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I'm an award-winning romantic suspense novelist, but in my free time I love to review books and my fave TV shows, as well as pass along great book deals, and eat Canadian chocolate---not necessarily in that order.
Showing posts with label TV series. Show all posts
Showing posts with label TV series. Show all posts
Tuesday, June 18, 2019
Former CIA Chief of Disguise and Alias
Saturday, April 28, 2018
Hawaii Five-O Recap & Review: Another Ho-Hum Kidnapping
Well, the previews for this one looked interesting, but once again it was another kidnapping. My husband and I were trying to count up how many times people on the task force have been kidnapped as well as people associated with the task force. It's definitely one of the most overused storylines on the show, but, here we go.
The previouslies remind us that Tani's bro is a drug addict that nearly OD'd and had to go to rehab.
We start with Jerry in a mental health facility dispensing meds as an orderly named Hector. A really gross scene of a resident stabbing himself with a fork and making his arm bloody greets "Hector" on his rounds. When Jerry tries to intervene, the resident attacks him, so Jerry has to hold him down and yell for help. Poor HectorJerry.
Steve meets up with Jerry who looks fairly verklempt. Steve gives him an out, that field work isn't for everyone, but Jerry says he volunteered and doesn't want to let Steve down. They show a flashback to the Chatting Table where Junior and Tani really didn't want the undercover op and were trying to foist it on each other before Jerry volunteered. It seems a resident of the facility was found murdered and dumped in a ravine with a skull fracture. Staff have circled the wagons and just say he wandered away, but the guy hadn't wandered in all eight years he lived there. The HopelessHPD didn't get anywhere with their interviews and search of the victim's room (do they ever?) and since there's an opening for an orderly, someone can get on the inside. Back to the present where Steve tells Jerry to be resourceful and starting thinking like him. Evidence is degrading and people's recollection can get hazy. They need intel, but hey, HectorJerry, just call if you need something.
Tani visits her bro in rehab thinking he's coming home, but he's decided to be a counselor there now. *yawn*
Duke is in the evidence room heading to look at a box from an open murder case. He's shooting the breeze with another officer when he suddenly tazes the guy and walks down the aisle with a determined and cranky look on his face. Cut to the team trying to track Duke down, but he's turned off his phone so they get things going by ordering the HopelessHPD to dust for fingerprints and look at security footage. Because no one at HPD knows how to run an investigation.
Jerry borrows some empty boxes from a dumpster so he can look the part when he tells the receptionist that he's supposed to pack up Ben Pollack, the murder victim's, room. He finds a chess clock and asks the receptionist who played with Ben and heads over to that guy's room.
Back to trying to find Duke. HPD is sitting on Duke's house and his financials are clear. Tani says his wife and daughter claim they haven't spoken to him, but the phone records show he talked to his daughter several times that morning. They bring her in and she lies again while she's trying to cover bruises on her wrist. They finally tell her that they know she talked to her dad three times. Steve appeals to her to let him help her and for her to tell them what she knows. He's really convincing here, reminding her that she knows him and can trust him. She finally caves and says that men burst in and snatched her daughter, Akela. (We also see a flashback of it.) They contacted Duke and said if he got anyone else involved they'd kill her. Oh, and they'll be in touch soon. They even sent him a burner phone in a package at work! So efficient. They called Duke while he was at his daughter's house and said they wanted him to get a certain key. He told her to stay home and act like everything's okay so she did. But she's sorry she lied. Steve brushes that away and tells her to forget about it, she was doing what her father wanted. But if Duke calls, tell him to call one of us, you're ohana and we look after each other. Awww. Steve goes into action, telling her they'll process her house discreetly with plainclothes officers coming through the back door. Then they'll go through the evidence locker and try to figure out what the key was for. Oh and he'll tell everyone else to stand down that Duke is no longer a person of interest. Tani seems surprised at McG's reaction, but Lou tells her that McG will never turn his back on family no matter what.
Jerry talks to Harris, Ben's chess pal and he tells Jerry their routine. Chess every day for two hours, then lunch, then watch game shows, then group, dinner, and lights out. Only, one day, Ben didn't show up for group after lunch. Jerry asks the receptionist about where Ben's TV went and apparently the TV broke and Ben had to watch his shows in the common room. Jerry goes there and tries to change the channel, but a resident changes it back. He warns Jerry not to change the channel since he doesn't want to make Kusaki angry. They pan over to him and that guy already looks angry. It comes out that Ben put on the Price is Right and Kusaki got mad and pushed him. Ben got upset and was going to call the doctors or the police. Kusaki got angry, but then the orderlies came and said to stop fighting. Ben left, but hasn't been back since. Dun, dun, dun. Jerry follows Kusaki down some stairs and the guy turns and confronts him. He gets in Jerry's face and tells him to mind his own business.
Junior got a lock on Duke's phone and Steve and Danny head to the location. They find his car, but no one is inside. They hear banging from the trunk and Duke is gagged and zip-tied. Lucky they found him when they did! He's sorry, had felt like he no other choice. The key he took was to one of the lockers behind them (who has lockers in an alley?) He opened the locker and there was a bag inside with a million dollars, but when he took it to the car and was putting it in the trunk, he got jumped. The kidnappers call just then and Duke tries to keep them on the line so they can get a trace. No dice. He has an hour to get them the money. That he no longer has. Well, who else knew there was money in that locker? They got the key from a drug dealer that was picked up on a hit and run. Duke went to talk to him first thing, but he said he didn't know anything. Well, obviously Duke tipped the drug dealer off so someone else knew there was money in the locker. Who did the drug dealer call?
They bring his lawyer to the Blue Room of Doom and explain the situation. He's pretty arrogant and goes with the "I don't know what you're talking about, you can't prove anything" spiel. Lou gets in his face that a cop's granddaughter has been kidnapped and he'll be an accessory to whatever happens to the girl. The lawyer must have caved because Lou and Tani go to some guy's house where he jumps out the window. Tani punches him out and finds the money.
Jerry uses a tutorial to pick the lock to the records room and finds out that Kusaki is actually dead and the guy impersonating him is Dylan Shu. He calls Lou and tells him Dylan Shu is a fugitive hiding out in the mental hospital and the guy is bad news. Lou sends units down, but before Jerry can leave the records room another orderly catches him. Jerry confesses he's actually with Five-O and found out that Shu is a fugitive. The other orderly pulls out a gun and says he's going to stay that way. (Oh Jerry. Never blow your cover!) He forces Jerry into a van and FakeKusaki is in the back seat. Jerry buckles up and starts rambling about how clever it was to hide out in mental hospital and how it must have happened when Ben said he might report FakeKusaki. Since they cracked Ben on the head, is that what they're going to do to Jerry? FakeKusaki says this time they won't find body, so Jerry guns it and rams into a dumpster. He's bleeding and gets out of the van. A worried Lou calls since no one can find him, but he says he's good. (I'm guessing the EvilOrderly and FakeKusaki are knocked out? We never really see.)
Junior and Steve are set in sniper positions as Duke pulls up to the meeting place with the money duffel. Three masked men ask if he came alone and they're pointing their guns at Duke. It doesn't seem to faze him and Duke asks where his granddaughter is. He's walking toward them, his voice raised, so one of the masked men shoots him. Junior shoots two of them, then the next thing we know Steve and Junior must have teleported or something and are there near Duke, joined by Lou and Tani. There's a good gun fight inside and we find out that Duke was only shot in the shoulder. Tani finds the little girl and she's okay and she brings her outside. Duke's daughter comes in to hug him and then runs to her daughter. It's another slo-mo scene where everyone is smiling and happy. (Which we also saw with the kidnapped college kids, kidnapped SEAL's daughter, you get the picture.)
Back in Jerry's hospital room the team is chatting with him and catching him up that Duke will be fine and his wound was a through and through. HPD might fire him, though, since stealing evidence and assaulting a fellow officer has consequences. McG says they'll explain the extenuating circumstances to everybody, though. Awww. The receptionist comes in with HarristheChessPlayer and the team leaves. Oddly, Danny hugs the receptionist he was just introduced to before he goes. Hmm. Weird.
The ep ends with Koa's group talking about change and having someone who sticks by you. Koa has Tani stand up and say a few words. She starts with, "I'm a sister of an addict." She didn't give up or turn her back and there's someone out there that loves and supports you, too. They show Akela and her mom in Duke's hospital room, while Jerry plays chess in his room with Harris, and Steve and Danny are staining the restaurant counter. We end with Tani's words of "you have my bro, and he's special. Mahalo."
The kidnapping part was a little boring because we've done that story so many times. Jerry's arc had a few twists and turns so that kept it interesting for me. Did you watch? What did you think?
The previouslies remind us that Tani's bro is a drug addict that nearly OD'd and had to go to rehab.
We start with Jerry in a mental health facility dispensing meds as an orderly named Hector. A really gross scene of a resident stabbing himself with a fork and making his arm bloody greets "Hector" on his rounds. When Jerry tries to intervene, the resident attacks him, so Jerry has to hold him down and yell for help. Poor HectorJerry.
Steve meets up with Jerry who looks fairly verklempt. Steve gives him an out, that field work isn't for everyone, but Jerry says he volunteered and doesn't want to let Steve down. They show a flashback to the Chatting Table where Junior and Tani really didn't want the undercover op and were trying to foist it on each other before Jerry volunteered. It seems a resident of the facility was found murdered and dumped in a ravine with a skull fracture. Staff have circled the wagons and just say he wandered away, but the guy hadn't wandered in all eight years he lived there. The HopelessHPD didn't get anywhere with their interviews and search of the victim's room (do they ever?) and since there's an opening for an orderly, someone can get on the inside. Back to the present where Steve tells Jerry to be resourceful and starting thinking like him. Evidence is degrading and people's recollection can get hazy. They need intel, but hey, HectorJerry, just call if you need something.
Tani visits her bro in rehab thinking he's coming home, but he's decided to be a counselor there now. *yawn*
Duke is in the evidence room heading to look at a box from an open murder case. He's shooting the breeze with another officer when he suddenly tazes the guy and walks down the aisle with a determined and cranky look on his face. Cut to the team trying to track Duke down, but he's turned off his phone so they get things going by ordering the HopelessHPD to dust for fingerprints and look at security footage. Because no one at HPD knows how to run an investigation.
Jerry borrows some empty boxes from a dumpster so he can look the part when he tells the receptionist that he's supposed to pack up Ben Pollack, the murder victim's, room. He finds a chess clock and asks the receptionist who played with Ben and heads over to that guy's room.
Back to trying to find Duke. HPD is sitting on Duke's house and his financials are clear. Tani says his wife and daughter claim they haven't spoken to him, but the phone records show he talked to his daughter several times that morning. They bring her in and she lies again while she's trying to cover bruises on her wrist. They finally tell her that they know she talked to her dad three times. Steve appeals to her to let him help her and for her to tell them what she knows. He's really convincing here, reminding her that she knows him and can trust him. She finally caves and says that men burst in and snatched her daughter, Akela. (We also see a flashback of it.) They contacted Duke and said if he got anyone else involved they'd kill her. Oh, and they'll be in touch soon. They even sent him a burner phone in a package at work! So efficient. They called Duke while he was at his daughter's house and said they wanted him to get a certain key. He told her to stay home and act like everything's okay so she did. But she's sorry she lied. Steve brushes that away and tells her to forget about it, she was doing what her father wanted. But if Duke calls, tell him to call one of us, you're ohana and we look after each other. Awww. Steve goes into action, telling her they'll process her house discreetly with plainclothes officers coming through the back door. Then they'll go through the evidence locker and try to figure out what the key was for. Oh and he'll tell everyone else to stand down that Duke is no longer a person of interest. Tani seems surprised at McG's reaction, but Lou tells her that McG will never turn his back on family no matter what.
Jerry talks to Harris, Ben's chess pal and he tells Jerry their routine. Chess every day for two hours, then lunch, then watch game shows, then group, dinner, and lights out. Only, one day, Ben didn't show up for group after lunch. Jerry asks the receptionist about where Ben's TV went and apparently the TV broke and Ben had to watch his shows in the common room. Jerry goes there and tries to change the channel, but a resident changes it back. He warns Jerry not to change the channel since he doesn't want to make Kusaki angry. They pan over to him and that guy already looks angry. It comes out that Ben put on the Price is Right and Kusaki got mad and pushed him. Ben got upset and was going to call the doctors or the police. Kusaki got angry, but then the orderlies came and said to stop fighting. Ben left, but hasn't been back since. Dun, dun, dun. Jerry follows Kusaki down some stairs and the guy turns and confronts him. He gets in Jerry's face and tells him to mind his own business.
Junior got a lock on Duke's phone and Steve and Danny head to the location. They find his car, but no one is inside. They hear banging from the trunk and Duke is gagged and zip-tied. Lucky they found him when they did! He's sorry, had felt like he no other choice. The key he took was to one of the lockers behind them (who has lockers in an alley?) He opened the locker and there was a bag inside with a million dollars, but when he took it to the car and was putting it in the trunk, he got jumped. The kidnappers call just then and Duke tries to keep them on the line so they can get a trace. No dice. He has an hour to get them the money. That he no longer has. Well, who else knew there was money in that locker? They got the key from a drug dealer that was picked up on a hit and run. Duke went to talk to him first thing, but he said he didn't know anything. Well, obviously Duke tipped the drug dealer off so someone else knew there was money in the locker. Who did the drug dealer call?
They bring his lawyer to the Blue Room of Doom and explain the situation. He's pretty arrogant and goes with the "I don't know what you're talking about, you can't prove anything" spiel. Lou gets in his face that a cop's granddaughter has been kidnapped and he'll be an accessory to whatever happens to the girl. The lawyer must have caved because Lou and Tani go to some guy's house where he jumps out the window. Tani punches him out and finds the money.
