Last week, Grover was hanging out in Chicago and being shunned by all his friends while the rest of the team was lounging in a cage in the jungle waiting for Steve to get them all out safely. This week, SuperSEAL Steve comes to the rescue again, but it's a bloody mess, I'll tell you what.
We start off innocently enough with a grandpa in the car with his granddaughter, trying to help her feel better after she broke up with her boyfriend. They are suddenly T-boned, and instead of helping the grandpa and the girl, men dressed in black jump out and carjack another car to speed away in. Now that's an attention-grabbing opening!
Kono is bringing lunch to Adam, a sandwich that features potato chips in it. Ew. Apparently she's been bringing him lunches every day, but he doesn't want her to feel like she has to check up on him. And all the guys call her a "smokeshow." (What does that even mean, really?) Adam's just grateful he gets to come home to her every night even though he's sweaty and stinky. She finds that hot so it's all good.
Grover is filling in McG at the accident scene. Bank robbers fleeing the scene caused the accident and killed the grandpa. Sad! McG goes over to talk to the granddaughter Amanda, and say that he's sorry, it wasn't her fault and they're going to find the man responsible. Aww. He looks so earnest when he says it, too.
Adam is running a backhoe and while digging finds a bone. He brings it to his boss, worried they might be disturbing a burial site, but his boss tells him to keep quiet about it because they don't want to get shut down. (Poor Adam. He always ends up working for dishonest people. Or being dishonest himself.)
Back at the office, Steve is watching some footage of a documentary the grandpa did for an anniversary of the Pearl Harbor attack. It's heart-wrenching as he describes what happened that day and black and white footage is used to drive home the horror of it all. They didn't get a match to identify the robbers with on the blood at the scene of the car wreck, but they did get some security footage. The team all goes to the Chatting Table to analyze it, mentioning the robbers only got $12,000, were in and out in a minute. Steve goes deeper, though, and says they have M-4 carbine rifles which is infantry issue, they're stacking before they enter, a basic close quarter training. They're probably military! And the military keeps DNA records, so they're going to check out that lead.
Adam can't let the bone go, and he digs up the property records and asks Jerry to help him. Jerry isn't too sure at first, since he just got a badge and doesn't want to go behind the team's back. Adam explains he doesn't want to bring Kono in just yet because she could shut the whole place down and dozens of people would lose their jobs. Jerry agrees to help and says that Adam should get another bone fragment so they can get Noelani to tell them if it's an animal or human.
I guess the military DNA database came through because the team is suddenly surrounding Nicholas Rider's house. The windows are boarded up, thermals say he's alone inside, but somehow they think he was expecting them, so everyone needs to be careful since this guy is military trained. Steve is on point and cautions everyone to stay close, stay sharp, and stay safe. (And dang he looks good on point!) They move in and start to clear the building, when suddenly the lights go out and they're taking fire. A couple of SWAT guys go down and everyone is shooting when Nick goes upstairs. He's got a bomb up there and sets it for thirty seconds before he jumps out the window. To get to ground, he leaps on an unsuspecting SWAT guy just standing around and thumps him on the head before he runs away. (Poor dumb SWAT guy who didn't look up when the window broke. Pay attention, man!)
Steve runs upstairs after him and sees the bomb, shouting for everyone to get out. They do, and Steve jumps through the broken window, but apparently he's bigger than the first guy since he breaks more glass. He's on the roof when it explodes, debris everywhere, but it looks like everyone is safe. Whew! Steve runs into the forest to follow Nick, while the rest of the team just waits back at the bombed out house. There's a lot of junk in this forest, random stuff hanging in trees and an old shed full of odds and ends. Steve makes his stand there and gets into a gunfight with Nick and is shot! He goes down and Nick comes over like a rookie, and gets close enough that McG fakes him out and can shoot him in the head. They close-up DeadNick several times and the bloody wound. It's gross! But McG takes DeadNick's gun and when the team finally decides to join him he can say, "Clear!"
Kono wasn't just lollygagging around at the bombed out house, she's apparently been talking to Paladin Security who had DeadNick on their payroll, about some incident in Afghanistan that's classified. Steve is listening while he digs the bullet out of his Kevlar-covered belly area. (It was a magic bullet apparently, because there was no way it hit that low! Looked like a shoulder hit to me, but whatever.) Everyone is surprised when he finally gets it out and calls him Superman. (I guess everyone took Steve's words of "I'm on point," very literally.)
Adam sneaks into his construction site and digs around, looking for another bone fragment. (My question is, how did he explain his late night excursion to Kono? Did he sneak out? Lie? Going to work in the dark, honey? Hmmm.) He doesn't find anything, though. The next day at work, his boss calls him in. He had security cameras installed and saw what Adam did last night. "You're fired!" (Poor pretty, but unemployed, Adam. How far we have come from the mob boss days.)
McG is everywhere this ep and gets the Paladin files. It tells all about how Lee Campbell ran security for key civilians, but there was some incident in Afghanistan, so the DOD pulled their contract. They pull up the security team pics and hey, it's a body match to the footage of the robbers! But it's not enough to arrest them, so Steve wants HPD to watch them. (I can already tell you that's not going to go well.)
