Hawaii Five-0: Season 5, Episode 9 Review (S05E09) -- Ke Koho Mamao Aku (Longshot)

(S05E09) Ke Koho Mamao Aku (Longshot)
RATING: 2 stars
Original air date: 12/12/14

The thing I liked the most about this show was the change of scenery to the Big Island.

It began on the slopes of Mauna Loa where a Mars Rover-like device was cruising around the mountain while a guy in an astronaut suit tended to it in the midst of the barren Mars-like landscape. (This is connected to a real research project.) A cowboy, Keone Maka (Christopher Huffine) suddenly showed up and dropped dead, beginning the crime of the week.

With complications including cowboys, horses and a rodeo, much of the crime of the week was interesting, more so to me than the original show's low-key ninth-season rodeo episode Requiem for a Saddle Bronc Rider.

Investigating Maka's death, Five-0 talk to Al Mokuau (Ron Yuan), boss of the local rodeo, who suggests that Maka had trouble with Luke Pakele (Cody Easterbrook), a bull rider who was doping animals with steroids. They track down Pakele, who lives in the bizarre Kalapana Gardens where houses are constructed on a lava flow field. He is the red herring suspect who says that he was "pissed" at getting fired from the rodeo, but did not kill Maka. Maka's place has been trashed, and a vial of what turns out to be horse blood is found in a milk carton in the refrigerator. Maka made numerous phone calls to Jeff Harrison (Frank Ashmore), a trainer connected with Urban Myth, a Kentucky Derby horse which mysteriously disappeared on the mainland some time ago. Chin determines that Harrison is on the island, but when Danno and Kono arrive at his motel, Harrison collapses, foaming at the mouth. At the motel, Max and local medical examiner Sanjeet Dhawan (Ravi Patel) find a bottle which contains traces of liquid nicotine. The blood sample from Maka's fridge is also analyzed and determined to belong to Urban Myth. Five-0 figures that after the horse was stolen, it was taken to a stud farm on the island, and one of the 3 stud farms there happens to belong to Mokuau, the rodeo boss. Through Mokuau's financials, McGarrett discovers that a backhoe is to be delivered to a property Mokuau owns near Waimea, suggesting that he intends to kill the race horse and bury it. Quickly arriving at this location, Mokuau is put out of action and the case is closed.

For this episode, McGarrett stayed in Honolulu for meetings with the Governor and was on screen just a bit less than 20% of the time. Jerry was nowhere to be seen (yay!). Max, Danno and Grover flew to the Big Island, with Kono showing up soon after. Chin Ho held down the fort in the Five-0 offices.

On the negative side, the show was far too Max-centric. The show's resident geek became overly conflicted mere seconds after he stepped off the helicopter because of his previous relationship with Dhawan, who he had encountered at medical school. At one point, Max raised his voice louder than I ever recall hearing on the show, including the expression "son of a bitch" directed at Dhawan. All the fuss turned out to be over "a woman," specifically some Star Trek action figure of Yeoman Janice Rand the two had fought over years before. Seriously, there were times in this show when I felt like punching Max in the face.

Also on the annoying side was the cleverness and speed with which certain elements of the crime of the week were figured out, like how the blood from the refrigerator was tied in to the missing race horse and how the poison was determined to be liquid nicotine, a component of e-cigarettes -- not to mention the speed with which Five-0 got to Urban Myth's execution location.

And then there were issues with the kidnapped horse. How could Mokuau provide stud services with Urban Myth? Surely he would have to tell people the horse's name and background if he were to demand high fees! The fact that, as he said, "no one cared" about the horse and the fact that its owners had likely received an insurance payout didn't negate the fact that it was stolen.

The show's sub-plot had McGarrett cutting down a Christmas tree in a protected forest on Oahu because it was too expensive for Danno to buy one. This was dumb, aside from giving the two an excuse to bicker about something. But so was the related sub-plot of Officer Pua Kai (Shawn Thomsen) investigating this "crime." It seemed odd that the show's resident comic-relief cop would be the one chosen out of HPD's 2,000-plus officers to deal with this, especially considering his previous relationship with members of Five-0.

I'm sure McGarrett and Danno could get a smart lawyer to easily overturn the resulting $1200 citation, because Pua's "photo lineup" was highly prejudiced against the two of them. All of the guys in the lineup except McGarrett and Danno were tough-looking Hawaiian dudes. The woman who picked them out didn't have to work too hard, describing them as "two haoles."

More likely, though, they will use the usual "immunity and means" nonsense, but on what grounds? Maybe McGarrett could plead temporary insanity, saying "I had to cut the tree down because that freaking Danno was driving me crazy."

I thought it pretty funny at the end when Kamekona was leading the singing of "Silent Night" they cut the song similar to the way the Five-O theme is chopped during the show's end credits. To make up for this, there was an expansive arrangement of the Five-O theme near the beginning when Max, Grover and Danno arrived at the crime scene by helicopter.

MORE TRIVIA:

• Though the name of the astronaut at the beginning of the episode was not mentioned, his name in the end credits, Richard Royce, was the same as the character in the original show's 10th season episode Shake Hands With The Man On The Moon, about a washed-up astronaut involved with a sleazy real estate developer.
• Dhawan's license plate on his Volkswagen "Thing" (same car as Max was seen driving in the season two premiere episode) was SET4STN, i.e., "set for stun."
• Harrison's Los Angeles phone number is 323-555-0155. He used his credit card numbered 6159 4202 0073 2189 to buy a ticket to Honolulu on Palm West Airlines. The ticket cost $426.00. The "Awww" reconciliation between Harrison and his horse near the end of the show was strictly out of movies like My Friend Flicka and probably very appealing to the Facebook cat video crowd.
• Danno got to drive in this episode, and very, very fast, as they transported the poisoned Harrison to the hospital.
• When Five-0 arrives at Mokuau's Nakata Ranch, why do they have the sirens blaring? Surely there is no easier way to get a suspect to run (though Mokuau was not there).
• Watch at the very end of the show for Santa and his sleigh crossing the moon.

Hawaii Five-0: Season 5, Episode 8 Review (S05E08) -- Ka Hana Malū (Inside Job)

(S05E08) Ka Hana Malū (Inside Job)
RATING: 1-1/2 stars
Original air date: 11/21/14

After a couple of above-average episodes, this show brought the reboot crashing down to its usual bad reality TV level.

McGarrett's Aunt Deb (Carol Burnett) returned, still cancer-stricken but now undergoing chemotherapy, which presumably accounted for the ghastly makeup the actress had when we first saw her. She's come to Hawaii to get married to Leonard Cassano (Frank Valli of The Four Seasons), a guy with near-perfect teeth who she met in a cancer support group. He has stage four leukemia.

Cassano is a mob lawyer who may have tampered with evidence to get one of his clients off. Jerry, a.k.a. "Mr. Conspiracy," is assigned to investigate this, as if the Supercomputer is broken. When McGarrett, thinking of his aunt, confronts Cassano, her husband-to-be gives McGarrett an unopened package containing this evidence -- which Cassano has brought with him, expecting problems with McGarrett. McGarrett, again thinking of his aunt, decides rather than turning this over to the the district attorney in Cassano's jurisdiction of New York, he instead will put this package on ice, anticipating that Leonard will soon kick the bucket.

