone number was 800-555-0198. The music during the scene where Kono and Chin Ho were questioning her was stupid.
- The gun that Burns used to kill his wife and her lover was used in a jewelry store heist two years before. But when Kono goes with Duke to the HPD evidence room to find it, it is not there, because seven months ago (in other words, just before August 2013 when Ingram and Sally Ann "disappeared") it was taken to be melted down at the scrapyard, but was intercepted by Moku, who sold it to Burns. If this was so, why wasn't the box containing the gun in the evidence room removed? Kono says "Duke had no idea, because the PA's [prosecuting attorney's] office misfiled the paperwork." Huh? First, is Duke in charge of the evidence room? Second, shouldn't evidence like the gun be retained for more than a year and a half? When Kono shows Moku a picture of the gun, asking him to identify it, you have to wonder how he could do this, considering the number of guns he would typically take for "resale," based on what he is seen offering to a couple of thugs at his house before Chin and Kono kick serious ass.
- In the scrapyard office, a 2013 calendar is seen on the wall for either September or December (probably the latter), though dates mentioned in the show suggest that it is taking place in 2014.
- Max's attempt to be funny prior to cutting Ingram out of the wall with a saw, saying that he was "Leatherface" from the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, was dumb, not to mention in questionable taste.
Not considering the opening and end titles, about a quarter of this show was taken up with a continuation of Danno's mother Clara's visit to Hawaii. The emphasis on this was on stupid, starting with Grover's McGarrett-authorized guided tour of "what Danno does" (which included a lot of HPD stuff, which Danno does NOT do). Is this happening on Grover's day off? He seemed to be on call, because he suddenly showed up at a crime scene which had little or nothing to do with SWAT, where bodies in a house were rigged with bombs under them, which required the attentions of the BOMB SQUAD. I find it depressing that Grover started out as a hard ass, then turned into McGarrett's BFF, and now is almost a pussycat comic character like Kamekona.
I didn't much like the discussions between Grover and Clara during her ride-along. The clip from the sneak peek of the episode showed her packing heat, but it turned out she was using the gun at the HPD crime scene simulator, presumably in the HPD basement. This did little other than give the script an excuse to have the boss of this shooting range, an HPD captain named Kevin Palmer (Boo Arnold), hit on her and later take her out on a date, which increased Danno's panic attacks over his mother's well-being.
While the show's teaser was only just over a minute long (usually a good sign, because it means the show is going to spend more time on serious matters), we were then treated to a 30 second flashback to the episode where McGarrett and Catherine went to recover the body of McGarrett's friend Freddie who had been left behind in North Korea. McGarrett woke up all sweaty, obviously a buildup to the rumoured upcoming episode(s) where he will be suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.
As a result of McGarrett's freaking out, Grover showed up at the beginning of the show to have a heart-to-heart with him, sort of the opposite of last week's show where McGarrett played the counsellor as an emotional Grover related why he came to Hawaii -- except this week's encounter was not as good as the previous one.
The attractive Chinese MSS operative Xi Chen (Elaine Tan) was pretty serious and brought to mind the equally serious Asuko Sunada in The Capsule Kidnapping from the original show, though their characters were at polar opposites. (MSS is the Chinese equivalent to the CIA.) Chen was posing as a grad student on a visa in Hawaii living under the name of Karen Chou at 833 Truman Street, Honolulu 96826.
It didn't take much to figure out that when returning conspiracy freak Jerry Ortega (Jorge Garcia) was talking to McGarrett on the docks and you see them from a distance, the audio is distorted like SOMEONE IS LISTENING, and indeed it is Xi Chen who is monitoring their conversation. Jerry is convinced that the downed satellite which hits a boat in the teaser and results in the death of three people is known as "The Black Unicorn." Xi Chen is also listening later after McGarrett and Jerry visit the very cranky Admiral Graham Rhodes (Patrick St. Esprit). I really liked this character. The repartee between him and McGarrett reminded me of the way McGarrett dealt with the Feds in some of the original series episodes, like the pilot "Cocoon."
After being MIA recently, Catherine suddenly appeared out of nowhere and jumped into the current investigation, getting intelligence from people in the military who "owe her a favor." Why didn't the show's producers just leave her in the Navy?
There was far too much bafflegab from Jerry over the Chinese satellite and Max over God-knows-what during Grover's tour, not to mention the complicated story told by Xi Chen about her boyfriend Quan Lung who betrayed her. There were also lots of questions like when did the people fishing on the Maggie Joe, the boat at the beginning, take the pictures of the bad guys on the "treasure hunting" ship (Kahana) before the bad guys murdered them ... and howcum the Kahana crept up so suddenly and silently beside the Maggie Joe and no one noticed it?
Probably the worst thing about the episode was when Danno's mother told Grover that in addition to her son who is divorced and living on an island (i.e., Danno) and her other son the fugitive ("a nice fugitive"), there are two sisters who are "a whole other story." So the big question is: when will these two sisters appear on the show and who will be selected to play these ding-a-lings?
