Hawaii Five-0 Watch: Kai e' e

By Jacob Sundstrom
Published: 2011-01-23 22:00:55
Hawaii Five-0 Watch: Kai e' e We got to see Hawaii Five-0 a day early this week thanks to playoff football taking place on CBS; because of this, I’d like to thank CBS for keeping my ass glued to my couch for the past five hours. Well played, CBS, well played. In other news, that is the most times I have ever typed CBS in one piece of writing - period.

While tonight’s episode was significantly dryer than I expected, the writing was significantly improved over last week’s show. The guest casting of Joel Moore (Avatar) worked beautifully as he reprised his role of Norm Spellman (effectively) as a nerdy weather service expert that still uses a pager. In fact, it appears that everyone working on the tsunami predicting team still uses pagers. Good enough for government work, right? It turns out that Moore isn’t the top banana at Tsunami H.Q. where the head honcho has gone missing right in the wake (so to speak) of a massive tsunami.

Hawaii Five-0 is, more or less, a character driven show. That’s how it gets away with standard plot devices; it distracts us with likable, if not interesting, characters. This episode put a lot of emphasis, as does the show in general, on Danno’s relationship with his daughter, Grace. The father figure is huge in this show, and it wouldn’t surprise me if that held true with the original incarnation of the show as well. From Danno and Grace to McGarrett and his father, Hawaii Five-0 puts a large emphasis on the father-child relationship in order to drive the show’s emotional front forward.

More movement was also made towards the unity of the Five-0 group, which lacked a lot of team spirit up until this point. Looking back, I realize that little effort has been made to create a great group atmosphere. Seriously, the Justice League with animated cartoon characters featured better camaraderie, and even as a kid I had the feeling that they secretly hated each other. Chin is the focal point of the togetherness of this group, not only is he the least comfortable with his new power, the money that was lost for his benefit a couple weeks ago still haunts him. Things didn’t get any better for Chin, because when Five-0 found out the tsunami was a hoax, it turned out that the money Five-0 used to ransom Chin off was the intended target. This is obviously a problem, since, you know, they already stole it themselves.

But, like any good sitcom (er, what?) everything worked out in the end. Sort of. They busted some a-hole coast guard guy (which, in Hawaii, is apparently considered a real job [just kidding, I love the coast guard!]) after he stuffed whatever money was down there into sand bags, with the plan to take them after the evacuation was cancelled. Shortly after, Five-0 was called into the governor’s office for what they assumed was going to be an arrest. But, remember what I said about the sitcom ending? Yeah, turns out all the money was present and accounted for. I know, great, right? What really sold it? The “HOLY CRAP WHAT THE EFF” look on McGarrett’s face. Seriously, that’s EXACTLY what his face looked like.

Hawaii Five-0 is back on at it’s regular date and time next week, so don’t miss out on what I’m sure will be another friggin awesome episod