Jerry uses a tutorial to pick the lock to the records room and finds out that Kusaki is actually dead and the guy impersonating him is Dylan Shu. He calls Lou and tells him Dylan Shu is a fugitive hiding out in the mental hospital and the guy is bad news. Lou sends units down, but before Jerry can leave the records room another orderly catches him. Jerry confesses he's actually with Five-O and found out that Shu is a fugitive. The other orderly pulls out a gun and says he's going to stay that way. (Oh Jerry. Never blow your cover!) He forces Jerry into a van and FakeKusaki is in the back seat. Jerry buckles up and starts rambling about how clever it was to hide out in mental hospital and how it must have happened when Ben said he might report FakeKusaki. Since they cracked Ben on the head, is that what they're going to do to Jerry? FakeKusaki says this time they won't find body, so Jerry guns it and rams into a dumpster. He's bleeding and gets out of the van. A worried Lou calls since no one can find him, but he says he's good. (I'm guessing the EvilOrderly and FakeKusaki are knocked out? We never really see.)
Junior and Steve are set in sniper positions as Duke pulls up to the meeting place with the money duffel. Three masked men ask if he came alone and they're pointing their guns at Duke. It doesn't seem to faze him and Duke asks where his granddaughter is. He's walking toward them, his voice raised, so one of the masked men shoots him. Junior shoots two of them, then the next thing we know Steve and Junior must have teleported or something and are there near Duke, joined by Lou and Tani. There's a good gun fight inside and we find out that Duke was only shot in the shoulder. Tani finds the little girl and she's okay and she brings her outside. Duke's daughter comes in to hug him and then runs to her daughter. It's another slo-mo scene where everyone is smiling and happy. (Which we also saw with the kidnapped college kids, kidnapped SEAL's daughter, you get the picture.)
Back in Jerry's hospital room the team is chatting with him and catching him up that Duke will be fine and his wound was a through and through. HPD might fire him, though, since stealing evidence and assaulting a fellow officer has consequences. McG says they'll explain the extenuating circumstances to everybody, though. Awww. The receptionist comes in with HarristheChessPlayer and the team leaves. Oddly, Danny hugs the receptionist he was just introduced to before he goes. Hmm. Weird.
The ep ends with Koa's group talking about change and having someone who sticks by you. Koa has Tani stand up and say a few words. She starts with, "I'm a sister of an addict." She didn't give up or turn her back and there's someone out there that loves and supports you, too. They show Akela and her mom in Duke's hospital room, while Jerry plays chess in his room with Harris, and Steve and Danny are staining the restaurant counter. We end with Tani's words of "you have my bro, and he's special. Mahalo."
The kidnapping part was a little boring because we've done that story so many times. Jerry's arc had a few twists and turns so that kept it interesting for me. Did you watch? What did you think?
Saturday, April 7, 2018
Hawaii Five-O Recap & Review: The One With Steve's Dad
This one has connections to Steve's dad, so hopefully we'll get to see a lot of Steve!
We start out with a guy in Ewa Forest in 1975 digging a grave for a man with a police badge. Switch to present day, where an older version of the grave digger is sitting in an office looking at the family pictures on the doctor's wall. The doctor comes in and call him, Mr. Davis and says he was sorry to keep him waiting.
Danny and Steve are talking to the Fire Inspector at the office. Apparently there are seventeen fire code violations at the restaurant. The boys are surprised and Steve immediately says it's Uncle Vito's fault, that he's trying to destroy their dreams. He gave Vito the number for an electrician that did great work at the office. The Fire Inspector is very interested in that tidbit of information and says he'll look around then. Steve realizes what a mistake he made and tells Danny it just came out. Hmmm.. Tani comes in to say that Steve has a guy waiting for him and says it's about his father.
The gravedigger guy is looking at Steve's awards and such on his walls. He mentions that he did a tour in Vietnam and Steve asks if that's how he knew his father? Or did they work together? LeRoy tells him they knew each other through work. He sits down and proceeds to say that he was employed by the Hawaiian syndicate in 70s and 80s. Steve is surprised and asks if he just said what he thought he said. Yep, he was a hitman. A lot of cops back then were corrupt or too scared to come after him, except Steve's dad. When LeRoy met him, he knew he'd be trouble. We go to a flashback at a disco club where Leroy pulls up and is about to go inside when Steve's father arrives with a baseball bat and starts breaking LeRoy's car windshield and headlights. Leroy pulls gun and shoots in the air. He finally points it at McG's dad, but he isn't afraid. He accuses LeRoy of killing one cop this week and warns him that he's the guy who will put you in jail for the rest of your life. LeRoy admits that he did kill Detective Osuki earlier that week. Steve wonders why he's coming forward now and LeRoy says he's been carrying it around long enough and if Steve's father were there, he'd be confessing to him, but Steve is the next best option. He opens a briefcase with guns in it that are evidence. He'd like to confess to the murder of Detective Jake Osuki and seventeen others and he takes Steve to his old dumping ground, the Ewa Forest.
Adam gets confronted by FBI Guy McNeil and he forces Adam by gunpoint into his car. I never liked that guy.
Back at HQ Danny brings fire inspector down to Jerry's. The AC is broken. He goes in to inspect Jerry's office while Danny dumps him off on Jerry. The fire inspector doesn't seem to mind and says that the office is a tinderbox.
Back in the forest Leroy finds the spot where he buried the detective. It's a remote area with road access and the earth was soft, so it was easy to bury the bodies there. Steve calls Noelani and asks her to bring all the people she can to exhume seven bodies. But where are the rest of the bodies? LeRoy tells Steve, "Patience, John." And that's our first clue that something isn't quite right.
Adam is taken to a house with a room covered in plastic. That can't be good. Adam is starting to realize this isn't an official FBI meeting. A woman comes in with two goons. She knows him and says that while they've never met, Adam has been a presence in her life since she was a child. Adam tells her he never knew he had a sister, and she's surprised he knew about her. But she's the one he's been looking for this whole time. The one who killed Fisher. She admits it and says that they've led different lives where he was given everything and if she wanted something she had to take it. Then she shoots McNeil. Ew. After the body falls to the floor, she tells Adam to make himself comfortable, they have a lot to catch up on. Make himself comfortable with the body in the room? Yikes. One of her goons wraps up the body in the plastic and drag him to a corner. The new sister is rambling on that she was eight when she discovered that her dad had another family and ten when she realized she was never going to meet her brothers. They were the dirty little secret. But she wants to know how Adam found out about her and he says her DNA was found on Hidecki. Since she hadn't been around the guy in ages, McNeil must have planted it for leverage or blackmail. But now she's been discovered, she needs to disappear, so Adam needs to give her Shioma's twenty million. He says he doesn't know where it is, but after NewSister shows him pics of Kono's hotel in Amarillo and says she has people there waiting to hear from her as well as in San Francisco for Chin Ho, Abby, and Sara. With their lives on the line, he has six hours to get the money.
Steve gets a report that LeRoys fingerprints are all over the guns and they are pulling files on everyone who went missing during his active years. LeRoy takes Steve to his house and Steve realizes he's been there before with his dad. His dad used to drive him home from school that way a lot. LeRoy says he's not surprised that McG's dad was keeping tabs on him since he was relentless.
Back at HQ fire inspector is taking notes and shaking his head. Lou tries to approach, but gets a lecture that the place is a fire trap, nothing can be grandfathered into an old building and do they have extinguishers.
Adam goes to Jessie's house and she's annoyed that Adam's psycho sister with Daddy issues has put anyone close to Adam in her cross hairs. It's not like Adam is happy about it either. He's going to get the money and Jessie is shocked to find out he knew where it was all along, and even when she gave him his "beatdown" or when Hidecki put a gun to his head he didn't spill. He says the people he cares about are in danger now so he has no choice. She says she'll go with him to get it. Yeah, I'll bet.
LeRoy goes inside to feed his cats and Steve sees a bunch of prescription meds in the house. They chat about how his wife died ten years ago and his kids are all on the mainland. Junior calls to say they've exhumed two bodies and one has an ID. It's Detective Osuki's badget number. Ground radar confirms five more, right where LeRoy said they would be. LeRoy gives his cat to the neighbor to take care of and Steve asks why he killed Detective Osuki. LeRoy never asked why his employers wanted someone dead and he only killed when ordered. Steve wonders why he let his dad live. LeRoy tells him a story (and we see it in flashback) that he almost killed PapaMcG in the forest near the dumping ground. His gun was pointed at him, but PapaMcG got a call that his wife was going into labor. So, in a way, Steve saved his father's life.
The team finds out the man LeRoy used to answer to still lives on the island but has been out of the game for years, so they pay him a visit and arrest him for ordering the murder of eighteen people.
Adam and Jessie go to a guy's house who has a bunch of plants and trees around him. Adam helped him take care of a rare and 252 year old juniper when he was eleven, so they've known each other a long time. Adam gets down to business and says he needs to make a withdrawal of all the money. JuniperGuy says that would be unwise, but Adam has to do it. He shuffles off to get the transaction taken care of while Adam explains to Jessie this is an unofficial bank for the Yakuza, and the only one that serves all clans as well as washes money. It's been around for generations and is loyal, trustworthy, and discreet. What an endorsement! Adam found Shioma's money on Kuaia and had to put it somewhere safe. His dad left a lot of debts to some not so nice people, and the money being in the bank has given him some time to get the debts paid down. Without it, there will be penalties.
Leroy is on a beach, showing Steve where the rest of the bodies are. Steve is marking them with orange flags and it's a very somber scene. LeRoy tries to justify his acts saying killing was never easy even when he wore the uniform, but it was all he could do when he came home from the war and the country treated him like the enemy. No one would hire a baby killer Steve doesn't buy it. His dad fought in same war and came home to the same country and was spat at and he didn't go off and become a professional killer, so save that story for someone else. LeRoy quietly says John was a better man than me, then adds, hey, did you ever catch who killed him? Steve says he did and LeRoy replies with a "At least one of you got your man." Oooh, buurrrrn.
Adam puts the duffels full of money into his car. (So the plant place has millions of dollars lying around? Wow.) He goes back inside to say goodbye and leaves Jessie with the car and the money. Oh poor, dumb, Adam. While Adam is saying goodbye to the "banker" he hears the car driving away. He runs out just in time to see Jessie peel off. He calls her and says to come back. If you run, Noriko will find you. (Who told him his sister's name?) She says she trusted him and look where it got her. He pleads with her that his family is in danger, but she doesn't care and says, they're cops and can take care of themselves. Cold. Adam calls Tani, asking for McG, but he's out so she'll have to help him track a cell.
Leroy gets handed over to Duke at the station, but he wants Steve to read him his rights since it's something his father would have enjoyed doing. Steve does it and they flashback to PapaMcG in 1994 and how PapaMcG kept tabs on LeRoy asking him if today was the day. PapaMcG even took LeRoy to a cemetery to watch Detective Ozuki's wife Linda and son Jack there mourning over an empty grave. He never forgot Jack's name because of PapaMcG. He had pointed out to LeRoy that every murder has two victims, the deceased and the family left in the wake. Back to present day where they lead LeRoy into the station. Steve gets the doctor LeRoy was seeing at the beginning of the ep to spill that LeRoy has a brain disease and only has about three to six months to live. Noelani's office has identified all the remains and HPD notified all the families. They've been waiting years for answers and are in the hall waiting for Steve. Detective Osuki's son Jack is an officer now and reaches out to shake Steve's hand. He gets a lei and more mahalos with kisses. Steve walks away with a few files in his hand and gets in his truck to say, "We did it dad. You did it." Awww.
We end with Adam and Tani in a car tracking Jessie. When they catch up to her they get out, guns drawn. The trunk is open and the money is gone. Jessie is still in the driver's seat, dead from a gunshot wound to the head. Adam is shaken.
I enjoyed the glimpse of Steve's early life and his dad. I could have done without the fire inspector scenes. What did you think? Did you watch?
We start out with a guy in Ewa Forest in 1975 digging a grave for a man with a police badge. Switch to present day, where an older version of the grave digger is sitting in an office looking at the family pictures on the doctor's wall. The doctor comes in and call him, Mr. Davis and says he was sorry to keep him waiting.
Danny and Steve are talking to the Fire Inspector at the office. Apparently there are seventeen fire code violations at the restaurant. The boys are surprised and Steve immediately says it's Uncle Vito's fault, that he's trying to destroy their dreams. He gave Vito the number for an electrician that did great work at the office. The Fire Inspector is very interested in that tidbit of information and says he'll look around then. Steve realizes what a mistake he made and tells Danny it just came out. Hmmm.. Tani comes in to say that Steve has a guy waiting for him and says it's about his father.
The gravedigger guy is looking at Steve's awards and such on his walls. He mentions that he did a tour in Vietnam and Steve asks if that's how he knew his father? Or did they work together? LeRoy tells him they knew each other through work. He sits down and proceeds to say that he was employed by the Hawaiian syndicate in 70s and 80s. Steve is surprised and asks if he just said what he thought he said. Yep, he was a hitman. A lot of cops back then were corrupt or too scared to come after him, except Steve's dad. When LeRoy met him, he knew he'd be trouble. We go to a flashback at a disco club where Leroy pulls up and is about to go inside when Steve's father arrives with a baseball bat and starts breaking LeRoy's car windshield and headlights. Leroy pulls gun and shoots in the air. He finally points it at McG's dad, but he isn't afraid. He accuses LeRoy of killing one cop this week and warns him that he's the guy who will put you in jail for the rest of your life. LeRoy admits that he did kill Detective Osuki earlier that week. Steve wonders why he's coming forward now and LeRoy says he's been carrying it around long enough and if Steve's father were there, he'd be confessing to him, but Steve is the next best option. He opens a briefcase with guns in it that are evidence. He'd like to confess to the murder of Detective Jake Osuki and seventeen others and he takes Steve to his old dumping ground, the Ewa Forest.
Adam gets confronted by FBI Guy McNeil and he forces Adam by gunpoint into his car. I never liked that guy.
Back at HQ Danny brings fire inspector down to Jerry's. The AC is broken. He goes in to inspect Jerry's office while Danny dumps him off on Jerry. The fire inspector doesn't seem to mind and says that the office is a tinderbox.
Back in the forest Leroy finds the spot where he buried the detective. It's a remote area with road access and the earth was soft, so it was easy to bury the bodies there. Steve calls Noelani and asks her to bring all the people she can to exhume seven bodies. But where are the rest of the bodies? LeRoy tells Steve, "Patience, John." And that's our first clue that something isn't quite right.
