Hawaii Five-0: Season 5, Episode 13 Review (S05E13) -- Lā Pō‘ino (Doomsday)

(S05E13) Lā Pō‘ino (Doomsday)
RATING: 3-1/2 stars

Original air date: 1/30/15

I liked this show, despite the fact that, if you think hard about it, much of it was pretty stupid. It was a total turn-off-your-brain, kick-ass episode, something we haven't seen for quite a while. In fact, I think this was the most kick-ass of any episode I've yet seen on Five-Zero, though my memory for past shows is not what it could be. The crime of the week took up the entire 44 minutes and there was a minimal amount of the usual "ohana" drivel.

The beginning of the show had a "holy fucking shit" moment. Joe White, now running a private security business, comes back to Hawaii accompanying Mitch Lange, a serviceman who has contracted H5N4, a deadly form of bird flu. Why Lange is isn't being taken to the mainland is a mystery, especially since it's later revealed there is no level 4 biosafety lab on Oahu where he could be treated.

McGarrett grudgingly meets Joe, expecting no doubt to be jerked around yet more by his former mentor with regards to issues concerning his mother. But Joe says that he is "not gonna duck [questions] anymore ... You want answers -- I'm here to give you answers." McGarrett is skeptical, describing his mother as "self-serving."

As they are on their way to Tripler Medical Center to give Lange a shot of serum which will cure his ails, complete with a hazmat team and a police escort, a giant wrecking ball hits McGarrett's car and several terrorist types appear out of nowhere and kidnap Lange. Both Joe and McGarrett seem to be seriously injured, but McGarrett hops on the motorcycle of some cop who got knocked off during the attack and follows the kidnappers' truck. Once he finds it, it is empty.

At the Five-0 offices, Nalani Dyer, the Honolulu Center for Disease Control station director, played in a rather matter-of-fact way by Clare Nono, gives the team the dope on Lange's malady, which has a very high mortality rate of 85% (actually 93.9% according to the stats Dyer rattles off, 1315 of 1400 infected people in the Philippines where the virus originated). Later, Dr. Jill Loi (Elaine Kao) at the University of Oahu tells Danno and Kono that if the virus reaches the general population, it will not only decimate everyone in Hawaii, but everyone in the entire world!

Five-0 later determines that Dr. Howard Rennick, head of virology at Oahu State University is somehow involved with the attack. When they arrive at Rennick's home, they have a firefight with terrorists, and they find Rennick's wife tied up in a closet. She tells them six men kidnapped her husband three days ago.

Despite the fact that Dyer said it would be difficult to set up a level 4 lab, the bad guys got Rennick to order $30,000 worth of laboratory equipment with his credit card and all these supplies were delivered to Oahu and set up on some farm in the middle of nowhere (Hau'ula) ... within the last three days!

Not only that, Michael Carson (Mikal Vega), the guy in charge of this operation, a former CIA agent who went rogue years before and recruited various mercenary types from Yugoslavia, Albania and Russia to help him, is able to test the virus, which will be distributed with bees who have powder extracted from Lange's infected blood on their wings using a process called lyophilization (freeze-drying).

Everyone suddenly becomes very clever. McGarrett realizes that charred burlap and pine needles found in the nostrils of one of the terrorists he shot dead during the initial attack is something associated with a "bee smoker," a device used in beekeeping to calm honey bees. Chin Ho cross-checks spikes in power (a level 4 lab needs a lot of electricity) with addresses where bees have been purchased or sold recently.

Five-0 arrives at the farm in the middle of nowhere and has yet another shoot-out with the rest of the terrorists, but a "Waimea Honey Company" truck full of bees manages to head to downtown Honolulu to do damage. Joe White manages to get on the truck and is involved in various mind-bending stunts, including driving the truck off a dock in a manner highly reminiscent of the show Hookman in order to neutralize the virus-laden insects.

The show ends with McGarrett and Joe sort of friendly, but McGarrett is still suspicious that Joe is hiding something. I am predicting in my Nostradamus manner the dreaded double-M (McGarrett's mom) will be appearing soon, or at least her story thread will come to an end.

MORE TRIVIA:

