Hawaii Five-0 Recap

Alright, guys and ghouls, it’s time for Hawaii Five-0’s super spooky Halloween episode. If memory serves, they didn’t do one of these last year, right? Maybe they weren’t sure they’d last that long or something, who knows? Looking through my recaps, it appears the answer is “no.” That’s alright. I wouldn’t mind seeing fewer “serious” shows doing these. Then again, I can’t seem to decide if Hawaii Five-0 counts as a serious show. Part of me wonders if they realize we like the Michael Bay stunts and explosions and all the random sexiness and are just having fun with it.

ANYWAY…it’s Halloween, so what’s that mean? It’s gotta be a “spooky” crime. Your ordinary murder just won’t cut it. That’s why just a guy in the woods by himself wouldn’t be enough…so he’s got some hipster chick with him.

Pssh. I had a night vision camera before you even knew about them.

I do appreciate that the girl is wearing short shorts and a skimpy shirt, ya know just for the sake of genre accuracy…though for my money a little girl-girl action was missing. I mean, c’mon, it’s the 21st century.

Anyways, slutty hipster chick and her boyfriend are out in the woods looking for some ghost warriors or some business. Of course they are. They’ve been out a few nights in a row with no success, but who’s to say they won’t find what they’re looking for tonight, right? They arrive at what he tells his camera is a sacred burial ground slash temple,and talks about how it’s a grievous offense to trespass upon these grounds, but “it’s worth the risk to have a chance to see the night marchers. SHC has already jumped over the stone wall as he’s narrating. She notices a strangely out of place duffel bag sitting in the burial ground and does the sensible thing…peers into it, then immediately scoots away screaming. Camerabro comes running to see what’s up, and then….lights out!!! IS IT THE GHOSTS?!?! The camera is still rolling, so maybe we’ll see!

INTRO!

Alright, so post intro, there’s a fun little montage of kids trick-or-treating in Hawaii. Sadly, SpaceGrate is not among those kids. No, instead she’s with Danno, trick-or-treating at his extended stay hotel. Strangely, people don’t seem to have candy…

Though I’m sure this guy could find a mint in that rug of chest hair…

Danno doesn’t take “no” for an answer, because he wants this Halloween not to suck balls for his little girl, but really Danno is just being an obnoxious dickhead. If I was stuck living in an extended stay hotel and some dickbag with an adorable little girl who had no acting talent whatsoever stopped by trick or treating, I’d punch the guy. Instead, this guy comes back with two airplane bottles of liquor, and Danno freaks out. I mean, Danno, if you gave half a shit about your talentless hack of a daughter, you’d have taken her to a real neighborhood, where people expect asshole dads to be trick or treating with their stupid kids. Instead, Danno threatens to book the guy, but then he gets the call about the dead kids. And then gets all butthurt when SpaceGrate is excited to be getting the fuck away from the fleabag hotel.

Basically this sets the theme for the episode…Danno acts like an asshole for an hour.

So McG and Danno get to the crime scene, and are rudely greeted by some deranged homeless guy cheerfully played by Robert Englund, who tells them to GTFO, because they shouldn’t be here. Boomer briefs them on what went down. Camerabro and SHG’s roommate was running a bit behind, so she got there late, and the two kids were already dead and (mostly) buried when she found them. She tells them that the kids were in the woods trying to catch the Night Marchers on film. Danno scoffs at the idea of Night Marchers. Then then notice that Taylor isn’t around, and ask Boomer what’s up. Boomer acts all dodgy, and Danno and McG figure out she had to change out of her costume.

Somehow this is like big fucking news. I mean, is it really so weird for an attractive young woman to dress up for Halloween? Or ever? Thank God it’s not, or I’d probably hate Halloween with a vengeance generally only reserved for Valentine’s day.

What? Oh, you want to see what I looked like in my costume? Well, so would our audience, I’d bet.

Yes…yes they would. Alas, major cop-out…we get no sexy costume shots of Taylor. Seriously, guys, the ladies all scoffed at KY ads for a week after last episode’s McRibfest, and you can’t even grant me this…

So, Boomer, Taylor, McG, and Danno head up to the crime scene to meet Jin. Jin tells them they can’t go into the sacred burial ground until the priest blesses them. Danno can’t believe they have to wait while two dead guys just sit buried inches beneath the surface…so he basically calls Jin and Boomer (and maybe McG, I’m not sure) crazy, slaps each of them in the face, and jumps over that small rock wall. He finds the camera, continues to make a mockery of everyone for their religion, and asks if the evil spirits will come and curse him now…

Lesson #1, Danno. Don’t be an asshole.

Seriously, I’m fighting back the urger to burn through 500 words on a tirade against people who mock others’s beliefs, but I’m pretty sure that’s not what you came here for. You came here to read my attempts at funny, and not hear some “The more you knoooooow” piece. Suffice it to say I hate Danno for this entire episode.

McG makes fun of Danno for being an asshole, and for having a giant fucking rock in his windshield.