MORE TRIVIA:
- There were a few laughs during the show. Danno told his mother that her making tuna salad was significant because every time she did that when he was a kid, she was guilty about something. For example, she told him he was going to see the 1984 movie Gremlins (directed by sometime Five-0 director Joe Dante), but he ended up at the dentist. Later, Danno told McGarrett that his mother "has secret agendas." Once again, Jerry referred to Danno as "Scully" (Gillian Anderson's character on The X-Files). After Jerry knocked out Xi Chen with a stun gun, he called McGarrett on a special red batphone, phone number 615-555-1279 (area code 615 is actually in Tennesse). McGarrett said to Chin Ho: "He [Danno] woke up on the wrong side of life."
- At the beginning of the show, the people fishing on the Maggie Joe are said to be in "Kewalo Basin." But according to Wikipedia, this is a commercial boat harbor that serves as home to some of Honolulu's commercial fishing fleet, and charter and excursion vessels that serve the Hawaii tourist market. There is no sign of the shore in any of the views of the Maggie Joe. Based on Max's estimate of the time of death of the people on this boat two hours before Five-0 arrives at the docks, Quan and his crew must have worked fast to get the very large debris from the satellite on board the Kahana and then get lost, especially since the Coast Guard were also tracking the downed satellite and brought the Maggie Joe back to the dock in the two-hour time frame.
- McGarrett is pretty clever, he can look at the board taken from the satellite with wires all over it at Quan's place and tell that the hard drive has been removed. Also, how does he know Xi Chen is a member of MSS based on what little information she tells him in Jerry's basement?
- Quan rented the Kahana using a Pure Elite credit card, number 5799 3228 4017 0963, expiry date 08/16. His bogus driver's license, number 392T273, says he lives at 1649 Mahuna St., Honolulu 96816 and that his date of birth is 12/29/1975. He is 5'10" tall and weighs 175 lb.
- Xi Chen knows how to use the Five-0 Supercomputer without any prompting at all. Jerry makes some remarks to her which are almost impossible to understand. She ignores him. (The dialogue from Jerry goes like this: "MSS e-mail server? Any chance you'd share your password? Sorry about the whole stun gun thing. In fairness, I thought you were there to kill me.")
- A Chechnyan businessman named Umar Basayec is in Oahu to buy the satellite's hard drive which is full of data which will leave the USA open to an attack. The middleman brokering this sale is Mikel Taylor, a former Russian citizen who has been a permanent resident of the USA since 09/22/72 (his PR card is number A#2206463) and on the FBI watch list for years. Taylor runs the Winning Zone arcade in downtown Honolulu. His driver's license, which does not have a number, shows he lives at 2241 Nanamaoa Street, his date of birth is 03/18/53, and he is 6'1" and weighs 210 pounds. His driver's license expires 03/18/19. Although the arcade is closed, Grover shows up in a SWAT truck and he, McGarrett and Danno approach the place in a VERY obvious way. Grover's thermal imaging device is pretty strong, since all the people it shows in the building are in a back room. A terrific firefight follows.
- The blood after Xi Chen and her boyfriend shoot each other at the end of the show in a Reservoir Dogs-like encounter looks pretty phony.
This episode hopefully brought to a close to the soap opera with Danno’s mother. It began with the two of them pussyfooting around, Clara going to a lawyer to file for divorce and Danno flying in his father Eddie (Tom Berenger) to reconcile with her in a reconstruction of the restaurant where the two of them had their first date in New Jersey. This was the part of the show that I cared the least about. I actually fast-forwarded during some of the scenes near the end. Tom Berenger looked very good, especially in comparison with Melanie Griffith, and it’s unfortunate that he only appeared for a few minutes.
Conspiracy freak Jerry Ortega bade farewell to McGarrett, in whose house he was staying because of fear of revenge from the Chinese government over his participation in last week’s show. While doing a final batch of laundry, Jerry found the Champ box in McGarrett’s garage and determined that (a) it was painted the wrong color and (b) there was some mysterious writing on the bottom including the word Shelburn (minus an “e”) which we have not encountered for some time. Using a real cryptographic technique called the Polybius square, Jerry decoded this writing, which revealed a geographical location in Cambodia with longitude and latitude 12.002° and 105.339°. McGarrett was puzzled by this, since his father served in Vietnam in 1968, but this was before he met Doris, McGarrett’s mother. At the end of the show, McGarrett, with the help of Joe White, called the local CIA branch and ended up meeting with some guy who told him that the geographical coordinates led to a field and, more specifically, a grave.
The crime of the week involved Kelly Donovan (Conor Leslie), a school teacher’s daughter who concocted an elaborate plan to murder her father in order to collect on a million dollar life insurance policy. The writing for this part of the show was bad, harkening back to unbelievable plot lines full of peculiar twists and red herrings in earlier episodes. The 16-year-old Kelly got access to a commercial database where she ran a criminal record check to find someone she could dupe into being a fall guy for her scheme (seriously). She chose Tommy Fa’aloa (Booboo Stewart), child of a bad home who had constantly been in trouble with the law since he was 12 years old. Tommy just happened to work for Aikapu Auto Repair where she and her father took their cars to be serviced. Some coincidence! Kelly inflicted injuries on herself to make it look like her father was abusing her and documented these photographically and in a journal. Using these photos, among other things, she then convinced Tommy that she had to be rescued from her father, which resulted in a violent confrontation during the show’s teaser where the father was shot to death in his house with his own gun. There is no indication whether Tommy disarmed the father, or Kelly intentionally left the gun somewhere for Tommy to find. While this was happening, Kelly looked genuinely concerned at what was going on, as if she regretted that what she had put into play was going too far. At the end of the show, the tables were turned on Kelly where it was revealed that her father had cancelled the life insurance policy, choosing instead to invest the money in her education. Kono’s talking tough with Kelly, telling her “You’ve got nothing” was much more effective than Kono's browbeating a suspect last week.
