Monday, October 8, 2018

Hawaii Five-O Recap & Review---The One Where Steve Stays At The Office

Well, we get more CIA shenanigans in this episode. I admit, I'm kind of liking the dynamic here!

We start off with a plane heading into Honolulu---about ten minutes out. A guy who is there with his wife and child goes to use the restroom, but on his way out a man wearing a hideous tank top with a zip up jacket over it confronts him with a gun. TerribleOutfitMan puts on a parachute, blows open the door with a bomb, and kidnaps/tandem jumps with the bathroom guy out of the plane. (Would a plane even be able to stay in the air with a blown door? Hmm.. This is Hawaii Five-O land, though, so it's fine. Nothing to look at here. Carry on.)

Cut to money floating through the air behind Steve's house. As was feared last week, Eddie dug up Kamekona's money and it's in the water and all over the property. Danny is very upset and tells Steve that burying the money was a stupid idea. Steve mentions the hole would have been deeper if Danny had shown up to help dig. Yeah. Moving along to the point of the scene: Steve had a meeting with the governor and the info they fed Greer led to the arrest and capture of three members of the Chinese spy network. Unfortunately, they wised up and pulled the rest of their agents out and no one has any idea where Greer is. Steve's phone rings and it's about what happened on the plane.

McGrover and Danny look at inside footage of the guy jumping out of the plane and they are trying to figure out where those two men might have landed. Very few people could have pulled that jump off and they killed a marshal in order to take his place on the plane and kidnap that guy. But why? (And how did he know when the guy would go to the bathroom?) We also find out that Bathroom Guy's name is Jack Teague and he was just coming to Hawaii for a fun week at the Hilton. Now it's ruined!

The B storyline starts with some recruits processing a fake crime scene and sneezing all over it, touching their nose, etc., and their instructor, Captain Keo, calls them out in front of everyone. When he sees Tani come in, however, he lets all the recruits go. Tani apologizes again for punching Captain K when she was at the academy, but hey, it got her a job with Five-O after getting kicked out. She asks Captain K for a favor, since he's the only person she can trust. (What? I'm sorry, but her not trusting McG or Danny or even Jerry with this is so bizarre. She goes to Keo, the guy she punched out and who was one of the reasons she got kicked out of the academy? *shakes head*) Okay, well, she wants Captain K to run the ballistics on the gun she found in Adam's apartment and keep it off the books. Captain K isn't on board and says that McG isn't a stickler for the books, so why does she need him? Tani says that McG can't know. She has a hunch about the gun and if she's right it will incriminate someone close to McG and if she's wrong it will destroy her relationship with him and the team. (What? How would that gun ruin her relationship with the team? It doesn't make any sense to me. If she knows them at all, she knows they're fair and will investigate. What would they blame her for?) She goes on to say that Five-O is her only family and she can't risk losing them. (She can go behind their backs, though, and say she can't trust them, since Captain K is the only one she trusts. Oookay.) The captain points out that Tani is a woman who cheated on her test and punched her instructor. A rule-breaker. And that's not how he does things so he won't help her. Captain Keo says No. (I really don't like this storyline at all. It doesn't do any favors for Tani when she's talking about trust and loyalty.)

Anyway, back to the Chatting Table. Jerry pinpoints the plane's location when the kidnapper and kidnappee jumped and then Junior narrows the search area down even further. They're able to locate the chute and so Danny, Tani, and Junior head out. Steve stays behind to dig into Teague and Danny is surprised since jumping out of helos is Steve's "jam." Danny promises to figure out why Steve doesn't want to go.

TD & J take Steve's "jam" (see what I did there? Ha!) and they head out to the site, find the chute and start tracking. Danny starts dropping gems on "the kids" like "have hope to catch a break, hope to catch the bad guys." (I hope Danny takes some of his own advice because his hopefulness is sometimes hard to detect on a case.) Junior finds TerribleOutfitMan/the kidnapper from the plane dead on the ground. His neck was snapped.

Steve is looking at Teague's family pics. Grover shows him a pic of CIA Agent Miller waiting at the airport for Teague's plane. Since he should be sidelined as Greer's partner pending a security evaluation, that is very odd. Then, Jerry comes in with Teague's laptop and finds an encrypted partition in Chinese. Uh oh. Those Chinese got to Teague! McG lets Danny know that Teague is a Chinese spy, then we see Teague running across a river. (I wonder where he's running to exactly? Just away?)

