- Title: Hawaii Five-0 – Pe’epe’e Kanaka
- wiki: link
The investigation into the murder of a pool boy gets far more interesting when Five-0 uncovers an Al-Qaeda connection to the home where the young man was found shot and a plot involving the recruitment of local college kids to bomb an Air Force base on the island. Calling in Grover (Chi McBride), Five-0 takes down two members of the cell and captures a third uncooperative member (Pretty Little Liars‘ Sasha Pieterse) who is too busy spouting her philosophy to offer any remorse for her actions or clues to the higher-ranking members of the cell bankrolling the kids’ efforts.
Relying on the help of a specialist at the FBI’s Terrorist Explosive Device Analytical Center, Five-0 is able to connect the type of bombs the college kids were making to a similar device used to kill all but one severely-injured Marine in a convoy in Afghanistan in June, 2012. As the show is known for when dealing with these types of storylines, the heart-on-its-sleeve pro-military slant is pushed hard in the eventual capture of the rest of the terrorists and in a late sequence where McGarrett (Alex O’Loughlin) and Danny (Scott Caan) take leave from the island to track down the surviving Marine in a VA Hospital.
The tension and high stakes of the episode work well, and Pieterse is convincing as a brainwashed terrorist (although I think the show could have spent a little more time attempting to decipher how she was recruited and turned to Al-Qaeda’s agenda, especially given how much of the storyline surrounds her character). With the terrorists all eventually captured, Five-0 has time to spend on the episode’s B-story that bookends the episode playing on McGarrett and Grover’s competitive nature when the former Chicago cop takes up spear fishing for the first time.
This was one of the best episodes of the season. The plot and setup was really believable and sort of frightening, the action scenes were really intense, too.
One odd thing. I totally love the song “Say It, Just Say It” by The Mowgli’s, but it seemed kind of odd to use it during the scene when Uday Jahani is watching his son play lacrosse and Grover and a swarm of agents arrive and arrest him. Again that’s one of my favorite songs, but it’s so triumphant and joyous sounding, I’m not sure it fit here- would’ve been better at the end credits.
That’s an interesting point you make about the song. Five-0 doesn’t use much music other than the score (at least that stands out to me) but I do recall on one or two occasions over the course of the series thinking a song that was used felt a bit odd or forced in a particular scene.