Adam is taken to a house with a room covered in plastic. That can't be good. Adam is starting to realize this isn't an official FBI meeting. A woman comes in with two goons. She knows him and says that while they've never met, Adam has been a presence in her life since she was a child. Adam tells her he never knew he had a sister, and she's surprised he knew about her. But she's the one he's been looking for this whole time. The one who killed Fisher. She admits it and says that they've led different lives where he was given everything and if she wanted something she had to take it. Then she shoots McNeil. Ew. After the body falls to the floor, she tells Adam to make himself comfortable, they have a lot to catch up on. Make himself comfortable with the body in the room? Yikes. One of her goons wraps up the body in the plastic and drag him to a corner. The new sister is rambling on that she was eight when she discovered that her dad had another family and ten when she realized she was never going to meet her brothers. They were the dirty little secret. But she wants to know how Adam found out about her and he says her DNA was found on Hidecki. Since she hadn't been around the guy in ages, McNeil must have planted it for leverage or blackmail. But now she's been discovered, she needs to disappear, so Adam needs to give her Shioma's twenty million. He says he doesn't know where it is, but after NewSister shows him pics of Kono's hotel in Amarillo and says she has people there waiting to hear from her as well as in San Francisco for Chin Ho, Abby, and Sara. With their lives on the line, he has six hours to get the money.
Steve gets a report that LeRoys fingerprints are all over the guns and they are pulling files on everyone who went missing during his active years. LeRoy takes Steve to his house and Steve realizes he's been there before with his dad. His dad used to drive him home from school that way a lot. LeRoy says he's not surprised that McG's dad was keeping tabs on him since he was relentless.
Back at HQ fire inspector is taking notes and shaking his head. Lou tries to approach, but gets a lecture that the place is a fire trap, nothing can be grandfathered into an old building and do they have extinguishers.
Adam goes to Jessie's house and she's annoyed that Adam's psycho sister with Daddy issues has put anyone close to Adam in her cross hairs. It's not like Adam is happy about it either. He's going to get the money and Jessie is shocked to find out he knew where it was all along, and even when she gave him his "beatdown" or when Hidecki put a gun to his head he didn't spill. He says the people he cares about are in danger now so he has no choice. She says she'll go with him to get it. Yeah, I'll bet.
LeRoy goes inside to feed his cats and Steve sees a bunch of prescription meds in the house. They chat about how his wife died ten years ago and his kids are all on the mainland. Junior calls to say they've exhumed two bodies and one has an ID. It's Detective Osuki's badget number. Ground radar confirms five more, right where LeRoy said they would be. LeRoy gives his cat to the neighbor to take care of and Steve asks why he killed Detective Osuki. LeRoy never asked why his employers wanted someone dead and he only killed when ordered. Steve wonders why he let his dad live. LeRoy tells him a story (and we see it in flashback) that he almost killed PapaMcG in the forest near the dumping ground. His gun was pointed at him, but PapaMcG got a call that his wife was going into labor. So, in a way, Steve saved his father's life.
The team finds out the man LeRoy used to answer to still lives on the island but has been out of the game for years, so they pay him a visit and arrest him for ordering the murder of eighteen people.
Adam and Jessie go to a guy's house who has a bunch of plants and trees around him. Adam helped him take care of a rare and 252 year old juniper when he was eleven, so they've known each other a long time. Adam gets down to business and says he needs to make a withdrawal of all the money. JuniperGuy says that would be unwise, but Adam has to do it. He shuffles off to get the transaction taken care of while Adam explains to Jessie this is an unofficial bank for the Yakuza, and the only one that serves all clans as well as washes money. It's been around for generations and is loyal, trustworthy, and discreet. What an endorsement! Adam found Shioma's money on Kuaia and had to put it somewhere safe. His dad left a lot of debts to some not so nice people, and the money being in the bank has given him some time to get the debts paid down. Without it, there will be penalties.
Leroy is on a beach, showing Steve where the rest of the bodies are. Steve is marking them with orange flags and it's a very somber scene. LeRoy tries to justify his acts saying killing was never easy even when he wore the uniform, but it was all he could do when he came home from the war and the country treated him like the enemy. No one would hire a baby killer Steve doesn't buy it. His dad fought in same war and came home to the same country and was spat at and he didn't go off and become a professional killer, so save that story for someone else. LeRoy quietly says John was a better man than me, then adds, hey, did you ever catch who killed him? Steve says he did and LeRoy replies with a "At least one of you got your man." Oooh, buurrrrn.
Adam puts the duffels full of money into his car. (So the plant place has millions of dollars lying around? Wow.) He goes back inside to say goodbye and leaves Jessie with the car and the money. Oh poor, dumb, Adam. While Adam is saying goodbye to the "banker" he hears the car driving away. He runs out just in time to see Jessie peel off. He calls her and says to come back. If you run, Noriko will find you. (Who told him his sister's name?) She says she trusted him and look where it got her. He pleads with her that his family is in danger, but she doesn't care and says, they're cops and can take care of themselves. Cold. Adam calls Tani, asking for McG, but he's out so she'll have to help him track a cell.
Leroy gets handed over to Duke at the station, but he wants Steve to read him his rights since it's something his father would have enjoyed doing. Steve does it and they flashback to PapaMcG in 1994 and how PapaMcG kept tabs on LeRoy asking him if today was the day. PapaMcG even took LeRoy to a cemetery to watch Detective Ozuki's wife Linda and son Jack there mourning over an empty grave. He never forgot Jack's name because of PapaMcG. He had pointed out to LeRoy that every murder has two victims, the deceased and the family left in the wake. Back to present day where they lead LeRoy into the station. Steve gets the doctor LeRoy was seeing at the beginning of the ep to spill that LeRoy has a brain disease and only has about three to six months to live. Noelani's office has identified all the remains and HPD notified all the families. They've been waiting years for answers and are in the hall waiting for Steve. Detective Osuki's son Jack is an officer now and reaches out to shake Steve's hand. He gets a lei and more mahalos with kisses. Steve walks away with a few files in his hand and gets in his truck to say, "We did it dad. You did it." Awww.
We end with Adam and Tani in a car tracking Jessie. When they catch up to her they get out, guns drawn. The trunk is open and the money is gone. Jessie is still in the driver's seat, dead from a gunshot wound to the head. Adam is shaken.
I enjoyed the glimpse of Steve's early life and his dad. I could have done without the fire inspector scenes. What did you think? Did you watch?
Tuesday, November 7, 2017
Hawaii Five-0 Recap & Review--The Halloween Episode
This episode was full of the usual Halloween murder and mayhem, but combined with Hawaiian legends this time around.
We start out with Junior cleaning up Eddie's accident, when Danno drops by to scare Steve with a $75 mask. (Do people really pay that much for masks? That seems expensive and it wasn't all that great.) Danny does mention to Junior that he can call him sir every three minutes or so. I personally like that Junior is respectful and still has a military bearing around him. Where's Steve you ask?
Steve is going to escort Alicia to the courthouse, so he brings her some coffee. While they're chillaxing, she confesses that it wasn't self-defense with Dr. Gray. Steve doesn't look surprised, but he tells her never to say that again and he didn't hear it. She doesn't want to commit perjury, (since she's a murderer with a conscience and all) Steve doesn't trust the system to see it her way and since her daughter lost her mother for five years, she doesn't deserve to lose her again. (Ahhh, now we get down to the nitty gritty of why Steve is so against this. Losing mothers is a touchy subject for him with his own mommy issues. Poor Steve.) Alicia just asks that Steve take care of her daughter if jury goes wrong way. (Which was a bit of a strange request, but okay. I mean, Steve does take care of other people's kids all the time. Usually not twenty five year olds, but whatever.)
Oddly, we are heading to the Florida State prison because Lou is visiting Forney (the guy from Where the Heart Is. I love that movie!) Lou has no idea what the guy wants with him, but since he's on death row and about to be executed, he sticks around to ask. Forney draws out the suspense, eating his last meal, talking about a chicken farmer he murdered. Lou is near the end of his rope and just wants to know what he's doing there (I get cranky after long flights, too, Lou) and Forney wants him to have patience. Easier said than done when someone just wants to shoot the breeze! We finally get down to it when Lou's old buddy Clay Maxwell comes up. (Seriously, are they still beating that dead horse? Sheesh. Give it up already! Get Lou a new crazy friend!) Anyway, seems that Clay hired Forney to kill Lou. Forney has to get some hair shaved off on the top of his head before he's executed and tells Lou that Clay offered $250,000 for the Grover hit. (At least it's a pretty good amount. Lou would have been insulted for less, I'm sure.) Aside from that, Forney can prove Clay killed Diane, but in exchange, he wants an extension on his stay of execution. Good luck getting that!
Tani and Danny are investigating a guy whose truck broke down on the Pali while he was transporting pigs and got murdered. Tani tells Danny the legend of Pele and how the goddess of fire had a relationship with a demi-god who was half-man, half-pig and they had drama and split the island in half. Since then, you can't bring pork over the Pali or an old woman and her dog will kill you. Danny isn't buying it, and is half-mocking her, but Eric comes and backs up the legend with evidence that a small person and a dog were near the murder scene.
Jerry chimes in on the case since he had his own spooky experience on the Pali. When he was young, riding his bike, the chain came off. He went to put it back on and he heard growling. He had to get the spam out of his fanny pack and throw it to the growling and pedals away. (Who randomly carries around spam? Weird.) And there have been several other reports of the same sort of phenomenon. (Jerry is also keeping on with Max's tradition of dressing up like Keanu Reeves characters and goes with a Dangerous Liaisons costume. I miss Max.) Danny gets another alert that there's been another homicide and this one is also connected to a Hawaiian legend.
New homicide was a guy found entombed in concrete in front of his home. He was killed at midnight (what was he doing pouring concrete at midnight? Random.) But he suffocated as he died in the concrete. (Didn't he have anyone miss him when he didn't come in after pouring his new sidewalk?) Anyway, according to legend, trolls on the island were expert craftsmen but they were shy and if they caught you watching them work, they turned you into stone pillars. Cue the dead guy's body that does, in fact, look like stone. Dun, dun, dun.
Steve is sitting in the back of a courtroom listening to the attorneys talk about the phone call that Alicia made before she killed Dr. Gray. They're getting to the evidence that the knife wasn't in the victim's hand and Alicia was reporting an actual murder when Tani comes in. She takes Steve in the hall and tells him about the two murders they've been investigating and how they they think it's a serial killer. Steve gets an idea and goes back to the courtroom to interrupt the trial. He whispers to the lawyer and the trial is put on hold because Five-0 needs Alicia's profiling skills. They leave and head back to HQ.
Alicia gives her professional opinion that the serial killer is patient, meticulous, and may be trying to make a statement since both victims were white men. (Even I got that much. I should have been a profiler!) She segues into her opinion that maybe Steve brought her onto this case to stop her from telling the truth about what happened with Gray. (Ya think?) He says he's not that clever, but does want to talk some sense into her. Before they can, however, Eric wants to show them some results he got. (Which were pretty sparse, actually, and he could have called and reported, but whatever) There was some DNA in the rafters at the murder scene, and he found moss and seaweed on the victim. Steve knows which legend the killer is using next and says there's going to be a kidnapping. We cut to a little girl being watched at a school playground with her costume on. On the way to the school, Steve tells the legend of a mom who lost her child, wanders around as a ghost and takes any child. The girl has already been snatched by the time they get there, but the team follows her cell phone. Unfortunately, they end up finding it in an abandoned backpack. The girl is now being led through the woods by a person in a hoodie and she's bound and gagged.
Jerry calls to say the DNA from the crime scene belongs to Marisa Walker, a girl who was abducted, raped, and tied to a tree twenty years ago. She was also attacked by wild boars which left her horribly disfigured and the newspapers called her half-faced girl. (Sad! Why are people so mean?) Of course that gives her motive of recreating the legends. But in a twist, the team finds out that Lacey is actually her niece. Uh oh. Marisa's sister was supposed to walk home with her the day she was abducted. She feels responsible. But the question now is, will Marisa recreate what happened to her twenty years ago on her niece? With Marisa tying the girl to the tree and telling her the monsters will be there soon, it looks like it.
The team and HPD go out with flashlights looking for the girl. Tani and Junior chat, and he finds out she's new to the team and didn't graduate the academy. Double standard, much? Junior is a highly trained SEAL forced to join HPD before he gets to join Five-0 and Tani couldn't hack the Police Academy and gets on Five-0 with barely any training. Yeah, makes no sense to me either, Junior.
Grover can't get a stay of execution, but goes to witness the death. The first electrocution doesn't kill him, so they do it again. Gruesome. As Grover is leaving, the guard gives him a letter from Forney. It's a map in the Florida Keys with confession tapes from Clay. (What a dumb newbie criminal to confess on a tape.) Lou is overcome that he finally has evidence and calls Steve to tell him. (Hopefully we can bury that old case now. Really. Please don't inflict anything to do with Clay on the audience ever again. I'm begging you, show.)
Steve is walking through the woods "looking" for the girl and chatting to Alicia. He tells her that Five-0 has immunity and means and he has no problem telling the judge she still worked for them so she can beat the murder charge. He recruited her, he brought her in, let him help. Alicia doesn't want to do that and says Steve doesn't owe her. He got her daughter back. Won't let him lie for her. Chat time comes to an end when they find an abandoned building, and it's obvious that's where Marisa has been living. It's suitably cobwebby and spooky. She even recreated her family at a table with life-size looking dolls. Creepy. Steve sees Marisa running away from the shack and gives chase. He's losing his touch, though and gets beaned over the head again when Marisa gets the drop on him. (That's like the third time this season, I think!) They lose Marisa because they don't think to look in the trees where she's hiding, but thankfully, Eddie finds the girl and she's okay. They show an emotional reunion with her mom and the team looks pleased. To top it off, Alicia gets the call that she got 18 months probation is all, since she'll be at the beck and call of Five-0. Hmmm....wonder who made that happen?
And the awkward award of the night goes to Tani when she invites Junior to grab some pancakes with her. The whole scene seemed forced and weird.
