Hawaii Five-0 – Did it really have to go there?

For 59 minutes, this week’s Hawaii Five-0 was good, solid, no-BS fun — and then we came to that last scene. To steal a line from Richard Belzer, not only did the show rain on my parade, it blew up all the floats.

Joe White (Terry O’Quinn), Steve’s mentor and close friend, was seen calling an unidentified person, telling them that Steve’s “getting too close.”

Then I was seen rolling my eyes.

Before I get into the reasons why, let me be fair and say that as we don’t know what the writers are planning, there’s the possibility that this disastrous clip might not turn out to be what it looks like.

Yet as fans and critics, we can only evaluate what’s in front of our faces on any given week. And what it looks like is that Joe is another mole in the Five-0 team.

I am not in love with this idea. In general, I’ve tired of the tendency – not just in television but often in film as well – that there needs to be some sort of last-second surprise, which usually takes the form of a good guy going bad. This has become fairly common practice, which makes me wonder how much of a surprise any of these twist endings are when you can pretty much expect them.

When it comes to this show, I dislike it more because it’s ground that we’ve already treaded this season, with Jenna Kaye. One mole is one thing, but two? That’s a bit ridiculous. (Even I started laughing at how 24 found at least one mole in CTU every season.)

Jenna’s defection was decently successful, because we never warmed to her as a heroine, so we were more inclined to believe that she would turn sides. (And her last episode was pretty great, too.) But do we need to tear down Joe’s character in this way? To rob Steve of his mentor, close friend, and one of his rare confidantes outside of the team – perhaps one of the most dear people in his life? Let’s not forget that last season already saw one of his old friends try and kill him.

This feels to me like another play to make this show bigger and better, when it doesn’t need anything at all. As the saying goes, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”

I want to hold out hope that I’ll be wrong about all this by the end of the season. I’m just not sure how accurate that would be. Joe has been around so often this season that he’s practically a regular; all that screen time would be explained if the writers were just building up his relationship with and importance to Steve before pulling the betrayal card for maximum effect.

Yet this is the guy who saved Steve’s life last week, and who lost his lengthy Naval career this week because of that. He’s loyal enough to risk that, but not loyal enough to stick by his protege? It doesn’t quite sit right with me.

I’ll wait and see what happens. But I hope the Five-0 writers have a very good explanation for throwing in this latest wrench.

Clacked by Brittany Frederick
on Dec 06, 2011 @ 08:21 EST5EDT