Ever since January when we saw what episode Alex was actually directing, we have been excited for it to air. Therefore, this is one recap that we are also excited to present. The episode was very good and although some might think we are biased, we felt it was one of the best of the season. Alex did a great job directing it and was in it way more than we would have expected (obviously more than he expected too based on his interviews). Thanks to Mimsy who provided us with this week’s recap. Let’s get to it.
We last left off with Adam beginning to doubt Jessie’s loyalty to him and their mission to take down Hideki, accusing her of sleeping with the enemy. Of course she was none to happy with that accusation and told him he needed to chill out as she was doing what needed to be done to get their job done. Also we recall Danny’s shooting in the isolation room at the hospital, we’re reminded of Steve and Danny questioning Uncle Vito about how Vito remembers the shooter when they see a news story about the guy on TV.
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This episode starts off in a flashback; the ID of Danny’s shooter is finally revealed. It turns out that he was a wife beater who Danny and his partner on the Newark police dept. met while responding to a domestic disturbance call. He was fighting with his wife when they were interrupted by the two police officers thanks to a call made by their neighbors. The wife defended him saying that it was just an argument and it was now over. Neither Danny nor his partner believed either one of them, separating them so Danny could speak with the woman while his partner was speaking with the husband. After not wanting to answer any of Danny’s questions out of fear of what her husband would do to her in retaliation, she asked him to leave which he did, but not without leaving her his card just in case.
In Honolulu present day, Danny is reunited with Brooke who is the shooter’s ex-wife. While catching up, he teases that since the bullet her ex put in his shoulder missed his heart by three millimeters, he’s thinking of going to Vegas and liquidating his pension due to feeling lucky.
Next HPD pulls over a car and it turns out to be Adam. They order Adam to the ground and upon searching his trunk they find a dead body.
OPENING CREDITS
At Five-0 headquarters, Tani and Junior enter the building to take a meeting with Steve. They come in to find a mini ‘concert’ taking place in Steve’s office. Tani asks Steve and his friend, the life saving helicopter pilot, Frank Bama, if they are taking requests and Steve quickly makes the excuse that he was just tuning his guitar. He acted as he was embarrassed like he’d just gotten caught red handed by his mom.
As Steve is introducing his two newbies to Frank, he lets them know that Frank is the only person on God’s green earth who is allowed in his office with bare feet. They exchange hellos and Frank gives them the run down on where he’s vacationing while on the island. He also shares how he just had to stop by and deliver Steve’s belated birthday gift, a “beautiful Portuguese guitar” that Steve is pretending that he doesn’t know how to play. Frank announces that he has to get down to the beach to catch the swells and Steve says his good-byes with a handshake.
Upon his exit, Junior asks what Steve wanted to see him about. They discuss how Junior got his Five-0 badge early before even graduating from the police academy and that was because he had earned it. However, there is one thing that the students are required to fulfill before graduating. He walks over to a garment hanging on the coat rack enclosed in a suit bag that Steve opens up, revealing its contents. He lets Junior know that the one task that is still required is to “walk a beat”. This immediately amuses Tani, who asks Steve, “Please tell me he has to wear that” while enjoying watching Junior cringe at the very thought. Steve informs the horrified officer that he has to wear the uniform for one day and work one shift to see and experience things from a cop’s point of view. He tells him that the cops are their front line and that there is no work more honorable.
Tani’s enjoyment is short lived as Junior agrees and then asks Steve why he is the only new recruit doing the honorable work. Tani has gone from a twisted kind of happy to an “oh crap, please no” expression as she obviously has a feeling what is coming HER way next. Steve agrees telling Junior that he makes a very good point.
We then see both Junior and Tani in uniform walking the beat outside with Tani telling her partner “You just had to open your mouth, didn’t you?” She is met with the response of “You just had to be in the room.”
Down at an FBI field office, as Steve arrives we see the screen flash ‘Directed by Alex O’Loughlin” which makes all fans smile wideley for a moment.
Steve lets the agent know how it is obviously a set up that they just happened to get an anonymous tip that causes them to pull Adam over and there just happens to be a dead body in his trunk. The agent tells Steve that it’s not just any body, but that of Hideki Tushiro. The agent reminds Steve of the run in between the two men and to him and, that’s motive.