• Hau'ula, the location of the farm, really is "in the middle of nowhere." According to Google maps, it would take over an hour to get to Honolulu if you wanted to drive a truck off a dock there.
• I'm sure the shots of the huge cargo plane landing at the beginning of the show, containing Lange and the hazmat team, have been seen before in some other episode.
• Rennick's employee number on his O‘ahu State University identity card is OSU20-00457. O‘ahu is spelled incorrectly with an apostrophe rather than an okina (yes, I know ... I spell it wrong all the time too!).
• As Joe White is driving the truck full of bees off the dock, he says "The only easy day was yesterday," the motto of the Navy SEALs.
• Considering how deadly this H5N4 is, it's disturbing how McGarrett opens the empty truck which contained Lange's body at the beginning of the show and the way the Five-0 team stands around looking at Lange being removed from the farm at the show's end.
• There are episodes of the original Five-O with vaguely similar themes:
  • Episode 30 -- Sweet Terror -- A terrorist wants to wipe out the Hawaiian sugar cane industry with a fungus so countries will have to buy their sugar from a certain "island" (Cuba, which is not specifically named).
  • Episodes 46 & 47 -- Three Dead Cows at Makapuu -- A microbiologist who develops a "biological mutation hostile to all forms of life on earth" comes to Hawaii where he intends to unleash this deadly substance and wipe out all life on Hawaii as a protest against the evils of biological warfare and show that "the world is on the brink of a terrible catastrophe."
  • Episode 188 -- A Killer Grows Wings -- A sleazy land developer introduces harmful insect larva into the sugar cane crop on a woman's ranch because he wants her to sell the place to him for peanuts so he can develop a $30 million resort village.
• Bad words: "You weren't really born a crazy son of a bitch" (Grover to McGarrett); "I bet that pissed you off" (Joe to McGarrett).
• When McGarrett tells Joe about his last encounter with Wo Fat where he found out about his mother covering up the murder of Wo's mother, he says "that was a crime." This is pretty funny, considering some of the hijinks he and the Five-0 team have gotten away with in the last five years.
• The February 2nd episode of the CBS show NCIS: Los Angeles is also featuring bioterrorism!
• By the end of the show, we never find out what really motivated Carson, the boss of the operation. Was he trying to ransom someone (like the government) or what?

Hawaii Five-0: Season 5, Episode 12 Review (S05E12) -- Poina ‘Ole (Not Forgotten)

(S05E12) Poina ‘Ole (Not Forgotten)
RATING: 2-1/2 stars
Original air date: 1/16/15

This show, which dealt with "family" from several angles, began with Grover comforting his daughter who was freaking out over her kidnapping and confinement by Ian Wright last season. This, plus the following heart-to-heart between Grover and Chin Ho plus scenes with Grover and his daughter at the end of the show, made me wonder -- is there going to be some further development of this in a future episode?

Then we cut to another family scene at the household of Dr. Christine DuPont (Sarah Jane Morris), chief neurosurgeon at the Kuakini Medical Centre. Her kids are being a pain and her husband Mark (Brian Letscher) has to deal with them. She has been called to the hospital on her day off to perform an emergency operation.

Next we see Alex Mackey (Gregory Itzin), a kindly grandfather type, getting his grandson off to school on a Roberts Hawaii School Bus. He tells the kid that they will go to J.J. Dolan's for pizza later (a real Honolulu restaurant located in Chinatown). We see Dr. DuPont arrive at her job, where Mackey suddenly appears in the parking lot, pulls out a gun and shoots her dead in her car.

After the main titles, McGarrett is seen jogging with Danno's daughter Gracie in preparation for a competition when the two of them see his 1974 Mercury Marquis Brougham which has been stolen. McGarrett leaves Gracie and pursues the car, knowing exactly which fence and hedge to leap over in the neighborhood so he can unsuccessfully try to catch the car on the next street.

When he arrives at the hospital crime scene, Danno gives McGarrett a hard time about abandoning Gracie. McGarrett replies that at least "I didn't leave her in the middle of Makaha," suggesting not that this is a bad place, but one in the middle of nowhere (see the map of Oahu).

Five-O thinks that DuPont's murder has something to do with an operation she was going to perform on Paul Delano (William Baldwin), temporarily out of Halawa because he has been diagnosed with a possible aneurism. Chin Ho and McGarrett pay Delano a bedside visit in the hospital where he taunts Chin with the fact that his brother Frank killed Chin's wife Malia ("How's what's left of the family?"), among other things.

This part of the plot had very vague similarities to S03E01 of the original series where a young girl was kidnapped by Wo Fat to prevent her surgeon father from performing an operation to save the life of a government agent whose assassination under Wo's direction was bungled. But the business with Delano is a red herring, since there is no reason why someone would have knocked off the doctor to get rid of him because, while he has been shooting his mouth off in Halawa recently, he is not trying to pull off some big takeover in the prison, by his own admission.

Having eliminated Delano as having anything to do with the doctor's murder, Kono finds some recordings on DuPont's work desktop computer she had made with another patient who recently died -- Mana Tahni (Rodney Oshiro), a low-level criminal loser who has been in prison for 40 of his 55 years. Tahni was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer and gave the doctor an astounding confession before he died, but according to Max, he didn't die from cancer, but from having been smothered in his hospital bed with a pillow.

Tahni told her that years before at the Wilea Reform School where he was incarcerated he witnessed four boys -- friends of his -- being taken to solitary confinement in a swelteringly hot basement. These boys, who had escaped from the place in June 1974 with Tahni and had stolen the car from one of the guards before they were recaptured, were never seen again and Tahni suspected that they had all died as a result of their punishment. The doctor had apparently been snooping around on the Internet later trying to find information about this case, though you have to wonder why she didn't just turn the whole matter over to the cops.

Along with information about the four boys, DuPont also got the name of the warden of the school, Walter Russell (Wings Hauser), who was forced to resign in 1975 over "official misconduct," including abuse of boys at the school. When Grover, Danno and McGarrett visit Russell, he turns out to be a Vietnam vet and Class A nut job whose place in the middle of nowhere is booby-trapped with punji sticks that are straight out of the movie The Green Berets. After Russell tries to escape and is killed by one of his creations, Grover deduces that he was seriously "off his meds." Once again, Five-0 loses a suspect during their "pursuit of justice."