Aunt Deb seems to have been brought back to the show to give her nephew an opportunity to reflect on his life. She tells him that although she was a flop as far as her singing career and having children was concerned, she has finally found love with Leonard. McGarrett flashes back to Catherine in Afghanistan, who seems now to have been gone a really long time, coming to grips with the fact that she is really, really not coming back. He tells Deb that Catherine found her friend's kid but now wants to stay and protect him and the other kids in the village from the Taliban (really). McGarrett says "She's found her place."

The crime of the week had the usual crazy plot machinations.

At the beginning of the show, David Kealoha, an investment banker and financial advisor who was under investigation by the SEC for inappropriate use of his clients' funds, is found brutally shotgunned to death along with his wife Kate.

The major suspects are his two sons Jake (Nathan Kress) and Travis (Charlie Carver), aged 17 and 21 respectively, and Kealoha's sleazy lawyer Eugene Goodman (John Billingsley). Travis becomes very suspicious when he flees from a polygraph examination and is trailed in a really obvious way reminiscent of the old Five-O by Chin and Kono to a motel where he meets with Patti Gable (Josie Davis), the MILFish mother of his best friend Tai who, up to this point, has been Travis's alibi for the time period when his parents were killed. Patti, described by McGarrett as a "hot mess" and Grover as "Mrs. Robinson," isn't a murderer and neither is Travis, however -- they were just "doing it" and were thinking of fessing up to Travis's parents soon.

Back to the Five-0 office where the Supercomputer can finally figure out that Goodman had power of attorney over his clients' funds and an old bank account of Kate Kealoha shows that $100,000 was paid to Greg Barber, a known hit man, to knock off the two parents.

But the computer doesn't seem to show exactly who paid out this money, because it later turns out it was not Goodman, but Kate. At Barber's place, after he is knocked off, Grover suddenly finds a laptop which has e-mails from Kate to Barber with pictures of their house. Grover can figure this all out in a matter of seconds. How Kate knew about or contacted the hitman is a big mystery, especially since he was an "old client of Goodman" and seemingly had no connection to her at all. The bottom line, according to Five-0, is: Kate arranged to have Barber kill both her and her husband so the boys could collect a $20 million double indemnity life insurance policy. I am not making this up! Talk about stupid writing!

(This is not as stupid as the revelation during the big final scene about how Five-0 did a blood test on the Kealoha's dog Riley to determine that it was out of commission while the murder was going on, having been doped up by some of Kate's sleeping pills.)

Considering there was no reason for Kate to have both herself and her husband killed, inasmuch as the insurance policy was just on David, a more plausible explanation, which the writer did not consider, would be she hired the hitman to just kill David, but when Barber found the two of them together, he decided to knock her off as well because she was a witness who could finger him for the crime.

But, overriding this logical explanation, this still leaves the question: Why would she, in effect, use the hitman to commit suicide? According to Patti, Kate did try to commit suicide previously when she found out about her husband's financial dealings, but there is a big difference between swallowing some pills and having someone blast you with a shotgun.

Bad, bad, bad!!

MORE TRIVIA:

• In addition to the usual "twittering" about Catherine on fan forums after her appearance in this show's flashback, and not exclusively by people who have no idea who she is, the following incredible comment was posted on IMDB: "At the wedding as his aunt and husband were saying their vows, there was a close up on Steve and he was crying..or at least looked very sad. It's been awhile since I saw his character that way. I'm kinda hoping it's the first sign of his PTSD that I heard rumoured on the way. Or it could be also that he's happy for his aunt? He'd be more smiling than crying though,no? Or really missing Catherine and the wedding is reminding him of a love, lost? What do you think? I'm hoping it's the PTSD starting." A reality show, indeed.
• There is a major goof: The two sons' drivers licenses were issued on the days they were born: 08/05/94 and 03/10/97. The license number of Travis, the older brother, is 492H202. He is 5'11", weighs 175 lb and has brown eyes and hair. His license expires 08/05/16. Jake's driver's license is number 343T849. He is 5'10", weighs 165 lb and also has brown hair and eyes. It expires 3/10/19. Their home address is 705 Alinalina Place, Honolulu 96825. (There seems to be more than 1" difference in the height of the two boys in the show.)
• When the dog runs in front of the car at the beginning of the show, it looks very phony, since it is likely a front-projected backdrop.
• The Kealoha boys' doper friend Tai Gable is played by Wilke Itzin, son of Gregory Itzin, who played President Logan on season four of "24," a show that Five-0 executive producer Peter Lenkov also executive produced.
• Hitman Barber, played by an uncredited actor, lives on Oahu, and is tracked down by Five-0 who engage in the usual firefight. But after McGarrett drops through the skylight in Barber's apartment, he has no choice but to shoot him, thus again eliminating a prime suspect, at least for a few minutes.
• The sound mix for this show was terrible in a few spots, and not because the dialogue was overpowered by the music, as is the usual complaint.
• When Chin and Kono are tailing Travis to the motel, they are actually photographed in a car driving down a Honolulu Street. Amazing!
• There is an interesting stunt when McGarrett runs across the top of several parked food trucks when he, Grover and Chin are pursuing Tai.
• David Kealoha worked for a company called Bordinay Investments.
• McGarrett uses the term "son of a bitch" when referring to Leonard after Jerry brings him up to date on Cassano's past.

Hawaii Five-0: Season 5, Episode 7 Review (S05E07) -- Inā Paha (If Perhaps)

S05E07. Inā Paha (If Perhaps)
RATING: 4 stars
Original air date: 11/7/14

This episode was hyped big time, because it was number one hundred. There was even a special song written for the finale of the show entitled "All For One" by John Ondrasik of Five For Fighting. I managed to avoid most of this publicity, as I have been trying to do for all the episodes this year so far.

The show had "vague similarities" to an episode of the classic series, the two-hour season nine premiere Nine Dragons, where Wo Fat kidnapped McGarrett in Hong Kong and held him prisoner, applying "behavior modification through stress" to turn McGarrett into a near-robot denouncing his country. There are further references to Wo to Woe Fat, the original series' finale, where Wo exposes prisoners to "compliance ration," some kind of gas which overcomes their "will to resist." In the current episode, Wo Fat kidnaps McGarrett and holds him captive in the basement of a dry cleaning plant which he had purchased several years ago. Wo tortures McGarrett to reveal the location of his father, who Doris, Steve's CIA spy momma, had tried to assassinate. With the help of a black female assistant Eris (Tracy Ifeachor), Wo subjects McGarrett to "behavioral engineering," including water boarding, taser-like electrical stimulation and injection of various chemicals including truth serum. The torture the new McGarrett is subjected to was very nasty twenty-first century torture.

The show began with a "previously on Five-0" of sorts, with a flashback to the beginning of the pilot episode, except McGarrett's father did not die. Instead, he was rescued by HPD led by Danny Williams. This deviation from the original script and much of what followed was obviously hallucinations McGarrett was experiencing thanks to Wo Fat's drugs. Most of it was pretty funny: Danno driving his own car, loving Hawaii and his wife, wearing an aloha shirt and using McGarrett-like interrogation techniques; Kamekona a big time convict; Chin Ho on his way to becoming chief of HPD; Grover a tourist annoyed that his golf clubs had been stolen; and Kono a champion surfer and model doing commercials for lip balm. Other people in the show who had appeared in the past included Jenna Kaye and Victor Hesse. Duke Lukela was still Duke Lukela. Jerry appeared as a babbling homeless conspiracy freak.

