Hawaii Five-O Recap & Review--The One With A New Task Force In Town

Hey, guess what? Special FBI Agent Fisher is holding a press conference to announce that the governor has created ANOTHER special task for with sweeping authority to root out crime in Hawaii. (Either this is the most crime-riddled state in the union, or the governor thinks Five-O is falling down on the job.) Fisher promises to restore peace and tranquility to the island. (Uh huh. He jinxed himself there.) Cut to his wife unpacking boxes in their new house, looking for their daughter's stuffed bunny. The doorbell rings and Fisher answers it. A suspicious looking guy is walking away from a package and Fisher realizes too late it's a bomb. A big one.

Twenty-four hours earlier--Tani is on her Vespa and Fisher approaches her with an offer. McG is too close to see that the escalation of violence can be tracked back to Michelle Shioma's murder and they want to investigate Adam. All Tani has to do is report her observations to the FBI and if she does that, there could be opportunities at the bureau for her. He hands her his card, all official.

A tense-looking McG pays Fisher a visit at his new FBI task force HQ. He's going to save them time. Adam is a good man! He married a member of Five-O with McG's blessing and proved his loyalty. He trusts him with his life. Fisher doesn't seem impressed, so McG just gets to the point. Approach a member of my team again, we're going to have a different convo and it won't be as polite. (Here's my thought: If you were the head of a new task force, you would think you'd want to play nice with the head of the other, more established, task force. *shrugs* I don't know. Just a thought. Professional courtesy and all that.)

Sadly, it doesn't matter. Steve is standing in the morgue, looking at covered bodies of Fisher and his family. The emotion is even more intense when they show the little girl's burned bunny. So awful. Steve and Lou head to the office to talk about the lack of evidence in the case. They can't trace the bomb, officers are going door to door, there's a perimeter around the crime scene. But so far, nothing. (Junior is at the Chatting Table today and his badge is prominently displayed on his belt. Awww.) With Fisher's job and press conference declaring war on gangs, there is no shortage of suspects. Steve says they'll be bringing them all in to press all of them until someone rolls. That's a big suspect pool, maybe even in the hundreds. They're going to need some help and then we see the military trucks rolling through. (Do you think he has something to prove now that the head of the other task force was murdered?)

The next scene is of the task force rounding people up all over the island with no warrants or any legal ground that I can see. (Immunity and means, I guess.) They get eighty-seven suspects in custody and take them to a temporary lockdown. Steve calls a huddle and tells them to speed it up because they lost the element of surprise now. Cancel all officer leave! We've got fifty-four more people to grab! (I'm sure that makes him popular down at the station.) Five-O is going after the high value targets. Well, everyone except Junior. He gets to be backup to HPD. Poor Junior. Babysteps for him. Tani gets permission to go take down a gang leader named Damien all by herself! Makes absolutely no sense, but there it is. Kamekona gives them a lead on two safehouses and Lou and McG head over to one. Eddie is giving Lou the stink eye though, since he's sitting in his seat. Poor Eddie. Has to sit in the back. They get to the safehouse and can't find the guy, even though his heat signature shows he's there.

Random scene cut to Adam getting pulled over by the FBI and taken in for questioning.

Back to the safehouse. Eddie sniffs out a hidden door that has stairs leading down to a tunnel. McG lets Eddie go through the tunnel, while they're waiting for Garcia on the other side. Eddie bites the guy's arm to subdue him, but it's easy to see the misshapen padding under his shirtsleeve. Good Eddie scene, though.

Damien lets Tani in and she's talking about their history. She doesn't care that he's dating other women now and her brother is good now that Damien isn't in his life. He heard she got booted from cop school and asks what she's doing now. TSA? Mall cop? No, she tells him. I'm with Five-O, here on official business. He says he isn't going anywhere with her and his heavily armed crew rolls up to prove it. Once again, Tani is in over her head.

