Hawaii Five-0 Recap & Review: The One With A Valentine's Day Hostage-Taking!

Happy Valentine's Day!

We start out with a catchy Love is in the Air tune while people are surfing. Since it's Valentine's Day, a delivery man gives a bouquet to a woman who takes the flowers inside her house. She puts them on the counter and reads the card, then sets it next to a bloody, dripping hammer that leads to a body on the floor. Ew. The police pull up and she comes out with her bloody hands and says she just killed her husband.

Cue music.

Aww, Noelani is taking surfing lessons from a guy named Errol while Tani stands there and claps for her. (It sort of reminds me of when Danny took surfing lessons.)

StillSortOfMadLou meets with Adam, who immediately apologizes for how everything went down last week. Poor Adam looks so anxious to be back in Lou's good graces. He doesn't expect forgiveness or trust, but just wants Lou to understand that everything he did was to keep Bonnie safe. Lou gives a little and says, well, at the end, everything turned out okay, and he's grateful, but since Adam put Bonnie's life at risk, it's going to take him a while to get over it. (Um, without Adam, she would be DEAD! They were going to shoot her in that jungle and you wouldn't even have her body!)

Back at McG's house, he's ironing his shirt while Danny critiques him and then wonders why Steve is ironing in the first place. Steve has a date! The woman named Brooke from Charlie's school. Steve didn't want to tell Danny because last time he went out with Brooke Danny wouldn't stop calling and texting and it was too much. Another new bit of information, Steve has lost count of how many dates he's been on with Brooke, even though it sounded like he hadn't been on any when he talked to the vet. Hmm... Danny is glad Steve has a life, but he looks sad, so Steve says if he finishes up early with Brooke, they can hang out. The Secretary of State calls and Steve and Danny head down to HPD for a briefing on Lorena Massey, the woman from the beginning who killed her husband. Apparently, the husband was a high ranking diplomat from Thailand, so the State Dept. is in a delicate position and want to avoid an international incident since a U.S. citizen killed a Thai diplomat and all. Enter the Five-0 task force! Then they can say they have their best people on it and it's being handled discreetly.

Steve and Danny go in and introduce themselves. Lorena isn't very talkative, but Danny pegs her right away. She's wearing a long sleeve shirt in 85 degree weather, has perfect makeup to cover the wounds her husband gave her. What did he do? Was he violent? they ask. She tells them that every time it happened he said he would change, but last night it was so bad she had to go to the ER, so this morning after he said he was sorry, she got the hammer and hit him hard in the back of the head. Hmm...Danny and Steve go into the hall to discuss it and Danny says he worked domestic cases back home and she did not kill her husband. There's a pattern of violence, apology, and calm. Victims rarely fight back and when they do, it's almost always in self-defense, not pre-meditated. Steve will back him up, but if she didn't do it, they need to figure out who did, ASAP.  Danny agrees and goes over her confession with her again and she tells him that no matter how many times he asks her, the consistent and detailed story will be the same. He throws it out there that she's probably protecting someone (she denies that) and his job is to keep her out of jail. The guys back at HQ tell Danny that the evidence at the crime scene says she did it. Heck, the only prints on the hammer were hers! But Danny is all, yeah, that's odd. Didn't her diplomat husband use it? She probably wiped it down and put her prints on it to protect someone, so Lou and Quinn will dig deeper for signs of a secret relationship and see if she has an alibi at the time of death.

Tani and Noelani are headed to the car, dishing about Errol. Noelani needs some water so they stop in at a convenience store where a suspicious looking man and woman walk in and give each other the eye. Yep, they pull out guns and tell everyone to get down. The clerk puts a couple hundred in a bag, but the GirlRobber wants more so she takes him to the safe. The GuyRobber is twitching and unsteady. That can't be good. Everyone hears sirens and the cops are outside because the clerk tripped the alarm. Uh oh. They're on the bullhorn telling the robbers to come out with their hands up. (Does that ever work?) The robbers have hostages so they lock the door instead, telling each other they'll figure this out together. Awww. Valentine Robbers. How sweet!

