S01E07 Okay, Hawaii Five-O. I’m all for patriotism, I’m a red-blooded American like the next guy, but as an American I expect a few things. I expect my explosions to be loud and my cars to be fast. I expect shootouts and hostages. I expect the good guys to win and the bad guys to lose. I expect the flag to be flown and the national anthem to be sung at top volume. I am a patriot. But I do not expect a full on patriotic remembrance ceremony in the middle of a hostage situation!
I mean come on, there’s a time and place for everything. And a psychotic ex-Navy Seal on board a cramped, old aircraft carrier while holding half a dozen people as hostages and getting all nostalgic about Pearl Harbor is not right! Afterwards, definitely. After everything is said and done, you remember the hell out of Pearl Harbor or whatever you want! But not when there are guns being pointed at people’s heads. McGarrett you wouldn’t be making your grandfather proud by letting innocent people get killed because you were too busy remembering the good times with a crazy old Vet, now would you?
All complaining aside, we had a fairly straight forward episode this week. Just a run of the mill former Navy Seal takes a whole grounded aircraft carrier hostage episode. You know, the basics.
So we start off with some images of a woman being murdered, stylized fly overs of Hawaii, and a gravelly voiced Vet leading a tour on the USS Missouri. Then we see a guy running away from the murder scene, knife in hand, heading toward the battleship. He gets in line and eventually steals a police officer’s gun and takes a woman hostage. And that’s when he starts arguing his innocence because nothing convinces the police of your innocence more than than holding someone against their will. Haven’t we as a culture watched enough TV and movies to realize that this isn’t a plan that works? Ever? I mean, what do these people think will happen? That the police will just stop and listen to you like a reasonable person?
Anyway, the 5-0 get called in to take care of the situation because the guy holding everyone hostage is an ex-Seal like our boy McGarrett, so he would know how to handle the situation. I guess Jean Smart was busy because we had a stand-in for her Governor character, who explained the situation for us. Basically the hostage guy insists rather passionately that he did not kill his wife and they better hurry up and find the killer. Now, I agree that sometimes the government and police forces can move rather sluggishly but taking people hostage and giving them a deadline usually isn’t the best way to speed things up. Voting usually takes care of that.
McGarrett then splits the team up. Danno and Kelly will investigate the murder scene. Kono will question the kid (and she doesn’t get to question the kid because she’s a woman. I repeat, she doesn’t get stuck with the kid because she’s a girl, it’s because she’s a rookie, so it’s not sexist at ALL) and McGarrett himself will sneak on board the ship and take care of this himself. Of course, this involves McGarrett taking off his shirt and filling his bag full of handy dandy plot fixing devices because why not? This is CBS after all.
Let’s follow the rest of the team for a bit. Kono tries an alternate approach with getting the kid to talk. Instead of just barraging her with questions, she bribes her with Shave Ice. Also, is this just me, or isn’t it called Shaved Ice? Is that a brand or just a Hawaii things? If only there were a website where I can type in a question and it would bring up a list of relevant sites. Someone get on that, Internet. Eventually a creepy dude in glasses shows up and he freaks the girl out. Kono tries to talk to the guy but he was a distraction and his goons grab the kid. Classic misdirection, way to go Kono, you rookie.
Danno and Kelly investigate the murder scene and basically waste a lot of time before finding a diary written in Russian. Kelly questions Danno on his knowledge about Russian and he gives some weird explanation. Did we really need that? Isn’t Russian just universally recognized? Would someone watching this actually get mad without an explanation as to why Danno would recognize Russian? Couldn’t we just have let that one go?
They eventually ID the scary looking guy as the real father of hostage guy’s daughter and track him to the airport where he’s about to take off in a private jet. We get our little stunt of the week (this week brought to you by the new Chevy Camaro) when they out gun the private play, do a little fancy spin move, and the jet barely brakes in time before crashing right into them. They rescue the girl and all is well.
Back to the boat. McGarrett did some fancy (read: shirtless) swimming and made his way on board the ship. He’s sneaking around, doing his little spy thing when he meets the old tour guide. Of course the tour guide didn’t get caught and has been trying to sabotage the hostage situation himself. Oh old people, they’re so cute when they think they can help. He joins up with McGarrett as his wise cracking side kick (and eventual patriotism tester) and they set off to take care of the hostages.
McGarrett gets embedded with the hostages. He tries to understand the guy with the gun but eventually his cover gets blown. So he does the next best thing and starts trying to talk the guy down. This, of course, is basic character development and we learn that the guy is kind of going insane from PTSD and everyone should be worried. McGarrett had sent the old guy packing because he couldn’t really be useful with the hostages but really that was a plot set up for the old guy freeing McGarrett when hostage guy wises up and locks him in the bathroom.
And then apparently McGarrett’s phone has a good enough camera that it can take a high resolution photo of a finger print good enough to identify a person off of it. I can barely take a photo of a sunset (yeah, I’m sensitive like that) with my phone. I need to upgrade to TV world phones. McGarrett and old guy take off to find the hostages and it seems like a good enough time to STOP EVERYTHING AND TALK ABOUT PATRIOTISM. I mean, seriously, they could not have stopped the momentum in a more jarring way. It was bad enough cutting away to Kono eating shaved ice with the kid, but that was just annoying. I’m all for being patriotic but there is a time and place people! Time and place.
They find the guy on the open deck because an ex-Navy Seal would know that the best place to hide is right out in the open. Everyone starts to panic, guns start firing, and the old guy takes a bullet for McGarrett (way to honor the vets, McGarrett!). McGarrett does some fancy stuff with his grab bag full of plot saving devices and they take the guy down. They get the guy and he is slightly relieved they caught the guy that killed his wife. Of course, he’s being carted off to jail and will probably miss a good portion of his daughter’s life but they caught the guy! Oh, and he’ll also be undergoing treatment for his PTSD. But we got our little reunion of the two of them surrounded by American flags and it was sweet and seemingly grand and my heart just swelled with American pride.
But then I remembered no Grace Park in a bikini so this episode sucked.
