Review: 'Hawaii Five-0' - 09/27/2013

I've always had a soft spot in my heart for Steven Seagal movies. Sure, the plots are ludicrous and the action sequences seem to have choreographed by someone who can only see the world in two dimensions. Then there is Seagal himself, who manages to combine wooden acting with a fighting style that in recent years most closely resembles a drunken bear doing yoga.

But I always end up watching the movies because Seagal actually believes he's making something great. A lesser ego would play it for laughs or with a nod and a wink to the audience. But Seagal's seriousness in the midst of creating a disaster is kind of compelling to see.

I find myself feeling the same way about "Hawaii Five-0," the CBS drama kicking off its fourth season this week. When faced with the task of rebooting the Jack Lord TV classic, most producers would have opted for a slick procedural cop show that includes lots of bikinis and surfing. Instead, in the first three season viewers have been confronted with a creatively insane mash-up of increasingly idiotic plots that tend to leave the casual fan slack-jawed in amazement. There have been storylines involving South American terrorists, the Yakuza, a secret trip to North Korea, the assassination of the Governor of Hawaii and the mysterious death of "Five-0" head Steve McGarret's (Alex O’Loughlin) parents. No wait, his mom (Christine Lahti) isn't dead. She has just been on the run from Wo Fat, or vegan terrorists or well...that's still not clear. But darn it, she is on the run.

The season four premiere ratchets up the crazy as it continues the cliffhanger storyline that ended season three. A recently facially charred Wo Fat is in a maximum security prison and McGarrett has just learned that his mom was a recent visitor. Kono (Grace Park) is literally on a slow boat to China with boyfriend Adam Noshimuri (Ian Anthony Dale) as he tries to hide from the Yakuza. Danny is involved with...oh who cares. I mean, the show has spent a sizable amount of time trying to get me to care about his daughter, his ex-wife and his current flame and I can barely remember their names.

When the season four premiere opens, McGarrett goes to prison to visit Wo Fat, who is locked up behind a plexiglass wall and a hallway full of armed guards. Of course, when McGarrett gets there a team of heavily armed assassins show up to kill Wo Fat, leading to a battle that manages to be over the top and ludicrous all at the same time. The four member hit team kill every guard in sight, leave the hallway leading to the cell looking as if has been charred by a blowtorch and yet somehow McGarrett manages to overcome them all.

That leads to an even dumber plot, involving the nephew of a terrorist leader, an assault on Police Headquarters, the most obvious setup for a kidnapping in recent history and a resolution that depends in large part on McGarrett being able to tell the new head of the Honolulu SWAT (Chi McBride) that he has complete immunity from the Governor for anything he does. Which makes the whole scripting of the consequences for McGarrett's actions much easier to write. There's the predictable fight on a helicopter in which the pilot is shot in the head, to say nothing of the scene in which McGarrett shoots through a suspect's shoulder to kill a hit man.

When it was all over, I found myself both admiring the audacity of the script and being appalled by the waste of talent and money in the production of the episode. "Hawaii Five-0" does okay numbers in the U.S., but it apparently does very well internationally. Which in one respect might be a positive for the U.S., since any enemy of the country watching the show would conclude that we are a people who are violent, unpredictable and completely unfamiliar with the normal rules of scriptwriting.

As for me, I prefer my action shows to include a bit more reality and a little less of the rejected storylines from "Grand Theft Auto."

Which brings us to next week's episode, in which a Texas Ranger comes to Hawaii looking for his kidnapped daughter. Because, you know, that's the logical place to take the daughter of a Texas Ranger.

I really need a drink.