Moving rapidly forward, McG and Danno are driving somewhere unspecified, and Danno is on the phone trying to find an apartment that sucks at least 50% less than his current digs. Then McG decides to lecture Danno on being an insensitive assface. He tells him that they need HPD and Hawaii in general to be on their side to solve this murder, so it’d be best if he didn’t trample all over their religion and disrespect their beliefs. Point McG. He then hassles Danno until Danno tells him he’s an Atheist, at which point McG responds “Wow,” like it’s the single dumbest thing he’s ever heard. McG, the point has been taken back. And you lose one more for failing irony.

At H50 HQ, Boomer and Jin show Danno and McG the video, but clearly the killer isn’t on the tape, as that’d be too easy. However, thanks to the tape, they now know there was a duffel bag that they didn’t know about before. McG asks Boomer to take the camera to Fong to see if he can enhance any images or do that other CSI stuff, while he and Danno head out to see Franklin.

No one seems quite sure how to react when a Medical Examiner offers them a choice between the blue pill and the red pill.

Max tells them he has some good news and some weird news. The good news is that he found a fingerprint on the girl’s hipster glasses, and that print matched a record in the system. The weird news, however…their brand new suspect…is dead. So, wait, what left the prints??

So, turns out this suspect, Greg, died only last week…he was shot in the face with a shotgun by his girlfriend. Unfortunately, she’s crazy. And not like “yeah, duh, woman…” crazy, but certifiably crazy. Padded walls and straightjackets crazy. Or so claims to be. Danno posits that perhaps Good Guy Greg faked his own death, since his girlfriend’s confession would mean they probably wouldn’t double-check his ID, and the shotgun blew his face off.

Sorry, I just can’t say “face off” without picturing that scene. Ever. In fact, it’s all I can do to not do the motion. Makes typing this tough…

McG asks Taylor to come along to the crazy home to talk to Greg’s crazy gf (or ex, I hope, since she shot him in the fucking face…that’d be the last straw for me…), because he needs her “profiling skills.” Ya know, I’ve never seen a pink ribbon that said “Save the Profiling Skills!” Just say what you mean, McG. Before they leave, Taylor points out that if Greg isn’t dead, who died and was buried in his place? Jin decides to start the process to exhume the corpse.

Boomer checks with the roommate to see if she recognizes Greg, and she doesn’t. To be nice, Boomer asks her how she’s holding up. “Not great,” she says, which is understandable…but then she follows up with “The worst part is, I’ve lost both my roommates, and I’ve never lived by myself before.” Yep, that is the important part in all this. Anyways, the roomie goes on to tell Boomer about some weird guy that was bothering her friends a couple days prior. Apparently Camerabro tried to get him to go away, and in doing so caused him to fall and split his head on a rock. Boomer wonders if this is motive.

Up at the crime scene again, Boomer and Jin find blood on a rock, confirming the roommate’s story.

McG and Taylor hit up the ex-gf at the crazy home to ask her about (not) killing Greg. There’s just one tiny little flaw in their idea…

She’s batshit fucking crazy.

She tells them Greg is haunting her, but that she did shoot him in the face. McG sends Taylor over to meet Danno at Greg’s apartment.

As Danno is walking up, he’s yelling on his cell phone at someone about an apartment no longer being available, when a nice old lady with a Pomeranian tells him a unit in the building may have just opened up. Danno says it’s probably out of his price range, but then proceeds to explain to the landlord that due to the murder she’ll probably have to cut the rent in half just to rent the place.

Just then they get a call about getting approval to exhume what they suspect is Greg. The funeral home guy tells them all he thinks it’s wrong to disturb someone’s final resting place, but they make him open the coffin anyway. Only when the coffin is raised out of the ground…

Good Guy Greg. Dies…doesn’t waste a perfectly good coffin.

This whole empty casket would support Greg just faking his death, except…the blood at the crime scene, from when he was shot in the face…it’s his. So he’s dead. However, that “dead man’s hand” joke earlier…it’s about to make a whole lot more sense.

Fong, being a wizard, is able to do some fancy shit called yadda yadda-ing with the video footage, and it turns out the camera went directly over the open duffel bag. Inside, it turns out, was a hand. Presumably Greg’s. Boomer determines that the killer wasn’t robbing sacred graves, but rather was using that sacred burial site to hide the body!

So everyone hurries to the burial site, and Danno’s new lady friend is overseeing the excavation of the body to make sure they don’t damage anything.

Smart money is on Danno not being a dickhole this time…

Taylor tells her that they’re going to use ground penetrating radar to find the body, instead of just bringing up the backhoe and going nuts. Just then, Jin comes up and tells Danno someone threw a rock through his window. Danno laughs and tells him to keep up, that’s so 27 seconds 2 days ago. Jin clarifies that this time someone threw a rock through his BACK window. Bahaha Danno, Karma’s a bitch.

After a little giggling at his misfortune and chiding him for being an insensitive chode (seriously, who uses that word anymore?), Danno straps on his logic hat and, together with McG, they realize Freddy Fucking Krueger did it! Clearly this means he lives up in this area somewhere!! McG’s all like “I know where I would hide…”

Way to go, McG. Really narrowed it down, there.

