Hawaii Five-0: Season 5, Episode 22 Review (S05E22) -- Ho’amoano (Chasing Yesterday)

(S05E22) Ho’amoano (Chasing Yesterday)
RATING: 2 stars

Original air date: 04/24/15

The premise of this show is three around-40-year-old accountants from Cleveland -- Jake Lockhard (Pauly Shore), Mickey Dickson (Kevin Farley) and Nolan Fremont (Jaleel White) -- travel to Hawaii during spring break to try and make out with partying women, many of whom are young enough to be their daughters. The results are predictable, similar to a recent Facebook/YouTube video where some guy, as part of a "social experiment," asks women on the street if they would have sex with him. In the video most of the women are either horrified or just laugh at the guy asking (though he is younger than the three on the show). Same thing for this episode.

The three men are pretending to go to Hawaii to hunt wild boars. In order to do this, they have to transport rifles, and presumably ammuntion, on the planes. This is not particularly easy according to various TSA regulations, and whether this would even be encouraged by the wild game outfits, who would typically supply the hunters with firearms or even crossbows, is a good question. This hunting ruse does not convince one of the men's wives, who leaves him voice mail, calling him a "hairless, ball-less loser."

Speaking of questions, there are plenty of them about this show:

• When the men wake up on the morning after a day and night of wild partying with a huge hangover (comparisons with the hit movie of the same name are inevitable), they find a woman, later identified as Rebecca Oleana, dead in their bathtub. Strangely, none of them noticed this if they went to the bathroom, though presumably the ketamine (date rape drug) later determined by Max to be in their systems scrambled their brains enough to make them avoid seeing her, because not only is Oleana very dead with a bullet in her head, but the tub is full of bloody water and beer bottles.
• Why is ketamine in their systems? Someone obviously slipped this into their drinks, maybe because they were making total fools of themselves at the bars they went to, so someone wanted to get them out of the way or in trouble. Is the bullet in Rebecca's head from one of the men's rifles? Is this ever determined? (I don't think so, see below.)
• One of the accountants gave Rebecca his hotel room key card. In a huge Perry Mason-like plot twist, it is revealed (big spoiler) she was being sought by her terminally ill father who had her during an affair years ago. Rebecca was in line to get half of his $20 million fortune, but her step-brother Raymond Garvey (Todd Robert Anderson), upset that this money, all originally intended for him, would be split with her, was the one who killed her, after chasing her from the Glitter Ball Pit where she worked to the hotel where the accountants' room was located. But was this hotel located right next to the nightclub? The men are staying in room 1710 and Rebecca is shown running down the 17th floor hall with her step-brother right behind her. How could he get there so quickly? By taking another elevator to this floor? If so, how would he know which floor she was going to? Surely he was not in the same elevator as her! After the two of them go into the hotel room, there is the sound of a gunshot almost immediately, suggesting that one of the boar-hunting rifles used by the three accountants was used as the murder weapon. But then you have to ask -- how would he know that there was a weapon there, where it was located, and how could he get it loaded so quickly (presumably it was not)?
• In an unusual move, Garvey asks to be read his rights big time when in the blue-lit room, but, as usual, crumbles almost immediately when confronted with the fact that his step-sister fought back and there are likely traces of his DNA under her fingernails, saying "That money was mine." But has it been proved that he actually killed her? A smart lawyer could make mincemeat of this case if the guy had just kept his trap shut!
• How do the three men from Cleveland get Rebecca's dead body from the hotel bathtub to what they think is some out-of-the-way location where they intend to bury her (actually Diamond Head crater), later resulting in a charge of "hindering prosecution"?

Considering comedian Shore is synonymous with "lame" in certain circles, there was apprehension in some Internet forums about how he would fare on the show, but his performance wasn't bad. On the other hand, Farley overacted, channelling his late brother Chris, especially the scene where he leapt into the ball pit. White's character, the least "comedic" of the trio, was the most rational and sober.

