by Mr. Mike » Sat Apr 15, 2017 2:06 pm
Review: http://fiveohomepage.com/2010-log7.htm#22
by ringfire211 » Wed Apr 19, 2017 5:15 pm
So I checked out this episode on cbs.com and thought it was pretty good. Nice to see old veteran Hal Holbrook (if only for a brief moment) on screen again and any episode that has a tie-in to Pearl Harbor is an automatic plus in my book. I also enjoyed the bank robbing soldiers storyline, even if the climax was overkill (as per the usual on this show). I even enjoyed the subplot with Kono's boyfriend discovering the bones at the construction site - I was expecting something worse. Of course the best part was the "subdued" Danno. None of his usual hand waving and cringy blabbering! Proof that if he disappeared no one would miss him one bit. The corny Kono romance is to be expected on this show so there's not much one can do about it. Wasn't Kono's boyfriend some kind of gangster though? If so why is he so conscientious when he discovers the bone at the site? Does he really care about the sacredness of Hawaii (if he thinks it was a heiau site) or that criminals be brought to justice (if it's a murder victim)? Seems to me like he was probably involved in much worse things. But then why would Kono ever even be with this guy??? Never would have happened on the old show. Oh well....
P.S. I was surprised that Hal Holbrook was just clumped together with the other guest stars instead of being listed as "special guest star" or "and Hal Holbrook" after the other guests are listed. He used to be a pretty big name on the big screen!
by todd » Sat May 06, 2017 2:59 am
I mostly agree with the above (and Mike's review, as well).
Action-packed episode, relatively little time-wasting, and good stunts/effects.
Even the Adam subplot wasn't bad (though I agree the sappy lines between Kono and Adam were lame).
My one major issue with this episode was that it didn't really make logical sense. The first two robberies netted less than $30,000, and the third was likely to net a final $17k. So we were dealing with about $45,000 needed TOTAL. If the three guys wanted to save their dead buddy's wife's house that badly, they couldn't have come up with $45k between the three of them? That's hard to believe, especially given that they were working in what should have been fairly lucrative positions (security detail contractor in Afghanistan).
This would have made a lot more sense if the money involve was bigger -- like $450,000 instead of $45,000.
I just had a really hard time believing that these guys would have committed such major crimes (plus been willing to shoot at police officers) simply to raise a sum like $45k.
While I appreciate villains who aren't completely evil (these guys were committing crimes to save the house of their fallen comrade), the brutal fight at the end between McGarrett and the lead bad guy seemed like it was a confrontation between McGarrett and a supervillain. It just didn't fit.
by ringfire211 » Sat May 06, 2017 10:53 pm
Todd, you make good points. Committing major robberies and firing at officers just to save a house for the wife of their fallen comrade did seem far-fetched, the more I think about it. Unless they were really driven by their anger against the U.S. and the system and authority figures for vilifying their actions back in Afghanistan.
by todd » Sun May 07, 2017 10:38 am
I didn't even mind the main plot point of these guys being willing to do anything to save the house of their fallen comrade. The narrative presented by the episode was that these guys felt screwed by the government AND were fiercely loyal to their dead partner, so presumably they felt the government owed their dead friend that money.
But the amount of money involved was what bugged me. They were committing some really, really serious crimes to raise a paltry $45,000.
Surely three guys who had just worked a lucrative government security contract could have TOGETHER come up with $45,000, right?
If the amount of money they needed was much larger, I would have had much less of a problem with this major plot point.
Even Chin made light of the surprisingly small amount of money involved, saying, "Except they didn't get rich. The entire net from both robberies was less than $30,000."
by Mr. Mike » Sun May 07, 2017 12:44 pm
In the third season of Bosch which I binged-watched on Friday, there was this group of "contractors" from Afghanistan who came back to the States, and they had amassed a HUGE cache of cash which they shipped back to the States in a container (I forget the exact details of where they got this money, I think it was from an Afghan warlord or something). I agree that robbing these banks for peanuts on Five-Zero was kind of dumb, but then maybe they had no idea how much money they could expect to get from these places.