Hawaii Five-0---The Halloween Episode

I can hardly believe it's time for the spooky Hawaii Five-0 Halloween episode! Not generally one of my favorites because I'm a scaredy-cat, but that's only because this episode is usually pretty tension-filled. This one was no exception!

We start out with kids trick or treating at an older woman's house until two grown men are at the door, one pulls a gun and shoots her. So sad! They quickly go inside and head down to the basement where they break into a heavily locked vault. Only there aren't any valuables inside, merely a bed and a cabinet/dresser?---and something else that bursts out and attacks them! Blood everywhere. Ew.

Cue music.

Trick-or-treaters are at Steve's house and none of them are afraid of his "scary" mask or his lion dog. (Eddie just stretches out on the floor and shows his belly, haha. He was a cute lion, though!) Steve gets a call from Noelani who is dressed as Elton John asking if he's coming to the party. He says he'll be there soon, after he's handed out a little candy. (I love that he's thinking about the little kids!) But wait! Noelani hands the phone to a mystery person, but Steve guesses right away it's Max. Yay! Max is enjoying Africa, but he misses Hawaii and the camaraderie of the Five-0 team. Steve tells him he'll see him when he gets to the party. While at the party, Max is greeting Flippa while Quinn and Tani are talking about Junior. Quinn tries to ask Tani where Junior is and she denies knowing. When Quinn asks what Tunior are to each other, Tani doesn't know that, either. (Hmmm... ) They go over to meet Max (who is dressed as John Wick 2) and we also get to meet Max's son who is dressed as John Wick 3! He's a cutie. Quinn is dressed as Maverick from Top Gun and Tani points out that Top Gun is McG's favorite movie, so her costume is fitting since they were basically separated at birth. (Honestly, they compare every single woman to McG and try to portray them as awesome as he is. I was sort of hoping Quinn wouldn't get that treatment and be her own woman. Oh well.) We get a scene of Flippa's mom freaking out when Tani tells her that friends sometimes get a ten percent discount at the shrimp truck, but the ohana discount is only five percent. (Yawn)

But the shrimp truck talk is curtailed when Quinn gets a call and they caught a case! Max goes along, too, and Grover and Adam are very happy to see him. (The team all did a super quick change before they got there since they're in civilian clothes and not costumes. I guess professional is best, but it would have been funny to see Maverik, John Wick, and a mermaid show up to the crime scene) Max's son stayed behind with Noelani for trick or treating, so Grover doesn't get to meet Max's son yet, but they do let Max accompany them into the crime scene. First stop: the older woman who was shot was named Edith. Trick or treaters found her body because her door was wide open. Second stop: the basement and victim Ralph, the guy who shot Edith. Poor Ralph was in prison for B&E and had only been out for a month. The team opens the vault and see the cell bedroom and realize Edith was keeping someone locked in that room. PoorDumbRalph was probably thinking he'd get a big score and instead got killed by whoever was trapped in there instead. Max notices the guy's left and right jaw injuries, crushed torso, and extensive soft tissue damage which is a rare way to kill someone. And Ralph must have had an accomplice since there are fresh black scuff marks on the floor and Ralph has beige soles and Edith was barefoot. Since it took six inches of reinforced steel to keep whatever was inside that room locked up, it might not be human. But whatever it is, it's out now. And then we cut to a guy being chased by a growling shadow. After running in such a panic, he backs onto a road and is hit by a car while the shadow watches.

Kamekona is giving MaxJr some trick or treating advice on bringing empty bags to show so people feel bad for you and give you more candy to fill it up. Noelani gets a call and has Flippa turn on the TV to watch a submerged car being brought to the surface with a missing girl's body in it that was found in the trunk. The missing girl vanished two months ago after leaving a frat party and now with the body discovery, Noelani has to go in to work. It's okay, though, Flippa will take MaxJr trick or treating. Noelani also changes out of her costume pretty quick and starts the autopsy. (They do show the girl's body, but after being in the water for two months, she would not look that good. I had to research it once for a book and water does terrible things to a dead body.) Before Noelani can really start, the lights go out and there aren't any backup lights. Creepy! She hears a noise and goes to investigate. (And doesn't take a weapon! At least take the scalpel.) She's walking around in the darkened halls with the scary music when a security guard comes around the corner and scares her. He says the circuit breaker was tripped and when they get the lights turned back on, they find the girl's body is gone. Dun, dun, dun.

Steve gets called down to Noelani's office on his way to Edith's house. Duke tells him that whoever took the body didn't just trip the power, but took out the cameras. And there's no sign of them. The building is on lockdown, but we all know how well lockdowns and perimeters are when the HPD is in charge. Everyone has been following the story since the girl disappeared so her killers must have been, too, and decided now that the body had been found they had to take it before it showed any incriminating evidence. Duke tells Steve that Noelani is taking it hard so he goes in to talk to her. Apparently, Lana's parents were there two hours ago to ID the body and really wanted answers, and sadly, Lana's sister can hardly get out of bed, and now Noelani had to call and tell them their daughter/sister is missing again! And it's her fault! She should have stayed with the body! Steve looks confused and tells her this has nothing to do with Noelani (I agree! It's so emotional and weird!) The responsibility belongs to the person who took the body, not Noelani. Steve assures her they'll find Lana's body and bring her back.

