Hawaii Five-0 4x08: Akanahe

What I Liked
-Four guys show up to kill Nick Jonas. About freakin' time.
-McGarrett tells Chi he has a very angry disposition. He sure does.
-Cat can't flick things up onto the big screen. He-he.
-The photo that comes up when Steve calls Cat is still goofy.

I tried to do that for my ladyfriend, but it wouldn't work. She's not terribly upset about it.

What I Hated
-Kono explains what a bullet will do to Sato's brain. That probably seemed bad-ass on the page, but it came off REALLY lame.
-The kids are getting naked on webcam. I don't need to see that. Also, Chi McBride really shouldn't have given his daughter her laptop back so quickly.
-A guy hacks his foot off to get rid of a tracking bracelet.
-The guys actually believe a kid can control a plane with a laptop. Computers are not magic, people!

Final Thoughts
So Chi McBride's character and McGarrett now have a grudging respect for one another. I was hoping they'd just kill Chi off, but now he has allies on the team and some kind of shady backstory, so he's going to be around for a while. Not that I'm against Chi McBride in any way -I've actually quite liked some of his work- but the character is unnecessary, and it seems a bit odd for the SWAT captain to suddenly be getting a lot of play when they went three years without mentioning the previous captain.

I really despise TV shows and movies that treat computers like they're magic. It's 2013, not 1991. Everyone and their grandmother has a computer in their pocket these days. Furthermore, while it may be technically possible to screw with a plane's GPS, there's absolutely no way to disable radio communications short of physically damaging the plane's hardware. It's a radio. You can build one out of crap you find lying in the street.

None of the three Bs were represented this week. Partially because Scott Caan wasn't even in the episode, and that kinda precludes any booking or driving of the Camaro. The lack of bikini babes is inexcusable, though. The only reason this episode doesn't get a single-star rating is because of all the violence done to Nick Jonas' face.

Hawaii Five-0 4x07: Ua Nalohia

Deputy Cat's beating dudes up and looking for info on Adam.

Dude gets shanked on his surf board.

Mary adopted a baby. And Taryn Manning looks kinda haggard.

Dead guy was undercover with the ATF.

Mary gets salmonella poisoning, so the boys play Three Men and a Baby.

Daryl Hannah shows up to play a sexy real estate agent.

The woman who was transcribing the guy's reports gave inside info to her boyfriend and they used it to rob the bad guys. Then they killed him when it looked like they might be found out.

Fortunately, there was enough info to take the bad guys down anyway.

Kono's been gone a long time, and the guys need help, so Cat becomes a full-time member of the team.

What I Liked
-"Hey, why is there a baby attached to your chest?" Chin gets straight to the point. I like that about him.
-Baby's first wad o' cash.

Time to make it rain down at gymboree.

-The baby keeps grabbing at Scott Caan's face, but he just keeps on acting like she's not even there. That's one of the signs of a professional. Also, it's one of the signs that you should never work with kids or animals.

What I Hated
-The guy followed a woman who was dressed all sexy-like and who he didn't know down to a basement just because she whispered in his ear. He deserved to get beaten and arrested; she was either a hooker, a cop, or she was gonna roll him.
-Even though we haven't seen her since last season, apparently Chin's been dating Leilani, and she knows him well enough to know that he always eats pancakes for breakfast.

It's bad.

-Chi McBride's character. He's around solely to be a grumpy antagonist for McGarrett, much as eight years ago he was around solely to be a grumpy antagonist for House.

Final Thoughts
Charlie's still alive. I really thought they had killed him off at the end of last season.

No Kono again, and now Cat's a full member of the Five-0 team. Looks like the rumours of Grace Park leaving the show might be true.

Kind of a mediocre episode that didn't have any of the three Bs. But at least it wasn't blatantly offensive, and they brought in Daryl Hannah to sex things up bit, which was nice.

Hawaii Five-0 4x06: Kupouli 'la

Sad Cat is sad.

Zombies!

Danny and Steve ride the party bus.

Ladies and gentlemen: TV's drunk Corbin Bernsen.

Someone cut the dead girl's head off.

They remembered Max was dating Rumer Willis.

Crazy DJ Qualls. The beard makes him look extra crazy.

Evil doctor. Not Dr. Evil... that's a different guy.

Cat does some recon work.

Corbin Bernsen's lunatic son kills the evil doctor, who was injecting parasites into peoples' brains to try to make them more docile. Obviously, it didn't work.

What I Liked
-Max's dancing.

The ladies love a man who dances.

-Danny and Steve drive around in the Camaro instead of Steve's truck because it gets great gas mileage. That's some product placement that I can get behind. Subtle, but effective.
-Drunk Corbin Bernsen. How can you not love drunk Corbin Bernsen?
-The pathologist backs off and makes Chin open the morgue drawer when they find it all smoking and looking freaky. Smart move, doc.
-"Mr Demps' amygdala is covered with cysts. That's weird." Good performance by Masi Oka on that one.

What I Hated
-Danno's claustrophobic all of a sudden after having already spent a whole bunch of time in enclosed spaces over the course of the series. You can't just add new character traits like that in the middle of the fourth season. They contradict too many previous episodes.
-Corbin Bernsen's "Oh my god! What have I done?" was kinda awful. I expect better acting from him, although I'm not sure why.

Final Thoughts
I've actually heard of scopolamine, and not because I've used it to rob someone. It was used in a Castle episode last year. Unfortunately, it was a season four episode, so my review is lost to the ages.

The ending to the episode was a bit sudden and came out of nowhere. I knew that Corbin Bernsen was going to be related to the bad guy in some way since he's a high-profile guest star, but having his heretofore unseen son up and murder the guy was completely unexpected.