As they enter the holding room, Steve sees where Adam is handcuffed to the table and the agent tells Steve that they have five minutes and he leaves. Steve sits at the table and relieves Adam’s mind letting him know that he believes Adam and knows that he didn’t kill Hideki. He tells Adam that it is going to go down with the autopsy results coming in shortly and that will show the time of Hideki’s death. Steve tells him that if the person who set Adam up is as smart as he thinks they are, they will have planned it all so that he does not have an alibi. This means that Steve has to start working that case immediately.
Steve asks Adam if he has any ideas of who might be setting him up. Adam is convinced that it is whomever Hideki was working for, the guy he has been tracking. He shares that his boss was not happy about not getting the $20 million delivered and killed Hideki making it look like Adam did the deed. Steve suggests that that makes sense, especially if they found out about the task force. Steve then questions Jessie’s loyalty to Adam, being that she was the only one, other than Five-0 who knew about the task force. Upon Adam’s change in his expression at that suggestion, Steve questions it. Adam informs him that he confronted Jessie about this very loyalty and that he found out that she was sleeping with Nemoto, one of Hideki’s crew.
Junior and Tani are driving their squad car looking for the residence of a domestic disturbance call. While looking, their cop car is hit with a flying sneaker. They stop to see a woman throwing her man’s clothes out of their apartment from the second floor with him begging from the driveway to stop. Once done, both officers are questioning each party and then come together to exchange stories. Tani tells Junior that the guy did not get home the prior night until 3am, no phone calls, and no texts. The woman had checked her guy’s GPS on his phone and found that he was at a fancy hotel. And the fact that it’s her birthday that day, well that made it even worse. Junior suggests that they let the couple work things out themselves and Tani sarcastically responds that they’re just going to brush off the fact that he’s cheating. Junior reminds her that his cheating is speculative and is not a crime and she laughs at him saying that that’s typical that he would take the guy’s side. When he tells her that just because he was at a hotel the night before, it doesn’t mean he was cheating on his girlfriend. Tani tells him to “Please continue to mansplain this to me”. He then informs his partner that she is way off the mark on this one because yes the guy was at the fancy hotel, but that it was because he was making reservations for her birthday to surprise her with. The whole works … a luxury suite, spa treatments, dinner reservations; which was supposed to be a surprise that Tani now just ruined for them. While trying to take her foot out of her mouth, Tani and Junior turn to see the couple hot all over each other, making up. Tani’s final comments to the situation, “Alright then. Job well done.” And Junior left them with, “You folks have fun” and then leaves.
The FBI agent tells Adam that that is a fascinating story that he is spinning, but the fact remains that they still found him with the body. He tells Adam that he knows that the two men had history. Adam tells him that Hideki was a person of interest in his investigation, and the agent tells him that due to his bruises that still remain from the beating that he took during the trek through the woods, that gave Adam every reason to want to take Hideki out. Adam counters that the bruises were due to Hideki being convinced that he knew where the $20 million was buried. The agent tells him that there IS one person who could help him out if they are able to corroborate his story, but Adam tells him that he outright refuses to give up his CI.
At the morgue, Danny and Brooke are there for Brooke to identify her ex’s body. Danny is clearly uncomfortable at the mere sight of the man who nearly ended his life. Brooke confirms the ID and then apologizes to Danny for what he was put through by her ex. She lets him know that she is alright and is glad that her ex is now gone as he won’t be able to hurt anyone anymore. Danny let’s her know that he believes in karma and while she agrees, she also thought for so long that it would have ended up with her lying on that slab with her ex ID’ing her body.
Flashback: Danny arrives at the apartment where Brooke was staying after she’d left her husband to see how she was doing. He let her know that he had some sandwiches and other supplies for her to help her get by for the time being. She invites him in to join her.