The episode's obligatory sub-plot was dumb. Using a motorcycle, Jerry is delivering food for Kamekona when he notices a woman, later identified via a computerized Identikit as Natalie Morris, being abducted on the street. It turns out that she was grabbed by her criminal business partner named William Malo who she later shoots dead. Morris and Malo are involved in some slave-trafficking operation, where people are lured to Hawaii from other countries and then forced to pick coffee on some plantation (seriously).

Kono and Chin Ho go to the Big Island to investigate this, and deal with it without any help whatsoever from the local cops or anyone else from Five-0. They manage to take out the armed people who are guarding the operation without any problems (there are only two of them) and then drive quickly to the island's Kawaihae Harbor docks where they engage in a firefight with Morris who jumps on to a pallet of coffee being loaded on to a ship. She is shot dead, just like one of the guards at the plantation, and falls into the water. So once again, Five-0 eliminates suspects in a major crime, and this slave-trade crime was a big deal, because the woman and her partner were both wanted by the FBI and featured on "Fugitive Profiles," an "America's Most Wanted"-type TV show.

MORE TRIVIA:

• The police chief giving Jerry an award at the end of the show for his help which led to the capture of the two bad guys is the real current Honolulu police chief, Louis M. Kealoha.
• What is Kakemona referring to by "grinds," meaning the food that Jerry is delivering? Jerry is using the Siri-like Micrsoft Cortana on his cel phone to help him locate the address he has to take the food to.
• During McGarrett and Danno's investigation at one of the spring break party venues, a young woman frolicking in the pool with dozens of other people has her bikini top removed (this is only seen from the back, naturally).
• The three are thrown out of The Fix, a real Honolulu nightclub.
• The letter for Rebecca from estate attorneys Longworth and Motto concerning her parentage, dated April 10, 2015, has her address as 3340 Hukui Ave., #102, Honolulu 96826.

Hawaii Five-0: Season 5, Episode 21 Review (S05E21) -- Ua helele'i ka hoku (Fallen Star)

(S05E21) Ua helele'i ka hoku (Fallen Star)
RATING: 2 stars

Original air date: 04/10/15

While setting this show at an Elvis impersonator get-together in Honolulu was potentially a good idea, some of the script by David Wolkove almost seemed as if the writer had never seen past shows, which is odd, because Wolkove has been involved as executive story editor, story editor, the author of the story, the teleplay or the script itself for a very large number of episodes.

The show began with not one, but two “previously on Five-0” sequences which wasted just over two minutes of time. One of these was easier to understand why it was included, being a prelude to the conclusion of last week’s show where Grover told his former friend and fellow cop Clay Maxwell, suspected of spousal homicide, that he would go to Chicago and do everything he could to “lock [Maxwell’s] ass up.” The other flashback went back three and four episodes where respectively (1) there was a major jewellery heist (a show co-written by Wolkove) and (2) Chin was arrested by Internal Affairs investigator Coughlin as part of his brother-in-law Gabriel’s plan to get out of jail and Gabriel later murdered Coughlin.

You have to wonder why these two sequences appeared in the show at all, though these summaries have been more frequent this season. Are the number of people watching the show dropping, or is it just their attention spans? Or is this intended to provide continuity for the show when broadcast in syndication, assuming that it is not broadcast in the same order it is shown, or what? After all, we’re only talking about a range of five episodes, and there have been plot threads across multiple episodes in the show previously where viewers didn’t have to be reminded of what happened before in this manner.

Following this, we jumped to the Memphis Forever Tribute at the bogus Walani Hotel, where former Hawaiian rock star/now Elvis “tribute artist” Lane Collins (Peter Dobson) was singing “Burning Love” to an enthusiastic crowd before keeling over and dying shortly after. The sound mix for this part of the show was typically terrible, though probably just as well, because it covered up trivia spouted by the Elvis-costumed Jerry (a theme throughout the show, much to Danno’s annoyance) and lines by Max –- dressed as Elvis’s manager Colonel Tom Parker -- like the ridiculous “It takes serious sartorius muscles to pull off pelvic gyrations like that.”

