Hawaii Five-0 (S0615) “Ke Koa Lokomaika’i” (The Good Soldier)

Aloha fellow Hawaii Five 0 fans 🙂

After the hype of 6.14 I didn’t know what to expect from 6.15 and I was pleasantly surprised by an action packed, twists full and character driven very enjoyable episode.

6.15 followed two storylines, the one about the crime of the week and the one about Danny’s mom, Clara Williams’ visit to Hawaii, both plots which would lead to two completely different but very intriguing final twists.

Lets start with the COTW.

I really enjoyed this story line because I think it dealt with the characters involved in a very respectful, delicate and intelligent way. We see at the beginning a guy carrying another man to the hospital after he has been shot. We’ll later find out that he will be one of the main characters in the episode, Neil, a highly functioning autistic young man that witnessed his only friend being killed.

The character of Neil was beautifully written and portrayed, with lots of respect for his condition and with a realism that showed the daily struggle he faces in his life. Someone close to me suffers of bipolar disorder, a completely different mental illness but that similarly makes them dependent from their regular schedules and behaviours, and Neil’s story mirrored reality very well from that point of view.

His loyalty to his friend was very sweet too, especially when he asked Kono if Mark was a bad guy.  He wasn’t, he just made a very bad choice which unfortunately cost him his life.

The way our Steve dealt with the situation and his witness was to say the least heart warming. Steve was so understanding, patient, compassionate. The man we have come to respect and love not only for his bravery and intelligence but mostly for his big heart. I loved the way McGarrett paid attention to the pins on Neil’s uniform to make a first contact with him. He found a way to communicate with Neil via his passion for space exploration and that was adorable. Also the way he allowed him into his personal world via the USS Enterprise helped a lot to make Neil at ease. Steve as a Navy Seal must have had many fun and fond memories on that ship and Neil had a connection with it too because of the shuttle, that helped to improve their relationship by using common ground, well done writers. Steve and Neil developed a trusting and mutually beneficial friendship and I’m glad to hear from peter Lenkov that we’ll see more of it in the deleted scenes on the DVD.

We have seen Steve extracting information from his witnesses in many ways during the past 6 seasons but never we saw him dealing with such patience and tact as he did with Neil.

Kono was also very sensitive and clever in dealing with Neil, our lady is not only beautiful, strong and the best gun”man” of the team (she did save Grover’s life in this episode with her shooting skills and he loves her for that as much as we do) but also kind and perceptive.

Of course the crime of the week involved the other members of the team and even one of the funniest, best loved guest stars of this season, Willie Garson as Gerard Hirsh. Now Gerard fancies himself as a Crime Scene Cleaner, in business since 1982. He hasn’t lost his habit of conning people but at least this time he put it to good use in helping Five 0 to solve the case. He even tried to make a pass at Kono, once again unsuccessfully. I don’t think ha has a chance against Adam but his determination and self esteem is quite admirable 🙂 I was wondering at the time, “how does Gerard know about Abby?” but then he said ha had a police scanner so there’s that little mystery solved.

So the crime of the week turned around a “robbery” at the Waikiki bank facilitated but two easily corruptible inside guys, the Manager who helped criminals in laundering money and the assistant Manager who helped her brother and his gang to take advantage of the situation.

Little did they know that our resident evil, no less than Mr Gabriel Waincroft was behind it all and once again most of the people involved ended up dead to his benefit. I struggled a little to understand why he would still walk into the “trap” when he well knew that Five 0 was behind it. Maybe he thought he could get rid of them once for good or that he was untouchable. Well his arrogance this time lead to his apparent defeat, as after an “epic” fight with Chin he ended up flying out of a window and landed very painfully on car in the road. I have to admit when Chin said to Steve that Gabriel was “where he belongs” I thought he meant either dead or captured to go back to jail. And my instinct was telling me “Oh please let Gabriel not to be dead”. Now, any other sociopathic villain would get much less sympathy from me but as much as Gabe is dangerous and evil the fact that he is played by Christopher Sean makes me wish that he’ll be in the show as long as possible. It must be great acting when someone as nice and personable as Chris brings to life a character so completely different from himself. And now he can keep tweeting the question “Where is Gabriel?” as our cat like with 9 lives villain disappeared once again into thin air.

The second storyline involved Danno being dragged by his mom Clara into trying to win tickets for a cruise while impersonating his dad. I have to admit I found Clara very annoying with her continuous throwing back in Danny’s face what she did for him as a baby and a child. But the story served the purpose of introducing a new threat for our team, FBI agent Michael Coughlin, brother of the deceased agent that was trying to nail Chin before Gabriel stuck a pencil in his eye. Now the brother is after Five 0, probably more for personal vendetta than for the pursuit of justice. He will try to catch them in the act of stepping the line. And he is not doing it on his own. Unfortunately one of the characters we have come to know and love in this season is helping him. Or at least she is performing her duty of following his orders.

On the positive side this story line gave us the one little McDanno moment of the episode. Short and sweet but adorable nonetheless. Steve’s reminding Danno on the phone that he is there for him whatever he needs put a smile on my face.

Now we know that Abby is working under cover for the FBI in this investigation of the Five 0 team. Question is: are her feelings for Chin real or are they just an expedient to get closer to a member of the team for the investigation? I think they are real, and that’s why she couldn’t allow herself to be with him and to lie to him further in the Valentine episode.

Will her feelings for Chin bring her not to betray Five 0? Will the fact that they are actually good people help her to decide to come clean with them? I hope so, time will tell. Intriguing storyline for sure.

Until next week my friends I wish you a very good weekend and an even better week ahead.

Mahalo for reading!