Sang Min also appeared once again, this time to help Five-0 take down Johnny Moreau (Gavin Rossdale), who had taken over Sang's business enterprises, including drug trafficking, prostitution and kidnapping. Sang also provided information about who could have helped Wo Fat kidnap McGarrett. This was conveniently confirmed by Adam Noshimuri, whose family had connections to the sale of the dry cleaning plant to Wo, using the alias of Anthony Shu.

Despite the major unpleasantness of the torture scenes, Alex O'Loughlin did an exceptional acting job throughout, and Scott Caan's character's reversal showed that he can play something other than his usual one-note persona.

The big reveal in this episode was that Wo Fat had been raised by Doris McGarrett after she killed Wo's mother during her assassination attempt on Wo's father years before. She continued to do this until her superiors at the CIA forced her to abandon the kid. However, all this produces some serious questions: McGarrett was born 3/10/1977 (as per a screen shot in the season one finale), so when did his mother have time to raise his "step-brother"? McGarrett's father's birth date was March 15, 1942. So Steve was born when his father was 34 years old. His mother died on April 19, 1992 when he was 15.

There was not one, but two fight sequences in the show, perhaps the most intense fights seen on the show yet. The first was McGarrett against Eris, the second McGarrett against Wo Fat. The previously mentioned song at the end accompanied a montage of "greatest scenes from the show so far." The sound mix for this episode was exceptionally good, as were the production values, though there were still a few lines which were difficult to understand. Most of the musical score was the typical noise, though there were a few nice sequences reminiscent of Lost (as were several of the scenes during McGarrett's torture).

MORE TRIVIA:

• When Five-0 arrived on the scene where McGarrett had been abducted, the Mercury Marquis owned by O'Loughlin's McGarrett (and driven by Jack Lord on the original series) was showing serious damage to the driver's side window. The car was also really dirty and dusty outside which makes me think this is not the original car, despite it having the same license plate.
• When Five-0 brought Sang Min to Moreau's place, why didn't Moreau bother to check outside to see if there was some kind of setup? Sang's disappearance after he gave Moreau an envelope full of blank paper in the form of dollar bills was far too quick, as was the appearance of Kono and Chin Ho inside the building. Similarly, why didn't Wo Fat, who left the subterranean torture room, hear all the noise during the fight with Eris?
• The film showing McGarrett and his sister as kids at the beginning of the film, probably made in the late 1980s, had sound. But according to Wikipedia, "few [8mm] cameras were made that could record the sound directly onto the film."
• Sang Min refers to Kono as "Spicy"; Danno calls Hesse "Bono."
• Questions about Wo's escape from the Colorado Supermax prison in the last episode of last season remained unanswered. The scar on Wo's face seemed less serious than previously; perhaps he had been visiting the Honolulu Dermabrasion Clinic.
• Incredulously, some fan sites had people thinking that this was the last episode of the series or that it had been cancelled!
• You have to wonder about the title of this episode -- does it mean "Whatever"?

Hawaii Five-0: Season 5, Episode 6 Review (S05E06) -- Ho'omā'ike (Unmasked)

S05E06. Ho'omā'ike (Unmasked)
RATING: 2 stars
Original air date: 10/31/14

Once again the show starts with "Previously on Five-O," taking up about a minute of time, so I guess this is the new norm. This time the flashback was to the story arc of Jerry's investigation of Vintage Books as a front for counterfeiting (or as cartermatt.com said for the third time, "counter-fitting.").

At the end of last week's show, Jerry was kidnapped by Thomas Farrow, the owner of the bookstore. At the beginning of this show, Farrow is at his house and dressed in a leather apron for some inexplicable reason, maybe to scare the tied-up Jerry into thinking he is going to dismember bodies like someone from a horror movie. Farrow chooses a dumb time to deal with Jerry and Helms (his tall bald associate, identified in the credits of earlier shows as Browser, who is also tied up), since there are tons of kids outside on the streets for Hallowe'en. To scare the crap out of Jerry, Farrow has seemingly beaten up Helms, who he says didn't do his job keeping tabs on Jerry very well, and seemingly kills him with a gun. But, as we learn later, Helms really isn't dead -- it's all a scam. In addition to all his other talents, Farrow must be a special effects guy (using squibs to simulate where he shoots Helms) and a makeup artist (corn syrup and food coloring for the blood where he has beaten him).

When Jerry returns home after he is released by Farrow, he discovers that everything has been removed from his basement by the bookstore owner, and I mean EVERYTHING: all of Jerry's research, files, his computer and so forth. You have to wonder -- how does Jerry get back into the swing of things investigating for the rest of the show? Near the end of the episode, Jerry is seen with a small computer, almost like a netbook -- is that sufficient?

McGarrett tries to get a warrant to search Farrow's place because of Jerry's illegal investigation, calling on his deputy prosecutor pal Ellie Clayton from the previous episode. When she doesn't have any luck because of a lack of recent, and more importantly, reliable information, McGarrett does the usual heavy-handed Five-0 number arriving at Farrow's place and threatening him. This totally flops, as does any later attempt to find evidence that can be used to arrest him.

It eventually turns out Farrow is not who he seems to be. Instead of a guy who knows a lot about books based on the experience with Kamekona and the rare book, he is actually a British operative named Major William Corrigan. When his true identity is uncovered by Five-0, he is bitter about the fact that he was court martialled (or "court marshalled," as Entertainment Weekly reported) for killing a family of a mother and four children while serving in Iraq about 10 years before. Jerry gets information that Helms is Lieutenant Colin Helms, who not only is very much alive, but has ties to a "radical IRA splinter group," and the counterfeit money is destined for this group.

McGarrett and Danno go after the money when Jerry tells them about "a freighter anchored four miles offshore" (in other words, not in international waters -- 13.8 miles) which is registered in Belfast. The money is not on the freighter right now, though. It is on what looks more like a large tug. There are very vague similarities here to the original show's tenth season show Up the Rebels, where explosives for Ireland were being transported on a large tug all the way from Hawaii to Ireland. But I think most apologists for the new show would suggest that this tug is just going to the freighter. Whatever. Seemingly under the auspices of the Coast Guard, McGarrett and Danno fly to this tug by helicopter and then rappel down to its decks. The bad guys, including Helms, just sit there until the Five-0 duo have both landed on the decks, rather than shoot at them when they are descending. DUH!!

The crime of the week had some potential, but was let down by the usual mediocre writing. Two men have been murdered, one with his tongue removed, the second with his eyes gouged out. The geeky Max recognizes this "plot" as one from a 1984 horror flick called Jack Knife. There is one more victim to come who will lose an ear. Five-0 manages to make a connection between the first two victims -- Henry Chung and Mark Lerner -- with Kamekona's implausible help; he remembers them from school thirty years before as being members of a bullying gang ("equal opportunity haters"). The third member of the gang was Brad Weiss (David DeLuise). After Weiss loses his ear but survives, he tells Five-0 the killer is Sam Cole, who they horribly abused. Cole is suspected for taking revenge on the three bullies, but when Five-0 gets to his house, it turns out that his son Aaron is the killer, inspired by the cult film. Just in case we can't get this connection, Kono finds reference on a Facebook-like social network page on Aaron's computer at his house with a picture of an invitation to a screening of Jack Knife organized by Collector Maniacs memorabilia shop two weeks before. Aaron also attempted to kill his father, who Chin finds tied up outside. Aaron denounces his father as weak and responsible for the fact that he -- Aaron -- was destined never to get anywhere in life.