Collins’ death was no accident, according to Max, but murder after someone put cyanide in a bottle of Cardigan’s Bourbon found in Collins’ dressing room. Suspicious minds drifted towards a suspect in Kaleo Fisher (Evan Gamble), formerly a guitarist in Collins’ popular group Freelance Riot, who has recently been abusing Collins on Twitter. When confronted at a hotel where he is singing songs like Eddie Money's "Two Tickets to Paradise" to tourists, Fisher says “Social media isn’t the best place to express yourself.” One wonders if anything should be read into this. considering the problems former star of the show Michelle Borth had in this area. Fisher did not kill Collins, but points McGarrett and Grover in the direction of someone who likely did.

In the sequence that followed, I found the treatment by McGarrett and Grover of Jane Miller (Calico Cooper), a fan so obsessed with Collins to the extent she killed him to "to protect his legacy," so "people will remember him for what he really was" very mean-spirited, unlike anything “previously seen” on the show when dealing with suspects. Handcuffed in the blue-lit room, any feelings of respect for her quickly went out the window with lines like this:

McGarrett: I'm pretty sure that Lane knew you were obsessed with him. It's just too bad that he didn't know how certifiably crazy you are.

Grover [a couple of minutes later, as he is leaving]: Whew, you're crazy.

McGarrett [later, outside the room]: So, I mean, how's the irony completely lost on this woman? The inspiration for killing her idol is the song she got the words wrong to.

Grover: Well, what'd you expect? The girl's 118 pounds of crazy.

While Miller really did kill Collins, blurting out a confession at about the halfway point of the show, she was yet another red herring in the big scheme of things because a comment by the trivia-obsessed Jerry led Danno to the man who designed Collins’ jewel-studded Elvis outfit which was just not what it should have been. This guy was found dead on the floor of his local costume supply business almost at the same time as three masked men entered the medical examiner’s office and stole Collins’ body (and his costume), holding Max at gunpoint.

Collins’ body is found close by shortly after, and one of the jewels left on his body yields a serial number on a diamond which is connected to the robbery a few episodes before, leading Five-0 to sleazy pawnshop owner and fence Barry Burns (Jon Lovitz, returning). Forced to spend his time at home with an ankle monitor restricting his movements, Burns has had visits from people inquiring about the location of the jewels from the robbery. In one of the few big laughs in the show, he tells McGarrett that if he didn’t get a deal from Five-0 to avoid jail, he’d “probably be someone’s prison bitch right now.”

His protestations to the contrary, it later turns out that Burns knew the location of the diamonds, which were in a private locker in a wine cellar, placed there by Radomir Ivanovic, the man who stole them. You will recall Radomir was gunned down by HPD at the end of the robbery episode. Burns assembled a “crew” to get these diamonds and arranged for the jewels to be sewn into the Elvis getup. These men would join the “Elvii” (Jerry’s annoying term) when they returned to the mainland and thus escape detection.

But Collins picked up the wrong outfit from the designer, leading to his involvement in this complicated plot. To make matters worse, Ivanovic’s brother Adrian (Ilia Volok), accused of committing war crimes in Bosnia, as well as extortion, kidnapping and murder for hire, is on the trail of the gems and arrives in Honolulu to threaten Burns, who spills the beans about his crew, who are promptly murdered by Adrian in room 1650 of the Walani Hotel. Adrian dons the jewelled outfit and attempts to flee, but the usual idiotic firefight ensues outside the hotel and he is killed by McGarrett, to whom Kono says “Nice shot, boss.”

Since there are seven minutes left in the show at this point, you know what is coming: drinks, this time at Rumfire, a bar located in the Sheraton Waikiki Resort (one of the show’s sponsors). Here we are treated to Jerry singing another hit from “the King,” Love Me. Jorge Garcia does a creditable job with this imitation, but there was a major element of “Puh-leeze” to what took up almost two minutes of show time.

