Friends, Family & Guests: Russell Wong [ Unknown ], Danny Kamekona [ Unknown ], Kelly Hu [ Unknown ], Derek Lowe [ Unknown ]

 Cyndi Glass: Well done episode, and finally some more air time and a plot for Ioki. It's easy to overlook Ioki, with all the emphasis that the show places on Hanson and Penhall, but when Dustin Nguyen was given material such as this to work with, he rose to the occasion. In some nicely directed scenes (his tidy apartment, and what we know of his personality from the previous episodes where he temporarily let Penhall live with him, tell us more about Ioki than his dialogue). We are shown how his life is so isolated and lonely that he feels no connection, and that makes us understand how he can be drawn into the Vietnamese street gang almost for real. It’s very similar to the psychological background for Joey in #87 "Brothers." Ioki has cut himself off from his ethnic culture, and once he gets a taste of it, he yearns for more. We see Ioki’s need to help his grandmother back in Vietnam, and his disgust at himself for giving into that need and possibly compromising his case to do so.

Oh and yes, boys and girls, this is the one where Penhall accidentally shoots Hanson in the butt. You can rest easy now. What a comedic talent DeLuise and Depp are when they work together.

John DeCarli: Maybe the best Ioki episode they made. I like how they were really able to build on #24 "Christmas in Saigon" and show Ioki’s isolation in his adopted country. The Hanson/Penhall comedy subplot comes off well too. I like how the subplot actually came out of the case - it wasn’t just dropped in to fill time. Because the Hanson/Penhall bond is much stronger than the one between Jackie and Hanson, the comedy scenes here work much better. The FX version edits about 30 seconds from the hospital scene, but #70 "Back From The Future" contains the complete scene and the complete Sal Banducci dialogue.

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