Five-0 (2010) -- Season 2

Copyright ©2011 by Mike Quigley. No reproduction of any kind without permission.

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For the season two premiere, the show's creators deserve a special prize for jamming what seemed like more roller coaster-like action into 42 or so minutes than in any other episode so far.

At the beginning of the show, McGarrett escapes from jail thanks to his nemesis Victor Hesse, who stabs him in the prison yard, getting McGarrett transported out of jail by ambulance. Prior to getting knifed, the two of them carry on their kung fu fighting from their previous encounters. Victor wants McGarrett to escape and go after Wo Fat because he figures that Wo will come gunning for him once he cleans up a lot of loose ends locally. On the way to the hospital, McGarrett punches out the two ambulance attendants and leaps out of the moving vehicle, almost getting run over, a pretty improbable move considering how badly McGarrett is bleeding.

Terry O'Quinn made the first of what are supposed to be several appearances as McGarrett's SEAL mentor and trainer Lt. Commander Joe White, who also knew McGarrett's father for 34 years. O'Quinn and O'Loughlin played well off each other, and this seemed to be much more of a "family" episode with the Five-0 team than many in the first season. Masi Oka as coroner Mac Bergman got promoted to a star character who will be seen more often, as did Taylor Wily as Kamekona, who talks about expanding his operation from the shave ice stand to a shrimp truck. Danno's ranting was less offensive than normal, mainly because he was being the "voice of reason" most of the time when he was yelling and not just carrying on like a ninny.

While "some conditions apply" from Lieutenant-Governor Sam Denning (Richard T. Jones), the team ends up back together as it was before McGarrett got jailed over the assassination of Governor Jameson, though Kono is still suspended from the police force.

There are some major plot twists -- McGarrett's father being pals with Wo Fat then and Jenna Kaye being pals with him now. I am skeptical that Jenna is really Wo's pal, though. Her glance at him at the end looked like he had something on her ... maybe the whereabouts of her supposedly dead fiancée?

The high seas chase at the end was very reminiscent of the end of Murder -- Eyes Only in the earlier show where Five-O pursued Wo Fat on a hydrofoil trying to escape into international waters, only to discover when they boarded the ship that Wo Fat was not there. The new ship even had a silvery "hydrofoil" look about it.

There were a few things in this show that didn't totally add up:

• On the hidden camera that McGarrett's father hid in the Governor's study, there was footage, not only which cleared McGarrett of the Governor's murder, but also dating back a couple of years before, showing Wo Fat meeting with McGarrett's father and the Governor. How much memory did this camera have? The way Chin Ho and Danno entered the study and Danno smashed the clock containing the camera without getting a warrant first was legally very iffy.
• O'Quinn's character is running around on the streets of Honolulu with a gun. Is he a member of Five-0 now? Do Navy SEALs have the right to run around on city streets armed without some serious SEAL purpose?
• Wo Fat at the end disguises himself as a guard, gets into the prison, murders Hesse and walks back out through the prison (where there are seemingly no other prisoners and guards) in a robotic fashion. Silly!

The photography was above-average in this show, particularly when viewed on a higher resolution TV, which I think may be part of the problem with those shows last season which looked kind of crappy. (I had watched several of those in 480p; there may also be some issues with how the shows are broadcast.) Some reports from people who have watched the Blu-Ray discs of the first season suggest that the higher resolution makes a huge difference in both the quality of the image and the color compared to a standard TV. Unfortunately, the music rehashed a lot of familiar "themes."

MORE TRIVIA:

• Kurt Hauff (Jay Freis?), the guy who is buying some mysterious liquid in metal containers from Wo Fat which White says is "the raw materials for a dirty bomb," looks very much like Val Kilmer. His rap sheet that Kono pulls up includes "arms trafficking, extortion and conspiricy [sic] to commit terrorist acts."
• Max Bergman's geeky car, a Volkswagen "Thing," has the license number of WARP 9. When Danno asks Max if he hasn't seen the news to learn that McGarrett escaped from jail, Bergman says, "I try not to ... it's very scary." Later, when Bergman, who is wearing a green shirt, makes some inappropriate comment during the reunion between McGarrett, Danno and Chin Ho at his house, Danno yells at him "Zip it, Kermit!"
• When McGarrett is doing push-ups in his cell at the beginning of the episode, written on the wall behind him is the word "Sheila." Sheila is a colloquial term for a girl or woman in O'Loughlin's native Australia.
• On the memory card obtained in the locker on Molokai, McGarrett's father was seen setting up the camera in the governor's office; the date was showing on the playback: 5/9/2009

I actually had to watch this show while it was on, a painful experience not only because it was late, but because I had to endure the awful sound mix and mumbling actors without any opportunity to "rewind." While the script was sort of logical, it was the usual slam-bam-thank-you-ma'am experience with dizzying photography (very nice to look at, though) and mediocre music.

This episode introduced Lori Weston (Lauren German), a skinny blonde FBI profiler who is foisted on the Five-0 team by the Lieutenant-Governor to keep an eye on them and make sure they avoid some of the excesses of the previous season. I didn't like Weston much at all. Is she a friend of the Lieutenant-Governor's or something? Was she on a short list of candidates applying to work with Five-0 or what? On the other hand, Jenna Kaye, who I wasn't too crazy about originally, leaves because she receives news that her fiancé is still alive (she says he "must" be alive, not "might" be alive), but as I suggested in my review of last week's episode, this is probably something to do with Wo Fat, not her boss at the CIA, who she says told her this. I was actually sad when Jenna left, and had a good laugh at the line she gave McGarrett when he was hassling her about getting information on the case they were investigating, something like ""OhmigawdIamalreadystressedtothemaxandyourhasslingmedoesn'tmakemeworkfaster!"

The story was about Jen Hassley, a fifteen-year-old champeen paddleboard surfer who was kidnapped just at her moment of triumph at the end of a race from Molokai to Oahu. Turns out that Jen was born to Ria, the daughter of Steven Carver, the "Jim Jones"-like leader of a cult with its headquarters on the island of Lanai. Because of a heart condition which meant that the no-doctors attitude of the cult would have doomed her daughter, Ria faked Jen's death and gave the kid up for adoption. Even after watching the show a couple more times, I still had a lot of difficulty figuring this scenario out.

First, Carver's cult believes -- at least based on what Carter says to the kidnapped Jen when he tries to give her some herbal tea -- that "medicine makes us weak." So would there even have been a doctor in attendance at Jen's birth? Without a doctor, how would they have been able to diagnose her heart condition to the extent that she needed emergency surgery? And how would her mother have faked Jen's death? This would require the co-operation of Jen and any medical personnel (if they were even present), plus it would all have to be kept secret from the other members of the cult, especially Ria's father, Carver. Way back then, Ria contacted Matt Porter, an "extractor" who professionally helped people escape from cults, to help with the adoption process. How would she know him and how would she get in touch with him? Wouldn't Porter be total anathema to the cult? It's not like they had his phone number in their Rolodexes or something. Porter, with Ria's knowledge, took care of the adoption process with Jen winding up with her current parents. But would Porter have legally been allowed to do this? One of Porter's aliases, James Westerfield, was on the adoption papers for Jen, but -- despite what Jenna says -- not on the paper that she showed McGarrett dated July 17, 1996 (15 years before) which was seen very briefly in the show. The only signatures on that paper were those of the Hassleys, Jen's adoptive mother and father.

