Hawaii Five-O Recap & Review: When The Team Gets A Dog

Well, our task force is growing.

We start out with a sweet dog going on a mission with his DEA agent handler. Unfortunately, the mission goes south, his handler is murdered and the dog is shot pursuing the killer. He gets a good bite in, though, but it's still pretty sad to see the bond between the dog and handler and then have the guy die.

Cut to Steve's house. (Is it me, or does it look smaller these days?) Steve is making coffee when he gets a visitor knocking on his door. Surprise! It's Chin's replacement! He doesn't say he's a poor man's Chin Ho Kelly, though, but instead says his name is Junior Reigns. (He literally looks like he's fifteen years old and has an adorable baby face.) Babyface says Steve's diving buddy Dave talked about Steve and his task force and Babyface wants to work there! Steve says no, so he walks away with sort of a sad smile.

Steve's phone is constantly ringing this ep and he gets a call and heads out. He ends up in the car with Danny discussing why Danny wants to ship Jersey water to Hawaii for the Italian restaurant. (It has minerals from old pipes that make it red and perfect for pizza-making. Ew.) Steve vetoes the idea because Danny didn't consider his feelings. Danny says Steve's a sensitive flower, but when Kono and Chin get brought up, Danny has a sad face and Steve points out that Danny is the sensitive flower now. (At least this was more of a discussion/argument instead of a one-sided whinefest, so that was good.)

They end up at the port where the DEA agent was killed. All the shooters got away (really? It looked like the DEA guy shot at least one, but maybe his drug smuggling buddies carried him away) two DEA agents were killed, and there's one service dog unaccounted for. (What? They can't find the dog? The place is crawling with HPD and DEA) Of course, Steve goes to look and immediately sees a blood trail and finds the wounded animal. Good thing HPD called him in! They might have never found that dog.

Duke and a head DEA guy, Agent Reed, (who looks like he should have retired about ten years ago. My grandpa looks younger than him!) update Steve and Danny on all the cocaine on the island recently and Agent Lazio's work trying to break open a smuggling ring. Lazio got the tip, and the team got ambushed. Steve tells AgentGrandpa he wants to talk to Lazio's CI. Meanwhile, Danny and Tani stay behind to check the containers at the port for drugs, but there's so many, it's going to take awhile. Steve asks Jerry to look for any repeat shipments that match up to the spike in drug activity that the island has seen every six weeks. Oh, and to check on Eddie the dog who is in surgery.

Eddie gets the bullet taken out while Jerry looks on. (Do they really have observation areas to watch surgeries from?) He leaves his name for the nurse to call when she knows something. While Jerry is at the vet, Steve and Grover are watching some kids on the soccer field with a cute soccer mom on the sidelines. Turns out the CI is the soccer mom. They sit her down and shes's overwhelmed. She got addicted to prescription meds and went to the street stuff. When she got popped the third time and was facing mandatory jailtime and losing her kids, Lazio stepped in and helped her get rehab and keep custody, so she became his informant. Her dealer, Manny, told her a shipment was about to come in. McGrover want to talk to Manny, and it turns out when he's not dealing drugs, he's a dishwasher! (Gotta keep an eye on those dishwashers.)

Grover recaps in the car what they know about the case so far until Danny calls and says they found a container with a cut lock and are checking it out. McGarrett tells him to log all the people coming in or out because if the drug haul is as big as they think it is, someone is coming back for it. Dun, dun, dun. (This, my friends, is called foreshadowing.)

McGrover make it to the restaurant where Manny works, but he didn't come into work today. The boss, Roger Niles, has his address in his office, though, and they walk back to get it, admiring the restaurant along the way. Grover tells Roger that Steve wants to open a restaurant and Roger tells him it's stressful, lots of risk, and his old partner died after eighteen months of it and he was only forty-two. Steve is forty-one. Uh oh. He does give Steve restaurant tip, though. The food is the loss leader. A wine list is the key to turning a healthy profit. Has Steve applied for a liquor license? From the look on Steve's face, it doesn't look like it. (Don't worry, the Restaurant of Dreams will have lots of Jersey water instead!)

McGrover head over to Manny's house and find him twitching on the floor, a needle in his arm. Steve starts CPR, but he gives up after a while and says Manny didn't make it. (Where's the ambulance? Sheesh. I never want to have an emergency in that part of town.) They both stare at Manny, noticing the needle was in left arm, but since his watch is on his right hand, he's probably left handed. Who shoots up with their non-dominant hand and doesn't have any tracks in his arms? He was set up. Poor DishwasherDrugDealerManny. Noelani comes along finally to confirm their theory. Manny had a massive heroin toxicity and a head wound and was definitely killed by someone else. They probably just missed his killer! Late to the party again.

Steve's phone saves the day again when Jerry calls with some good news and better news.  Eddie the dog is out of surgery and eating, so that's a good sign. Also, even better, some foreign blood out of Eddie's mouth (ew) matched a druggie named Jesse Burman. Jerry sends the picture to Danny and Tani says she saw that guy! (I'm sure she meant to say, she logged that guy in just like Steve said!) He left in a truck full of cargo not ten minutes ago. Uh oh. The team has been bamboozled! Those sneaky drug smugglers opened a random container to throw them off.