But wait, there’s more! Chin is on his way to Rumfire when he is called by Gabriel, who says that there is something of interest back at Chin’s house, so Chin skedaddles there fast. By the time he arrives, the bomb squad has already checked out the place and found nothing. A cop hands Chin an envelope which contains pictures of Kono’s boyfriend Adam Noshimuri with some Asian guy who I originally thought to be his father Hiro (Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa), who we have not seen since Ua Hopu (Caught), episode 22 from season 2, where it was assumed that he was the bloody mess in Wo Fat’s bathtub in Japan. But I was told this is not correct and on checking, I discovered both of the actors in this photo, Ian Anthony Dale and Tagawa, are around 6 feet tall, which the older man is plainly not. Presumably this older guy is some Japanese yakuza boss (or maybe Wo Fat's father??), to be determined in an upcoming show, obviously leading up to what is supposedly the Kono-centric episode to come this season.

MORE TRIVIA:

• When Grover returns and is met by McGarrett at the airport, he says that he has several pizzas from Malnati's, a famous Chicago-area restaurant, in his suitcase. Grover did not make any headway trying to get evidence against his former pal, since the pal's mistress refused to talk to Grover, as did several cops on the force who did the usual "circle the wagons," protecting a fellow cop from accusations.
• During the gun battle, Suspicious Minds, another Presley hit, is heard in the background (not in a version sung by Elvis).
• At the bar, McGarrett orders a Longboard, lager made by the Kona Brewing Company. So do Kono and Danno. Grover gets a strawberry daiquiri.
• Adrian Ivanovich’s date of birth is July 8, 1981. He is 214 cm tall and weighs 98 kg.
• Peter Dobson, who played Elvis imitator Collins, also played the young Elvis in Forrest Gump.

Hawaii Five-0: Season 5, Episode 20 Review (S05E20) -- ‘Ike Hānau (Instinct)

(S05E20) ‘Ike Hānau (Instinct)
RATING: 3 stars

Original air date: 04/03/15

Powerhouse acting by Chi McBride was the main feature of this show.

Clay Maxwell (Mykelti Williamson), Grover's old police buddy from Chicago, and his wife Diane (Kim Wayans) are visiting Hawaii, celebrating their twentieth wedding anniversary, and the three of them with Grover's wife Renee (Michelle Hurd) are shown hanging out at a restaurant. The next morning, Grover has hardly recovered from his hangover when he gets a call from Clay who says that he and Diane were out hiking in the Kualoa Mountain Range when Diane slipped and fell off a cliff to her death.

Grover hurries to the scene, but soon starts to get suspicious over this turn of events, because he knows Maxwell is very manipulative based on something which happened when the two of them were at the police academy years before, among other things. The rest of Five-0 can't believe that everything is not as Clay reported it, especially McGarrett. Chin and Kono do the usual investigation of the couple's financial records, but find nothing.

Grover wants to get his hands on Maxwell's cel phone, which seems odd, considering Chin would normally snoop in the call history records and so forth. I'm sure Grover knows what the cel phone number is, and could have given it to Chin. Grover asks his wife to get the phone, which almost puts her in danger from Clay, who "has a temper." Eventually she does get it, and in record time, Grover finds a photo of Maxwell with LeAnn Stockwell, an attractive woman who is a trainer at a gym Clay frequents who Clay describes as "some piece I had on the side."

This leads to a confrontation in the blue-lit room, but despite some very heavy threats by Grover, Maxwell does not give in. And there is no reason why he should, since all the evidence which Grover has amassed so far is strictly circumstantial despite the fact that Grover makes a big deal about how information on the phone which is removed (like pictures of Clay with LeAnn which he shows to his now-former friend) can be undeleted. Grover says he will return to the mainland and track down every bit of evidence that he can use to put Maxwell away for good. But you will notice that Grover does not say that he found any deleted text messages on the phone with words to the effect that Maxwell and his girl friend wanted the wife to die, or for him to kill her, for example.