At the end of the show, Ria speculates that when her father was in Honolulu recently, he saw Jen's interview in a magazine where the kid mentioned her heart condition and somehow made the connection with his supposedly dead granddaughter. Finding out about her father's plans, Ria called Porter to warn him that her father was coming to get Jen, using some secret phone number which was only given out to people Porter dealt with, the ones needing help escaping from cults. But would Ria have this number after so many years? (If it was a newer number, again -- how would she get it?) Does Porter live in Hawaii? The fact that he had a bunch of bogus drivers' licenses for various states suggests he is always travelling around. Or was he in Hawaii just to help Julie, the girl from a mainland cult, trying to go underground? (Chin Ho located her via voice mail that Porter left -- love them all-encompassing powers!) Carver would have to figure out where the secretive Porter was staying, kill him, dump his body and then use his car to kidnap Jen after contacting her via a pseudonymous character on a Facebook-like site, sending her a letter with a picture of Ria, her birth mother which told Jen to meet behind the changing room at the paddleboard race finale for more information. All of which is fraught with the possibility of something going wrong. And then, why would Carver steal Porter's car? To make people think it was Porter who kidnapped Jen? Don't forget, Max Bergman determined that Porter was killed on Saturday. The race was held on Sunday, proving that Porter did not kidnap Jen. It's not as if Carver could not afford to rent a car -- the guy owns his own plane!

Questions, questions, questions -- all because of very, very bad writing!

In the show we get to see McGarrett, Danno and Lori ride horses to the cult's Lanai ranch. I'm surprised that Danno didn't spend a lot of time bitching about having to ride a horse -- after all, he is from NEW JERSEY. When McGarrett and Danno are having a "horse-argument," Lori gets off a zinger: "How long have you been married," which is pretty lame, considering in season one's show Ho'apono, Robert Loggia's character made a similar remark. The big shootout at the cult headquarters was ridiculous and brought suggestions of the ATF attack on the David Koresh compound. I like the way every time someone shot at the Five-0 threesome, they were either behind sheet metal or oil drums. I was also surprised that in the next show, McGarrett didn't get get another good-sized ass-chewing from the Lieutenant-Governor for violating 57 varieties of civil rights.

Of course, any show that has Grace Park looking sad can't be bad, and this one had several teary-eyed moments as she had to prepare for her review by Internal Affairs, with Tom Sizemore being the VERY nasty boss of IA. Having him show up in her house reading her school yearbook was a particulary creepy moment. Surely Kono could have launched a complaint about this. Note that the name of Sizemore's character, Fryer, is the same as that of the Internal Affairs bigshot in the original show's tenth season episode The Friends of Joey Kalima, who hassles the title character of that show, also a rookie cop, in a very aggressive fashion.

The ending, with its cloying song telling us again what to think, was nauseating.

MORE TRIVIA:

• Chin Ho arrives at a crime scene on his motorcycle -- very cool!
• In the Lieutenant-Governor's office, McGarrett is reading Woman's Day, a real magazine. Lori has the Honolulu Star-Advertiser sports section, which she gives to him. The page with the headline -- Moniz named top offensive player -- is from the July 29, 2011 issue of the paper.
• Among the stations sticking microphones in Jen's parents' faces after the race are KOPT, KMZR and KOIP (all bogus).
• Amazing -- when McGarrett, Danno and Lori are being driven in a police Jeep on Lanai, this is NOT a process shot. By the way, the cop driving is identified a Maui cop, not a mistake, since Lanai is under the jurisdiction of Maui.
• Cult leader Steven Carver has a second degree murder charge on a rap sheet that is seen briefly. He was born on March 9, 1956.
• McGarrett cuts through a chain link fence to get into the cult's compound, a move highly reminiscent of the very bad tenth season show When Does A War End? from the original series. Ditto for the shooting of the tire of Carver's plane, and pursuing a plane fleeing down a dirt runway, which harken back to a couple of other earlier shows.
• Microsoft Bing (not identified as a sponsor for this show in the end credits) is used to locate cults with an anti-doctor bias: Family of Attis, Gates of Ascension, Host of Harmony, Founding Families, The Kindred, The Sept and Sunmakers.
• Interesting that Danno, who was shown to be a technophobe last season who was "all thumbs" when using his cel phone, is now an expert on social media, saying that "kids use these sites to vent, share secrets and talk trash to each other."
• Dennis Chun appears as Sgt. Duke Lukela, helping out with the investigation at the paddleboard race site.
• A list of phone numbers extracted from Jen's cel phone contains the following. Note they all are the same except for the last three numbers:

   Waynecroft, H.  18085550187
   Fellano, S.  18005550166 (and 0139)
   Chipoya, R.  18005550129 (and 0130)
   Dunwadde, D.  18005550182
   Lepchovich, G.  18005550144
   Tallridge, J.  18005550188

This was actually a pretty good "don't think about it too hard" episode.

Clay Garcia, a Navy SEAL who is having marital problems, is found dead in an Oahu forest in the middle of nowhere, apparently the victim of suicide. McGarrett's mentor and trainer, Joe White (Terry O'Quinn), who has decided to relocate to Pearl Harbor, doesn't believe for a moment that the guy killed himself and asks McGarrett to investigate. McGarrett gets Max Bergman to reopen the case, which he does with reluctance, and after Max does a more thorough job, he finds evidence that points to a homicide. Subsequently, another SEAL is killed under suspicious circumstances. Later, Chin Ho, McGarrett and Martin find a pot plantation close to the place where Garcia's body was found. Using footage from the dope growers' elaborate security system, Five-0 figures out that a hitman hired by a Mexican drug cartel which was recently targeted by SEALS Team 9 on their home turf is going after members of this elite force, who are training in Hawaii. In the nick of time, Five-0 manages to prevent yet another SEAL murder, and the show ends with Five-0 watching a live feed of Team 9 taking down the Mexican drug lords one more time, for good.

There were several things about this show that were above average, aside from the photography which was exceptional, the constantly rotating camera notwithstanding. One was the opening sequence where a young couple (an actual twosome in real life) finds Garcia's body in the forest. This part of the show was worthy of five stars, for reasons which I won't get into.

Then there were two stunts. The first was when the drug dealers were trying to catch Five-0 and White, and their vehicle hit a tree which McGarrett conveniently let fall in front of them. (I was surprised that Husqvarna wasn't added as a new sponsor ... how did he manage to do this in such a short time?) The three guys go flying out of their jeep which was totalled.

But this was nothing compared to the mind-bending stunt at the end of the show, which will be hard to top -- ever. Hector Ruiz (Simon Ebling), the nasty hitman hired by the cartel, poses as the pilot for a plane which is taking SEAL Commander Bradley Jacks skydiving, drugs him, then puts the plane on auto pilot and throws Jacks out from several thousand feet up after cutting his parachute ropes. Suddenly out of nowhere, McGarrett appears, skydiving, and in an incredible free fall sequence, grabs on to the falling SEAL, then lets go of him and catches up with him again, fastens on to him and then they fall together to earth. There was some serious time compression going on here, as McGarrett not only managed to get to the airport after realizing at Ruiz' hideout that Jacks was next to be knocked off, but then commandeered a plane and managed to fly exactly above the place where Jacks got dumped. The hitman was totally oblivious to McGarrett's presence as he did this, even though the sky was totally clear and there were no other planes or skydivers to be seen anywhere.

