Tuesday, February 3, 2015

Today You Get Both Castle & Hawaii Five-O Recap & Thoughts!

My two favorite shows were pretty awesome this week and since I haven't been all that impressed with this season of Hawaii Five-O (and haven't recapped it for months) I was excited to have an episode that I liked! Woot! So to celebrate, I thought I'd share my thoughts with you.

Hawaii Five-O


Joe White is back.  Which means nothing good for Steve.  In fact, this is what I wish Steve would do every time Joe opens his mouth:



The episode starts with Joe in a plane, flying toward Hawaii. They have a sick guy in the back with a quarantine tent around him. He doesn't look good.  They unload everyone off the plane while Joe greets Steve.  It's all cordial, they catch up on Joe doing private security and how the sick guy has a new strain of bird flu.  They get in the car and it's still just, how's Mary, how's the team, when Joe finally says hey, spit out what's on your mind. Steve asks about Wo Fat and his mom and when Joe finally gives him the answer he needed months ago, Steve tells him Wo Fat already told him. Right before Steve killed him. Before they can go too much further, though, a wrecking ball starts wrecking through their entourage. It was actually pretty awesome to see the wrecking ball mowing over the cars. They would have had to time that pretty much down to the second because how lame would that be to have the wrecking ball miss every car. I can see it all now, the wrecking ball guy is all scratching his head, I don't know what happened boss. But I digress.

It hits two cars like a pinball machine hits it's mark.  Steve's vehicle is overturned and both him and Joe are pinned in when the bad guy team starts shooting. Joe is miffed the attackers take the bird flu infected guy, but Steve at least gets a few shots off and kills one of the bad guys. Chin starts tracking the van, but by the time Steve finds it, (on a motorcycle, it looked awesome by the way) they've switched vehicles and bird flu guy is gone. And the team is thinking since it was such a coordinated attack they're terrorists who will probably weaponize the virus that guy's got. Dun, dun, dun.  (Cute scene of Danny coming to the hospital all worried about Steve. Love their friendship!)

There's not very many people capable of doing such a thing on the island or have the equipment, so they start looking at recent purchases and people. We get a scene of the bad guy with the sick guy and then with a beekeeper guy. Did you guys get that? Well, none of that can be good.  Later on there's this grisly scene where the bad guy tests out the infected bees on an unsuspecting guy by locking him in the room with the bees who come through the vents and sting him while also infecting him.  He dies a horrible death. *shiver*

The team also finds a virologist who hasn't been to work in three days and bought a bunch of equipment that you would need to weaponize a virus. They go to his house for a shootout, and find his wife taped up in a closet.  Bad news: the bad guys took the virologist.  Some of the bad guy's team have been killed in the initial shootout and this one and so they each get identified one by one. That's when the common link becomes clear---a CIA handler who profited off the wars and who was on a think tank for different ways to deliver biological weapons. That's our head bad guy. The team figures out the bee angle from the charred burlap found in one of the dead bad guy team's lungs (they use that in the bee smoker I guess) and then they figure out which barn the bad guys are in and storm it. The whole time the team was creeping up on it I was all, can't they see an entire team with guns coming toward them? Our guys didn't seem to be doing a good job of hiding, but whatever.

Another shootout ensues and one bad guy escapes in a van with some of the infected bees.  Joe White grabs on and struggles for control of the van in a long 'fight for the steering wheel' scene.  Once Joe gets control, the bees are coming out of their containers so he drives the van into the water.  Steve was worried, but Joe is fine. Headed for solitary for three weeks until they see if he got infected with anything. Steve comes to visit and they talk about his mom and Joe says he'll give him answers (yeah right).  I have no idea why Steve would even ask this guy about his mother again. They've had this same convo pretty much every time Joe shows up. Haven't heard from your mother. She's probably dead or on the run. I'll let you know if I hear anything else. But then he lies to Steve again. Lather. Rinse. Repeat. This time, though, Steve is spying on Joe. Let's hope it does the poor guy some good.

All in all, a good episode.  Great action, a nice twisty plot intermixed with great scenery.  The Hawaii Five-O that I love!

Castle


This week's episode was so creepy and twisty! Like Alfred Hitchcock mysteries! And yes, they say that a lot in this episode.

We start out in the woods with Castle wandering around until he gets conked in the head.  Then we revert to 12 hours later. I never understood why shows do that. Why not start with the exciting stuff and keep going? That old bait and switch move.  But I will forgive Castle because the writing has been stellar this season.

