Memo to CBS: Phoenix exists.

So does Denver. And Salt Lake City and Albuquerque. Those metropolitan areas alone comprise almost 9 million potential viewers. And that doesn’t include folks in the vast rural areas around and in between those cities.

I was skeptical when CBS announced that it would enable viewers to choose the ending of last night’s Hawaii Five-0 episode (‘H50’ Plans Audience Gimmick). One thing that struck me about the network’s news release was that it specifically cited the East, Central and Pacific time zones but was oddly silent about the Mountain time zone. Now we know why.

About 45 minutes into the broadcast, when the plot cues clearly indicated that it was time to insert one of the three endings, there was nothing. No prompt to vote, no instructions, not even a pause. I dialed up the CBS website and was greeted with this smackdown:

 

Yes, dear readers, CBS blew off an entire time zone. Even more ridiculous, it excluded viewers in Hawaii as well.

Does anybody else think this is a problem? Should all CBS promos come with a disclaimer akin to those in pharmaceutical ads: *May not apply to millions of potential viewers? Maybe if they did, I wouldn’t be so annoyed. If CBS had been up front about the limits of its viewers-choice gimmick, I still would have thought it lame. But the network would have been managing my expectations rather than appearing to promise what it couldn’t – or couldn’t be bothered to – deliver. [Maybe I should cross post this on my public relations/social media blog.]

Cookie-Cutter Approach

Another weakness in the viewers-choice gimmick was that it really didn’t matter which ending won. CBS had all three versions on its website. They were virtually identical but for different actors. Same motive; same action; same result.

I know from my years in the newspaper business that the most expedient way to swap out stories is to create a hole that can be filled by any one of several options pre-sized to fit. But that’s news and, presumably, readers of one edition are interested only in the option that relates to them. H50 is entertainment and, as New York Times blogger Mike Hale put it: “The effect of the stunt was to force the writers to come up with an even more simplistic, gimcrack plot than usual.” On the back end, viewers interested enough to watch all three endings at CBS.com should have been rewarded more-stubstantive differences. As it was, the viewing became tedious halfway through the second one.

“The writers could have made the gimmick count for something if they really had come up with three different suspects with three individualized, plausible motives – but that would have been a lot of work, so they settled for a cop-out that leaves nothing at stake.”

~ Phil Dyess-Nugent, A.V. Club

[NOTE: I completed my draft of this article before reading the blogs cited above.]

Leave Enough Clues

A third failure of the viewers-choice gimmick was in the main plot itself. If you’re going to ask the audience to solve a mystery, it’s only fair to give them enough clues to do so.

On one hand this is a built in problem: To make three different endings plausible, the setup has to work for all of them. But, on the other hand, the whole construct collapses if the setup is flawed to begin with. In last night’s episode, the writers withheld a crucial character and plot point until about 40 minutes in – moments before the viewers were expected to choose – denying them any time to process the new information.

Episode 12

The main plot in Season 3, Episode 12 concerned the murder of a college professor in his lab. Among the characters the team investigates are the professor’s department head, teaching assistant and a couple of students. The first two and one of the third are the potential killers among whom the “lucky” viewers on the coasts and in the Midwest eventually chose.

The plot comprises a school of red herrings and left me with several thoughts:

• You’d think no one in Hollywood had ever been in a fraternity or sorority given the way they are portrayed onscreen.
• A particularly obtuse coed tries to escape from Five-0 on a moped. Really? During the ensuing low-speed chase, McGarrett pulls up next to her; Danno lowers the window an asks her to pull over; and she says no. At that point, McGarrett pulls ahead and turns in front of her, forcing a collision. There is no way a real cop would do that, especially in a low-speed situation where no lives were in danger. Real cops would follow her until she stopped or ran out of fuel.
• The financial motive – stealing the professor’s cure for a rare disease – doesn’t hold up. Rare diseases don’t generate enough demand for their cures to be profitable. In fact, Congress has had to pass legislation giving pharmaceutical companies incentives to keep producing so-called orphan drugs.

Subplot 1a introduces Danno’s nephew Eric, played by Andrew Lawrence (United States of Tara). He is a budding juvenile delinquent, a smart-enough kid with no direction and too much time on his hands. Apparently Danno’s sister is a single mom, and she has sent him to get some tough love from Uncle Danny – though I’m not sure that sending a teenage boy from New Jersey to Hawaii counts as tough love. Danno treats Eric like a failure but brings him along on the murder investigation. Surprise! Given a purpose, the kid is perceptive enough to actually help. Will he become a recurring character? I don’t know. Isn’t Danno already struggling to spend enough time with his daughter?

Subplot 2 brings back old friend Sang Min (Will Yun Lee). I love this guy! Sure, he was poised to kill Kono back in the series premiere, but the character has evolved since then. He was the brash, scenery-chewing head of a human-trafficking ring in that first episode; since then, imprisonment has left him, like one of his illegal-immigrant victims, on the periphery of society – participating but unable to partake – invisible to the ex-wife and son he loves. Sang Min has served many purposes in his many reappearances – suspect, snitch, sonofabitch – and earned a grudging respect from members of the Five-0 team. At times he appears almost bipolar, menacing one moment but comic relief the next.

In this episode, Kono must babysit the convict who previously nicknamed her “Spicy” when he is flown in from a mainland prison to testify in a federal trail. We get a very 1980s Sang Min rocking a mullet and singing Poison’s “Unskinny Bop” in the shower. But he has his own agenda and already has set his plan in motion.

The thing about this subplot is that it’s virtually self-contained. Except for an unnecessary briefing Chin Ho gives Kono over the phone, there is no interaction between the characters in the murder plot and those in the Sang Min subplot. I wonder if the latter was written for an entirely different episode before being grafted onto this one.

In Brief

• The gimmickry will continue in the next episode, scheduled to air Sunday, Jan. 20, after the NFL’s AFC Championship game. TV Guide reports that the hour will include seven previously unreleased Jimi Hendrix songs.
• Episode 12 did not advance any of H50‘s ongoing story lines. Several important characters – Max, Catherine and Doris – were missing as well, though Max was referenced once in the dialogue. And arch-villain Wo Fat has been AWOL since the season premiere.
• CBS tweeted that Terry O’Quinn will return to Hawaii Five-0 as Steve’s mentor, Joe White, later this season. I guess ABC’s quick cancellation of 666 Park Avenue has left O’Quinn with time on his hands. Kind of like when ABC freed up Michelle Borth to become an H50 regular by canceling her fine series Combat Hospital.
• Speaking of Borth, Executive Producer Peter Lenkov told AccessHollywood.com that her character, Navy Lt. Catherine Rollins, will be called back to active duty but remain available to do favors for boyfriend Steve. Geez, hasn’t that scenario been played out? Far more interesting was her developing relationship with Mama McGarrett.
• In the same interview, Lenkov revealed that singer Jimmy Buffett will make a return appearance as helicopter pilot Frank Bama.

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Stuart J. Robinson, a college friend of the TV Tyrant, is a writer, editor, media-relations practitioner and social-media guy based in Phoenix.