S09.E07: Pua aʻe lā ka uwahi o ka moe (The Smoke Seen in the Dream Now Rises)

[BW Manilowe]

McGarrett investigates a cold case from the 1940’s, one that his grandfather and the famous Honolulu detective Chang Apana worked on, and he tries to deduce how the case could have been solved. Also, McGarrett and Danny get ready for the opening of their restaurant, on the milestone 200th episode of Hawaii Five-0. The Five-0 cast appears as characters from the 1940’s.

Original Airdate: November 9, 2018

SOURCE: https://cbspressexpress.com/cbs-entertainment/shows/hawaii-five-0/releases/view?id=51178

[GustheCat]

Quote

 

This looked like fun from the previews on the show last week. It reminds me of the Star Trek episode where Kirk, Spock and some others were transported back to the 1920's prohibition era with the gangsters.

The real Chang Apana was supposed to have been the inspiration for the fictional Charlie Chan (Sidney Toller, Warner Oland and others). I loved those movies so I am anxious to see if Chang will spout off any "Chan-isms"? For instance, to Steve: Always happens – when conscience tries to speak, telephone out of order.  (The Black Camel) To Danny: Best to slip with foot, than with tongue. (Charlie Chan at the Circus) To Lou: Detective without curiosity is like glass eye at keyhole – no use. (Charlie Chan in the Secret Service) AND, to both Danny and Steve: Easy to criticize, more difficult to be correct. (Charlie Chan at the Race Track). If they don't, the writers will have passed up a huge opportunity, the chanisms are better than most of the dialogue on 5-0.

Also, Chang Apana died in 1933 so it will be interesting to see how they work that into the story. He also carried a bullwhip all the time and had previously worked as a cowboy. Let's see if they do him justice on the episode.

[Mittengirl]

Seriously?!  All the bullshit about the restaurant for that?!  

[Roselle]

So 'Steves's' is kaput before even officially opening...what an epic waste of time that was. 

As to the rest - the forties fashions/cars/scenery details were nicely done (SC looked particularly comfortable in the three piece suit and overcoat) but I was a bit bothered by AOL's adoption of such a thick (NY?) accent to go along with them.

The whole Chang Apana storyline was a  nice idea. I lost count of the numbers killed but they were all in a dream so I guess realism matters even less than usual. 

Edited November 10, 2018 by Roselle

[dwmarch]

I always enjoy alternate 5-0 episodes and I thought this one was pretty fun. I got a good LOL out of the bad guys (or mooks I suppose) coming out of Wo Fat Chop Sui. I was surprised by "Tani" getting killed and I find myself wondering if there was any significance to Adam appearing in Steve's dream as a gangster.

The show also did something bold that I thought they wouldn't do. They had Steve light up a cigarette and actually take a visible puff from it! At first they were very coy with it and I thought it would be a situation where we'd see him lighting it and holding it but never actually smoking it. But he does take a drag when talking to Tani. I'm pretty sure she inhales too. I thought that was super verboten on TV but I guess if it's a period piece you're allowed to make it somewhat realistic.

Another laugh was courtesy of Jerry and the analog Microsoft Surface. What would they do without something like that?

[Magnumfangirl]

I loved this episode.  I want a whole new reboot of H50 set in the 1940s!   So glad the stupid restaurant story is over!

6 hours ago, Roselle said:

AOL's adoption of such a thick (NY?) accent to go along with them.

I thought it was a just fun stereotype of a 40s era gumshoe.  What was Danno's accent supposed to be?

[preeya]

In his 1941 costume, Little Dano, reminded me of Sonny Corleone.

[roamyn]

I thought this was a great 200th episode.  From the score, to the costuming, the smoking & atmosphere, the accents & gumshoe language, Jerry being normal & not conspiracy prone, Noelani still being a doctor & her correcting “Milton” on his assumption.

Loved, loved the big band theme.

The only nitpick I had was that the Whitmour Estate was still intact.  And just because their isn’t a pool there now, doesn’t mean there wasn’t one at one point.  Kind of a bad assumption of Steve’s , since it’s been 70+ years.

And I don’t find the restaurant resolution to be that bad.  Sometimes you have to go through the motions to find out that’s not the path you really want.

But now it seems like all Danny’s dreams from his shooting are falling apart.  No baby girl for Adam/Kono, no successful restaurant for McDanno.  Does that mean they won’t spend their twightlight years together? 