There was a sub-plot with Danno and Mindy Shaw that, by my rough calculations, took up about 20% of the show. It was inconsequential. It was difficult to hear what the two of them were saying at the beginning of the show because the sound mix was so crappy, but they ended up stuck in an elevator with a dead body on the way to the morgue with no connection to the outside world, either through the elevator intercom or their cel phones. Danno had a panic attack because of his claustrophobia and Dr. Shaw calmed him down, including some physical contact which, like Scott Caan's returning presence , seemed designed to raise the level of chatter among women fans who are crying big tears because Caan has been away from the show recently. Before being rescued by Officer Pua Kai, Shaw dug a bullet out of the corpse which, when combined with some fingerprint evidence, was quick to establish who the killer was, summarily arrested by Danno near the show's end.

MORE TRIVIA:

• When in the elevator, Dr. Shaw starts out her quick autopsy of the corpse by stating the date, which is the actual date of the show: April 3, 2015.
• Someone on IMDB was saying "how could Grover leave his wife alone with this guy [Maxwell, when they let him stay at Grover's house]," but this doesn't make sense, because the guy is not a psycho killing women, just his own wife. If he knocked off Grover's wife as well, then suspicion would fall on him for his own wife's murder like a ton of bricks. From my true crime reading days, I am aware of cases where husbands killed their wives (usually multiple wives, often to get insurance) ... and they don't get caught until some clever cop figures out a pattern which might involve the wives falling off a cliff (i.e., being pushed off), as in the case of Randy Roth.
• Richard Yeager (Christian Martin), who murdered his business partner (the dead guy at the beginning of the show who ends up in the elevator with Danno and Shaw), actually says he wants to speak to his lawyer when arrested by Danno!
• The music had a big climax when Grover exclaimed, "He [Maxwell] DID THIS!"
• When Grover talks to his wife about his theory that Clay murdered Diane after Clay goes to get some rest in a bedroom at their house after his ordeal, their conversation seems very loud, at the level where I'm sure that Clay could hear them talking.
• McGarrett was also on screen about 20% of the time. Kono and Chin were seen less than 10%.

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.

Hawaii Five-0: Season 5, Episode 17 Review (S05E17) -- Kuka'awale (Stakeout)

(S05E17) Kuka'awale (Stakeout)
RATING: 1/2 star

Original air date: 02/27/15

I really disliked this show, a major contender for Worst Episode of Five-Zero Ever. If had to give it a name, other than the one above, I would have called it "Two Men and a Pussy" (TMAAP).

This was a major league apartment-gument between McGarrett and Danno. Overall, the show was much worse than the similar S03E03 which I also did not like, where the duo were marooned, afloat on a boat.

My notes taken during TMAAP were littered with comments like "Stupid!!" and "Shut up!!" It began with a two minute and 41 second continuation of their Governor-sanctioned psychological therapy seen in this season's premiere episode, S05E01, and went downhill from there.

What I hated the most was the music which had the usual plink-plunk associated with "comedic" and/or "cute" scenes throughout, because -- among other things -- the incessant arguing between McGarrett and Danno, who were "working on their relationship," was supposed to be funny, but it was not. The music score was probably the worst one yet heard on the show.

After a jewellery store is robbed, McGarrett and Danno set up shop with cameras and phone taps across from the apartment of one of the suspects, Emma Mills (the very attractive -- read: large-breasted -- Jessica Lowndes). The comic-relief characters who dropped by, including neighbor Ruth Tennenbaum (Cloris Leachman) and geeky dope dealer Ricky Schiff (Charlie Saxton) as well as the non-stop chatter between McGarrett and Danno really drove me crazy. Much of the show played like a bad version of Hitchcock's Rear Window.

The woman named Agnes whose apartment they are commandeering is a serious cat lady. This leads to interaction between McGarrett, who confesses his liking for cats, which he describes as "ninjas," and the resident feline, Mr. Pickles, in scenes designed to appeal to Facebook cat-video fanatics. (Danno tells us that he is a dog kind of guy.)

As if this isn't dumb enough, McGarrett enlists the help of Jerry to try and track down who recently stole Mrs. Tennenbaum's fern. Comedian Jon Lovitz appeared as Barry Burns, a pawnshop-like merchant in "gold and unwanted jewelry" seen on local TV in sleazy commercials who is acting as fence for Emma's $3 million worth of stolen loose diamonds.