Grace Park as Kono got to wear a slinky skirt and boots as she started hanging out with a group of sleazy cops, including William Baldwin in his first appearance as Frank Delano. Whatever Kono is up to, it screams "setup," either because she wants to get brownie points with HPD on her own, or she is working in cahoots with Fryer from Internal Affairs. I'm surprised that Delano and the other cops can't figure this out, especially since Kono was previously kind of a goody-goody.

On the negative side, we had to endure more of Lori Weston's "babysitting" Five-0, even having a "cargument" with Danno over his relationship with his wife. At least this produced a good line from Danno: "'Close' is no good unless you're playing horseshoes or hand grenades." At the end of the show, her agreeing that it was a good thing that McGarrett was on "our side" was totally unnecessary, like some know-it-all who joins a company suddenly opening their mouth after working there for only a few days. McGarrett and Danno also got to have a discussion while driving, and in both cases we were back to the usual awful projected backdrops.

The "long arm of U.S. justice" attack on the Mexican cartel at the end, witnessed by Five-0 via a live feed, had lots of contemporary relevance, with obvious echoes of the Navy SEAL raid which killed Osama Bin Laden. It was either rah-rah-gung-ho or repugant, depending on your viewpoint. One person who contacted me about this, whose identify I cannot disclose for obvious reasons, had this to say about the ending: "At the end when they were showing the 5-0 team the SEAL takedown live as it was happening, that was TOTALLY unbelievable for me. I have had a Top Secret clearance for over 22 yrs now and you NEVER NEVER invite people WITHOUT a security clearance into a TOP SECRET environment, much less show them a live video feed. I am pretty sure none of the 5-0 people have a TOP SECRET clearance in the show (maybe Steve does??) as there would be no need for it in the storyline. There is a special kind of law enforcement classification called "law enforcement sensitive" which is a MUCH lower level of classification than TOP SECRET. However, with all the blatant security present at the location where they watched the takedown, it was pretty obvious that it was a TOP SECRET environment."

MORE TRIVIA:

• As part of Ruiz' "research," a travel itinerary, presumably for one of the SEALS, is pinned to his wall. It is for the "Chongqing Group," from April 8-April 21, 2004!
• This is the second show of three in a row where GSR (gun shot residue) is mentioned.
• White has been married and divorced three times.
• McGarrett presses SEAL Commanding Officer Wade for information about the members of Team 9's identities, which he cannot divulge because of security issues. But when he meets with White and McGarrett in a bar, he leaves them a copy of "The Chronicle" newspaper which has details about the Mexican cartels that gives them a clue as to what is going on.
• Chin Ho's badge number is 13353.
• Max Bergman is not the boss of the coroner's service. He talks about having to defer to his superior, the "senior medical examiner," who graduated summa cum laude from Harvard. Max's position is "chief medical examiner."

Although this was an interesting show with above average guest stars (Patty Duke, Peter Fonda, Don Stroud), a relatively logical plot and, as we have seen more recently, highly improved photography, the resolution of the crime of the week turned out to be kind of boring. Then I realized that this show was about "RELATIONSHIPS." For a start, McGarrett's relationship with his girlfriend Catherine seems to be on the skids -- like they don't want to get too close to each other. Then Kono seemingly has a "relationship" with the William Baldwin character. Is she "doing it" with this creep as part of her undercover work? UGH! McGarrett's relationship with Joe White was also strained, when he found out that White didn't send the video of his father to the Department of Defense for anal-ysis. The line that White gives him, like "you don't want to know what this is about" is highly reminiscent of what Wo Fat told McGarrett during their meeting in the Chinese restaurant. Then there is Chin Ho's relationship with Kono, and the skindiver's relationship to his mom (Duke). I had a good laugh at the music accompanying the scene at the beginning where the kid was pretending to be a shark. It had echoes of John Williams' score to "Jaws" ... in other words REAL MUSIC!

Another kick ass episode. I especially liked the business with Sizemore shooting Baldwin. In the movie Heat (one of my all-time favorite films), Sizemore is the bad guy who gets it! Kono looked very hot when she met with the bad guys at the end. But wouldn't the bad guys have checked out what she was doing? She was gone quite a while, after all. I hope this isn't the end of the Sizemore arc, especially since he makes a great bad good guy. O'Loughlin and Sizemore had a dramatic screaming match near the end when it was revealed -- DUH!! -- that Kono was working undercover for Fryer. Chin Ho really outdid himself being geeky in this show, and he was in a "cleaning" truck, though it wasn't a dry cleaner truck like in the old show, but one of those trucks used by restoration companies. I also loved the way Chin Ho totally ignored Lori when she was trying to chat him up in the motel while they were waiting for the woman, asking him about McGarrett!

If the show two episodes ago was about "relationships," then this show was about "fighting." The beginning and ending of the show, with McGarrett partaking in an MMA (Mixed Martial Arts) fight for charity, was ridiculous, designed only to show off O'Loughlin's beefcake. Come on ... even though McGarrett is a public figure, he needs to have a certain distance between himself and the community. Considering the element who attend these kind of contests, doesn't it seem logical that someone might try to try and knock McGarrett off if he appeared in public in such an obvious way? The way the other members of the Five-0 team and Kamekona were carrying on, supporting McGarrett, was silly. Then there was the extreme kick-ass duel between Joe White and Wo Fat. Come on again ... Terry O'Quinn is almost 60 years old (I was surprised to learn he is younger than I am, though). Just because he is a Navy SEAL, does this give him kung fu fighting ability? The plot was the usual routine: someone is murdered in an unusual way, which gives Max Bergman an opportunity to come up with some esoteric ideas about how the guy died. In this case, it was a well-known restaurateur in Honolulu, Jake Griffin. Then there are red herrings, like his sister, Samantha Martel, played by Annie Wersching, Renee Walker on "24," and tough guy Victor Boriero (Gino Anthony Pesione). Boriero trains at a gym established by Griffin for wayward young street types in Honolulu, part of a charitable foundation which is conveniently overseen by Samantha. Neither of these two are guilty. Turns out the bad guy is Marshall Martel (Shawn Hatosy), Samantha's husband and Griffin's brother-in-law, who shot Jake during an argument and then threw his body in his swimming pool after tying him to a chair with duct tape which he bought at a hardware store shortly after (conveniently filmed by the store's video camera). BORING! At the end, Wo Fat makes his presence known again. This show was unusual because another suspect in Griffin's murder actually asked for a lawyer several times while in the Five-0 interrogation room, which got a lot of use. Prize for lame euphemism goes to Boriero, who said when Griffin called him a loser to his face, "not many men have the stones [i.e., balls] to say that to me." Some nice aerial shots of Honolulu, but overall this show was a dud. Hopefully they can get out of this rut of using the same kind of story-telling every week with something a bit off the beaten track soon.