But, a week later, the kidnapped girl's mom has learned nothing! She leaves her daughter sleeping, doesn't close any blinds, and Marisa is creepily watching them through a window. I hope the mom invested in a security system or something. The least she could do is get a few blinds! Yikes.
So, they crammed in a death row story, Alicia's being put on Five-0 speed dial and getting off on her murder charge, as well as a serial killer getting away, and a kidnapped girl being found. Very ambitious!
Did you watch? What did you think? Too much or just right?
We start out with Junior cleaning up Eddie's accident, when Danno drops by to scare Steve with a $75 mask. (Do people really pay that much for masks? That seems expensive and it wasn't all that great.) Danny does mention to Junior that he can call him sir every three minutes or so. I personally like that Junior is respectful and still has a military bearing around him. Where's Steve you ask?
Steve is going to escort Alicia to the courthouse, so he brings her some coffee. While they're chillaxing, she confesses that it wasn't self-defense with Dr. Gray. Steve doesn't look surprised, but he tells her never to say that again and he didn't hear it. She doesn't want to commit perjury, (since she's a murderer with a conscience and all) Steve doesn't trust the system to see it her way and since her daughter lost her mother for five years, she doesn't deserve to lose her again. (Ahhh, now we get down to the nitty gritty of why Steve is so against this. Losing mothers is a touchy subject for him with his own mommy issues. Poor Steve.) Alicia just asks that Steve take care of her daughter if jury goes wrong way. (Which was a bit of a strange request, but okay. I mean, Steve does take care of other people's kids all the time. Usually not twenty five year olds, but whatever.)
Oddly, we are heading to the Florida State prison because Lou is visiting Forney (the guy from Where the Heart Is. I love that movie!) Lou has no idea what the guy wants with him, but since he's on death row and about to be executed, he sticks around to ask. Forney draws out the suspense, eating his last meal, talking about a chicken farmer he murdered. Lou is near the end of his rope and just wants to know what he's doing there (I get cranky after long flights, too, Lou) and Forney wants him to have patience. Easier said than done when someone just wants to shoot the breeze! We finally get down to it when Lou's old buddy Clay Maxwell comes up. (Seriously, are they still beating that dead horse? Sheesh. Give it up already! Get Lou a new crazy friend!) Anyway, seems that Clay hired Forney to kill Lou. Forney has to get some hair shaved off on the top of his head before he's executed and tells Lou that Clay offered $250,000 for the Grover hit. (At least it's a pretty good amount. Lou would have been insulted for less, I'm sure.) Aside from that, Forney can prove Clay killed Diane, but in exchange, he wants an extension on his stay of execution. Good luck getting that!
Tani and Danny are investigating a guy whose truck broke down on the Pali while he was transporting pigs and got murdered. Tani tells Danny the legend of Pele and how the goddess of fire had a relationship with a demi-god who was half-man, half-pig and they had drama and split the island in half. Since then, you can't bring pork over the Pali or an old woman and her dog will kill you. Danny isn't buying it, and is half-mocking her, but Eric comes and backs up the legend with evidence that a small person and a dog were near the murder scene.
Jerry chimes in on the case since he had his own spooky experience on the Pali. When he was young, riding his bike, the chain came off. He went to put it back on and he heard growling. He had to get the spam out of his fanny pack and throw it to the growling and pedals away. (Who randomly carries around spam? Weird.) And there have been several other reports of the same sort of phenomenon. (Jerry is also keeping on with Max's tradition of dressing up like Keanu Reeves characters and goes with a Dangerous Liaisons costume. I miss Max.) Danny gets another alert that there's been another homicide and this one is also connected to a Hawaiian legend.
New homicide was a guy found entombed in concrete in front of his home. He was killed at midnight (what was he doing pouring concrete at midnight? Random.) But he suffocated as he died in the concrete. (Didn't he have anyone miss him when he didn't come in after pouring his new sidewalk?) Anyway, according to legend, trolls on the island were expert craftsmen but they were shy and if they caught you watching them work, they turned you into stone pillars. Cue the dead guy's body that does, in fact, look like stone. Dun, dun, dun.
Steve is sitting in the back of a courtroom listening to the attorneys talk about the phone call that Alicia made before she killed Dr. Gray. They're getting to the evidence that the knife wasn't in the victim's hand and Alicia was reporting an actual murder when Tani comes in. She takes Steve in the hall and tells him about the two murders they've been investigating and how they they think it's a serial killer. Steve gets an idea and goes back to the courtroom to interrupt the trial. He whispers to the lawyer and the trial is put on hold because Five-0 needs Alicia's profiling skills. They leave and head back to HQ.
Alicia gives her professional opinion that the serial killer is patient, meticulous, and may be trying to make a statement since both victims were white men. (Even I got that much. I should have been a profiler!) She segues into her opinion that maybe Steve brought her onto this case to stop her from telling the truth about what happened with Gray. (Ya think?) He says he's not that clever, but does want to talk some sense into her. Before they can, however, Eric wants to show them some results he got. (Which were pretty sparse, actually, and he could have called and reported, but whatever) There was some DNA in the rafters at the murder scene, and he found moss and seaweed on the victim. Steve knows which legend the killer is using next and says there's going to be a kidnapping. We cut to a little girl being watched at a school playground with her costume on. On the way to the school, Steve tells the legend of a mom who lost her child, wanders around as a ghost and takes any child. The girl has already been snatched by the time they get there, but the team follows her cell phone. Unfortunately, they end up finding it in an abandoned backpack. The girl is now being led through the woods by a person in a hoodie and she's bound and gagged.
Jerry calls to say the DNA from the crime scene belongs to Marisa Walker, a girl who was abducted, raped, and tied to a tree twenty years ago. She was also attacked by wild boars which left her horribly disfigured and the newspapers called her half-faced girl. (Sad! Why are people so mean?) Of course that gives her motive of recreating the legends. But in a twist, the team finds out that Lacey is actually her niece. Uh oh. Marisa's sister was supposed to walk home with her the day she was abducted. She feels responsible. But the question now is, will Marisa recreate what happened to her twenty years ago on her niece? With Marisa tying the girl to the tree and telling her the monsters will be there soon, it looks like it.
The team and HPD go out with flashlights looking for the girl. Tani and Junior chat, and he finds out she's new to the team and didn't graduate the academy. Double standard, much? Junior is a highly trained SEAL forced to join HPD before he gets to join Five-0 and Tani couldn't hack the Police Academy and gets on Five-0 with barely any training. Yeah, makes no sense to me either, Junior.
Grover can't get a stay of execution, but goes to witness the death. The first electrocution doesn't kill him, so they do it again. Gruesome. As Grover is leaving, the guard gives him a letter from Forney. It's a map in the Florida Keys with confession tapes from Clay. (What a dumb newbie criminal to confess on a tape.) Lou is overcome that he finally has evidence and calls Steve to tell him. (Hopefully we can bury that old case now. Really. Please don't inflict anything to do with Clay on the audience ever again. I'm begging you, show.)
Steve is walking through the woods "looking" for the girl and chatting to Alicia. He tells her that Five-0 has immunity and means and he has no problem telling the judge she still worked for them so she can beat the murder charge. He recruited her, he brought her in, let him help. Alicia doesn't want to do that and says Steve doesn't owe her. He got her daughter back. Won't let him lie for her. Chat time comes to an end when they find an abandoned building, and it's obvious that's where Marisa has been living. It's suitably cobwebby and spooky. She even recreated her family at a table with life-size looking dolls. Creepy. Steve sees Marisa running away from the shack and gives chase. He's losing his touch, though and gets beaned over the head again when Marisa gets the drop on him. (That's like the third time this season, I think!) They lose Marisa because they don't think to look in the trees where she's hiding, but thankfully, Eddie finds the girl and she's okay. They show an emotional reunion with her mom and the team looks pleased. To top it off, Alicia gets the call that she got 18 months probation is all, since she'll be at the beck and call of Five-0. Hmmm....wonder who made that happen?
And the awkward award of the night goes to Tani when she invites Junior to grab some pancakes with her. The whole scene seemed forced and weird.
But, a week later, the kidnapped girl's mom has learned nothing! She leaves her daughter sleeping, doesn't close any blinds, and Marisa is creepily watching them through a window. I hope the mom invested in a security system or something. The least she could do is get a few blinds! Yikes.
So, they crammed in a death row story, Alicia's being put on Five-0 speed dial and getting off on her murder charge, as well as a serial killer getting away, and a kidnapped girl being found. Very ambitious!
Did you watch? What did you think? Too much or just right?
Tuesday, October 24, 2017
Hawaii Five-O Recap & Review--Where McG Plays Daddy
Well, this week we get some background into the people who help Five-O---but it doesn't end well for them.
We start out with the "previously on H50" and the history of a hacker named Toast (which was helpful, since he hasn't appeared in very many episodes.)
Then we switch over to a shooting range where JuniortheShootingAce is showing off his skillz. McG shows up to check on his boy and the coach tells him that Ace is the best raw talent he's had as a recruit and reminds him of McG. (Why does the show always do that? Everyone they want the audience to love, they always say that they're just like McG) Ace comes over and McG invites him out to lunch at the shrimp truck.
McG meets Grover in a store and he's looking to buy a used restaurant oven. Danny is out of town, so McG is going to buy it before he gets back. Apparently Danny wants all new things for the restaurant because they come with a warranty. They discuss the ramifications of making such a purchase without Danny, but luckily a phone call from Toast shuts that convo down. Sadly, though, all they hear is Toast getting beat up and then gunshots ring out. (That has to bring back terrible memories for McG since his father died over the phone with him listening to the gunshots. He doesn't talk about that though, or show any signs. Sometimes I wish the show would let Alex act out those sorts of little memories, because I think he'd do a great job with it.)
With the previouslies in our head of all the eps Toast has been in, it's sad to see his beaten and dead body with a stoic McG next to it. He throws out some scenarios with Grover about what could have happened since Toast was a CI, and the beatdown was obviously personal. Jerry calls to say that someone hacked into their system (again? Wow, their security is terrible) but it was a sophisticated attack. If Toast's murder was connected to being a CI, that would explain how they got the information. But, since Toast was their main hacker, and he's dead, they need someone else who's just as good. Apparently the government doesn't have anyone who can do this job and be a lawful citizen, so they go to the prison to talk to Aaron Wright who hacked into their system two weeks ago when he helped a crazed criminal escape. Wright has conditions for his help---like being transferred, and while he's helping he goes to a hotel, spa treatments, room service, the works. McG agrees.
They walk into the hotel room and Tani is there dressed in a vest, tight pants, and not very sensible shoes. Wright asks why the masseuse is wearing Kevlar and says she looks familiar. Tani mentions she saved him when he was tied up and covered in gasoline, crying and begging for his life. (She doesn't mention how he then watched her get beat up and thrown around like a rag doll, but whatever.) She claims she saved his life, but really, it was McG showing up before both of them were killed that saved Wright's life. (And you might recall that we were also told in the scene right after that one, that Tani was the female version of McG. Surprise! Both Junior AND Tani are little McGs! Who's your daddy?) McG handcuffs him to the work table and they give him an ice bucket to pee in before telling him to get to work. Ouch.
Jerry is trying to figure out who might have had a vendetta against Toast, but coming up empty. McG is on the balcony looking at the view when he gets a text from Danny that he heard about Toast and he's coming home. McG says that he's come a long way since he's now calling Hawaii home. Tani calls McG in to look at the computer screen. Yep, Wright figured out that their CI list was compromised so all their CIs could be on a hit list. Dun, dun, dun. He does find a digital fingerprint of a hacker named Mogera inside the files. Wright met him once, he's a hacker legend, apparently and he's blind. (Which is cool, actually.)
Junior is waiting for McG at the shrimp truck and no one has seen Kamekona. Uh oh. McG socks that info away, and is all solicitous, checking on Junior, asking about how much sleep he's getting, that it's okay if everything isn't okay and coming home is tricky. He wants to help him through the process. (Awww) He does lie and tell Junior that it's important to graduate from the police academy. But Junior isn't a dummy and asks if that's always the way it works, (ha! Tani even cheated on her exams before they kicked her out and she got an invite to Five-O. Poor Junior) but McG says that's the way he thinks it should work. (Except in Tani's case, I guess.) Junior doesn't have a phone, so McG is a good dad and says he'll get him one. They're interrupted when Jerry calls to update McG on all their CIs. Everyone is accounted for. Whew! Kamekona is just checking on Flippa's truck so McG is going to head up there.
When McG gets to Flippa's truck, though, it's nearly engulfed in flames and he rushes in to save Nahele moments before the propane tank explodes. Nahele tells Steve that two men in black SUVs (criminals are so unoriginal. I wonder if criminal organizations get a discount for a bulk order of black SUVs), they torched the truck and took Kamekona.
Kame's cell has been disabled and a helo is on its way (to do what? Look for him in the air?) and they have a long list of people that Kamekona burned as a CI, so anybody could have taken him. Grover brought in the blind hacker Magera (whose real name is Harley? Grover kept calling him that, so I'm assuming it is) for questioning in the Blue Room of Doom. He's not talking, though, and Grover is frustrated and gets very close to his face to threaten him, talking directly into his ear, etc. which was strange. The guy's blind not deaf.
Anyway, Kamekona is tied to a chair and getting beaten pretty badly. He tells them they have the wrong guy, he doesn't even know them, but then the guy he does know walks in---Kang. He knows Kame works for Five-O, but Kame denies that and says they just come around the truck a lot. (They've never hidden their relationship or their conversations, so I imagine a lot of people would suspect him of working with Five-O. It seems pretty obvious, but okay) Kang just wants his half a million dollars back that Kame stole from him, but Kame finally admits he spent it, but won't tell him what he spent it on.
Tani is pacing around the hotel room and whining to Wright that it's taking too long. (I kid you not. She is actually saying "how much longer" like a child in the car.) Wright says he's working on it. Then she starts texting her AWOL brother and ignoring the dangerous criminal behind her. Wright tries to engage her in a convo about brothers, but when Wright compares his brother to hers, Tani freaks. She says Wright's brother Ian was a piece of crap and a psycho and her brother isn't like that. She then tells him to shut his hole. (I'm having a hard time relating to her. This scene was particularly unprofessional and bratty. She's on an elite task force, for crying out loud. Act like it. Oy.)
