Book ‘Em: Parental non-control

In Chinatown, McGarrett demonstrates how to run like a schoolgirl. (Courtesy CBS)

BY BURL BURLINGAME / bburlingame@staradvertiser.com

“Kamehameha Highway” does NOT run by Koko Head Crater. Looks Kalanianiole to me. Why must everything be misidentified to no apparent purpose? Is “Hawaii Five-0.2″ messing with us? Is the misdirection a salient plot point? Wink wink nudge nudge, none of this is real, including the stuff that actually is real?

Coupla local guyz toolin’ along Waimanalo in a “TransHawaiian Parcel” delivery step van, talking da kine. Guess FedEx and UPS and DHX and Aala Ship Service were all busy. The delivery guys manage to work in Las Vegas as the “ninth Hawaiian island” and “slippahs.” These opening scenes setting the location and local color, featuring our adorable native population, are beginning to be the “Five-0″ standard opener, right out of the “Law & Order” playbook. Then something awful will happen, someone will look shocked, the camera will make a panicky zoom and the credits will roll, along with the pounding drums. It’s a formula.

Sure enough, a dark van hijacks the delivery truck, and the nice-guy driver is shot dead, his partner freaks mightily and …

Credits. “Pu‘olo,” or “The Package.” H50.2.2.14. When it absolutely, positively, must be delivered at 9 p.m. on Monday night.

Flashback to the old McGarrett beachfront home on Black Point. Papa McGarrett tells a sullen teenage McG that he’s being sent to the mainland to attend the “Army-Navy Academy” for his own safety. Oh, yeah, little McGarrett sister is being sent off too. Remember that McG had a trampy little sister? She’s been AWOL since early in the first season. McGarrett the Elder exclaims that McG can always trust Old Joe, which is like shooting up a flare to announce a scene cut, and sure, here’s modern-day, all-grown-up McG, nursing a sourball expression.

He’s tailing Old Joe, who seems to be antique shopping. They have words in an alley, and they might as well be labled, Here’s what happened last week. Now that you’re caught up, here’s some zoomy, oversaturated aerial shots.

The whole H50 team is on the scene of the delivery van robbery. After Danno comforts the distraught survivor with a Vulcan shoulder squeeze, everybody wonders what was stolen. But no packages are missing. McG wonders out loud what the whole thing was about, just in case viewers at home are incapable of doing so.

A bloody fingerprint in the back of the van makes the crew suspicious of the surviving delivery guy. Magic Table identifies the fingerprint in milliseconds. Delivery guy lives in an awfully nice Waialua cottage, which makes Danno jealous — he makes reference to the continuing joke from earlier in the season when he was homeless — and he and McG break in to the sound of gunshots. Delivery Guy is beaten and tied to a chair, and there’s a brief flurry of gunplay as a perp is shot down. Delivery Guy admits he’s crooked and was sneaking mysterious packages through Customs.

Danno gets a call from the ex Mrs. Danno. She’s delivering too! Just when we thought the show had fogotten all about her. She’s been gone for a year getting highlights in her hair.

Magic Table reveals that Dead Perp is a smuggler of some sort, with a tenuous connection to Sang Min, that con with family issues, who also dates back to first season. “Holy mullet!” exclaims Officer Supermodel when Magic Table shows his picture. OK, that’s funny.

Chin Ho, ever helpful, whispers to McG that Old Joe was visiting an antiques store. I guess the first clue was the giant sign atop the storefront.

Old Joe steps out of a Hawaii National Bank — hey, that’s a real business — just in time to fling an innocent passer-by behind a phalanx of bullet-proof Honolulu Star-Advertiser streetboxes, as a drive-by shooter drives by and shoots. It’s good to know that our newspaper can double as armor. Or maybe it was the coinboxes on top jammed full of quarters from happy readers. Yeah, that’s it.

Joe fires back, making a hole in the drive-byer’s rear window and fireworks on the metal body. Come to think of it, the Star-Advertiser street boxes also threw out sparkly fireworks when hit by bullets. Why is that the case? Has anyone on the show ever seen an actual bullet strike an object? It’s not Tinkerbelle pooting fairy dust.

At the Halawa graybar hotel, Officer Supermodel and Kono visit Sang Min, who has picked up a barrio accent over the last season. He promptly agrees to rat out his smuggling buddy “Nicky” in exchange for a Club Fed mainland incarceration, in with the “general pop,” as Kono smugly puts it. But first, Sang Min has “needs.”

Cut to Sang Min wolfing down Kamekona’s shrimps, even wearing Kamekona Shrimp logowear. Kamekona himself has ducked out back to eat something that doesn’t have shrimp in it. Why do I get the feeling that Taylor Wily’s role will have a gradual arc of odd and “colorful” businesses?