FAR TOO MUCH TRIVIA:

• There are plenty of questions raised about the Jerry counterfeiting arc. For example, why did Jerry take an interest in the bookstore and its fishy activities in the first place? As per the first show of the season, the store's owner, Thomas Farrow, had bought a bunch of antique books from a library in Europe, and the pages from these books, which had a 75% cotton/25% linen content, could be "melted down" and used to make counterfeit money. But why would Jerry take an interest in this? Even though Jerry is someone obsessed by conspiracies, there is a limit as to how many conspiracies and bad things in the world a person can be interested in. This counterfeiting business hardly seems like a "big deal" in the world of conspiracy freaks. This leads to further questions like where did they melt down the money, how did they convert it to sheets and print all the currency? At the end of the show, we see the finished product and there is a LOT of cash. This would require printing plates, a printing press, ink, and other things like chemicals. You have to wonder why Five-0 couldn't have looked into who was ordering supplies of ink and so forth that could be used to print this money, or where a press could be located that was capable of making so much cash.
• Over and above this is the fact that Jerry is an all-purpose geek who can figure out anything that the team cannot, like the stereotypical Braniac type in movies who can sit down at any computer and type away at 120 words per minute and find out just about anything. The Jerry character, along with the Supercomputer, totally deprives the show of any "process" such as we used to see on the old show.
• Danno has a few good zingers during the show (as does Grover who acts as the "voice of reason" with regard to Max's stupid Hallowe'en costume, among other things). But Danno's comment that the IRA "died with the last Duran Duran album" doesn't make sense. First, Duran Duran isn't an Irish band, they are English. They had abums in the 1980s and 1990s and all the way up to 2010. Second, the IRA ended in 1969 according to Wikipedia, then changed to the Provisional IRA (which is what most people would still call "the IRA"). It had a cease fire in 1997 and really ended in 2005.
• The term "serial killer," connected to the crime of the week in the PR for the show, traditionally refers to someone who kills THREE people, not two, though this is a matter of some dispute among FBI bigshots, who will accept two as sufficient to qualify.
• According to Jerry, Farrow came to Hawaii in 2012, but his driver's license was issued 06/14/2008. The license number is 836H136, Farrow's date of birth is 10/07/82, he is 5'11" and weighs 185 pounds. The license expires on 10/07/2018. His home address is 2210 Purcell Street, Honolulu 96816.
• When the nerdy employee of the memorabilia shop prints out 1,000 e-mail addresses of people who were invited to see Jack Knife at a screening two weeks before Hallowe'en (the exact location of this is not revealed), it takes him only 56 seconds from the time he leaves Kono and Grover until he returns. This employee refers to a Dolby Digital 5.1 laser disc of the film Dune, something which actually exists.
• Why does McGarrett get all moralistic about the fact that when Farrow was in Iraq, he killed members of a family which resulted in Farrow's court-martial? Is this consistent with McGarrett's personality? Terrible things like this happen in war, and there doesn't seem to be any evidence that Farrow targeted these people intentionally, but was responding to what he thought was an imminent attack on him and his men. McGarrett then accuses Farrow of killing Helms, which we know did not happen, because he is still alive in Hawaii! This leads to a bitter rant by Farrow, saying "the cowards are the politicians who send us into battle and second-guess every decision we make."
• Weiss gets a call on his cel phone from HPD to warn him that the ear-chopping killer may be visiting him soon, but he neglects to take the call. The voice mail shows HPD's phone number as 808-555-0155. But why would HPD know Weiss's cel phone number?
• Jerry comes up with the quote "As far as extractions go, he's [Farrow's] right up there with Hans and Simon Gruber," two villains from Die Hard movies.
• Ellie says part of the difficulty in getting a warrant against Farrow is the fact that the bookstore owner had "donated money to half of the judges on the island" and "worked on the governor's campaign" (despite the fact that he was only in Hawaii for two years?).
• Football great Eric Dickerson makes a cameo appearance near the end of the show for no logical reason, other than allowing McGarrett to snap a selfie with him to piss off Danno. This reminded me of the Ed Sullivan show (another CBS show) where Sullivan would get famous people to stand up in the audience and take a bow. McGarrett tells Dickerson that "A.P." came close to breaking his record, meaning Adrian Peterson. The selfie which McGarrett takes has him holding the phone in portrait mode, whereas the resulting picture is in landscape mode.
• When McGarrett and Danno look in a barrel where all the counterfeit money is stored at the end of the show, didn't anyone think that when they opened the barrel, maybe -- SURPRISE! -- Danno's supposedly dead brother would appear? I would have thought that the sight of the barrel would have at least produced some kind of traumatic reaction in Danno.
• Chin Ho's classic Mustang, which I thought his personal car, has police lights on the front.
• Corrigan's service number with the British Special Forces was 171-4321-394.
• Ellie, who is seen fishing with McGarrett at the end of the show, no doubt leading to speculation about romance between the two, tells him that her father used to take her to Australia, specifically Port Phillip Bay, where she learned her fishing skills.
• Whereas the previous show's photography had several very GREEN moments, this show seemed to emphasize the color BLUE more.
• When Five-0 stops Farrow from leaving the country by plane with his store all boxed up, they once again have no connection to the funny money. Farrow protests he is being harassed, but McGarrett says they are holding him for failure to fill out "Form 7501," which authorizes the exportation of commercial goods. This is a Homeland Security document, but it is for the importation of commercial goods.

Hawaii Five-0: Season 5, Episode 5 Review (S05E05) -- Ho’oilina (Legacy)

S05E05. Ho’oilina (Legacy)
RATING: 3-1/2 stars
Original air date: 10/24/14

Yes! A good show, and not only that, the music was good -- both worthy of 3-1/2 out of four stars. The writer for this show, Eric Guggenheim, had written a couple of mediocre episodes -- McGarrett and his ninja momma in the elevator shaft (S03E23) and Catherine in Afghanistan (S04E21), but he also wrote the Carol Burnett show (S04E09), which was above average.

As the show begins, McGarrett goes to visit his father's grave on the anniversary of his murder, September 20th (also the date of the pilot episode of both the old and new shows). He encounters Ellie Clayton (Australian actress Mirrah Foulkes), who is also paying her respects. Her father Paul was murdered years before in the Aces High bar which he owned, and the senior McGarrett (William Sadler), who is seen in numerous flashbacks, was not only in charge of investigating, but took the orphaned Ellie under his wing. Ellie is now a deputy prosecutor in Honolulu.

