S1E19: Ok, I’ll be honest with you. I have absolutely no idea what happened in this episode of Hawaii Five-0. Don’t get me wrong, I have seen the episode, gone back, studied it, and yet, I still have no idea what happened in the plot. They couldn’t have been content with just a crazy plot, they had to throw in a bunch of twists and dead ends that it all left me scratching what little hair I have left on my head.
I should actually add another point on my grade scale for episodes like this. This plot made no sense whatsoever and we spent most of the time running back and forth chasing various leads. The craziest part of this whole thing is that the lady they bagged at the end was booked on a charge that we didn’t even know about until after halfway through the episode. It wasn’t like Scooby Doo where the villain is introduced in the first act so you forget about it until the reveal. No, in H50, one crime will lead to another, that will lead to another, and then you get the bad guy for the second crime that has connections to the third that also allows you to bag the, oh yeah we forgot about him, first criminal. So anytime from here on out that H50 ends the show on a criminal for a crime that wasn’t in the first act of the show it gets a point on the awesome scale.
“Did he really just do that?” -Chin
Here’s how convoluted the plot was: they had to spell out EXACTLY what was happening (or happened) not once, but TWICE. The first time was with Kono and Chin in the hotel apartment where they were able to guess the motives of the killer exactly in a (what felt like) five minute bit of the worst dialogue. The second time was with McGarrett handily explaining exactly the who, when, and where and how that all applied to their cases. It was actually fairly helpful because I am a professional television critic and I needed a review session before the third act. I was angry at first but then I realized H50 was simply throwing me a bone. And it was awesome.
Speaking of awesome, this was the greatest opening of all time. Seriously, I was afraid they were going to do a shitty Minority Report ripoff with the kid missing from the pool but then BOOM a dude in a costume falls to his death. Crazy excellent. But why was the guy dressed as a superhero? Because there was a comic book convention in town! How timely! That is definitely something the viewers have heard about and is a different setting for the show! And the crazy part is that the writers actually managed to nail the nerd culture down pretty well. The girl they were interviewing said they were into Monty Python, Neil Gaimon, and Keyboard Cat videos. I know that doesn’t encompass all nerds, but it got a very big portion of them.
“That’s effective, I guess” -Danno
Anyway, onto the checklist. We had some decent product placement this time. My favorite was the big ass Hilton sail that went up for no apparent reason. Because nothing says a comfortable hotel like a sail boat. Also, all of the bad guy’s cars this episode were Fords once again. I’m almost insulted when they think that just because our favorite characters drive a certain brand of car that we might be more likely to buy that car and you would think that they would hope that we would be less likely to buy a certain brand of car if they see the bad guys driving them. But honestly it just amuses me. At least that’s what I thought about when I was driving my new Chevy Cruze on the way to work.
Then there are the guest stars this week — oh yes, we had guest stars this week! As we knew, Larisa Oleynik made her debut as someone close to the Wo Fat case. I was just glad to see Alex Mack is still causing trouble but sad to see that her powers had vanished and been replaced by a Harvard t-shirt and thick rimmed glasses. I didn’t really like how they gave her a personal connection with the Wo Fat case. I mean, it made sense for her motivations but it felt forced. Oh well, maybe next week will balance her out. Of course, we already knew about Mark Dacascos as Wo Fat, but this was the first time that McGarrett knew he was the bad guy so I’ll go ahead and count him as a guest star too.
There were some good riffs happening this week and surprisingly they didn’t all involve Danno and McGarrett. Kono and Danno managed to have some great chemistry together when they were posing as a stripper via text message and they should definitely have more scenes together. Meanwhile, McGarrett had to do his best intimidating voice when he was confronted by Wo Fat in the diner. Now, in the promos for the episode it seemed like he just said “Say hello to my little friend” out of nowhere, but in context it actually made sense. And it was a decent burn. Way to go McGarrett! But on a serious note, we had a super somber “Book’em Danno” this week and that totally killed my buzz. Awww man.
“Say hello to my little friend, old American proverb.” -McGarrett
Notice how all over the place this recap is? That’s exactly how the episode was. Just to tie everything back together (that doesn’t tie anything together), here are three other random thoughts I had during this episode:
Do they ever apologize to the people they accidentally arrest? Like the guy they tackled at the beach for no reason, did he get an “excuse me” or anything? It was a nice little character moment with Bergman when we see his desktop wallpaper was a piano. Could be a coincidence, but I’ll choose to believe it was on purpose!One of the biggest axioms of writing for the screen is “show, don’t tell.” H50 broke that big time when Kono said “Look, the card is still in the lock” AND THEN SHOWED A FUCKING CARD STILL IN THE LOCK. Jeeze.
Anyway, this episode was all over the place, messy, bright, exciting, confusing, nerdy, and did I mention confusing? But whatever, that’s the way I like my H50. Well, that and with Grace Park in a bikini.