Back to the case. Ballistics has come back and Toast's murder weapon was tied to another crime. A guy named Marks had a brother-in-law that was killed in a prison riot and he blamed Toast. Grover puts a BOLO out on him, but guess what? Wright knows where he is. BrattyTani is still asking him how much longer while she's looking at her phone when the hotel room door bursts open and Marks and two other guys come in guns at the ready. They shoot Tani in the Kevlar and break Wright out. (They want to shoot Tani, but Wright stops them) But seriously, didn't anyone remember how dangerous Wright was? Who leaves a known criminal like him with unrestricted access to a computer and the barest minimum of supervision and they don't think he might reach out to his friends and tell them where he is?
BrattyTani is telling the EMT that she's fine and goes on the balcony to pout. Jerry connected the sedan that Marks drove to the hotel with to the one from Toast's murder. The guys start spitballing on what if Wright took the CI list when he hacked Five-O's system last week, and set up this elaborate con to break out of prison. (Yeah. Maybe they should have thought about him possibly organizing an escape attempt a bit sooner) But he had Toast killed so they'd have to come to him. The guy's a genius. (Ya think?) The blind hacker is the only one who can give them a lead.
They go back to the Blue Room of Doom and question the hacker, but he's pretty quiet. But when they offer him protection and say he could be charged with accessory to murder, he caves. Wright contacted him over the dark net and blackmailed him that he'd turn over proof of his hack of government sites if he didn't do what he said. Harley has some hacking abilities and they bring him to the Talking Table to find Wright. His specialized keyboard materializes and the team watches some colorful wavy lines, computer code, and tunes going on the screen as he tries to get into Wright's files. Thankfully it works and they figure out that it's Joey Kang who took Kamekona.
A bloodied Kamekona is with Kang and his goons. He wants the money really bad, but Kame just keeps saying he spent it. Kang repeats that he's going to die, but Kamekona says he was a lost kid trying to make it out of tent city and went to prison. He should have died there, but didn't. Ever since he got out he's tried to live his life right and give back to the kids so they can make it. He never took one single day for granted and he's not afraid to die. They take him for a last ride before they kill him.
McG has gone to Kang's dad's garage and is pouring gasoline everywhere. He wants the dad to tell them where his son is or they're going to light up his place because he protects his family. (Sniff) The dad give in and calls his son just before Joey Kang takes Kamekona into some trees to kill him. (Good thing Kame was walking slowly!) Joey pulls the gun out, but then in a big anti-climactic scene, puts it away. (Who knew criminals listened to their dad when they said don't kill anyone!) They don't show what the dad said, but Joey tells Kame it's his lucky day. (It was a weird ending, I can't explain it!)
McG pulls up to the downtown Oahu mission and Junior is there. McG tracked his phone, but like any teenager, Junior lost it. He does say he should have taken better care of it (which I've heard from my own teenager, haha!) McG did the same thing I did, and lets out a breath before telling him they're going home. Junior gets to live with McG until he graduates the academy.
Everyone is remembering Toast at the Tropics bar and Jerry is even singing a tribute. (Toast gets a little montage, too) Kamekona is there celebrating surviving and he also tells Flippa he'll be back working for him. McG gives Kame a forehead touch and aloha before he introduces Junior to everyone. Grover updates McG that Wright and Marks are in the wind, but Kang was caught. (Well, one out of three isn't terrible I guess.)
McG goes to Tani's house to check on her. He tells her it wasn't her fault, it was his for taking Wright out of prison, that that was a bad judgment call and we all learn from mistakes. She tells him that maybe she's not right for the job, (I agree. Make her go back to the Academy and figure herself out) She does admit that she was distracted with texting her brother, etc., and took her eye off the ball. McG asks if she could have taken out three guys with a flashbang and automatic weapons? And she says maybe. (Hmmm...) In the end, McG tells her that if she wasn't right, they wouldn't be having this conversation. (Well, at least Eddie was in that scene and happy to be there. He's the best new character on the show in my opinion.)
The final scene is days later when a healed Kamekona is at a kid's center where young boys are playing basketball. The coach says he hasn't seen Kame around for a while and he should come around more often, he's always welcome. Kame smiles and as he leaves we get a close-up of a little plaque says that the community gym was donated by anonymous in 2010. I guess we know how he spent the money.
I loved the ending and how hard Kamekona has worked to help others and benefit from his mistakes. Best part of the show. McG having to be a father-type figure to his new recruits was expected, but sometimes I wish he didn't have to be the caretaker of the group so much and he had someone on his level that took care of him, as well. Hopefully we'll see more of that as the season goes on.
Did you watch? What did you think?
We start out with the "previously on H50" and the history of a hacker named Toast (which was helpful, since he hasn't appeared in very many episodes.)
Then we switch over to a shooting range where JuniortheShootingAce is showing off his skillz. McG shows up to check on his boy and the coach tells him that Ace is the best raw talent he's had as a recruit and reminds him of McG. (Why does the show always do that? Everyone they want the audience to love, they always say that they're just like McG) Ace comes over and McG invites him out to lunch at the shrimp truck.
McG meets Grover in a store and he's looking to buy a used restaurant oven. Danny is out of town, so McG is going to buy it before he gets back. Apparently Danny wants all new things for the restaurant because they come with a warranty. They discuss the ramifications of making such a purchase without Danny, but luckily a phone call from Toast shuts that convo down. Sadly, though, all they hear is Toast getting beat up and then gunshots ring out. (That has to bring back terrible memories for McG since his father died over the phone with him listening to the gunshots. He doesn't talk about that though, or show any signs. Sometimes I wish the show would let Alex act out those sorts of little memories, because I think he'd do a great job with it.)
With the previouslies in our head of all the eps Toast has been in, it's sad to see his beaten and dead body with a stoic McG next to it. He throws out some scenarios with Grover about what could have happened since Toast was a CI, and the beatdown was obviously personal. Jerry calls to say that someone hacked into their system (again? Wow, their security is terrible) but it was a sophisticated attack. If Toast's murder was connected to being a CI, that would explain how they got the information. But, since Toast was their main hacker, and he's dead, they need someone else who's just as good. Apparently the government doesn't have anyone who can do this job and be a lawful citizen, so they go to the prison to talk to Aaron Wright who hacked into their system two weeks ago when he helped a crazed criminal escape. Wright has conditions for his help---like being transferred, and while he's helping he goes to a hotel, spa treatments, room service, the works. McG agrees.
They walk into the hotel room and Tani is there dressed in a vest, tight pants, and not very sensible shoes. Wright asks why the masseuse is wearing Kevlar and says she looks familiar. Tani mentions she saved him when he was tied up and covered in gasoline, crying and begging for his life. (She doesn't mention how he then watched her get beat up and thrown around like a rag doll, but whatever.) She claims she saved his life, but really, it was McG showing up before both of them were killed that saved Wright's life. (And you might recall that we were also told in the scene right after that one, that Tani was the female version of McG. Surprise! Both Junior AND Tani are little McGs! Who's your daddy?) McG handcuffs him to the work table and they give him an ice bucket to pee in before telling him to get to work. Ouch.
Jerry is trying to figure out who might have had a vendetta against Toast, but coming up empty. McG is on the balcony looking at the view when he gets a text from Danny that he heard about Toast and he's coming home. McG says that he's come a long way since he's now calling Hawaii home. Tani calls McG in to look at the computer screen. Yep, Wright figured out that their CI list was compromised so all their CIs could be on a hit list. Dun, dun, dun. He does find a digital fingerprint of a hacker named Mogera inside the files. Wright met him once, he's a hacker legend, apparently and he's blind. (Which is cool, actually.)
Junior is waiting for McG at the shrimp truck and no one has seen Kamekona. Uh oh. McG socks that info away, and is all solicitous, checking on Junior, asking about how much sleep he's getting, that it's okay if everything isn't okay and coming home is tricky. He wants to help him through the process. (Awww) He does lie and tell Junior that it's important to graduate from the police academy. But Junior isn't a dummy and asks if that's always the way it works, (ha! Tani even cheated on her exams before they kicked her out and she got an invite to Five-O. Poor Junior) but McG says that's the way he thinks it should work. (Except in Tani's case, I guess.) Junior doesn't have a phone, so McG is a good dad and says he'll get him one. They're interrupted when Jerry calls to update McG on all their CIs. Everyone is accounted for. Whew! Kamekona is just checking on Flippa's truck so McG is going to head up there.
When McG gets to Flippa's truck, though, it's nearly engulfed in flames and he rushes in to save Nahele moments before the propane tank explodes. Nahele tells Steve that two men in black SUVs (criminals are so unoriginal. I wonder if criminal organizations get a discount for a bulk order of black SUVs), they torched the truck and took Kamekona.
Kame's cell has been disabled and a helo is on its way (to do what? Look for him in the air?) and they have a long list of people that Kamekona burned as a CI, so anybody could have taken him. Grover brought in the blind hacker Magera (whose real name is Harley? Grover kept calling him that, so I'm assuming it is) for questioning in the Blue Room of Doom. He's not talking, though, and Grover is frustrated and gets very close to his face to threaten him, talking directly into his ear, etc. which was strange. The guy's blind not deaf.
Anyway, Kamekona is tied to a chair and getting beaten pretty badly. He tells them they have the wrong guy, he doesn't even know them, but then the guy he does know walks in---Kang. He knows Kame works for Five-O, but Kame denies that and says they just come around the truck a lot. (They've never hidden their relationship or their conversations, so I imagine a lot of people would suspect him of working with Five-O. It seems pretty obvious, but okay) Kang just wants his half a million dollars back that Kame stole from him, but Kame finally admits he spent it, but won't tell him what he spent it on.
Tani is pacing around the hotel room and whining to Wright that it's taking too long. (I kid you not. She is actually saying "how much longer" like a child in the car.) Wright says he's working on it. Then she starts texting her AWOL brother and ignoring the dangerous criminal behind her. Wright tries to engage her in a convo about brothers, but when Wright compares his brother to hers, Tani freaks. She says Wright's brother Ian was a piece of crap and a psycho and her brother isn't like that. She then tells him to shut his hole. (I'm having a hard time relating to her. This scene was particularly unprofessional and bratty. She's on an elite task force, for crying out loud. Act like it. Oy.)
Back to the case. Ballistics has come back and Toast's murder weapon was tied to another crime. A guy named Marks had a brother-in-law that was killed in a prison riot and he blamed Toast. Grover puts a BOLO out on him, but guess what? Wright knows where he is. BrattyTani is still asking him how much longer while she's looking at her phone when the hotel room door bursts open and Marks and two other guys come in guns at the ready. They shoot Tani in the Kevlar and break Wright out. (They want to shoot Tani, but Wright stops them) But seriously, didn't anyone remember how dangerous Wright was? Who leaves a known criminal like him with unrestricted access to a computer and the barest minimum of supervision and they don't think he might reach out to his friends and tell them where he is?
BrattyTani is telling the EMT that she's fine and goes on the balcony to pout. Jerry connected the sedan that Marks drove to the hotel with to the one from Toast's murder. The guys start spitballing on what if Wright took the CI list when he hacked Five-O's system last week, and set up this elaborate con to break out of prison. (Yeah. Maybe they should have thought about him possibly organizing an escape attempt a bit sooner) But he had Toast killed so they'd have to come to him. The guy's a genius. (Ya think?) The blind hacker is the only one who can give them a lead.
They go back to the Blue Room of Doom and question the hacker, but he's pretty quiet. But when they offer him protection and say he could be charged with accessory to murder, he caves. Wright contacted him over the dark net and blackmailed him that he'd turn over proof of his hack of government sites if he didn't do what he said. Harley has some hacking abilities and they bring him to the Talking Table to find Wright. His specialized keyboard materializes and the team watches some colorful wavy lines, computer code, and tunes going on the screen as he tries to get into Wright's files. Thankfully it works and they figure out that it's Joey Kang who took Kamekona.
A bloodied Kamekona is with Kang and his goons. He wants the money really bad, but Kame just keeps saying he spent it. Kang repeats that he's going to die, but Kamekona says he was a lost kid trying to make it out of tent city and went to prison. He should have died there, but didn't. Ever since he got out he's tried to live his life right and give back to the kids so they can make it. He never took one single day for granted and he's not afraid to die. They take him for a last ride before they kill him.
McG has gone to Kang's dad's garage and is pouring gasoline everywhere. He wants the dad to tell them where his son is or they're going to light up his place because he protects his family. (Sniff) The dad give in and calls his son just before Joey Kang takes Kamekona into some trees to kill him. (Good thing Kame was walking slowly!) Joey pulls the gun out, but then in a big anti-climactic scene, puts it away. (Who knew criminals listened to their dad when they said don't kill anyone!) They don't show what the dad said, but Joey tells Kame it's his lucky day. (It was a weird ending, I can't explain it!)
McG pulls up to the downtown Oahu mission and Junior is there. McG tracked his phone, but like any teenager, Junior lost it. He does say he should have taken better care of it (which I've heard from my own teenager, haha!) McG did the same thing I did, and lets out a breath before telling him they're going home. Junior gets to live with McG until he graduates the academy.
Everyone is remembering Toast at the Tropics bar and Jerry is even singing a tribute. (Toast gets a little montage, too) Kamekona is there celebrating surviving and he also tells Flippa he'll be back working for him. McG gives Kame a forehead touch and aloha before he introduces Junior to everyone. Grover updates McG that Wright and Marks are in the wind, but Kang was caught. (Well, one out of three isn't terrible I guess.)
McG goes to Tani's house to check on her. He tells her it wasn't her fault, it was his for taking Wright out of prison, that that was a bad judgment call and we all learn from mistakes. She tells him that maybe she's not right for the job, (I agree. Make her go back to the Academy and figure herself out) She does admit that she was distracted with texting her brother, etc., and took her eye off the ball. McG asks if she could have taken out three guys with a flashbang and automatic weapons? And she says maybe. (Hmmm...) In the end, McG tells her that if she wasn't right, they wouldn't be having this conversation. (Well, at least Eddie was in that scene and happy to be there. He's the best new character on the show in my opinion.)