No one was ever charged with the murder of Ellie's father, so McGarrett reopens the cold case. Five-0 revisits people who were suspects at the time and digs up evidence. Paul Clayton's body is exhumed to get fragments of bullets which are examined by Max and Mindy Shaw as the music takes a dive with some crappy pop tune heard for a few seconds. A homeless guy named Ned Burrows (Nick Searcy) leads them to the stolen cashbox from the bar which he recovered in a dumpster and later hid in a building behind Leonard's Bakery (a Honolulu landmark). Amazingly, the box is still there. Kono looks up a card found in the cashbox and references it in the "HPD Symbol Images Database." (Really?) It turns out to be for membership in an underground gaming room called the Paradise Den where Paul Clayton was involved in gambling and where he pissed off some heavy duty dudes who hung out there, including members of SVL, a Samoan street gang.

O'Loughlin's McGarrett has a Jack Lord-like brainstorm when he realizes that Paul Clayton's murder was not because of a robbery, but a hit which was made to look like a robbery.

Jordan Lewis (J.R. Lemon), a meth dealer who argued with Clayton before his murder, is sprung from Halawa and wired. He is sent to rattle the last suspect on the list, Jimmy Sykes (Stephen Bauer, recently known for the TV series Ray Donovan and Tony Montana's pal Manny Ribera in the 1983 remake of Scarface). This unorthodox move backfires, because Sykes shoots Lewis in the chest after Lewis flies off the handle recalling how his junkie mother was in debt to Sykes years before. Fortunately, Five-0 is nearby in the Takahamo Cleaning and Restoration van and arrives quickly on the scene.

Danno did not appear in the show at all. McGarrett was seen talking to him on the phone at one point, wondering "how is the family holding up," referring to the traumatic events of the previous episode. Grover and Kono showed up briefly to help with the investigation, getting some unexpected insight from Kamekona. The team was seen helping Jerry move out of his house near the beginning of the show, and I didn't mind this scene so much, because Chin Ho gave Jerry serious shit over his illegal bugging of the bookstore. However, at the very end of the show, Jerry was confronted and captured by the store's owner, Thomas Farrow (Greg Ellis). Seriously -- I really don't care where this story arc is going, as mentioned previously!

Despite the episode's minor issues, Alex O'Loughlin did a very good acting job. So did Daniel Dae Kim. Aside from the obnoxious "cute" underscore during the move at Jerry's and the above-mentioned outburst during the exhumation, the music was also very good.

Next week, however, is the annual Hallowe'en exercise which in earlier years has not turned out well. We can hope...

MORE TRIVIA:

• Ellie was a keener in school. The recovered cash box from her father's bar contains a report card of hers where she got "A"s in all of her subjects. Her address at the time was 3964 Mokae Avenue, Honolulu 96816. Her ID was 299492, the school district was 399, and her school, Momi Academy, was number 127.
• In a flashback to Christmas 15 years before when McGarrett's father visits Ellie as his partner Chin Ho waits outside, the HPD squad car is number 467. The current McGarrett is working on the Mercury Marquis seen on the original Five-O at the end of the show. The license number is FCS 154, the actual license number of the car.
• When Chin Ho is driving in his classic Mustang, he appears to be actually on an Oahu street, not with the usual projected backgrounds. (Or the projected background technology has improved majorly.)
• cartermatt.com just can't get it right: "Bad news about Jerry – turns out not only is he right about the counter-fitting, but the counter-fitters have found out about him and have taken him."
• The main credits did not kick in until over 8 minutes into the show.

Hawaii Five-0: Season 5, Episode 4 Review (S05E04) -- Ka No’eau (The Painter)

S05E04. Ka No’eau (The Painter)
RATING: 1-1/2 stars
Original air date: 10/17/14

Lots of people fawned over this episode, and Peter Lenkov, co-writer with Ken Solarz, almost broke his arm patting himself on the back because of what he thought of it. (Twitter: "Ending of 504, tonight's ep, is one of the best we've ever done. Career highlight for sure.")

I didn't find it that great.

The crime of the week was outlandish. Hit man Joseph Stegner (operating under the name Gordon Bristol, played by Lee Tergesen) comes to Hawaii, and, despite the fact he is kind of mild-mannered-looking, manages to overpower five law enforcement officers who detain him because he was carrying some heavy artillery in his suitcase.

Stegner escapes from the cops and is eventually tracked down by Five-0 using the usual security camera/facial recognition techniques. He is just about to be arrested when he is shot dead by another hit man, Nick Mercer (Timothy V. Murphy). Both of them work for the same Detroit mob family, the Bagosas. This has Five-0 scratching their heads since they can't understand why one hit man would take out another in this fashion.

Mercer, also known as Valentine (because "he has no heart," according to the mainland's Special Agent Chapman (Alysia Reiner)) was wounded by McGarrett when he shot Stegner. He commandeers an ambulance, leading to a chase by McGarrett and Grover in the Chevy Silverado, which performs in a rather gutless manner (not good P.R. for General Motors).

When finally captured, Mercer proves to be a hitman with a heart -- literally. He received a heart transplant after a car crash a while back, and suddenly had a major attitude change, finding himself unable to kill people as per orders from Albert Bagosa (Carmen Argenziano), boss of the crime family. Feeling unusually magnanimous towards his intended victims, Mercer set up an elaborate witness protection-like scheme which just happens to be located on the west side of Molokai (how convenient). All of the people he was paid to knock off are living in a LOST-like compound, far away from the prying eyes of the world. Stegner was coming to Hawaii to kill these people.

Word of Mercer's second near-death experience reaches his employer Bagosa, who arrives by jet on Molokai to the tune of "Taking Care of Business." He is accompanied by several well-armed thugs and all of them intend to wipe out the people in the secret compound. But Five-0 (and Mercer) beat them to this location and mess up their plans big time with the silly help of Jerry providing electronic "diversions." Mercer even stops Bagosa from killing McGarrett. But because Mercer was really a bad guy, he is taken away at the end of the show. Maybe he will get some kind of special consideration, despite the fact that he supposedly killed at least 100 people?

The big deal about this show getting Lenkov and others excited was the resolution of the business with Marco Reyes threatening Danno and his daughter over $18.5 million which Danno's brother Matt stole from him. The episode began with yet another "previously on Five-0," taking up a minute of time. I don't know why they have done this for the last two shows, but rarely did it otherwise, except for premiere episodes after the previous season's cliffhanger. Did someone finally figure out that if the show is in syndication, it might be difficult to follow these soap opera-like plots?

If the show hadn't already reached its quotient of preposterousness with the admittedly original crime of the week, I might have been a bit more sympathetic towards the conclusion of this Danno arc. But once again we have Jerry and Kamekona providing comic relief, Danno getting emotional, flapping his hands and talking to people while not looking at them, and Chin Ho finally getting $5.5 million to give Danno from his brother-in-law Gabriel (tsk tsk) in exchange for getting him moved to a better prison (Gabe isn't doing well in Halawa because he is tagged as being related to the cop Chin). This extra money is needed because, for some reason, Matt's money which Danno dug up last week was $5.5 million short of the $18.5 million Reyes had requested.

Danno and McGarrett fly off to Colombia to meet up with Reyes in some favela shithole (I thought they were going to just meet him on Oahu). They are taking the $18.5 million with them which, if it was in $100 bills, would weigh well over 400 pounds. Does their "immunity and means" extend to them, two white guys, arriving at a Colombian airport carrying this cash in huge bags? The reaction of the customs people and cops would probably be considerably greater than that of the law enforcement types who detained Stegner at the beginning of this show.