The scene at the end where Emma's partner and bad guy Jacob Anders/Radomir Ivanovich (Zoltan Hayth) shot up the jewellery store in a manner like The Terminator where he wounded or killed at least half a dozen cops was in very bad taste, especially considering the cutesy-poo finale outside Kamekona's shrimp shack which came after this.

This episode was Daniel Dae Kim's TV directing debut. I have really nothing to say about this, because the whole episode was so distracting, other than "I guess he has to start somewhere," and "I wish him well in his future endeavours."

MORE TRIVIA:

• For all the show's faults, I laughed like hell when Leachman's character told McGarrett and his "partner" Danno "I fully support gay marriage." After she left, Danno had a snappy response: "I personally would have gone with the gay thing to keep our cover." Danno also had another good line, saying the apartment they were using "smell[ed] like loneliness and despair," to which McGarrett said the smell was mothballs.
• "Family values" WWW sites are not going to be happy with this episode, especially the scene where Emma is revealed to be in cahoots with Mia Price from the jewelery store (Arden Cho) and the two are in a lesbian relationship. They are seen kissing and later McGarrett is listening to them making out.
• The book given to McGarrett and Danno at the beginning of the show for "homework" is The Perfect Partners' Workbook: Exercises in Conflict Resolution and Team Building by Susan Rothman. There actually is a marriage and family therapist in California named Susan Rothman, who, according to her WWW page, is "a practicing zen student and lead[s] a group called 'Being Mindful'." But as far as I can determine, this book and its author are both bogus.
• Conan O'Brien's drummer/band leader Max Weinberg, seen in the remake of Hookman where Danno had another idiotic whiny rant, reappeared as gunshop owner Norm. He had a serious run-in with Anders, who beat him up and stole small and large firearms plus body armor and explosives. (Are these all items one could obtain in a gun shop in the USA?)
• Anders is a member of Serbian special forces who participated in the Bosnian war, a tiresome trope for bad guys on the show.
• Not only was the music bad in the scene where Anders extracted a bullet from his stomach (put there by his partner Emma at the beginning of the show) but it was overbearingly LOUD, something I get at least one complaint a week about through my WWW site from people who think the site is officially connected to CBS.
• Emma's apartment is in the art-deco style Waikiki Cove located at 2118 Kuhio Avenue. When Danno calls for an ambulance to deal with her injuries, he says the address is 2119 Kuhio, apartment 503.
• Not be overly picky, since this show is "fiction," but the building from which McGarrett and Danno are surveilling, shown briefly in a frontal view, is also on Kuhio Avenue, and their window faces the street. So, if this was "real life," they would not be able to see into Emma's building at all. As well, the window frame in her room is different than what can be seen on the art deco building through Google Maps, though that picture may have been taken several years ago. When McGarrett and Danno enter her room, they do it through a sliding glass door, and the only place these are located on the building (from what I can see) is via the balconies of the apartments. Are McGarrett and Danno leaping across balconies like McGarrett did in the last show? There is also a fire hose on the right of Emma's window through which McGarrett is spying, which does not make sense, because this would probably be in a hallway in the building. When Mia Price visits Emma, the two of them go into what looks like a bedroom off to the left (from Five-0's viewpoint), but later McGarrett is watching them have sex in silhouette, presumably in the living room, since that's where his camera is focused. (The second computer on the right of the table is used to communicate with the Five-0 office, among other things.)
• The scene where gunshots and screams are heard from Emma's building on the third day of the stakeout confused me. I thought that the couple fighting was Anders and Emma, but it was not. It was some other couple two floors down at the end of the building. Although I did not recognize them (i.e., not Anders and Emma), McGarrett and Danno, using binoculars, did not either, which is interesting, because you would expect they would, because they have been watching the building for three days. I don't know how they can hear these screams and two gunshots, because the windows of this couple's room appear to be closed. McGarrett and Danno run outside and over to Emma's building and they go to this couple's apartment which is empty, saying "We just got played." (The room looks like someone was painting in it, vaguely reminiscent of a scene in Hookman in the room above Norm's gun shop.) Then they go to Emma's condo two floors up and find her mortally wounded by Anders. When I asked questions about this on IMDB, member fishead924 there suggested that Anders arranged for the couple on the third floor to stage the fight to draw McGarrett and Danno away from Emma's room where he was shooting her and taking the diamonds. Even if Anders hired these people to distract the stakeout, how much time would this buy him? Does he expect that McGarrett and Danno, who he obviously realizes are watching, would go and help the other couple, maybe because it is "the thing to do" (i.e., a domestic dispute is not good) or it will interfere with their surveillance? On the stakeout camera footage viewed later after the commercial, Anders doesn't seem to take a long time after he plugs Emma, so it's odd that McGarrett and Danno don't run into him on their way up to her room. The bottom line is: this is yet more sloppy writing on the show with the usual "means -- no matter how stupid -- justifies the end" kind of logic.
• We find out in this episode that McGarrett used to play the guitar, something Jack Lord's Steve McGarrett also did. He gave up his musical career when he was traumatized during a grade ten talent show. The actor playing the young McGarrett, Taylor John Smith, had little resemblance to Alex O'Loughlin. Not to be too cynical or anything, but I thought considering the "comedic" angle of the show, maybe they should have done an Airplane-like spoof and had the young McGarrett played by a black guy.
• The phone number for Barry Burns' company Gold Blast USA is 555-0101 (no area or 1-800 code).
• Danno says that his favorite music is Bon Jovi: "I could tell you about every song he ever wrote."
• Jessica Lowndes, the female "bad guy" and one of the few things worth watching during this show, especially when she peeled off her clothes, is from Vancouver, my home town. Interestingly, in S01E09, the execrable Po'ipu (Siege), Emmanuelle Vaugier, the villain, was equally attractive, and also from Vancouver. Alas, both of these women were knocked off. I was recently "studying" Krista Allen, another good-looking actress who appeared in S04E18. She was not knocked off and not from Vancouver, but it looks like she might have made several soft-corn porno movies (do a Google search for her and feel free to post in the Five-0 Discussion Forum with your take on this).