I thought it funny that the most interesting part of the show to me was Jerry’s investigation into the Champ tool box, which should have been the most preposterous
MORE TRIVIA:
- We learn that Danno’s father recently retired from his job as a firefighter.
- Some guy escorts Jerry into the Five-0 office as a visitor, presumably from security … but he says nothing to McGarrett and promptly vanishes.
- When McGarrett goes to meet the CIA operative at the end of the show, he drives at night to some mountain meeting spot in the classic Mercury Marquis Brougham from the original series, probably because his truck is in the repair shop after the accident which Tommy caused earlier.
- The co-ordinates from the toolbox decoded by Jerry actually lead to the middle of a lake in Cambodia called Boeng Thum. Zoom out from the map to see a bigger picture.
- When he is bidding farewell to Jerry, McGarrett says “I like to live alone.” What happened to Catherine? Executive producer Peter Lenkov has confirmed on Twitter that they live separately. Is this because McGarrett wants to keep Catherine at arm’s length because she is now a member of Five-0?
- When Tommy and Kelly are finally cornered by HPD, despite McGarrett’s command not to fire, Tommy is shot dead as he follows Kelly out of their stolen car as she runs away, pretending to be a victim.
- The device seen used by suspect Jay Cooper (Noshir Dalal), allowing someone to fly with high-pressure bursts of water, goes by various names: water jet pack, Jetlev or flyboard (I don't know which one applies in Five-0's case).
- The place where Kelly and her father live looks like a condominium or apartment, not a house. If so, why did no one hear the violent confrontation between Tommy and Kelly’s father, including a gunshot, at the beginning of the show? According to Kono, a “neighbor a few houses down” saw Tommy driving away with Kelly later … but if this is not a house, what are the chances that a “neighbor” would have seen this and specifically recognized Kelly?
- Danno had a good line for McGarrett during their first "cargument" regarding him following his mother to the divorce lawyer's office, that McGarrett had surveilled his own mother, so now they were "even." On the other hand, the second cargument with Danno screaming as McGarrett drove at high speed down a street was just stupid.
This was the fan-built episode, with people voting on line to choose elements of the plot, as well as things related to wardrobe and music plus the episode's title. Some of the fan selections were incorporated well into the story, others were not.
The story went like this: Chin and Jerry are attending their 25th year class reunion at Kukui High. While this is going on, Laura Richmond, who was kind to the geeky Jerry when they were in school, is found dead, having fallen on to one of her own stiletto heels. She had taken off the shoes to escape from someone who was pursuing her. Five-0's first suspect is Tony Gibson (Rob Corddry), a magician with a criminal past who was also at the reunion. But he is quickly cleared. Five-0's investigation reveals that though Laura has only been back in Hawaii for a few hours, she took $200,000 out of her trust fund at a bank and paid off the hospital bill of Nina Johnson, an older woman. Nina (Mary Anne McGarry) was the mother of Corey Johnson, Laura's boyfriend on the sly from 25 years before who mysteriously vanished -- presumably drowning while surfing. Chin and Kono do a lot of Jack Lord McGarrett-style brainstorming and determine that Laura's known boyfriend of the time, Alan Kim (Peter Shinkoda), also seen at the reunion, killed Corey way back then and then buried his body in cahoots with Laura's brother Bradley (Mackenzie Astin). Alan was also the one who killed Laura at the reunion.
The writers sort of "cheated" a bit with a couple of the fan choices:
There were several very confusing things about the script.
- The victim - Macadamia nut tycoon. Laura was actually the tycoon's granddaughter. It was unlikely Laura ever would have been a "tycoon," because she disdained taking any money from her trust account, according to her family during Five-0's questioning, other than the $200,000 to pay the hospital bill.
- The murder weapon - a "dark and devilish" five inch stiletto. Whether this could be considered the murder weapon is debatable. Laura was thrown off a stairwell by Alan, but Max suggests in his preliminary look at her body that she would likely have survived the fall and the fact that she landed on the heel which was pointed up and penetrated her aorta was a fluke. Still, Alan certainly had the intent to kill her (but there are more questions, see below). "Stiletto" can also refer to a knife or dagger with a long slender blade and needle-like point, which is what I was expecting as the "weapon."