Adam and Quinn have a moment where she says she doesn't want to be awkward new coworkers that are polite and trying to laugh at each other's terrible jokes. Adam agrees and says they'll just jump to being rude and tired of each other coworkers. (Okay, whatever. As if Adam could ever be rude.)

Chatting Table Roundup Report: Adam reports that HPD is on alert, but it's hard to issue a BOLO with no description. Quinn called the dead thief's parole officer who told them Ralph was working as a window installer and his friend replaced a window at Edith's place. So that's how they saw they vault and thought it was something valuable. HPD is tracking the coworker down. (HPD is very busy tonight!) Lou's report is that Edith was eccentric and her neighbors say she hardly ever left the house. Quinn looks up her public records and after high school graduation Edith went off the grid then showed up twenty years later on utility bills. Where was she for twenty years? Lou throws in that he's going to stay home on Halloween from now on and go full old man Grover. (Ha! Danny would probably say the same. If we ever saw the guy anymore.)

Tani is poking around Edith's house and finds books on exorcisms and deliverance prayers, as well as a crucifix and bible. Max gives her a scare when he comes in with a warning about touching other people's clothes because there could be a moth infestation and eggs are easily transferable by touch. Since Edith was apparently a former nun, Tani thinks they might have a Rosemary's baby situation on their hands where she got exiled from the convent because of her pregnancy and gave birth to the son of Satan. Lou is pretty much rolling his eyes because for him, Edith was just a crazy old bird who abducted some guy and locked him away in her fruit cellar. Only he eviscerated poor Ralph, but yeah, thirty years in a vault would give anyone anger issues. TaniLou go to the convent but the nuns don't know anything and the creepy Mother Superior who has two different colored eyes (one is almost glowing blue) shepherds her nun friend away from TaniLou. Tani is sticking to her Edith-was-pregnant theory and Lou thinks that maybe Edith was exiled for her pregnancy then punished the child his entire life because of it. But before they can put on their super sad faces, Quinn calls to inform them that HPD located Ralph's accomplice---he was hit by a car! And they put him on a psych hold because he can't stop screaming about being chased in the woods by a demon. Creepy.

Duke is running down the Lana case for Steve and Junior. She never made it home after she left a frat party after 11 p.m. It was a terribly attended frat party, though, since only thirty-five people were there and HPD got statements from them all. Duke had three guys from the mainland who were members of the frat throwing the party that he liked for the crime. Privileged, entitled, and spoiled Todd Hughes, Remy Mitchell, and Zac Wyatt. They were seen talking to Lana, but the interest wasn't mutual and they left the party thirty minutes after she did. The problem is, they have alibis. Steve asked if any of them were on the sailing team because the ropes on Lana's hands are nautical knots. Junior quickly pulls up an Oahu State Sailing Team pic and Todd Hughes is front and center. They go to Todd's house, but he's dead on the floor with the initials LN written in blood beside his body.

Noelani comes to the crime scene and finds a long, brunette hair on his body, so maybe he was at the morgue helping to steal Lana's body! She also tells Junior and McG that Todd couldn't have written the initials as a dying act because he died instantly from blunt force trauma. So Duke wasn't the only one who thought Todd participated in Lana's death and the killer is making a statement, killing him for his role. LittleMax is with Flippa talking about how he's worried about what to do if the people handing out the candy ask him for a trick and all he can do is solve puzzles. Flippa says they'll just move on to the next house, but while he takes a call from his mom LittleMax runs off with some other kids.

Junior and McG split up to find the last two suspects in Lana's murder. They're too late. Zac isn't home and Remy Mitchell's dead. His hands and feet were bound and the place has blood everywhere with the initials LN written on the walls and floor. The killer is mirroring Lana's death by beating Todd, binding Remy, so they need to find Zac before the killer finishes their performance art and drowns him.

Back at the Chatting Table   People at a Halloween party called the cops when they saw something weird on their home cameras. It could be their guy from the vault, casing the house to find somewhere to lay low, so Quinn and Tani go check it out. Max also has news; Edith had a hysterectomy and her pelvic bone reveals that she's never been pregnant, so it wasn't her child in the vault. It was a human being held in there, however, but no DNA matches in the system, so Max is going to check for genetic mutations, because, well, we don't know why. (And does Max still have access and privileges to do that checking? Where is the ME in charge of the case?) They have reached the conclusion that whoever this is, he has genetic mutations and just because he's different doesn't mean he's dangerous. (Um, what about Ralph? He's dead and VaultMan killed him!) At the Halloween partygoers house the fridge is open and Tani makes a joke about their guy being hangry and the owners being out of town. (Didn't we just hear they were at a party? LOL) They hear a crash upstairs and go to investigate. Quinn finds their guy and gets a good look at him before he knocks her down and runs away. Tani wings him in the shoulder before he gets away.