McG is driving Renee's minivan and Grover is concerned about the vehicle getting home unscathed. McG claims he's a good driver, so don't worry. (Considering the car chases Steve has done in the past, I actually agree that he's a good driver.) McGrover is spitballing about what could be happening with the case like, maybe Teague got word he was about to be exposed, so he grabs his family and heads to Hawaii under cover of a vacation. But Miller is waiting to intercept Teague and then the Chinese snatch him, but why go to all the trouble? Nothing really adds up. Hopefully Miller has some answers.

Back in the jungle Junior finds footprints. He thinks Teague went upstream and crossed over, but something feels off to Danny. He drops another gem of "When evidence seems too good to be true, it is." Teague knows he's being tracked and the print doesn't look like a running footprint, it looks staged. They decide that Teague went up a tree and crossed over then dropped down. Junior asks Danny not to tell McG about him training a Navy SEAL on how to track someone. (Yikes. Considering the extensive training Junior would have had to go through to be a SEAL, that seems really unrealistic that he wouldn't know how to track someone. But, okay.)  Tani finds an injection device that turns out to be a GPS implant so Teague can be tracked, but the receiver is missing.

Grover knocks on Agent Miller's door but Miller doesn't want to let him in. Grover is friendly, says he just needed to stall him long enough for McG to break into the room. (I guess he scaled the hotel? I wonder how high up they are.) Once McG comes in the patio door, Miller lets Grover in. They get to the point and ask why he was at the airport? They know Teague's working with the Chinese but why were you there? Miller says he's collateral damage to Greer's betrayal and he won't wait for the suits at Langley to clear his name. Oh, and Teague's one of ours. He's a double agent feeding counter-intelligence to the Chinese and the whole thing unraveled when Steve exposed the spy network. (Nice twist!) Teague is spooked, so Miller reached out and offered protection. He sent a Special Activities Division team to search for Teague, but when DT&J find them they're all dead. (Wow. Our Spec Ops teams are really taking a hit in this ep. Junior doesn't know how to track and now there's an entire Special Activities Division team dead. That seems hard to believe as well, considering how Special Activities teams train and the kind of missions they do.) And apparently they were all killed by the Chinese extraction team marching through jungle tracking the GPS. (I guess they scored the receiver. Poor Teague.) Greer is with them.

Teague is shooting at the Chinese team. Danny and the others join the fight. Teague takes off, wounded in the arm and jumps over a waterfall and gets away. Greer is also wounded, but Danny brings her in as a gift to Steve. The strange thing is that the Chinese team with Greer, who seems to have killed an ENTIRE U.S. SPEC OPS team are really terrible shots and DT&J take them all out without any problem at all. Weird.

Greer is put in the Blue Room of Doom and Steve unlocks one cuff so she can make a call and tell the rest of her men in the field to stand down. He reminds her that she took an oath to serve and protect her country and he's counting on one shred of decency and honor that will show she stills cares about that. Greer doesn't and says Steve pretends that the work they do is so noble. They armed governments, interfered in elections, propped up dictators. She also reminds Steve that he's done things. Bad things. He brushes that off and tells her that since this whole thing is about money, she'll have the rest of her life in an 8x8 cell to see if that Chinese payday was worth it. She doesn't seem all that upset about his dire prediction. I bet Steve's asking himself what he ever saw in her . . .

Jerry dumped Greer's phone, and finds out that she's been monitoring Miller. Uh oh. Miller is close to the last known location of Teague! McG calls him, and tells him he's been compromised, but Miller doesn't seem too concerned because he's picking up Teague! (My question is, how did Teague contact Miller? Jungle pay phone?) The Chinese pull up behind him and there's a short car chase. Miller is murdered and Teague gets taken. Again. (All that running through the jungle for nothing! He just gets shot for his trouble, then kidnapped again) Tani and Junior arrive on the scene and confirm that Miller is dead. They try to figure out what kind of car the Chinese had that took Teague. Luckily, they find a broken rearview mirror from the Chinese car, they get the serial number from that and Jerry tells them it's a Chevy Tahoe. They quickly sift through traffic cams and locate the Chinese Tahoe (since they ran a red light that must be the one!) And they're headed to the Chinese consulate. McG hurries over and rams them with Renee's minivan before they can get through the gates. Teague is saved and the Chinese kidnappers are taken into custody. Teague is barely bandaged before they let his wife and daughter in. (I could have sworn Teague calls his daughter Spencer. Did anyone else hear Spencer?)