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Back at Five-0 HQ, Steve and Lou are discussing Adam’s case. Steve tells Lou that he believes that Agent McNeil believes Adam didn’t kill Hideki, but until they can provide proof, Adam’s not going anywhere. Steve tells Lou that they need to track down Jessie, that she’s been sleeping with one of Hideki’s right hand men, Kazuya Nemoto. Lou explains that he’s “Mr. Chlorine Heist” and that they had him in custody a few days back but that he had made bail.
So off they go and pay him a visit at his place. Upon searching Nemoto’s residence, they finally find him in the bathtub. Although the ID might be a little difficult due to half of his face having been blown off, Lou can confirm that the tattoos that are on the body are most definitely Nemoto’s. Thankfully this was directed with less gore than normal and we were all spared seeing the faceless body.
Flashback: Danny arrives at Brooke’s apartment to find her on a stretcher to be brought to the hospital after having been beaten again by her ex. She lets Danny know that she was going to her sister’s, that her ex knew that she was seeing someone, but she swears that she didn’t tell him that it was Danny who she was seeing.
Present: Danny and Brooke are on the rocks at the water as she is debating on scattering her ex’s ashes. She says that he doesn’t deserve even that, but Danny convinces her that it’s not really about her ex, but more about her and her moving forward. She releases those ashes into the air and sea exemplifying finally letting go and being free. This was a powerful moment and displayed brilliantly but Kurt Jones, Director of Cinematography.
Tani and Junior are taking a break with gas station sushi that Tani is saying that it’s not lunch. Junior reminds her that picking their meal via rock-paper-scissors was not his idea. Junior asks why she had been kicked out of the academy and she lets him know before her dad passed away, that it was just the two of them and her younger brother. While growing up, she and her brother were really close. Always having fun and always getting into trouble. She came to the realization one day that she was not setting a very good example for him. She decided that it was time to set the right example so she joined the academy. The irony of all of that is that now that she’s a cop, the relationship between brother and sister has never been worse.
The story is stopped then by the kid who they were watching paint over his own graffiti. He had stopped what he was doing and they questioned why. He informed them that he had painted over his own tag. Junior supplied him with two more buckets full of white paint and he questioned why he had to paint the entire wall. Junior lets him know that it was better than being charged with vandalism, and under section 708 of the Hawaiian Penal Code, that was a misdemeanor which was finable up to $1,000. Tani was impressed saying that someone had read the manual and then asked “Picasso” if he could handle two coats and that she wanted crisp edges to the job as well.
Back at Five-0 HQ, Lou and Steve are discussing the ballistics that finally came back in the Hideki murder. He was killed by a .45 but there were no hits in the system. Nemoto’s murder however was taken care of by a shotgun. Saying that there’s basically no chance of getting any useful ballistics on that, he told the lab to never mind. While the ballistics don’t match on both murders, Steve is convinced that they are connected.
A call comes in on Steve’s cell letting him know that HPD located Jessie’s car and Lou and Steve run out. The chase begins and Jessie thinks that she’s in the clear since other drivers accidentally blocked the HPD cars. Little did she know that she would be going head on with Steve’s truck after he decided to drive the wrong way, of course scaring the hell out of Lou. Lou let’s Steve know that if they live, his wife is going to kick Steve’s ass.
Jessie has nowhere to go when in a parking lot and a foot chase between her and Steve begins. From one of the upper floors, Jessie hops the rail down to the ground. She runs and Steve continues on. Thinking that she’s gotten away, she runs around the circular building only to be met by Steve’s swinging arm right into her upper body dropping her to the ground.
Flashback: Danny is waiting for Brooke’s ex in a parking lot outside of a bar. Upon seeing him, Danny puts his gun in his glove compartment and calls in a 911 about a possible DUI saying that he will hold the guy there until a unit can arrive. Confronting the man, he lets him know that he knows that he beat his ex-wife and that if next time he feels like hitting someone, that he’ll give him his number and he’s free to call Danny and can beat him up. He tells the guy that he knows that the guy is pissed because she is sleeping with someone else. Danny lets him know that it’s HIM who she’s been sleeping with and decides to antagonize the guy by telling him that Brooke told him that Danny is more of a man than he ever was, even before he started drinking and “couldn’t get it up”.