Kono makes a further connection between Russell, the reform school and the bad guard (nicknamed "Huhu," or "Angry") who turns out to be Mackey from the beginning of the show. After the reform school closed down, he got a job as a maintenance man for 36 years at DuPont's hospital, and Five-0 suggests he knew the ins and outs of the system there and managed to keep his face off the security cameras when he was shooting the doctor.

But this is just sloppy writing, because Mackey retired from the place in 2011 (at least 3 years before), so why would no one recognize him (or not) if he was around the place? As well, it is said that he "had access to Dr. DuPont's schedule," which makes no sense, because she was called in to do the operation on the morning she was killed, at which time Mackey was seeing his grandson off on the school bus ... not the night before when Mackey was supposedly killing Tahni with the pillow in the hospital. And why would Mackey even know about Tahni? Would the doctor have mentioned his name to Russell? Even if she had been scheduled the night before, would Mackey have had access to any of this information regarding her schedule? At least we can guess that Mackey was tipped off about the doctor's investigation by Russell, who the doctor had phoned, according to her phone records.

Brought to the blue-lit room, Mackey essentially tells McGarrett and Danno that they have nothing on him, which is probably correct, because the only thing they do have is Tahni's confession taped on DuPont's phone, which is probably inadmissable in court. But after the four boys' bodies are discovered outside the school, McGarrett says that they have finally got evidence to convict ... but what is this? Fingerprints on the shackles put on the boys? DNA of some kind? They don't say, but Mackey blabs away in the best Five-Zero tradition, completely implicating himself!

Back at the Five-O office, McGarrett gets to play social worker with Nahele Huikala (Kekoa Kekumano), the kid who stole his car, who has been living on the streets, and whose family is a mess. Rather than have the kid busted, McGarrett gives Pua Kai, who makes yet another appearance, some money to get the kid dressed and fed. Later Nahele gets a job at Kamekona's Shrimp Shack, serving the Five-O ohana who guzzle beers on the beach as the usual banal plink-plunk music plays in the background.

This episode should really get only two stars because of its excessive family focus and script stupidities, but I give it a half star more for its exceptionally good villains: Daniel Baldwin, Gregory Itzin, who gave "bad presidents" a bad name with his portrayal of Charles Logan on "24," and Wings Hauser.

MORE TRIVIA:

• The four boys who died at the reform school were Tai Saluni, Poto Kanoa, Fata Lotomau and Jason Inoke.
• Mackey's driver's license number 6H83244M shows that he lives at 3412 Nalunalu Street, Wai'anae 96792. His birthdate is 06/10/1952 (Itzin's actual birthdate is 04/20/1948), the license was issued 04/18/2008 and expires 06/10/2022. He is 5'11" (actually 5'9"), weighs 195 lb. and has blue eyes.
• Russell's prescription of the antipsychotic drug chlorpromazine from Dr. William Matushira was filled on 10/29/14.
• Bad words: "son of a bitch" (twice from McGarrett over the theft of his car, once by Danno to Mackey); "You bet your ass I do!" (Delano to Chin Ho)
• Danno refers to McGarrett's stolen car as a "death trap on wheels" and a "classic piece of junk," phrases not likely to endear Danno to fans of the original show. Later when the car is found, it is on blocks with the wheels missing. It looks depressing, aside from the fact that it is filthy dirty. Pua Kai and Duke are part of the team investigating the car's disappearance. Later when Danno is calling the car "a piece of junk car of yours," McGarrett has a good line: "Don't trivialize my suffering."
• Max plays some of "The Merry Widow" which he says is from Dimitri Tiomkin's score to the Hitchcock film Shadow of a Doubt on the piano in his office. But the Merry Widow Waltz heard in this film is not by Tiomkin at all, but by Franz Lehar.
• The punji sticks at Russell's place are obviously made of rubber rather than bamboo.

Hawaii Five-0: Season 5, Episode 11 Review (S05E11) -- Ua ‘aihue (Stolen)

(S05E11) Ua ‘aihue (Stolen)
RATING: 2 stars
Original air date: 1/9/15

This episode was bland, with far too much cutesy-poo stuff, especially Kamekona getting involved in some Shrimpapalooza cook-off, being tutored Karate Kid-style by Iron Chef Masaharu Morimoto and going up against Sam Choy (both real Hawaiian restaurateurs). Maybe this comic relief was to make up for the absence of Danno, who was nowhere to be seen. Jerry did appear, helping out Five-0 in the Takahamo Cleaning & Restoration truck, including running it into the bad guys at the end to stop them from escaping.

The crime of the week involved Lukas Janssen (Henri Lubatti), an art thief from Belgium, smuggling a stolen Van Gogh into Hawaii and, to avoid getting arrested, hiding the painting in the carry-on suitcase of Bryan Wallace (Gerald Downey), a father travelling to the islands with his family. After Wallace arrived and was settled in his hotel room and the rest of his family went down to the pool, he was shot by Janssen, who took back the painting. Janssen then used it as an entry ticket to meet local art collector Tom Emery (Casper Andreas) who offered similar valuable stolen paintings for sale to a select few in a back room of his Oahu mansion.

