Hawaii Five-0: Season 5, Episode 19 Review (S05E19) -- Kahania (Close Shave)

(S05E19) Kahania (Close Shave)
RATING: 3 stars

Original air date: 03/13/15

This episode was not bad, falling into the category of "how could it be worse than the one(s) that preceded it?" (both of which were major stinkers).

Unfortunately, there was a very stupid sub-plot of Jerry getting mistaken for a home invader robbing and attacking divorced women. The show began with Jerry getting picked out of an HPD lineup by one of the victims with "beyond a reasonable doubt" certainty.

Chin, Grover and Kono did the investigative work trying to get Jerry sprung from becoming what Jerry called "the next Hurricane Carter," referring to the boxer who spent almost 20 years in prison for a crime he did not commit.

It turned out that three of the invader's victims all used the same law firm (Kaio and Reed), so it didn't take much effort to track down the culprit who worked there. The guy turned out to be a big Samoan-looking dude with long hair, but the bigness and hair were where the resemblance to Jerry ended.

The crime of the week (or, more specifically, big action of the week) happened in and around the barber shop of Odell Martin (Michael Imperioli reappearing after only 5 episodes). Much of the acting in this part of the show was very good.

McGarrett was getting a shave at some early hour of the morning, like around 6 a.m. -- probably the first time O'Loughlin's McGarrett has appeared clean-shaven on the show since it began, if I recall correctly. This was a new barber shop because it ends up looking like Swiss cheese after a bunch of Armenian gangsters shoot it up. (The previous location in S05E14 is a local landmark).

These bad guys are after Eran (Steven Krueger), a young guy who flees inside. Eran, who has been shot in the knee, says he was working at his job at the Hoapili Bakery on Palolo Avenue (bogus business, real street) and witnessed these Armenian dudes executing some guy.

After the gangsters, led by Ari Bailan (Ivo Nandi), spray the shop with automatic weapon fire, McGarrett soon runs out of ammunition. Odell manages to lock the drop-down metal gate in a scene which is ridiculous, because as he does this, a bullet comes flying towards him in slow motion. Bullets do not really fly in slow motion, and if this was real life, Odell would be toast! After a very long time, an HPD cop eventually shows up in response to phone calls about the shooting, but he is dispatched with a bullet to the head.

Barricaded in the shop with bad guys both at the front and back doors and Odell's closed-circuit TV disabled, McGarrett is at his wits' end, only to discover Bailan cutting his way into the place with a chainsaw through the Kahanu Flower Shop next door. This leads to a very cool stunt with not one, but two guys becoming human torches as Odell and McGarrett fashion a Molotov cocktail from various barbering supplies like hair dye and after shave.

McGarrett gets Odell to drive Eran to King's Medical Center after Eran is further wounded during the final confrontation with the gangsters. But on the way there, Eran grabs a gun that McGarrett gave Odell and gets him to drive to a marina.

Meanwhile, McGarrett confronts the local Armenian gang boss, Garig Dobrian (Mark Ivanir).

Odell has already provided McGarrett with info about this guy, who relocated from Los Angeles where the trope of an Armenian gang was already used a lot on The Shield, a show which co-starred Alex O'Loughlin. Odell describes Dobrian as "ruthless. Drugs, shakedowns, insurance scams -- got his hands in all of it. He owns the Rainbow Valley Supermarket over on Palolo Avenue, but that place is just a front."

It turns out that Dobrian is Eran's father, and that he ordered his men to kill his son, who he calls "a sick boy, touched by the devil," after he found out that his son was involved in the murder of several children. Somehow Dobrian knows that McGarrett was trying to protect his son, saying "I had to make it right, but my associates failed to stop him."

The show ends with McGarrett shooting Eran dead at the docks (yet another suspect!) and then finding evidence to close this case, though you have to wonder why HPD never did this, considering how many children were seemingly killed, judging by the stack of photos McGarrett looks through, bringing to mind the line about how such events can rock even the most hardened investigators.

