Hawaii Five-0 Recap & Review: Where Steve Plays Maverick

The show starts out this week with Steve doing some amazing runs in an airplane during a race. He's talking to Danny about his time when he clips a pylon and starts to lose control of the plane. He's going down! Danny and the team look on worriedly, and we cut to the music. (Great opening!)

Thirty-one hours earlier Steve and Danny are having a meeting with a guy named Ronnie from Steve's Navy days. (He calls him Ensign McG. Aww, they go way back!) Ronnie is a mechanic and taught Steve a lot and asks Steve if him and his dad ever got the Mercury going. (*sad face*) Ronnie has been working on plane races and his pilot crashed during a practice run. Ronnie wants Steve to look into it because he checked that plane before the NTSB did and it was fine. His pilot, Jason Sachs, was ice cold up there and didn't make mistakes. (Like Iceman from Top Gun? Hmm...) The NTSB is saying pilot error, but Ronnie isn't so sure. And just to sweeten the request for Steve's help, Ronnie mentions the widow won't get any money from insurance if it's pilot error so they need to be sure.

Steve and Danny go to the hangar where the NTSB has the crashed airplane laid out. The agent in charge named Callahan is pretty cagey. He tells Steve h's been doing this a long time, and this one is cut and dried. Steve pokes around a bit, brings up the trim tab and how if anything were to happen to that up in the air, the pilot would lose control. CageyCallahan gets defensive and won't give them the cockpit video, but says he'll keep them in the loop. (Uh huh. Sure he will.)

Well, apparently Tani and Junior are hitting it off. She called him this morning for a "paddle" but he didn't pick up since he went to see his parents. But here they are, meeting for lunch. (What would their couple name be? Tunior? Juni?) We get a little backstory on Junior when his mom didn't show for his visit after he waited an hour and his dad sat on the porch drinking and talking about wanting a garbage can on the porch. Sounds like a great guy. Apparently he didn't want Junior to enlist since he was in the Navy. Tani looks sad for him for a minute before they're all smiley and cozy again. Then McG calls and Tani has to go. She hugs Junior awkwardly and leaves. (Poor Junior has nothing to do I guess. Did he get kicked out of the Academy then? Why is he just hanging around the beach and visiting mom and dad?)

Everyone is around the Chatting Table looking at a Youtube video Jerry found of the crash. They chat about this race being like the Indy 500 in the sky. Steve throws in that the company who made crashed plane had trouble with trim tabs on other planes they made, so maybe that's what happened to Jason. But there's also the theory that with so much prize money at stake, someone sabotaged the plane. The plot thickens.

Noelani gets a little cameo when she looks at the pilot's autopsy with Lou. He died of blunt abdominal trauma, but beyond his injuries, he'd been in excellent health, and his tox screen came back negative. She says she'll look at the autopsy again, maybe do another one.

McG and Tani go to talk to the widow, Elena. She tells their love story of meeting in Mexico when Jason came in for a drink. They started talking and offered her his coat. He smiled and that's when she knew. He came back a few times, but she was with someone who treated her bad. One day she was at work and she heard a plane land in a field and it was Jason. They ran away and never looked back. No one had a problem with Jason that she knows of, but one guy came to talk to Jason the morning he was killed and seemed upset. Jason said it was just a misunderstanding. (I liked the actress who played Elena. She was really believable and natural.)

Tani looks pensive in the car and McG tells her it's okay to care. (Was that what her look was all about? She didn't seem that caring toward the widow at all, so I wasn't sure.) Before they can say much else, Ronnie calls Steve to say that he got to a technician who had the trim tab (and the guy is tied up. Uh oh. That can't be good.) Steve hurries over. By the time he gets there, though, there's a caravan of black SUVs leaving. It was the NTSB! Who knew they had so much manpower? They confiscated the trim tab, but we have no idea how they knew Ronnie had a hostage and the missing trim tab. Psychic, perhaps? Maybe the NTSB has so many men they can afford to pay someone to watch Ronnie? I guess we'll never know.

The tech is still tied up and Steve takes him to the Blue Room of Doom for questioning. He's actually terrible at his job and misses mechanical problems that caused two planes to go down in the past. He didn't spot the problems on Jason's plane so he fished the trim tab out of the water so no one would know. (But didn't Ronnie say he checked the plane and it was all good?) The tech tells Steve that the tabs on Jason's plane were steel, though, and didn't melt like the others, so he thinks they were tampered with. Tani and McG go to talk in the Green Hall (seriously, it's all in shades of green and Tani's shirt even matches it) trying to decide whether they believe the tech. (Why wouldn't they?) Jerry comes down to tell them the NTSB is having a press conference and they run upstairs to watch. CageyCallahan announce it was pilot error. (Why would they need a news conference for that?) Steve says they need the trim tab for their own analysis, but the only way to get it is to call the governor. (And there goes Tani looking thoughtful again. Is she upset? Thinking? Hard to say.)