As usual there was something stupid in the script -- in this case, the fact the Janssen put the Van Gogh into the carry-on suitcase. Maybe someone would like to explain to me how he did this. Was the case beside the family in the pre-boarding area of the departure terminal or was it in the luggage space above the seats on the plane, where Janssen was sitting right next to them? In either case (no pun intended), wouldn't have someone SEEN Janssen open the suitcase (assuming it was not locked) and put the painting inside? Geez...

Acting undercover, Chin and Kono infiltrated a get-together at Emery's place with the help of geeky dealer Gerard Hirsch (Willie Garson), who was attending an art collectors' meeting and auction in Honolulu. (Kono, wearing slinky dresses, was -- as expected -- the "bait" to attract him.) Unfortunately, their cover was blown by Janssen and his technologically sophisticated associates, who took everyone at Emery's hostage and then attempted to escape with the paintings from the inner room, resulting in a ridiculous shootout outside the mansion which put the fleeing guests in great danger.

The other major guest star was English actress and Lost alumni Rebecca Mader playing Nicole Booth, an investigator for Bishop & Copley Insurance who was trying to track down the Van Gogh, supposedly worth $55 million (the painting seen in the show was based on one in real life).

Once again, out of all the cops at HPD, Officer Pua Kai (Shawn Thomsen) had some connection with Five-0. This was surprising, considering his antics two episodes earlier with the ticket he gave McGarrett and Danno for cutting down the Christmas tree. In light of this, I was surprised that Kono didn't have anything to say about working with him, but maybe this was counterbalanced by his confession that he was no longer interested in her and had found another girl friend (note to show producers: please spare us from encountering this woman in a future episode!). Pua appeared in the hotel's security room, trying to figure out via surveillance camera footage who attempted to kill Wallace, drawing on his former experience in S03E17 as a security guard at the Marriott Hotel. At Kono's direction, he managed to pull up a closeup of a tag on Wallace's suitcase that Janssen was taking out of the hotel. Do security cameras usually have such magnification?

The photography had plenty of tourist shots, plus quite a few closeups of McGarrett. The music was back to its usual nonsense, including far too much of the string pizzicato-like accompaniment.

MORE TRIVIA:

• Tom Emery's place was located at 1055 Olohua Road, Honolulu 96816. His driver's license, number 938H311, showed his date of birth as 08/22/1974 and was isued on 08/22/1998 with a 20-year span (according to various WWW sites I checked, the longest you can get a license for in Hawaii is 8 years). Emery was 5'11" and weighed 175 pounds.
• Janssen's Belgian passport number P3013GL showed his birthday to be 12.05.73. The passport was issued on 05.12.10.
• When Booth said she could get the schematics for Emery's high-tech house, she did so VERY quickly.
• Near the end of the show, when Janssen and his associates, using some radio frequency detector, figured out that Chin Ho was wearing glasses which not only contained a camera but a microphone, why didn't Jerry, who was monitoring the video and audio from these, just turn them off?

Hawaii Five-0: Season 5, Episode 10 Review (S05E10) -- Wāwahi moe‘uhane (Broken Dreams)

(S05E10) Wāwahi moe‘uhane (Broken Dreams)
RATING: 3 stars
Original air date: 1/2/15

This episode was interesting, primarily because of guest star William Forsythe as ex-HPD cop, former friend of McGarrett’s father and now private investigator Harry Brown. As well, the music approached above average because the resident composers tried some new ideas in addition to the usual stock effects like the pizzicato string-like plink-plunk near the beginning in the scene with Jerry and brainiac kid Ani (Youngaisa Wily, son of Kamekona). Hopefully these new musical ideas will not become new clichés! The production values like the photography were well above average throughout.

Forsythe did a great job playing the world-weary detective from Lāna‘i looking for Brooke Waiakea (Delys Kanemura Recca), the daughter of a friend. She had come to Oahu and joined the Manoa Hula Company, a front for an escort agency, and was found murdered after witnessing the killing of one of her clients. Featuring the point-of-view of Brown through a film noir style narration was "something completely different" for the show and it worked well, though it did call attention to itself, as did the opening sequence which was in reverse. Calling attention to itself is not necessarily a bad thing, though you have to wonder why the show waited until its fifth season to get more creative in this fashion.

Unfortunately, the plot of the crime of the week was a veritable fish market with red herrings falling all over each other. By the end of the show, when the "bad guy" was revealed to be Kiana Thompson (Andrea Roth), the boss of the escort agency, I had pretty well lost interest. But then I watched the show again and realized that plot logic once again collapsed near the end. (Bear with me, this is complicated.)

An early suspect in Brooke’s murder was David Waring (Trevor Kuhn), a loser who was involved with multiple lawsuits over failed real estate deals, who was himself murdered as per the above. Waring was engaged to Erica Young (Grace Phipps), whose father, Robert (Doug Savant), was also a client of the escort agency, even though he said he only hired the dancers for a corporate event. Somehow Young found out about Waring’s connection to the agency’s girls. But how did this happen? Did Thompson tell him, maybe because Waring was in the news regarding his engagement to Erica? What was in this for Thompson?