This episode was a big disappointment, especially considering it was directed by Joe Dante, a man responsible for mixing horror with a wacky sense of humor in many of his movies. There wasn't very much funny about this show at all, other than seeing coroner Max Bergman dressed up like Keanu Reeves in The Matrix. Danno, on the other hand, was beyond annoying, especially at the beginning of the show where he flew off the handle when some guy didn't have any treats to give his daughter Gracie on Hallowe'en. Instead, the guy gave her a couple of small bottles of booze "for her dad" and Danno promptly threatened to arrest the guy. Come on! Danno also acted stupidly at the crime scene located at a sacred burial ground where a Blair Witch Project-style documentarian and his girlfriend had been brutally murdered. At least he was nicely rewarded there with a couple of large rocks through the front and back windows of his Camaro. There were the usual red herrings connected with the murder, specifically Robert "Freddy Kruger" Englund as a deranged derelict Vietnam veteran and some other creepy guy who worked at a funeral home, neither of whom had much to do with the crime. The guy who actually did it only put in a brief appearance at the last minute -- his presence seemed to be for little purpose other than a spectacular stunt at the end of the show where he turned into a human torch. The photography again was good, with some nice, swooping shots of the Oahu skyline. The music was mostly the usual plink-plank nonsense, but there were a few creepy passages which sounded like manipulated tape sounds, at times reminiscent of The X-Files. The soundtrack as Five-0 approached the killer's house was unbearably loud. Despite the fact that Danno outdid himself in being a PITA, I kind of liked it when he started needling Lori about her Hallowe'en costume, calling her "Wonder Woman." Lori, whose part was boringly written, got clubbed on the head with a very heavy-looking object near the end of the show. I suspect if this was real life, that the damage it did would have been very severe. I was surprised that when Bergman started talking about liquid nitrogen, McGarrett actually didn't know what this was used for, or where Bergman's explanation was leading. The killer's hideout with its plastic sheets was very reminiscent of "Dexter." Chin Ho used the expression "son of a bitch" -- for the first time on the show?

I enjoyed this show, in no small part due to the presence of guest actor Greg Grunberg. He appeared briefly at the beginning and I figured it's the usual Five-0 guest spot with the actor spending minimal time on the show, probably reappearing at the end of the show where he is identified as the bad guy. But Grunberg's character, ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) agent Jeff Morrison, took an active part in the investigation along with Five-0 to avenge the death of Monica Jennsen, an agent who worked for him. The big scene at the beginning of the show where this co-worker crashed into the ocean in a plane used pretty cheesy CGI, reminiscent of the famous stock shot from the old show where a car plunges over a cliff and bursts into flame. The Five-0 supercomputer seemed to be slow to respond to help with the case, because information about this plane and its pilot were not forthcoming early on. There was some suggestion that the NTSB (National Transportation and Safety Board) was going to be doing an investigation, but would this keep Five-0 from gleaning any details? As well, one would have expected McGarrett to bark "I want to know every plane that took off from this island" (especially since he knew that the plane was a certain variety of Cessna which had some peculiar characteristics which influenced the plot) and "I want to know everyone who is qualified to fly or jump from a plane." It turned out that the bad guy had these qualifications, yet the supercomputer did not flag these after Chin and Kono talked to the guy earlier in the day. The bad guy, Liam Miller (Jon Gries) was a VERY bad guy suffering from terminal cancer who took extreme measures not only towards Morrison's associate, but also some Chinese herbal doctor who prescribed him exotic animal remedies which did not work. The scene at the beginning with Danno was annoying, and Danno picked up a pet dog which seemed to share some of his characteristics, i.e., barking and interrupting the investigation at Five-0 headquarters and depositing some turds in McGarrett's office. You have to wonder, if Danno was such a "dog person" as he suggested, why he would let the dog gag on some of Kamekona's shrimp products. As well, Danno was bitching about Hawaii ("I hate this miserable land"), something which has not been actively pursued in recent episodes (other than the last one, where he was messing around with the sacred burial ground). Still, despite its faults, the plot for the show was relatively logical, and the photography again was well above average.

MORE TRIVIA:

• Fun moments: Masi Oka and Grunberg having a mini-Heroes reunion, with Oka asking if he knew Grunberg from somewhere else. Kono pretending to be a stoner in the medical marijuana dispensary.
• Annoying musical moment accompanying Chin Ho and Lori Weston as they travel through an Oahu forest on ATVs.
• Hard to believe moment: Chin Ho recognizes the "specialty tire" print from the bad guy's antique Triumph motorcycle out in the forest because it happens to be similar to one that Chin himself is "working on."
• Clueless McGarrett moment: "What's a 'red book'?"
• Amazing moments: Not one, but TWO suspects asked to speak to a lawyer!
• Blast from the past: The "geek god" (according to Kono) Charlie Fong uses a "video spectral comparator" to figure out what is written on a couple of scraps from Jennsen's diary which were torn out and partially burned. Shades of some of the wacky sounding equipment used by Che Fong on the old show.
• Funny Kamekona quote: "I sell shrimp, not baby seals."
• Max Bergman was seen driving a new yellow Camaro, obviously inspired by the earlier episode where he was driving Danno's car. The license number on this new car -- WARP 9 -- was the same as the one on Max's geeky Volkswagen "Thing." I e-mailed the Honolulu Department of Motor Vehicles about this, as to whether one could transfer plates between cars, and they replied: "To switch vehicles, the owner would do a plate transfer by taking in the registrations for both vehicles to a Satellite City Hall of his or her choice and informing staff that they want to record a plate transfer. Fee is $11.00, if registration fees are due on either vehicle they will be collected first."

Not a particularly interesting episode, partially redeemed by the excellent photography and interesting locations including a ship laying cable out in the middle of the ocean. It was a typical new Five-0 procedural as the trunk of one of several muscle cars destined for Asian markets revealed a body which had had plastic surgery. The usual suspects included car thieves (obviously) as well as members of the Boston Irish Mafia. Along the way, Max joined Danno on the rag, snubbing McGarrett and Danno, only speaking to Agent Weston. Weston got an opportunity to act slutty undercover, as well as escorting Max to some social function at the end, which, considering what happened just before it, was annoyingly cutesy-poo (as was Max playing the piano in the autopsy room). The sound mix when suspects were in the interrogation room was terrible, making it difficult to understand crucial plot points. Danno was bitching about Hawaii once again, saying that the sound of waves was "water torture." One of the Irish Mafia guys mentioned a lawyer, but then crumbled under questioning from Danno and McGarrett anyway. I figured out who the "bad guy" was well before the end, just by a process of elimination. Isn't this supposed to be November sweeps time when they pull out all the stops for a killer show?

MORE TRIVIA:

• Chuck's Corvette Clinic at 505 Kamani Street (an actual location) was shown, where Kamekona sold Chin Ho and Kono some info, along with an air freshener which had the smell of spam musubi.
• In addition to Kamekona, Duke Lukela also put in an appearance at the beginning of the show.
• I question whether the real Honolulu police would pursue someone through downtown streets in such a dangerous manner as seen during the opening car chase. Later at the HPD garage, Kono was seen wearing her HPD uniform.
• Although it's not stated how far out in the ocean the cable ship is located, McGarrett's phone seems to work fine. Was it a satellite phone of some kind?

