Hawaii Five-0 Recap & Review: The One With a Lot of Talking & A Shirt Thief

I got a little behind for the last few Hawaii Five-0 reviews, so I'm hoping to catch up this week. Honestly, you didn't miss much. This one was a bit on the boring side for me.

This one starts out with Junior helping his dad repair that deck. (It's a pretty small deck, but they've been working on it for a really long time.) The dad is listening to some musical theater and reminiscing about how he joined chorus to meet Junior's mom. *yawn* The dad then finds his daughter's old bracelet beneath a board and just shoves it in his pocket. Junior gets a call and has to leave. (Please let this episode get better.)

Steve and Junior arrive at the crime scene of a window washer who fell to his death. Duke gives them the rundown that the dead window washer's (DWW) rigging was cut and all he had in his pocket was a set of keys. Tani finds out the company that was on the guy's shirt is a fake. They stand around speculating that maybe he saw something he shouldn't have or maybe someone had a beef and made it look like an accident. Just what was the guy doing up there? (And why is an elite task force taking this case? Poor incompetent HPD)

Back at the Chatting Table the keys in the DWW's hand matched the keys to a van parked nearby registered to James Cooper. James is a corporate consultant based out of Miami, who hasn't been there for a year and doesn't have a local address. Grover says he's been to Boston, Atlanta, London and Costa Rica recently, but maybe since he's a consultant he's meeting with clients or you know, casing places for a robbery. Steve tells Junior to check the tenants of the building to see who would be obvious targets and to ask HPD robbery if there have been any high end burglaries.

Tani calls and she's on the roof of the building where DWW fell. Jerry has a crime scene modeling drone and since the roof is made of white membrane, they can distinguish footprints. Oh, and there's fresh shell casings up there, too, from two different guns. They 3-D map the roof and lift off the maintenance man footprints and match the victim's. Looks like DWW was on the roof when two shooters open fire so he runs to his rig and goes over the edge, but the attackers cut the rig line. Then the team sees a smaller, probably female, set of prints. She got away using the fire escape so they have a witness to the crime that they need to find before the killers get to her, too.

Back at the M.E. office, we get the rundown on DWW. He had a non-fatal bullet wound to his shoulder and end stage bladder cancer. Also, his fingerprints were burned off with acid. Ew. Jump back to the Chatting Table, where Jerry has cloned the garage door clicker in DWW's glove box and narrowed the search area to a half mile radius. Tunior and Jerry are going to help HPD with the canvass. (Seriously can we blow something up? Have a chase scene? Anything but more talking.)

Adam calls Grover and he needs help with a body. Good. (Maybe his case can be more exciting than the DWW!) But no. It's just a shirtless man who has been strangled to death. He's still got his slacks and shoes on, but his wallet is gone. Grover randomly finds a bamboo button near the body so they go to an aloha shirt shop where the owner tells them it came off a vintage 1950s royal Hawaiian shirt worth a couple grand. So, to amp up the excitement, they're going to wait and see if the perp shows up at the store to try and unload it. (If you drink caffeinated beverages, go get one right now to get you through the rest of the ep.)

Tunior are driving around pointing the clicker at different garages. Since Junior is quiet, Tani starts asking him what's wrong. Junior tells her about finding his sister's bracelet that she lost when she was ten and how his dad never cried after she died. Tani is all, wow, someone who shares your DNA doesn't want to share his feelings? Then they sort of awkwardly laugh. But then they find out that  Pua found the right garage and they head over there. He's been guarding it since the female might still be in there. Tunior moves in and set off a paintball booby trap. (It's probably the most exciting thing that happens this episode.) They find a bunch of painting supplies, stencils, exacto knives and art. DWW was a graffiti artist. So they call in Hirsch who identifies DWW from a panda motif. He is none other than the anonymous, and yet legendary, street artist Brickz. Tunior doesn't know who that is, but it's one of the top street artists in the world (who is apparently rich. Who knew there was money in that?) and it's even more awesome because no one knows who he is except his art dealer Sterling Jacobs. Back at the Chatting Table AGAIN we get the rundown on Brickz pieces that started appearing in Honolulu, but as soon as they went up, they got defaced with horrible sayings like Haole Go Home. Hirsch tells them that crossing out someone's work is basically a death threat, so if they find out who defaced the art, they'll find the killer. So, Hirsch goes with Tani and he uses the stencils from the warehouse to make a Brickz piece and watch it after Hirsch puts the image on his Instagram.  (Is watching paint dry the symbolism for this ep?)