Junior is pulling up to the Alvarez home with two HPD officers. They let him know that they'll bring the suspect out, but before they get too far, gunfire breaks out and both cops are shot. Junior starts shooting back and requests back up. Then he goes in to get the perp himself. There's an awesome shootout in the house before Junior throws a flashbang, then pops through a paper-looking wall. The suspect is taken down and when Junior is washing the blood off, we see he was winged during the encounter. He's calm, though, and asking about the cops. Professional, compassionate. Loved it.

Damien's crew has come up the elevator and is now at the door. Tani puts up a little barricade to buy time, and has Damien at gunpoint. When Damien tells his men he has Five-O inside, they start shooting the door and she puts her gun away. Randomly both her and Damien jump over the balcony to the pool below. (Why would Damien go along with that? He's a gang leader. Used to guns. Tani is half his size and has her gun holstered. It was just a big stretch that he gave up so easily and just lets her take him in. Oy.)

Back at the lockdown facility, Tani is proud she got Damien there. They start questioning all the suspects, but get nowhere. Everyone is blaming each other and the men are in survival mode for the turf wars going on. Jerry notices that the Yakuza have avoided casualties in all the violence. Maybe they're behind it all to decimate the competition! They figure out that Brandon Kento is heading up Yakuza and want to talk to Adam about finding him, but Adam isn't answering. They ping his phone and the FBI still have him. They're all suspicious of Adam, saying that no one retires from Yakuza. Steve busts in and says it's over, charge him or we're leaving. The FBI guy shows him a pic of Adam meeting with Michelle Shioma twenty-four hours before she's killed. Do you still think Adam's innocent? Yep, because Adam can explain that! When he's alone with Steve he says that Michelle reached out through an intermediary. He was curious. But all she wanted was for him to reach out to her kids for her. Offers him money. Says she knows something about him. He walks away and doesn't take the bait. *shrugs* No biggie. Steve gets back to business and says they need to find Kenzo.

Adam is their man! He finds Kenzo and goes in to discuss his terms of surrender. Kenzo isn't sure at first, but eventually surrenders and is taken into custody. They question him, but he denies having anything to do with the turf wars or Shioma's murder. Hmm...if not Yakuza, then who? Uh oh. Jerry sees eight hostiles overpowering guards and four cops are down at the lockdown facility. (They really only had four cops guarding the place? Or only four were killed. With over a hundred gang leaders, I would hope they had a ton of people guarding that place, but sadly, it doesn't look like it.) The hostiles open the cages and take all the high value targets out and make them kneel down before the feed is cut.

Oddly Steve doesn't call for backup right away and tries to take down the eight guys with his own team. They're too late to save anyone, though, and all the high value targets are murdered. The team takes out a couple of hostiles before the rest get away. They go inside and see the carnage. Tani is kneeling by Damien's body and they're realizing every crime boss in town is dead.

Cut to Tani getting Damien's effects from Noelani so she can give them to his mom. Junior is there with the cop's body and he's been there a while. Tani goes to talk to him and he admits he feels guilty and like he should have done more. She takes him home.

Steve calls Adam into office. He's had a horrifically bad day with the lockdown fiasco and the unresolved Fisher murders with the murderer still out there. He's having trouble with it. Adam tells him that tomorrow's another day. (Sounds like a fortune cookie saying to me. Or something your grandma would have on a cross-stitched pillow).  Steve says that the dead shooters were foreign mercs out of Tokyo with no affiliations to any crews here, no arrest records or ties to syndicates. There's a new player on scene that doesn't like competition. Adam says Steve is chasing a ghost, but Steve says, no WE are. I need your help. I want you to head up special division in the Five-O task force, specializing in organized crime. (Wait, wasn't that was Fisher was doing by governor's orders? Did they run it by the governor?) Adam doesn't care. He's in! And happy to have a job!

So, to sum up, the epi had good action, great Eddie scenes, and Junior cementing his place on my favorites list. Did you watch? What did you think?