After Brooke witnessed Young murdering Waring, who was pissed that his daughter would marry such a “scumbag,” Brooke took a cab to her house and then called Thompson, who phoned Young to tell him that Brooke had seen what happened (she was hiding in the bathroom at Waring’s place). After Thompson told Young where Brooke was, he went to Brooke's house and killed her, then disposed of her body with his friend Richard Sheridan (Eric Roberts, in a near-cameo role) who “owed him a favor.” Why would Thompson have called Young to tell him all this?

Danno makes some remark that Brooke was "not worth losing two clients over in one night." But she had already "lost" one client -- Waring, who was dead!

There were sub-plots with the Kono/Adam relationship (very brief) and Jerry trying to get a job with the I.T. company Inotech. Both of these were stupid and just took time from the quality aspects of the show. At least there was no "ohana" finale -- a definite plus!

In another useless sequence, McGarrett was seen sparring in a boxing ring with Ellie, his prosecutor friend from episodes five and six. This led to speculation on some fan forums about the usual “where is this relationship going,” though if people listened carefully, they would have heard that Ellie was trying to set McGarrett up on a date with her yet-unseen friend Jess who is “drop-dead gorgeous,” supports the Second Amendment and her favorite movie is The Guns of Navarone, a 1961 war film starring Gregory Peck. McGarrett’s response to Ellie's matchmaking was “I’m just taking my time.”

Speaking of romance, there was a nice scene between Danno and assistant medical examiner Mindy Shaw. She was freaked out by Brooke’s murder, which brought back bad memories from her college years of a friend who disappeared. Whether this is going to lead anywhere is a good question.

MORE TRIVIA:

• The song heard at the end during the flashback of Brooke surfing was Possibility Days by Counting Crows.
• Waring’s drivers license, number 772A043, shows his address as 4399 Dawes Road, Honolulu 96816. His date of birth (also date the license was issued) was 07/18/80. He was 6’1”, weighed 175 pounds and had brown hair and eyes. His license expires on 07/18/20.
• The stereo mix was particularly bad in parts of the show like the dialogue in the scene between Jerry and Ani … but crystal clear when I managed to get a copy of the show which had Dolby Digital sound. Turning on the closed-captions is strongly recommended if you can’t understand … though this particular show’s problem was not the usual complaint about how the music is drowning out the talking. In some of the scene where Chin and Kono were grilling Brooke's roommate Annie Reese (Carlie Casey) there was NO MUSIC AT ALL (very effective).
• In an unusual move for this show, Richard Sheridan demanded to talk to his lawyer when in the blue-lit room.
• According to Michael Timothy, Harry Brown’s car is a 1965 Ford Thunderbird hardtop.
• There were plenty of bad words in this show: “He was really pissed”; “You don’t want to piss this guy off”; “Get the hell out of here”; “Son of a bitch”; “This crazy bastard assaulted me”; “Give me five minutes with this son of a bitch.”
• The opening shot of this episode is similar to the opening shot of the pilot episode of the original series (thanks to Jason from Dallas for pointing this out).

Hawaii Five-0: Season 5, Episode 9 Review (S05E09) -- Ke Koho Mamao Aku (Longshot)

(S05E09) Ke Koho Mamao Aku (Longshot)
RATING: 2 stars
Original air date: 12/12/14

The thing I liked the most about this show was the change of scenery to the Big Island.

It began on the slopes of Mauna Loa where a Mars Rover-like device was cruising around the mountain while a guy in an astronaut suit tended to it in the midst of the barren Mars-like landscape. (This is connected to a real research project.) A cowboy, Keone Maka (Christopher Huffine) suddenly showed up and dropped dead, beginning the crime of the week.

With complications including cowboys, horses and a rodeo, much of the crime of the week was interesting, more so to me than the original show's low-key ninth-season rodeo episode Requiem for a Saddle Bronc Rider.

Investigating Maka's death, Five-0 talk to Al Mokuau (Ron Yuan), boss of the local rodeo, who suggests that Maka had trouble with Luke Pakele (Cody Easterbrook), a bull rider who was doping animals with steroids. They track down Pakele, who lives in the bizarre Kalapana Gardens where houses are constructed on a lava flow field. He is the red herring suspect who says that he was "pissed" at getting fired from the rodeo, but did not kill Maka. Maka's place has been trashed, and a vial of what turns out to be horse blood is found in a milk carton in the refrigerator. Maka made numerous phone calls to Jeff Harrison (Frank Ashmore), a trainer connected with Urban Myth, a Kentucky Derby horse which mysteriously disappeared on the mainland some time ago. Chin determines that Harrison is on the island, but when Danno and Kono arrive at his motel, Harrison collapses, foaming at the mouth. At the motel, Max and local medical examiner Sanjeet Dhawan (Ravi Patel) find a bottle which contains traces of liquid nicotine. The blood sample from Maka's fridge is also analyzed and determined to belong to Urban Myth. Five-0 figures that after the horse was stolen, it was taken to a stud farm on the island, and one of the 3 stud farms there happens to belong to Mokuau, the rodeo boss. Through Mokuau's financials, McGarrett discovers that a backhoe is to be delivered to a property Mokuau owns near Waimea, suggesting that he intends to kill the race horse and bury it. Quickly arriving at this location, Mokuau is put out of action and the case is closed.

