Hawaii Five-O Recap and Review---The One With Another Dead Friend For Poor Steve

This one had a lot of action and I really enjoyed it overall!

We start out with the flight deck of the USS Nimitz. A small aircraft is approaching with a mayday signal and even though the tower tells him not to approach or they'll be considered a threat and they sound the alarm and get out the big guns, they're all talk. They just let the plane land. Good thing there wasn't a terrorist on board, you know? There was, however, a crying baby on board and a dead-from-a-gunshot-wound pilot. How did he land the plane? Died as soon as it touched down? Impressive.

Cut to the HPD where Duke is coming back to work and Steve is at the head of the crowd clapping and giving him a welcome back. There are salutes and smiles all around until a woman from NCIS named Emma Warren ruins the fun and approaches Steve with her bad news. Apparently Steve's friend Carson was the guy that was found dead in the plane with the baby and Steve was the last person to see him alive when they had drinks a few days ago. Emma speculates that maybe Carson was involved in a kidnapping, but Steve says no way, he was on Teams with this guy for two tours, he knows him, and he was a good man. (I feel so bad for Steve. All of his Teams friends are ending up dead.) Emma tells him that Carson took contracts from sketchy individuals, but Steve isn't concerned about that. He wants her to ID the kid and talk to the parents so they can clear this up. (Steve is in his blue shirt and nothing sets off his eyes like this particular shade. Especially when he's passionate about something.) Emma says she wants Steve to promise to back off and let her do her job and Steve says he's got it. (Yeah. Sure he does.)

We're back to Tani and the Terrible Storyline when she goes to Adam's house to put back the gun she found. She's startled when Adam stumbles out looking pretty bad---stained shirt, no showering or shaving, still drinking. It seems that Kono has left him and it's over. After Jessie's death changed him and Kono's job changed her, they were two different people trying to pretend it still worked. He's pretty broken up about it, and goes back to his room while Tani stares at the gun sticking out of her bag. (Hopefully it's not loaded because that thing looks ready to fall on the floor!)

Flashing back to a few days prior when Steve and Carson were having drinks, they're reminiscing about a terrifying tandem jump where the guy was sick all over Carson and how he taught Steve the tape trick. (Which is taping something to an out of the way place as a clue. Heavy foreshadowing here fellow viewers!) Carson confides that he makes good money now, but doesn't work for good people. Steve reminds Carson that he made him a job offer, (three SEALs on Five-0? Could be interesting) but Carson says that law enforcement isn't a good fit since there are too many rules (does he know Five-0 and their track record with rules?) and he can't take orders from Steve. They hug and talk about not waiting six years to do this again before they say goodbye. Then we're back to the present where Steve is in the morgue, standing over Carson's dead body. Sad. Weary. Paying his last respects. (When can Steve have a friend from his past who isn't evil or dead?)

Noelani lets Danny and Steve see Carson's things when she steps out to make a call and they find a hotel keycard and a receipt for baby supplies. They decide he must have come here looking for the baby and Tani is able to give them more details like the baby is around 2-3 months old by the size of diapers and has an allergy because of the formula Carson bought. Jerry gets an assignment to be creative, find the airplane Carson was piloting and get the tail number. Jerry poses as an airport worker named Chuck, but before he can get in to get the tail number, he's caught. Grover swoops in posing as an NTSB agent and he has the Chief take "Chuck" to be watched until his "NTSB car" can get there. When Chuck and the Chief are gone, Grover slips behind the curtain to get the tail number. Emma catches him, but Grover plays it off like she needs better security since there's riffraff wandering about. (I love when Grover uses words like riffraff. LOL)

Tani and the Terrible Storyline continue when she tells Junior that she put the gun back before she left Adam's house, but now she doesn't know what to do. Junior is all I told you not to get involved, but you're a cop and need to follow the law. (Um, what? Isn't she a member of Five-0 because the cops booted her from the academy? Doesn't she owe some loyalty to Steve? *shakes head*) Junior says that this could blow up her relationship with McG, (which is ridiculous. Neither of them are giving Steve any credit at all and assuming a whole lot.) But Junior has suggested calling in an anonymous tip to HPD and Tani has thought seriously about that.

