‘Hawaii Five-O’ Recap: ‘Alaheo Pau`ole’

What a gyp! After all that promotion about a “Hawaii Five-0” wedding this week, it was a mere afterthought, literally taking just seconds of airtime. The rest of the episode involved another silly plot, this time about a local luau manager scamming a mainland couple looking for their missing son. I’m starting to get tired of these filler episodes. Can we just get on with the Wo Fat and Shelburne storyline, please? Or at least make the non-Wo Fat episodes entertaining like last week’s show? The show’s writers really need to come up with solid content every week, and not just rely on beautiful scenery and a shirtless McGarrett for ratings.

Here’s this week’s look at The Good, The Bad and The Weird.

The Good

• I enjoyed the “Goonies”-esque opening scene. Too bad that kid who fell into the lava tube didn’t have any “pinchers of peril.”
• What’s really going on with Danno and Westin? Whatever it is, it sure is kinky. Handcuffs? Nice!
• “Be there in 20.” – McGarrett. Well, at least it’s better than the usual “I’ll be right there.”
• “You’ve been hanging with McGarrett for too long.” – Chin Ho to Danno, after Danno threatens a witness with a live grenade.
• The Paradise Cove Luau appears to hire import models as hula dancers.
• See, I told you Kono was the best in the interrogation room. Everyone tells her everything!

The Bad

• Max playing dress up again, this time looking like Super Mario. Enough please. Stop trying to find an angle to justify his character’s existence. It’s not working.
• Your son disappeared just two years ago, then you see a photo of him in Hawaii, and the first thing you think is that it’s impossible because he’s dead? How about feeling hope and relief because there’s a possibility he may still be alive? Talk about a real glass-half-empty mother.
• I was going to list the free publicity for Paradise Cove Luau under the “Good” category until it was revealed that they were scamming tourists in the episode. Hope that doesn’t hurt business. Oh wait, I forgot they hire import models as hula dancers. It’s all good.
• Why was Tom Sizemore so insistent that the luau manager give up the name of his cell mate who killed the kid? They know his name and where he served time. Can’t they just go check the records?
• The Chin Ho and Malia wedding relegated to barely a minute of screen time. Why even bother?

The Weird

• Those kids spoke perfect English. They must go to private school. Then again, they weren’t bright enough to tie the rope down to something stable before sending the first kid down, so maybe not.
• The wallet with “badass” written on it, like in “Pulp Fiction.” There are so many film references in “Hawaii Five-0” episodes. Homage or simply lazy copying? I lean toward the latter.
• The Rafe Tong character is way too young to be making a Charles Bronson reference. Either the character’s a film buff or the script writer was “borrowing” Gary Oldman’s line from “True Romance.”