User Reviews

No ridiculous plots involving everyone suddenly tearing around the world, no silly bickering, just a fairly good story well told. The sub plot involving parents trying to foist their belief in whatever sky-fairy they picked on their children was cliched and has been done better elsewhere but still, an improvement on previous episodes

This episode was all about inclusion. From the parents who cannot accept their lesbian daughter and want to send her out of state to undergo conversion therapy to the former prisoner who is planning to blow up a van while working with a group that plans similar attacks in other cities because they are threatened that American is no longer a white dominant country to the character Grover talking about being beat up as a teen in Illinois in 1988 for being black. As a 60 year old straight and married white man from Indiana I think this show was very good.

Spoilers ahead: This episode was absolutely horrible, filled with kind of preachy stereotypes and prejudice H5O usually avoids but is so very common on TV. The episode starts with a sub-plot of a troubled teen trying to escape her parents. The parents are religious and disagree with her life style so naturally they are portrayed as being ignorant hate filled bigots. This sub-plot has almost nothing to do with the rest of the story and seems put there by the writers primarily to virtue signal. The main story, the investigating of a plot by white supremacists (WS) to attempt a Timothy McVeigh style bombing, is better written. However, as with the sub-plot is so pretentious to be virtually unwatchable. There is a scene near the end were McGarrett and Grover beat the WS leader while the guards search his room for a burner phone. As is common with H5O the message of when it's ok to beat/torture suspects seems completely arbitrary. Just a season or two ago an entire episode was dedicated to the message that torturing a jihadist is wrong. McGarrett basically gets the intel he needs by hugging the terrorist and becoming his friend (after repeated failed torture attempts by other agents). It appears that beating suspects is only acceptable in H5O when they are Americans (even ones not convicted of any crime), then you can beat them all you want. Not that the WS didn't have it coming, he certainly did, as 5O had precious few minutes to locate the bombers but the message inconsistency is glaring. On a side note this story makes the common but inaccurate implication that Timothy McVeigh was a religious extremist. While he certainly was an extremist, McVeigh is quoted as saying "science is my religion". He was of course still a horrible person but please get your history strait!

I'll admit, the conversion therapy story at the beginning of the episode bothered me a little bit but I didn't take it as the show attacking Christians. I thought the angle of how they discovered the terrorist was interesting too because of how they linked it back to the guy in prison but the way the ending played out seemed like it all wrapped up too quick. they supposedly discovered 5 other simultaneous terrorist plots around the country? Whatever happened to those? Also any episode without Danny is a lesser quality one IMO.