The final scene is days later when a healed Kamekona is at a kid's center where young boys are playing basketball. The coach says he hasn't seen Kame around for a while and he should come around more often, he's always welcome. Kame smiles and as he leaves we get a close-up of a little plaque says that the community gym was donated by anonymous in 2010. I guess we know how he spent the money.
I loved the ending and how hard Kamekona has worked to help others and benefit from his mistakes. Best part of the show. McG having to be a father-type figure to his new recruits was expected, but sometimes I wish he didn't have to be the caretaker of the group so much and he had someone on his level that took care of him, as well. Hopefully we'll see more of that as the season goes on.
Did you watch? What did you think?
Tuesday, October 17, 2017
Hawaii Five-O Recap & Review: The Ep Where A Lot of People Get Killed
Well, this ep is marked with a lot of murder and violence, but also the return of Harry Langford, (who I wish was a recurring character). But I digress . . .
The show starts out in Waikiki with a waitress bringing drinks to a back gaming room where a heavily guarded man is arguing with someone about the best place to get a manicure. (Do crime bosses really get manicures? Like, so their shooting hand looks especially good or something?) The FBI has a surveillance van listening in, whining about how boring this assignment is, when gunfire breaks out. The FBI guys try to run in, but their back door is blocked in by another car. (Can't they go out the front? More than one exit seems like something surveillance guys would plan for, but hey, what do I know? Apparently these are smart criminals and we have bumbling FBI guys.)
Back in the Restaurant of Dreams, Steve is sanding down a counter with Kamekona looking on when Danny brings in fabric swatches for the restaurant booths. He pretends, but doesn't really want Steve's opinion on what color fabric to use, because he's already ordered garnet. Not to be outdone, Kamekona offers up T-shirts he ordered that will bring people in. It has McDanno's Bar and Grill on it, with Danny and Steve in the Lady and the Tramp pose. Danny hates it (as would most people I would imagine, yikes!) Steve tries to be diplomatic and tell him it's going to be a different kind of establishment than the one he's used to running, but Kame has already ordered 400 of the shirts. (Maybe they can use them as rags?) Steve's phone rings, thankfully, and it's Harry! He wants to hang out with them.
The audience gets a nice shot of Harry coming out of the ocean in small swim trunks that Danny compares to Daisy Dukes. (Which was a bit strange, but okay.) Harry gives him a nice wet hug, using his shirt for a towel, but Steve gets a handshake. Apparently, Harry has retired at 45 and is traveling with world with his girlfriend Veronique who meets them as they walk down the beach. When Danny sees Veronique he comments that she's so pretty, but then adds, it's painful. (I'm not sure what that means. So pretty it hurts his head? Eyes? Heart?) Anyway, she invites them to lunch, but Steve gets called to the FBI's I-Can't-Get-Out-Of-My-Van crime scene.
The murder victim was Jimmy Okada, head of the Okada crime family and nine of his terribly inept bodyguards were killed as well. Lou starts to give the boys a recap when Tani comes in to finish it off, saying that after the shooters barricaded the feds in their own van, they came in the emergency exit, shot everyone, and left without being seen. Steve looks very concerned at this news because whoever did this, just started a war. Dun, dun, dun.
Back at the Show and Tell Talking Table, Tani is showing a deposition video of Okada giving one stiff line about how this is a waste of time and then we hear an even more stiff voice from the off-camera female attorney laying out his crimes. (I mean, I know lawyers have a reputation for having no feelings, but they don't talk like robots!) Jerry runs in breathless for the "tell" part of the show and tell, because he found out that the witnesses and staff are all accounted for except the waitress, Annie Hughes, who was last seen five minutes before the shooting. The team breaks without any high fives with Lou and Tani going to talk to Okada's son, Derek, (who isn't helpful, but definitely wants some revenge) while Danny and Steve go to see a CI. But of course they have to argue more about booth colors. (Steve wants black booths, Danny still wants red.) The scene is obviously filler, but then Harry shows up in the office elevator to save it! He wants to help them out on their case because retirement can be so tedious.
Steve and Harry talk about the booth colors. Harry votes for plain colors so they can liquidate it after the restaurant fails. (No one has been positive about a restaurant. Literally no one, so why are they still doing this?) They end up at Kamekona's for lunch (he's their CI) and to see if he knows who might want to take over Okada's turf and pull off a hit like that. (Honestly, how would Kamekona know? Hasn't he been out of the game forever?) Kame gives them the name of a gunrunner, though, and they send Harry in to see the guy, since he knows all the "cops" on the island and the boys will run backup and listen in.
Harry is the ultimate professional, and gets hit on at the restaurant by a woman who is intent on taking something of Harry's if she can't have him herself, (in this case, she takes his drink) while he waits for GunRunnerLoto. Once the gunrunners finally arrive, Harry isn't intimidated at all by Loto and his crew. (I admit, I love listening to Harry's British accent). Loto asks him to get in the back of his van to do business (no, don't do it! Never get in a creeper van with graffiti all over it!) He does, though, and surprise! Once it's moving, a fight breaks out, which escalates to gunfire and the driver is shot. When the van stops, Steve and Danny hurry over, but Harry has things under control. (Of course!)
Danny can't get Loto to talk with his "good cop" persona, so Harry and Steve convince him. (Man, I would love to see those two work together on a regular basis.) They end up in a warehouse on Pier 17 and surprise a crew who bought a massive amount of guns from Loto. After a brief gunfight (where the bad guys once again are terrible shots), Steve pops a guy running away and they take him to the Blue Room of Doom. Victor, the BloodyGunRunnerGuy, admits they were trying to take over Okada's turf, but they didn't kill him. He knows someone at the FBI (bumblers AND with a mole? The poor FBI looks terrible in this ep) and they were waiting until the feds took down Okada before they made their move. But, Victor isn't the killer, and Lou confirms that since the guns from the warehouse and the Okada murder scene aren't a match.
But, good news! They actually found a gun match---with a gun that was reported stolen three days ago. Everyone is surprised the Okada murders (ten guys!) were done by a lone gunman, but Jerry shows them how it could have been done. (And the audience gets to see all the murders happen. Ew). Once the Jerry show is over, Harry meets Tani and is impressed with her shiny badge and wedge espadrilles meant to impress (but which aren't practical for her line of work. A lot of women on cop shows wear shoes that would never work. Why is that? Remember Castle? Some of Beckett's shoes/boots had four inch heels!) Anyway, Tani got a lead on the missing waitress, so the team breaks again and Steve and Danny go to talk to her, while Lou and Tani follow up on the guy who reported his gun stolen.
In the car Danny can't stop talking about how he wants to retire. Harry used to think the same thing, but he didn't realize he'd miss the buzz of the job. (So, let Danny retire, Harry become Steve's full-time partner, and they can go eat lunch at Danny's dream restaurant every day. Everyone wins!)
The boys get to the hotel and the waitress is dead on the floor, so that lead is gone. But, all is not lost! Tani and Grover are at the piano teacher's house and he's acting suspicious from the start. He doesn't know what was stolen besides the gun, says maybe a camera, when a large expensive camera is sitting on his coffee table. There's also an expensive tea set that didn't get stolen. (Plus, the guy's got shifty eyes.) When a cell phone rings on the coffee table, Lou goes ahead and answers it (which was weird), but it's Steve on the other end. PianoTeacher was the last phone number the waitress called before she died. Lou pulls a gun on him, just as a lot of men in dark cars and suits pull up. (Have you ever noticed that a lot of Crime Family Goons dress nice for work?) Tani takes the little piano student to safety in the bathtub and then joins the gunfight with Lou---after he tells her to make sure she kills who she shoots at. (Didn't he see her last week? She picked off a ton of people. Some of them from a moving car!) Oddly, they have piano music playing as they're killing people. (Like that makes it more classy? I'm not sure.) Oh, and Grover dares PianoTeacher to try to get away during the gunfight and he does! Never trust a shifty-eyed piano teacher.
Steve and Danny arrive on scene and Lou tells him that the guys Tani and Lou killed were identified as crew from the Okada family. Everyone is surprised PianoTeacher is behind it all, but then they find his secret room with all kinds of guns and weapons, books and DVDs on weapons, topped off with surveillance pics. Jerry figures out that Okada ran over the piano teacher's kid and killed him, so the Okada murder was a revenge play. (Well, for all the training he did, he sucked as a criminal by not having his stolen gun story straight. It totally gave him away!) Oh, and the waitress, Annie Hughes, was PianoTeacher's girlfriend.
Well, Derek Okada is mad that the piano teacher got away. (How did he figure out who killed his dad? We'll never know) and he orders his men to be on guard. After the piano teacher calls to tell him he's next, he wants to get his place locked down. Yeah, good plan. (PianoTeacher has definitely lost it. I mean, an hour ago he was teaching a little girl to play a piano piece!)
Next thing we know the piano teacher is killing everyone in his way as he works up to Derek Okada. He shoots all kinds of guards and even shoots someone through the eyehole in the door! (Ew). (It's pretty violent, especially when you consider all the murders at the opening of the show, the warehouse, the van, the murders at the piano teacher's house, and even the waitress.) When PianoTeacher finally makes it to Derek, he shoots him in the leg and shoulder, before he holds a gun to his head, Steve, Danny, and Harry come in quiet and tell him not to do it, but he wants Derek to pay. You see, Derek tried to buy the piano teacher's silence, and then his dad threatened to kill the rest of his family (Who? Did he have a wife or other kids? Because their lives are screwed now with their husband/dad being a serial murderer) if he went to the cops about Okada's role in his son's death. Harry says he's lost someone he loved very much and that this won't bring his son back or change anything. The piano teacher coldly shoots Okada anyway. (They even show the blood spatter on his face. Gross.)They take him into custody, but he doesn't look sorry.
Harry says he needs to make things up to Veronique since he told her he was only going out for sun cream. Danny and Steve offer to make them dinner, but can't get anything edible on the table, so Harry takes her to Kamekona's instead. Kame lectures the boys on customer satisfaction as they awkwardly watch Harry and Veronique eat. (Did they follow them there? It was so odd that they were just standing there drinking, watching Harry and his date.)
Anyway, the best part of the ep for me was definitely Harry's appearance. The rest? Yeah. A little much.
Did you watch? What did you think?
The show starts out in Waikiki with a waitress bringing drinks to a back gaming room where a heavily guarded man is arguing with someone about the best place to get a manicure. (Do crime bosses really get manicures? Like, so their shooting hand looks especially good or something?) The FBI has a surveillance van listening in, whining about how boring this assignment is, when gunfire breaks out. The FBI guys try to run in, but their back door is blocked in by another car. (Can't they go out the front? More than one exit seems like something surveillance guys would plan for, but hey, what do I know? Apparently these are smart criminals and we have bumbling FBI guys.)
Back in the Restaurant of Dreams, Steve is sanding down a counter with Kamekona looking on when Danny brings in fabric swatches for the restaurant booths. He pretends, but doesn't really want Steve's opinion on what color fabric to use, because he's already ordered garnet. Not to be outdone, Kamekona offers up T-shirts he ordered that will bring people in. It has McDanno's Bar and Grill on it, with Danny and Steve in the Lady and the Tramp pose. Danny hates it (as would most people I would imagine, yikes!) Steve tries to be diplomatic and tell him it's going to be a different kind of establishment than the one he's used to running, but Kame has already ordered 400 of the shirts. (Maybe they can use them as rags?) Steve's phone rings, thankfully, and it's Harry! He wants to hang out with them.
The audience gets a nice shot of Harry coming out of the ocean in small swim trunks that Danny compares to Daisy Dukes. (Which was a bit strange, but okay.) Harry gives him a nice wet hug, using his shirt for a towel, but Steve gets a handshake. Apparently, Harry has retired at 45 and is traveling with world with his girlfriend Veronique who meets them as they walk down the beach. When Danny sees Veronique he comments that she's so pretty, but then adds, it's painful. (I'm not sure what that means. So pretty it hurts his head? Eyes? Heart?) Anyway, she invites them to lunch, but Steve gets called to the FBI's I-Can't-Get-Out-Of-My-Van crime scene.
The murder victim was Jimmy Okada, head of the Okada crime family and nine of his terribly inept bodyguards were killed as well. Lou starts to give the boys a recap when Tani comes in to finish it off, saying that after the shooters barricaded the feds in their own van, they came in the emergency exit, shot everyone, and left without being seen. Steve looks very concerned at this news because whoever did this, just started a war. Dun, dun, dun.
Back at the Show and Tell Talking Table, Tani is showing a deposition video of Okada giving one stiff line about how this is a waste of time and then we hear an even more stiff voice from the off-camera female attorney laying out his crimes. (I mean, I know lawyers have a reputation for having no feelings, but they don't talk like robots!) Jerry runs in breathless for the "tell" part of the show and tell, because he found out that the witnesses and staff are all accounted for except the waitress, Annie Hughes, who was last seen five minutes before the shooting. The team breaks without any high fives with Lou and Tani going to talk to Okada's son, Derek, (who isn't helpful, but definitely wants some revenge) while Danny and Steve go to see a CI. But of course they have to argue more about booth colors. (Steve wants black booths, Danny still wants red.) The scene is obviously filler, but then Harry shows up in the office elevator to save it! He wants to help them out on their case because retirement can be so tedious.
Steve and Harry talk about the booth colors. Harry votes for plain colors so they can liquidate it after the restaurant fails. (No one has been positive about a restaurant. Literally no one, so why are they still doing this?) They end up at Kamekona's for lunch (he's their CI) and to see if he knows who might want to take over Okada's turf and pull off a hit like that. (Honestly, how would Kamekona know? Hasn't he been out of the game forever?) Kame gives them the name of a gunrunner, though, and they send Harry in to see the guy, since he knows all the "cops" on the island and the boys will run backup and listen in.
