by Mr. Mike » Sat Jan 07, 2017 8:31 am
After making us wait three weeks since the big cliffhanger in S07E11, the title of this episode should have been "Loa O‘opa" or, in keeping with the Mexican setting, "Totalmente cojo" (totally lame).
The whole business about Chin Ho getting kidnapped and his niece Sara being turned over to him by her adoptive parents Jorge and Maria because of future danger ("Juarez is not a safe place for her -- DUH!!) was resolved by 8:40 into the show, not including a 47-second "previously on" segment and 30 seconds for the main titles. (I guess no one figures that there will be no "danger" to Sara back in Hawaii; anyone like to check S02E15? [http://fiveohomepage.com/2010-logtwo.htm#15])
And WTF was the point of having Adam show up suddenly, other than making the "ohana" more complete? The only one seen actually rescuing Chin out in the middle of nowhere was McGarrett, wearing some fancy Special Forces outfit that he no doubt picked up at the Ciudad Juárez Walmart.
What was even more ridiculous about this rescue scene was the fact that the nasty Mexican boss of the gang didn't shoot Chin Ho dead immediately as his pals were being dispatched by McGarrett, including one of them falling into a pit full of equally nasty dogs that were intended for Chin.
As far as the Crime of the Week on the rest of the show was concerned, further comments will have to wait, considering I could hardly understand what the hell was going on because the sound mix was so unbelievably bad. And I was watching the show in a version with Dolby Digital sound!
One thing I really noticed in this episode was how much grey was showing up in McGarrett's beard. Maybe he changed the setting on his stubble trimmer recently?
by Mr. Mike » Sat Jan 07, 2017 9:12 pm[More stuff]
There are some dumb (or unexplainable) things said in the show:
When Adam shows up in Mexico, he says "I couldn't just sit by and do nothing [in Hawaii]." But what does he do when he comes to Mexico? He does NOTHING!
With regard to the gang taking action to getting Chin back ...
Grover says to Kono: [W]E'RE gonna get him. And WE'RE gonna bring him back.
When he sees Adam, McGarrett says: WE need all the help we can get.
Later, Grover says: Oh, WE ready to go. Danno's out there loading the car right now. [Danno is not seen in the episode at all.]
Just before they leave, Adam says: LET'S do this.
But the only one seen taking out the bad guys is McGarrett. Earlier, McGarrett said "I'm not gonna put this on anyone else. This is on ME."
At the end of the show, Chin says, thanking Adam, "What you did for me yesterday [yes -- YESTERDAY!] coming all the way down to Mexico -- that was above and beyond ... You came down to Mexico and put yourself on the line for me. It meant a lot."
by T. Jones » Sun Jan 08, 2017 4:43 amIt is becoming increasingly more difficult to watch the show. I can suspend reason and reality a fair amount, but they have gone far past that this season. From acting like James Bond and getting knighted by the queen to taking on Mexican drug cartels with out so much as getting a scratch, it is just too much.
This latest episode seemed like eight story lines randomly crammed together: Mexican drug lords; custody of the girl; drug smuggling; murder at a car dealership; dirty bomb; Jerry's living situation; Max leaving; and a dirty bomb.
S07E12 - Updated Review
by Mr. Mike » Sun Jan 08, 2017 4:14 pm
http://fiveohomepage.com/2010-log7.htm#12
Amusing comments from IMDB
by Mr. Mike » Mon Jan 09, 2017 8:23 am
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1600194/board/thread/264862348
No one seems to understand the obvious. Sara will obviously be safer with Uncle Chin because now he can come to her rescue sooner in Hawaii. They won't have to pack at a moments notice and fly from Hawaii to Mexico in all of an hour. Also by living in Hawaii instead of Juarez they won't have to worry about Sara getting accidentally gunned down while walking down the street. Those have to be the kindest and most patient cartel members in all of Mexico. Human life actually means something to them because they spared little Sara instead of making Chin suffer more by watching her die before they killed him. It makes no difference that Chin was nowhere on the scene when all of the cartel people were killed in Hawaii; the plot for revenge still makes a lot of sense.