Danny sees the police unit show up and decides to let the guy head-butt him and then knock him down to the ground, repeatedly punching him. The two cops who have arrived on the scene get out and arrest him for assault with Danny never having touched him.
Present: Brooke and Danny are sharing a drink and Danny tells her about the night Ray got arrested and changed the course of his life. Saying how two people could experience the same thing differently. Brooke told Danny that the difference was that Danny moved on and that Ray continued to blame everyone else for his own failures.
Down in the blue interrogation room, Lou and Steve are questioning Jessie about Hideki and Nemoto. She tells them that when she finds out that Hideki is dead, she calls Adam, but he doesn’t answer his cell. So she goes to one of her contacts, Nemoto, only to find out that he too “has been iced”. Steve tells her that the task force that Adam has been running is under McGarrett’s supervision, so everything is run by them and they know she was sleeping with Nemoto. Lou asks her how she thinks they knew all about her contact? She asks where Adam is and they let her know that he’s sitting in FBI custody because they found Hideki’s body in his car due to the anonymous tip.
Lou tells her that someone knew about the Task Force in order to set Adam up and then wants to know how “someone” would even know the Task Force existed in the first place. Suggesting that they think she gave Adam up, Steve asks then why did she run. Jessie tells them that when the two people closest to you in the organization are killed, it doesn’t take a math genius to figure out who dies next. She says that Hideki knew he was on thin ice when he couldn’t deliver the money so that’s why he went underground. She explains that he was full on paranoid and had himself held up at a construction site. When she went there to bring him supplies, he was gone and the whole place was a blood bath. Deciding that this is their primary crime scene, they tell her that she’s going to have to take them there.
Junior and Tani are “discussing” how she normally rides a scooter and that he should be the one driving. She disagrees as they come upon a little boy who should be in school, however he is riding a grocery cart down a sidewalk. When they talk to him, they find out his name is Kawika. He tells them that his mom is dead and that his dad sometimes gets sick and falls asleep. They go to his house where Junior sees Kawika’s dad through the window lying unconscious on the kitchen floor with a band around his arm; a band that resembles drug use. Junior is able to wake him up. Tani let’s Kawika know that they found his dad and that he’s alright, but that he’s going to have to get some help at the police station and that the boy will be staying with his aunt. Tani walks Kawika down the street to his aunt’s house while Junior and Kawika’s dad wait at the police car. Before she does a moment is shared where Kawika turns and tells his dad he loves him, which his dad returns as he enters the police car led by junior.
Jessie, Steve and Lou arrive at the construction site to find this trailer that Jessie told them about is no longer there. She swears that it was but Lou does not believe her. Steve then finds tire marks and says that something was most definitely there. Lou then asks, “Someone stole our crime scene? That’s a first.”
The three are checking a satellite system on Steve’s laptop and it shows that the trailer was most definitely there. It also shows a truck hauling it away and thanks to a sticker on the truck, they are able to locate where the trailer was taken to.
Lou, Steve and SWAT enter and gunfire erupts with three men in full paint suits and masks. The three men are all killed and when Steve checks out the inside of the trailer, he finds that it’s been completely cleaned, taking away any chance of exonerating Adam by proving who actually did it.
Tani and Junior have dropped Kawika’s father off at the police station and Junior shares he spoke with the booking sergeant who told him that as long as Kawika’s father enters a rehab program, the prosecutor will recommend conditional probation. As they drive off, Junior tells Tani that he doesn’t remember the first time his own dad got arrested, but he does remember the first time he saw his dad in handcuffs. They both agree that their day walking the beat wasn’t all that bad. They then drive up on a little old lady who is crossing the street, but her one bag of groceries had spilled onto the street. Tani tells Junior, “That’s all you Superman”. Junior offers to help the woman and he is met with getting pepper sprayed for his efforts as he surprises her.
Danny and Brooke arrive back at her place and they share a warm goodbye hug. She watches him walk away, closing her apartment door with an expression of not wanting him to walk out of her life again.
Danny stops half way down the hall and remembers via flashback back to when he told Brooke that Ray would be spending a very long time in jail for everything as they shared their first goodbye to go their separate ways.
