Hawaii Five-0: Here We Go Again. Again.

First off, sorry this wasn’t up yesterday like it should’ve been, but at least you all have reading material for your inevitably slow Friday, right??

Our episode begins with some terribly cheap CG attempt to zoom in on Hawaii from outer space. It looks low budget like a SyFy movie. The Lost submarine deserves an Emmy next to this. Then again, the horrible CG doesn’t seem so horrible next to the poorly written, directed, and acted opening sequence of the episode….

I mean, really, who wrote this crap, amirite?

They have this tres awkward convo about how Julie, who we’ll learn soon enough is a key witness in a trial to take down a drug lord, is super appreciative of some guy whose name you don’t really need to know for taking care of her. He’s a US Marshall. So, just then, an HPD car pulls up, and so the Marshall explains that her escort has arrived, and he goes out to meet them. I’m not sure why a police escort would need to come out to this place, which apparently no one really knew about, to escort them all the way to the courthouse, because since NO ONE KNEW where they were, why would they need an escort until they got to the courthouse, where everyone would know where they were? Seems like it’s complicating things….

So Jack or Joe or whatever goes out to meet the cops, and they talk about how this really is the middle of nowhere, and he tells them how it’s gonna be. Julie is to ride in his car, and the cops will lead the way. He asks for a radio so they can stay in communication, and one of the cops heads back to the car to get one for him. The Marshall notices something that he finds disturbing…

Wait, are those real bullet holes, or like the stickers that rednecks put on their trucks? They look real, but why would someone shoot holes in his own police unifo–uh oh…

So our US Marshall, who should’ve known his fate when he signed up to be a US Marshall on a local PD show, tries to pull his gun all sneaky like and takes two in the chest, and Julie, our new favorite daytime-soaps actress/key witness, does what she does best and witnesses the whole thing. Of course, then she realizes she’s effed in the a, and takes off…and like any pretty girl in one of those “about to die” moments, she runs into the bathroom so she can piss herself with dignity.

When we come back from the intro, Danno is having a “private moment” with some apparently delicious food. He asks Jin what they are, and Jin says they’re something. I couldn’t understand it, and I watched this little bit like 20 times. However, I was determined to figure it out for you, my loyal readers, so I googled the name of the bakery. Liliha Bakery. Just for shits, really, but it turns out that it’s a real place. WTF product placement. And the mystery food, it would appear, are “coco puffs,” which apparently my brain is just not capable of hearing in the same sentence with “should be illegal it’s so good.” Of course, if they’re doing this whole “commercial within the show” that they’re so fond of, shouldn’t they do more than just show the box…like show the coco puff? Because they look fucking amazing, and now I’m going to this place if I ever end up in Hawaii.

Danno then receives a call from his ex-wife Rachel, and I’m gonna let Steve Hernandez and Clyde Drexler take it from here…

REEEEEEEEEEEE-JECTED!!!!

Jin, of course, being a nosey nelly, looks and sees who’s calling, and then, after that, asks why Danno didn’t want to talk to her. It doesn’t really matter, but I get the sense that she’s about to come back into this show. Great…

In H50 HQ, McG briefs everyone on the sitch. The two HPD cops that were supposed to escort Julie and the Marshall aren’t responding, and neither is the Marshall. And, of course, if they can’t find Julie and get her to testify before 5pm THAT DAY, some really bad dude from a drug cartel goes free. Because in Hawaii they put the ass in procrastinate.

Danno’s phone rings again, and it’s his ex again, and he ignores it, again. This time, however, her message is cut off by two big dudes running into the road in front of her. The pull guns, and she swerves and stops the car, which is exactly what you shouldn’t do when two big guys are trying to steal your car. Well, lesson learned. The car gets jacked as she’s held at bay at gunpoint.

I thought I told you to stay out of this show, you low-budget bitch!

The whole thing, of course, is on Danno’s voicemail, so he hears it and freaks out and just as he’s freaking out Rachel calls him from the HPD station and tells him that they’re ok, but he jumps in his car anyways and races over to the station to see them.

This, of course, means McG has to take his own car out to the very remote safehouse. When he and Jin and Boomer get there, they find the dead Marshall in the grass, and wander into the house. In the bathroom the discover that Julie used the old hairspray and lighter trick to burn one of the bad dudes, and then dove out the window. Boomer seems to think there’s something unusual about this, but from where I’m sitting this is simply par for the course…improvised weaponry + diving out a window = H50 staple.

Jin finds the two missing HPD officers stuffed in the trunk of their own car…clearly shit just got real. McG decides that they absolutely must find her and ensure that she testifies…

McG and Jin get ready to head off into the Hawaiian jungle, and McG sends Boomer back to base to cut the crust off his sandwiches.

…and I swear, if you don’t put the peanut butter on BOTH slices of bread before you add the jelly, I’ll know! NO SOGGY BREAD!!!!