Back at the Chatting Table, everyone reports in. Quinn says the yoga studio has Lorena in class, but she was done by 7:30. Lou is giving up and thinks she probably did it. Adam says none of the neighbors saw her this morning, but a guy driving a Jaguar took her to the ER last night. Well, no Uber driver uses a Jaguar, so how did they communicate for the ride? Quinn has a secretive niece who uses an app to hide texts and photos from her parents, so they look and find a secret Calculator app on Lorena's phone. She's been texting a Dr. Ray Poulsen. And he drives a Jaguar! Well, now we know who she's protecting and who the killer might be!

Next we get a back and forth of Danny questioning Lorena and Lou questioning the doc in the Blue Room of Doom. They've texted 6500 messages between the two of them! Doc says he cares about Lorena, but she's a married patient. Well, hey, your last text said if he hurt her again, that will be the last thing he does. Ooooh. The doctor also seems shocked that Lorena confessed to his crime. Danny is pointing out that Lorena sacrificed for her husband and now the doctor, when will she take care of herself! Is it worth going to jail for the rest of your life? She asks him if he's ever sacrificed for love and Danny says he moved to Hawaii for his daughter. (I wonder if that still feels like a sacrifice to him?)

Well, there's a development. The doc has an alibi! He was getting gas when the husband was killed. When Lorena hears that, she quickly tells the truth. She thought the doc did it because he was so mad when he drove her to the hospital last night. She did it to protect him, but she doesn't know who did this and doesn't want to go to jail. (Should have thought of that a little sooner!) Danny asks her to help him find the real killer.

Back with the ValentineRobbers, Noelani fakes an asthma attack and goes to the back with GirlRobber. Tani takes out GuyRobber, but Noelani didn't win and GirlRobber is holding a box cutter to her throat when Tani gets there. Well, that didn't work out well. She gives GuyRobber his gun back. (Since Noelani is going to hang around the task force people and she's already been kidnapped once, she should probably take some self-defense classes.)

InfoAdam is back and says CSU found a flower petal just inside the door that doesn't match anything in the bouquet Lorena received this morning. Since the husband had an armed guard, his only vulnerable time was when he was at home, and probably wouldn't think twice about a flower delivery guy on Valentine's Day. So poor old HPD has to go back to the neighborhood and ask around about a delivery guy. Also, Adam is the only person who realizes Tani hasn't come in and will go check on her. Good old backstabbing Adam! (I still hope he isn't betraying the team, though.)

Duke comes to Steve to say that Undersecretary Yang is there with an attache from the Thai consulate who want to take Lorena to Thailand for prosecution. Steve isn't down for that and says, yeah, you can't take an American and throw her in a jail cell in Bangkok. Oh, but wait! They have papers that say Lorena gave up her citizenship! But she denies she did that. It must have been her evil husband! With those legal papers there isn't much Steve and Danny can do about it, but she begs them not to let them take her.

Back with the ValentineRobbers the phone is ringing and Tani is annoyed they don't answer it. She tells them it's the hostage negotiator and if they don't answer, they'll breach and probably kill them. GirlRobber tells her to shut up, so Tani is all, hey I'm a COP! I know what I'm talking about. So there! Well, GuyRobber has a seizure and Noelani says she's a doctor and wants to help him. GirlRobber unties her hands, but says if she tries anything, she'll put a bullet in Tani's head.

Steve is wearing his blue shirt, but the Undersecretary is not dazzled. She wants to get rid of Lorena since they already agreed to turn her over to the Thai officials to stand trial for her husband's murder. She already confessed, so the Undersecretary is all, bye, Lorena. Steve tells her she recanted that confession and don't you want to find the real killer? Nope. She tells Steve to step aside. Steve says, fine, you can have her, but you have to find her first. And then we see Danny and Lorena running out the back with Duke's help and getting in a truck. He promises her she's going to be fine (he promised that to Joanna, too. Sad!) They're going to keep her off the grid for a little bit at Kamekona's safe house. And he looks happy to see them, too!