Still in flashback mode, while driving away, Danny mentally reminisces about his time together with Brooke, but as he does his car ends up getting rear ended. Upon exiting his car, he encounters a very flustered Rachel for the first time who insists on giving him her number in order to pay for his car to be fixed. He tells Rachel that if she gives him her number, he’ll forget about the entire thing.
Present: Danny shows up at Rachel’s to pick up Charlie. Rachel lets him know that Charlie’s bag hasn’t been packed yet because they have been reading a story. He tells her that is fine and that he can wait. She invites Danny in to finish reading the story with his son while she packs his bag.
The paramedics give Junior some eye drops and tell him to apply them every four hours. Tani lets him know that she will be telling EVERYONE about that incident. Junior wonders if there is any way he could buy her silence, to which she responds that there is no way. “The Golden Child gets owned by a grandma? That is priceless.” And they share a laugh about that.
Agent McNeil is told by another agent that Adam is innocent based on what Steve and Lou found out, and then tells Adam that he is free to go while Steve looks on. Adam holds up his hands to McNeil basically telling him to get the cuffs off now.
Adam and Steve are up at a spot overlooking the city that night. They’re discussing how by the time that Steve and the others got to where the trailer ended up, there was no evidence to help Adam. Steve tells him that the crew that was cleaning the scene was a small Japanese group affiliated with the Yakuza. However, the fact that they were destroying evidence while Adam was still in custody was enough to make the case against him completely fall apart. Steve lets Adam know that they were all wrong about Jessie as well and that she did not sell Adam out.
Adam questions who did; did he slip up? Steve doesn’t know, but at that moment, there was something more pressing that he wanted to discuss with Adam. He told Adam that when the medical examiner was performing the autopsy on Hideki, they found some foreign DNA on him. While there was no way to tell if it was the killer’s DNA, they ran it anyway. Nothing in the system that could outright ID the person, but it did turn up a familial match. To Adam! Stunned, Adam questions how that could even be possible. Steve says that they matched 27 of 111 DNA markers showing a close familial relation to a 35-40 year old female. Steve asks Adam if he knows what all of this means and he says with shock in his voice, “I have a half-sister”. To which Steve responds with, “And somehow she’s involved in everything that’s been going on.”
UNTIL NEXT WEEK!
This episode was really good. We really enjoyed the majority of it. There was unfortunately three stories again and that always seems to take away from telling them all to their ultimate best. In this case the story we could have done without was the beat cop one. If it was thrown in for comedic relief from the intensity of the other two stories, it could have been a lot shorter providing the other stories more time. We did however, get to know a little more of the backstory of the new kids in town.
The main story of the night was the one with Danny and Brooke. It was well done and with a story that has such realistic consequences, it was done excellent. From the camera angles chosen to the believable flashbacks, this one was a winner. Both Scott and Joanna (who was handpicked by Alex according to his interviews) did an amazing job, and it was even fun to see how it was tied into the first meeting of Danny and Rachel. Well done.
Adam’s story was also interesting and allowed us to be reminded that Steve still can be badass. Not sure how long it has been since we have seen some good Steve action and a good foot chase is always welcome. We have said before that Adam seems to be the only one that has a running story currently and it got deeper when Steve dropped the DNA info. Anyone have any guesses who his half sister might be? or has she not been introduced yet? We enjoy scenes with Steve and Adam and Steve and Grover so those scenes were good too.. It was also good to see Jessie interact with other members of the team besides Adam.
Our Eddie odometer had him missing and that was unfortunate.
Overall the episode was very good. Alex did a superb job of directing and his creative hand was revealed in many areas. He was given a difficult scrip to direct with all the different elements and he rose to the occasion and met the challenge, In some cases he even superceded it. From the camera blocking, to the lighting, to the angles, and to knowing when to time out a scene to highlight other more important ones, he excelled and provided the viewers something a little different than usual. He also successfully made Honolulu look very much like NJ and the east coast. It is good to know that he enjoyed this experience so much that he wants to direct again, as we would love to see more from him too.
For all these reasons and maybe some more, we rate this one a 9.5.
Alex is amazing as always I’m so proud of him.