Watching Hawaii Five-0 1.02: “Ohana” (CBS)

With CBS’s re-boot of Hawaii Five-0, judgment of its success for me doesn’t come down to ratings, but rather which is better: the episode or the theme song.

And this week, the episode won… but not by much.

If ”Ohana” is any indication, no one is ever going to mistake Hawaii Five-0 for a show looking to re-write the TV buddy cop formula.  All the standard ingredients were in place: guest stars in peril, oversized black briefcases, techno-geek supplying techno-speak that sounds important but is basically meaningless, a girl in distress, nefarious foreigners with satchels of money, the heroes making a raid on the villain’s hideout, a last minute explosion just as everyone safely clears the building, and moments hinting at a future bro-mance between Alex O’Loughlin and Scott Caan.

But there were a few surprises.  While I saw the mid-episode battle between Kona and suburban-Serbian super-spy Nadia coming a mile away, I was impressed with it nonetheless.  I was also relieved that Grace Park was given something more to do than babysit little Evan as he worried about his kidnapped father.  It wasn’t much more, but it was a step in the right direction, something the writers might soon want to do for Daniel Dae Kim.

The development of the McGarrett-Danno pairing was a little soft this week.  From the wardrobe argument off the top that had them coming off like a squabbling same-sex couple, to the standard “protocol versus violence” battle over how to interrogate a hostile witness, there was nothing I either cared to see or hadn’t seen a million times before.  Hopefully, if the numbers continue to stand up, the writers will infuse this partnership with some grittier and uncomfortable conflict.

But it’s only week two. Risk-taking is too much to ask for at this point.  Look what happened to Lone Star.

Kicking things off in this episode, we have the kidnapping of Roland Lawry, an ex-NSA cyber terrorist expert with a high level security clearance.   And while I’m always a fan of a good car crash, if you’ve seen one kidnapping  involving Car #1 slamming into Car #2 and knocking it off the road followed by a shootout and anonymous villains emerging from Car #1 and using the Jaws of Life to pry open Car #2 to snatch the intended kidnappee, you’ve seen them all.

The Governor immediately puts our team on the case.  First stop is the scene of the crash to retrieve the traffic camera footage, which reveals a bloodied figure emerging from the wreck/shootout and lumbering towards a hotel.  Within minutes, McGarrett, Danno and Kelly are on the charge.  Now, I’m pretty sure the Governor would frown on her super-secret task force blazing into a hotel lobby draped in Kevlar and waving around their guns without even so much as stopping by the concierge desk to explain themselves, but since that thought only occurred to me after my second viewing, I’ll let it pass.  Maybe it’s not an election year.

A trickling trail of blood takes the team to the roof where they locate the wounded and close-to-expiring Sergei Ivanovitch.  McGarrett and Danno need information, but Sergei ain’t talking. Danno starts in with the psychology you might see in a interrogation room on NYPD Blue, but since we all know Sergei’s gonna blab sooner or later, I prefer McGarrett’s choice of holding him by his ankles over the side of the building.  It produces a faster response and includes some killer Hawaiian scenery in the background.

Danno is incensed.  This isn’t proper procedure, dammit!  But McGarrett recognizes the blue star tattoo on Sergei’s wrist, identifying him as a Serbian mobster.  He knows that whoever kidnapped Roland is willing to kill anyone necessary to achieve their goals, including Roland’s young son, Evan.  Clearly, McGarrett feels the pangs of losing his own father just last week.  I would have liked to see that storyline bleed over a little more into this episode.  It gives us another reason to be pulling for McGarrett.  A few more weeks of brushing over it this lightly and it will be nearly impossible to revive audience interest when the time comes to move it up to the front burner again.

McGarrett and Danno come to reluctant terms and then it’s on to investigating Roland’s home for clues.  Once there, Danno notices what looks to be a fake wall and uncovers one of my all-time favorite plot devices - the SECRET DOOR!  I love me some secret doors.  There can be anything behind one of those things… dark winding passageways, bars of gold, Amelia Earhart.  Here though, we only get a room with a lot of wires, computer monitors and overhanging lights.  What a waste of a secret room!

None of what the computers are displaying makes any sense to McGarrett.  Luckily for him, Danno knows a guy.  And luckily for us, that guy is none other than Freaks and Geeks alum Martin Starr!  Here, Starr plays super-smart, super-stoned Adam “Toast” Charles, master of code hacking.  He quickly recognizes that Roland has successfully built a “skeleton key” which can bypass encryption on high-grade security networks, which means there’s no government computer that’s safe.

Meanwhile, Kona has been stuck playing house with lonesome Evan (flirting with orphan status), and Roland’s girlfriend Natalie, who’s looking way too sweet and clean-cut to be just a boring concerned mother figure.  And guess what… she’s not!  Natalie is actually the insidious Nadia, planted to seduce Roland and gain access to the location of the skeleton key.

Kona figures out she’s in the presence of danger at the exact same moment Nadia figures out she’s in the presence of a person who has just figured out she’s in the presence of danger… and a hot, spontaneous “fists versus kitchen utility knife” fight ensues, moving from the laundry room, into a closet shelved with lots of precariously balanced books, through a backyard bamboo wall and right into the swimming pool.  Lots of smacking and hair pulling.  It’s 24 meets Dynasty, folks!  And just as Kona’s getting the upper hand, out walks the mastermind of the entirely over-complicated affair, one Drago Zankovic, holding a gun to little precious Evan’s head.  That sucks.  Dad kidnapped, interrogated by police, put into the care of a Serbian assassin, and now he gets a gun pointed at his face.  I hope little Evan’s wearing his Pull-Ups.

The villain’s hideout this week is the Dillingham Air Field, which actually exists if you’re interested in taking a peek.  Father and son are reunited, though the duct tape and open wounds made hugging a little tricky.  Our skeleton key buyers arrive with the above-mentioned sacks of money, just as Danno and McGarrett arrive on the scene (courtesy of some clunky exposition and the coincidence of a black mystery plane coming in for a landing directly over their heads – don’t ask).  The ensuing gun battle inadvertently lights some fuel tanks aflame and it isn’t long before McGarrett is saddled with the line, “Everybody out… now, NOW!”

Ka-boom!  Father and son are reunited, Kona is free, Drago is captured, his cohorts are nothing more that Serbian McNuggets lying all over the landing strip, and our heroes exchange something similar to snappy dialogue humorously underplaying the danger they’ve just faced, and we’re out.

“Ohana” for those of you not intimately familiar with the Disney film Lilo & Stitch is Hawaiian for “family,” and it’s a nice theme Hawaii Five-0 is dancing its main characters around without letting them actually commit to it.  We’ve got McGarrett and the loss of his father, Danno looking to be a better parent to his daughter, and the cousin cops that are Kelly and Kona.  There’s a lot of material to be mined here that could allow for some nice additional layers and filling out of characters who are, to this point, merely action figures.  Not bad for a few more weeks of fun, but not beyond that.   And that’s only assuming Daniel Dae Kim has some major story lines coming up… or we see more of the sinister Victor Hess… and soon.  Or way more secret doors!

Tags: Alex O’Loughlin, CBS, Colin Ford, Daniel Dae Kim, Grace Park, Hawaii Five-0, Martin Starr, Scott Caan, Scott Cohen