They say that in show business, you should never work with children or animals, and this episode shows us all why the first part is true. What's the Hawaiian word for annoying kid? Is there one? I'll bet the Germans have one.
Anyway, Steve takes Catherine to a romantic breakfast at the local drive-thru, and as they're sitting in his truck, some dude tries to carjack them. In broad daylight. In front of perhaps dozens of witnesses.
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| If you do something that stupid, you deserve an ass-whooping. |
While turning in the world's dumbest carjacker at the police station, McGarrett finds the world's most annoying child. Well, maybe second most annoying after Dakota Fanning in War of the Worlds. The kid's name is Ethan and he's handcuffed to a desk because he broke a station window while trying to get the cops' attention. Apparently his dad didn't come home last night.
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| And who wouldn't want to come home to this? |
To get him to shut up, McGarrett gives the kids a shiny new Windows 8 phone with a direct line to Five-0 headquarters. Catherine takes him home to pack a bag while everyone else does kid-free detective work. They find a blood trail out the back of the store and a shotgun with a print on it that leads them to the first guy who didn't do it. His truck is full of blood, he's covered in it himself, and he's carrying a shovel. It doesn't look good for him until it turns out that he was just slow-roasting a pig that he shot without a licence.
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| A pig that explodes and sprays juice all over Chin. |
At the kid's house, Catherine finds a suitcase filled with about $20,000, and at headquarters, Kono tracks down video of someone using the dad's car to drop a gunshot victim of at the ER. The guy didn't make it, and when doing the autopsy, Max finds antifreeze in his blood and ti leaves under his fingernails. Chin knows exactly what's up: The guy was a moonshiner. So, he and Danny head off to the woods to visit his uncle Choi.
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| Played by George Takei. |
Chin's uncle's been moonshining since Chin was in diapers, and he knows all the tricks of the trade. But, he's a purist and won't mix with the bad crowd that cooks their stuff in a radiator. He knows where you can get it, though: Out of the back of the dad's store.
Back at headquarters, Catherine tries to get Ethan to give up any info he has on the dead moonshiner. The kid breaks down crying and I'm not sure if the acting was bad or if he was just supposed to be pretending to cry because it looked so fake. While Cat's out of the room getting the kid a juice, he empties her wallet and takes off.
The team tracks the cell phone Steve gave him, and they wind up at the home of Darrin Hodge, a local low-life. They grab the kid before he can climb the fence, then Steve and Danny go in. Hodge isn't there, but they do find the pig roasting guy. He told Hodge about some secret deliveries the dad was making to a reclusive rich guy, and he figured Hodge had something to do with the dad's disappearance, so he went over to his place to shotgun some info out of him.
Kono traces some of the cash from the suitcase to a bank robbery from five years go. They figure the reclusive dude is the bank robber and they use recent property purchases in the area to find out where he lives. Bad dude's not there, though, just the corpses of Hodge and one of his gang.
The bad guy shows up at Ethan's house where he and Catherine are playing cards. He has the dad as a hostage, but he swaps him for the kid because he's smaller and more annoying. He's looking for the money he paid the dad, but when he finds out it's gone, he gets a little upset. Catherine manages to hide and distract him by setting off the smoke alarm. Then she blind sides him and kicks his ass.
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| Her finishing move tosses him down the stairs and breaks his neck. |
Steve and Danny bust in seconds later to save the day... except it doesn't really need saving. McGarrett offers the kid a job with Five-0 in ten years because apparently being shrill and annoying makes one an excellent cop.
Kamekona gives everyone a free ride on his helicopter as a Christmas gift, and McGarrett puts on a tuxedo to take Catherine to dinner.
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| Case Closed. |
What I Liked
-McGarrett's idea of romantic music is 1980s hair metal. I'm in full agreement with that, and anyone who disagrees is a philistine.
-Steve and Catherine are arguing when they get carjacked, so he holds a finger up to silence the guy so he can continue the discussion.
-Max gets a little testy at Danny when he's giving him the rundown on the dead guy. Masi Oka gives the perfect stone-faced expression. It's hilarious.
-Alex O'Loughlin's accent really slips in one scene. He went super-Aussie, and I burst out laughing when it happened.
-Catherine's fight at the end. Usually, when they have tiny women beat up men it's totally unrealistic. But, the guy she fought was kinda small and tweaked out, so it actually made sense that her superior fighting skills would be able to defeat him.
What I Hated
-The kid. Seriously, he was so bad that I swear he must be somebody's nephew. The writing was at least partly to blame, but he certainly wasn't elevating the material.
-Steve appears out of nowhere to grab the kid after they catch up with him. He's not in the background of the previous shot, then two seconds later he's pulling the kid off a fence. He's a SEAL, not a ninja.
Final Thoughts
I'd like to see more of George Takei's moonshining uncle character. I think every show like this could use a crazy uncle who drops by from time to time.
Whoever thought putting that kid in the episode would be a good idea should be fired. Other than him, the episode was quite serviceable, but he was so bad that he tarnished the whole thing. I don't even want to write about it anymore. The kid was bad, and you should avoid watching this episode if you value your sanity.
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