I did not like this show at all. So far I have resisted being one of the "this new show is pissing all over the sacred body of work that was the old Five-O" crowd, but this show not only pissed over that, but all over itself as well (even more than the Hallowe'en episode). This episode really should have been a two-hour show, in which case it might have succeeded ... MAYBE. Trying to compress this much material into 42 minutes was absurd, and script logic was totally thrown to the winds. For example, after Bethany Morrison, the muckraking reporter for the Pacific Register, was murdered at the beginning of the show, some guy named Sam Schulte was seen being interrogated in the usual blue-lit room at Five-0 headquarters. Who was this guy? He just appeared out of nowhere, matched up by voiceprint analysis to a threatening message left on the reporter's answering machine. He sounded like another member of the Irish Mafia, but he was not seen in the previous show. I rewound the show for several minutes prior to his appearance, but couldn't figure out who he was. Are they going to drag in some Irish Mafia guy every time they need to resolve plot points? Then there was Doug Mossman (nice to see him) as Kimo Hakama. Was he the owner of the house, some rental agent, the caretaker, or what? I couldn't believe the way the characters jumped on a plane for South and North Korea with all the preparation of taking a trip to the mall to buy a quart of milk. And since when did the Five-0 team get the knowledge to operate rocket launchers, heavy duty weaponry and so forth? Then there is the location of North Korea, where McGarrett was being held captive by Wo Fat after being coerced there by Jenna Kaye under the pretext of rescuing her fiancé Joshua Hirsch. Like Po'ipu, episode nine of the first season which featured a Kim Jong-Il-like leader, this show proved once again that its creators should avoid anything even remotely connected with North Korea. The way Terry O'Quinn led his comic book band of fighters into this country with the help of his old buddy Frank Bama (Jimmy Buffett) reminded me of The A-Team (especially with the participation of Commander Wade Gutches who is stereotypically gung-ho military enough) ... or even Scooby-Doo. I was under the impression that North Korea was one of the most repressive and highly regulated (not to mention protected from "outside influences") countries in the world, but what ... we have "rebels" in North Korea (the ones who captured Jenna's fiancé)? Huh? If someone tried to "invade" North Korea in real life, they would have been vaporized within a few seconds. Inasmuch as I am getting tired of Wo Fat being an even bigger Superman than McGarrett (who in this episode turned into Houdini as well), I was glad to see him finally on the run at the end of the show. But, of course, this will just make Wo even more motivated to come up with typically diabolical schemes and McGarrett equally motivated after the Nine Dragons-like torture that he endured. This was real twenty-first century torture, nasty and sadistic, with the demise of Jenna being a particular shocker. Chin Ho was seen seriously reviving his relationship with Malia at the beginning of the show, only to be called away to work (this is becoming an ongoing cliché). The way Reiko Aylesworth's character is being featured in such a sweet way only makes me think that she will meet a horrible end like she did in "24."

MORE TRIVIA:

• In trying to track down who murdered the reporter, Five-0 comes up with a guest list from the Kailua Inn's guest registry: Molly Kahaina, Robert Chipoya, Evan Nakumotu, Roger Takahamo, Ruth Provazolli, Edward Kapuloha, Cynthia Kahaina, Thomas Kamamea, Leilani Janderman, Aoki Tolchuck, Matthew Kamanui, Lisa Palakoa and Rufus Kinkirk plus their suspect, Sung Paek.
• Sung Paek's Hawaiian driver's license is numbered 2398729327D; his date of birth is 2/24/1992, he lives at 1549 Uluhi Road,k Honolulu 96824. He is 5'6" and weighs 110 lbs. A bogus license that Jenna was using, numbered 261G842, shows her to be Jane Woodley from 2016 Aukle St., Honolulu. Her height is 5'5" and she also weighs 110 lbs.
• An file from the reporter's computer which Kono manages to save just before the drive self-destructs with a virus has an article called "Lost Prisoner of Fate" about Jenna's fiancé Josh. It is rather amateurishly written.
• As part of their "undercover" operation, where they are pretending to go to Korea on a humanitarian mission, Joe White asks the Five-0 team for their badges. But he puts them in a bag which he then puts on a pallet of medical supplies that is being loaded on the plane!
• When White and the others meet the retreating Wo Fat, they have overturned a vehicle on the road and set it on fire to obstruct Wo's way. Where did they get this vehicle?
• When McGarrett tells Danno he is going to Korea to help Jenna, Danno says this is not a "puddlejumper to Lanai," referring to the second episode of this season, where the kidnapped paddleboard champion was held in a cult.
• At the end of the show, Bama's ramshackle helicopter is seen flying over the ocean. Some people have speculated they are flying directly from Korea back to Hawaii, leaving Kono behind! (I don't think so.)

A much improved show over last week (how could it be worse?). It begins with Joe White getting kicked out of the Navy SEALS because of his A-Team adventures extracting McGarrett from North Korea. But this just motivates White to go "underground" in his retirement, helping out the Five-0 team (a very good career move, in my opinion!). He kidnaps Hiro Noshimuri (remember him from season one?) who has gotten out of jail thanks to clever lawyers, and makes him reveal that the mysterious Shelburne is a person that even Wo Fat fears. The central issue of the episode is another kidnapping -- of a school bus full of kids by some very nasty dope dealers. They are connected with a recent $80 million cocaine bust by Five-0 which gets a lot of exposure at a press conference held by the Governor, identified as "Sam Danning" in the CBS press release for the show -- DUH! Soap opera star Ingo Rademacher is Malcolm Schafer, the father of one of the kids, and Five-0 suspects that he has some ties to the cocaine ... which he does, but not in the way we expect. Turns out that the drug runners were using his warehouse and when he found out, he turned them in. That's why they kidnapped all of the kids, including his son Jason. I had some very serious problems with the time frame in this show (2 hours for Five-0 to come up with the cocaine, 1 hour for them to deliver it). The team is all over the island, finding the bus, dealing with the kids' parents, going to Halawa Correctional and and rushing back to headquarters where they grill Mateo Vargas (Rick Gomez) from the prison in the usual blue-lit room. Kono even has time to try some hypnotic-like regression on this character. Of course the bad guys are nicely dispatched and the kids, who are nearly smothered to death in a delivery truck at what looks like a gravel pit where a conveyor belt dumps dirt all over the vehicle are driven back to their parents in their school bus by McGarrett as the usual banal music with Bourne-like passages plays in the background. Lori haters get their moment as she makes goo-goo eyes at McGarrett for a few seconds near the end.

• The military big shot at the beginning of the show who is in charge of White's hearing sounds very much like the late G.D. Spradlin, who starred in films like Apocalypse Now and The Godfather Part II.
• As White gets the boot from the SEALS, the music in the background is almost tolerable, but it falls back into the usual Fast and Furious underscore quickly.
• Amazingly, Five-0 is unable to trace the call from the kidnappers' cel phone ... shades of the old show!
• Chin Ho, among his other skills, has the ability to use a large earth mover to help remove the dirt covering the truck.
• Near the end of the show, McGarrett has a cut on his left cheek. Where did he get this?
• Nice local color as a suspect in the kidnapping is found shot to death in a truck full of pineapples.
• Several cars driven by Five-0 get very dirty during the show.
• Some of the techniques which McGarrett and Danno use in the interrogation room are far too extreme.