McG goes to Carson's hotel room and finds a piece of paper taped to the bottom of the nightstand with a license plate on it. (The good old tape trick.) Emma catches him, but he denies finding anything and leaves. They all watch him go and Emma seems very annoyed that he's not taking her warnings to back off seriously. Steve goes to the office to have the license plate analyzed. It was a rental car connected to a burner phone. But guess what? With the tail number, they got a flight record that the plane was going to Lana'i and the burner phone is on Lana'i too! Steve wants to head to Lana'i, but Tani takes him aside to tell him Adam is back in town and Kono left him. The poor guy is not in a good place. Steve listens, but can't do anything because Emma shows up at the office with two guys. She found evidence that he took something from Carson's hotel room and points to the picture of the piece of paper still up on the Chatting Table screen as proof she's right. Steve says he shouldn't have done that and he's sorry, he won't do it again. But Emma isn't having it. She arrests him and the two guys cuff Steve.

Steve gets his one phone call as we see him cuffed to a conference room table. Danny is heading to the governor to get a letter of release, but Steve has him go to Adam's first. Danny pours water on a passed out Adam and mentions several times how much Adam stinks. Danny commiserates with him, tells him he knows how he feels, and that it gets better. Adam appreciates the pep talk, but he's okay. Sure, he is. Oh and by the way, since Adam's helped Five-O so much, they're offering him a job on the task force with the badge, gun, and everything. (What the what? Don't they remember how easily he gets kidnapped? How terrible he is when he's on the run and constantly getting caught? What are the requirements for being on the task force these days---just a sad face and a hard luck story?) But Adam's no dummy and probably remembers how hard it was for him to find a job, so he accepts the offer and hugs Danny.

Tani and Grover have made it to Lana'i and find the crime scene. Five dead bodies, lots of bullet holes, and an unused diaper, so the baby was there. But what happened? (And why hasn't anyone found five dead bodies yet? Don't any of these people have bosses? Family?)

Danny comes to the conference room where Steve is still cuffed to table and reports that Adam is miserable, but happy about the badge. Emma comes in and meets Danny, and he gives her the governor's letter that she has to release Steve. She still looks annoyed and reminds Steve that he is jeopardizing her case. (She doesn't seem to have much of a case, but okay.) Danny updates Steve on the address in Lana'i and the bloodbath and he gets that look in his eye. Steve marches to Emma's office, tells her what they've found and says they should work together. It's her call. She must have said yes, because right after that everyone is at the Chatting Table while Tani remotely shows them the crime scene. One of the dead bodies is ID'ed as Kalino, a guy who has a record. Grover shows up on the feed, so Steve introduces him to Emma, who recognizes him as the NTSB guy. (Haha. The look on Grover's face!) Grover found luggage under the bed that still has tags on. Apparently, Julia, the baby's mother, flew into Honolulu eight days ago and Jerry quickly pulls up the baggage claim footage so they all can see Julia hugging Kalino. But, Julia is married to a rich tech guy with terrible hair. The team decides to find him and talk to him.

TerribleHairTechGuy rushes to the hospital and sees his baby behind glass. He tells Emma and Steve that his wife Julia is mentally unstable and disappeared with the baby so he hired Carson to bring them home safe. TerribleHairTechGuy was supposed to hang tight until he heard from Carson, but the call never came. He doesn't look impressed when Steve mentions Kalino and just says that his wife knew Kalino from way before. Steve and Emma tell him not to leave the island, but he assures them he won't leave the hospital. Steve tells Emma he thinks TerribleHairTechGuy is lying through his teeth. Emma isn't so sure, but Steve lays it out for her. Carson would have scoped the house out, and he's not going to walk into a fight with five armed guys by himself. Emma thinks about it and decides that if TerribleHairTechGuy lied about Carson, well, he could be lying about everything. (Ya think?) They need to talk to the mother.