We know that Alan and Laura were an item back in their final year at Kukui. Chin says that everyone knew this. But Laura was seeing Corey on the side. Alan found out about this, and wanted to teach Corey a lesson, but after Alan punched him out, Corey hit his head on a rock, killing him. The "evidence" that fans chose was "a toy rocket," and it turns out in the class reunion time capsule, there is a toy rocket. Several similar rockets are seen in Corey's room at his mother's house where everything is still preserved after 25 years. In this time capsule rocket there is a roll of film which includes a photo dated 05/05/89 of Corey, Alan and Bradley on the beach from the evening when Corey "disappeared" (i.e., was killed). So why was this roll of film placed in the rocket, and who put it there? Who took this picture of the three of them together? And who took the rocket from Corey's room if Corey was dead (assuming he died before the time capsule was created)? Why would the roll of film with possibly incriminating evidence be placed in the capsule, which would quite likely be opened in the future? How did Laura know about Corey's killing? Did Alan just blab to his girl friend? It is suggested that Laura was "Alan's alibi" because someone spotted a car similar to Alan's near the place where Corey was last seen ... but Laura said the two of them were watching a movie. Did Bradley go along with Alan in burying Corey's body because because he thought that Corey was not worthy of associating with his sister? Laura returned to Hawaii, unknown in advance to the people planning the reunion, and paid off the mother's hospital bills because she felt guilty about Corey's death. Considering that her return was unknown, and considering that Alan presumably only met her at the reunion, how could he have figured out that Laura was going to the cops to spill the beans about events of 25 years before, which is why he suddenly wanted to kill her? And how did Bradley know that Alan killed Laura? AUGH!
The show began and ended with a continuation of the McGarrett family soap opera. At the beginning, McGarrett is in "Cambodia" looking for the mysterious grave location hinted at in the previous show by the CIA agent Sam Connors (James Brennan). It is in a field, even though Google Maps revealed its geographic location to be in the middle of a lake. The grave is empty, but there is a piece of hair found which McGarrett later gives to Max to analyze for DNA. This sample gets lost between Max's office and the DNA lab, though McGarrett is smart, because he keeps some of this hair sample in case of an eventuality like this. McGarrett and Danno are seen returning from Cambodia to Hawaii in the hold of some huge plane. This whole Cambodian sequence and return, even though brief, was dumb.
Later, McGarrett harangues Connors about the empty grave, then at the end of the show drops by the CIA office to talk to Connors who, of course, has disappeared. When McGarrett answers a ringing phone in Connors' office, a stern-voiced guy on the other end warns him that what he is doing is very dangerous. I thought McGarrett's appearance in the office was pretty stupid, because it was night time and I was expecting a bullet to fly through the window. Alex O'Loughlin's acting for most of the show was kind of robotic, no surprise considering the mediocre script material he was given.
MORE TRIVIA:
- Laura is played by an uncredited actress. On the other hand, Cecilia Brown played two parts: Amanda Santiago, the woman who gives Chin and Jerry their name tags at the beginning of the show and the woman in the helicopter piloted by Kamekona.
- McGarrett actually kisses Catherine goodbye before he goes to the CIA office near the end of the show. Whoa! Contact between these two! Not to last for long, though, because Michelle Borth, as I'm sure everyone knows, will be leaving the show at the end of the season (or before).
- Jerry helps to develop the roll of film from the toy rocket. He says he likes doing this because he doesn't "trust digital [photos]." But was this film a color film? Considering it dates from 1989, this is quite likely. Jerry is seen developing the film in a stereotypical darkroom with a red safety light (so we can see what is going on -- DUH!), in real life used when developing black and white photos. Maybe Jerry is making a black and white print from a color negative.
- While the time capsule is being opened, suddenly Laura's voice is heard over the school's public address system pleaing for help to stop Alan, who wants to do her harm. Why would she use this method of communication? If she was so familiar with the school's public address system (which still works in the same manner as it did 25 years before), why wouldn't she just call the cops using a school phone or, better still, just get out of the building?
- The rap music heard at the beginning of the show as Jerry and Chin emerge from a limousine in slow motion is "Bump" by Spank Rock. The lyrics go like this: "Behind my Gameboy, I got game girl it comes easy/Let go your shoulders/My popsicle [i.e., penis] is so sweet, see/Slam back that sparks/Don't hesitate and you'll believe me/Ya bitch [the word "bitch" is omitted] believe me, ya." Following this, the band on stage, played by the Hawaiian rock band Elephant, is playing the Bobby Brown song "My Prerogative." The fan-chosen musical selection was "Good One" by The Green (where does this appear in the show?).
- The maze where Bradley is captured at the end of the film is on the Dole Plantation near Wahiawa. According to its website, it is the world's largest maze. There is some digital manipulation to have a large "R" (for "Richmond") in the middle of the maze, as well as to combine it with the Richmond family's house, which is the Clarence Hyde Cooke House at 3860 Old Pali Road.
- Krista Allen plays the sexy Nani Kahanu, one of Chin Ho's classmates who tearfully hugs him while being interrogated after Laura's death. Earlier on, she wants Chin to take her for a "ride." She should definitely return!
This show was an improvement over recent ones.
I didn't mind the expected underground bromance as Danno and McGarrett were caught in a bombed and collapsed building, and I don't think I've ever laughed as hard during the show as when Danno told McGarrett how much he hated him. Whoever wrote that sequence of dialogue should get a special prize! The brotherly love between the two of them made up for Danno's fingernails-on-a-blackboard whining about his daughter Gracie earlier in the show after she encountered his girl friend Amber (Lili Simmons) at their house for the first time.
