H50 Ep: Imi Loko Ka 'Uhane

[the_other_sandy]

Well, that was...odd. I'm not really sure what to make of it.

Previous episodes that have involved the pursuit and capture of Wo Fat have been pretty intense. Steve in particular has been through a lot at the hands of that man. So why would TPTB choose to give us a Wo Fat episode within the framework of a fluffy morning talk show? Because that pretty much canceled out any emotion I felt about it. Even seeing Wo Fat so badly burned, which you know is not going to improve his attitude toward McGarretts, did nothing for me because it was viewed through the lens of Savannah Walker's show, so the audience was one step further removed from the action than it usually is.

It was just so strange to see what would have been a fairly heavy episode plopped into the middle of all that fluff. Of course, it also wouldn't have worked if they'd done a light case because then Five-0 wouldn't have come out looking like the special unit they are. But I am kind of happy that Savannah Walker followed Five-0 with the intent of showing them off as an elite task force that apparently specializes in bar fights and shoplifting because that's the kind of thing governors put together elite task forces to handle as opposed to doing an exposé on how awful and violent they are, which is how episodes like this usually go.

Kono kind of annoyed me when she told Savannah that she was the tech expert as if she were the only one. She's certainly tech savvy enough, but what happened to Chin's expertise? Remember when he was the one running the computer table of awesome?

I loved that Savannah not only caught a cargument on film, but broadcast it to her audience while telling them that Steve and Danny really loved each other in spite of all the bickering. And I also loved Catherine telling Savannah that America needed to mind its own business with regard to her personal life. I just wish there could have been a little scene showing Danny with Grace somehow to show that while Danny doesn't get off on the adrenaline rush of car chases and running gun battles like Steve and Kono do, he does what he does to make the world a little safer for his daughter. You'd think something like that would fit right in on morning TV.

Comments

[4thoffive.livejournal.com]

Agree with your assessment. When they showed the pictures of young Steve (actually young Saxon in the football one) I was hoping we'd see young pictures of Danny too.

On the subject of Danny, I can't imagine him allowing Grace to be on the show. He would never expose her like that given all of the 5-0 enemies.

I think they had to capture Wo Fat to make a big reveal to Steve about another family secret in an upcoming episode ("hey I'm your brother"? - god I hope not).

[the-other-sandy.livejournal.com]

I can't imagine him allowing Grace to be on the show. He would never expose her like that given all of the 5-0 enemies.

Oh, I totally agree that Danny would never volunteer her for it. I was thinking something more along the lines of Rachel unknowingly dropping Grace off. Based on the rest of the footage, Savannah's producers didn't do any editing at all, even if it would have made sense for them to. And speaking of exposing people, clearly no member of Five-0 is ever going to be able to go undercover again.

"hey I'm your brother"? - god I hope not

You and me both, but I've been kind of dreading that as a reveal for awhile now. That, and that it'll turn out that Joe White is Steve's biological father.

[superbadgirl]

I kind of wondered how they had all this unedited footage, but did have time to edit together fancy intros for Steve and Kono (but not Chin or Danny - which, also, why is Chin lieutenant and Danny's detective, not sergeant? Am I wrong that their titles are detective lieutenant and detective sergeant? Eh.)

I actually think it was pretty stupid to have Catherine on at all, especially when she implicated herself, her CO and Steve in activities that are not really Navy sanctioned. On camera. On national TV.

[the-other-sandy.livejournal.com]

So much of this episode didn't make sense. The footage Savannah showed on air never would have been shown on a real TV show. Who wants to watch interview subjects fiddle with their microphones?

And why on earth did Steve show Roger/Gary's girlfriend the picture of him skinned? It's not like she could have identified him from that, and they could have just asked her if he had a tattoo on his shoulder.

[superbadgirl]

I don't think they'd figured out there was a tattoo there, but yeah, they could have simply asked her if there might be something special about his right bicep. Also, for seeing her BF's butchered body and eventually that her brother did it, Cammy was very unemotional.

