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"?
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