What follows is a two-minute Subway commercial. Kamekona is dieting by eating five Subway sandwiches at every meal. He also claims to be saving money. I guess the show’s writers don’t know that the five-dollar foot-long is not only a thing of the past, it cost more in Hawaii.

McG laughs at Sang Min’s attire. Sang Min makes moke-face and insists he needs local muscle for the big meet with Nicky. Kamekona is dragooned into the role, and the guys do a costume change to befit their instant-gangster status. Kamekona insists he’s now legit, a “pillow of the community.” These guys are great.

Adorable scene with Danno and Mrs. Danno in the hospital, getting ready to give birth. Wait. That’s not his kid, is it? Danno is the only guy on the show who seems to have a life that isn’t dictated by Magic Table.

Gangsta showdown doesn’t go well. Sang Min and Kamekona are outed immediately as posers. Drawn guns in pure John Woo style. Shoot-out! Sparks fly from cardboard boxes. Four perps gunned down, and then Nicky, laughing maniacally, pulls out a flamethrower. Whiskey Tango Foxtrot! He only misses “Say hello to my lil’ friend!” McG thinks of shooting him, but instead, shields himself with a cardboard box and makes a flying leap. That’s always my first choice, jumping at flamethrowers.

Nicky gets sweated in the Green Room. The missing package contained 100 RFID chips. Since the show doesn’t explain that the acronym stands for Radio Frequency IDentification, I will. They’re now used in passports, and this is a clue that the scam involves forged passports. In “Hawaii Five-0,” the plot-reveals always trend upward, not downward. It’s the reverse of Occam’s Razor.

Mrs. Danno has the obligatory delivery emergency. There has never been a smooth baby delivery in the history of television.

McG and Old Joe meet Yakuza Boy at night atop Punchbowl Crater. John Woo pistol-waving all around. Old Joe calls up Yakuza Boy’s father and proves he’s not dead, then announces that the “death” was all a ruse to entice Wo Fat. Yakuza Boy is then impressed by Old Joe’s command of trite Asian aphorisms. Lots of furrowed brows. McG, wild-eyed, bleats, “We just wanna know if you’re in or you’re out.” No answer, of course, from Yakuza Boy, because that’s what passes for mythological throughput on this show.

Magic Table IDs the antique dealer as involved somehow. As they rocket through downtown Honolulu in the dark of night in a monster truck, Old Joe tells McG that the antiques dealer is an old friend, and oh, by the way, also a master forger. I’m getting the feeling that Old Joe is the catalyst for every criminal activity in Hawaii. He’s not an agent, he’s a reagent.

McG and Old Joe kick in the doors of the antique store and find the owner/forger shot. “He’s got a pulse!” shrieks Old Joe, checking.

The RFIDs were hijacked by “a couple of East European” types, who added their own picture so they could flee the country. They’re nabbed at the airport by H50, who somehow know exactly which skyway to hide in. The nabbing is anti-climatic. The dudes never even get a line to speak. Awwww. H50 is always so mean to the bad-guy actors.

Adorable birthing scene. Baby boy born to ex-Mrs. Danno. Gathered around the cozy hearth of Magic Table, the H50 squaddies coo and exclaim over Danno’s tough luck. Then McG tells them all to scram, so he and Old Joe can talk. Nice piece of visual continuity — the sloop model on his office shelf is the same model glimpsed over his father’s shoulder earlier in the show.

McG and Old Joe do the stare-down. “Shell Burn?” asks Old Joe. He drags McG out into the night, and then it’s sunrise at Punchbowl, and they’re looking down at McGarrett Elder’s grave. (This is the scene that a Pearl Harbor anniversary tour group complained about them filming.)

“Shell Burn” is a code name McGarrett Elder gave to his yakuza investigation, and it turns out that Old Joe killed Wo Fat’s father, which is why Wo Fat is so dickish about things. And yes, Old Joe could have said this 14 episodes ago.

Nicely written and acted scene in maternity ward, as Danno gazes upon his rival’s baby, as “Hi‘ilawe” plays, “Descendant” style, on the soundtrack. McG offers to treat Danno to a ZipPac, which is another cutely encoded locals-only reference.

A bit of return to form, this episode, in terms of action and humor. Body count: Six. Old Joe is going into hiding, instead of shambling around Honolulu with a target on his back. Officer Supermodel gets the best line, although the episode is really about male inter-generational bonding. Just in case that hammer on your head didn’t ring a bell, McG and Old Joe and Wo Fat and Yakuza Boy and Danno all have daddy issues.
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Burl Burlingame is a features reporter at the Honolulu Star-Advertiser. Email him at bburlingame@staradvertiser.com and follow him on Twitter.