Synopsis for 208 and More Lori Press

[kapuahi]

Before we go anywhere peoples, spoilers abound enter at your own risk.


First of all FIVE-0 INVESTIGATES WHEN A CUSTOMS AGENT IS FOUND DEAD INSIDE A PLANE THAT CRASHES INTO THE CLEAR BLUE WATERS OFF THE ISLAND, ON “HAWAII FIVE-0,” MONDAY, NOV. 7

Greg Grunberg (“Heroes”) Reunites with Masi Oka When He Guest Stars as Jeff Morrison, a Customs Supervisory Agent

“Lapa’au”* – FIVE-0’s investigation into the suspicious plane crash and death of a customs agent takes an unexpected turn when it is revealed that the victim was dead before takeoff. Meanwhile, Danny finds himself the proud caretaker of an orphaned dog, on HAWAII FIVE-0, Monday, Nov. 7 (10:00-11:00 PM, ET/PT) on the CBS Television Network. Greg Grunberg (“Heroes”) reunites with Masi Oka when he guest stars as Jeff Morrison, a customs supervisory agent.

* “Lapa’au” is Hawaiian for “Healing”

SERIES REGULARS:
Alex O’Loughlin ………………. Steve McGarrett
Scott Caan ………….. Danny “Danno” Williams
Daniel Dae Kim ………………….. Chin Ho Kelly
Grace Park ……………………… Kono Kalakaua
Masi Oka …………………….. Dr. Max Bergman
Lauren German ……………. Officer Lori Weston

RECURRING CAST:
Taylor Wily ………………………….. Kamekona

GUEST CAST:
Brian Yang ……………………….. Charlie Fong
Makua Rothman ………………………… Robey
Brian Keaulana ……………………….. Jet Skier
Greg Grunberg ………………….. Jeff Morrison
Jon Gries ……………………………. Liam Miller
Scott Ok ………………………. Brody Campbell
Ronnie Gene Blevins …………….. Jason Akita
Elizabeth O’Brien ………………………. Ms. Lee

WRITTEN BY:
Joe Halpin

DIRECTED BY:
Steve Boyum

And finally, it's hard to read from this if the Barbie dream house will be closed up and we'll be seeing the Beach Cruiser drive off into the sunset. Fingers crossed people.

Comments

[portraitofafool.livejournal.com]

Lenkov is an ass; I've actually thought that since S1 due to the way he makes offhand remarks about things (it's nothing specific, but his tendency to handwave and basically say, "screw you" irks me) and how he really does seem unwilling to take fan/viewer opinion into account to the detriment of his own show even is just bad business all around. All of that has... yeah... led to me hearing his name and thinking, "Ass." automatically nowadays.

That said, threatening the man with bodily harm is going too far and I couldn't blame him for having people banned--or at least sternly warned/scolded for that kind of behavior. The internet is full of large-scale crazies and it's better safe than sorry 'cause it's a jungle out here in the big, wide open plains of the WWW.

You made me LOL with the remark about the Barbie Dream House and the Beach Cruiser though. One can dream, trufax. One can also dream that Lenkov will take popular opinion into account and do something about her instead of handwaving people away with that, too, which he seems to've done a fine job of so far. Note: Plugging your ears up and yelling LALALALALA at the top of your lungs will not make the problem go away, Lenkov. Eesh. Dude needs a cluepon.

/ramble

[azziria.livejournal.com]

You know my opinion of Lenkov, and this doesn't improve my viewpoint any. He misquoted this, pulling a line from a longer piece, and although the writer was very upset and over-reacting, in context this referred to the threat of the show being cancelled and was not a direct threat to harm anyone. Lenkov pulled it out and tweeted it to distract attention from the criticism he's getting about Lori and the way the show is being written right now, IMHO. He's a big boy and he's been in this game too long to take an article like that to heart; he's playing media head games, trying to make people feel sorry for him to distract from the mess he's making of the show.

[lunachickk.livejournal.com]

Yes, this!

[portraitofafool.livejournal.com]

See, I didn't know he'd done that. So with that in mind (and now his backpedaling) let me just reiterate: Ass.

[kapuahi.livejournal.com]

I've heard that about Lenkov, but up to now I've not seen it.

