Thank you, thank you, thank you for all your wonderful comments, tweets and emails! Your support means the world to me. It’s lovely to be back and to catch up on what’s been happening the past two weeks!

Hawaii Five-0 Updates

• Hawaii Five-0 has been airing in Canada on Global TV (in English) since the show premiered in the US in September 2010. Séries+, a specialty channel for the French-Canadian market, began broadcasting the show on January 6, 2012. To help launch Five-0, Séries+ created a print ad campaign that various websites have been posting about, including Adlag.com. In addition to the ads, the broadcaster also made use of a novelty Five-0 police car that drove around downtown Montreal on the premiere date, and actors handed out postcards and Hawaiian dolls to passersby. The show airs on Fridays and each episode is repeated on Saturday, Sunday and Wednesday. Go to Séries+ for more details. You can view the launch promo here – I think you’ll like Steve’s French-Canadian voice!  
• Check out TV Guide’s TV’s Hottest Men and TV’s Hottest Women!
• A video of a night shoot with Alex and Daniel was posted on YouTube – thanks to Rumpeltillskin!
• Peter Lenkov returned to the Mike Buck show to discuss what we can expect for the rest of this TV season on Hawaii Five-0. You can listen to the podcast at Five-0 Undercover!
• Two interesting tweets from @plenkov:
  • In response to @Staceyk1968′s question as to when Steve’s birthday is and when he had last received an actual present, Peter tweeted:
    

    @staceyk1968 March 10… and you can be sure we’ll be addressing his bday soon.

    Steve was born in 1977, so that makes him a year younger than Alex. 

  • @vshizzle asked “Any chance 2.16 will be V-Day themed?”:
    

    @vshizzle it will have a V-Day theme runner

Hawaii Five-0 Articles

• STLToday.com posted a photo of two O’Loughlins with the following article:
  

  Bob O’Loughlin, topper of our town’s Lodging Hospitality Management, was among 2500 Hilton Hotel owners who gathered recently in Oahu, Hawaii. LHM owns several Hiltons in the St. Louis area.The Hilton Hotel Corporation, which sponsors the television series,”Hawaii Five-O,” held a drawing for a few of the attendees to visit the show’s set.

  Bob O’Loughlin was one of the winners, and, while he was on the set, he met Alex O’Loughlin, one of the show’s stars. Are they related? Not sure but they’re guessing there could be a family connection since they both have ancestors from Ireland.

• TV Guide shares some Max Bergman scoop:
  

  Got any intel on Hawaii Five-0? — Kerry
  ADAM: What’s in a name? Masi Oka’s medical examiner Max Bergman is about to find out. “You’re going to find out why he was orphaned,” executive producer Peter Lenkov teases. “You would never think Masi would be named Max Bergman. So, you’re going to find out why and that whole backstory is a very emotional journey.”

• One of McKinley High School’s teachers, Tony Nickelsen, shares his experiences as an extra on multiple episodes of Five-0 with the school’s newspaper The Pinion:
  

  Nickelsen says that being an extra does have its fun, but it also has its downfalls. As an extra, you have to do a lot of waiting around while standing. (There is a lot of waiting around because shooting scenes take a lot of trials, at different angles. On the actual show, you only get to see one or two angles of a scene.) The main actors and actresses have their tents and seats, while extras don’t. Extras are not allowed to talk to the actors or actresses either. Extras are at the “bottom of the totem pole”. But aside from all that, Nickelsen says the “food is really good” and you get to see yourself on TV and say, “There I am! There’s my head!”

  Having little experience, Nickelsen tried out for being an extra, when Hawaii 5-O opened a cast for actors in 2010. He got the opportunity the following year and made his first appearance on Hawaii 5-O in January 2011.

• Wendie Burbridge writes about two local nice guys who play convincing villains on the show on her entertaining Five-0 Redux blog. One of them is Mark Dacascos, but the spotlight is focused on the lesser-known Jomar Miranda, who appeared in the Season 2 opener as one of Wo Fat’s bodyguards:
  

  Working with Alex O’Loughlin and Scott Caan on his first scene was a little nerve wracking, Miranda said, but everyone made him feel comfortable. He shot a funeral scene and boat scenes after his interrogation, and by then he felt more comfortable about his character and what he needed to do when he worked with Daniel Dae Kim. Miranda said the crew was “like a family” and that O’Loughlin and Caan are definitely “BFF’s.” He said he worked more with Dacascos and Inoue and both were very friendly and great to work with.

• The product endorsement in episode 2.14 certainly set tongues wagging! Love it or hate it, it got the job done and I’m sure Subway have been rubbing their hands with glee. Personally, I enjoyed it – it was funny and cleverly written and certainly less annoying than the Bing plugs. The topic even made TV Guide’s Ask Matt, who quotes none other than Pinkie! Attagirl, Pinks!
  

  Question: I just finished watching the latest episode of Hawaii Five-0 and was stunned to see such blatant product advertisement in the show. As viewers, we’ve gotten used to seeing flashes of logos here and there (as they do for Hawaiian Airlines or Hilton Hawaiian Village), but in this episode, they basically did a Subway sandwich endorsement including giving a rundown of menu items (all they left out was a Jared cameo)! Is this the future of network television? Yikes if it is! If the network execs need to find ways around people fast-forwarding through commercials, is there no alternative? It was an embarrassment and totally off-putting to viewers. — Rachel

  Matt Roush: If you read my Week in Review column late last week, you’ll know I agree with this wholeheartedly. This may well be the wave of the future, but there are ways to insert these plugs more adeptly. This was without question one of the worst I’ve ever seen, and that includes all the times the Buy More folks chomped down on Subways on Chuck — but in that case, the Subway sponsorship helped keep the lights on, whereas CBS and Hawaii you’d think don’t really need to do something this blatant.

  But to be fair, let me share an excerpt from one of the comments generated by my column, from someone going by “Pinkiepie230″: “That Subway product placement has gotten more mileague than any other commercial on TV this week. Hate it or love it, it was very effective because everyone’s been talking about it since it aired on Monday. Personally, I didn’t think it was that awful. The more it’s discussed, the more it appeals to networks to add more of these types of endorsements to their scripted shows. Be prepared. Don’t like it? Shut up about it and pretend like you didn’t notice it. Everyone I know who saw the Subway debacle all mentioned they got hungry and wished they had one too. You’re looking at the future.”

Gallery Updates

• BTS pics of episode 2.15 from E-PR/CBS
• Various images posted by Peter Lenkov on Twitter
• Pics posted by director Larry Teng
• More pics from Masi Oka and one with him shared by Malika Dudley
• A lovely photo of Alex with fan Jessica Ann that was posted on Tumblr.
• Stills from episode 2.16
• Article scans added to the 2008, 2009 and 2012 album – look for the items marked “new”!
• More 2010 scans from Honolulu added: May 18 | July 16 | September 5 | September 14 | October 10
• The Phillies shared a great pic of Shane Victorino with Daniel Dae Kim on Twitter. Shane will be appearing in episode 2.17.

Enjoy Monday’s episode and have a great week!