Why Hawaii Five-0 doesn’t always have Scott Caan — burning question answered

There are a number of Hawaii Five-0 questions that we tend to get every season, but this one about Scott Caan is at the top of the list. Why don’t we see him in every episode? There will be stretches where Danny is around in the bulk of a story, and then there will be others where he doesn’t turn up at all. It happened on multiple occasions during season 7, and it certainly can prove jarring for longtime show fans who anticipate getting to see the partnership/bickerfest that tends to go on between him and Steve McGarrett.

Wondering where Caan is every episode is a pretty simple question, and as it turns out, it has a fairly simple answer. As executive producer Peter M. Lenkov explained on social media (see the tweet at the bottom of the post), Caan travels back and forth from Hawaii to Los Angeles during the season to spend time with his family. It’s likely something that is sorted out before the season, that way everyone has the schedule and is fully prepared for when he’ll be there and when he’s not. Things may come up as they often do in life, but this could serve as a blueprint. This does also further illustrate the challenges for some cast members as they balance shooting in a place that is far away from home.

If Caan is gone for multiple season 8 episodes, it could pose some further challenges for Hawaii Five-0 as it turns to become accustomed to its new world order without Daniel Dae Kim and Grace Park. When Caan was absent, the show was able to balance it out by delivering a big episode for Chin or Kono. They had a cast of such seasoned performers that they were able to handle the fact that the ohana was not always there at the same time. They do still have many seasoned performers in the new season, but the problem is that two of them are newcomers to viewers and setting episodes around them, at least for now, is a gamble. You have to bring along new cast members slowly sometimes, since you do run that risk here and there of having people reject them for little reason other than that it’s something that they don’t know and television viewers, especially with crime procedurals don’t like change. Overexposure in the early going can prove dangerous.

We’ve said this many times before, but it’s worth repeating — the Hawaii Five-0 writers were, along with the actors, responsible in part for why we loved Kono and Chin in the first place. While these new characters, and even the return of Ian Anthony Dale as Adam, aren’t going to be the same as what we had, they could still be entertaining in their own right. They are worth a chance, so we’ll be watching intently on CBS this fall hoping to have a rather good time — while the bad guys are being dealt with simultaneously.

Did you miss our ratings discussion?

Recently, we posted a piece over at the link here detailing what we think some of the expectations should be for the new season, with everything that is happening behind the scenes in mind of course. Hopefully, this is some worthy weekend reading. (Photo: CBS.)