See in my head (which sadly I am currently considering the perfect Five-0 World) there's a reason why she's not in the opening credits. She might be a 'team' member but she's always had a limited life span. And whether Lenkov likes it or not the huge swell against the character on all social media outlets has to be worrying the crap out of the homophobic asses that run the network. So twelve episodes and she pcks the Beach Cruiser with anatomically correct Ken and drives off into the sunset (or my preference onto a flaming tanker filled with C4).

What? A girl can dream can't she.

[azziria.livejournal.com]

The two things that do give me hope are the fact that she's not been in the opening credits right from the start (unlike Masi Oka) and that she was only initially contracted for 12 episodes. This says to me that there was always an element of 'watch and see' with the character.

CBS are idiots if they keep her. Ratings are good so far, because lots of people don't care, but there are also a lot of people still hanging in there and hoping it will improve. And if it becomes clear to those people that nothing is going to change, then those people will start to switch off.

[portraitofafool.livejournal.com]

If there's any kind of homophobia going on--and it wouldn't surprise me if there was--then I do have to say I don't think it's the big wigs at CBS saying, "Cut the gay." They let shows like The Good Wife go with openly gay characters, including m/m kissing and a frank discussion of sex. (I actually SQUEED when that happened, too, because to see something like that on network television was like a breath of fresh air for me.) There's also an episode of NCIS from last season that deals with a gay teen wanting to join the military--and I also loved that episode a LOT. *smishes Gibbs forever* Aaaand I am pretty sure that Mr. Finch on Person of Interest is also gay. An article I read in TV Guide in line at the grocery just made me, "Hmm..." about that even more.

If there is any kind of homophobic backlash going on with H50 then it's Lenkov and/or that particular set of PTB saying, "No." to the bromance and they have cut waaaay back on that angle this season. Even in scenes with Steve and Danny together they're so much more subdued seeming to me that I am left feeling pretty o_O about it. But it wouldn't surprise me and thinking that may be the case bugs me quite a lot. And just makes me SAD because the way things are now--in a lot of ways, finally--that some asshole would come along and take full advantage of the "one step forward, two steps back" saying. *sigh*

she packs the Beach Cruiser with anatomically correct Ken and drives off into the sunset (or my preference onto a flaming tanker filled with C4)

You made me snort and choke on my noodles when I read that. Damn you! :P (I love all the Barbie snark; I'm that kid that ripped my Barbies' heads off. *koff*)

[lunachickk.livejournal.com]

The Danny and the dog thing makes me start drawing airhearts all over the place. ♥ I'm so excited about that. I hope he gets to keep it!

As for PL's tweet yesterday, I think he was trying to start trouble or else he was queening out over something. I could see it was clearly part of a quote that referred to ratings/viewership and not a direct threat to him and I didn't even read the entire thing it came from. It didn't sound like it was written by a batshit crazy fan and I've seen plenty of tweets from them that he could have chosen.
Yes, he opens himself up to stuff like that when he comes on social sites like Twitter for fan reactions (and we love that he does come to Twitter!) but he should also be aware that not everyone is going to agree with him or like his choices/direction for the show at times and they have a right to their opinion.

I will not defend the crazies that make stupid threats on Twitter but Twitter is an open forum and you can block people if you don't like what they are saying. I do disagree with some of the fans that are just kissing PL's ass. He's a big boy. Let him hear what fans think about the way Season 2 is going and their thoughts on Lori.

I have made plenty of tweets about my opinion of the character of Lori. I will not however send personal tweets to the actress Lauren German attacking her or even her acting ability. I'm perfectly willing to believe she was sadly miscast and being given poor direction.

Oy, fandom, you give me a headache sometimes.

[azziria.livejournal.com]

"I'm perfectly willing to believe she was sadly miscast and being given poor direction."

Yes, so am I. I don't know the woman, and I've not seen her act in anything else so I have nothing to base my views on other than her performance in H5-0. It may well be that with a different director and a better script she would turn in a different performance. However, in my opinion she is miscast in this role, and the character is badly written and superfluous to requirement, and that's what I'm focussing on. I'll criticise this role and this performance, not the individual herself as a person. I don't want a nasty witch hunt, I just want Lori gone from the show.

[lunachickk.livejournal.com]

Exactly. I heard she was in Hostel II but I haven't seen that movie. I haven't seen her in anything else either.

As I said somewhere else, the character is just so unnecessary. You could give all of her lines from the last ep to other characters and no one would notice she was even missing. She literally adds nothing to the show.

