Hawaii Five-O Recap and Review: Big Trouble On The North Shore

We start out with Danny and Steve putting together a cute race car room for Charlie. Steve is on a ladder, putting up wall paper, thinking about doing something like those shows that renovate houses for the families. He seems in his element, as always. (Can you think of a time when Steve wasn't confident?) Danny is staring at the bed parts, unsure what to do because he threw the instructions away. (I guess Danny's never been to IKEA. Those instructions are like gold!) There's a knock at the door and it's Captain Tanaka! Danny's old boss before he was drafted onto the task force. Surprisingly, Danny doesn't seem happy to see him, but grudgingly lets him in. He reminds Danny about the last case he worked that went cold because the witness was killed but there was no body. Welp, guess what? The NotDead guy turned up!

We quickly turn to a Special News Report. Some guy in a coma for seven years had an elevated sugar level and was waking up! And they don't care about privacy at all and show all his caregivers and the coma patient in his hospital bed. It must have been a very slow news day in Hawaii. (For a minute I thought they were faking and this episode was going a very different way because the guy in the hospital bed did NOT look anything like a man who'd been in a coma for seven years, cooped up inside and on a feeding tube. He looked healthy! But, I guess they couldn't find an actor who looked more sickly.) So, the story is, they found a guy at the bottom of a ravine with no ID and severe head injuries and brought him there. Did no one notify the police? No missing persons reports? And in seven years, no one thought to do fingerprints or something? He's obviously still recognizable as Makeno, since Danny ditched Steve and is in a car with Captain Tanaka both believing this is their missing witness.

Flashback: to Danny seven years ago when he wore ties, arriving at the old drug case. Captain Tanaka beats him to the crime scene and gives him a little grief about it. Danny is sensitive, feeling like the Captain is getting after him. Does somebody need a hug? There's a bunch of people in orange vests milling around, but one guy sort of ambles by, looking really suspicious and Danny goes to talk to him. He mumbles that he doesn't know anything (sure, he doesn't!) and Danny gives him his card that actually says Donald Williams on it. Ha! He scribbles out Donald and writes Danny in.

Present Day--Danny is staring at Makeno in his hospital bed and the Captain comes in with the guy's personal effects and there's a corner of Danny's card there. It IS Makeno. But by the time they figure it out, a lockdown alarm is going off. Danny goes into the hall where there are a ton of people just moseying around and nurses are trying to corral them into their rooms. Now, usually, during a lockdown police are called, emergency services, SWAT, fire trucks, the works. Especially for an assisted living center, you would think there would be a large response. But not on the North Shore! HPD is TWENTY MINUTES out! And I guess there's no one else close by. Yeah, I wouldn't want to be having an emergency on the North Shore.

Danny calls Steve, a little panicked, and says he needs back up, a guard's been killed, and to hurry! Steve tries to calm him and says he's on his way, but really, won't he get there around the same time as HPD?

Flashback: Danny is arguing with Rachel about a sleepover and Grace's schedule. (I miss his Psycho ringtone he used to have for Rachel. So funny!) His buddies have put suntan lotion on his desk again and he drops it in a drawer full of them. His partner suggests he drop the tie, wear some sunglasses like Magnum P.I. because everyone loved that haole. Rachel calls back and they argue some more until Danny gets told Makeno is waiting for him on Line 4.

Present Day: A nurse comes in and Danny asks her to help move Makeno. Where? What's his plan? He doesn't know. The nurse goes over to Makeno's bed with her tray and he realizes she knows Makeno's name when she shouldn't. He confronts her and she beats him over the head with the tray and they struggle. The nurse gets the upper hand pretty quickly, choking Danny, but he grabs the syringe and stabs her in the neck with it. Ew. Captain Tanaka comes back with another nurse and Danny freaks out asking for ID. (The new nurse is Kit from A League of Their Own. I loved that show! She doesn't look the same, however with big glasses and a shorn head.) DeadGirl has a phone, but no ID. Danny takes a pic of her last few calls and a pic of her face to send to Jerry. The DeadGirl's phone has an incoming message from her team and they're coming in! Honestly, this is the worst lockdown in history. No guards. No police. No emergency vehicles. Nothing! Well, there's a panicked Danny and a retired police captain. But still.

Flashback to Danny at Makeno's apartment. He thinks there was a struggle and Makeno was taken. They connected copper piping cutters at Makeno's house to the crime scene. It's not enough evidence, though, and Captain Tanaka takes him off the case. He needs more time! Too bad. He gets the McGarrett case.

Present Day--Danny is on the phone to Steve, not to say it's been twenty minutes and HPD has arrived so it's all good, but to tell him about the Ninja lady who brought armed friends so they're putting Makeno in an ambulance and taking him to a police station. Steve just says he'll meet him there. Really? There are armed men about to come into a hospice facility, but hey, meet ya at the police station. Good luck!

I bet you're wondering where the rest of the team is. They're at the Chatting Table talking about the contract killer that nearly choked Danny to death! Her name was Laura Kendall and a number on her cell went to Dario Mendez. Because he's obviously a newbie cartel member and makes phone calls from his real phone. DumbDario is rebuilding the cartel so the ENTIRE TEAM is going to go talk to him. And leave Danny alone to deal with armed gunmen. I mean, really, nothing says family like leaving a member hanging in the wind when there are armed gunmen in the area.