Edited November 10, 2018 by roamyn

[Passepartout]

Yeah as wonder how much Danny and Steve will get since they are being brought out but saw that next week episode over on the having Thanksgiving dinner at the restaurant or so I thought!

[Raja]

28 minutes ago, Passepartout said:

Yeah as wonder how much Danny and Steve will get since they are being brought out but saw that next week episode over on the having Thanksgiving dinner at the restaurant or so I thought!

It is not going on the market, Kamekona is taking it over like he suggested on the Magnum P.I pilot 

[MissLucas]

Aww, that was tons of fun - I always like those special episodes where you can see and feel that everybody was enjoying the change and they all had a good time.

They put the restaurant plot out of its misery as graceful as possible so I'm not complaining. 

Edited November 11, 2018 by MissLucas

[sue450]

I think the whole restaurant plot was to be the end of the show and they needed togive up five 0 and fall back on something...we lost kono and her cuz and gained  2 younger  people and the show is doing good  and not ending after all

[roamyn]

2 hours ago, sue450 said:

I think the whole restaurant plot was to be the end of the show and they needed togive up five 0 and fall back on something...we lost kono and her cuz and gained  2 younger  people and the show is doing good  and not ending after all

Good theory.   You could be right in that if the series ended w/S8, Steve/Danny would “retire” from 5-0 (and possibly Lou), and start a new phase of their lives.  But since it got renewed, they had to do something w/that storyline.

[BW Manilowe]

I too loved the ep & the alternate version of the main title theme (I wish we could download it from somewhere—the CBS site or the usual music/TV show download sites). I couldn’t help but wonder, though, if Chin & Kono would’ve had the same parts as Tani & Junior, or how the story might’ve differed if DDK & Grace P were still in the cast & Beulah Koale & Meaghan Rath weren’t in it at all.

[Passepartout]

Yeah as really think that Steve IMHO is not the retiring type or one to sit down easily. But it would not be surprising if it came up again the restaurant thing. But if it is, well glad it ended on a great note. Really dragged on last year. 10/10!

[Arkay]

That was a lot of fun. 

I understand that Steve was dreaming and therefore we had an alternate reality, in which the grandfather was a detective and did not die on the Arizona. How, though, did Steve know about Whitmore once he'd awoken? Was that mentioned earlier? Or it was all in the file, I suppose. 

I am willing to make allowances for period details that embellish the gumshoe genre, such as the accents. However, even in the 40s, would a Hawaiian cop really wear a trenchcoat? Especially before air-conditioning was common? 

As a retired teacher of English, I was irked by the misspelling of "adventure" in Tani's yearbook (I forgot the name of her 40s character).

[BW Manilowe]

16 hours ago, Arkay said:

That was a lot of fun. 

I understand that Steve was dreaming and therefore we had an alternate reality, in which the grandfather was a detective and did not die on the Arizona. How, though, did Steve know about Whitmore once he'd awoken? Was that mentioned earlier? Or it was all in the file, I suppose. 

I am willing to make allowances for period details that embellish the gumshoe genre, such as the accents. However, even in the 40s, would a Hawaiian cop really wear a trenchcoat? Especially before air-conditioning was common? 

As a retired teacher of English, I was irked by the misspelling of "adventure" in Tani's yearbook (I forgot the name of her 40s character).

Regarding the bolded & italicized: Tani’s 40’s alter ego was named Alexa Alana, I’m 99.9% positive; the 0.1% of me that’s not positive says her name was flipped—Alana Alexa. But the former sounds more correct in my head than the latter.

[HurricaneVal]

I am a sucker for the ridiculous H50 AUs.   Even when it is just a momentary piece of whimsy like the go cart racers with accompanying cargument they opened that one show with.  So of course I loved this one.  I cracked up with the wardrobe, Steve's wide and very short tie, Danny's whole get-up.  It was quite the send-up of the noir genre.  Since it was Steve's dream sequence, I really found it amusing that he included several carguments as well as making Danny have that James Cagney shrill and nasally vocal tone.  Or, maybe that was Scott Caan's acting choice, to make vintage noir detective Danny a bit of a caricature.

 

I am both disappointed and not disappointed with the fate of the restaurant.  We didn't get much payoff out of all the angst, but I did like how even Danny was OK with letting Kamekona take over.  Now we can look forward to many episodes of Danny rants when Kame "messes" with his grandmother's sacred recipes, and puts shrimp in the lasagna or some such thing.  Because you just know the team is going to hang out there.  We'll see what they do with it...I don't think we're done with it quite that easily.