For this episode, McGarrett stayed in Honolulu for meetings with the Governor and was on screen just a bit less than 20% of the time. Jerry was nowhere to be seen (yay!). Max, Danno and Grover flew to the Big Island, with Kono showing up soon after. Chin Ho held down the fort in the Five-0 offices.

On the negative side, the show was far too Max-centric. The show's resident geek became overly conflicted mere seconds after he stepped off the helicopter because of his previous relationship with Dhawan, who he had encountered at medical school. At one point, Max raised his voice louder than I ever recall hearing on the show, including the expression "son of a bitch" directed at Dhawan. All the fuss turned out to be over "a woman," specifically some Star Trek action figure of Yeoman Janice Rand the two had fought over years before. Seriously, there were times in this show when I felt like punching Max in the face.

Also on the annoying side was the cleverness and speed with which certain elements of the crime of the week were figured out, like how the blood from the refrigerator was tied in to the missing race horse and how the poison was determined to be liquid nicotine, a component of e-cigarettes -- not to mention the speed with which Five-0 got to Urban Myth's execution location.

And then there were issues with the kidnapped horse. How could Mokuau provide stud services with Urban Myth? Surely he would have to tell people the horse's name and background if he were to demand high fees! The fact that, as he said, "no one cared" about the horse and the fact that its owners had likely received an insurance payout didn't negate the fact that it was stolen.

The show's sub-plot had McGarrett cutting down a Christmas tree in a protected forest on Oahu because it was too expensive for Danno to buy one. This was dumb, aside from giving the two an excuse to bicker about something. But so was the related sub-plot of Officer Pua Kai (Shawn Thomsen) investigating this "crime." It seemed odd that the show's resident comic-relief cop would be the one chosen out of HPD's 2,000-plus officers to deal with this, especially considering his previous relationship with members of Five-0.

I'm sure McGarrett and Danno could get a smart lawyer to easily overturn the resulting $1200 citation, because Pua's "photo lineup" was highly prejudiced against the two of them. All of the guys in the lineup except McGarrett and Danno were tough-looking Hawaiian dudes. The woman who picked them out didn't have to work too hard, describing them as "two haoles."

More likely, though, they will use the usual "immunity and means" nonsense, but on what grounds? Maybe McGarrett could plead temporary insanity, saying "I had to cut the tree down because that freaking Danno was driving me crazy."

I thought it pretty funny at the end when Kamekona was leading the singing of "Silent Night" they cut the song similar to the way the Five-O theme is chopped during the show's end credits. To make up for this, there was an expansive arrangement of the Five-O theme near the beginning when Max, Grover and Danno arrived at the crime scene by helicopter.

MORE TRIVIA:

• Though the name of the astronaut at the beginning of the episode was not mentioned, his name in the end credits, Richard Royce, was the same as the character in the original show's 10th season episode Shake Hands With The Man On The Moon, about a washed-up astronaut involved with a sleazy real estate developer.
• Dhawan's license plate on his Volkswagen "Thing" (same car as Max was seen driving in the season two premiere episode) was SET4STN, i.e., "set for stun."
• Harrison's Los Angeles phone number is 323-555-0155. He used his credit card numbered 6159 4202 0073 2189 to buy a ticket to Honolulu on Palm West Airlines. The ticket cost $426.00. The "Awww" reconciliation between Harrison and his horse near the end of the show was strictly out of movies like My Friend Flicka and probably very appealing to the Facebook cat video crowd.
• Danno got to drive in this episode, and very, very fast, as they transported the poisoned Harrison to the hospital.
• When Five-0 arrives at Mokuau's Nakata Ranch, why do they have the sirens blaring? Surely there is no easier way to get a suspect to run (though Mokuau was not there).
• Watch at the very end of the show for Santa and his sleigh crossing the moon.

Hawaii Five-0: Season 5, Episode 8 Review (S05E08) -- Ka Hana Malū (Inside Job)

(S05E08) Ka Hana Malū (Inside Job)
RATING: 1-1/2 stars
Original air date: 11/21/14

After a couple of above-average episodes, this show brought the reboot crashing down to its usual bad reality TV level.

McGarrett's Aunt Deb (Carol Burnett) returned, still cancer-stricken but now undergoing chemotherapy, which presumably accounted for the ghastly makeup the actress had when we first saw her. She's come to Hawaii to get married to Leonard Cassano (Frank Valli of The Four Seasons), a guy with near-perfect teeth who she met in a cancer support group. He has stage four leukemia.

Cassano is a mob lawyer who may have tampered with evidence to get one of his clients off. Jerry, a.k.a. "Mr. Conspiracy," is assigned to investigate this, as if the Supercomputer is broken. When McGarrett, thinking of his aunt, confronts Cassano, her husband-to-be gives McGarrett an unopened package containing this evidence -- which Cassano has brought with him, expecting problems with McGarrett. McGarrett, again thinking of his aunt, decides rather than turning this over to the the district attorney in Cassano's jurisdiction of New York, he instead will put this package on ice, anticipating that Leonard will soon kick the bucket.