Tani and Danny race off and track Jessie and his truck. Unfortunately for Jessie and his crew, they are terrible shots and Tani pretty much picks them all off while hanging out of a swerving car. (I guess she wasn't just a pretty face in a bikini after all. She can take people out like nobody's business!) The truck goes off the road after the driver is killed, but a wounded Jessie flees on foot. Danny leads the chase into the woods, but when everyone goes their separate ways (now that song is in my head!) he doesn't see Jessie at all and instead hears four shots fired. Jessie is dead and guess who killed him? AgentGrandpa says he had to do it, Jessie was going to shoot him. (Hmmm... )

After all the shooting is over, they find a huge shipment of wine in the back of the truck, and guess what? Cocaine can be transported inside and then turned back into powder form. Danny takes out the bill of lading and it's a familiar name. Steve goes back to Roger's  restaurant, guns drawn. (That Roger, acting all nice before. That just goes to show that you should never trust a guy trying to sell you a $500 bottle of wine.) Well, now he's gone and taken all the stuff in his safe with him. (Oddly, Roger has a picture of a cow and a pig on his office wall, with different cuts of meat on it. I mean, I know he owns a restaurant, but his office was sort of nice. Too nice for a meat cut picture of bovines and swine, in my opinion.)

Time for high fives all around! With the amount of cocaine in the wine bottles, the task force has busted the biggest Hawaiian drug haul worth 24 million dollars. Tani is all yeah, but I wish we had the guy behind it all. (If wishes were dollars, my friend . . .) But, RestaurantRoger is nowhere to be found, and his wine shipments coincide with the spiked drug activity, so he's probably the guy Tani's looking for. Everyone at the Talking Table contemplates that for a moment until Grover has Steve come outside. Babyface is there washing Steve's truck. He feels bad for the guy and says that Babyface should meet him there at noon sharp the next day and to put his car washing stuff away. *coughsuckupcough*

Steve's phone rings again with another exciting lead on the case. (Seriously, without all his phone leads, this case would have gone nowhere.) Noelani did the fastest autopsy ever on Jessie the druggie and you'll never guess. He was executed by AgentGrandpa with a close range shot to the heart. Uh oh. Cue to a grisly scene of AgentGrandpa shooting more two more agents to get his hands on the impounded wine filled with cocaine. (Why is it always the ones who are close to retirement? I guess pensions must be worse than I thought.) (Also, why does he kill everyone else, but leave the soccer mom alive? Weird.) HPD is on top of it all though, and fairly quick-like find the empty van.

Steve's phone is on FIRE with leads and saves the day again when Jerry calls to say he found some undeveloped property of RestaurantRoger's and it's in a remote location. So, you know, they could be processing the wine for the cocaine there. Since it's such a large location (five city blocks) the team heads there with SWAT and HPD. Oh, and Eddie apparently came out of major surgery and the anesthesia wore off, so he could come along, too! Back in the field already. That's dedication. Before they go in, Steve gives everyone instructions for the search, then tell them to pat Eddie's head for luck. (It was a DEA thing.) Grover isn't too excited, since he's not a dog person, but he does it. Steve kisses Eddie and says go get them. Awww.

Eddie gets sent in with a camera on his back and his wound doesn't seem to hurt him at all or slow him down. The team follows and they find the drug operation. RestaurantRoger is there and AgentGrandpa! The team moves in and a gunfight ensues. The bad guys are generally terrible shots, but Eddie does end up saving Grover from a shooter he didn't see. AgentGrandpa runs from Eddie, wounded, but still trying to escape. When Eddie's done with him, he's taken out on a stretcher really bloody. (Double ew.) Grover is talking baby talk to Eddie, telling him he's a good doggie and he'll get a steak from Uncle Lou. Awww. He's not a dog person, but he's a "thisdog" person now.

At the pat on the back news conference Duke says that this was a sophisticated drug operation and were put out of business by brave law enforcement and Five-O, seizing millions of dollars in cocaine. (They don't mention that Head DEA AgentGrandpa was part of that operation, though.) And we cut to a sad scene of the flag being folded over Agent Lazio's coffin while Steve and Eddie look on. (Steve is wearing his blue shirt in that shot, though, probably to help us feel better. Thank you wardrobe people.)

Babyface comes into Five-O headquarters and is pretty impressed. Steve introduces him to Duke and says he needs to join the Academy to become a cop before he can join Five-O. Babyface isn't pleased and says he doesn't want to be a cop, he wants to work for Steve. No dice. Steve says he has to graduate from the academy and then they'll bring him on. Promise. (Maybe Babyface could do like Tani did and get kicked out of the Academy, and then they'll want him. Or maybe they want him to look like he shaves before they bring him on. Seriously, he looks so young!)

Danny is sitting on Steve's cupboards talking about Eddie and how Steve likes him since he's chopping free range chicken for him and putting it in favorite cereal bowl. Isn't Steve a cat guy? Yeah, cats are still a far superior animal, sophisticated and cunning, more agile, and self-sufficient, but Eddie has grown on him and he's a sweet dog. (Awww again.) But Steve called Danny over to tell him that Adam came to visit. Kono's case went federal and she's not coming back anytime soon so he's flying out to be with her. Sad faces. Things are changing. (But hey, they have SassyTani, Babyface, and Eddie now! Who needs Kono and Chin!) Steve calls the dog to dinner, but he's gone and they can't find him. Steve figures out where he is and heads to the cemetery where he's lying on Lazio's grave. (*sniffle* I'm not crying. You're crying!)

Eddie made it a sweet episode with tender and sensitive flower feelings. Did you watch? What did you think?