Hawaii Five-0: Season 5, Episode 16 Review (S05E16) -- Nānahu (Embers)

(S05E16) Nānahu (Embers)
RATING: 3 stars

Original air date: 02/20/15

This episode, well directed by Joe Dante, could be called "The Tale of Two Psychos."

The first of these was Frank Simpson (David Hoflin), the husband of Amber, Danno's girl friend. Turns out that Amber's real name was Melissa Armstrong and she had married Simpson who abused her so badly she had fled as far away from New York where they lived as possible, i.e., Hawaii.

Danno and Amber (Lili Simmons), making her third appearance on the show, were re-establishing their relationship and spending some time together at an isolated location near Waimanalo. Somehow Simpson managed to track them down, which was odd, because even Five-0 had no idea where Danno was.

Simpson first visited Kamekona's shrimp shack where he inquired about Amber with a photo. This set off alarm bells with the big guy who fortunately snapped a picture of Simpson's car and sent it to McGarrett. Then Simpson made inquiries at Amber's company, though it is equally unlikely that the boss there knew where she was.

Eventually Simpson ended up at the romantic retreat where he knocked out Danno and threatened his ex-wife in a very nasty manner. After Danno punched the shit out of Simpson, getting stabbed in the process, he and Amber were leaving on their way to the hospital when Simpson suddenly appeared out of nowhere and made further threats. Amber drove right into her ex, with the result he flew up on to the roof of the car and then back down in front of it via the hood (a great stunt). Amber then drove over him like she would a speed bump, a move that I suspect will return to bite her in the ass eventually, even though she and Danno were seemingly the only witnesses. (Don't forget the "old lady" of season one who fingered Kono!)

The second psycho on the show was Jason Duclair, played by former UFC fighter Randy Couture. Duclair was a serial arsonist who had terrorized people in California, then relocated to Hawaii. Posing as an exterminator, he cased people's houses, then returned to burn the places down with the people trapped inside.

