I’m not going to give Greg Grunberg all the credit for this week’s Hawaii Five-0 being a great episode, but I’m going to give him a gold star for livening up the joint, certainly.
In “Lapa’au,” Grunberg played Jeff Morrison, the supervisor of a murdered ICE agent who tagged along with Five-0 on the investigation into her death. I’m not sure how legal that was, but I let it slide because c’mon, it’s Greg Grunberg! His Eric Weiss was the most underrated character on Alias! It would have been a waste for him to play the typical “boss of the victim who gets two scenes and is never heard from again.” Thankfully, the writers made good use of him, even including a hilarious scene where Max, played by his Heroes costar Masi Oka, insisted that Jeff looked familiar.
As writers, we’re told not to build episodes around a particular guest star, but it certainly helps our material when a good one comes on board. Hopefully Grunberg will be one of the ones that Five-0 finds a reason to bring back.
“Lapa’au” wasn’t just a good episode because of him, though. It was an episode that didn’t hit the sore notes that season two has struck all too often. The premise seemed farfetched at first – a plane with a corpse in it sounded like it might have been a better fit for last week’s Halloween episode – but it ended up being relatively easy to follow. Lori seemed to stick out less this week, and it was nice to see her clueless about something for once.
And though Grunberg was a great guest star, his being there did not take over the entire show. No offense to Terry O’Quinn or any of the other guests from season two to date, but the sophomore run has been a little guest star-heavy, so it was pleasant that we didn’t get too much of a good thing.
The episode also contained more of what made me enjoy Hawaii Five-0 in season one. Steve and Danny’s banter was back, but it felt more natural and less like it was being inserted for the sake of being there. We also got to see Kono return to the field after spending last week in the office, and that granted us the kick-ass Grace Park we all know and love.
It wasn’t perfect — Jeff’s line to Lori that the deceased reminded him of her felt like another one of those instances where the writers are trying to make us like Lori by having someone else like her. Not to mention that it seemed to come out of nowhere.
I also feel like our heroes should have been able to finger the killer a lot earlier, if only they’d looked into his background a little deeper when they talked to him the first time. Then again, if they had, we would have had a very short episode, so I understand the reasoning. I just would have been more on board if the reveal hadn’t been something so simple to figure out.
But those are small issues in the big picture. “Lapa’au” was a fun and more importantly, properly executed episode, and I hope that it’s the start of a trend, because this show really should be one of the best on television.
One thing I can’t let slide, though: I’m still putting the graphics team in the penalty box for misspelling “department” as “departmant” in one of tonight’s captions. Spell check is your friend.
Clacked by Brittany Frederick 
on Nov 08, 2011 @ 02:43 EST5EDT