There were the usual script problems. After the blast, McGarrett was really like MacGyver. He suddenly had an explosive, which looked like a grenade, and managed to make use of some disinfectant containing peroxide and duct tape to deal with Danno's very serious injury -- a piece of rebar in his stomach area which just happened to miss vital organs. I'm sure this stuff used by McGarrett was all accounted for in the maintenance room where they were trapped, but it seemed very convenient that it survived the blast and McGarrett was able to find it quickly. Some of the pieces of concrete which McGarrett was moving around seemed rather large. I also thought that McGarrett using his grenade to produce a hole exactly in a spot from which he and Danno could be easily rescued was far-fetched.
The ending was yet another confrontation with yet another sleazy CIA operative, this time one named James Cobb (David Gautreaux), who set up the bomb in the building to wipe out McGarrett because of the latter's ongoing quest for information about his mother which now has connections to Cambodia (see the last two shows). Turns out that the person in the grave there was Wo Fat's mother and Wo's father is still on the loose somewhere. What this all means means that we are returning to the Ma McGarrett soap opera big time soon (i.e., the last episode of this season) and the big question is: who will play Wo's father and what is his significance to future episodes (and yet more soap opera)?
A few days ago, Executive Producer Peter Lenkov suggested via Twitter that the musical score for the show was going to be something special, but it sounded like the usual synthesized noise. The Five-O theme did make another appearance as Danno emerged from the rubble, though.
On the positive side, Catherine actually expressed a lot of emotion in this show, probably more than in the entire fourth season up to this point. But soon she will be gone (sigh). Lenkov is now teasing everyone with words to the effect that she "really isn't gone and might come back."
MORE TRIVIA:
- There seemed to be a lot of light in the collapsed basement, and not just from McGarrett's flashlight. Whoever did the production design on this set and the building above did a very good job, though.
- After surviving the blast, Chin Ho and Kono went back and forth very quickly (twice) between the building's presumably downtown location and Halawa where they dealt with JC Dekker (Xzibit) who had been fed bad intel originating with Cobb to give McGarrett regarding a shipment of guns, leading to the building which exploded. Although this is actually a 20 minute drive, they managed to get themselves cleaned up pretty good first. Dekker told McGarrett and Danno earlier he wanted a reduction in his sentence as well as "new digs." He said that he was a "changed man" who was "just trying to get home to [his] family." Unfortunately, Dekker's lawyer brother Marcus was killed, part of the plot arranged by Cobb.
- Danno's claustrophobia was mentioned. Is this episode why this was set up in the first place?
- Prior to applying serious persuasion to the inmate named Spider (uncredited actor) who fed him the bad info from Cobb, Dekker greeted him by saying "Surprise, bitch."
This show was pretty offensive in three ways: to animal lovers (fish getting speared), to Muslims (nasty terrorists) and to people who don't like Americans pushing their weight around in international matters -- in this case, McGarrett being particularly gung-ho in the way he dealt with the crime of the week.
The murder of pool cleaner Nico Kane (Sam Upton) at the beginning of the show gave rise to an investigation which uncovered an Islamic cell in Hawaii under the direction of American Jihadist "poster boy" Muhammed Nazaria, living in Yemen. Strangely, Nazaria did not appear in the show other than a picture on a rap sheet, yet the actor playing him, Salman Bokhari, got a credit.
One thing I liked about the show which resulted in some envelope-pushing scenes was the fact that one of the Muslim converts, Dawn Hatfield (18-year-old Sasha Pieterse), did not cave in to McGarrett's demands for help during her grilling in the blue-lit room. On the other hand, her two cohorts met a nasty end. Joseph Sung, a chemistry major in charge of making the bomb intended to create havoc at Hickam Air Base, leapt to his death from the top of a building (after a spectacular jump, followed by McGarrett, from one building to another) rather than surrender to McGarrett, and Brian Miller was shot by Five-0 during a firefight. Both of these actors were uncredited.
McGarrett was very aggressive in his encounter with the brainwashed Dawn to little avail, telling her that she had caved into the Jihadists' mindset because they had taken advantage of her dysfunctional childhood, and that she was speaking "phrases cherry-picked from a holy book." She replied to him that "we will never stop fighting until every single person who walks this earth accepts Islam and all the wonders of God"! (I can hear the protests from Muslim groups already.)
Despite Hatfield's rhetoric, these junior terrorists were pretty dumb. First, they didn't bother to get rid of the pool cleaner's body, which was left lying in front of the door of the "borrowed" home where they shot him after he uncovered their activities. Then they dumped a bag full of empty bottles of the chemicals they were using to make the bomb, including hydrogen peroxide, acetone, hydrochloric acid and sulphuric acid, in the garbage can. The garbage men had come earlier that day, with the result that only this bag was in the can, noticed by the neighbor who pulled the can back off the street. (You have to wonder why this neighbor never noticed the jihadists coming to and going from the house. Hatfield, a "friend of the family," was in charge of looking after the place while the elderly owners were away.) Then there were the dozens of green palm tree air fresheners hanging from the ceiling in the house to mask the smell of the bomb-making chemicals. When such a dumb plot device is introduced, you then start asking questions like "how are these air fresheners connected to the ceiling," "will they really cover up the smell," and "why did they bother using the house for making the bomb at all, since Hatfield and Miller seem to be sharing some older house where Five-0 encounters them later."