McG goes back to his office and watches more documentary footage, this time from someone who remembered what Ensign Steve McGarrett did to give the men a bit more time to get off the sinking Arizona and sacrificed his life to do it. Steve hadn't known that information, because when his grandpa got the Purple Heart, there hadn't been any details. (You know, Steve sure has a lot of people in his life that he doesn't have a lot of important details on. Just sayin') This was a touching scene, however.
Chin comes in to say that Lee Campbell is at some credit union in Pearl City. Lee's no dummy, though, and goes over to talk to the obvious "undercover" cops to tell them that he'll be at the diner down the street if McG wants to talk. How did he know they were sent by McG?
Steve shows up and gets a coffee while he talks to Lee. Honestly, all I can think about during his entire conversation with McG is when the actor playing Lee, also played Willie Jack Pickens in
Where the Heart Is. Remember his big speech to Novalee? "Why does anyone lie? Cuz we're scared? Or crazy? Or just mean? There's a million reasons why a person lies... but sometimes, you tell a
lie so big... that it changes your whole life." Yeah, WillieJackLee is spinning some big stories with McG when he's trying to explain that war is messy and he was protecting his men and what happens in Afghanistan, stays in Afghanistan. Grover also said this last week, that what happens in Chicago, stays in Chicago. Maybe next week we'll get, what happens in Jersey, stays in Jersey. Haha.
Jerry checked on the property owners, they don't look like the murdering type (what does the murdering type look like do you think?) he also says it's not a burial ground. Adam mentions maybe a realtor with access to the property? Kono calls and interrupts and Adam lies to her with no hesitation at all, saying he's on a supply run. (What supplies would a backhoe operator need?) Jerry finds a realtor who had a missing wife and then he wants to bring in the team. Adam says he will tomorrow, he's got an idea to prove their theory. (Uh oh. Adam usually has terrible ideas.)
Well, WillieJackLee has some reasons behind why he's been robbing banks. His team member was killed in Afghanistan by a suicide bomber, and WillieJackLee has been taking care of the wife. She has a lien and needs $17,000 or she'll lose the house. Sad! The bank manager wouldn't give an extension, so it's not looking good. Danny goes to visit the wife and tells her what's really going on, but she doesn't believe him and tells him to get out. He fills McG in on what's happening and they both look concerned.
Adam goes to see RealtorNesmith and says he found some boxes with mementos in it from that old house and how can he get in touch with the owner? Nesmith looks guilty and says call me at the office tomorrow. Adam watches Nesmith's house and follows him after he puts a shovel in his car and drives away. (Again, how is he explaining these late night absences to Kono? And how much do you want to bet Adam ends up working for Five-O?)
The team is putting on tac-gear and passing out guns, getting ready to foil a bank robbery. All kinds of alarms are going off, though, and Steve is thinking something isn't right. What alarm is isolated, Jerry? A jewelry store! So the team goes there instead and catches WillieJackLee and his men before they can escape. There's an awesome gunfight and an interesting comparison between McG who runs to save a SWAT guy that's down (while his SWAT buddy just sort of stands next to him helplessly. SWAT looked like bumbling newbies in this ep!) and WillieJackLee also saves one of his men that's down. Things aren't going well for WillieJackLee though, so he bolts, and McG goes after him. WillieJackLee tackles him from behind and starts beating the crap out of McG. He even gets plastic over McG's face and tries to suffocate him. It's hard to watch! McG is bloody and fighting for his life at this point. He's being choked with a pipe, kidney punched, the whole nine yards. He rallies and gets WillieJackLee off him, breaking his arm (a hide-my-eyes moment! The crack of the bone? *shudder*) and then WillieJackLee is thrown hard and gets impaled on a steel rod. It's a bloody, gross, drawn out death scene as WillieJackLee gasps his last breath and McG falls exhausted to the floor near him. It's horrible and awesome, if that makes sense.
But, in the next scene, McG is walking with Amanda, assuring her those men won't hurt anyone else, and he's not even limping! Not a bruise in sight! Only a tiny cut on his forehead. After that kind of a beating I would have expected a few more injuries, but hey, this is SuperSEAL McG, so I should have known better. Amanda thanks him for keeping his promise. We also find out that the bank has decided to do right by the widow and make sure she doesn't lose her house, so all is well there, and WillieJackLee didn't die for nothing, sort of. Adam comes in and finally comes clean with Kono. They go look at security footage to see the dumb realtor digging up his dead wife's body and he gets arrested. Kono shuts down the site and says Adam's former boss is lucky she doesn't charge him with obstructing justice. She also asks why Adam was a lying McLiar face, and he says he didn't want to let her down. (Isn't lying letting her down?) She tells him not to lie to her anymore and they smile and all is well. Silly Adam.
Steve is pulling a trunk out from under a bed. It was his grandpa's! (It's a wonder it wasn't beside the Champ box or the hidden-in-the-floor Mommy Diaries. There are a lot of boxes and hidden things in McG's house!) He opens the trunk and there are pictures of his grandpa, the Purple Heart, and dog tags in it (reminded me of my grandpa's Korean War trunk *sniff*) and Steve is contemplating it all. The final scene is him with the voice-over of Amanda's grandpa's funeral, facing the USS Arizona and saluting in his dress whites. Awww. I liked that ending.
So, lots of action and emotion in this episode, but WillieJackLee, the explosion, and that bloody death scene was what made it stick in my memory.
No promo for next week.
What did you think? Did you watch?