Harry is the ultimate professional, and gets hit on at the restaurant by a woman who is intent on taking something of Harry's if she can't have him herself, (in this case, she takes his drink) while he waits for GunRunnerLoto. Once the gunrunners finally arrive, Harry isn't intimidated at all by Loto and his crew. (I admit, I love listening to Harry's British accent). Loto asks him to get in the back of his van to do business (no, don't do it! Never get in a creeper van with graffiti all over it!) He does, though, and surprise! Once it's moving, a fight breaks out, which escalates to gunfire and the driver is shot. When the van stops, Steve and Danny hurry over, but Harry has things under control. (Of course!)
Danny can't get Loto to talk with his "good cop" persona, so Harry and Steve convince him. (Man, I would love to see those two work together on a regular basis.) They end up in a warehouse on Pier 17 and surprise a crew who bought a massive amount of guns from Loto. After a brief gunfight (where the bad guys once again are terrible shots), Steve pops a guy running away and they take him to the Blue Room of Doom. Victor, the BloodyGunRunnerGuy, admits they were trying to take over Okada's turf, but they didn't kill him. He knows someone at the FBI (bumblers AND with a mole? The poor FBI looks terrible in this ep) and they were waiting until the feds took down Okada before they made their move. But, Victor isn't the killer, and Lou confirms that since the guns from the warehouse and the Okada murder scene aren't a match.
But, good news! They actually found a gun match---with a gun that was reported stolen three days ago. Everyone is surprised the Okada murders (ten guys!) were done by a lone gunman, but Jerry shows them how it could have been done. (And the audience gets to see all the murders happen. Ew). Once the Jerry show is over, Harry meets Tani and is impressed with her shiny badge and wedge espadrilles meant to impress (but which aren't practical for her line of work. A lot of women on cop shows wear shoes that would never work. Why is that? Remember Castle? Some of Beckett's shoes/boots had four inch heels!) Anyway, Tani got a lead on the missing waitress, so the team breaks again and Steve and Danny go to talk to her, while Lou and Tani follow up on the guy who reported his gun stolen.
In the car Danny can't stop talking about how he wants to retire. Harry used to think the same thing, but he didn't realize he'd miss the buzz of the job. (So, let Danny retire, Harry become Steve's full-time partner, and they can go eat lunch at Danny's dream restaurant every day. Everyone wins!)
The boys get to the hotel and the waitress is dead on the floor, so that lead is gone. But, all is not lost! Tani and Grover are at the piano teacher's house and he's acting suspicious from the start. He doesn't know what was stolen besides the gun, says maybe a camera, when a large expensive camera is sitting on his coffee table. There's also an expensive tea set that didn't get stolen. (Plus, the guy's got shifty eyes.) When a cell phone rings on the coffee table, Lou goes ahead and answers it (which was weird), but it's Steve on the other end. PianoTeacher was the last phone number the waitress called before she died. Lou pulls a gun on him, just as a lot of men in dark cars and suits pull up. (Have you ever noticed that a lot of Crime Family Goons dress nice for work?) Tani takes the little piano student to safety in the bathtub and then joins the gunfight with Lou---after he tells her to make sure she kills who she shoots at. (Didn't he see her last week? She picked off a ton of people. Some of them from a moving car!) Oddly, they have piano music playing as they're killing people. (Like that makes it more classy? I'm not sure.) Oh, and Grover dares PianoTeacher to try to get away during the gunfight and he does! Never trust a shifty-eyed piano teacher.
Steve and Danny arrive on scene and Lou tells him that the guys Tani and Lou killed were identified as crew from the Okada family. Everyone is surprised PianoTeacher is behind it all, but then they find his secret room with all kinds of guns and weapons, books and DVDs on weapons, topped off with surveillance pics. Jerry figures out that Okada ran over the piano teacher's kid and killed him, so the Okada murder was a revenge play. (Well, for all the training he did, he sucked as a criminal by not having his stolen gun story straight. It totally gave him away!) Oh, and the waitress, Annie Hughes, was PianoTeacher's girlfriend.
Well, Derek Okada is mad that the piano teacher got away. (How did he figure out who killed his dad? We'll never know) and he orders his men to be on guard. After the piano teacher calls to tell him he's next, he wants to get his place locked down. Yeah, good plan. (PianoTeacher has definitely lost it. I mean, an hour ago he was teaching a little girl to play a piano piece!)
Next thing we know the piano teacher is killing everyone in his way as he works up to Derek Okada. He shoots all kinds of guards and even shoots someone through the eyehole in the door! (Ew). (It's pretty violent, especially when you consider all the murders at the opening of the show, the warehouse, the van, the murders at the piano teacher's house, and even the waitress.) When PianoTeacher finally makes it to Derek, he shoots him in the leg and shoulder, before he holds a gun to his head, Steve, Danny, and Harry come in quiet and tell him not to do it, but he wants Derek to pay. You see, Derek tried to buy the piano teacher's silence, and then his dad threatened to kill the rest of his family (Who? Did he have a wife or other kids? Because their lives are screwed now with their husband/dad being a serial murderer) if he went to the cops about Okada's role in his son's death. Harry says he's lost someone he loved very much and that this won't bring his son back or change anything. The piano teacher coldly shoots Okada anyway. (They even show the blood spatter on his face. Gross.)They take him into custody, but he doesn't look sorry.
Anyway, the best part of the ep for me was definitely Harry's appearance. The rest? Yeah. A little much.
Did you watch? What did you think?
Tuesday, October 3, 2017
Hawaii Five-O Season 8 Premiere Recap & Review
My show is back! I've been looking forward to this all summer!
We start out with some beautiful shots of Hawaii that remind me of why I want to go there someday. Sigh. Someday, Hawaii, I will be there to see all of that myself!
Cut to a hotel pool where an exasperated lifeguard is chasing some bratty kids around telling them not to run and jump. (Most of the hotels I stay in have big signs that say No Lifeguard On Duty. Parental Supervision Required. This must be a nice hotel.) Unfortunately, that lifeguard doesn't even have a good teacher voice and not shockingly, those kids don't listen. Thankfully, Steve and Danny interrupt her day and ask if she is Tani Rey and can they have a minute? Apparently, she has no qualms about leaving her post (did she get a lifeguard sub? Or was she just grateful to leave them all unattended?) and they go sit at a table to look at a picture of a murder victim.
The murder victim is Benny Lung who was strangled to death last week and the only clue they have is a hacker that goes by the name Mizchief, like a rapper name. (Don't worry, though, it's just a plot point, we never hear about poor Benny again). They want LifeguardTani to go undercover at Aloha State to ID Mizchief. She turns them down, says she's busy, and Danny says, busy doing what? Getting harassed by eight year olds? (Haha. I hope we see a lighter Danny this year with more one-liners than groaning and griping.) Steve tells her that her boss isn't expecting her back to work today and he gets down to business. Five-O needs someone who doesn't think like a cop and isn't afraid to break the rules, or someone's nose. Apparently, she punched out her training officer, and cheated on her written exam. Steve doesn't care. Says he knows her dad died (surprise! All the tortured heroes on this show have dead fathers) and she was a great cadet who reminds him of Chin who's running his own task force in San Francisco now. (Oddly, he asks her if she knows who Chin is and she acts like she doesn't. Five-O routinely busts into places and shouts Five-O like everyone on the island knows who they are. Since there's only six of them, wouldn't everyone know who they are?) (Also, since LifeguardTani is replacing Chin/Kono, it isn't surprising that she reminds me of Kono who, at her meet and greet, had Danny crushing on her and she punched someone.) LifeguardTani says no to going undercover and walks away.
Cut to Aloha State where Mizchief hacker is on the quad, letting convicted arsonists out of prison. Jason DuClair literally walks out of Halawa prison when Mizchief opens his door, locks the guard in and there's just one other doorway between him and freedom with no other checkpoints to stop him from escaping. Someone needs to give that prison lessons on better security.
LifeguardTani is headed home where her gamer brother is playing on a system that he can't account for. He leaves and tells her to get a life. Meanwhile, Danny is showing Steve a space where he could put his Italian restaurant in Chinatown. Steve isn't exactly thrilled, thinking Danny said he was going to do a restaurant when he retired. He asks Steve to be his partner and Steve is suspicious that it's about his radiation poisoning and Danny is worried he'll get the big C, but Danny says it's all about having fun. Steve tells him the restaurant is Danny's dream. (Yeah. Stay with that Steve. For all of our sakes.) Before they can talk further, the phone rings and they head back to HQ to talk about Duclair's escape around the Talking Table. Eric tracked the hacker to Aloha State and supposedly the other students picked him out of the footage and said he wasn't registered there. (Really? How small is this university? Ten people? I couldn't tell you who was registered and who wasn't at my university.) Anyway, Mizchief's real name is Aaron Wright, brother to Ian Wright who kidnapped Grover's daughter four years ago. Aaron hacks into Five-O to tell them how happy he is about Duclair getting out. Everyone stares helplessly at the screen.
At Alewa Heights Duclair is there with a serious looking dude and his two sons licking the wood, looking at burned items, and trying to "investigate" a fire to figure out who did it. Back at Jerry's laptop, Grover says Aaron came to the island two months ago and the passenger manifest has one name that doesn't check out--Mick St. John (shout out to a character AOL used to play). There's a hotel room booked under that name, but when they break in, Aaron is there to mock them from a laptop while he is at another undisclosed location. (He calls them Crockett and "white Tubbs" referencing Miami Vice, LOL). (He taunts them some more, but I'm sitting there thinking, why is this hacker so invested in annoying Five-O and releasing Duclair? They didn't kill his bro and he knows that. He doesn't seem to have any motivation at all. Money, I guess?) He knows Steve is about to get a call (he's still plugged into Five-O's Talking Table, apparently), and Steve and Danny rush off to an arson fire with one casualty.
There's a burned out corpse being examined and Noelani tells them he was shot in the kneecaps before he died. The charred body was graphic and gross and we get several close-ups. The team ties the murder victim to a fire that burned out Randy Tao's drug lab where he lost a lot of product and a lieutenant, but they also figure out that Tao used Duclair as a fire investigator. (You would think drug lords could afford to hire legit people instead of going to all the trouble of breaking people out of prison. I guess I just don't think like a drug lord.)
The team heads to Tao's house where they find three smoking corpses. (Duclair was obviously showing his own brand of appreciation for Tao getting him out.) Jerry finds a money trail from Tao to Wright (what a newbie mistake for a hacker! Never leave a money trail) and we see Duclair dousing Aaron with accelerant while Aaron begs him to stop. LifeguardTani randomly shows up at his door (is she telepathic? Hacked into the Talking Table, too?) and goes hand to hand with Duclair who is double her size. He tells her she'll look good on fire (ew) and she calls him a psycho before he throws her around and subdues her. He's choking her when the team busts in to save her. Duclair runs into a room, while Danny tries to unsuccessfully kick in a door. (It's harder than it looks!) Duclair gets away and carjacks someone (why don't they lock their doors or keep driving when a bleeding psychopath confronts them?) Tani is chasing him along with the team and refuses to obey Steve's order to go back to the house. Danny thinks that's funny and says she's stubborn, unpredictable, and crazy like Steve. (Um, maybe they could have caught Duclair if she hadn't slowed them down? And obeying orders from the boss should be a thing for a task force, but hey, LifeguardTani is sassy! And a kickbutt female! Don't forget that.)
They track the car to the woods and Duclair runs into the trees while the team changes into tac gear (Steve puts on a t-shirt because who wants to wear a vest with a shirt collar?) They don't give Tani any gear, but do give her a gun, even though Danny and Grover seem to be balking at that. Steve asks her the first rule of carrying a firearm and she says don't shoot the good guys. That's good enough for him. They track Duclair in the woods, going by broken branches instead of the large fire he's started (does the guy carry matches on him?) They finally see the inferno, though and Tani says, "he started a fire." (Ya think? Haha. I don't know what it was, but that was so funny to me.) The fire quickly spreads and Kamekona comes to feed the firefighters. Aww.
They separate and of course McG finds Duclair first. He whacks McG with a torch and McG loses his gun so they go hand to hand. It's nearly identical to the Tani fight where McG gets thrown around a lot, lands a few punches, and ends up on the ground with Duclair choking him. The team comes in to save him and Tani shoots Duclair in the leg. She's SassyTani and tired of dealing with a weenie roast. Danny likes that and asks to keep her. Like a pet?
Fire is everywhere and Grover asks Duclair, a criminal, what they should do. He says die. (Yeah, don't ask criminals for advice.) SassyTani even punches Duclair, which Grover approves of. They find a cabin in the woods and decide to wait there. Well, Steve is going to go find help while the rest of them roast inside the cabin. It's fully furnished however, with water and sewer so at least they're comfortable. Steve goes out into the middle of the fire, but can't seem to flag down a helo. Cut to people being evacuated from their homes since the fire looks like it's on their front lawns and Kame is there helping with food, literally handing it out with the fire just feet away. Now that's dedication!
Back to the cabin where Tani douses herself in water and Danny apologizes for getting her into this. (Hmmm...these two seem pretty chummy, I'm just sayin') Duclair is tied to a chair and waxing philosophical about how you die from fire, that McG won't make it, fire is an elegant weapon, blah blah. Grover whacks him with a bowl and says no one likes a chatty kathy.
Duclair gets free of his bonds and even with a bullet wound to the leg, runs away. Oh, and he gets another bullet wound to the shoulder, but keeps going, like Terminator! How many bullets will it take to take him down? Steve, Tani, and Grover are on the floor, trying to breathe, fist bumping and saying goodbye. Then they hear the helo and go outside where Steve is up there, piloting a rescue helicopter. He drops four straps down which they brace under the cabin in a few minutes, (who knew it was so easy?!) then go back in and Steve pulls up the house from the fire and they fly away in it. A fully furnished cabin. Like in the Wizard of Oz only with a helicopter and not a tornado! I wonder if he dropped it on anyone. (Why not just pull the three of them up into the helo? Or was that too easy?) Duclair apparently dies in the forest fire and Danny goes to talk to Tani. He says she has a nice place and that he's working on being more positive. (I hope that's true!) Tani is all smiley. Steve called her and she's thinking about joining the task force. Danny tries to tip the scales and says that Five-O is never boring and Steve is awesome to have watching your back. Tani is an Army brat and knows how hard it is to find someone to count on, a good friend, and Danny assures her that Steve will be there for her no matter what. And guess what? Tani reminds him of Kono! She's gone working with a task force to shut down sex traffickers so Tani is the next best thing. And things are changing so they want her to be a part of that. She nods happily.