Reyes takes the money and "rolls out the barrel" which supposedly contains Matt's body (though we never actually see this). Predictably, this freaks Danno out and after he and McGarrett leave, there is the off-screen sound of fighting and gunshots when McGarrett (and Danno?) supposedly overpowers the guards (also heavily armed) who admitted them into Reyes' presence. Danno returns and puts a bullet into Reyes head ... in other words, committing murder (tsk tsk).

There is plenty of speculation as to where the show is heading now (and don't forget Chin has extra money floating around, since McGarrett and Danno will take the $18.5 million back, I am sure). Does this mean Scott Caan will be leaving the show or his character will be having yet more emotional turmoil in the future? Stay tuned...

MORE TRIVIA:

• Five-0 should get to the rifle range for some practice. It's the second show in a row where they can't shoot out the tires of an escaping vehicle, instead blasting the rear window.
• The closed captioning for this show was pretty funny (I was watching some of it on Global TV in Canada). Important dialogue was not translated, but things like "engine roaring" were.
• Jerry and Kamekona are both now seen surveilling Vintage Books outside the store, kind of a dumb move since both of them are now known to the store owners, Jerry because of his previous surveillance, and Kamekona because he sold the store a book from Jerry last week.
• Danno refers to Reyes as a "son of a bitch."
• Prior to Mercer hijacking the ambulance, he threatens its driver and his assistant after they offer to drive him to the Straub Clinic, a real Honolulu hospital.
• OK production values, good stunt work with "O'Loughlin" running between cars and up on to the hood of a cop car, music was nothing special, the episode was directed by Peter Weller.

Hawaii Five-0: Season 5, Episode 3 Review (S05E03) -- Kanalu Hope Loa (The Last Break)

S05E03. Kanalu Hope Loa (The Last Break)
RATING: 2 stars
Original air date: 10/10/14

After an unusual (for this show) "previously on Five-0" segment rehashing threats to Danno regarding his brother, things begin with a trio of women robbing sightseers on a Waikiki Trolley tour bus. This idea is vaguely similar to the old show's seventh season episode A Woman's Work Is With A Gun. There three women desperately in need of money who met during "rap sessions" at the Oahu Women's Center became partners in crime. The threesome in the current episode, on the other hand, rob to support their surfing habit. All of them are disguised as skimpily-dressed tourist types wearing bikinis and attracting far too much attention from some of the men on the bus. (No one on the street seems to pay them much attention, though, when the women are yelling at people during the robbery and flashing guns and the bus has been pulled over to the side of the road.)

One of the passengers on the bus is Nathan Wagner, "president of a major I.T. security firm specializing in encryption, network administration and some type of high-tech firewall." He resists being robbed, and ends up with a bullet in his chest, falling over the double-decker bus's railing on its top level to the street below. It turns out that the three women have competition, because Vanessa Hansen (Erica Piccininni), sitting beside Wagner, had a gun pointed at him and was trying to get his co-operation in breaking into a bank using his cel phone (which one of the bikinied trio steals). After Five-0 arrives on the scene, Hansen pretends to be Wagner's wife Monica, who actually died of cancer five months before.

The old show's episode had some unrealistic forensic work by Che Fong, who blew up pictures to reveal information, and this show has Charlie Fong giving Kono equally far-fetched help, analyzing surf wax and sand in this wax left on the back of Wagner's shirt sleeve during his struggle with one of the robbers. (If you look carefully at this scene, it's debatable whether Keilani Makua (Sumire), the robber who shoots him, actually touches him in this area.) Charlie tells Kono this sand is found in the area of Diamond Head, so Kono is delegated to go undercover at that location since she is supposedly the least visible cop on the team. (But what about the business where she was charged with corruption a few years ago -- didn't this make the papers?).

Kono resists wearing some miniscule swim suit picked out for her by Grover. She soon arrives beside the three women who are waiting off Diamond Head for a wave. Keilani tells her to get lost. After they realize she is a cop (so much for Kono's big cover), Kono engages in a paddleboard pursuit and takes down Lea Nohoa (Allie Gonino) as the Five-O theme is heard in the background in the first of two appearances in the show. Back in the blue-lit room, Lea tells Kono to go to hell and asks for a lawyer.

Meanwhile, the ex-convict Hansen is busy tracking down the trio and trashing their hangout, trying to find Wagner's cel phone, just before Five-0 arrives on the scene. Though Lea is still uncooperative, Five-0 managed to find out about this place through her bellhop cousin who was the one who marked the clothes of intended victims at the Kahala Resort & Spa with some kind of invisible ink. The girls have fled to a "safe house" owned by one of their grandparents ("tutu") in Waimanalo, and Five-0 finds out about this place by telling Lea (who finally cracks) that her pals may be in serious danger. How Hansen finds out about this location (or even the previous one) is never revealed, but she arrives there and shoots Keilani in the stomach. Five-0 shows up, arrests Hansen, and takes the two girls into custody. Keilani survives and this part of the show ends with the threesome on their way to the clink as Kono has a ridiculous narration worthy of Jack Webb in Dragnet. All that is missing is some stern music in the background.

Since the show at this point has seven minutes to go, we continue with the shaggy dog story of Jerry surveilling a bookstore where he suspects the owner of counterfeiting, or as the supposedly serious TV site of cartermatt.com described it, "counter fitting." Jerry has already tried to convince McGarrett that his suspicions are serious, but left the Five-0 office in a pouty mood when rebuffed. Later he makes up with "McGruff," who enlisted the help of the Secret Service in giving the bookstore a clean bill of health. Jerry gets the help of Kamekona with a motivational speech about his "brilliant engineer" father who -- like Pollard in the previous episode -- was paid to shut up about job-related complaints. Kamekona, who describes himself as a "visual" rather than a literary kind of guy, sells a rare book containing a hidden microphone planted by Jerry to the store. I really can't figure out where this plot arc is going, and Jerry's Max-like humorous take on dealing with serious issues is really starting to put him in the category of a character that causes you to cringe every time he appears, like some people experienced with Catherine (who I liked) and Lori (who I did not).

The show bookends with Danno trying to track down either his brother or the $18 million his brother stole. The idea here is to shut up the smirking Marco Reyes, who keeps harassing Danno, even though Danno persistently punches him in the stomach every time he sees him. Using a postcard his brother Matt sent him before he disappeared overseas, Danno figures out that the money is buried between palm trees with an island in the background in a scene which I and many others found highly reminiscent of the finale of the classic comedy-to-end-all-comedies, It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. Danno digs up the money and the show ends.