No Grace Park this week. Which means no Adam-Kono drama. I'm okay with that.

It's a bit strange for me to complain about this show having a girl in a bikini, since that's one of the three Bs. But it was Catherine, and we've seen that. It seems a bit degrading to her character to have her as the designated eye candy for the week. They should leave that job to random extras who they found on the beach. Besides, Michelle Borth's been super naked on TV before, so it's not anything we haven't seen before.

Anyway, this week's episode was better than the last couple, but still not very good. It started off well, and seemed like it could be a lot of fun, but then it petered out towards the end.

Hawaii Five-0 4x05: Kupu'eu

What I Liked
-TV's Terry O'Quinn grew a beard.

It looks good on him.

-Danny tells Grace to break a leg at her cheerleading competition. Hee-hee.
-Joe wonders if Danny and Steve bicker while they're in the car. It's bantering, not bickering, Joe.

What I Hated
-Kono and Adam play The Fast and the Furious: Hong Kong Drift all over the city, and the local cops don't show up. That's weird.
-Billy and Catherine get out of their surveillance van and get into a gunfight. I know it's the US, but they're not government agents of any kind; they can't just open fire on someone in a residential neighbourhood. I'm glad they both got shot.
-This week's product placement: The awesome power of Bing Maps on a Microsoft Surface tablet.
That's way too blatant, even for me.

-The killer manages to live for hours after taking a pretty severe hit to the gut, but then dies 30 seconds after the team gets to his house. How conveeeeeeeeeeeeeeenient.
-The guy who hired the killer was pretty random. And how the hell does an office assistant have the money to hire a hitman, anyway?

Final Thoughts
I guess Scott Caan had a week off or something, because he was barely around, and some of his shots looked like they were done in front of a green screen.

So, they killed Billy off about five minutes into the episode.

That's certainly one way to resolve the stupid relationship drama.

It seems like a bit of a cop out, though. They built it up quite a bit over the past few episodes, what with McGarrett's jealous, lingering gazes and so forth, so it seems a bit anticlimactic to have him unceremoniously shot in the guy by the random baddie of the week. Maybe the writers realized that Hawaii Five-0 isn't Grey's Anatomy, panicked, then fixed their horrible mistake as quickly as they could. That's two stupid, dramatic relationship issues resolved in as many weeks. Hopefully in the next episode they'll finally finish whatever the hell is going on with Kono and Adam... which I still don't care about.

Anyway, despite the end to the Billy-Catherine drama, this was still a terrible episode. The killer was a random guy, the guy who hired the killer was equally random, and not even one of the three Bs was represented. I think that may very well be the first time that's happened, and it doesn't bode well for the series. What makes this show different from every other cop show on TV -and also makes it watchable- is the fact that it often doesn't take itself particularly seriously. This week it was full of gruff, serious-business military guys and Catherine's good buddy getting gut shot. That's not exactly what I'd call wild, madcap antics, and it's not why I watch this show. Even the over-the-top action was missing from this episode. If things keep going the way they have this season, I'm probably going to stop watching soon, because the show's just not fun anymore.

Hawaii Five-0 4x04: A ia la aku

Adam and Kono beat up a Yakuza dude.

Back in Hawaii, a bride runs away from her wedding to the scion of a wealthy family and gets in an accident.

Someone boots her off a cliff.

The team investigates a murder at the hotel where the wedding was being held.

When the bride saw the future dead guy, she bolted.

The gun used to kill him came from a small-time punk.

It turns out the dead guy and the bride were brother and sister and ran cons all over Europe, tricking rich dudes out of their money. They got pinched, and the brother just got out of prison.

Chin finds the bride and they medivac her to a hospital.

The family lawyer was behind it all. He ran a background check and was going to blackmail the bride after the wedding. Also, Rebecca De Mornay looks okay for her age.

The lawyer did it all for the money.

After reading the bride's hand-written vows, the groom decides he still loves her, and they get married.

Danny breaks up with Gabby.

Catherine comes home from her first day of work, and McGarrett thinks maybe it wasn't such a good idea to let her work with Billy.

What I Liked
-Adam punches the Yakuza guy in the face after shooting him in the leg. That's cold.
-The other theatre goers and their girlfriends give the guys crap for talking at the movies.

They're going to go to the special hell.

What I Hated
-Chin rides his motorcycle without a helmet. Sure, his hair looks awesome, but that's dangerous.

Always wear your brain bucket, kids.

-They brought Gabby back just to have Danny break up with her. I hate the relationship nonsense on this show so very much. And what the heck happened to Leilani?

Final Thoughts
How in the damn hell did the girl's brother get ahead of her on the road? She ran away from the wedding and then burned rubber out of there without evening taking off her dress. And what was his plan if she hadn't driven off into the middle of nowhere and wrecked? A head-on collision? It makes no sense.

Sometimes these shows blur together, but I think this may be the second time that they've done an episode where the wife had a secret past as a conwoman and her old partner wanted a cut of the action. It's a really common trope at this point, though, so I can't be sure. It's kinda lame either way.

Still not caring much about what happens to Adam and Kono. The only way they can get me to care is if they can get Sang involved somehow. It wouldn't be too hard. He *was* a snakehead, and they *are* in Hong Kong after all.

So much bullshit relationship drama this week. This show is becoming Grey's Anatomy. I suppose they managed two of the three Bs...

Men like boobs.

but that doesn't make up for all the whiny drivel. Witty banter is great. Whiny banter sucks. Also, the whole "I don't want to be the guy who holds back her career" thing is way overdone. If you love someone, it's okay to be a little selfish and say you'd like 'em to stick around. Love is rare, and you shouldn't let it go so easily.