Back to the loft where Kate tells Rick that Gates is on a vacation and she can work from home with him today! Yay! But he gets a call from a client and heads to his office. It's his old classmate who wants Rick to look into whether her husband is cheating on her or not. Rick says no, but when she cries and begs him to help her, he says he will. He's such a softie!  He easily gets the evidence of the cheating and goes to give the wife the pictures when he hears a scream in the house.  Running around the back he sees her bloody body being dragged through her house. By the time he gets back to the front, her body has been loaded in a car and they're driving off. Rick follows and that's when he gets conked in the head. After five years or so with the police, you would think he would know better than to follow a killer unarmed with no backup into a wooded place. But whatevs.  He comes to and starts walking until his phone gets service again.  Next thing we know he's giving a statement to the detective with jurisdiction over the case, (not Beckett!) but she doesn't seem to really believe him.  They go to the house to confront the cheating husband, and he lets them poke around the place for a bit until he realizes they think he killed his wife, then he orders them out.

Castle is feeling horribly responsible and Kate promises him she'll look into it.  Castle however, goes to stalk the cheating husband and gets caught. That guy is creepy all on his own. He tells Castle he'll never prove anything, which sort of makes him sound guilty. But the harassment charge doesn't do anything good for the credibility of Castle, the only witness.  He has a hard time separating himself from this case and understandably so.

Kate interviews the mistress and the guys are looking into financials while Castle has been spying on the husband. It's fun to see them sort of working together again. (The PI angle has been a breath of fresh air for the team, though, I must say.) Everybody on the suspect list seems to have an alibi, but they do find out the husband had a first wife who died under mysterious circumstances. That can't be good.

There is a cute little B storyline about Ryan setting up a profile for Espo on a dating website.  Espo's reaction was hilarious.  I really want him to see that subway cop again, though.  That could be interesting since there was a spark there before and they worked well together. I guess we'll see.

Castle starts to believe that maybe Eva isn't dead, but that she put together this whole thing to make her husband look guilty and lose everything, but then they find Eva's body. Sad. Blunt force trauma. Lainey finds Cole's DNA under Eva's fingernails so the team goes to arrest him, but he's dead.  Looks like a suicide. (And they did a close-up on the face. I hate that. *shiver*)  But Castle thinks that's too easy and stays up all night to put together this elaborate timeline.  (Before he leaves, though, he asks a mostly sleeping Kate if she's still awake because something is bothering him and she's all, yeah, something's bothering me, too, with that sardonic look on her face. So funny.) Anyway, Castle proves circumstantially that Cole couldn't have killed his wife. But then who did?

They investigate a little further on the men the husband worked with and find out Cole was having an affair with the wife of one of his partners.  That guy admits to staging the murder with Eva, but that once he put her up in a company apartment, he doesn't know what happened after that. And then the evidence comes up that the corporate attorney was the first dead wife's sorority sister from years ago and was avenging her death. I didn't see that one coming! Really great ending.

Loved the creepiness and the twisty plot points to this one. I didn't think I'd like the PI angle going on very long, but it's really been done well and the team still feels together but different. Provides a great way to have Caskett working together, but in a different capacity. So far so great!


Next week the 3XK killer returns. You know that's going to be good. Did you watch?

3 comments:

Jon Spell said...

We had both figured out / guessed that the wife had staged her own murder but were then really shocked when she ended up really dead. Very twisty at the end.

I liked the moment when Esposito says something to Kate along the lines of "Do you believe him?" And she gives a sort of non-committal response about how he's been right enough times that they should pursue it.

Personally, I'm not a fan of the continuing PI business. I thought it was fun for one episode, especially the noir aspects, but now it feels tacked on.

Can you imagine, having written several novels about a hostage rescue team, actually becoming one professionally? I don't know how they get him back into the precinct, but I wish they would. =)

Julie Coulter Bellon said...

I was surprised when Esposito said that. Mr. Doubtful Danny. The online dating thing was funny. I really want him to try to see that subway cop again!

I didn't think I'd like the PI business, and last week I thought maybe it had run its course, but this week's was good. It does provide a fresh angle to cases that I like.

With all the research I've done I actually think Hostage Negotiation might be awesome. But you're right, it might be better to just write about it and not really do it. :) (And it sort of sounds like Castle is coming to that conclusion actually.)

Debra Erfert said...

I'm so glad you write the synopsis (what's a plural?) because I can't stay awake long enough to watch them. It wouldn't be them, anyway. I don't watch H5O. :(