Hawaii Five-0 Recap & Review: The One With Joan Collins

So, since I missed my review of this episode that aired a few weeks ago, I'm catching up here. This was a fun one and my author heart really enjoyed seeing situations that I know about firsthand! And  I've definitely met authors like Amanda Savage! haha

We start out with a woman driving and texting. (tsk tsk) She drops her phone and drifts while trying to get it and when she looks up again, a shirtless and very aggressive man is in the middle of the road. Luckily, she swerves and misses him, but a semi-truck hits him instead. Ew.

Steve and Danny pull up to the Hilton dressed in suits. Steve is hanging out with Danny and helping him be a bodyguard to his ex-mother in law for the day. In exchange, Danny will never mention the liver donation again. (Yay!) Steve is surprised he'd actually go for that deal, but Danny is being all tense and edgy, sure that Steve will understand once he's met the woman. Steve is pretty chill, telling Danny he's being overdramatic and that babysitting a novelist will be a cakewalk. (Haha, As a novelist myself, it might not be a cakewalk, but it would never be boring.) Steve is supposed to stand there silently the whole time and just look handsome because Danny thinks Steve will offend his ex-mother-in-law if he is himself. (What the . . .?) Joan answers the door with an "oh, no, the airline has lost my luggage," before she invites them in.

Noelani is giving the rundown on the victim hit by the semi. He was Brad Chen and only 24 years old and the semi hit him going 70 MPH. Yikes. The poor guy was on a cocktail of HGH and testosterone, but there was also some Pyrovelerone and that's what guaranteed his death. He was feeling invincible, but his heart wouldn't have been able to take that drug much longer. But who put the Pyrovelerone in with his steroids? Dun, dun, dun.

AmandaJoan is opening champagne, bemoaning that she had to fly commercial while she serves Steve a glass with nothing for PoorSadDanny who is assuring AmandaJoan that they'll find out what happened to her seven suitcases. (Someday, when I go to Hawaii, I think I might need seven suitcases, too, because all my friends will want to hide in the luggage.) AmandaJoan is mostly upset because now she has nothing to wear and what she's wearing isn't good enough. But does Hawaii have anything suitable? Steve is quietly drinking his champagne when Joan calls him out for not saying much. Danny gives him the nod that he can speak and he tells her that he works with Danny. She smiles and says he can call her Mandy. (Meow.)  She quizzes Steve on his qualifications and Steve assures her he can handle himself. (I'll bet.) Danny throws in that he's an ex-Navy SEAL (can you be an ex-Navy SEAL? Maybe former?) and head of Five-0, so he can handle some crazy fans. (You'd be surprised at the level of crazy some authors get for real) Joan is impressed he was a Navy SEAL, but needs to get going on the shopping trip. Oh, and since Danny's car isn't suitable, she needs a limo. This hurts Danny's feelings and as soon as she leaves the room he asks Steve's opinion of her. Steve thinks she's great and loves her. PoorSadDanny is pouting that he's known her twenty years and doesn't get to call her Mandy and he didn't get any of the expensive champagne. Steve tells him to relax and gets up when Amanda comes back in. He even offers to hold Mandy's purse and throws out some Italian phrase that completely charms her (and us.)

Grover is out interviewing FlatBrad's dad. He's sad, says that his son loved baseball, had a scholarship, and was on his way to the majors when he tore his rotator cuff and rehab wasn't getting him back to one hundred percent. Dad didn't know son was doing steroids, but doesn't seem surprised. Baseball was everything. He's also surprised that they're treating it like a homicide since he can't think of anyone who would want to target his son. Tunior is at the guy's apartment and find some empty vials labeled with days of the week and some bags of blood in the fridge. Ew.

