By Stu Robinson,
Episode 19 of CBS’s new Hawaii Five-O finds the team investigating why a man in a superhero costume took flight off a hotel balcony and, lacking actual super powers, met his end pool cabana below.
The episode is structured around an investigation, but the audience never has a chance to figure things out for themselves. Heck, the team only solves it though the coincidences and dumb luck that one finds only on TV. That said, it still was pretty engaging. Once the team deduces that the man was tossed from the balcony of the room above his own in a case of mistaken identity, it becomes a question of who was staying in that room and why somebody would want that person dead.
The secondary plot advances the McGarrett family mystery, particularly the relevance of the mysterious Wo Fat. CIA analyst Jenna Kaye turns up in McGarrett’s office and tries to steamroll him into turning over all his information about the deaths of his parents. McGarrett stalls for time and somehow obtains her CIA personnel file through 
personal connections. Turns out she’s the foremost expert on Wo Fat but was removed from the CIA’s investigation after the failure of an operation she planned, which led to the deaths of an agency strike team that included her fiancé. Like McGarrett, it’s personnel for her – and she’s been conducting her own investigation while on leave from the CIA.
When they start to compare notes, Kaye shows McGarrett a picture of his father’s killer, Victor Hesse, receiving a prison visit from Wo Fat – an event the television audience saw in a coda to Episode 12.
In the series’ pilot, McGarrett captures Hesse’s brother in a military operation, only to learn that Hesse is holding a gun to his father’s head back in Hawaii. When the brother dies moments later in a firefight, Hesse kills Papa McGarrett. The audience, and McGarrett, are left to assume that Hesse pulls the trigger in retaliation for his brother’s death, as he had threatened to do moments earlier. Now CIA analyst Kaye suggests a scenario in which Wo Fat brought Hesse to Hawaii and ordered him to to kill McGarrett’s dad. I have trouble with both scenarios: How could Hess or Wo Fat possibly have known that McGarrett’s Navy SEAL team would capture the brother – much less the exact day and time.
Product Placement
While it has been clear from the start of the new Hawaii Five-O that good guys only drive Chevy’s, it’s become apparent that bad guys only drive Fords. I wonder if the good folks at Chrysler feel left out?
Speaking of the Chevy’s, Episode 19 offers another “cargument” between McGarrett and Danno. It’s comparatively short, but does give us this gem:
- “You are a devourer of dreams,” Danno tells a skeptical McGarrett. “You know what I mean? Like … you eat them. You’re like a little Pac-Man in cargo pants.”
Also, the coroner, Max Berman (Masi Oka), uses Bing to search the Internet for information.
Guest Stars
The theme for Episode 19′s guest stars is actors from 1990s teen movies who pretty much disappeared while their costars went on to greater fame.
Kaye is played by Larisa Oleynik, who portrayed the younger Stratford sister in 1999′s 10 Things I Hate About You. That remake of Shakespeare’s Taming of the Shrew set in a Seattle-area high school also starred Julia Stiles (the Bourne trilogy), the late Heath Ledger (The Dark Knight, Brokeback Mountain) and Joseph Gordon-Levitt (3rd Rock from the Sun, 500 Days of Summer and Inception). D.B. Sweeney, who starred opposite Moira Kelly (One Tree Hill) and Terry O’Quinn (Lost), in The Cutting Edge (1992), plays a robbery victim. [To appease the TV Tyrant, I should note that Sweeney also guest starred in five episodes of Jericho, one of her favorite shows.]
Outside that theme, the Sweeney character’s wife is played by Perrey Reeves, Mrs. Ari from Entourage.
And last, but not least, Episode 19 gave us a “Book ‘em, Danno.”
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Stu Robinson, a college friend of the TV Tyrant, is a writer, editor, media-relations practitioner and social-media guy based in Phoenix.