I didn't like this show that much. Fryer's character was really inconsistent with his previous appearances. Suddenly he is working like a regular cop (there was some explanation for this that he gave, that he was "promoted" from Internal Affairs to head of detectives or something like that, mumbled like much of the other exposition for the show). If he is Internal Affairs, he should just be Internal Affairs. Why would he want to become a detective, which is hardly some cushy desk job? (And, as someone e-mailed me, it would put him in serious conflict with people he may have been investigating.) The people making this show totally can't keep their characters on track, like the way that Lori was supposed to be the governor's stooge, but she turned out to be just a cipher, boringly written. As well, Fryer's extreme interrogation techniques verged on the absurd, making McGarrett and Danno look like pussycats by comparison. Storywise, this was a typical Five-0 procedural where things don't turn out as you expect. The kids at the beginning of the show talked in an unrealistic manner reminiscent of a Stephen Spielberg movie, mouthing yet more exposition. And what's with the "lava tube" in the bunker? Did it suddenly appear out of nowhere since the war? The sequence with Danno and Lori, also at the beginning of the show, was very strange. Is Lori now supposed to have hot pants for Danno instead of McGarrett? The business with the handcuffs was never really explained. Max was totally annoying -- is there anything that he investigates that he doesn't have some particular interest in, i.e., he is a comic book or TV/film memorabilia collector, a spelunker, etc.? The wedding was cute in a travelogue-like way ("This is how we have a wedding in Hawaii"), but I still worry something sinister will befall Malia ... and now Joe White has to fear for his life because Noshimuri's son is going to come gunning for him!

This episode pushed the envelope, with a teacher sexually involved with one of his students (the teacher pointing out that the age of consent in Hawaii is 16; the girl in question was 17). This was a peripheral issue during the investigation, though, which was like peeling back the layers of an onion until the center was revealed. Once again we are presented with a typical Five-O red herring procedural, and these red herrings are starting to stink! The best friend of the sexually involved girl was murdered by a professional hit man in order to get her father replaced on a jury with someone sympathetic to the defendant, a construction company which was using substandard steel from China, instead of the USA. As the episode progressed, things became seamier and seamier. The still-unsolved mystery of what Joe White did to Hiro Noshimura left us with yet another big tease at the end, with Joe telling the frustrated McGarrett that he helped Hiro fake his own death -- but there is no indication that Hiro is dead, he has merely disappeared! There were some very strong words between McGarrett and White at the police station, and later Joe was kidnapped by Noshimuri Jr.'s thugs, who beat the crap out of him. Unfortunately, the episode left a very bad taste in my mouth because there was not one, not two, but three examples of extreme interrogation which made me finally say "This is bullshit." McGarrett harassed the boyfriend of the murdered girl in the hospital after he tried to commit suicide, he and Danno grilled the teacher who had sex with the 17-year-old in the blue-lit room at Five-O and, worst of all, the two of them kidnapped the replacement juror, put a bag over his head and threatened to throw him off a cliff if he didn't talk (and, of course, he did). Having heard what they wanted to hear, they threw him off anyway, only to have the camera pull back and show that the cliff was only 20 or so feet high, but probably high enough to cause the juror to have suffered some serious damage, especially considering his hands were secured behind his back. For these scenes, I give ZERO stars. For the rest, three. The average of the two = 1-1/2 stars.

MORE TRIVIA:

• Lori's presence was insignificant as usual. The one big contribution she made to the investigation concerning the murdered girl was to whip out some gizmo which revealed the phone number her best friend was calling with her cellular phone.
• Charlie Fong had a good line to Kono: "Resist the urge to have sex in front of an open laptop." Of course, he had no designs on Kono when saying this.
• The way the footage from the airport security camera focused on the hitman's boarding pass, making it appear clear as day, was ridiculous.
• At the end, McGarrett tried to save the sleazy jury consultant Owen Sutherland who was knocked over the edge of the building by the head man in charge of making the substandard building. McGarrett grabbed on to Sutherland's jacket, which ripped, sending him to his death several stories below. This was very reminiscent of the finale of the 12th season episode Good Help is Hard to Find.
• Nice music at the beginning, Stevie Wonder's "Superstition." Nice contrast to the usual boring plink-plank which followed it in front of the murdered girl's house.

This episode was supposed to have ASTOUNDING REVELATIONS. A CBS press release prior to the show said "CHIN HO TELLS MCGARRETT SHOCKING NEWS ABOUT JOE WHITE THAT CAUSES A FACE OFF BETWEEN THE TWO ... McGarrett is rocked to his core when Chin Ho tells him some shocking news about Joe White." This did NOT happen. The same press release said "Danny plays mid-wife for his ex-wife when she goes into early labor," suggesting that Danno actually helped with the delivery. This also did not happen. It also promised to reveal what was the mysterious Shelburne that has been driving Wo Fat (and viewers) crazy for several episodes. This happened, but in an anti-climactic way. Who is cranking out this promotional material, an ex-writer from the National Perspirer?

The show instead turned out to be all about FATHERS, aside from Danno, who may or may not have been the father of the child his ex-wife Rachel had in the hospital. Incidentally, some fan sites had a disturbing amount of hatred both for Rachel and Claire van der Boom, the actress playing her, saying that the character should have died in childbirth, or will hopefully now leave the islands for good. Someone even said how much they hated van der Boom's "British accent"!

The episode opened in 1992 with William Sadler returning as McGarrett Senior, a bottle of bourbon on the table in front of him, telling McGarrett Junior (Will Carlson) that he was going to be shipped from the islands to the mainland and military school for his own protection (Sadler looked hardly younger than his previous appearance during the show's pilot episode last season). At least the producers resisted the temptation to do an Airplane-style parody with the kid being Black or Asian. McGarrett's dad said that if something to happened to him, his son could "trust [his] Uncle Joe," as in White.

The crime of the week dealt with Lee Dolan (Dean Kaneshiro), an employee of Trans Hawaiian Parcel, a local delivery company, helping to smuggle RFID (radio frequency identification) tags manufactured in Thailand -- to be used in creating bogus passports -- past airport customs in Honolulu. It was suggested that Dolan was actively involved in the smuggling, but this doesn't make sense, because there would likely be someone else in the company's office who actually processed the goods, rather than one of the drivers who would deliver them. There were also suggestions that this was not the first such smuggling job Dolan had participated in, but this one went horribly wrong, with his driving partner murdered by a couple of semi-automatic-toting thugs who stopped the truck with a spike belt in the middle of nowhere.

When Five-O showed up later at Dolan's place, they found him being pummeled by Kyle Ferris, who worked for Nicky Chang (Dante Basco), "a major player in Hawaii's black market." Unfortunately, during the confrontation at Dolan's, McGarrett shot Ferris dead. In order to get to the "paranoid" Chang, Five-O had to spring Sang Min (Will Yun Lee) from jail, under a bogus pretext that the case against him collapsed (which the Segway-riding Chang and his associates saw through all too easily later). Kono and Lori talked to Sang Min in jail prior to his release, allowing Yun Lee to engage in some "I'm so horny" comments directed at Lori plus serious overacting reminsicent of Al Pacino playing Tony Montana in Scarface. After a meal at Kamekona's shrimp shack and following an obnoxious commercial for Subway (more about this later), the wired Sang Min accompanied by the burly Kamekona as his bodyguard, gets into Chang's warehouse, tailed in an original-series-obvious way by the Five-O team in a Takahamo Cleaning and Restoration truck. They park almost next to the warehouse, which is full of surveillance equipment inside ... so why wouldn't it also have cameras on the OUTSIDE, where Five-O's every move can be monitored? When Five-O overhears that their two agents' cover has been blown, there is a ridiculous firefight in the warehouse including the use of a flamethrower, culminating in McGarrett giving Chang some Schwarzenegger-like zinger after he is subdued.