Danno catches up with Rachel and Grace at HPD HQ, and just then a cop comes up to tell her that the car was found, and nothing was stolen…Danno thinks something’s fishy, and tells Rachel that it seems like step-Stan got himself into some kind of trouble. She gets mad, and is ready to head home. Danno, being the chivalrous gentleman he is, offers to drive them home…

Boomer catches up with the prosecutor for the case, who seems a little TOO convinced that Julie is already dead, but agrees to help out anyways. She tells Boomer that Julie was one of those “wrong place, wrong time” types who just so happened to be an accountant for a shipping company / drug front. Doh. The DA reminds Boomer what happens if the witness isn’t there by 5pm…

Back with McG and Jin in the jungle…McG is giving Jin a lesson on tracking. McG is also wearing clothing that blends nicely into the surroundings, while Jin is wearing standard issue kevlar and a white long-sleeved shirt.

This is basically “I don’t have to outrun the bear, I only have to outrun you,” just with guys with guns instead of bears…

McG points out a rock that indicates that the bad dudes are about an hour ahead of them, and then notices a leaf that’s been broken off it’s plant, which is “still green,” indicating it was just broken off. I want to do an experiment, but in February in Chicago there are no green leaves. Seems to me that leaves in Hawaii must wilt faster than leaves everywhere else, though.

Anyways, they follow the broken leaf trail, and hear breathing. McG warns Darth Vadar that he’d better come out of the shadows before his ass gets shot, but then Jin shines his spotlight on Julie…she’s been out in the woods for all of an hour or so…

…and that bitch has already gone all Lord of the Flies on us.

McG sweet talks the shit out of her, but he does it over the commercial so we can all be left in suspense. When they come back from the break, Jin is treating her wound. McG lays out the escape from the Jungle plan…and tells Jin and Julie to head for the road while he hunts down the bad dudes. Jin tells her “some guys are just born without a fear gene.” This is another line I had to listen to like 20 times to figure out what he’s saying. I was probably having trouble because I was trying to hear “some guys are born with normal-sized penises, and then some guys are Steve Fucking McGarret.” I could actually understand most of what he was saying as the real Jin in LOST better than I’ve been understanding him today…

Udders?

Boomer just happens to still be at the courthouse, and as she’s leaving she sees the real bad dude being paraded through the hallways, and stops to tell him how fucked he is. His lawyer is all “I’m filing a complaint against you,” and Boomer spells her name for him.

<3 Boomer.

Danno, Rachel, and Grace arrive back at Rachel’s house, and the front door is open. Step-Stan is still in Thailand, so this is worrisome. Danno makes Rachel take his car for a spin around the block while he checks out the house without waiting for backup. Again, nothing of value is missing, and Danno’s suspicions that step-Stan is in over his head are strengthened. Rachel still wants to hear none of it. Danno tells her to take Grace and stay at a hotel.

Back to McG in the jungle, and here’s the part in the show where I laughed out loud…why?

That’s why…

Seriously I can’t decide if this additional “camo” is bad blackface or he’s going for Tugg Speedman’s pandaflage. So McG is in the middle if hoisting a very large log up in the air when Danno calls…and McG tries to talk him out of whatever he’s planning to do to step-Stan.

Julie tells Jin all about herself…her whole life story about why she left Hawaii in the first place, and then why she came back to testify, and Jin’s just like “blah blah blah” shut up or they’ll hear and shoot your ass, and I’m not really sure I’ll mind…

The two “cops” are wandering through the jungle and apparently they catch a scent, and split up…one of them sees one of Julie’s shoes, which McG took from her probably for this exact purpose, stuck in the mud. He picks it up, and suddenly he’s transported to the Forest Moon of Endor…

Fuckin’ Ewoks…

Seriously, McG built an Ewok trap and just fucked this guy up. If I EVER hear someone refer to Ewoks as the “Jar-Jar Binks” of The Trilogy, I will end them.

So then Jin and Julie are walking, and he tells her they’re more than halfway to wherever they’re trying to get to, and suddenly someone starts shooting at them. They freak out and Jin tells Julie to get down, and she slips over the edge of a cliff!!! Jin dives to save her, and is holding on while she dangles above certain doom. The gunshots, it turns out, are being fired from what has to be over 100 yards away…from what I’m reading online, the effective range of most handguns seems to be about 50 yards, so basically this guy just pissed away his whole clip for nothing.

Anyways, of course, even though she was walking right towards the ledge and somehow didn’t see it until she tried to duck out of the way of the spray-n-pray shooting of bad cop #2, Jin doesn’t let her fall, and she runs off into the jungle. Jin follows, but not before noticing he lost his gun and phone!!!

Pictured…

So Jin lets her run a few steps ahead, and makes the weakest attempt ever to throw the cop off their trail. The bad cop has somehow crossed the canyon already and is hot on their trail.