So, GuyRobber's seizures started a few weeks ago, but his epilepsy meds aren't working and they robbed the store so they could pay for the blood tests and MRIs that he needs. Noelani listens to the symptoms and says it's probably brain tumor related epilepsy and likely needs surgery, but right now he needs oxygen badly. She wants to take him to the EMTs outside, but GirlRobber says no way. Noelani is going to go to the ambulance and get supplies, even though GirlRobber isn't sure she can trust her. Noelani gives her word, though, that she'll come back alone. Outside, Adam shows up and gets the rundown of what's going on. Noelani comes out for the supplies and the guy in charge wants to send one of his men in with her, but Noelani says no, she's afraid of what GirlRobber will do. Adam backs her up and is all, hey, you guys can't even get the robbers on the phone! Noelani knows what's what. So she gets to go back in alone.

Danny gets a sketch of a delivery guy that was seen at Lorena's house that morning, but Lorena's never seen him before. She didn't get out much or know anything about her husband's work life. But it wasn't always like that. He swept her off her feet at a luau, so she moved to Hawaii to be with him. Luckily, he'd just gotten reassigned from his post in Mumbai because it was too hot there, or they never would have met. Danny thinks that's weird that he asked to be reassigned and so do Lou and Steve. They check it out because moving to Hawaii from India would be a big step down for a Thai diplomat.

Noelani gives GuyRobber the oxygen and some meds and Tani tells GirlRobber I know you're scared of going to prison. But GirlRobber is all, nope, I just can't be without him and he needs a surgery we can't afford. Tani has the solution, though! Just turn yourself in because prisoners get mandatory medical attention! He'll get treatment and Tani will speak to the judge at sentencing to tell why she did it and maybe they'll go easy on her. (Wow. What a sad statement on the healthcare system and what a terrible solution to put out there. Hey, go commit a crime so you can get free healthcare in prison!) GirlRobber is surprised Tani would offer to do that and lays both guns down in front of her. The end. We never see or hear anything else about the Valentine Robbers for the rest of the ep. (Also, I guess it's not a big deal anymore when someone from the team is held hostage because no one says a word about it. LOL)

Steve tells Danny that a week before the dead husband was reassigned there was an incident, but it's sealed so he's calling in some favors. But Danny has to go because the Undersecretary has found the safehouse! Danny and Lorena run, but it's too late and they're caught and cuffed. Steve gets Danny out pretty fast, though, threatening to make some noise when the State Dept. wants to keep everything quiet. Sounds like the State Dept. was eavesdropping on HQ's secure line, so that's a problem. Lorena is on her way to the airport to be flown to Thailand, but wait! Quinn and Lou have the unsealed records! Seems the husband used his diplomatic immunity to get away with killing a woman while drunk. And guess what? The dead woman's husband matches the description of the delivery guy that was at Lorena's house that morning. Steve hurries to stop Yang's motorcade and she is not happy. He tells her they have the real killer and Lorena is innocent, but Yang reminds him she's not a citizen. Steve pushes on that they had to unseal a bunch of records and Lorena's husband had DUIs, harassed women, oh, and sold visas to the highest bidder. So, if that came out, that could cause friction between the two governments since selling visas flagrantly violates another country's national security. Our happy ending is back at HQ, Danny brings Lorena in and the doc is in Steve's office and they hug. Oh, and HPD took the killer into custody and he confessed.

The not-so-happy ending part is Adam getting into a car telling some guy about HPD patrol patterns and that they're looking to shift more resources to Filipino teritory. The guy he's talking to looks spooked and says that Kenji isn't pleased with the Endo for Bonnie exchange and he's unpredictable. Adam says he's not afraid and Kenji is unstable. (What happened to Tamiko? Did they break up?) The guy tells Adam to watch his back.

Back at McG's Danny comes in and the whole gang is there with Brooke and McG. They decided to stay in and watch the movie, Love, Actually, since there's traffic and Valentine's Day crowds. Danny sits next to Brooke on the couch so Steve squishes in and the movie starts. Cute.

So, what did you think of the ep? Did you watch?

If you missed my review from last week, you can find it HERE