MORE TRIVIA:

• Danno was not in this show. McGarrett said "he'll be back in a week," without specifying where he was. In fact, the rest of Five-0, investigating Jerry's dilemma, had nothing to do with McGarrett at all during the show.
• There are three pictures shown of the home invader's victims. The first of these, Susan Lipsberg, has a large cut on her right lip in her photo, but not when she fingers Jerry in the lineup. The other two women are named Carol Oyama and Mary Washimura.
• Odell's new shop is supposedly located in the 1200 block of Queen Street (1284 precisely), which a look at Google Maps will disprove. This address is actually located quite close to the beach in Ala Moana Beach Park, though.
• McGarrett commits a major faux pas when he leaves his cel phone in his Silverado while having a shave, so he cannot call HPD after the shooting starts. As well, Odell had "a falling out with the phone company years ago," and he "[doesn't] do cell phones." If so, you have to wonder how did McGarrett contact Odell to "open up early, [and] sacrifice your morning paddle, all for my schedule."
• While moving stuff around in the shop, McGarrett finds Odell's diploma for law school, specifically Fordham University. The date he received his degree was May 10, 1972. Michael Imperioli is only 48 years old, which would probably be much younger than someone who received this degree after spending three to four years after getting a bachelors' degree at university. In other words, Imperioli's character would probably be in his mid-60's, at least! When telling McGarrett that he had had enough of studying law after he got this degree, Odell uses the expression "wela ka hao," which translates as "strike while the iron is hot."
• Grover is Mr. Potty-Mouth again, calling Chin's brother-in-law a "sick son of a bitch," and telling Tauna Lahani (Pogi Tevaga), the suspect in the home invasions, "I don't think you got the stones [balls] to run, do you?"
• Max, who is Jerry's alibi, tells Chin reluctantly the night before Jerry was arrested that the two of them were at a Magic: The Gathering tournament which features geeky trading cards. Max pocketed a pile of money at this tournament, though, according to Wikipedia, "The gambling rule is forbidden at sanctioned events and is now mostly a relic of the past, though it still sees occasional usage in friendly games."
• At the end of the show, how does McGarrett know where Odell and Eran are?
• During the first meeting Chin had with Jerry while the latter was in jail, there was actually NO MUSIC for about 50 seconds. Amazing! The sound mix for this show was unusually bad, by the way, especially when heard on a relatively low-fi system.
• When talking to Chin, Jerry makes reference to Locked Up Abroad, a National Geographic Channel reality show about people who have been arrested while travelling.

Hawaii Five-0: Season 5, Episode 18 Review (S05E18) -- Pono Kaulike (Justice For All)

(S05E18) Pono Kaulike (Justice For All)
RATING: 2 stars

Original air date: 03/06/15

This show, with a script by Lenkov and Solarz, was actually pretty good up to a point (to be discussed shortly). It had nonstop action with characters running into and out of scenes with high tension as two of Five-0 were taken out of action, plus very good villains. It should really have been a two-parter.

After a flashback to Danno knocking off "drug dealing scumbag" Marco Reyes earlier this season, it began with McGarrett tossing a football around with Nahele Huikala (Kekoa Kekumano), the troubled youth who stole his car in S05E12. As usual, fun is interrupted by a phone call, in this case Joe White acting as the Harbinger of Doom, telling McGarrett that Danno is in really big trouble.

Danno is talking to his daughter Gracie's class about police work along with Max when two Federal Marshals show up and take Danno away, arrested for murder, specifically that of Reyes. McGarrett cannot get into the Federal Detention Center to talk to Danno, who is being grilled by Ben Alexander, a slimy "State Department" type (meaning CIA), well played by Raphael Sbarge.

As if this isn't bad enough, Chin Ho is busted by Rex Coughlin from HPD Internal Affairs (Robert Knepper, giving an equally oily performance), who was on Chin's ass in S04E13. The charge is "bribery, tax evasion, criminal misconduct and conspiracy to commit murder," all relating to the money which Chin "borrowed" from his incarcerated brother-in-law Gabriel Waincroft (Christopher Sean) to help Danno pay Reyes the $18.5 million ransom for his brother Matt.

Much of this harkened back to episodes of the classic series where the theme was along the lines of "some member of Five-O is soo screwed, how will he get out of this mess?"

Joe provides a lot of the answers, thanks to a flash drive he picks up in Chinatown in a package of hard packed Carolina Menthol cigarettes. It seems that Reyes was connected to some Colombian cocaine cartel's money laundering scheme. Money invested by Wall Street bankers in the Colombian housing market ended up in this scheme, and without the flow of drugs and money continuing after a subsequent Colombian government crackdown, the U.S. economy would have been in serious trouble. Reyes was in charge of moving the coke under the watchful eye of the CIA. Reyes knew the location of $1.3 billion (3 tons) worth of coke, information about which disappeared with Reyes' murder.

Despite Alexander mentioning the word "lawyer," Danno waives extradition to Colombia and gets flown to a prison there which makes the archetypal bad Turkish one in the movie Midnight Express look like Disneyland by comparison. Danno is subjected to brutality from both the prisoners and guards at this joint far beyond that which any human can endure.