Namal the terrorist is purty stoopid!!
by Mr. Mike » Mon Jan 09, 2017 10:51 am
Yeah, yeah, I know the show is a comic book, I shouldn't take it too seriously, blah blah blah, but indulge me...
Namal the terrorist, whose Interpol rap sheet shows he is from Saudi Arabia, is seen taking a metal cylinder out of a metal suitcase where it is inserted into some foam. He is wearing what look like thick rubber gloves and has no other protection. He unscrews the top of this cylinder after putting it next to another cylinder which is made out of glass. He pulls the top up, exposing what look like metal rods (perhaps the "core" of what is in the metal cylinder). Namal's arms (above the rubber gloves he is wearing) and his face look quite normal. This is followed by a commercial.
Within what seem like minutes, Five-Zero shows up wearing what is presumably hazmat anti-radiation clothing. There has obviously been a time gap here between the previous scene, because Namal supposedly passed along the radioactive material to someone else (see below). Namal's arms now all look badly burned, and he shoots at Five-Zero with an automatic weapon. They enter the house. Namal goes into a room and commits suicide. When they turn his body over, his face/neck and arms are all gross-looking. (How quickly could the radiation have caused this?)
In Namal's place, Grover finds the suitcase which contained all the bad stuff (this case seems much bigger than the hole in the car from which it was extracted, if that was the case, no pun intended). The case is extremely radioactive, so Five-Zero assumes that it contains something very bad and leave the premises.
HPD hazmat guys take this case and put it in a special truck. (As this happens, there is a fade from this scene to the next one, which is an aerial shot of Honolulu. I don't recall having ever seen this kind of fade on the show before.)
At the end of the show, Grover phones McGarrett to report that "DHS [Department of Homeland Security] X-rayed that suitcase. They found it to be empty ... [T]he levels we detected at the apartment were from residual radiation." When McGarrett speculates that Namal passed the suitcase on to someone else, Grover says, "That's right. And whoever that someone else is, they now have enough of that stuff in their possession to kill half the population on this island."
I have some observations. First, Namal seems very dumb. Why would he be handling this radioactive material in such a casual way? Didn't he get good marks at bomb-making school? If he passed everything along to someone else, are they going to take precautions? Maybe they will end up horribly burned like Namal, and the bomb will not be finished and Oahu won't turn into a parking lot. (How big a bomb would it have to be to kill almost half a million people -- most of whom are no doubt concentrated in the Honolulu area, mind you.)
There are also questions about other people who may have been contaminated by the material, i.e., people at the dealership where the car was received, people connected with the car as it was transported from India (the place where it is suggested the car was manufactured), etc., etc. Of course, tracking down these people is kind of insignificant compared to the threat this material poses to the general population.
by Cehasgr » Wed Jan 11, 2017 10:53 pmThe dealership was Aloha Kia on Nimitz Hwy. Saw several KIA's during some of the scenes. The car made in India was actually a Nissan Altima.
by Guest » Mon Jan 16, 2017 5:05 pmI wonder what the writers bothered to make the connection to the killer being formerly a Weatherman, it brought nothing to the story, 99% of people today probably don't even know what the Weather Underground was (a bunch of leftie terrorists bombing in the late 60's and early 70's). By the way he seemed a bit young to be a member of a group that disappeared in the mid 70's, not to mention that his Porsche probably didn't jive with the socialist-communist manifesto of that group of terrorists! Sort of like showing up at a ISIS rally with a Jewish girlfriend
by Mr. Mike » Mon Jan 16, 2017 10:00 pmWhen they said Gabler was a "weatherman," I think they meant that he was a "weather man," the guy who gives the weather forecast on TV or the radio, or is a meteorologist. But, like you, I was saying "so what?"
Your comment about "how could he be a Weatherman [terrorist type] if he is driving a Porsche" reminded me of the "radical revolutionaries" in the original show's 12th season episode Voice of Terror where they were driving around in a Cadillac:
http://fiveohomepage.com/5-0log12.htm#267