[BW Manilowe]

4 hours ago, HurricaneVal said:

I am a sucker for the ridiculous H50 AUs.   Even when it is just a momentary piece of whimsy like the go cart racers with accompanying cargument they opened that one show with.  So of course I loved this one.  I cracked up with the wardrobe, Steve's wide and very short tie, Danny's whole get-up.  It was quite the send-up of the noir genre.  Since it was Steve's dream sequence, I really found it amusing that he included several carguments as well as making Danny have that James Cagney shrill and nasally vocal tone.  Or, maybe that was Scott Caan's acting choice, to make vintage noir detective Danny a bit of a caricature.

 

I am both disappointed and not disappointed with the fate of the restaurant.  We didn't get much payoff out of all the angst, but I did like how even Danny was OK with letting Kamekona take over.  Now we can look forward to many episodes of Danny rants when Kame "messes" with his grandmother's sacred recipes, and puts shrimp in the lasagna or some such thing.  Because you just know the team is going to hang out there.  We'll see what they do with it...I don't think we're done with it quite that easily.

Danny wasn’t Danny in the 1941 sequences. He was Milton (Milton Cooper, I think, who I think they said was Chang Apana’s real-life professional partner, or worked with him on his cases in some other way). So Steve apparently imagined himself to be his namesake grandfather, working with Chang Apana’s partner instead of Chang Apana, as Grandpa Steve had. At least that’s what I got outta it.

Edited November 13, 2018 by BW Manilowe
To add a parenthesis.

[Moxie Cat]

Steve's dream went way off the reality rails, which I did not get until rewatching. Milton and Steve Sr. were best friends and all they used to talk about was becoming detectives. "That was the dream," Milton says, until Pearl Harbor. Apparently Milton joined the HPD after Pearl Harbor, in part to honor Steve Sr. 

The Lyla case was the last unsolved case of Chang Apana. "Your grandfather and I were obsessed," Milton says. They would get together on weekends and see if they could crack the case, as practice to become detectives. 

Steve Sr. was the kid in the 1932 photo with Chang Apana. It is not explained why this photo exists, other than it was a fan thing. Otherwise, Steve and Milton had nothing to do with Apana or the case, beyond being amateur hobbyists.

I was confused when Steve's dream opened in the police department as if Steve and Milton were actually working the case in the department - maybe others were too?

Edited November 13, 2018 by Moxie Cat

[Raja]

1 hour ago, Moxie Cat said:

 

I was confused when Steve's dream opened in the police department as if Steve and Milton were actually working the case in the department - maybe others were too?

I certainly was. I spent the entire episode saying that years ago they told us Grandpa Steve was a naval hero at Pearl Harbor

[GustheCat]

I'm not sure that Steve was actually taking the role of his grandfather rather than just a cop working at the time. Grandpa McGarrett was NOT a police detective, so maybe Steve was dreaming that he was partners with Milton. And, since they were both named Steve McGarrett, you wouldn't know by how they were addressed by anyone.  Hey, it's a dream, it doesn't always have to make sense. I thought the episode was well done and looking forward to watching it again. I was disappointed that they didn't try to capitalize on any of the famous Charlie Chan sayings but that's just me. I can hear McGarrett delivering a few to Danny/Milton in that NY accent.

I did read that they have a Crime Beat Tour of Honolulu once a month where the tour guide takes on the persona of Chief Detective McDuffie, who was Apana's boss at one time and appears as Inspector McDuff from the Charlie Chan books. That would be interesting. I also thought it was a nice touch to have Danny reading "House without a key" which was the first book to include Charlie Chan.

Did Tani's lip-synching just look bad to me, or anyone else? And, if she was singing, it was a bad lip synch impression.

Edited November 14, 2018 by GustheCat
left out a detail on names

[Moxie Cat]

37 minutes ago, GustheCat said:

Hey, it's a dream, it doesn't always have to make sense.

Yeah, I get that now and that does make the episode more fun....also lets you handwave any scenes that seemed straight out of a noir movie or too-stereotypical '40s because it was just Steve's imagination. 

I think it would have made more sense if they had changed old Milton's story - if they had made it the story that he actually hadn't become a detective. Then when the dream started, we wouldn't have been confused about exactly when he became a detective and when/if Steve Sr. was involved. 