After McGarrett manages to buy time from Alexander, Joe gets further intel that the cocaine, which no one, including the Colombian government, can locate, is probably in an oil refinery owned by an old Reyes front man which has been off line for several years, but now has multiple security guards protecting it. Add to this the fact that during his encounter with Reyes, Danno's brother's body came delivered to him in an OIL DRUM (duh!).

All they have to do now is go to Colombia and locate the cocaine, which they do even though 9 hours of the 48 hour grace period granted by Alexander have already expired. Considering a direct flight to Bogota from Honolulu takes about 12 hours (that is 24 hours return), this does not give them a lot of time, especially since once arriving there they have to drive about 120 miles to the town of Ortega where they track down Frank Bama (Jimmy Buffett), Joe White's/Five-0's pal formerly in South Korea who, without any explanation whatsoever, is now in Colombia. This is the "point" at which the show goes totally stoopid, degenerating into the usual A-Team adventure that results whenever Bama is around, with the Five-0 team (McGarrett, Kono, Grover and White) flying to the oil refinery in a helicopter which looks like a "washing machine with propellers."

If this wasn't ridiculous enough, the story suddenly jumps back to Honolulu where the returned McGarrett confronts Alexander, telling him that the cocaine was destroyed by the Five-0 team and they also found Reyes' books which reveal Alexander to be seriously involved in the whole dope-smuggling business. (Presumably these "books" were of the cover-your-ass variety.) McGarrett tells Alexander he wants Danno returned to Honolulu ASAP after which he strongly recommends that Alexander retire from the intelligence agency ... and guess what ... it all comes to pass!

My notes for the show kept a running track of times during events as the show came closer to its end with comments like "how can they resolve this?" The last five minutes of the show were taken up with Danno's return and Joe White telling McGarrett that ... surprise, surprise ... the one who spilled the beans on where the cocaine that Reyes was involved with was hidden was McGarrett's goddamn mother! (This is why McGarrett seemingly got preferential treatment to Danno, despite the fact that both of them were present at Reyes' murder.) Get lost!!

Chin Ho's dilemma was resolved in a much simpler way. Gabriel, who was supposedly going to testify against the arrested Chin, was taken to a well-protected safe house. After striking a deal with Coughlin for transfer to a minimum security prison, Gabriel is about to sign the paperwork which Coughlin has drawn up, when he fatally stabs the IA cop in the eye with the pen and escapes (though to where is a good question)! No Gabriel means no case against Chin, though you would wonder why Coughlin didn't get his testimony recorded or witnessed by some other cops.

Aside from the idiotic time-compressed ending of the show, I found the total immorality of the arrested characters with respect to their charges disturbing, particularly Chin Ho. Coughlin told him bluntly, "You took drug money from a cop killer. No matter how it was used, that's still a crime." Chin's excuse was "I 'borrowed' that money to help pay for that man's [Danno's brother's] ransom." Even a teary-looking Kono got into the act, saying that Chin was "losing everything that he ever worked and fought for his entire life." Danno, on the other hand, seemed more contrite when returning home after his prison experience.

MORE TRIVIA:

• During the question and answer with Danno and Max, some smart ass student in the class asks Max "Ever find anything weird in the poop chute?," a line which surely rates as one of the all-time tasteless on this or any other TV show. Max replied, "Young man, if you're referring to the anus or the descending colon [it sounds like he says "semi-colon"], then the answer is 'Yes'."
• According to McGarrett, Max takes Gracie to "Rachel's place," meaning Danno's ex-wife, but she has been missing in action from the show for a very long time, supposedly living now in Las Vegas. Maybe Rachel and her husband Stan still maintain a place in Hawaii with full-time servants where Gracie can be taken care of. After all, who looks after her while Danno is at work?
• When Joe plugs his flash drive this into the Supercomputer in the Five-0 office, it doesn't look like it has a standard USB connector, even though we saw that in the previous scene.
• McGarrett confronts Alexander, telling him that "this man [Danno] was denied counsel ... that's a violation of his civil rights." Considering the 57 varieties of violation of civil rights committed on the show in the last four years, this is a pretty funny line.
• Joe tells McGarrett "we earned our Trident today," referring to the U.S. Navy's Special Warfare insignia, also known as a "SEAL Trident." At the end, Joe seemingly is following McGarrett at a distance because after McGarrett drops Danno off, Joe suddenly appears out of nowhere.
• The episode also harkened back to classic Five-O shows where McGarrett was jerked around by the Feds. But do U.S. Marshals really have the kind of super power seen in this episode? McGarrett, who usually flashes the "immunity and means" card, seemed reduced to a total state of impotence by their actions.
• The music was improved a bit over last week's, especially the passages which aped John Powell's classic scores for the Bourne movies like when Joe was in Chinatown.