By Stu Robinson,

There’s a new deputy in town, and the sheriff is none too happy about it.

Following the boffo theme song, we see McGarrett cooling his heels outside the new governor’s office – a scene obviously meant to symbolize the fact that he and Five-0 will be on a much shorter leash this season.

Our hero perks up when a hot blonde enters the waiting room and tells the receptionist she has a meeting with the governor. (No California readers, this is not “the governator” and it’s not a “meeting.”) The blonde takes a seat, and McGarret starts chatting her up. I wonder if Navy Lt. Catherine Rollins, McGarrett’s Season 1 love interest, is picking this up on her spy satellite.

The brief flirtation is interrupted when McGarrett and the blonde are called into the governor’s office – together.

Turns out the blonde, Lori Weston (Lauren German, whose most notable credit is Hostel: Part II), is a Homeland Security agent who specializes in profiling. Gov. Sam Denning (Richard T. Jones) has assigned Weston to Five-0. While they might have been flirting outside, neither McGarrett nor Weston is pleased with this forced marriage. But their protests are interrupted by the chirping of McGarrett’s wireless phone, which brings word of this week’s crime.

The governor sends them off to investigate, and it looks like we’re in for the cliched subplot in which the angry boss freezes out the well-qualified but unwanted newcomer. But to my great surprise, the writers spare us most of that. Danno and Chin Ho tell McGarrett he’s acting like a dick, and Lori confronts him in his office to clear the air.

The episode’s plot – really a subplot to the addition of Lori Weston – involves the kidnapping of an attractive, white teenage girl. The team must find her quickly, because she needs medication for a heart condition. I could get into the details of the plot, or rail about the fact that nobody seems to care much when unattractive, non-white, adults go missing, but the real purpose if the episode is to introduce new characters.

Which brings me to a question: Are weasels indigenous to Hawaii? Because two of them pop up in this episode.

Lori’s assignment to Five-0 begs the question of whether another female character will have to go to make room for her. It’s unclear; the writers killed off Laura Hills (Kelly Hu) in the Season 1 finale. But Kono remains sidelined, the subject of a Honolulu Police Department Internal Affairs investigation into the $10 million heist from last season’s Episode 12.

Enter Vince Fryer (Tom Sizemore from Black Hawk Down, Saving Private Ryan and Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew), an HPD Internal Affairs officer with really bad taste in suits. The powder blue number he wore in this episode actually stood out for its dullness amid the colorful backdrop of H50. In the headlines as much or more for his drug problems than for his acting, Sizemore mumbles his way through a couple of scenes in a lifeless performance. An actual weasel would be more engaging.

The second weasel is another female character whose time might be coming to a close: Jenna Kaye (Larisa Oleynik). Last seen driving the getaway car for Wo Fat after he killed Victor Hesse, she helps investigate the kidnapping case but also uses the team’s fancy tabletop computer screen to look at files on McGarrett. Later, McGarrett senses that something about her isn’t quite right. When he confronts her, she claims she’s gotten word that her fiance (whom she’d said was killed by Wo Fat) might actually be alive – and she’s going to go back to Washington to investigate. McGarrett tells her to go, but one wonders if he suspects more.

Notes

• During a stakeout with McGarrett in a diner, Lori addresses one of my pet peeves: the coffee top off. “You get just the right mix going – coffee, cream, sugar – all working in perfect harmony. Then, when you’re not looking, waitress comes and tops you off. Ruins a perfectly good cup of coffee.”
• Instead of a cargument, McGarrett and Danno bicker on horseback. In the continuation of a running gag, Lori asks: “How long have you two been married.”
• I’m getting really tired of the team members identifying themselves to victims, witnesses and suspects simply as “Five-0.” Like everyone knows that Five-0 is a special state police agency, even though it’s only been around for a year and we all know how much attention the public pays to government agencies. And how does the governor of Hawaii have the authority to reassign a federal Homeland Security officer?
• After landing with a splash on the season premiere, Terry O’Quinn did not appear in this episode. While looking over his credits on IMDB, I was reminded that he played Moira Kelly’s father in the in the 1992 figure-skating movie The Cutting Edge. Toe pick!

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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.