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."