Lou tracks down the guy who was upset talking to Jason the morning of the crash. He tells Lou that he invested his life savings with Jason Sachs, but then the guy disappeared. After years of searching, he saw Jason on Youtube so he comes to Hawaii. But when he gets there and confronts him, he realized it wasn't the same guy. Same name, similar looks, but not the guy. (Weird. Lost-lost twin? Nice twist, though.)

Steve comes into the office and surprise! the trim tab is on his desk! Tani claims she has no idea where it came from, but that Steve shouldn't look a gift horse in the mouth. She takes it down to the crime lab for analysis. He randomly throws out there that Tani is fitting in just fine. (Uh huh. Okay. Then why does the audience have to be told that? Too obvious.) Crime lab lady does the speediest analysis ever and tells Tani that someone tampered with the tab and then repainted it to hide the sabotage.

The team dramatically rolls up to the NTSB hangar and arrests CageyCallahan for obstruction of justice. He mostly just looks annoyed. They get him in the Blue Room of Doom and CageyCallahan ain't playing! He doesn't think it was sabotage that it's just a difference of opinion. But Tani pipes up to say that they already looked at his financials and he gets paid in offshore accounts to make anything that comes up at the races go away. CageyCallahan smiles all creepily and that annoys McG (and all the viewers). CageyCallahan says there are a lot of people involved and admits he covered it up. But he points out that Five-0 stole the trim tab so they're not innocent, either. There will be a fall-out from that and the NTSB will hold Five-0 responsible! (Ooh, I bet McG is shaking in his boots! Not the NTSB!) McG says the trim tab was on his desk and he doesn't know how it got there. Did the evidence fairy bring it? Maybe. But that's the truth. (I'm still imagining all the mayhem the NTSB would rain down on the Five-0 task force. Seriously, what could they do? I've never heard of the NTSB doing anything like restrictions or any sort of punitive actions. Weird.)

Lou comes in to tell them the story of the two Jasons. Jason Sachs died in a car wreck six years ago. The pilot guy stole his identity and was actually a runner for a drug cartel turned informant. His name is really Luke Nixon. When he escaped from the cartel, he took the cartel kingpin's only daughter and when the DEA wouldn't help him get out, he changed his identity and disappeared.

Well, I guess the cartel messed with his plane and killed him. But why waste time sabotaging a plane when they can put a bullet in him? Why risk it? They go to Elena's hotel suite for more answers, but it's been broken into and Elena and her son are gone. Jerry puts McG through to the federal police (in Mexico?) since they're probably surveilling the Moldonado cartel, but they won't give up any info.  McG presses since they have hostages and the guy caves and says he'll check if there have been any phone calls to Hawaii in the last 48 hrs. (I can't imagine the hostages being the thing that made the federal guy cave. Hostages and drug cartels are an everyday occurrence. Maybe it was McG's velvet voice.)

Well, apparently the Moldonado cartel is going through cutbacks since they only sent two guys to collect Elena and her son and they didn't cover their tracks very well. Elena tells them she won't go with them, but the older-looking cartel guard says her dad wants to meet his grandson. They head for the door, and when they open it, there's an explosion. Steve and crew rush in and take the two cartel guys into custody and tell Elena she's safe. (Yeah, only she's really not, since her dad is a drug lord. Maybe next time he'll send more than two guys to get her.) (Also, the rescue was a bit anticlimactic, since it was over in about twenty seconds. Oh well, I guess. At least no one died.)

Ronnie can hardly believe the story behind Jason and his true identity as a drug runner/informant. He's also still sad because Elena will have to fight for insurance since her husband had an assumed identity and they won't even get anything from the race if they don't put a plane in the air. Steve volunteers to take the back up plane up so Elena and Tomas will get at least some money. (Aww.)

That takes us back to the flight where Steve is losing control. There is a little moment of silence, then he pulls up just in time. Danny is worried and just wants him to put the plane on the ground. He calls him, "Maniac," which Steve mistakes for Maverick. A great compliment! In true Top Gun form, Steve even "buzzes the tower" over the people and everyone ducks and laughs. No one spills their coffee, though. Lou keeps the homage to Top Gun going and says he feels the need . . . and Jerry finishes with, "the need for Steve." (Which should be the show's slogan, don't you think?) The team meets him at the hangar and they do a slo-mo of him getting out and taking his helmet off and the team coming to meet him in Top Gun final scene style. Steve asks how he did, but he came in last--twelfth out of twelfth. (Aww, good effort, though.)

(They show some awesome Hawaiian scenery in this episode. I am so going there someday!)

The team goes to Kamekona's for drinks and are teasing Jerry about the "need for Steve." The Boss man is his hero (and everyone else's.) Jerry seems embarrassed and leaves. Steve still has no idea who put the trim tab on his desk and Tani tells Junior she'll tell him more about that later. (Tunior have so much to talk about!) Tani heads home on her scooter and her bro is outside watching TV. He asks if stealing that trim tab makes them even and she says yes. They go out to eat at Rainbow's. (I'm sort of sad she had him steal evidence from a federal facility to close a case when just last week she was trying to save him from the DEA so he wouldn't have a record. But, they're "even" now, whatever that means.)

So, there were a lot of good twists and turns, and some great flying scenes. I enjoyed this episode overall. Did you watch? What did you think?