Now that the crisis has passed, Danny is asking why Steve sent him into the jungle with Tunior. Steve says so they could learn something from Danny. They defer to Steve when they're out in the field, so he wanted to give Danny a chance to teach them what he knows about being a good cop. (Is he thinking about passing the leadership torch? Hmmm) Grover is upset about the minivan and Steve assures him after a couple of days in the shop it will look as good as new. Grover says he won't be able to go home and when he's at Steve's breakfast table in his drawers eating Froot Loops, it'll be funny. (Now that's an image.)

Tani is at her house, when Captain K pulls up. I guess her saying that Five-O was her only family besides her brother got him thinking so he looked into her. (He didn't look into her before? Wasn't he her instructor?) She lost her father two days before the incident in the classroom, but she didn't want to use that as an excuse because her father would have hated that. Captain K says that's pretty noble or stupid, he can't tell which, but he'll run the gun for her. She thanks him, but he says don't thank me yet. You don't know what I'm going to find. Cue serious music. (Please don't drag this Tani storyline out. Just tell Steve already. Sigh.)

Steve takes Greer to the airport and congratulates her that she'll be the first American charged under the Espionage act. She's sort of smirking and says, "Remember Marrakesh? What we did before we jumped into bed? I always worried our enemies would know it was us and retaliate. I had the comfort that you never would have implicated me just as you knew if we were on the same side I wouldn't implicate you." (Uh oh. That can't be good since they're not on the same side anymore.) Steve's just taking it in and says, "You threatening me?" But she's just stating facts, of course. He tells her they were just following orders, but she reminds him that won't matter to people who just want answers. Steve has her taken away and she's put on the helo while Steve watches. We get a slo mo Steve walk as the helo flies away and he has a very serious look on his face. (Hmmm... Oh, Marrakesh. What happened all those years ago?)

So, an interesting storyline overall. I really am liking all the CIA involvement and double agents and betrayals. Can't wait to see where this is going!

What did you think? Did you watch?

4 comments:

Darlena said...

Yes a plane can still fly with a door missing, only thing that happens is pressure equals out between inside and outside so everything not secured in the cabin will fly out and if at high altitude it will also mean lack of oxygen but as they were about to land they would have been low enough for that not being a problem on this flight.
The storyline with the money is boring and I'm over it already so I wish they would stop that silliness altogether and make Steve and Danny act as the adults they're supposed to be and not 12 year olds.
No comments about Tani, like you I think that story line too is just weird.
I liked the case of the week though, it was interesting and suspenseful enough to keep me on the edge of my seat for most of the ep. Will be interesting to see how it unfolds with this Marrakesh story.
Not sure though about Junior not knowing how to track in the jungle, or was it rather a case of humouring Danny as he's older and letting him shine because of it, otherwise it would have made more sense if he had been teaching Tani how to track.
Last but not least I thoroughly enjoyed your review as usual.

Julie Coulter Bellon said...

Thanks for answering my plane question! So, if someone wasn't sitting down, would they have flown out I wonder?

We agree on teaching Tani to track. That would have made so much more sense!

And thanks for the comment. I'm glad to hear you enjoyed the review. :)

Darlena said...

Yes if someone had been out of their seat they could have been sucked out if close enough to that door. As it was low altitude it wouldn't have been too much of a pressure difference on this particular flight but I've watched Air Crash Investigations and there was once a Hawaiian airline plane that started breaking apart mid air and a huge hole formed in the ceiling, one of the flight attendants was sucked out of it and disappeared. Luckily the skilled pilots managed to land that damaged plane without breaking it apart any further.

Julie Coulter Bellon said...

Guess all H50 fans will now get in their seats when the captain asks them to! The things we learn from a TV show. LOL Thanks for the info!