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.
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