S1:E4 Man, the music budget for Hawaii Five-O must be incredible. First we start out with a little Rolling Stones and Gimme Shelter, then we get some Kanye West Power later in the episode. Knowing how much royalties are these days, especially for high profile acts like Kanye and the Stones, it was not cheap to use those two songs. Remember when Conan was trying to use as much of NBC’s money as he could? There’s a reason he used the Stones. And Kanye doesn’t get to wear these white suits for free, Liz Lemon.
Too bad the rest of the episode wasn’t exactly worth those two songs.
But before we get into the bickering, let’s at least mention some of the better aspects of this episode.
First up, our special guest of the week – Mr. D.L. Hughley! Looks like someone wanted a paid vacation to Hawaii. He was pretty decent in his role as a prisoner, but come on. You get a black guest comedian and you make him a prisoner? Isn’t that kind of racist? I mean, if you’re going to have them play basketball, couldn’t you have gotten an actual basketball player for some sort of extra level joke? I mean, Hughley is a good comic, couldn’t there have been a better role for him?
Wow, I was supposed to be talking about the good parts of the episode. Ok, something good that happened. Hey, it seems the 5-O got their floor decal laid out pretty quickly in their swanky new headquarters. And it came with state of the art touch screen computers. Glad to see they don’t have any budgetary concerns. Also glad to see that McGarrett can swing his big… influence… around and use military satellites to track convicts. Man, I wish I had that kind of swagger.
That paragraph got snarky too! Surely there must have been something worthwhile about this episode. What about a cool stunt? They seemed to have had one once a week since debuting. This week it was a helicopter crash. A CGI crash. Which then led to a big chase through the jungle. For a split second I expected Daniel Dae Kim to stop and say “Man, I am tired of running through the jungle!” but he didn’t. And then when he stopped McGarrett from drinking the river water, I really expected him to say he spent some time on an island forging for food. Come on H5O writers! You gotta use these opportunities to slyly wink at the actor’s past work! These are opportunities to not pass up!
And speaking of Daniel Dae Kim, I was sort of halfway joking when I asked if he could get some lines that aren’t exposition, but after this week I’m serious. That was just ridiculous. He only spouted out things that McGarrett needed to know, the only remotely little bit of acting he got to do was when he was pissed he didn’t get to fly the helicopter.
So yeah, not much happening for this episode. The storyline was ridiculous and nonsensical as ever. A guy breaks out of prison in order to rob these game show contestants who won a million dollars. Turns out, the winner is a former crime partner of the prisoner and he wanted his money back. A couple chase scenes, a few bullets get fired, and a helicopter chase later they nab the guy. It was all pure linear transition. One thing led to another with a few minor obstacles fell in their path.
And that’s the thing. This episode had so much going on. The story was bloated till it burst, we never slowed down and everything felt rushed. If they had simply taken out one of the pieces of the chase that wasn’t entirely necessary, like for instance the prison guard or the whole stealing another car to get to the airport, they could’ve flushed out another action piece and made it really exciting. Or we could’ve gotten a little more down time with a few more characters interacting. They blew up the story too much and really lost the flavor of the show. Like this:
They need more of that stuff! That was interesting and fun to watch. More of this, please!
But hopefully things will calm down in weeks to come. I still have hope for the show, but my patience is running thing.
Oh! Just remembered another good thing! Resident fat-Hawaiian guy Taylor Wily showed up. That guy looks so much fun. Wish they would have used him more. And also no Grace Park in a bikini or even fighting anyone?! Man, this show is just missing opportunities left and right. And to think, this paragraph started off so optimistic.
