Hawaii Five-0 – “Ne Me’e Laua Na Paio” – review

Five-0 investigates when a man dressed as superhero Captain Fallout falls to his death from the seventeenth floor of a science fiction/comic book convention hotel. Meanwhile, a CIA analyst contacts McGarrett, asking for all the information he’s gathered on his parents’ deaths.

My comments on this episode are mixed. Its three storylines all had potential for mystery, but given the usual forty-five minutes of screen time, one storyline in particular felt rushed. The dead man, Alex Baker, was booked into Room 1603, but there were no broken windows or signs of forced entry there. Chin Ho and Kono discovered Baker had been pushed through the window of Room 1703. 1703 was registered to a man who had died a year earlier, whose identity had been stolen to open a credit card account. Five-0 theorized that the identity thief, a recklessly extravagant burglar calling himself Johnny D, was the intended victim. Alex Baker had simply gotten drunk and mistakenly stepped off one floor above his room.

There was also some mystery to CIA analyst Jenna Kaye (Larisa Oleynik). McGarrett discovered she was officially on leave. When questioned, she admitted she was the first person to develop any leads on elusive mastermind Wo Fat (Mark Dacascos). Her pursuit led to her fiance’s death in an ambush.

Five-0 easily tracked down Johnny D, who took them to a storage unit full of everything he had stolen. None of it seemed worth killing anyone for, but somehow, amid all the junk, McGarrett found a snow globe that hid a video camera memory card. The card contained footage of a young woman who had been murdered three years earlier.

To help viewers keep everything straight, the characters explained a lot of what they were doing while they were doing it. Unfortunately, the mystery of the murdered woman still felt rushed. Medical examiner Max Bergman (Masi Oka) had conveniently kept a key piece of evidence from that three-year-old case, which led back to one of Johnny D’s present-day robberies.

Finally, Jenna Kaye and McGarrett scheduled a dinner meeting, but Wo Fat arrived before Jenna did. McGarrett had to spare him to ensure Jenna remained safe.

It seemed as if this episode tried to feature more mysteries and twists, as if someone had complained there weren’t enough. I appreciate the effort, but in my opinion, it’s better to have one or two well developed, well paced storylines than to have to rush anything.