Then the oddest scene of the whole episode was Grover bringing his traumatized daughter to the Blue Room of Doom to see Aaron bound and gagged inside. She gets a glimpse then Grover tells her to wait outside. He says he wanted her to see there's real live monsters in the world and it's his job as her father to protect her. What? That's why he brought her down there? Isn't that why she's having nightmares? Because she knows that already? I don't get it. There's a father daughter hug at the end, though.
Steve calls Danny down to the Restaurant of Dreams and he's bought a commercial lease so they can be partners on it. Danny wore him down. (Why? Stay strong Steve! This will not end well or be pretty.) Oh and Tani is coming to work tomorrow. But the restaurant will be fun. Right? Fun. I guess we'll see.
Did you watch? What did you think?
We start out with some beautiful shots of Hawaii that remind me of why I want to go there someday. Sigh. Someday, Hawaii, I will be there to see all of that myself!
Cut to a hotel pool where an exasperated lifeguard is chasing some bratty kids around telling them not to run and jump. (Most of the hotels I stay in have big signs that say No Lifeguard On Duty. Parental Supervision Required. This must be a nice hotel.) Unfortunately, that lifeguard doesn't even have a good teacher voice and not shockingly, those kids don't listen. Thankfully, Steve and Danny interrupt her day and ask if she is Tani Rey and can they have a minute? Apparently, she has no qualms about leaving her post (did she get a lifeguard sub? Or was she just grateful to leave them all unattended?) and they go sit at a table to look at a picture of a murder victim.
The murder victim is Benny Lung who was strangled to death last week and the only clue they have is a hacker that goes by the name Mizchief, like a rapper name. (Don't worry, though, it's just a plot point, we never hear about poor Benny again). They want LifeguardTani to go undercover at Aloha State to ID Mizchief. She turns them down, says she's busy, and Danny says, busy doing what? Getting harassed by eight year olds? (Haha. I hope we see a lighter Danny this year with more one-liners than groaning and griping.) Steve tells her that her boss isn't expecting her back to work today and he gets down to business. Five-O needs someone who doesn't think like a cop and isn't afraid to break the rules, or someone's nose. Apparently, she punched out her training officer, and cheated on her written exam. Steve doesn't care. Says he knows her dad died (surprise! All the tortured heroes on this show have dead fathers) and she was a great cadet who reminds him of Chin who's running his own task force in San Francisco now. (Oddly, he asks her if she knows who Chin is and she acts like she doesn't. Five-O routinely busts into places and shouts Five-O like everyone on the island knows who they are. Since there's only six of them, wouldn't everyone know who they are?) (Also, since LifeguardTani is replacing Chin/Kono, it isn't surprising that she reminds me of Kono who, at her meet and greet, had Danny crushing on her and she punched someone.) LifeguardTani says no to going undercover and walks away.
Cut to Aloha State where Mizchief hacker is on the quad, letting convicted arsonists out of prison. Jason DuClair literally walks out of Halawa prison when Mizchief opens his door, locks the guard in and there's just one other doorway between him and freedom with no other checkpoints to stop him from escaping. Someone needs to give that prison lessons on better security.
LifeguardTani is headed home where her gamer brother is playing on a system that he can't account for. He leaves and tells her to get a life. Meanwhile, Danny is showing Steve a space where he could put his Italian restaurant in Chinatown. Steve isn't exactly thrilled, thinking Danny said he was going to do a restaurant when he retired. He asks Steve to be his partner and Steve is suspicious that it's about his radiation poisoning and Danny is worried he'll get the big C, but Danny says it's all about having fun. Steve tells him the restaurant is Danny's dream. (Yeah. Stay with that Steve. For all of our sakes.) Before they can talk further, the phone rings and they head back to HQ to talk about Duclair's escape around the Talking Table. Eric tracked the hacker to Aloha State and supposedly the other students picked him out of the footage and said he wasn't registered there. (Really? How small is this university? Ten people? I couldn't tell you who was registered and who wasn't at my university.) Anyway, Mizchief's real name is Aaron Wright, brother to Ian Wright who kidnapped Grover's daughter four years ago. Aaron hacks into Five-O to tell them how happy he is about Duclair getting out. Everyone stares helplessly at the screen.
At Alewa Heights Duclair is there with a serious looking dude and his two sons licking the wood, looking at burned items, and trying to "investigate" a fire to figure out who did it. Back at Jerry's laptop, Grover says Aaron came to the island two months ago and the passenger manifest has one name that doesn't check out--Mick St. John (shout out to a character AOL used to play). There's a hotel room booked under that name, but when they break in, Aaron is there to mock them from a laptop while he is at another undisclosed location. (He calls them Crockett and "white Tubbs" referencing Miami Vice, LOL). (He taunts them some more, but I'm sitting there thinking, why is this hacker so invested in annoying Five-O and releasing Duclair? They didn't kill his bro and he knows that. He doesn't seem to have any motivation at all. Money, I guess?) He knows Steve is about to get a call (he's still plugged into Five-O's Talking Table, apparently), and Steve and Danny rush off to an arson fire with one casualty.
There's a burned out corpse being examined and Noelani tells them he was shot in the kneecaps before he died. The charred body was graphic and gross and we get several close-ups. The team ties the murder victim to a fire that burned out Randy Tao's drug lab where he lost a lot of product and a lieutenant, but they also figure out that Tao used Duclair as a fire investigator. (You would think drug lords could afford to hire legit people instead of going to all the trouble of breaking people out of prison. I guess I just don't think like a drug lord.)
The team heads to Tao's house where they find three smoking corpses. (Duclair was obviously showing his own brand of appreciation for Tao getting him out.) Jerry finds a money trail from Tao to Wright (what a newbie mistake for a hacker! Never leave a money trail) and we see Duclair dousing Aaron with accelerant while Aaron begs him to stop. LifeguardTani randomly shows up at his door (is she telepathic? Hacked into the Talking Table, too?) and goes hand to hand with Duclair who is double her size. He tells her she'll look good on fire (ew) and she calls him a psycho before he throws her around and subdues her. He's choking her when the team busts in to save her. Duclair runs into a room, while Danny tries to unsuccessfully kick in a door. (It's harder than it looks!) Duclair gets away and carjacks someone (why don't they lock their doors or keep driving when a bleeding psychopath confronts them?) Tani is chasing him along with the team and refuses to obey Steve's order to go back to the house. Danny thinks that's funny and says she's stubborn, unpredictable, and crazy like Steve. (Um, maybe they could have caught Duclair if she hadn't slowed them down? And obeying orders from the boss should be a thing for a task force, but hey, LifeguardTani is sassy! And a kickbutt female! Don't forget that.)
They track the car to the woods and Duclair runs into the trees while the team changes into tac gear (Steve puts on a t-shirt because who wants to wear a vest with a shirt collar?) They don't give Tani any gear, but do give her a gun, even though Danny and Grover seem to be balking at that. Steve asks her the first rule of carrying a firearm and she says don't shoot the good guys. That's good enough for him. They track Duclair in the woods, going by broken branches instead of the large fire he's started (does the guy carry matches on him?) They finally see the inferno, though and Tani says, "he started a fire." (Ya think? Haha. I don't know what it was, but that was so funny to me.) The fire quickly spreads and Kamekona comes to feed the firefighters. Aww.
They separate and of course McG finds Duclair first. He whacks McG with a torch and McG loses his gun so they go hand to hand. It's nearly identical to the Tani fight where McG gets thrown around a lot, lands a few punches, and ends up on the ground with Duclair choking him. The team comes in to save him and Tani shoots Duclair in the leg. She's SassyTani and tired of dealing with a weenie roast. Danny likes that and asks to keep her. Like a pet?
Fire is everywhere and Grover asks Duclair, a criminal, what they should do. He says die. (Yeah, don't ask criminals for advice.) SassyTani even punches Duclair, which Grover approves of. They find a cabin in the woods and decide to wait there. Well, Steve is going to go find help while the rest of them roast inside the cabin. It's fully furnished however, with water and sewer so at least they're comfortable. Steve goes out into the middle of the fire, but can't seem to flag down a helo. Cut to people being evacuated from their homes since the fire looks like it's on their front lawns and Kame is there helping with food, literally handing it out with the fire just feet away. Now that's dedication!
Back to the cabin where Tani douses herself in water and Danny apologizes for getting her into this. (Hmmm...these two seem pretty chummy, I'm just sayin') Duclair is tied to a chair and waxing philosophical about how you die from fire, that McG won't make it, fire is an elegant weapon, blah blah. Grover whacks him with a bowl and says no one likes a chatty kathy.
Duclair gets free of his bonds and even with a bullet wound to the leg, runs away. Oh, and he gets another bullet wound to the shoulder, but keeps going, like Terminator! How many bullets will it take to take him down? Steve, Tani, and Grover are on the floor, trying to breathe, fist bumping and saying goodbye. Then they hear the helo and go outside where Steve is up there, piloting a rescue helicopter. He drops four straps down which they brace under the cabin in a few minutes, (who knew it was so easy?!) then go back in and Steve pulls up the house from the fire and they fly away in it. A fully furnished cabin. Like in the Wizard of Oz only with a helicopter and not a tornado! I wonder if he dropped it on anyone. (Why not just pull the three of them up into the helo? Or was that too easy?) Duclair apparently dies in the forest fire and Danny goes to talk to Tani. He says she has a nice place and that he's working on being more positive. (I hope that's true!) Tani is all smiley. Steve called her and she's thinking about joining the task force. Danny tries to tip the scales and says that Five-O is never boring and Steve is awesome to have watching your back. Tani is an Army brat and knows how hard it is to find someone to count on, a good friend, and Danny assures her that Steve will be there for her no matter what. And guess what? Tani reminds him of Kono! She's gone working with a task force to shut down sex traffickers so Tani is the next best thing. And things are changing so they want her to be a part of that. She nods happily.
Then the oddest scene of the whole episode was Grover bringing his traumatized daughter to the Blue Room of Doom to see Aaron bound and gagged inside. She gets a glimpse then Grover tells her to wait outside. He says he wanted her to see there's real live monsters in the world and it's his job as her father to protect her. What? That's why he brought her down there? Isn't that why she's having nightmares? Because she knows that already? I don't get it. There's a father daughter hug at the end, though.
Steve calls Danny down to the Restaurant of Dreams and he's bought a commercial lease so they can be partners on it. Danny wore him down. (Why? Stay strong Steve! This will not end well or be pretty.) Oh and Tani is coming to work tomorrow. But the restaurant will be fun. Right? Fun. I guess we'll see.
Did you watch? What did you think?
Tuesday, February 7, 2017
24 Legacy: What Did You Think?
Did any of you watch the 24 Legacy premiere? Since I was a big Jack Bauer fan on the original 24 I wasn't sure if I would like this series. But, oh, it was good to hear that clock ticking again.
The show started off with a bang with a team of Army Rangers (a team that had killed a terrorist named bin Khalid) being picked off one by one---until they get to team leader Eric Carter. He manages to escape with his wife and calls the old head of CTU, Rebecca Ingram. Only three people knew the new identities of the Army Ranger team, and one of them was the new head of CTU, Keith Mullins.
Rebecca agrees to help Carter find the last surviving member of the team, Ben Grimes, and keep the op from the new CTU head. (That never goes well, if past 24's are anything to go by.) Ben is a drifter and not thinking straight, so it takes some maneuvering to find him. (The new tech is no Chloe, but he'll do in a pinch I guess.) When Carter mentions the assassins were looking for a strongbox that was taken from bin Khalid that night, Ben goes to his hiding place and retrieves it. Carter finally catches up with Ben, and they empty the box to find a flash drive with bin Khalid's network of sleeper cells, with their activation codes. Before Carter can take it in, he's faced with another terrorist team trying to kill him, and when he dispatches them all, Ben is gone with the flash drive. He's not going to give it back, either, unless he's paid two million dollars by the U.S. or bin Khalid's people, he doesn't care. Poor Carter is stuck trying to figure out how to get the money without getting himself killed.
Of course there are several side stories going on with Eric's wife and his drug-dealing brother, a girl in a high school who is planning to do something terrible (and a teacher is in on it) and the husband of Rebecca Ingram who is running for president.
I thought the pacing was really well done and my attention was riveted the entire time. Even without Jack, I think this series has a real chance of finding its own audience because of the sheer intensity of the subject matter. The characters have drawn me in and I can't wait for next week.
If you watched it, what did you think?
The show started off with a bang with a team of Army Rangers (a team that had killed a terrorist named bin Khalid) being picked off one by one---until they get to team leader Eric Carter. He manages to escape with his wife and calls the old head of CTU, Rebecca Ingram. Only three people knew the new identities of the Army Ranger team, and one of them was the new head of CTU, Keith Mullins.
Rebecca agrees to help Carter find the last surviving member of the team, Ben Grimes, and keep the op from the new CTU head. (That never goes well, if past 24's are anything to go by.) Ben is a drifter and not thinking straight, so it takes some maneuvering to find him. (The new tech is no Chloe, but he'll do in a pinch I guess.) When Carter mentions the assassins were looking for a strongbox that was taken from bin Khalid that night, Ben goes to his hiding place and retrieves it. Carter finally catches up with Ben, and they empty the box to find a flash drive with bin Khalid's network of sleeper cells, with their activation codes. Before Carter can take it in, he's faced with another terrorist team trying to kill him, and when he dispatches them all, Ben is gone with the flash drive. He's not going to give it back, either, unless he's paid two million dollars by the U.S. or bin Khalid's people, he doesn't care. Poor Carter is stuck trying to figure out how to get the money without getting himself killed.
Of course there are several side stories going on with Eric's wife and his drug-dealing brother, a girl in a high school who is planning to do something terrible (and a teacher is in on it) and the husband of Rebecca Ingram who is running for president.
I thought the pacing was really well done and my attention was riveted the entire time. Even without Jack, I think this series has a real chance of finding its own audience because of the sheer intensity of the subject matter. The characters have drawn me in and I can't wait for next week.
If you watched it, what did you think?
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