Aunt Deb seems to have been brought back to the show to give her nephew an opportunity to reflect on his life. She tells him that although she was a flop as far as her singing career and having children was concerned, she has finally found love with Leonard. McGarrett flashes back to Catherine in Afghanistan, who seems now to have been gone a really long time, coming to grips with the fact that she is really, really not coming back. He tells Deb that Catherine found her friend's kid but now wants to stay and protect him and the other kids in the village from the Taliban (really). McGarrett says "She's found her place."

The crime of the week had the usual crazy plot machinations.

At the beginning of the show, David Kealoha, an investment banker and financial advisor who was under investigation by the SEC for inappropriate use of his clients' funds, is found brutally shotgunned to death along with his wife Kate.

The major suspects are his two sons Jake (Nathan Kress) and Travis (Charlie Carver), aged 17 and 21 respectively, and Kealoha's sleazy lawyer Eugene Goodman (John Billingsley). Travis becomes very suspicious when he flees from a polygraph examination and is trailed in a really obvious way reminiscent of the old Five-O by Chin and Kono to a motel where he meets with Patti Gable (Josie Davis), the MILFish mother of his best friend Tai who, up to this point, has been Travis's alibi for the time period when his parents were killed. Patti, described by McGarrett as a "hot mess" and Grover as "Mrs. Robinson," isn't a murderer and neither is Travis, however -- they were just "doing it" and were thinking of fessing up to Travis's parents soon.

Back to the Five-0 office where the Supercomputer can finally figure out that Goodman had power of attorney over his clients' funds and an old bank account of Kate Kealoha shows that $100,000 was paid to Greg Barber, a known hit man, to knock off the two parents.

But the computer doesn't seem to show exactly who paid out this money, because it later turns out it was not Goodman, but Kate. At Barber's place, after he is knocked off, Grover suddenly finds a laptop which has e-mails from Kate to Barber with pictures of their house. Grover can figure this all out in a matter of seconds. How Kate knew about or contacted the hitman is a big mystery, especially since he was an "old client of Goodman" and seemingly had no connection to her at all. The bottom line, according to Five-0, is: Kate arranged to have Barber kill both her and her husband so the boys could collect a $20 million double indemnity life insurance policy. I am not making this up! Talk about stupid writing!

(This is not as stupid as the revelation during the big final scene about how Five-0 did a blood test on the Kealoha's dog Riley to determine that it was out of commission while the murder was going on, having been doped up by some of Kate's sleeping pills.)

Considering there was no reason for Kate to have both herself and her husband killed, inasmuch as the insurance policy was just on David, a more plausible explanation, which the writer did not consider, would be she hired the hitman to just kill David, but when Barber found the two of them together, he decided to knock her off as well because she was a witness who could finger him for the crime.

But, overriding this logical explanation, this still leaves the question: Why would she, in effect, use the hitman to commit suicide? According to Patti, Kate did try to commit suicide previously when she found out about her husband's financial dealings, but there is a big difference between swallowing some pills and having someone blast you with a shotgun.

Bad, bad, bad!!

MORE TRIVIA:

• In addition to the usual "twittering" about Catherine on fan forums after her appearance in this show's flashback, and not exclusively by people who have no idea who she is, the following incredible comment was posted on IMDB: "At the wedding as his aunt and husband were saying their vows, there was a close up on Steve and he was crying..or at least looked very sad. It's been awhile since I saw his character that way. I'm kinda hoping it's the first sign of his PTSD that I heard rumoured on the way. Or it could be also that he's happy for his aunt? He'd be more smiling than crying though,no? Or really missing Catherine and the wedding is reminding him of a love, lost? What do you think? I'm hoping it's the PTSD starting." A reality show, indeed.
• There is a major goof: The two sons' drivers licenses were issued on the days they were born: 08/05/94 and 03/10/97. The license number of Travis, the older brother, is 492H202. He is 5'11", weighs 175 lb and has brown eyes and hair. His license expires 08/05/16. Jake's driver's license is number 343T849. He is 5'10", weighs 165 lb and also has brown hair and eyes. It expires 3/10/19. Their home address is 705 Alinalina Place, Honolulu 96825. (There seems to be more than 1" difference in the height of the two boys in the show.)
• When the dog runs in front of the car at the beginning of the show, it looks very phony, since it is likely a front-projected backdrop.
• The Kealoha boys' doper friend Tai Gable is played by Wilke Itzin, son of Gregory Itzin, who played President Logan on season four of "24," a show that Five-0 executive producer Peter Lenkov also executive produced.
• Hitman Barber, played by an uncredited actor, lives on Oahu, and is tracked down by Five-0 who engage in the usual firefight. But after McGarrett drops through the skylight in Barber's apartment, he has no choice but to shoot him, thus again eliminating a prime suspect, at least for a few minutes.
• The sound mix for this show was terrible in a few spots, and not because the dialogue was overpowered by the music, as is the usual complaint.
• When Chin and Kono are tailing Travis to the motel, they are actually photographed in a car driving down a Honolulu Street. Amazing!
• There is an interesting stunt when McGarrett runs across the top of several parked food trucks when he, Grover and Chin are pursuing Tai.
• David Kealoha worked for a company called Bordinay Investments.
• McGarrett uses the term "son of a bitch" when referring to Leonard after Jerry brings him up to date on Cassano's past.