So Danno and McG head off into the jungle without a clue. Luckily, McG is an expert tracker, and even more luckily, he stumbles across a bootprint in the mud.

At the burial site, Danno’s museum honey explains that ancient Hawaiian burials tend to be no more than 1m deep, so anything anomalously deeper than that is probably their corpse. The radar tech sees 1 hit. And then another. And another. And another…Taylor radios McG to tell him there are dozens of bodies buried there, and the killer is probably a serial killer.

Just then, McG and Danno find Freddy’s campsite, but he’s not there. They start going through his things, and then…

Happy Nightmares…

McG and Danno both point their guns, so he drops his machete, and they bring him in. In interrogation, they don’t get a whole lot. He keeps talking about how people are trespassing on the burial site, and it wants him to protect it, so he does, but he’d never bury bodies there because it’s a sacred place, and that would be desecration. Then he tells Danno that the dead will be looking for him, now. On the list of things I don’t want to hear Freddy Fucking Krueger say to me, this one rates pretty high.

I’m sure you all understand why I shit myself, right? It’s not embarrassing, it’s normal under these circumstances.

They decide they don’t like Freddy for the crime, since he lacks pretty much all the necessary skills of a serial killer, and he’d never dig up the burial site to hide bodies. Then McG steps in with a novel idea…what if it’s not a serial killer? Because they know the batshit chick from the insanitarium killed Greg, and probably didn’t kill the other 30 people…and why would a serial killer bury a body in his secret place that was dead when he found it?

Turns out, Franklin and Fong have teamed up to determine that at least 3 more victims were not murdered, but died of accidents and natural causes. Serial killing, this is not. However, all of the bodies were missing ligaments, removed with surgical precision. These were all removed post mortem. So, they need a guy with surgical training who has access to freshly dead bodies. Idunno, MAYBE the creepy mortician who tried to talk them out of disturbing the empty casket?

So, McG, Danno, Taylor, and Jin head into the funeral home. The mortician is still there, so McG splits up his time to find the guy. He sends Danno and Jin upstairs, he takes the ground floor, and sends the pretty blonde to the basement. In a Halloween episode?!? McG, you’ve gotta be SHITTIN’ me!! To make it better, the lights don’t work, so she has to rely on her flashlight. She starts going through a filing cabinet, when she hears a noise…and looks around, and finds the mortician…dead…he was embalmed alive. She calls McG to tell him the news, and in the background a casket opens. I guess whoever was inside just assumed she was facing away, which she was. Lucky guess…anyways, he gabs something heavy and smashes her in the head with it, knocking her out. When she awakes, McG is standing over her. He asks if she’s ok, and she tells him to not look so concerned, she’s fine.

Because getting knocked the fuck out is, like, no big deal!

The guy got away, but while it seems that he was trying to get rid of evidence, he had to leave in a hurry, and some files remained. Seems that the same charge nurse signed out all the bodies, giving our guys a suspect again! Kono calls to tell them their boy skipped work today, and isn’t at home, but bought some property at a remote location. The rest of the non-sandwich-making crew heads out.

Seriously, when are they gonna get Boomer back int he action. I will gladly take a roundhouse kick to the face to let her epically take me down any day.

Right, where was I? Ah, yes. Everyone except Boomer heads out to this remote piece of property. They get out there, and at first the place seems empty. It reeks of formaldehyde, and it quickly becomes apparent that the suspect was planning on burning the place down using what he had on hand. Just then, Jin and Taylor find the guy, and Danno and McG run in and have him surrounded, but he pulls out a lighter, which is immediately a problem considering the place is soaked in the aforementioned formaldehyde. Despite their pleas, the dude goes all Johnny Storm…

FLAME ON!!!!

So everyone runs like fuck because there are barrels of this stuff, and they are apparently more hilariously explosive than the red barrels in video games.

Boom goes the Formaldehyde.

Thankfully, everyone except the Human Torch got out alright. Taylor asks McG (only) if he’s ok. It’s ok, Jin and Danno have each other.

Epilogue

Danno seems to have landed himself a dream apartment, and is exploiting his friends to get moved in. Ok, fine, personally I think he’s too old to ask his friends to help him move in for a few beers, but then again, all of his friends are in really great shape and this likely won’t come close to killing him. If someone asked me to help them move in, I’d probably die just thinking about it.

However, this is Danno’s final dickhead moment of the episode. First, he asks Taylor to pain SpaceGrate’s bedroom. Wait, no. No. No. No. That’s just. No. I know they’re trying to make this cute and funny, but they’re just taking me further down the path to the Dark Side with Danno. What a dick. THEN, when it’s all said and done, and everything is in place…and the landlady comes in to have him sign a few more things, and Danno THEN decides is the appropriate time to ask about a pet policy. It turns out they have a strict no pet policy. He asks wtf was up with the old lady and her Pomeranian, and the landlady tells him that lady died 5 years ago…and he flips and tells them to pack everything back up.

What. A. Dick.