Hawaii Five-O Recap & Review---The Thanksgiving Episode

Can you believe it's nearly Thanksgiving? Where has this year gone? Thankfully, we have a new Hawaii Five-0 ep to watch!

The show starts out sort of dark with a man falling down some stairs and a very large safe falling on him and smushing him. Ew.

Then we cut to Grover in the shower singing, until his brother dumps a bucket of ice on him and his screams wake the family. His mother (played by Gladys Knight. Love her!) comes in to give her boys an earful. Louis Gossett Jr. also pokes his head in the bathroom and he's playing Lou's dad. So fun to see them!

Shifting over to the annual Thanksgiving football game, it's McG's team vs. Tani's team this year. There's some good-natured trash talking and we find out that Noelani is dating a coach. (So cute!) Tani is pretty intense and her brother tells Junior that she was only this competitive until she was eight and then no one would play with her. (A little sad, but maybe understandable. She was really competitive!) On the last drive, Tani passes to Junior, but he was out of bounds when he caught it so it doesn't count and the game ends up being a tie.

Steve gets a call and the team heads out to the house where the smushed guy is dead laying on the floor in a pool of blood. Duke tells him that the homeowners are out of town and the thief took the giant safe out of bedroom and tried to bring it down the stairs himself. Oh and SmushedThief has priors and a day job doing a shuttle service. (So he knows when the rich people are out of town.) HPD finds drill marks and shavings on body, which tells them that someone else drilled the safe while it was on top of the dead guy. (Double ew.)

Grover tells Renee how hard it is to have his brother Percy there. He goes down to cook and Percy is cooking his specialty as well. He stands there berating Lou and calling him fat, chubster, and says he's as big as a house. (It's uncomfortable for sure.) The situation escalates when Percy throws dough at Lou and it starts a food fight. Gladys and Louis are cuddling and kissing when they hear the food fight. Mom tells her boys to clean up and points out that it's not funny for grown men to do this. (Agreed!)

Adam is looking through the safe and noticing that there's a ton of valuables still left in it. Tani adds that she found a bag of jewelry and a laptop upstairs. So if the SmushedThief didn't want that, he must have been after something specific. But then Tani adds another angle and says she thinks there were two thieves since she found another point of entry.

Grover serves his omelets and Percy brings out his pastries, which everyone loves. Some in the family think Percy should open his own bakery and Percy has actually met with a bank for a business loan. Dad is skeptical since Percy doesn't get out of bed until two in the afternoon, but Mom is excited and congratulates him. Grover is annoyed, so Renee sends him to pick up the turkey. Percy goes with him to pick out his ingredients and throws in a few more names for his brother like dum-dum, chub chub, and fat. (How old is this older brother? Grover has to be mid-to late forties I would guess. This seems so beneath a grown man, an older brother, who is possibly nearing fifty.) Percy wants to cook dinner and so does Grover, so they decide to each cook a turkey and let the family decide who is the better cook. If Grover wins, then Percy can't come back to the Grover house for two years. If Percy wins, Grover has to admit he's the better cook and co-sign on a loan for his bakery. Percy goads Grover and asks if he's scared like he used to be when bullies chased him, so Grover immediately takes the bet and Percy calls him fat one more time for good measure. (So uncomfortable with all the fat-shaming. Ugh.)

Grover ends up paying for his brother's groceries and then mocks him in front of the cashier and says he's $300 closer to getting rid of him. (Why? Why make Grover look bad?) The whole island is sold out of turkeys, but Grover calls in Kamekona, who shows up with a live turkey. For $400 he'll kill, clean, and dress it, so Grover shells out even more cash. (I was surprised he carries that much cash on him!)

Louis is on the couch with his grandson watching TV and Gladys has him put on his glasses (so he doesn't slice off his pinky) and go into kitchen to peel potatoes. It was such a cute scene! Will is helping him peel and comments that it's obvious his grandpa is scared of his grandma. It's okay, though, because his dad is scared of his mom, too, and everyone knows it, even his friends at work. Louis has a heart to heart where he tells Will that Grandma spends every waking hour taking care of them and still finds time to cook dinner every night after a fifty hour work week. Will's mom spends every waking hour taking care of Will, his dad, and his sister even with everything on her plate, so they spend every waking hour of our lives trying to be worthy of those women. Yeah, they're scared, scared of not measuring up and someday Will will be lucky enough to find a women he's scared of. (*sniff* Easily the best scene of the show.)

Back at the Chatting Table, Jerry has spoken with the homeowners and the only thing missing is a Stan Musial baseball card. Tani's never heard of him. (Me, neither.) But it must be valuable since it was insured for over 60K. Since the thief is going to want to unload it and there's only a couple of places that will take it, they should be able to locate it easily. Jerry and Adam go to a collectible shop and Jerry wants to dress in a disguise as a southern gentleman. Adam suggests that Jerry should just be himself and Adam will be Jerry's rich friend from Japan who wants to take some baseball memorabilia home. They approach the guy who's closing up the store, he says sure, come on in, but then locks them out and goes out the back. Adam gives chase and takes him down just like Steve would have done. (We haven't had a flying Steve takedown in a while. I miss those. Also, it's weird Adam is on the task force now and doing all the task force-y things.)

