Hawaii Five-0 – Never mind the holiday

Here’s a confession: I hate holiday-themed episodes. Not because I hate holidays (as I type this, I’m still elbow deep in Halloween candy) but because they generally aren’t the best installments of a show. Too much of them tends to ride on festive gimmicks and once you take that stuff out, there’s not that much left.

This week’s Hawaii Five-0 was no exception to my dislike.

The Halloween theme had one good thing going for it – the use of Ray Parker Jr.’s classic Ghostbusters song. The rest of the holiday schtick was actually a bit painful to watch. The team making cracks about Lori’s Halloween costume while standing around at an active crime scene? Danny getting allegedly cursed and then seeing dead people?

In fact, Danny took a bit of a beating this episode, one that even Scott Caan and his Golden Globe nomination couldn’t salvage something from. Most of the episode involved him getting into trouble for having disrespected the scantity of the particular ground that happened to be the primary crime scene. No matter what his thoughts (or lack thereof) about curses, he’s been around his Five-0 colleagues long enough that I’d think he’d at least respect their beliefs. No such luck.

As if that wasn’t enough, he’s still acting like a boy around Dr. Gabrielle Asano (Autumn Reeser), whom he’s now calling “Gabby.” That’s some quick familiarity considering she’s only making her second appearance and they’ve apparently only been on one date. But maybe she prefers to be called that off-duty? At least I’d hope so, or we’re being asked to accept a relationship that’s apparently developing off-screen. That’s usually not a good sign.

Too much of this episode just made me shake my head. There’s the Blair Witch-esque opening (at least with less crying). Later on, Lori goes off alone and gets knocked unconscious by the killer. Both those things could have been avoided if there’d been some common sense. I don’t know about you, but one look at the guy and I could just tell he was the perp. He looked creepier than the drifter (Robert Englund, who was an obvious red herring despite how heavily CBS promoted his appearance).

And the body-part-stealing plot? That reminded me of The X-Files: I Want To Believe, and that wasn’t the best movie either.

Never mind that this was supposed to be a Halloween episode. It just wasn’t a very good episode, period. We’ve been speculating for weeks as to what’s made Hawaii Five-0 season two not quite the same as season one, and I’m sure we could all guess at a half-dozen reasons and all be right. So instead of trying once again to figure out its foibles, I’ll just say this: season one was appointment television for me. It was a show I didn’t just sit back and watch with my brain off; I got invested in it. I kept it on my DVR after it aired so I could watch the best episodes again.

We’re seven episodes into season two and my attitude toward the show has completely changed. The show is still entertaining, and I’ve never stopped liking the original foursome. But I’m not on the edge of my seat. And I’m deleting the episodes after the credits roll. The show just doesn’t have any staying power with me anymore.

Maybe the real crime is how great this show could easily be, but somehow hasn’t been. Regardless of if it’s a Halloween episode or not.

Clacked by Brittany Frederick
on Nov 01, 2011 @ 02:39 EST5EDT