MORE TRIVIA:

• The sound mix in this show was very bad at a couple of points, so incomprehensible with the ordinary stereo version of the show that I had downloaded that I then got a Dolby Digital version which was not much better. Near the beginning, the bad sound didn't help the explanation that new medical examiner Mindy Shaw gave of how she figured out Wagner was the trio's intended victim because of something called "ALS." She passed a flashlight-like device over Wagner's shirt, revealing an "X" on the shirt in conjunction with some UV glasses. Is this procedure and its name something that the general public is expected to know? According to WWW pages dealing with this acronym, there are hundreds of possibilities: Advanced Light Source, Ambient Light Sensor, Alternate Light Source, Advanced Launch System, Active Laser Seeker, Advanced Laser System, American Light-wave System, etc. Some of Kono's discussion about the surfing wax with Charlie Fong was also near-impossible to understand.
• What's with the Five-0 team's attitude to Shaw taking on the case without Max's help, and McGarrett addressing her as "kid"? You have to ask if McGarrett thinks he is like her father or something. I didn't find this scene particularly sexist, but awkwardly written.
• The song in the background as Keilani, dressed like Paris Hilton, is shown walking down the street at the beginning of the show is Let's Go by Tiësto. I thought it was pretty funny how her high heels kept her from coming down the bus's stairs quickly after the shooting.
• Hansen's criminal record shows her address as 1432 N. Camac St., Philadelphia 19123.
• The phone number for the Secret Service agent Eric Keane (Zurich Solomon) that McGarrett talks to is 202-555-0143.
• The second instance of the Five-O theme is after the takedown of Hansen and the two women at the end of the show.
• Waikiki Trolley is a real company. A look at their tour buses on their WWW page suggests that the top of their buses normally has some kind of metal frame over the seats (unlike on the show), perhaps where a cover can be put if it is raining.
• Grover has a good suggestion that the team try to track down the location of the tourists' stolen cel phones via their GPSs, but this is seemingly never followed up.
• Classic Five-O star Al Harrington appears briefly as his recurring character Mamo, who has a Surf Rental business. He uses the expression "kanaka maoli" in referring to the three surfing robbers, meaning "native Hawaiians."
• Hansen, pretending to be Wagner's wife, goes to the morgue and, according to Grover, takes Wagner's thumbprint. But does this mean she physically cut it off his thumb or just took a fingerprint? A closeup of the thumb reveals it is covered with something blue which could be ink (it does not look what you would expect), but what good would a mere fingerprint do her if she was trying to match it up with the thumbprint reader on Wagner's yet unrecovered phone?
• Here is Kono's big speech at the end. Talk about bad writing: "For them, life as they knew it was simple. It was waking up every day with a desire to catch a better wave than the day before. The adrenaline you feel paddling out, knowing that at any time you could get the ride of your life. And then there's the rush of walking on water. Only gods do that. Everything they did was to preserve that life. To surf is to get up every day with a desire to battle something greater than yourself. And those girls just wanted to ride that wave as long as they could. And now their endless summer is over."

Hawaii Five-0: Season 5, Episode 2 Review (S05E02) -- Ka Makuakāne (Family Man)

S05E02. Ka Makuakāne (Family Man)
RATING: 3 stars
Original air date: 10/3/14

This episode featured a kidnapping, perhaps the most popular crime category on the show (see review of Powa, S01E17, where I noted that of the first 17 episodes of the reboot, 9 were about kidnapping). The show recycled some familiar tropes, including Kono as confessor to kids, Danno as a concerned, sympathetic father and the usual red herring plot.

This time, Sophie Larkin, the daughter of a US SEAL lieutenant in Afghanistan, is kidnapped during a performance at her school (the bogus Punaloa Academy). Suspicion is this has something to do with compromising the operation her father is on, but Vice Admiral Graham Rhodes (Patrick St. Esprit), previously seen in S04E16, denies this is the case.

It turns out that Maggie Porter (Ocean Riley), another girl who was hanging out with Sophie prior to their show, was the intended victim of the kidnapper. Her parents Eric (William Mapother, formerly seen on Lost) and Caroline (Natasha Henstridge) are wealthy manufacturers of children's products, including car seats.

One of their car seats was defective and caused the death of a two-year-old girl whose father, Jason Hollier (Brian White) conspired with his late wife's brother and sometime criminal Michael Wiley, paroled six months before, to commit the kidnapping. Wiley used the access card of a substitute teacher, Ben Sutor, to get in to the school, though there is no logic to this, since the school was open for parents attending the show. There is also no indication why Wiley chose Sutor to get the card. Sutor is later found murdered by Five-0. This all seems a rather grand scheme, considering Hollier is an amateur criminal and Wiley is not a particularly sophisticated one either.

When the Porters get a phone call saying their daughter has been kidnapped, despite the creepy-voiced caller telling them not to call the police, they immediately do, and McGarrett and Danno arrive without trying to downplay their presence. Later when the kidnapper phones with more instructions, he knows that the police are involved.

The Porters co-operate with the kidnapper(s). Caroline takes a ransom of $1.6 million to a location on the Manana Trail, but it turns out that Hollier isn't interested in the money. Instead, he wants to kill Caroline because of the anguish his daughter's death put him through. Caroline covered up evidence that the car seats were defective and, unknown to her husband (this is hard to believe, considering the legal paperwork that was generated), paid off Alan Pollard (Gareth Williams), the chief engineer at their company, to avoid a trial. Pollard designed the car seat and after it was in production he realized that it was likely to cause injury and told the Pollards. It is interesting that the amount of ransom Hollier asked for was $1.6 million, perhaps because Pollard, wracked with guilt, had recently offered to give Hollier all the money he had received, which was this amount. Hollier had refused it.

The show began and ended with scenes involving Marco Reyes, the sinister character played by Anthony Ruivivar, now identified as "a prominent realtor in Colombia," who wants Danno to help him get $18.5 million that Danno's brother Matt stole from him. Reyes says that Matt told him that Danno knows where this money is, which Danno does not.

This show was a major improvement over the previous week's. The child actors were very good. I didn't much like Jerry Ortega's comic efforts helping the Five-0 team, taking time away from Kono (Grace Park looked VERY good, incidentally). The photography was above average. The music had a few palatable moments, but also a couple of offensive pounding cues.

MORE TRIVIA:

• According to teacher Ben Sutor's driver's license which was numbered 843R342, his date of birth was 04/17/79, he was 6'1" and he weighed 210 pounds.
• There is product promotion for Skype, sponsor Microsoft's instant messaging client.
• When Kono delivers a laptop to the Porters' house via the fictional Palm Shipping and Delivery service, the package shows that their address is 3169 Halenal, Honolulu 96815. On the package there is what looks like a phone number -- 5553272347 -- and a tracking number: 28839029-4992-WTS.
• Jerry is seen in a silly scene using an EMF (Electromagnetic Field) reader which monitors "telekinetic activity ... ghosts." This is in his mother's house because she has moved out to Maui to be closer to her family. Jerry refers to his mother as "Moneypenny" and later describes McGarrett as "Captain America." The scary bald-headed guy from last week's premiere episode, connected with the bookstore Jerry was surveilling because of suspicions of counterfeiting, is seen outside the house keeping an eye on him.
• The crash that killed Hollier's daughter was on Route 93 which, according to Wikipedia, "is a major east–west highway on the island of Oahu which begins as Interstate H-1 terminates in Kapolei and ends at Kaena Point on the extreme northwest end of Oahu, just past Makaha. It is part of the Farrington Highway. As H1 ends near Kapolei and Ko Olina, it continues as a four lane, and then two lane highway up into the Waianae and Makaha area, the 'Leeward Coast,' of west Oahu."

Fan mail via Twitter

@gazergirl2: @fiveohomepage since you totally hate the reboot of #H50 I would suggest you reframe [sic] from watching and giving ur biased unwanted opinion and stick to the original version! I am an avid fan of the original #H50 have all 11 seasons (not 12th) but love the @PLenkov reboot! If you don't like don't watch! Simple!!! Keep your opinions as outdated as they are to yourself!

