By Stuart Robinson,
Last week brought us the return of Mary Ann McGarrett. But that was nothin’!
For Episode 15 of CBS’ new Hawaii Five-O, they could’ve replaced the series’ boffo theme song with Celine Dion’s “It’s All Coming Back to Me Now.”
- McGarrett’s girlfriend, Lt. Catherine Rollins (Michelle Borth), is back just in time to again commandeer a naval satellite for Five-O’s investigation.
- Kamekona, the gigantic shave-ice guy (played by Taylor Wily), is back to bab
ysit Danno’s daughter Grace (Teilor Grubbs). - Kono (Grace Park) is back in a bikini.
- The $10 million in cash the team “borrowed” from the Honolulu Police evidence room to ransom Chin Ho in Episode 12 – which was burned by Victor Hesse beforethe team could return it – is back on everybody’s mind.
- And most importantly, for the first time since Episode 5, I believe, we got a “Book ’em, Danno.”
Episode 15 somewhat resembles Episode 10 in that the criminals use a gigantic diversion to hit their target. In the earlier story, a team of extremely well-conditioned athletes used a citywide triathlon for a cover; this week’s criminals go even bigger.
The episode begins with Danno (Scott Caan) getting surfing lesson from Kono. You heard that right. Danno hates island life, so what could possibly get him to try surfing? Well – from the writers’ standpoint – it gets his shirt off, puts Kono in a bright orange bikini and positions them at the beach when the tsunami-warning sirens go off.
So why is a looming natural disaster Five-O’s problem? Well, the head of the Tsunami Warning Center has gone missing. Think the two could be related?
It’s pretty easy for viewers to figure out that the warning is bogus, a ruse to clear people away from the bad guys’ intended target. But the caper is more complicated, with a bunch of twists at the end that include whodunit and how.
There also is a twist with implications for future episodes: The criminals’ target is the stash of cash in the HPD evidence room, which is short $10 million since Episode 12. The story’s resolution, then, involves what course of action the Five-O team will choose and whether McGarret’s earlier decision to borrow the money will come back to bite him, and the team, in the butt.
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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.