[stellarmeadow.livejournal.com]

First of all, I have to squee: this is the ep I was an extra in!!! :)

Okay, that's out of the way...

Lenkov comes across as sort of a split personality, and I don't even pretend to know him enough even to guess if he's actually that way or if it's because of the short nature of Tweets and the lack of context, inflection, body language, etc.

On the one hand, he makes flip, sarcastic comments on Twitter, many of which I have to admit I might make similar types of comments myself. I have many times been told I was rude, insensitive, had my comments taken the wrong way, you name it, because of the way my comments were read in print. I mean, my reaction to the full post referred to, which I hunted down because of the lack of context, was, okay I get the frustration, but it's a TV show...calm down a little before you post things that might be misconstrued. I got the impression he was mostly joking in his tweet, but that's partly because it's he kind of thing I would have jokingly said. IDK if he's the same or not.

OTOH, he does seem to engage with fans in dialogue, and his responses to the issues people had to the S1 finale were thoughtful and not at all condescending or "well it's my show" or "I'm the writer, fuck you" which has been the response from some writers in the past. I met him at SotB, briefly, and I got to watch him interact with the fans, and he and Kurtzman both spent more time going down the fan lines and talking with people than anyone else. And when Lenkov heard there were three fans on the beach at 3 am the day of SotB, reserving spots for a group of us for SotB, he literally sent them breakfast. He didn't publicize it or anything, he just sent them breakfast.

So that doesn't really mesh with the asshole persona he sometimes projects at all. And then there's the fact that we really don't know who made the Lori decison - Lenkov or the network. Was it his bad decision? Or was it the network's, and the only way he can reverse it is to make her so unbearable that fan response will get rid of her and give him more barganing power with the network in the future?

This all makes me very confused and now my brain hurts.

[azziria.livejournal.com]

Hmm, that is confusing, but also useful to hear as a balance to the negative stuff. You have no idea how much I would love to be proved wrong about him, and this whole Lori mess be the fault of the network and not him. I'm still struggling with the 'we're not writing her as a love interest' thing, though, when my eyes and ears seem to be telling me something very different when I watch the show. Or maybe shooting for UST doesn't count as 'love interest' because nothing physical actually happens?

I want to be behind him 100%, I want to be able to do as he asks, which is to not anticipate and just sit back and enjoy the show. But you know how much I'm struggling to do that at the moment because of the way things are.

But who knows? Maybe the reason he's saying that is because he knows something we don't, which is the ultimate fate of the Loribot (if it was the network who forced her on him and us). Well, I can hope, can't I?

[stellarmeadow.livejournal.com]

I'm right there with you in terms of struggling to trust him. It's partly why I went through that whole long response--I'm trying to reason through it all and calm my own worries about the show and the whole dichotomy. Because I can't help but instinctively like the guy. It's my gut reaction to him. And the guy who steered S1 and wrote the finale/S2 premiere (with the exception of Rachel which was a bad call based partly on what was apparently going on in his head that he didn't transmit to the screen) is a damn good plot writer and storyteller and writes some mighty fine dialogue. And all the commentary and special features on the S1 DVDs support how I felt he saw the show and the characters.

And then we get Loribot and the bizarre mishmash that has been S2, which seems to largely go against most of that last paragraph and everything I thought I knew. Did he get big headed and defensive after the huge backlash? Possibly. Or is he hindered in what he can say and do because of network pressure? No way to know, so until I find out differently, I'm clinging to my hope that it's the latter.

I've had to do things in my job in the past that went against my own personal feelings of right and wrong in terms of supporting legislation or decisions that I couldn't control but had to support and work for nonetheless, and it's nauseating, but you do it to keep your job. If you really can't stand it, you quit if you can't fix it. But sometimes you just have to put on the public face and support things you can't control and don't like because the boss says so.

I guess my point is that if that's his situation, I sympathize. *g*

[azziria.livejournal.com]

And here's the latest tweet from Lenkov:

PLenkov Peter Lenkov
@catscrazyx3 @spoilertv all good. She's passionate. You gotta respect that. Carry on with your critiques.

He's a master of the backpedal, isn't he??

[stellarmeadow.livejournal.com]

You don't survive to get to his level in TV without being a bit of an expert in spin and backpedalling.. *g*