Steve is relaxed, carrying all of Mandy's bags, saying that he thought shop til you drop was an expression but he may collapse. (Haha I guess Cath wasn't a shop 'til you drop kind of girl.) Danny is still pretty tense, pouting that Mandy took Steve's fashion advice. Steve is all, well after four glasses of champagne I'm enjoying the ride. (LOL Have we ever seen this side of Steve?) They all get in the limo and Mandy pulls out a pair of cufflinks she bought for Steve as a gift since he came of his own volition and Danny came out of obligation. Steve is surprised and thankful and asks her where she gets her book ideas. (Honestly that is the one question every author gets asked.). She tells him they just come to her and she just had one about a handsome police detective who risks everything for the love of an older woman. One who's not that old actually. (Haha, she's so smitten.) Steve assures her he would read that. Danny throws in that Steve can't read anything but a cereal box. (He really sounds jealous here and I sort of feel bad for him.) Mandy tells the story of the high hopes she had for Rachel, who once dated a minor member of the royal family, but instead, poor Mandy ended up in Hackensack in a white limo with a fish tank, instead of in an English cathedral with a horse-drawn carriage for her daughter's wedding. Danny finally smiles at that. When they finally make it to the book signing, she's introduced and walks down the line of people waiting to meet her, acting happy to be there, but in reality she wants Steve and Danny to keep the mouth breathers away from her and don't them paw her since she hates being touched. Oh and when she says the code word to get her out of there. Steve asks her what's the code word? Well, it's get me out of here. (For some reason the look on Steve's face was so hilarious to me, like he was totally looking for a cool code word.)

The lab results on FlatBrad came back and the blood in the fridge is his, but since there wasn't any increased blood oxygenation in it, he wasn't reinjecting his own plasma. So what was he doing with it? Jerry throws in that he could be a part of the vampire community and isn't joking. Yikes. They did find that the silver-topped vials of steroids were the mix of steroids and testosterone. The gold-topped ones had the Prevolabadstuff in it. And hey, if the gold-topped vials are circulating, there could be a bad batch of bad product out there. What if this turns into a full blow public health crisis? Everyone is all amped up to find the source of the drugs before more people die.

So what do we do first? Adam finds out FlatBrad is a gym rat which is also where he probably got his supply. For some unknown reason they can't go in flashing their badges so they send Tunior in undercover. (*shakes head* they need a lot more practice being undercover) Junior immediately goes around telling everyone he's in the market for juice, but no one will tell him where they get theirs. (Sheesh.) Tani is supposedly an instructor, but when she's asked to fill in for a booty boost class can only produce some cringe-worthy moves. (I guess we needed some comic relief.) Tani does find out that Derek is deep in the roid scene and Junior approaches him to ask straight out for product. Derek says meet me out back. (This isn't going to end well.)

Steve and Danny are standing behind Amanda while she signs books and PoorSadDanny is brooding over how harshly Amanda remembers the wedding. Steve tries to tell him that it's an English thing, since they're notoriously stuck up with a cutting humor. Danny doesn't think that it's a cultural difference, she just doesn't like him. He tells the story how he flew all the way to England to get her blessing before he proposed to Rachel and Amanda refused to give it and told him that she would tell Rachel the same thing she tells her agent, "never take the first offer." Rachel told him to blow it off and they got married anyways, but when things got rocky, Rachel had someone in her ear telling her he wasn't good enough and then he started to believe that. Steve stops him there and points out that he's wallowing in some self-pity and reassures him that he's more than adequate. (I was surprised that more than adequate was the best Steve could do, but okay.)

Junior meets three guys out in the parking lot who are mad that he came into the gym asking for product on the first day. He's going to ruin the sweet situation they have! They try to give him a beatdown, but he takes them all down. (Yay for Junior!) Then he arrests them and asks for the name of the dealer. Meanwhile, Jerry has gotten the club's camera footage and they see FlatBrad stealing a master key and going into the locker room. He only had a short window of time to steal the steroids, so he just grabbed the gold top vials and the silver and dosed himself by accident. So whoever he stole the drugs from was the target or he's the one peddling this new poisoned steroid. Junior gets the name of the dealer and it's Moses! They get an address, but when they go there, his house is surrounded by police and he's dead in the yard that is strewn with household items. Apparently he was in an extremely agitated state when police got there, threw any cop that got near him to the ground, through a window, and on a car. The police tased him and then shot him, but he didn't die from that, his heart collapsed from massive cardiac arrest. They go into his house and find a similar batch of gold topped toxic steroids as FlatBrad, but since Moses is dead, they're no closer to finding out who's behind all this.