Quick FBI analysis of the bomb-making materials found by Five-0 revealed similarities to a device which had killed several Americans in Afghanistan and, through fingerprints on this device, to two men in Hawaii: Uday Jahani (Jorge Alfredo Martinez) and Rahim Ahad (Ahmad Tadjvar), both of whom were connected to the student cell and quickly picked up by Five-0. The only survivor of the Afghan explosion, Kirk Emerson, received a special visit by Danno and McGarrett at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in San Diego. Emerson was played by real-life triple amputee Bryan Anderson, who lost both legs and his left hand when an IED blew up during his tour of duty in Iraq in October 2005.
The show was bookended with a silly sub-plot involving Grover fishing with Chin Ho at the beginning, and then serving his catch to the entire gang at the end of the show in another unnecessary beery finale. The gang included Pua Kai (Shawn Thomsen), the former security guard-turned HPD cop from the first show of this season, who had tried to put the mash on Kono at a crime scene earlier in a tangential sequence that verged on cringeworthy. There was also some rather predictable verbal sparring between Danno and McGarrett about "relationships."
MORE TRIVIA:
- Brian Miller's birthdate was 05-17-1994, his ID at Pacific Isle University was 99645327.
- Muhammad Nazaria's Ohio driver's license, which expired in 2000, showed his address as 2083 East 70th Street, Cleveland 44103. The license number was YS87304H. His weight when the license was issued was 145 pounds. On the rap sheet, his weight was 165. He was born 02/20/1979.
- I wasn't watching too closely when FBI Analyst Katie Halinan, played by soap opera star Eden Riegel first appeared. Her voice was very similar to Michelle Borth's and I thought for a moment it might be the soon-to-depart actress, especially considering the kind of work the character was performing. Borth did not appear in the show, although she was listed in the CBS press release.
- Aside from shunning the romantic advances of Pua Kai, Kono had a lot to do in this show. Daniel Dae Kim showed off beefcake during the fishing scenes with Grover.
- McGarrett referred to three other American terrorist groups: the Symbionese Liberation Army (Patty Hearst kidnapping), the Black Liberation Army and the United Freedom Front, all of which he said "failed" in their objectives.
- Danno's line to McGarrett at the rehabilitation center, "You hear me complaining about my PT [physical therapy or physiotherapy] ever again, punch me in the head, OK?" was near-incomprehensible. At the end, when Pua Kai was at the fish feast, the writers missed a good opportunity when he asked Kono "I was wondering if you had a cousin..." She should have replied, "Yes, and he is sitting right here [pointing to Chin Ho]."
This episode once again demonstrated that Five-0 does things best, relatively speaking, when staying in Hawaii. You would have thought by this time people connected with the reboot, including the writers, would have learned this from Five-0's A-Team adventures in North Korea in previous seasons, which produced two of the very worst shows (S02E10 and S03E20, as well as the North Korea-related S01E09).
Things began with a silly and time-consuming poker game benefitting the HPD Bereavement Fund at McGarrett's house. Like the football game of this season's Thanksgiving episode (S04E09), it featured everyone but the kitchen sink in addition to the usual Five-0 team and their pals like Kamekona and Max: Duke, Grover, Kamekona's cousin Flippa, Kawika (leader of the Kapu gang/civic pride group), Mamo (Al Harrington), Nicky 'The Kid' DeMarco (Larry Manetti), and even Dog the Bounty Hunter. Despite the fact the last three had little to say, they all got credits during the main titles.
Catherine gets a call on her cell phone from Amir Khan (Mido Hamada) who helped her when she was on her tour of Afghanistan seven years before. His young son Najib has been taken by nasty Taliban kidnappers (NTK), likely with the intent of turning him into a suicide bomber. Already this is becoming yet another show where the initial premise is flawed. How would Khan know Catherine's cell phone number? It's later revealed that Catherine never told anyone about anything that happened during her encounter with Khan to avoid putting him in danger.
The poker game and Catherine's phone call, which McGarrett is interested in, are further interrupted by Danno because their presence is required at a crime scene. If you blink hard, you will miss the transition when Danno says "We gotta go." Suddenly Five-0 is on a downtown street investigating the theft of a liver destined for an operation, and Duke, who was at the poker game only minutes before, is in his uniform, also investigating.
To get the unnecessary and time-consuming crime of the week out of the way, it involves the usual red herrings, but is solved by the 24:30 mark. Jamie Kamaka (Jordan Salud) was hired by the Attis Chemical Company to steal the liver. It was being transported to a hospital to be transplanted into Jason Helani, lawyer for defendants in a class action lawsuit against Attis for poisoning a water supply which resulted in several people from Waialua getting cancer.
At the Five-0 office, Catherine tells McGarrett why she has to return to Afghanistan to help Khan. While there 7 years ago, she was wounded with a GSW (gunshot wound) to the leg, a broken arm and a broken vertebra. Khan and his family, including Bollywood star Mallika Sherawat as his wife, whose much-hyped role was relatively insignificant, hid Catherine until she recovered, thus proving that not all Afghanistani people are bad, I suppose. Considering the gunshot wound seems very serious as per a flashback when Khan extracts it from Catherine, I have to wonder why McGarrett -- who seemingly had sex with Catherine in at least one earlier episode -- never noticed or asked questions about this, or any of her other injuries.
