By Stu Robinson,
Today, dear reader, you are an unwitting participant in my test drive of WordPress for iPad. I’ve been writing these blog entries on the desktop iMac in my home office. But I’ve been in there all weekend doing my taxes and need a change of scenery. So here I am in the living room, where I have easy access to my DVR.
But you don’t really care. You just want my take on Episode 20 of CBS’ new Hawaii Five-0.
[Hmmm ... how does one italicize on this thing?]
Anyway, McGarrett and Danno are hiking up a lush, green mountainside – showing us there is more to Oahu than the beaches – when they come across a corpse. They investigate, with Steve breaking his arm in a repelling accident, and discover a bullet hole containing fish scales. Consistent with that, the victim is identified as a commercial fisherman who had no apparent reason to be on that mountainside. It’s as if the body fell from the sky.
Don’t even try figure it out. It’s one of those cases that viewers have no shot at solving on their own. As a matter of fact, it is the second straight episode in which the victim was killed for stumbling upon a different crime – one that doesn’t even come up until later in the show.
Episode 20 does, however, advance two ongoing backstories.
The mystery about McGarrett’s father advances slightly when he tells Danno that somebody left on his doorstep an envelope containing an old matchbox from the stolen toolbox – one of the random clues to whatever Papa McGarrett was investigating. CIA analyst Jenna Kaye (Larisa Oleynik), who was introduced in the previous episode, does not appear but is referenced in the conversation.
Danno: “What does Kaye think?”
McGarrett: “Kaye thinks Wo Fat’s playing a game with me.”
The real exposition concerns Chin Ho and the case that cost him his job with the Honolulu Police.
Viewers already know that he has been shunned by his cop-heavy family following accusations that he was involved in the disappearance of drug money. In this episode, a death-bed visit that he and Kono make to their aunt prompts new disclosures. Chin Ho’s arrival is greeted with the Pacific Islander version of the stranger bursting into an Old West saloon: silent stares.
But a welcome from the previously distant uncle, along with some dying words from the aunt, enable Kono to connect the dots. She realizes that the uncle stole the money, and that Chin Ho took the fall. When she demands the truth about the aunt’s illness and Chin Ho’s estrangement, he admits that the uncle used the money to obtain a black-market liver for his wife. When Kono argues that the truth should be revealed upon the aunt’s death, Chin Ho demurs: “I’ve finally found a home, here, with Five-0. What happened … happened.”
Daddy Issues
The father/son issues revolve around victim, killer and investigators alike. During their opening hike, McGarrett and Danno contrast their paternal-bonding experiences — hiking for McGarrett, Yankees games for Danno.
The killer turns out to be a wealthy businessman determined to shield his spoiled son from the consequences of an earlier slaying — “a stupid mistake,” the father ir-rationalizes.
Finally, there is the fisherman. Determined to ensure his son’s future while at the same time shield him from the drug smuggling on the docks, he secretly had been moonlighting at an airstrip to help pay off the family’s fishing boat. “Hard worker,” his boss there tells McGarrett. “Always talking about his son, their fishing boat. Said times are tough on the docks.”
So why did the fisherman end up dead? After he recognized the businessman’s fugitive son catching a secret flight off the island, the law-abiding father determined to protect his son was silenced by the crooked father out to protect a son.
Secondary Characters and Guest Stars
Though the CIA analyst and Danno’s daughter are mentioned in conversation, the only secondary character to show up in Episode 20 is Kamekona, the giant shave ice vendor. As Hawaii Five-0‘s go-to utility character, he picks up McGarrett upon his discharge from the hospital with the broken arm, then provides comic relief at the Hilton Hawaiian Village in the episode’s final scene.
If that’s not enough product placement for you, the search for ballistics evidence leads McGarrett and Danno to the Honolulu restaurant of The Food Network’s “Iron Chef,” Masaharu Morimoto, who plays himself and, unfortunately, tries to sing.
While Masi Oka’s recurring character, the oddball coroner, did not appear in this episode, his Heroes sidekick Ando (James Kyson-Lee) plays the fisherman’s son and has two emotional scenes with Kono.
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The writer never did figure out how to boldface or italicize with the iPad app and had to make the style changes on his desktop before posting.