The team finds Moses' fridge full of blood, but it's other people's who don't have the same blood type, so what is all this blood for? Well, Matt Zinner, a steroid user from the gym, has the answers. Moses gave him cash to bring in the blood of healthy, fit guys between 18-25 and he got cash and steroids in return. He brought FlatBrad in a few months ago, but Moses just barely cut him off a few weeks ago and told him his platelet count was off. That's why Brad had to steal out of Moses' locker. But the silver topped vials were the normal steroids and the gold were the toxic ones, which only Moses was supposed to have, so poor Moses was obviously the intended target and FlatBrad got dosed by accident.

Amanda's book signing is over and she's done smiling for the month (your cheeks really do hurt after a while!) and she's hungry. Danny has made reservations at three of the most expensive restaurants on the island, but Amanda asks Steve where he would take a woman hungry to explore the local flavors. Haha. (Great double entendre delivery here, too) Steve takes her to the shrimp truck and while Danny is making sure that everything is fresh, Steve is telling Amanda that Danny is the best of the best. Amanda doesn't want to talk about Danny, though and asks Steve to tell her about himself. Flippa reveals to Danny that he knows who Amanda Savage is and loves her books. Danny is surprised that he reads romance novels, but offers to get him an autograph. (Awww. You'd be surprised at how many people read romance novels, even some you'd never guess! I could tell you stories . . .) Danny brings the food to the table and Amanda thanks Steve for bringing her. PoorSadDanny is upset that if he had brought her here, she would have said it was no good and cheap, that he can't win with her. She tells him he's being oversensitive and he tells her and Steve to enjoy and he walks off. (Wow. I'm just sad he's so insecure about himself and showing it here.)

Back at the Chatting Table Jerry tells everyone that Moses was a high school dropout, but suddenly started making thousands of dollars a month trading plasma for steroids and cash. He's trying to figure out who was supplying it, but Tunior found out the biomedical carrier making pickups at Moses' house and it leads them to Dr. Warner, who promises his clients cutting edge life enhancement with bio regenerative therapies. He injects the blood of young men into rich clients seeking the elixir of life. Ew. But if Dr. Warner was supplying the steroids and getting the blood, why would he kill his best supplier? Well, from his financials, Moses was starting to demand higher payment and Warner couldn't go to the cops, so he murdered Moses. They go to the clinic and the doctor runs away with Tani in pursuit. He catches her from behind, though, and injects her with something. She loses consciousness and Junior and Adam find her as she starts having seizures. Junior starts CPR (not even close to how it should be done in real life) and Adam gets a portable AED defibrillator to bring her back since she is flatlining. For good measure they shoot her with adrenaline and she wakes up! Whew. Grover goes after the doctor and shoots him in the leg, like he doesn't have time for any more shenanigans. Case solved!

Danny is in a bar, waiting for Steve, but Amanda appears instead and sits down. She stole Steve's phone and acted like him so Danny would agree to meet her, since she knew he would say no if she asked. He seems surprised, and she goes on to tell him that it's true, she didn't like him, but not because he was a poor American, it was because he reminded her of where she came from. She grew up with three siblings in a two bedroom house. Dad was honest and hard-working and told his kids he loved them every day, which Danny does as well, but it wasn't enough for her, she wanted something more. She got married so many times trying to find a man as good as her father, but never could and was jealous when Rachel found that with Danny. But the real bombshell is that she really only came to Hawaii to ask him if he cares about Rachel and if he does, don't toy with her affections. Apparently, Rachel and Danny have been seeing each other a lot and she's talking about him all the time, but Amanda doesn't want to see her daughter hurt again. So will Danny do right by her? He says he will. So they toast to that with champagne. (I have so many questions about this, but my Danchel heart is happy. I love the chemistry they've always had and I'm glad they're repairing their relationship. So cute!)

Did you watch? What did you think?