Hawaii Five-O Recap and Review: Sharks, Strikes, and the SS, Oh My!

We didn't have a Hawaii Five-O last week, so the show felt bad and crammed in two cases, scenery, and pancake filler for our viewing enjoyment this week!

We start out with Lou's strange obsession with food and the team. (Remember a couple of weeks ago he was instructing McG on how to dunk malasadas? Yeah, weird.) This week, he's in some sort of perceived pancake challenge with Chin and is forcing his son, Will, to sit there while he cooks a papaya/pineapple pancake. (Can you see Chin caring about pancakes? Me, neither.) Will is texting while Grover rambles on about the dangers of too much screen time, before Grace comes over. Apparently they have a late schedule at school or something because Will and Grace have forty minutes before school starts! (Most teens I know are lucky to grab a bowl of cereal and a granola bar before they run out the door so they're not late!) Grace sits down and her and Will are texting while Grover continues to go on and on about nothing. (I think Grace must be used to a dad rambling, since her dad does it often.) Why is this important to the case, you ask? (I know I was asking.) Well, both of the kids see a gruesome pic of a dead guy trussed up and hanging upside down on the docks. Grover and Kono go down to investigate and decide that someone just didn't want to kill the guy, they wanted to make a statement. Ya think?

And now for our comic relief. Flippa is on strike with three other workers and Kamekona calls McG and Danny down to fix it. They explain it's not an emergency, they can't cross picket lines to buy shrimp from him, and McG leaves to a second murder. Flippa has a sign that says "KamekoNO" and honestly, I wish the show had said that to themselves before they did this storyline. As much as I love Kamekona, it was just odd and felt forced.

Back to the second murder case. The new ME describes how the dead woman (who really looked dead! Great job on the makeup) was found in the water and had been there a few days. She died of blunt force trauma and no ID, but has an unusual tattoo on her arm that makes Chin think of the Shoah foundation since it's similar to what a Holocaust tattoo looks like. The new ME seems surprised that Chin wants to reach out to them since the victim is only thirty and she points out the victim definitely couldn't have been in the Holocaust. Everyone looked very serious at this pronouncement.

Back to the chatting table where Lou off-handedly says their "prize catch" Sam Harrison hunted exotic animals. (I cringed a bit at "prize catch." It sounded a bit disrespectful to the victim, but whatevs I guess.) They spec that he made enemies with animal rights groups and Danny says those people can be pretty nuts. (Another cringe from me). They talk about how Harrison wanted to bag a great white shark and struck out all over the world so he tried Oahu. Kono mentions that sharks are a family god and if locals found out what Sam wanted to do they would "do the same to him." (Cringe again) They pull up Lily O'Neal, who is big in the conservation world. I guess she shamed Harrison online and then threatened him. (Uh oh. You should never do that in case that person turns up dead. Another life lesson from Hawaii Five-O.)

We get to see Lily swimming with a shark for a while, (some beautiful underwater shots and scenery filler) then getting back in her boat and going to shore. Danny and Kono question her, but she more or less gives them what sounds like a conservationist's mission statement. She smiles after, though, and they believe her. So, if the online conservation shamer didn't kill Sam, who did?

Welp, we're on to the next case, so we'll have to put those pesky suspect questions on hold. Jerry matches the tattoo to a Holocaust survivor named Itzhak Rozen. He died last year and his only living relative is a granddaughter, Leia Rozen. Who happens to be the Jane Doe they pulled from the water. They track her purchases to an old leprosy colony Kalaupapa, which hasn't been under quarantine since the 60s, but it's still hard to get in unless you're a volunteer. Chin and McG head down there by helo, no hiking or riding a mule for them.

And so far, all I can think is there's been a lot of talking this episode and no action. I hope it picks up. Soon.

My wishes were not granted and we get more scenery filler. Since the actual cases were a bit bland and I was feeling sleepy, I was glad to see some beautiful Hawaiian scenery. (I really want to go there. Someday. Sigh.) So I ooh and ahh over the scenery until Sheriff Alana meets McG and Chin and tells them she's there to help. She seems so nice! We're still listening to her talk and she tells them the victim came there two weeks ago as a volunteer and she wants to introduce them to Bill Walker, the volunteer coordinator. She talks some more about the history of Kalaupapa, how it's restricted and about a hundred former patients and workers live there. They finally get to Bill who is shocked Leia is dead and he informs McG and Chin she was quiet and hardworking. He takes them to her bungalow and they search her stuff. She looks like she was a fairly neat person overall, no big messes anywhere, but they find a gun in her backpack. Dun, dun, dun.