Grover is chopping veggies and cooking when Renee comes in. He sings to her, they dance and kiss, she talks about how happy he looks while cooking. (It was sweet and very believable.) Grover tells Renee about the bet with Percy and Renee is upset and disappointed. She doesn't want anything to do with that.

Jerry and Adam come back to the Chatting Table with the stolen card and say the collector bought it for ten grand, but all he could give them was a basic physical description of the seller. Tunior found footage of a guy buying drill bits and drills the morning of the robbery so he's obviously the guilty party. Since the homeowner is landing soon, Tunior is going to go show him the footage and see if he recognizes the guy.

Renee, Will, Louis, and Gladys are all on the porch looking at old pictures of Lou and Percy. They comment on how big Lou was and they mention that the kids at school started calling him chubster (and his brother continued it! Oy.) The bullies would chase him and he would be yelling for Percy because he knew his brother would stick up for him. Grover is listening in on the convo when he smells smoke. His turkey is burned. Grover is mad and throws his towel on the stove before he goes after Percy who is cooking outside. He shoves Percy and accuses him of turning the heat up on his bird, which he denies. Lou forges ahead and says Percy is a liar who has been two steps away from jail since he could crawl. Lou throws a punch and the fight is on. The family comes to witness this spectacle with disappointment on everyone's face. Grover then notices smoke billowing from the house and says to call the fire department.

Tunior shows the homeowner the grainy image and tell him that whoever stole the card knew it was there. He recognizes the drill bit buyer guy as someone who worked at a homeless shelter that he used to donate to. His name was Patrick and he knew the card was there. Tunior goes to the homeless shelter and Patrick straight up admits he stole the card so he could feed the homeless on Thanksgiving. Apparently the homeowner decided not to donate for the Thanksgiving meal this year, and didn't care people would go hungry, so Patrick went all Robin Hood and decided to steal the card. The thing that was so horrific about this crime, though, was the blatant disregard for the DEAD MAN underneath the safe he drilled that card out of. And then Tunior give him a sympathetic look and tell him they won't arrest him until after his shift. But that's not all! They'll even help him serve, with big smiles all around. (Honestly I was appalled. What message are we sending here? Patrick showed no mercy to the man killed by the safe. Patrick is a thief. But since he did something charitable, then he gets some special treatment? *shakes head*)

The kitchen fire is put out, started by a greasy towel on the stovetop, but thankfully was contained to the kitchen. Louis admits that he had a few too many cocktails and thought the turkey would cook faster if he turned the heat up. So it wasn't Percy after all. Lou goes to apologize to Percy for the way he's been treating him and the horrible things he said. Percy apologizes as well and mentions that he's kept a scrapbook of all of Grover's achievements and wanted to tell him, but he couldn't get it out. (It bothers me that most of Percy's insults were about Grover's physical appearance, though. It was not normal at all.) They both cry and hug and Grover admits that Percy is the reason he became a cop so he could protect people who couldn't protect themselves. (Except that Percy became the bully he'd once saved Lou from, but okay.) They're saying I love yous and hugging while the family looks on. Unfortunately, now they don't have a turkey, but Lou takes them to the restaurant where the rest of the crew has gathered.

Tani tells Junior that her goal is to keep pace with him, but he's ducking out early to go to his family dinner to start learning how to be in the same room as his dad. They drink to dysfunctional family and holidays that force us to spend time with them. Adam is looking sadly at a pic of him and Kono and Jerry comes over to ask how's he's holding up on his first Thanksgiving without Kono. He says it's hard, but he's thankful for what he has. Steve signs over the restaurant to Kamekona (Danny signed it before he left for Jersey) and says that they almost broke even, to which Kame says in this business we call that success. (I'm just glad the Steve owning a restaurant storyline is OVAH!) Grover talks to Kamekona about a job for Percy as a baker. He pulls a pastry sample in a baggie from his pants pocket, (ew) which Kamekona tastes and hires Percy on the spot. Percy and Grover hug again with another I love you, then we pan to show everyone happy and eating with a Happy Thanksgiving wish from Steve.

So, we don't find out anything else about the man who was smushed by the safe. Lou and Percy look terrible for most of the show (and I normally like Lou's character, but this was over the top.) A man is given sympathy after stealing and showing no mercy to another human, all because he used his ill-gotten gains to feed the homeless. But, on the good side, we got Steve out of the restaurant business, we saw Gladys and Louis, and got a nice Thanksgiving wish from Steve.

What did you think? Did you watch?