HPD is on the case and has all available units out looking for guy! And now they have a blood trail too. Quinn describes him as a Caucasian, well over six feet tall and was asymmetrical, like things had grown at different rates, oh, and his eyes were two different colors. And that fits nicely with the genetic mutation theory! Where have they seen someone with two different eyes? Oh, Mother Superior. Max and Grover go visit her and confront her with what they know. Edith left the convent to raise a child that wasn't hers because she couldn't bear to abandon an innocent baby. Instead, she locked him in an eight by ten foot cell for thirty years and now the child has escaped and is a danger to the public. Mother Superior tries to say she doesn't have anything to do with this, but the mismatched eyes are inherited from a parent. She admits that she had a child and asked Edith to take the baby to a hospital, but she decided to keep it instead. She visited the boy a few times when he was eight and he seemed happy. His name is Kimo. When she met up with him he pointed at her eyes and covered his brown eye with one hand and mine with the other "Two blue eyes," he said. His appearance is the byproduct of a genetic condition that causes overgrowth in bones and tissue, so he wasn't cursed, he was just different. Mother Superior says Edith tried to get him help, but the outside can be cruel to someone who looks like that and it broke her heart. So she didn't keep him inside because he was dangerous, she was trying to protect him from the outside world who would have hurt him. (Um, he was in a LOCKED VAULT!) So Max and Grover pressure Mother Superior into trying to help her child now and not abandoning him again, especially since he just lost the only mother that cared about him. (What? He's been in solitary for thirty years! That's not caring!)

Junior and McG can't find Zac anywhere and no one knows where he is. He even turned off his phone! Well, maybe he's already dead. But McG thinks maybe he's the killer. What if Zac convinced his friends to help him steal the body to cover up Lana's murder and then he kills them so they can't ever roll on him when they're caught. He even makes it look like revenge killing with the initials at the crime scene to take heat off himself, then all he has to do is dispose of her body once and for all. We cut to Zac randomly standing near his car with Lana's body in the trunk before he gets hit in the back of the head. He's groggy and thinks it's Lana standing over him and he apologizes before she hits him again.

Back at the Chatting Table they've got that hair analysis back and it was a familial match to Lana, but the DNA was female. They pull up a pic of her mother first, but it can't be her, not the right hair color. However, the sister has hair that's a match. They ping her phone while Zac wakes up in the trunk and is bound with Lana's body right beside him. He kicks out the taillight and water rushes in. Uh oh. He's screaming.

A bunch of kids are at a picnic table near a beach while Kimo watches. When he approaches all the kids run away except LittleMax who offers him candy (an unwrapped sucker!) and asks him his name. They're smiling when the police roll up and snatch LittleMax away and scare Kimo by pointing their guns at him and yelling to put his hands up.

Junior dives in to save Zac and pulls him out. He's rambling that it was Lana trying to kill him and Junior assures him they have a nice safe cell for him. McG finds Lana's sister Emily sitting on a rock in the dark and he takes her into custody, telling her they would have caught them. She says I know. (Really anti-climactic, honestly.)

Back to the scared Kimo, Tani and Quinn are there and Duke is saying if Kimo won't stand down, tries to run, or endangers his officers, they'll have to use lethal force. (There is a battalion of cops surrounding him and the guy is unarmed, but okay.) Everyone's yelling for Kimo to put his hands up and sit down. He's scared and tries to run, knocking over an officer. Tani shouts to hold fire and realizes it's too loud for Kimo since he's been inside for thirty years. Duke is all yeah, well, if he doesn't back off we'll take the shot! (Oh, Duke. Really?) But Max comes in to de-escalate the situation since HPD just wants to keep yelling and threatening to kill him. Max tells Kimo about his son, that they're all adopted and that his son is different from other kids, too, just like Max and Kimo. Oh, and both Max and Kimo lost their mom and they both felt angry, scared, and alone. (Did everyone forget that Edith locked this guy in a vault for thirty years? He's definitely used to being alone. And what about poor dead Ralph? Sheesh.) Max says Kimo isn't alone and brings Mother Superior to stand in front of him. Kimo puts his hand on her brown eye and one on his and says, "Blue eyes." They hold hands and Kimo falls to his knees and hugs her. (What? Does he even remember some woman he met a few times when he was eight?)

The end is a musical montage of Junior watching Duke take Zac in, and there's a vigil going on with people holding Lana pictures and candles as Zac is frogmarched through the middle of it. Adam, Max, Grover, LittleMax, Flippa, and his mom are back partying and laughing, while Quinn and Tani are toasting. McG is with Lana's body, bringing her back to Noelani and the look of "Yep, kept my promise."

What did you think? Did you watch?