Eric the annoying tech rides down on a mule and is bouncing around pretty hard and gets laughed at for his complaints. He recoils from Bill's deformed hand when Bill tries to help him with his bag and McG gives him the "really?" look. Eric follows Bill to process the bungalow.

People are still talking. It's like they're just spoonfeeding the viewers this week and putting me to sleep with absolutely no action at all. The M.E. calls down Grover and Kono to show them that Sam had a shark bite, so they go talk to Kamekona about who could have helped Sam look for Great Whites since it's obvious now that he found one. Kamekona tells them they won't help him with the ridiculous strike, so he's not helping them. Apparently Grover gave Flippa the unionizing idea at Chin's birthday party and ruined his business. Kono appeals to him to help the sharks and he caves and gives them names of shark finners who provide restaurants with shark fins for shark fin soup. Ew.

Eric and Bill talk some more and have a bonding moment when Eric shows him how he gets a fingerprint. Bill mentions he's been there since he was eight years old. That's sad, actually. They get a hit on the fingerprint and it's Tony the bar guy! Who sometimes goes by Mikey.

Finally we get some action!! Tony the bar guy runs and we get the best (and only) action scene of the night when McG gives chase. Chin stands there against a fence sort of posing (like he knows he's awesome, but doesn't want to get in the way of a good McG chase scene) until McG has the guy on the ground, but then they both question him. He says he didn't kill Leia, but sold her a gun. She told him she wanted to make things right. McG and Chin walk a few feet away and discuss the case like Tony can't hear them. They spec that maybe Leia was going to settle a score! Jerry gives them her travel schedule and it was a Nazi rat line! Nazi sympathizers in a lot of countries gave them ID and helped them escape after the war and it looks like Leia was tracking one. They show a vid of her grandfather and it's a horrific account of what happened to him when a Nazi guard forced him to choose who would get shot, his sister or his brother. Heartbreaking and sobering. McG figures out the Nazi guard is who Leia was tracking, but points out the guy would be 91 years old now and probably not the murderer.

Back to the shark fin case. Kono and Danny have a guy in the blue room of doom and he's got some attitude. He runs dolphin excursions, but really kills sharks for their fins. He says if people would stop eating shark fin soup, he would stop killing them. Let's all do that shall we? Shark fin soup sounds terrible anyway. The guy doesn't seem to care about anything they say until Danny mentions they found Sam's blood on his boat. He caves pretty fast after that and says Sam paid him $10,000 to find a shark. They found one and NotSmart Sam got in the water and the shark bit him. He wasn't doing too good, even though they tried to patch up the shark bite with a first aid kit (really?) and wanted to go to the hospital, but apparently the shark finning guy thought it was better to let him die, and gut him to make it look like an activist did it. But he says, no one's crying for Sam and Kono says in an odd voice that no one will cry for him, either. (Did they not have family that would cry for them? What did that comment even mean?)

Well, in the interest of time, our crack team has already found the exact guard that Itzhak was talking about in his video and they age his picture to see what he'd look like now. They send it to the Sheriff Alana who doesn't recognize it, but Bill does and he says that's Alan Smith, a missionary that used to work there after the war, but moved topside. His daughter, Sheriff Alana can take you to him. (It's always the nice ones. Oh and Alan Smith named his daughter Alana! After himself, obviously) But alas, when they get to his house, it's cleaned out. Sheriff Alana bolted with her Nazi dad. Eric finds a bleached spot on the floor of the house, though, and blood spatter appears with a black light. The crime scene is found! And McG assures Chin no one can hide anymore with social media and 24 hr. news.

Eric says a fond goodbye to Bill and apologizes for being weird around him. They shake hands and part as friends.

Kamekona and Flippa sit down and negotiate. Kamekona offers Flippa his own truck on the North Shore as he's expanding his business.

We get more scenery, but it's not beautiful Hawaii, it's Arizona, where they go to arrest the Sheriff and her Nazi dad. They're playing It's A Wonderful World and going slo-mo with a lot of close-ups of Chin, McG, and Nazi Dad looking serious and sad.  I actually enjoyed Chin and McG working the case together and Kono and Danny working together. It's nice to switch it up once in a while, you know?

So, to sum up, there was a lot of talking in this episode, a lot of history, a lot of sadness and some silliness. But, the wardrobe department did show me some love this week and put McG in blue, there was a one-footed breach pose by Chin briefly shown, and we got to see McG in tac gear. Not to mention a lot of great scenery.

No promo for next week.

What did you think? Did you watch?