Catherine's return to help out her friends has to do with big concepts like honor and repaying debts, something McGarrett can relate to, so he says that he will get Joe White to pull strings to help her return ... except Joe White (who my friend Hermano described as a "nothing more than a travel agent") got kicked out of the military! Soon after, Catherine (and McGarrett, who just can't let her do this by herself) doesn't hop a military plane to Kabul as one might expect. They are seen at Honolulu airport getting on a commercial flight. I ran this kind of itinerary through a typical WWW travel site, and found out such a journey would take over three days. You would travel from Honolulu via Los Angeles and Istanbul, and the cheapest cost would be $12,271 per person. This is in contradiction to what Catherine suggests: "I can be on the ground [in Afghanistan] by dawn."
Despite their destination not exactly encouraging tourism, McGarrett and Catherine arrive in Kabul, clear customs without any problems, and head to Khan's village after getting a couple of animals from Hertz Rent-a-Horse. People, who might include Taliban squealers, give them suspicious looks as they arrive. Catherine and McGarrett track down Khan, who was in pursuit of his son's kidnappers, only to find him badly beaten. Back at Khan's place, Catherine, who is lounging around the place in her tank top, uses a laptop to determine where the kidnappers might be, despite the fact that Khan's village seems totally devoid of electricity.
Using the computer, Catherine and McGarrett figure that the NTK are only about 12 km away, on the way to their base camp. Somehow Catherine and McGarrett manage to get ahead of the kidnappers and get a bunch of sheep so McGarrett (who speaks Pashto fluently) can pretend to be a local pain-in-the-ass shepherd who is blocking the road with his flock. While the driver of the NTK's lead car is distracted, Catherine goes to the rear car and manages to free all of the kids who have been abducted (which does not include Khan's son). Despite the fact there are at least half a dozen well-armed NTK, she gets all the kids out safely. They don't escape notice by the NTK, however, which results in a firefight during which most of the NTK get knocked off. Those who do not capture McGarrett who is stunned by a grenade explosion; he is taken to the base camp. The NTK don't seem to care much about their potential young converts who are hiding nearby in a ditch with Catherine.
At the base camp, the NTK, including their very nasty boss Umar Hassan (Farshad Farahat), suspected of being killed in a drone strike a few years before, subjects McGarrett to abuse right up there with that dished out by Wo Fat in S02E10. The NTK have their own supercomputer which they can use to figure out who McGarrett is in mere seconds, aided by a pile of photos which show Navy SEAL McGarrett on his tour of Afghanistan, looking a bit like Fidel Castro. (I was thinking this metal box with the photos should have been the Champ tool box.)
Aided by the show's usual slam-bam-thank-you-ma'am logic, Catherine calls Danno in Hawaii who once again contacts Joe White (a.k.a. Mr. Deus X. Machina), who pulls more strings. Danno flies to Afghanistan (seriously) and relays the information about McGarrett's location, resulting in a group of elite military types flying a short distance to rescue McGarrett and, not surprisingly, their mission is successful. They arrive mere seconds before McGarrett, who is pissing off the NTK more and more, is about to be beheaded as a video camera films everything while Hassen spouts anti-American rhetoric. Of course, the NTK didn't hear these elite force guys coming! As McGarrett recuperates, Danno sits by his bedside and helps him deal with two guys from the CIA and the military who are very cranky about his "rogue ops."
The show closes as Catherine, still in Afghanistan, calls McGarrett in Hawaii to say that she has to finish her mission by locating Khan's son. McGarrett understands, blubbering "I love you, you know," to which Catherine responds "I love you, too." She gets on a motorcycle, wraps a scarf around her neck (but has nothing covering her head –- hardly enabling her to keep a “low profile” as she tells McGarrett), and rides off down the yellow dust road as the show ends, sparing us another boozy finale.
This is Michelle Borth's last show as has been much-discussed for several weeks. Considering the crappy material that she had to work with in this episode, Borth did a pretty good job, and it's unfortunate that she was relegated to being a "yes boss/no boss" second banana type after becoming a featured player. There are at least three hard-core followers (all guys) of my site (including myself) who will miss her! I'm sure we all "wish her well in her future endeavours"!
MORE TRIVIA:
- This episode had one of the longest cast lists of any so far.
- The co-ordinates given by Catherine to Danno to give to Joe White to give to the elite force for the location where McGarrett is being held are 34°28'09.0"N and 70°22'31.0"E. According to Google Maps, this is near Jalalabad, east of Kabul, but in in the middle of the Kabul River.
- Who owns the laptop that Catherine uses at Khan's place? Is this Catherine's own laptop? If so, how could she get this past Customs in Kabul without suspicion?
- The NTK are pretty well-informed. They know what happened during last week's show, referring to how McGarrett "took down brother Nazaria's soldiers in Hawaii."
