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).
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