Switch to the hospital where Rachel is being instructed by Danno to "exhale through your vagina," taken from a book for mothers-to-be which Danno describes as "hippie new age garbage," one of the few real laughs of the evening. The only reason for this dialogue seemed to be to get the word "vagina" heard on network TV.

Then there is a big switch to a scene overlooking Honolulu where another guy with Daddy issues, Adam Noshimuri, has a tense confrontation with McGarrett and Joe White. The latter finally reveals that he kidnapped Adam's father, and puts the two of them in contact by phone. (Noshimura Junior's words in Japanese to his father are "Where are you?", "What?", "I understand, father", and "Goodbye.") There are still references to Joe helping Noshimura Senior fake his death, despite the fact that this isn't knowledge that has been broadcast in the newspapers, or that Adam even knew about.

The buyer of the RFDI tags is IDd by Chang as Richard Dettwiler, an antiques dealer whose store, Pacific Collectibles, Joe was seen visiting at the beginning of the show, tailed by McGarrett. According to Joe, Dettwiler is a "master forger" who "forged documents for the CIA." When McGarrett and Joe show up at Dettwiler's shop, they find him shot, but he tells them that he was visited by a couple of "Eastern Europeans" an hour before, who left with the tags. Five-O manages to confront them on the jet bridge to a plane they are taking at the airport in a relatively boring takedown.

And then there is the big reveal about Shelburne. Turns out this is an alias that Joe and McGarrett's father created during the latter's investigation into the Wonderful World of the Yakuza years before, and that as Shelburne, Joe killed Wo Fat's father. Really! Soon after this, executive producer Peter Lenkov tease-Tweeted viewers even more, saying that there would be another "big reveal" regarding Shelburne in the season's final episode. YAWN!

On the plus side, the photography for this show, especially the aerial shots, was superb -- probably the best seen on the show to date. This motivated me to say early on that the show was worthy of three stars (I almost said three and a half), but this was the "don't think too hard" rating, something which I abandoned a while ago. So two and a half stars -- just average -- it is.

MORE TRIVIA:

• Although no one is talking about this, the scene where McGarrett and Joe reminisce at McGarrett Senior's grave near the end of the show is the one at the Punchbowl Cemetery which caused a huge stink during its filming when some veterans were treated "disrespecfully" during their 70th Pearl Harbor reunion.
• According to his tombstone, McGarrett's father was born on March 15, 1942 -- in other words AFTER Pearl Harbor, when >his< father was killed. More daddy issues! His date of death is September 20, 2010, the day the new show premiered -- but we know these dates already from episode four of the first season.
• Lori's part was once again boringly written, and it seemed appropriate that during the raid on Chang's warehouse, she was the one left behind in the truck to watch the monitors. When McGarrett told the team in the van "Just everyone relax, it's gonna be fine," Lori gave him a furtive glance. On the other hand, Grace Park as Kono looked very hot during both the interview with Sang Min and the interrogation of Chang in the blue-lit room at Five-O headquarters.
• Nicky Chang, according to his Five-0 supercomputer police data, is 5'8", weighs 145 pounds and was born 4/15/1975. Richard Detwiller's Hawaiian driver's license shows that he lives at 2106 Farthington Circle, Honolulu 96820. He is 5'1", weighs 180 lbs., has brown hair and green eyes, and was born 10/29/1958.
• Joe is no longer a Navy SEAL, and also not a member of Five-O (as far as I am aware), so why is he allowed to have a heavy-duty firearm which he uses to shoot at a truck during a drive-by shooting in downtown Honolulu?
• The less said about the Subway commercial in the middle of the show, the better. While one can see Kamekona as actually delivering his lines expounding the virtues of their sandwiches, since he is kind of a literal-minded guy, one can only feel sympathy for poor Taylor Wily. This sequence once again demonstrates that the writers for the show do not understand the concept of "show -- don't tell." If Kamekona had been complaining about losing weight and in a subsequent shot been shown munching on a Subway sandwich with the camera focusing on the wrapper with the words "SUBWAY," minus the spiel, this sequence would have been regarded as "cute," rather than "so stupid I'm not going to watch the show again." Someone at IMDB said this show will be known forever as "the Subway show."

It was pretty obvious from the first show when we knew that Danny had a young daughter that some episode would put her in serious danger and tis episode was the one, big time.

Scott Caan gave an exceptional performance as the anguished father after his daughter Gracie was kidnapped by Rick Peterson, a dirty cop who he helped put in jail back in New Jersey. Peterson was played by Peter Greene, who matched Caan at the other end of the spectrum, exuding nastiness, perhaps the nastiest character seen on the show so far.

There was some gorgeous photography in the show, especially at the beginning where McGarrett and Lori were seen running up the 1,048 steps to the top of Koko Head in a competitive manner. Although Lauren German was almost likeable, overall this sequence seemed designed to do little other than piss off the Lori haters, and later gave McGarrett the usual excuse to be called away from some fun activity to pursue an ongoing case.

There were several logistical problems with the show.

At the beginning, Dave Collins (Jon Olson), an old police acquaintance of Danno's who is escorting a prisoner back to Hawaii, goes to the washroom on the plane to call Danno when he recognizes Peterson sitting up ahead (is this a coincidence the two of them are on the same plane?). A flight attendant, seemingly only a few feet away, is coming down the aisle picking up paperwork from people. In the next scene, the attendant notices the prisoner is gone, his leg irons unlocked on the floor, and Collins dead in the washroom, hacked up in a very gory way. Between these two events, Peterson goes into the washroom and commits the murder. When this happened, why didn't the flight attendant notice something odd (like two guys going into the same washroom, or the sounds of what was presumably a struggle in the washroom, or the fact that Peterson ended up with blood all over him)? On the other hand, if Peterson did the deed around the time the plane was almost landing, wouldn’t this have given Collins enough time to contact Danno? Sal Painter, the extradited convict (Theo Rossi) later says that Peterson freed him from the ankle bracelets after the murder happened. The way the attendant comes down the aisle to pick up the paperwork and then comes down the aisle (actually later) to tell people to put their seat belts on prior to the landing and discovers Painter missing and Collins dead looks like this is the same sequence. Bad editing!

Then there is the issue of how Peterson and Painter escape through the rear of the plane ("via the service cartway through the galley") onto the tarmac. Is this really possible? No one at the airport seems to notice the two of them running away from the plane.

Later Peterson is established as some kind of computer whiz, tapping into Danno’s and Rachel’s voice mail (comment from Hermano: "Maybe he used to work for Rupert Murdoch's snoopy tabloid.") and cloning Danno’s cel so he can determine calls being made to and from the phone. Puh-leeze! Peterson is using the I.D. of a guy named McGuire, but why does it take Five-0 so long (only a few hours, but an eternity in Five-0 time) to find out McGuire was actually dead and that Peterson had stolen his identity?