Captain and Danny and NurseKit take Makeno in his bed to the elevator. Danny takes the stairs and kills two of the men waiting there. They get out to the ambulance and we cut to two more guys in Makeno's old room. Too late, suckas! But another gunman starts shooting at the ambulance and they drive away. Then we're on to real-life ambulance chasing! Two cars, both with gunmen in them that are terrible shots. They shoot a million bullets into that flimsy ambulance, but not one of them hit a person! They do hit a ventilator tube, though, but NurseKit patches that while Danny yells at her to hurry. The ambulance stops quickly and lets one of the bad guys ram into him. The doors don't even flip open! This is like a miracle ambulance! One bad guy's car is out of commission so they get into the other one, and the chase is on again. Danny sees a parking lot near a beach with a lot of people and turns in, so Captain Tanaka can shoot at the bad guys. (Because who cares about beach-goers getting caught in the crossfire!) Well, the bad guys crash into a car in the parking lot, but Danny leaves and gets all four tires punctured on the way out. Oops. Those spike strips for not paying are brutal! So the ambulance has to be stashed and they commandeer some random person's house and tell the teenage girl who answers the door to leave and not come back. That can't be legal. (Immunity and means gets you ANYTHING, my friends.) Just a random thought, with so much gunfighting on public roads, does the North Shore not have ONE POLICEMAN anywhere? Dang. Those poor North Shore residents!

Well, instead of putting the comatose patient somewhere safe, they put him in a family room right by a whole bunch of windows where he's really exposed. Maybe they thought the ambulance went so well, that an exposed position with automatic weapons would turn out, too! Then Danny calls Steve again to complain that he has no idea where he is. Really? After seven years he has no sense of where he might be at all? Near a beach? A street sign? Nothing? Jerry has to triangulate his position and Steve says he'll be there in ten minutes. Danny is his usual self and predicts he'll be dead in ten minutes. But don't worry, Steve tells him, Chin, Kono, and Grover got a lead on who's behind this and they're moving in! I'm sure that's totally comforting.

Chin, Kono, and Grover bust into Mendez's house and he denies any knowledge of what they're talking about, (surprise!) but Kono tells him they know he was the trigger man seven years ago and Makeno will probably ID him. That's the only reason he'd send in a contract killer with "a small army." (A small army? Aren't there like three guys in a black SUV?)

Danny is searching through the family's closet for a rifle since he saw a hunting trophy on the wall. The captain takes a time out to talk about the last case, that it was his bad he took Danny off, that he didn't want to hire Danny, and he's trying to apologize. Danny is super antsy, but finally says this whole thing was his fault because he was arguing with Rachel and didn't hang up so he missed Makeno's call. The captain tells him he's a good cop and that's why he came to him today, since,you know, he could have picked any other cop he knows on the island. (Yet, apparently every cop he knows are all busy and couldn't come with him anyway, and that's why he's holed up with Danny and a coma patient in a random person's house waiting for Steve.)

The DeadNurse's phone rings and the "small army" warn Danny they're coming in. So considerate! He sees them out the window, but doesn't try to shoot them yet. They go down to the family room with all the windows and hide, ready to pick them off when they come in. The small army men cut the power, so Danny runs outside to get a generator to keep Makeno's ventilator going. The miracles continue when the small army men are once again terrible shots and miss every time they shoot so Danny makes it back safely. Steve is trying to find him and when the small army men start to shoot up the house, Danny tells him to follow the gunfire. (He better hurry because the small army is coming in through the front door! Good thing they didn't go through the back.) Steve runs them over with his truck totally demolishing the front of the house. (The homeowners aren't going to be happy about that. Also, how did he know the coma patient or Danny wouldn't be in the living room?) Luckily, he only killed the bad guys. Captain Tanaka awkwardly says to Steve, "Thank you for your timely intervention. It was getting bleak in here." Who talks like that? But at least he got a thank you. Sometimes that's rare for Steve.

Danny finds out that they got DumbDario on conspiracy. So fast? What a terrible head of the cartel. They're going to move Makeno for protection. (Again? Well, stay away from the windows this time!) The captain tells Danny not to start a restaurant during retirement and to do something he loves. Meanwhile, Steve is babysitting Charlie and lies to him that Danno put the bed together all by himself and they fist bump to Danno's greatness.

Danny is talking to a comatose Makeno, talking about the team (Chin is loyal, Kono is a fox that he had a crush on, Jerry is special, Grover is from SWAT, Steve is a putz), and that he's sorry he wasn't there for him seven years ago. He says that if it wasn't for him, he wouldn't have found his family, and Hawaii wouldn't feel like home, so Makeno should wake up and meet them. (Honestly, the guy's probably exhausted after being dragged from pillar to post today.) We then get to see Steve and Danny's first meeting where they pointed guns at each other and how it all started. Awww.

Well, what I've learned from this episode:

   1. The North Shore has no emergency response to gunfire, lockdowns, or car chases.

   2.  A small army is less than six guys.

   3. All the cartels that Five-O deals with are newbies and sort of dumb.

Next week's episode looks good! Did you watch? What did you think?