More of a reminder about how Steve Sr. died on the Arizona and his situation at the time in the service would have been helpful too...I mean, I remember that aspect to the backstory of the show, but I don't remember everything in detail, and likely newer viewers might not know it at all. As it was, when they were on the balcony watching the attack, I was like, how does Steve Sr. get to the Arizona from there? (Yeah, I was pretty confused!)

I guess we are just to assume that all the details dream Steve discovered, including the sweater/HS, the mobster, the heir, were all in Milton and Sr's file, the just could never put it together. But magically, Super Steve's dreaming brain did! Lol.

Yeah, I love how Steve cast Adam as a bad guy, Lou as his and Danny's supervisor, and Jerry as a totally competent cop who had great aim with a gun! I wonder if Junior has hidden masseuse skills and Tani can really sing?

[roamyn]

3 hours ago, GustheCat said:

I also thought it was a nice touch to have Danny reading "House without a key" which was the first book to include Charlie Chan.

Did Tani's lip-synching just look bad to me, or anyone else? And, if she was singing, it was a bad lip synch impression.

I thought that was a cool tough, too.

And yes, Tani’s Lip syncing was terrible.  So very obvious.

[ganesh]

I didn't think Danny needed to adopt such a whiny affect to his accent. Good to see that Steve is just as bad in the past on civil rights as in the present. 

Edited November 18, 2018 by ganesh

[torqy]

They did a nice job assembling mostly period-appropriate autos, until the late-40's Chevy Fleetmaster sedan ran into a 1970-ish Chevy truck.

[sue450]

On 11/10/2018 at 6:59 AM, Magnumfangirl said:

I loved this episode.  I want a whole new reboot of H50 set in the 1940s!   So glad the stupid restaurant story is over!

I thought it was a just fun stereotype of a 40s era gumshoe.  What was Danno's accent supposed to be?

he was mimicing edward g robinson who played gansters in the movies many ,many years ago  or maybe james cagney  another who played gangsters

Edited November 20, 2018 by sue450

[jhlipton]

I loved the truck that they came to the Whitmore Estate in.  That was a beaut!

On 11/10/2018 at 12:55 AM, Roselle said:

I lost count of the numbers killed but they were all in a dream so I guess realism matters even less than usual. 

On 11/13/2018 at 5:48 PM, GustheCat said:

Hey, it's a dream, it doesn't always have to make sense.

Shooting the guards at the Whitmore Estate, who didn't know they were [ex-]cops and could reasonably thought that the trio was there for nefarious purposes, was flat-out murder.  But it's a 5-0 dream which makes doubly OK.

In the "What's an anachronism, Daddy?", there's no way Hawaii would have had a female doctor, or a black cop supervising white ones in the '40s.  It was cute that Steve's brain didn't even think that.

[Raja]

7 hours ago, jhlipton said:

 

In the "What's an anachronism, Daddy?", there's no way Hawaii would have had a female doctor, or a black cop supervising white ones in the '40s.  It was cute that Steve's brain didn't even think that.

It is a pet peeve of mine the (classic term) white washing of American history.  Only science fiction with a time travel theme like Quantum Leap or more recently Timeless seems to avoid it. But again then Steve was raised in 80s Hawaii and then went on to serve in a military that was among the most racially integrated institutions in America. Meaning he would have limited personal experience with Jim Crow, white flight, etc and only a Lou Grover very special episode, probably from his Chicago days would bring the topic up.

We just had a movie released Overlord going to WWII to bring in the Nazis yet ignored American segregation as it both (classic term) white washed American history and (modern usage) white washed the lead soldiers squad taking jobs away from black actors

[Kel Varnsen]

On 12/2/2018 at 1:20 AM, jhlipton said:

there's no way Hawaii would have had a female doctor, or a black cop supervising white ones in the '40s.  It was cute that Steve's brain didn't even think that.

To be fair though there is also probably no way that towing records from the 1930's are available for someone like Steve to search on a computer, and that didn't even happen in a dream. That would mean that someone at some point scanned those receipts and then entered the important data into a database to make it searchable. This show has always been ridiculous, the 40's version of Lou being an HPD captain in a dream sequence is hardly anywhere close to a top offender.

[jhlipton]

14 hours ago, Kel Varnsen said:

the 40's version of Lou being an HPD captain in a dream sequence is hardly anywhere close to a top offender.

Truth.