Hawaii Five-0: Season 5, Episode 7 Review (S05E07) -- Inā Paha (If Perhaps)

S05E07. Inā Paha (If Perhaps)
RATING: 4 stars
Original air date: 11/7/14

This episode was hyped big time, because it was number one hundred. There was even a special song written for the finale of the show entitled "All For One" by John Ondrasik of Five For Fighting. I managed to avoid most of this publicity, as I have been trying to do for all the episodes this year so far.

The show had "vague similarities" to an episode of the classic series, the two-hour season nine premiere Nine Dragons, where Wo Fat kidnapped McGarrett in Hong Kong and held him prisoner, applying "behavior modification through stress" to turn McGarrett into a near-robot denouncing his country. There are further references to Wo to Woe Fat, the original series' finale, where Wo exposes prisoners to "compliance ration," some kind of gas which overcomes their "will to resist." In the current episode, Wo Fat kidnaps McGarrett and holds him captive in the basement of a dry cleaning plant which he had purchased several years ago. Wo tortures McGarrett to reveal the location of his father, who Doris, Steve's CIA spy momma, had tried to assassinate. With the help of a black female assistant Eris (Tracy Ifeachor), Wo subjects McGarrett to "behavioral engineering," including water boarding, taser-like electrical stimulation and injection of various chemicals including truth serum. The torture the new McGarrett is subjected to was very nasty twenty-first century torture.

The show began with a "previously on Five-0" of sorts, with a flashback to the beginning of the pilot episode, except McGarrett's father did not die. Instead, he was rescued by HPD led by Danny Williams. This deviation from the original script and much of what followed was obviously hallucinations McGarrett was experiencing thanks to Wo Fat's drugs. Most of it was pretty funny: Danno driving his own car, loving Hawaii and his wife, wearing an aloha shirt and using McGarrett-like interrogation techniques; Kamekona a big time convict; Chin Ho on his way to becoming chief of HPD; Grover a tourist annoyed that his golf clubs had been stolen; and Kono a champion surfer and model doing commercials for lip balm. Other people in the show who had appeared in the past included Jenna Kaye and Victor Hesse. Duke Lukela was still Duke Lukela. Jerry appeared as a babbling homeless conspiracy freak.

Sang Min also appeared once again, this time to help Five-0 take down Johnny Moreau (Gavin Rossdale), who had taken over Sang's business enterprises, including drug trafficking, prostitution and kidnapping. Sang also provided information about who could have helped Wo Fat kidnap McGarrett. This was conveniently confirmed by Adam Noshimuri, whose family had connections to the sale of the dry cleaning plant to Wo, using the alias of Anthony Shu.

Despite the major unpleasantness of the torture scenes, Alex O'Loughlin did an exceptional acting job throughout, and Scott Caan's character's reversal showed that he can play something other than his usual one-note persona.

The big reveal in this episode was that Wo Fat had been raised by Doris McGarrett after she killed Wo's mother during her assassination attempt on Wo's father years before. She continued to do this until her superiors at the CIA forced her to abandon the kid. However, all this produces some serious questions: McGarrett was born 3/10/1977 (as per a screen shot in the season one finale), so when did his mother have time to raise his "step-brother"? McGarrett's father's birth date was March 15, 1942. So Steve was born when his father was 34 years old. His mother died on April 19, 1992 when he was 15.

There was not one, but two fight sequences in the show, perhaps the most intense fights seen on the show yet. The first was McGarrett against Eris, the second McGarrett against Wo Fat. The previously mentioned song at the end accompanied a montage of "greatest scenes from the show so far." The sound mix for this episode was exceptionally good, as were the production values, though there were still a few lines which were difficult to understand. Most of the musical score was the typical noise, though there were a few nice sequences reminiscent of Lost (as were several of the scenes during McGarrett's torture).

MORE TRIVIA:

• When Five-0 arrived on the scene where McGarrett had been abducted, the Mercury Marquis owned by O'Loughlin's McGarrett (and driven by Jack Lord on the original series) was showing serious damage to the driver's side window. The car was also really dirty and dusty outside which makes me think this is not the original car, despite it having the same license plate.
• When Five-0 brought Sang Min to Moreau's place, why didn't Moreau bother to check outside to see if there was some kind of setup? Sang's disappearance after he gave Moreau an envelope full of blank paper in the form of dollar bills was far too quick, as was the appearance of Kono and Chin Ho inside the building. Similarly, why didn't Wo Fat, who left the subterranean torture room, hear all the noise during the fight with Eris?
• The film showing McGarrett and his sister as kids at the beginning of the film, probably made in the late 1980s, had sound. But according to Wikipedia, "few [8mm] cameras were made that could record the sound directly onto the film."
• Sang Min refers to Kono as "Spicy"; Danno calls Hesse "Bono."
• Questions about Wo's escape from the Colorado Supermax prison in the last episode of last season remained unanswered. The scar on Wo's face seemed less serious than previously; perhaps he had been visiting the Honolulu Dermabrasion Clinic.
• Incredulously, some fan sites had people thinking that this was the last episode of the series or that it had been cancelled!
• You have to wonder about the title of this episode -- does it mean "Whatever"?