RATING: 3 stars
Original air date: 1/2/15
This episode was interesting, primarily because of guest star William Forsythe as ex-HPD cop, former friend of McGarrett’s father and now private investigator Harry Brown. As well, the music approached above average because the resident composers tried some new ideas in addition to the usual stock effects like the pizzicato string-like plink-plunk near the beginning in the scene with Jerry and brainiac kid Ani (Youngaisa Wily, son of Kamekona). Hopefully these new musical ideas will not become new clichés! The production values like the photography were well above average throughout.
Forsythe did a great job playing the world-weary detective from Lāna‘i looking for Brooke Waiakea (Delys Kanemura Recca), the daughter of a friend. She had come to Oahu and joined the Manoa Hula Company, a front for an escort agency, and was found murdered after witnessing the killing of one of her clients. Featuring the point-of-view of Brown through a film noir style narration was "something completely different" for the show and it worked well, though it did call attention to itself, as did the opening sequence which was in reverse. Calling attention to itself is not necessarily a bad thing, though you have to wonder why the show waited until its fifth season to get more creative in this fashion.
Unfortunately, the plot of the crime of the week was a veritable fish market with red herrings falling all over each other. By the end of the show, when the "bad guy" was revealed to be Kiana Thompson (Andrea Roth), the boss of the escort agency, I had pretty well lost interest. But then I watched the show again and realized that plot logic once again collapsed near the end. (Bear with me, this is complicated.)
An early suspect in Brooke’s murder was David Waring (Trevor Kuhn), a loser who was involved with multiple lawsuits over failed real estate deals, who was himself murdered as per the above. Waring was engaged to Erica Young (Grace Phipps), whose father, Robert (Doug Savant), was also a client of the escort agency, even though he said he only hired the dancers for a corporate event. Somehow Young found out about Waring’s connection to the agency’s girls. But how did this happen? Did Thompson tell him, maybe because Waring was in the news regarding his engagement to Erica? What was in this for Thompson?
After Brooke witnessed Young murdering Waring, who was pissed that his daughter would marry such a “scumbag,” Brooke took a cab to her house and then called Thompson, who phoned Young to tell him that Brooke had seen what happened (she was hiding in the bathroom at Waring’s place). After Thompson told Young where Brooke was, he went to Brooke's house and killed her, then disposed of her body with his friend Richard Sheridan (Eric Roberts, in a near-cameo role) who “owed him a favor.” Why would Thompson have called Young to tell him all this?
Danno makes some remark that Brooke was "not worth losing two clients over in one night." But she had already "lost" one client -- Waring, who was dead!
There were sub-plots with the Kono/Adam relationship (very brief) and Jerry trying to get a job with the I.T. company Inotech. Both of these were stupid and just took time from the quality aspects of the show. At least there was no "ohana" finale -- a definite plus!
In another useless sequence, McGarrett was seen sparring in a boxing ring with Ellie, his prosecutor friend from episodes five and six. This led to speculation on some fan forums about the usual “where is this relationship going,” though if people listened carefully, they would have heard that Ellie was trying to set McGarrett up on a date with her yet-unseen friend Jess who is “drop-dead gorgeous,” supports the Second Amendment and her favorite movie is The Guns of Navarone, a 1961 war film starring Gregory Peck. McGarrett’s response to Ellie's matchmaking was “I’m just taking my time.”
Speaking of romance, there was a nice scene between Danno and assistant medical examiner Mindy Shaw. She was freaked out by Brooke’s murder, which brought back bad memories from her college years of a friend who disappeared. Whether this is going to lead anywhere is a good question.
MORE TRIVIA:
- The song heard at the end during the flashback of Brooke surfing was Possibility Days by Counting Crows.
- Waring’s drivers license, number 772A043, shows his address as 4399 Dawes Road, Honolulu 96816. His date of birth (also date the license was issued) was 07/18/80. He was 6’1”, weighed 175 pounds and had brown hair and eyes. His license expires on 07/18/20.
- The stereo mix was particularly bad in parts of the show like the dialogue in the scene between Jerry and Ani … but crystal clear when I managed to get a copy of the show which had Dolby Digital sound. Turning on the closed-captions is strongly recommended if you can’t understand … though this particular show’s problem was not the usual complaint about how the music is drowning out the talking. In some of the scene where Chin and Kono were grilling Brooke's roommate Annie Reese (Carlie Casey) there was NO MUSIC AT ALL (very effective).
- In an unusual move for this show, Richard Sheridan demanded to talk to his lawyer when in the blue-lit room.
- According to Michael Timothy, Harry Brown’s car is a 1965 Ford Thunderbird hardtop.
- There were plenty of bad words in this show: “He was really pissed”; “You don’t want to piss this guy off”; “Get the hell out of here”; “Son of a bitch”; “This crazy bastard assaulted me”; “Give me five minutes with this son of a bitch.”
- The opening shot of this episode is similar to the opening shot of the pilot episode of the original series (thanks to Jason from Dallas for pointing this out).
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