- Danno identifies the motorcycle used by Jamie Kamaka, the liver abductor, as a Kawasaki E-1000, but there is no such thing. The Closed Captioning at CBS.com correctly identifies it as a Kawasaki Z-1000. When he is captured by Five-0, Kamaka asks for a lawyer immediately, which, of course, is unusual for this show. But he must change his mind about co-operating later, because when the Attis Chemical Company big shots are arrested in the middle of a board meeting, it is obvious that Kamaka has blabbed. Kamaka is pretty dumb, because he filmed the entire operation stealing the liver using a camera in his helmet, which he forwarded to Attis to prove that he had completed his job. When Chin examines this video on Kamaka's laptop, at the end of it, there is some pop-up which says that it was uploaded to Attis. Why would this pop-up be there at all? The pop-up contains an IP address which Chin uses to trace its destination. But the IP address is 415.23.192.663, pretty bogus, because the numbers in 4-part IP addresses do not exceed 254.
- An earlier flashback prior to Catherine's sheltering by Khan's family shows how she originally met them. She was going around from village to village "speaking to Afghan women" and saw Khan's son trying to get a soccer ball which had been kicked into a field where there potentially were some mines. Catherine calls Billy (presumably her now-deceased boy friend) who provides a weird-looking Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) vehicle to retrieve the ball. McGarrett berates her for using so much taxpayers' money to do this. This is pretty funny, considering how much taxpayers' money is used to rescue him near the end of the show.
- After the captured McGarrett is safe, one of the tactical team reports back to base: "Four tangos down." According to Urban Dictionary, "tango" is "A word used to describe a terrorist that has been eliminated. It is mainly used by the Special Forces to describe an eliminated enemy during a firefight." Earlier on, as she convinces him to let her go back to Afghanistan, Catherine tells McGarrett that the Taliban "don't do 'K & R'," meaning "kidnapping and ransom."
A disappointing season finale which rehashed two tropes: a kidnapping of one of the major characters' family members (this time Grover's daughter Samantha) and another ridiculous comic book-style escape by Wo Fat.
Wo Fat is in the Florence, Colorado Supermax prison, but manages to break out using a combination of pills he has been hoarding with paint thinner and fertilizer from the prison yard. This was impossible to take seriously, because, according to Wikipedia, prisoners in Supermax are generally allowed out of their cells for only one hour a day; often they are kept in solitary confinement. When Supermax inmates are allowed to exercise, this may take place in a small, enclosed area where the prisoner will exercise alone. It's highly unlikely prisoners would have easy access to bomb-making materials in Florence, considering Terry Nichols of the Oklahoma City bombing is one of the inmates!
Once he blew open the door of his cell, how did Wo manage to get out of the prison? If you do a Google search for information about this place, you will notice that even if you blew a hole in the outer wall of a cell, assuming it was on the outside of the building, there is still a nasty razor wire fence you have to scale beyond that. Was Wo a member of the Supermax pole vaulting team or something? And how did Mr. Very-Burned-Up Wo get back to Hawaii, considering his scarred face would have been on TSA's radar almost immediately?
Ian Wright (Nick Jonas, in a returning role, which he played well) wants Grover to help steal $100 million to get his kidnapped daughter back. This money is in the form of bills connected with illegal activities which are being moved off the island under the supervision of rogue federal agent Curtis Novak (Richard "The Sentinel" Burgi).
As before, Wright was a nasty little shit. But there is a limit as to how clever a computer hacker can be, and Wright's character exceeded all known bounds with his anal-ysis of the encrypted messages between Novak and the local crime boss Inoke Makuakane (Eddie Rothman), not to mention how he tracked down the shipment of the $100 million in the first place and hired several mercenary types to help Grover, posing as SWAT team members. This crime boss and his "family" was nothing memorable and represented an opportunity missed for the writers (Lenkov and Solarz, connected with two of the season's (and show's) best episodes -- S04E10 and S04E13). Anyone hoping for a revamp of the Vashon episodes from the original series would have been disappointed.
The relatively anticlimactic ending of the show, aside from Grover getting demoted by the Governor, who somehow overrides HPD procedure for dealing with officers who take the law into their own hands, posed a big question with Wo Fat returning to Hawaii and knocking off Wright. Is he doing McGarrett and/or Ma McGarrett a favor of some kind?
One thing I will give this show high marks for was the very weird opening scene with McGarrett and Danno pursuing some criminal on the streets of downtown Honolulu in the adult version of a bumper car from a shopping center. Unlike typical Five-0 driving scenes, this had no process shots.
As usual, the production values for the episode were high. Danno seemed more interested in what was going on than the last episode. And the Five-O theme made another appearance in the show itself as the episode came to a close. Too bad there were so many inconsistencies and things about the show which were just plain dumb, many of which were discussed to death on fan forums within only a couple of days of the show's broadcast.
MORE TRIVIA:
- Whatever happened to Novak and the various members of the criminal family while Five-0 and Grover were looking at the money? Were the disarmed bad guys just sitting around the front yard of the walled estate with their fingers up their asses? There is no suggestion that there are any other cops backing up Grover and Five-0.
- Grover's wife Renee, played by Michelle Hurd, finally made an appearance in person, while their son, seen in a photo, is still an unknown commodity.
- Although Michelle Borth is gone from the show as of the last episode, she still appeared in the main titles for this one. Catherine and her quest to find the missing Najib are referred to by McGarrett.
- Samantha attends the bogus Momi Academy in Kahala.
- $100 million in $100 bills would weigh about 2,200 pounds.
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