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%.