Saturday, February 7, 2015

Hawaii Five-0: Season 5, Episode 14 Review (S05E14) -- Powehiwehi (Blackout)

(S05E14) Powehiwehi (Blackout)
RATING: 2-1/2 stars

Original air date: 02/06/15

This episode brought back Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent Jeff Morrison (Greg Grunberg) as well as gun runner JC Dekker (Xzibit, in his third Five-0 appearance). Morrison has sprung Dekker from Halawa with a fabricated back story involving legal technicalities to help him track down Roman Zednick, a Bulgarian involved in everything "from narcotic trafficking and K&R [kidnapping and ransom] to assassination and piracy." Zednick showed up on Oahu a few days ago, wanting to buy guns.

To meet Zednick, Dekker has to contact him through Sidney Ames (David Cordell), a "concierge for criminals," the local "go-to guy" if you are interested in "weapons, muscle, safe house[s] and body disposal." Strangely, Five-0 has never heard of Ames. After his meeting with Zednick doesn't go well, Dekker is taken away by Ames to be knocked off, but he ends up turning the tables. Despite being shot in the ensuing confrontation and being very badly beaten, Dekker kills Ames and manages to get back to Halawa where he attempts to climb the fence and is shot yet again, which is where the story begins. (Why doesn't he just drive up to the front door of the prison?)

Suffering from a bad case of amnesia because his head hit a rock during the fight with Ames, so much so that he can't even recognize Morrison, Dekker doesn't have any idea what has happened to him. Five-0 manages to find out how Dekker met Zednick after talking to Odell Martin (Michael Imperioli), a former Eastern US low-level crime figure who was into "bookmaking, cigarettes and weed" and now runs the Moku Cuts barber shop. After they locate the place where the fight with Dekker and Ames took place thanks to some chemical analysis, Chin Ho manages to get info from Ames' cel phone which leads them to a house at 2121 Kahaleo Avenue where Zednick is supposedly staying. Five-0 typically knocks off three of the five people at the house, thus eliminating potential suspects/witnesses. Zednick manages to escape after threatening Morrison and his family, and McGarrett finds a woman named Danielle (Ana Alexander) wounded in a room.

Danielle gets transported to the same hospital as Dekker as he is slowly figuring out what has happened to him. Included in this is a flashback to when he was at Ames' house where he was told by Danielle that -- surprise! -- she was Roman. (The guy acting as Roman's decoy was really named Emil Hossa (Tudor Munteanu).) This results in a very serious situation as Kono, assigned to be Dekker's nurse, has to deal with Danielle/Roman suddenly becoming Super Villain and taking over their wing of the hospital by cutting the power to the elevator, among other things. (How D/R figures out how to do this boggles the mind.) At one point, Kono takes a hypodermic needle which looks like it is usually used to inoculate horses, draws off some of her blood and dribbles it on the floor to throw D/R off their track as they try to escape. D/R's pursuit of Kono and Dekker climaxes with a tremendous fight between Kono and D/R which ends with Kono taking a pair of defibrillators and applying them to D/R's chest, throwing her across the room and seemingly killing her. Thanks to a brainstorm by McGarrett back in the Five-0 offices that Danielle is Roman, Five-0 arrives shortly after.

While the crime of the week was interesting (as least on a second viewing) though formulaic, the rest of the show was not.

After the main titles, the show began with Kono dithering over her relationship with Adam, telling him his company is a "business that was born out of corruption." In a scene full of banal dialogue, Adam assures her that he is trying to make everything legitimate, but she isn't convinced. I was all ready to rant about this, but I already ranted about it in May of 2013 in my review of S03E23 and virtually nothing has changed! After having the crap beaten out of her by Danielle/Roman, Kono shows up at Adam's office at the end of the show and asks to become his wife. Now I am a sucker for scenes where Kono looks sad, like when she is gazing at pictures of her and Adam on her phone, but enough is enough and hopefully this will be an end to this soap opera sub-plot which is really sooooo wrong (see my rant)!

The show ended with Jerry (described by Dekker as Five-0's "mascot") driving Adam's Ferrari and singing Dean Martin’s “Ain’t That A Kick In The Head?" At least this sequence was actually filmed outdoors instead of in front of the usual process screen. Allowing Jerry to drive the car was Adam's "payment" for Jerry having coerced some friend at Leonard's Bakery to whip up a batch of macadamia nut malasadas which are usually only produced once a year. This was Adam's peace offering for Kono after their "argument" earlier on. This finale, which went on for far too long, was just plain stupid.

Danno was not in this show, having gone back to New Jersey to deal with some old case of his which came up on appeal. Neither was Max, even at the scene where Ames had been shot dead by Dekker.

MORE TRIVIA:

  • After Dekker arrives at the hospital, McGarrett suggests that in order to keep Ramon from getting off the island, they should "kill Dekker" by planting false news reports. Grover says "We need to clear this wing out as well. Even though there's security up here, there's a lot of foot traffic. The less people that see Dekker, the better." Kono then says, "There's another prison ward at King's Medical. We can have the guards transfer EVERYONE there." Morrison replies, "I can get a guy down here to handle security." Kono's word "everyone" is hardly audible. I thought she actually said "him," meaning Dekker, which would make a lot more sense. It would have avoided Danielle/Roman running into Dekker there later.
  • When Five-0 confronts Hossa in the Foster Botanical Garden, not only is Morrison -- who Hossa threatened earlier -- present and standing up, quite obvious for Hossa to see (even though he does not), but they seriously endanger all the people in the garden who they order to lie on the ground as they surround Hossa with guns drawn. Hossa is carrying a grenade, which he does not get a chance to use, fortunately.
  • Kono says that the last time they dealt with Dekker "he seemed like a changed man." Like Sang Min, Dekker is definitely Five-0's pal now, dispensing romantic advise to Kono concerning her and Adam -- nonsense like "Your boyfriend sounds like a decent guy," "I'm guessing you're the problem; you're the one who can't commit. What's that all about?" and "What you're doin', it ain't cool. If you can't commit by now [after being in a relationship for three years], you need to be fair to the guy and cut him loose. Don't be stringin' him along."
  • The license number of the car Ames uses to chauffeur Dekker around (sometimes in the trunk), and which Dekker is seen driving to the Halawa fence at the beginning of the show, is PIV 290.
  • The location of Martin's barber shop is a real barber shop, Island Style Cuts at 843 Kapahulu Avenue. Unlike in the Google maps view, it has a barber pole on the wall outside. In the background as McGarrett and Morrison are walking there, you can see the Kapahulu Vista Apartments. Despite the fact that McGarrett and Morrison are seen driving in a location which suggests that this barber shop is out in the sticks, it is really not.
  • I thought Morrison was a mainlander, but it doesn't look like this is the case. After he surprises him at Ames' place, Hossa threatens to kill Morrison's family, who are at 2756 Kalawao St. This street number in the closed captions is 2476, as opposed to 2756 as heard in dialogue by Hossa and Grover.
  • Jerry tells Kono and Dekker that "I have a little man crush on the guy [Adam]."
  • Considering Dekker seems to be bleeding pretty badly during his and Kono's attempt to escape from Danielle, why isn't there any of Dekker's blood on the floor of the laundry room where he hides?
  • The book Jerry is seen reading -- The Secret History of Freemasonry by Paul Naudon -- is a real book.
  • Bad words: "He's a slippery son of a bitch" (Grover referring to Ames).

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