When they cut the cameras off to have the confidential phone convo with that fed guy ... and then Savannah revealed that they told her what they convo was later, I had to remind myself to turn off my brain. I spent the rest of the episode admiring Danny's ass whenever I got the chance.

[and-ed.livejournal.com]

I love reading your reviews...you always notice stuff I don't. It didn't even occur to me to think about Chin and his tech-saviness until you said that but now...yeah, what about Chin???

I was thrown by the appearance of Wo Fat in such a fluff ep, too. It felt like we got cheated a bit. It didn't cancel out the emotion for me but I can see how it could diminish it. I was pretty focused on Steve's face and trying to cap the angst so I was able to kind of ignore Savannah when I needed to.

As for Grace, I can imagine Danny throwing down if that show or any other broadcast his kid, though it would have certainly made a more interesting, well rounded piece.

[the-other-sandy.livejournal.com]

As for Grace, I can imagine Danny throwing down if that show or any other broadcast his kid

Oh, I never thought Danny would offer her up for it, but I could see Rachel accidentally dropping her off while the crew was filming, or Danny needing to pick her up from school for some reason, or even the camera crew following Danny and filming Danny with Grace without his knowledge to add "human interest."

[rungirl60.livejournal.com]

I thought it was very out of the box thinking to have the show within a show, but it sounds like most people didn't like that. If Savannah hadn't stopped fake or real Wo Fat, I don't think 5-o would notice that he was there. But I do agree, it could have been any bad guy, it didn't have to be Wo Fat. So why was it Wo Fat? Maybe the actor has a contract and has to appear in so many episodes? I wished that he had just died out in the jungle, because it is too ridiculous how many lives he has. Let that plot point die already and give Steve closure.

[the-other-sandy.livejournal.com]

I thought it was very out of the box thinking to have the show within a show, but it sounds like most people didn't like that.

It wasn't that I didn't like the concept of the show within a show, it was that I didn't think they should have stuffed what should have been an intense Wo Fat episode into a fluffy morning chat show. They either should have stuck a different episode into the Savannah show, or they should have stuck the intense Wo Fat episode into a hard-hitting documentary or something. A morning puff piece about Wo Fat just seemed incongruous.

I wished that he had just died out in the jungle, because it is too ridiculous how many lives he has. Let that plot point die already and give Steve closure.

Unfortunately, I think we're stuck with Wo Fat because he was the big bad on the original H5O. But I think it was a mistake giving Wo Fat and Steve personal vendettas with each other right out of the gate instead of just making Wo Fat an extremely clever criminal who was difficult and frustrating to pin anything on.

[gottalovev.livejournal.com]

I agree with you, the format made me almost indifferent to the Wo Fat drama... and in fact I get really annoyed at the PR aspect, at how they are HEROES, do you GET IT??? like geez, lay it on thicker, I dare you ;)

[bookwurm.livejournal.com]

I think I could have handled the "show within a show" aspect better if Savannah hadn't been one of the stupidest people on television. She decided to do this "ride along" with absolutely no idea of what Five-o does, no preparation from her show's TPTB (liability waiver, what's that?), and the world's worst video editor. It was actually a pretty interesting case, despite the series of deus ex machina required to get them to the right place at the right time to catch Wo Fat. (And how did he find the trees without Catherine?)

In other television news, awfulhorrid and I are watching classic Doctor Who episodes on Netflix. We saw the Aztec story arc with William Hartnell (surprisingly good) and the mind robber story arc with Patrick Troughton (meh). That's all Netflix has for those two, but it looks like they have more with Jon Pertwee.

[the-other-sandy.livejournal.com]

Not a lot of early Doctor Who episodes survived. The BBC was famously cheap and was always reusing its master tapes to save money. Fortunately they also put some of the early episodes on film reels and shipped them around the country to be shown in various places. Many of the early episodes available to us now were reconstructed from these film reels that were found in attics and church basements.

And the only reason Monty Python's Flying Circus survived was because someone at the BBC tipped off Terry Gilliam that the master tapes were about to be reused, and Gilliam was able to buy them himself and keep them in his garage.