Worth Watching: ‘Hawaii Five-0’ Avenges a Death, Jackée Meets ‘Cool Kids,’ ’20/20′ Revisits the Bobbits

Matt Roush January 4, 2019, 7:00 am

A selective critical checklist of notable Friday TV:

Hawaii Five-0 (9/8c, CBS): Where we left off in December: McGarrett (Alex O’Loughlin) is still grieving the loss of his SEAL mentor Joe White (Terry O’Quinn), and gathers some of his nearest and dearest — including Catherine (Michelle Borth), Harry Langford (Chris Vance), Wade Gutches (David Keith) and Danny (Scott Caan) — to hunt down the killer.

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The Cool Kids (8:30/7:30c, Fox): One of the selling points for this golden-agers sitcom is the opportunity to spotlight longtime TV-comedy favorites in guest roles. Case in point: Jackée Harry (227), who shows up as Lorraine, Hank’s (David Alan Grier) ex-wife, to attend a mutual friend’s funeral. Hank wants to impress his ex, so enlists Margaret (Vicki Lawrence) to be his “hype man” and lie about how well he’s doing. You can imagine how well that will turn out, especially once Charlie (Martin Mull) and Sid (Leslie Jordan) defy Hank’s orders and crash the funeral.

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20/20 (9/8c, ABC): The newsmagazine revisits one of the more lurid stories of the 1990s in “The Bobbitts: Love Hurts,” the first in an eight-week series of two-hour specials looking back at hot topics of the recent past, featuring new interviews with key players. Tabloids went wild in 1993 when 24-year-old Lorena Bobbitt attacked and dismembered her husband, John Wayne Bobbitt, with a kitchen knife. The special includes a new interview with John and replays Lorena’s first TV interview, which she gave to 20/20 back in 1993.

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Inside Friday TV: The 2018 drama Beautiful Boy, starring Steve Carell and Timothee Chalamet as a father and son dealing with the son’s addiction, begins streaming on Amazon Prime Video… Imagine the awkwardness on ABC’s Fresh Off the Boat (8/7c) when Jessica (Constance Wu) and Louis (Randall Park) think they’ve won a weekend getaway at a posh resort and end up at a marriage retreat, where a guru (June Diane Raphael) encourages them to open up about their relationship… NBC’s Blacklist (9/8c) moves into its regular time period with Liz (Megan Boone) and the Task Force racing against the clock to stop a Blacklister’s bombing scheme… VH1 premieres Grown & Sexy (9:30/8:30c), a comedic panel series aimed at thirtysometehings in which comics and celebrity influencers dish on topics of the day.