Hawaii Five-0 season 8 episode 13 review: Chi McBride’s masterful, painful showcase
This is where we introduce the character of Brad. While out with his son on his day off, Grover had a chance to meet him for the first time. Brad was in many ways a broken man, struggling after the death of his wife. It was the accusation that he murdered her that drove him over the edge and made him want to take his own life. Grover was there on the scene before anyone, and as a result of that was responsible for helping to talk him down.
It was through these conversations with Brad where we learned more about his own history with suicide, including how he almost ended up taking his own life in a sea of guilt and suffering. Were it not for his son being home when he didn’t expect for him to be, he probably would have pulled the trigger. That would’ve been it.
McBride brought you into Grover’s head and and gave us a performance that was powerful, filled with sorrow, and gave us a very raw look at Grover in a way that we have never seen him before. Beyond just giving you an excellent performance, this story also filled in some necessary cracks — after all, over the course of the hour we had a chance to properly learn why Grover first moved to Hawaii. This was an origin story for him joining the Five-0 Task Force in the end. He had to get away from the ghosts of his past — and in many ways, the ghost of himself.
As for other highlights of the episode
There weren’t many given that so much was concentrated on Grover. It was nice to see Steve and Tani Rey’s friendship continue to evolve, just as it was also nice to have a Scott Caan sighting! He wasn’t in the episode the week prior, so it was nice to have him back around the gang for a little bit of screen time here.
Related – Check out what Peter Lenkov had to say about this Hawaii Five-0 episode via our recent interview
CarterMatt Final Verdict
The Five-0 team managed to determine that Brad was telling the truth about not killing his wife, but that doesn’t mean that the pain goes away. As devastating as his story is, and as heart-wrenching as Grover’s history was to watch, there is still something hopeful coming out of this episode. There is always a way to get through the pain, and we give all the credit in the world to the Hawaii Five-0 writers for presenting that in the midst of such dark times.
This may not be an episode that many Hawaii Five-0 viewers watch more than once, just because it was so sad and it threw you right into the middle of Grover’s pain. Yet, it is still one of the finest performances of McBride’s career and one that we’ll remember years down the road.
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