My reply (like her comment, across three messages, mine is slightly expanded):

What B.S. -- "you totally hate reboot of H50." I've said good things about new show, bad things about old show. Do your homework! I'll watch new H50 & say whatever I want. Ever heard of "so bad it's good" (which the reboot is not). I don't understand your paranoia. [Maybe she thinks the show will be cancelled because of my opinions? Hasn't worked so far after four years -- LOL.] And you don't have to brown-nosingly [Twitter-]CC Lenkov [by adding @ sign to his name], I'm sure he has other things on his mind. He knows where to find me if he wants to.

Hawaii Five-0: Season 5, Episode 1 Review (S05E01) -- A'ohe kahi e pe'e ai (Nowhere to Hide)

S05E01. A'ohe kahi e pe'e ai (Nowhere to Hide).
RATING: 1-1/2 stars
Original air date: 9/26/14

The crime of the week in this show, "torn from today's headlines," had a drone attacking people on Diamond Head and on Waikiki, the latter vaguely reminiscent of the actions of the "terrorist group" in the original show's seventh season premiere The Young Assassins.

Despite the drone spraying bullets all over people at the beach, the number of people who were actually killed (7) or wounded (at least 19) seemed pretty small. One could say the same for later in the show when it was pursuing Danno's car which was acting as as bait, giving new meaning to the expression "couldn't hit the broad side of a barn door."

The drone was stolen from Venpax, a company located in Hauʻula on Oahu (how convenient for Five-0's investigation) which was creating drones under some kind of top-secret national security contract. The evil-voiced guy who stole and then programmed and operated the drone was Jonathan Redmond (Ned Vaughn), a former employee of the company, who had been fired some time before for stealing company hardware. After the recent attacks, he stupidly contacts Five-0 by phone, saying "America needs to be reminded what it's like to be terrorized," seemingly oblivious to the fact that his voice might have been on file with the company after he had made several threatening calls to them after his dismissal (which it indeed was). DUH!

Turns out that Redmond was working for the SRS, a Russian terrorist organization made up of former Soviet intelligence agents who were were trying to spirit one Lawrence Turner out of the country. The Edward Snowden-like Turner (and remember -- the real Snowden had a serious connection to Hawaii) was a systems analyst working for a local military contractor who the CIA discovered had used his security clearance to download thousands of classified documents. The drone attacks were a smoke screen for SRS types to land a plane on a downtown Honolulu street (I'm not making this up) right in front of Turner's place and provide the whistleblower with valet service to get out of the country. They were foiled by the Five-0 team, including conspiracy freak Jerry Ortega, who maneuvered another drone to fly into the plane as it attempted to take off, resulting in it crashing and exploding on the same street.

There were plenty of questions about this evil-looking black drone-like/stealth/Short TakeOff and Landing plane. First, are there any streets in downtown Honolulu which are straight enough to attempt these manoeuvres? Second, despite the fact that at the beginning of the show we saw a scene of a street with abandoned cars, there were no cars at all on the street where the plane landed and tried to take off. And finally, where did the plane come from? It's almost 4500 miles from Oahu to Russia. Did the plane come from an aircraft carrier somewhere? If so, why didn't local radar detect it? Or did the bad guys pick it up at the local Sinister Rent-a-Plane?

Relative to what else was going on in the show, I actually didn't mind the drone and related business, despite the general stupidity of things like the plane's landing and attempted take off. There was the usual clever deduction by Kono and an exciting shoot-up and takedown of the bad guys.

But the rest of the show was REALLY awful. When you get to 36 and a half minutes of the show with the crime of the week wrapped up and there are 7 and a half minutes left, you know there is a big problem.

Things were already bad at the beginning of the show, which had McGarrett and Danno taking part in an therapy session with a Governor-sanctioned psychologist which went on for almost four and a half minutes. It played like a "Previously on Hawaii Five-0..." segment where the two of them talked about how they got together, how they (don't) get along, and so forth.

As if that wasn't bad enough, we had a continuation of the Kono/Adam soap opera, which bookended the major story, starting with them acting lovey-dovey in a beach shower and ending with Kono thinking about becoming Adam's wife and concerned about their safety (so you know something horrible will be happening to them soon).

Then there was some baloney with Chin Ho visiting Gabriel, his brother-in-law in Halawa. You may remember Gabriel from S04E13 which, by the way, I had just watched a day before, confirming that this was one of the best Five-0 shows ever (also co-written by Lenkov and Solarz, the authors of this mess under discussion). When captured way back then, gang member-turned drug kingpin Gabriel offered Chin a bribe of $25 million to "walk away." Chin now wants Gabriel to sign an affidavit to the effect that he never received these funds, since HPD Internal Affairs still has a bug up their ass, as evidenced by some guy surveilling Chin at the beginning of the show as he is on his way to work in a shiny classic red Mustang, license number JGO 217. But you have to ask -- why would Chin have taken the money, unless it was just to stop him from killing Gabriel?

And then there are a couple of guys connected with Vintage Books, a store that Jerry was surveilling at the beginning of the show. They look at a picture of Jerry on one of their cel phones, saying words to the effect that if they can't figure out who he is, "this guy has be taken care of."

To top it off, the show closes with Danno finding some guy in his house who knew Danno's fugitive brother Matt. This guy, whose name is Marco Reyes (Anthony Ruivivar), says that the Matt "took something" that he wants Danno to help him get back. No doubt Gracie will be in peril again...

Puh-leeze, puhleeze!

Seriously, I almost fast-forwarded through the last 7 and a half minutes...

MORE TRIVIA:

• McGarrett's explanation for why they hired Kono during the opening session: "We needed a female and she fit the bill."
• Jonathan Redmond's driver's license (number 593A175) reveals his address to be 3127 Pawlonia Street, Wakpahu, HI 96797. His date of birth is 11/13/1986, the license is to expire on 03/22/2015. His stats: 5'10", 180 lb., brown hair, brown eyes. The number on the employee card for Venpax, his former employer, is 79331965. His Social Security number as per his HPD criminal record is 977-43-8744.
• The local company that the SRS's money ($500,000 to Redmond alone) was funnelled through was Mahahehi Textile at 94-103 Truman Street, Honolulu 96802.
• Could all the people on the beaches have really been evacuated into their hotel rooms, houses, and so forth in two hours? What was to stop the drone from killing people in some place other than the tourist traps?
• The color scheme of Oahu was far too green at the beginning of the show.
• Vintage Books is located very close to Tea at 1024 on 1024 Nuuanu Ave. in Honolulu. While talking to McGarrett and Danno while doing his surveillance of this store, the owner of which he suspects of counterfeiting, Jerry refers to McGarrett as "McGruff," the crime fighting dog.
• Inputting the GPS coordinates for Redmond's controlling location that Jerry takes off the drone into Google Maps (21.288824 N, 157.852856 W) produces a location which is in the ocean off Ala Moana Park.
• The original Five-O theme was heard briefly as the team arrived by helicopter at the Diamond Head shooting site at the beginning of the show.

Return from the Dead

It's been a very long time since I was last here. I originally started this blog because the discussion forum on my site was off line. Most of the stuff I am posting here will be on my own site, but feel free to either comment here or in the discussion forum at the link in the previous sentence.