At the end of the show, Peterson forces Danno to shoot Stan, his ex-wife Rachel's husband, which he does, but only in the shoulder which is supposedly not so bad (but Stan is feeling the pain!). Then after Five-0 steps in, Danno shoots Peterson in the leg or foot to get him to reveal where he has hidden Gracie, and points a gun at his head. Despite his good intentions, these are all very serious acts, for which Danno should face legal consequences. Peterson then tells Danno where he has secreted his daughter (in some self-storage location). Why would he tells Danno this, considering what a dirtbag he has been prior to this and has nothing to gain?

At least there was no sucky ending at the very end after Gracie was rescued. But why didn’t Teilor Grubbs (Gracie) get a credit at the beginning?

MORE TRIVIA:

• Mark Dunkerley, playing the president of Hawaiian Airlines, really is the president of Hawaiian Airlines. This cameo was presumably to dispel any suggestion to people who are "very stupid" that something horrible like this might actually happen on a HA plane. Maybe they should have had the president of Subway appearing with Kamekona in the previous show and people wouldn't have been so offended by that commercial?
• The location where Danno pulled up near Diamond Head briefly looked similar to one in the old show used in more than one episode (i.e., A Thousand Pardons -- You're Dead).
• When McGarrett opens up Peterson's computer, there is a single icon on the screen. When he clicks on this, pictures of Danny, Rachel and Gracie suddenly start spraying all over the place, almost like a screen saver. What is the point of this -- to suggest how obsessed Peterson is for revenge (aside from advancing the plot)?
• How many times does McGarrett say "What've you got?" in this show? Danno uses the expression "son of a bitch" at least twice.

[To be expanded upon later] While some hard-core fan sites had their druthers about this show, I enjoyed it. It had plenty of action, the usual great scenery/photography and a mind-bending stunt which was perhaps the best one seen on the show so far. A lot of fans got conflicted over the departure of Lori at the end of the episode after the Governor finally got fed up with her not reporting Five-0's indiscretions to him. But the fact that it took the Governor 16 episodes to finally come to grips with this merely emphasizes that the producers and writers of the show totally blew it with the Lori character. She could have been interesting -- squealing to the Governor, caught between two worlds, and so forth. -- but what we got was NOTHING. Even the line she gave McGarrett near the end -- "I let things slide because of my feelings for you" -- was a lame, final "stick it to the Lori haters."

Although I wasn't looking forward to viewing this episode big time, I was at least willing to have an open mind about it. When it was over, I was disappointed because, while it was a good show which progressed logically for the most part, it employed the usual tried-and-true formula with red herrings, carguments (2), a "housegument," not-so-subtle product placement (Micro-Slop's Messenger with video, including really detailed closeups of the pad-like device's screen), blue-lit interrogations (2), nice scenery, and some very Hawaiian moments. By the end, it was obvious who did it -- there were not many suspects left, and the ones remaining were pretty uninteresting. The ending, which had nothing to do with the Crime of the Week (COTW), was cutesy-poo upbeat and went on for 3-1/4 minutes!

Hawaiian-born MLB outfielder Shane Victorino had a short cameo at the beginning of the show as a motivator from a group of pharmaceutical employees bonding in the Oahu wilderness. Speed skater Apolo Ohno had a more substantial role as Seth Burgess, one of the suspected bad guys, and did a good job. Al Harrington, in his recurring role as friend-of-McGarrett's-family Mamo, appeared as part of a battle re-enactment. As his character explained, "We're history buffs, trying to preserve and celebrate our culture." Although his part was brief, with his few sentences, he probably said more than he did in some of the episodes of the original series where he appeared. The beefy hundred or so Hawaiians appearing as warriors in this sequence seemed to be doing a bunch of kung-fu-like moves, trying hard not to hurt each other with spears and shark-toothed clubs called leiomanos.

The COTW was the murder of Brandon Koruba, one of the weekend warriors, who was a collector of Hawaiian antiquities and also the co-owner of Pacific Shipyards, builder of yachts and inter-island ferries. Aside from Burgess, Kevin Creed (Kaiwi Lyman-Mersereau), leader of the stupidly-named ecological organization Urthstrike, who had threatened Koruba and his company in the past because of their indiscretions against the environment, was also under consideration as a suspect until his lawyer gave him an alibi for the time of Koruba's murder. This left only Koruba's somewhat chilly wife Megan (Erin Cardillo) and business partner Tony Dennison (Patrick Fabian), and it turned out to be the latter, who was dispatched with a shot in the shoulder after a standoff (McGarrett obviously learned something from the two week's previous episode).

Typical fan reaction to this episode the next morning was along the lines of "Ding dong, the wicked bitch [i.e., Lori] is dead." Even people who, prior to this, were having a rational discussion in forums about things like "Peter Lenkov should be replaced as showrunner" suddenly had a glazed look on their face like cult members, drooling things like "Wow, what a great return to the 'core values' of the show" (whatever the hell that means). Depressing!

Despite the positive aspects of the show, my feeling is people should not forget that we wasted our time with 16 episodes of Lori bullshit ... thus 2-1/2 stars. (Yes, I can't let go ... even though I originally thought "Well, now Lori is gone, let's move on.") If the cloying end of this show, which had nothing to do with the COTW, hadn't gone ON and ON, I would have given it three.

This episode was like a throwback to the first season ... it was like we hadn't progressed at all!

On the other hand, the show next week looks very interesting, and I hope it will not disappoint me like this one did. Aside from James Caan, who -- based on the preview -- treats Danno in a sarcastic manner, it will also feature Jimmy Borges, a veteran of the original series (seen for a fraction of a second in the preview) and Dennis Miller, as an obnoxious radio host who gets blown up real good.

Any show that blows up Dennis Miller can't be bad ... I'm thinking of giving it four stars already.

MORE TRIVIA:

• When Danno visits his girl friend Dr. Gabrielle Asano (Autumn Reeser) at the Bishop Museum, she has a list of people who might be interested in a lei niho palaoa (neck ornament made from a sperm whale tooth and braided human hair) found near Koruba's murder scene, aside from Koruba himself: Naomi Hunter, Felipe Jeminez, Murry Johnson, Ken W. Kauhana, Arnold F. Postell, Dale Sackett, Helen Sheridan, Oscar Souza, and Neil Strong. As Danno spoke to Asano, there were a few seconds when the usual droning music ACTUALLY STOPPED!
• Another half minute at the beginning of the show after the opening credits was wasted with typical tourist shots. Do we really need these week after week? I think we get the idea that we are in HAWAII (hello -- what is the name of the program?). The original show didn't obsess constantly with this kind of promotion. There was also some footage of a large military plane landing, presumably carrying McGarrett returning from his training exercises. This sequence looked very similar to the one from the beginning of the pilot episode when McGarrett returned to the islands.
• McGarrett gets his comeuppance from Creed's lawyer. Even Kono tells McGarrett the environmentalists couldn't have committed the murder, over Chin Ho's protestations. McGarrett echoes typical right-wing ideology, describing the group as "anarchists."