Adam is cleaning up his house and looking at pics of him and Kono on the wall with a sad face. He packs all the pictures away. Duke knocks at the door and they have a search warrant. HPD received an anonymous tip for an open murder investigation. (Hmmm...I wonder who did that?) Adam looks stunned.

Emma is on the phone trying to expand the search for Julia with Steve adding his thoughts that they should check out vet clinics, too. Emma is upping her annoyed face game from mildly annoyed to very annoyed, and she says she understands why Danny was happy to see Steve cuffed to the table since he interrupted her four times in a thirty second call. Steve protests that he wasn't interrupting, he was contributing, since this is a joint investigation. Jerry tells them that ballistics came back and Carson's gun shot everyone except Kalino. Kalino and Carson were shot by the people on the outside. (Hmmm..so their theory doesn't hold and the plot thickens.) Oh, and the shooters were on the payroll of Kent International which provides shady muscle on the island. But who hired them?

Steve gets the address for Kent International and the team goes in. They shoot everyone on the premises, including Kent. Oops. They do find Julia bound and gagged in the back room with a gunshot wound. She's anxious to know where her baby is and Steve tells her Brandon is okay and at King's hospital. (My question is, how did he know what the baby's name was?) Julia recognizes Steve's name and said Carson told her to find him if she made it out of there. (I wonder when he dropped that little gem. Was it during the hail of gunfire? When he was wounded and trying to get a baby out of there?) She asks about Carson and Steve tells her he didn't make it and wants to know what happened. She was hiding out with Kalino waiting for new passports to get as far away from her abusive husband as possible, when Carson showed up. Carson wanted to take them home, but after he heard about how TerribleHairTechGuy beat her for years, he decided to help her get away to safety, but that's when the shooting started. Carson and Kanlino tried to hold them off, but Kalino was killed and Julia shot. She ran to the back bedroom with BabyBrandon and Carson killed a bunch of shooters. After he was shot, he retreated to the back room and barricaded them in. She begged him to take the baby to safety and he did. Steve and Emma realize that TerribleHairTechGuy decided he couldn't count on Carson alone so he hired Kent to cover his bases. Emma says they're going to arrest him and calls the hospital and Julia is freaking out they let him near the baby. With good cause since we see he's killed a guard and is kidnapping the baby. Security chases him, but he gets away.

As Julia is headed to the ambulance, she tells them that TerribleHairTechGuy has a private plane. Jerry locates the private airfield and Steve heads there with the team. TerribleHair is about to board with the baby when they confront him. He keeps backing toward the plane door, and tells them he knows they won't shoot as long as he has the baby. But Junior magically appears in the plane doorway with the gun and takes the baby away. TerribleHair is in custody and we see Junior holding the baby, first with no gun, then in the next shot he has the gun right near the baby and then right after that, the gun is gone again. Weird.

They reunite BabyBrandon with his mom while Steve and Emma look on. They walk toward the elevator and banter a bit. Emma offers Steve a handshake to say goodbye, but Steve says that the least she could do is buy a drink for the man who solved her case. She agrees and they get in elevator. She says she should have left him cuffed to that table and Steve returns that it's not too late. Cute. (She sort of looks like Cath to me.)

But the episode doesn't end there! Junior calls to tell Tani that HPD got a search warrant on Adam but they didn't find anything. She seems surprised, then sees Adam waiting for her in her office. She goes to talk to him and says what can I do for you? He's upset and lays the gun on her desk with an I think you've done enough. He asks her why she put that in his house, but she says she found it there while he was away. He's pretty skeptical saying that it's just sheer coincidence that a gun he's never seen before shows up at his house right after Tani's been there and three hours later HPD shows up? Tani backpedals and says that her first thought was to turn him in, but after everything they've been through she couldn't. Adams asks straight out, You didn't tip the cops? She doesn't give him a straight answer, just says, "You saved my bro's life. That means more to me than anything you might have done." Adam says that if she didn't plant the gun or tip the cops, who did? Dun, dun, dun.

So, while the Tani storyline isn't my favorite, I really enjoyed meeting another one of Steve's friends. (although it's sad he's dead!) and unraveling the mystery of the baby.

What did you think? Did you watch?