by Mr. Mike » Sat Feb 18, 2017 4:40 am
http://fiveohomepage.com/2010-log7.htm#17
by todd » Mon Feb 27, 2017 5:46 pm
When I saw the "previously on" segment and realized the episode was going to involve Madison Gray, I thought it was going to suck, given how stupidly the first one ended.
I was pleasantly surprised to see the interesting twist of Madison turning herself in with blood on her hands.
Like you, I was irritated by the 3.5-minute Kamekona and Flippa show, complete with the Pointless Celebrity Cameo of the Week.
Happily, the entire remainder of the show dealt with the main storyline, and there was not even a cutesy scene to end the show, but rather a cliffhanger. This episode was pretty much the opposite of the awful "Chicken Salad" one preceding it, which was mostly filler and little substance.
Unfortunately, the main "gotcha" of this episode (spoiler alert) was somewhat predictable. As you noted in your review, the fact that the DNA analysis on the blood taking "24 hours" (as opposed to instantaneous as it always is on this show) was a red flag. Once the blood was identified as "probably" Alicia's due to a "partial" analysis, it didn't take a genius to figure out that it probably belonged to her daughter, who would likely be still alive.
I also agree with your assessment that the timeline was WAY off. Traveling from Hawaii to Wisconsin is a LONG ordeal, and it seemed like McGarrett and Chin made it nearly instantly. They also seemed to move throughout snowy Wisconsin very quickly, especially when it came to catching up with Alicia.
Furthermore, I once again agree that the Wisconsin prison scene was ridiculous. Rather than the serial killer committing suicide with a pen (why would he even do this?), followed by an improbable discovery of letters from the kidnapper in the serial killer's cell, why not write a better and more realistic way to have extracted the evidence out of the serial killer? Even an old-fashioned "McGarrett violates the criminal's civil rights and tortures it out of him" scene would have been superior to the way they did it here.
I was trying to find signs that the Wisconsin scenes were actually filmed in Hawaii. If they were, they did a pretty good job. I suppose they could have covered everything with fake snow. It seems hard to believe that the Five-O cast and crew would have traveled to the mainland just to film such a scene. I've noticed that the production rarely leaves Hawaii. Still, the only snow in Hawaii exists on top of the tall mountains on the big island, and this clearly wasn't filmed there.
The end cliffhanger was interesting, though I can't imagine how Madison Gray could believe that she was turning Alicia into a "murderer" by breaking to her house and encouraging her to shoot her. Hawaii is a "Castle Doctrine" state, meaning that you have the legal right to use deadly force against any home intruder, regardless of how threatening they are perceived to be. This law exists in 26 states. Of course, as you mentioned, it is possible that Alicia wasn't the shooter, but instead it was McGarrett, Sienna, or someone else.
I do wonder -- does ANYONE like the cutesy time waster scenes? I know that the producers believe they are humanizing the characters, but I don't think anyone is watching to see interpersonal drama. What they don't realize is that you can weave character depth into actual storylines, without having to insert extraneous scenes which simply waste the audience's time.
I also think that giving Kamekona a shrimp truck and making him essentially "go straight" was a mistake. Now he's a pretty boring character, whereas "Kamekona the street hustler" we saw in the early seasons was much more interesting, and would make his scenes a lot more rewarding. That's what I initially though they were going for, as he seemed to be very much in the vein of the "Izzy" character from Miami Vice. Now it also seems they are trying to add depth to Flippa, who really was never more than Kamekona's sidekick.