Duclair was pursued by ATF agent Kathy Milwood (Melina Kanakaredes) from Orange County, who had followed his early career of two dozen fires. She nearly lost her life when Duclair torched her house, killing her husband, after she taunted him during a TV press conference where she called him a "weak, frightened coward" who was sexually dysfunctional.

Duclair was extremely nasty, grabbing and knocking out Milwood as she followed him into the Lava Gardens Hotel where he was going to climax his career with a big-time blaze. He doused her with White Spark camp fuel and was just about to incinerate her when McGarrett broke into the room via the next room and the balcony between them.

Kanakaredes' acting was exceptionally good -- too bad she cannot stick around to join the team! As she was leaving at the end of the episode, McGarrett told her "Don't look back, you can't change the past," again pretty funny, considering what a mess his own life is. The acting of the two villains was also very good.

There was a stupid sub-plot about McGarrett and Grover playing golf which took up about six minutes of the show's time. It featured U.S. Women's Open golf champion Michelle Wie giving advice to McGarrett and acting as his caddy as he participated in a charity tournament for the HPD Widows and Orphans Fund. The less said about this, the better. No doubt the gorgeously photographed shots of golf course scenery were designed to ensure that the show continues to qualify for Hawaii state production tax credits .

MORE TRIVIA:

• When Chin is talking to McGarrett about trying to locate Danno, having figured out that Amber's husband is after her, he says "I'll reach out to friends and [or "at"?] work and see if anyone knows anything [i.e., where Danno and Amber are]." Shortly after, Duke tells Chin "My boys spoke to one of Amber's co-workers; he said that their boss might know where Amber and Danny are. He also said that an old friend of hers came by the office this morning, asking the same question. We're trying to track down the boss. As soon as that information comes in, I'll get it to you." But it is never specifically said that the boss told the husband where Amber was. No matter how the husband identified himself, either as her husband or an "old friend," and the boss knew about Danno's relationship with Amber, because Danno had phoned him to get her off work (or some other reason), why would he?
• Duclair's character was very reminiscent of the classic Five-O and Zero character Hookman the way he kept newspaper clippings of his crimes (but framed!) on his wall. At the end, Duclair fingers a book of matches he seemingly lifted from his prison guard, reminiscent of the "surprise" ending of Woe to Wo Fat, final episode of the original show.
• Trying to find Duclair at the Lava Gardens Hotel (a bogus place), Five-0 goes to room 2104, which, according to the hotel, the killer checked into. But on the 18th floor we saw him get out of the elevator he shared with a family and go into a room directly opposite the elevator. (The room door does not close after he enters -- obviously so the camera can follow him in.) When Five-0 don't find anything in room 2104, they go out into the hall, and you see a room with number 2110. But as they are standing opposite the elevator where they see Milwood's blood on the elevator floor, behind them on the wall is another sign which indicates where rooms 1808 to 1834 are. There is no explanation as to how the Duclair either books the room on the 18th floor or gets the key card to open the door. It seems a stretch that Five-0 notices the blood in the elevator, considering there are three of them.
• Five-0 figures out Duclair is at the Lava Gardens because he left his computer running at his house where Five-0 breaks in, trying to find him. There is an e-mail regarding the hotel reservation right on the computer screen which McGarrett sees! Talk about stupid writing. Why wouldn't Duclair turn the computer off, since he has left the house? There are also questions about how Duclair could board up the front door of houses he is torching to keep its occupants from escaping during the fire without them hearing him do this.
• Duclair's exterminator license number is 45X2-ZY2Z-XY1. He works for the No Vacancy Pest Control.
• It takes just over half an hour to drive from Waimanalo to the Tripler Army Medical Center.
• Simpson's New York driver's license #B4259103K shows his address as 1813 Herkimer Street, Brooklyn 11209. (An actual street, though no such address.) He was born 08-08-81. The license expires 08-09-18. Amber's driver's license under her married name #B3486162M shows her birthdate as 06-09-84. It was issued 06-30-14 and expires 07-01-18. The issue date is odd, because Danno first met Amber in the episode broadcast on 01-10-14.
• Milwood uses the expression "son of a bitch" twice.