Back to the stolen shirt story. A guy comes in with the shirt wanting to know how much he can get for it and Grover shows him his badge and says 30 to life. The ShirtThief immediately caves and says the ShirtlessGuy was already dead when he stole his clothing. Apparently, they were both at a poker game and ShirtlessGuy won twenty grand and was bragging about how much his shirt was worth before he headed home. ShirtThief went out the back and found Shirtless Guy dead, his roll already gone, so ShirtThief decided to just take what he could get. Yuck.

Jerry is trying to get past the encryption and Junior finds some pictures that could help identify the mysterious female.

Tani and Hirsch are waiting for the defacers and Hirsch is droning on about how he's not talented, he's just a good forger who wasn't happy no matter how many people he fooled, he was just a phony. Now that he cleans up crime scenes, though, he can look at himself in the mirror every day. Two goofy guys come along and start spray painting the graffiti. Tani sends HPD in, but as usual, they can't catch a cold, so Tani has to run one guy down and clothesline him, while Hirsch whacks the other one with a baton. Tani questions them and they said they got paid really well to deface the Brickz art with paint that washes off. Oh, and the guy who paid them was Sterling Jacobs. Good old Sterling knows his client is going to die soon, and that the art will skyrocket after his death, so he's taking them off the market. Maybe Brickz found out about it and things got heated and Sterling killed his client. Steve and Tani head over to Sterling's rental house (yay, a Steve in the field scene!) Unfortunately, Sterling is dead and has been gruesomely tortured with burns and torn out fingernails. The killers were obviously after Brickz' identity.

They finally get an ID on the female who was on the roof with DWW. She's a Nicaraguan national wanted for terrorism named Teresa Estrada. Jerry is able to break into the encryption on the computer using a homemade fingerprint from the keyboard and they all stand around the Chatting Table AGAIN and watch a video of Teresa talking about her son being kidnapped from his dorm and murdered for his political views. Good old Brickz wanted the world to hear Teresa's story, so they were making a documentary about her since she's a dissident artist who makes street art in Nicaragua to protest the government and carry on the fight of her son. She's made some powerful enemies, including Arturo Grenara, a top official in the Nicaraguan Directorate of Intelligence Affairs who wants to be president. It looks like Brickz went to Costa Rica, right next door to Nicaragua, and smuggled her out of the country, so Grenara had to send a team out to Hawaii to track her down. Tani asks why the strike team didn't just take Teresa out on the roof, but Steve thinks Grenara wants to bring her in alive to discredit and diminish her with a show trial, or a long slow death in a dark cell. They still have a chance to intercept her before they take her off Oahu, so Steve calls on Joe White's agency friend down in Nicaragua.

Adam and Grover go to the poker game, show their badges and flash ShirtlessGuy's picture. His name was Earl Whittaker, and he cheated on his taxes, always bragged about not claiming his winnings and wasn't faithful to his ex-wife or girlfriend. (Get some toothpicks in case you need to prop your eyelids open.)

The CIA intercepted a live video signal transmitting from Oahu to Directorate of Intelligence offices and it's the remote interrogation of Teresa! The strike team knew every cop on the island was after Teresa so they decided to play it safe, get her confession now, and then kill her. Teresa's talking about her guilt and crimes in a coerced testimony with guns pointed at her head. Tani notices some art on the wall behind her, Hirsch identifies it as a prominent local artist's work, and they find out who bought that piece and head over to the house. We get to see and hear the short gunfight during Teresa's questioning and Tani leading her away. Grenara asks who are you and Steve leans down into the camera and says, Five-0, case dismissed. Burn!

Grover and Adam go to Earl's ex-wife's house. Looks like she received a text around her ex's time of death and bribed the dealer of the poker game to let her know if Earl started winning big. She says she was home last night, but they want to talk to her boyfriend. She says she hasn't seen him, (she's a terrible liar) and the idiot boyfriend loudly breaks a window in the back and Adam catches and cuffs him.

Hirsch meets Tani at shrimp truck, though it's not a date. Tani tells him Teresa is getting asylum along with her grandma. Oh and Brickz left a chunk of money to start a foundation for dissident artists and Tani put Hirsch's name in as someone who could run it. Hirsch is surprised, but Tani gives him a pep talk that he can do this. Hirsch says that if this isn't a date can we plan one for tomorrow?  *groan*

We end back at Junior's dad's house. Dad is in his little girl's old room staring at the bracelet and remembering how happy she was when he gave it to her. Her voice echoes saying Love you so much daddy. Dad has been drinking and is emotional and crying when Junior comes in and helps him to his bedroom. Junior tenderly takes off dad's prosthetic leg and tells him "I got you, Dad." Dad cries on Junior's shoulder and they hug. Sad!

Not a lot of action in this one and a lot of talking. But a good end scene and Steve did appear in tac gear. What did you think? Did you watch?