The ewok’d bad cop wakes up, and McG is sitting right in front of him, in all of his shoe-polish-on-face glory…

Ladies, are you sure you’d still consider this the best part of waking up?

He’s sharpening some bamboo, and starts asking the dude questions. The guy willingly answers them, for fear of having said bamboo shoved under his fingernails, and after McG learns what he needs to, he tells the guy he’s gonna use the bamboo to re-inflate his collapsed lung. That, of course, involves opening him up with a hunting knife and sticking the bamboo into his lung, then blowing in it like he’s making bubbles in his Coke…

Boomer calls, and with the help of the info McG gleaned from the ewok’d assassin, they are able to ID all three assassins, but there’s still a cleaner at large. McG tells her to send a rescue team to come save the ewok’d guy, who now has a bamboo straw sticking out of his chest…

Danno picks up step-Stan at the airport, and drives him around and asks him a bunch of questions. He makes it quite clear that he’s pretty unhappy with the situation of Grace being held at gunpoint. Stan finally caves and tells him that the housing commissioner was trying to pull some shady shit on him, and so step-Stan taped a conversation and threatened the guy, who now apparently seems to be coming at him mobster style.

Danno goes after the housing commish, and has a nice little “come to Jesus” talk with him, complete with

“The power of Christ compels you!!!”

Danno storms out after threatening the guy’s life and flashes his badge to the patrons of the restaurant so they know everything is ok.

Jin and Julie stumble upon a quaint little cottage in the middle of the jungle, complete with a tractor and a motorcycle. Well, we know Jin can handle a bike, so clearly this will be the getaway. Except the bike has no gas…so he siphons gas from the tractor. Lucky for him this is apparently not a diesel tractor…

Julie points out that they’re running out of time…and then a red truck drives up to the shed…and it’s a new bad guy! And then the 2nd cop that was in the jungle comes up to, and bursts in the door of the shed!!!

Jin beats the shit out of him with a shovel, and the last bad guy starts shooting from outside. These bad guys aren’t all about the high-percentage shots, are they?

Jin and Julie jump on the bike and drive out of the shed, knocking redneck baddie down, but he gets up fast and gets back in his red truck! He starts chasing them and firing more and more bullets…apparently the clip on his handgun holds somewhere in the neighborhood of 40 bullets…and then Jin and Julie do this…

Because he learned by playing Mario Kart that doing tricks off of jumps gives you speed boosts…

McPanda hears the 40-50 gunshots being fired, and runs out in the road right after Jin passes and squares off with the truck. Conveniently for McG, when he shoots the guy, he comes to rest on the brake pedal and not the gas.

…I just had to show this again…

So McG takes the truck from the dead guy, and Jin and Julie hop and and they all drive off to the courthouse together! McG calls ahead to let everyone know they’re on the way. He and Jin escort Julie inside, and meet the DA. More awkward soap-acting goodbyes, etc., and the DA offers her a clean sweater and shoes.

There’s still the cleaner left, and no one knows who she is, but Boomer is doing her good detective work and cutting the shit out of those sandwiches at the same time, and suddenly she realized who the cleaner is! It’s some blonde chick that we saw for 1/2 a second, who is apparently the assistant to the big baddie’s lawyer!!!

Her…yeah, I didn’t care either…

So, regardless of the fact that there’s one more shooter out there, our genius heroes just let Julie proceed with the DA alone…and they’re meeting with this blondie to discuss a deal!!! The deal is the guy goes to jail for life and gives up all the other bad guys he worked with…instead of the death penalty. Even though this isn’t a personal lawsuit, the prosecutor consults with the witness. WTF. Ok, seriously, this is a federal case…no one gives a shit what the witness thinks. Wow. Who wrote this? Julie nods her agreement, and they go off to sign the papers. Hilarious.

They walk into another room, and the blondie pulls a gun from a garter-holster. This kind of thing is way more sexy on Yvonne Strahovski, I promise…Julie and the prosecutor freeze in their tracks, and just then Boomer comes in and knocks the gun away!

CATFIGHT!!!!!

Boomer proceeds to get up from the above predicament, turn around, and

kick the blondie through a fucking door!!!!11!

Danno brings step-Stan back to his house to see Rachel and Grace, and he explains that there was just a big misunderstanding and that Stan did nothing wrong. The family goes inside, and Danno leaves, but not before he and Rachel share a long, wistful glance.

Back in the courtroom, the trial is underway. Julie is called to the stand, and the ask if she swears to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. There’s a dramatic pause, where we see the defendant holding his breath, hoping that she’ll screw up and say “no.” When she says “yes,” he looks defeated, and the episode ends.

All in all, this was definitely not my favorite episode. It seemed like they were trying too hard at certain points. At least I got to see Boomer being awesome, which is still a rare treat on this show. When are they going to bring Wo Fat back? Or Spike, since you and I both know he’ll get out of prison eventually….

AND WHEN IS McG GOING TO BECOME McRIBS AGAIN?!?!?