Hawaii Five-0 Review: McGarrett’s Ties to Pearl Harbor

If you want to see Hawaii Five-0‘s Steve McGarrett take out his fury on the job, the quickest way to do that is to insult someone in the military. Take this week’s victim as a cautionary sign. The man killed is one of the few remaining survivors from Pearl Harbor, only to die an unnecessary a senseless death in his 90s. Getting justice for one survivor ends up providing McGarrett with insight into his own grandfather. That kind of bond never goes away.

A group of thieves with military training have been robbing military banks with few casualties, except this time they took out a Pearl Harbor survivor named Leonard Patterson (guest star Hal Holbrook) in the getaway. The thieves are apart of Paladin Security, a former private government contractor headed by Lee Campbell. The contract was dissolved when the government tossed them out for killing Afghan civilians. Campbell barely bats an eye when he has a face to face with McGarrett. In his eyes he is serving a noble cause, so whatever he had to do was just collaterral damage. As it turns out the guys are trying to provide for their late friends’ widow, who is on the verge of losing her home. Admirable a cause as it may be, it does not justify the tragic death of an innocent man.

You can tell that this case was extremely personal to McGarrett by the way he handled Campbell. There was fury behind his defense. In that moment he was trying to get justice for Patterson, and take back the dignity Campbell’s reckless actions took along with Patterson’s life. The men who died in Pearl Harbor deserve better than to be used as justifications for another generation’s bad behavior, and the few remaining survivors deserve as much peace as they can get after the hell they went through. Learning about Patterson’s life through a Pearl Harbor documentary leads to McGarrett learning more about his namesake’s final day on Earth. His heroic actions saved many that day. It’s a sacrifice no medal can describe.

Adam is finally in a good place, probably the best place he’s been in years. All of his crimes are truly behind him, he has Kono, and he has an honest day’s work at a construction site. When he finds bones which he thinks might indicate the construction site is a Hao, Adam tries (and fails miserably) to get his boss to consider shutting down the workers. Adam is a good employee, but he’s also a native Hawaiian who respects the values of the island. Disturbing a Hao is a big no no. Before he blows his job out of the water by bringing 5-0 into this, Adam asks Jerry to help him dig deeper. Adam is fired for trespassing after hours to search the site, but that doesn’t stop him from continuing his quest. What he and Jerry find is that one of the previous owners of the property had a wife who ‘disappeared’. Eventually Adam brings Kono in to arrest the man for murdering his wife after her remains are discovered. Adam won’t get this job back, but at least he got justice for someone who deserved it.

Was McGarrett’s level of fury justitified?