Hawaii Five-0 Recap: McRibfest

This is the episode you’ve all been waiting for. There’s a chance you don’t even know you were waiting for it, but I promise you were. We all subconsciously knew this episode was coming long ago. I get the feeling that Hawaii Five-0 was saving up for this one, and they just blew their…ahem…budget.

The Mother Fuckin’ McRib is back.

The episode kicks off with McG getting himself ready to jump into an MMA ring. Taylor comes in to help him tape his hands, and makes a weak attempt to talk him out of the fight. No luck. She also kind of makes a pass at her boss.

Anyway, his number is called, so he runs out to the ring. Danno makes a joke about throwing in the towel before the fight even starts, Taylor checks him out one last time and gives her best “go get ‘im, Tiger,” and the fight begins. McG is in a ring against Chuck Liddel…who has definitely put on a few pounds since his UFC days. They dance around a little bit, McG gets popped in the face a time or two, and then they pull one of those crazy “this only works in the movies” moments…

I wonder if this is as good as simultaneous orgasms to McG.

So, McG got hit so hard that he’s sent back 48 hours in time, and I guess we’ll get to see the string of bad decisions that got him in the ring with Chuck.

And 48 hours ago, what happened is a dude got shot in the chest, tied to a chair, and dropped in a swimming pool. Not necessarily in that order.

INTRO!!

After the intro, McG meets up with Locke at a picnic table somewhere. He introduces McG to Special Agent Kensi Blye from NCIS: LA. Thank goodness it was the hot chick and not Chris O’Donnell or LL Cool J. McG makes a joke about how he owes LL a steak dinner, but only if he flies to Hawaii to accept. McG sees the tape of his dad and Wo Fat on her computer screen and gets a bit upset about it. Locke explains he flew Agent Blye in because she’s an expert lip reader. They have a little moment, and McG decides he can trust her, and asks for an update.

First rule of life, however…never trust a beautiful woman who steals your breakfast.

Apparently, in the video, Daddy McG asks Wo Fat about Shelburne, and that gets “a reaction” out of Wo Fat. Unfortunately, this word means nothing to any of them. McG suggests that they track down Mokoto, the old Japanese guy from the first episode of the season, because he’s the one that led them to the tape in the first place. She asks who that is, McG balks, she tells him she can look it up on her own if he doesn’t want to tell, and he lies and says that Mokoto hired his dad to investigate Wo Fat. He then gets a phone call and has to head off to figure out why there’s a dead guy in a pool.

At the crime scene, Franklin points out that chlorinated water is unfortunately good at eliminating trace evidence, so they don’t have a lot to go on except that the guy was shot with a .38. Taylor is bothered by the fact that this guy was shot after he was already taped to the chair, because that just seems strange. Inside, it appears that the guy was cleaned out of all valuables. According to HPD, there had been a few other home invasions this week, and in all of them the victims were tied to a chair, but no one was killed in the others. Regardless, it’s a start.

Just then, Danno sees a picture of the dead guy and his son, and realizes that his son will be home from school any minute now, and runs outside to catch him and keep him from coming in or being rudely turned away or something. He tells him about his dad, and the dead guy’s sister and bro-in-law show up.

They share the world’s most awkward hug.

Seriously, this hug hurts. It’s like he’s giving this “my aunt on this show is fucking HOT, better deploy the ‘don’t get a boner’ hug.”

Back at H50 HQ, McG and crew go over the other two home invasions. In all the cases, there were no signs of forced entry, and the robbers were waiting in the victim’s homes for them to come home, at which point they duct-taped the husbands to a chair and beat on them a bit until they give up the location of their valuables. Apparently the only thing the families had in common was that they ate at high-end restaurants not long before they were robbed. And they also used the valet. Also important: the dead guy in the pool? His name is Jake Griffin, and he owned these restaurants.

It turns out that four of the employees of the valet company have some alarmingly similar schedules on days around these robberies. And, gasp!, they’re all off work tonight. The gang heads out to one of the valet’s house, and he’s not home! They find some surveillance photos, and one of them appears to be a house that hasn’t been hit yet. Boomer who’s back to sandwich making duty, works her magic and locates the house based on the picture. They get there right on time, as would be expected…the burglary is taking place!

Something about a mask with chubby cheeks makes them seem so much less threatening…

Outside the house, McG and crew are scoping out the scene. Using thermal imagining, they are able to locate 3 of the 4 baddies inside. McG sends Jin and Taylor to the back door, and takes Boomer and Danno with him to the front. Flashbangs are sent in, and they storm the house, immediately taking down two of the bad guys. Danno finds number three in the hallway, and the fourth guy is upstairs. He hears the noise downstairs and takes off running. Jin and Taylor give chase, but since Danno is taking this one personally because of the kid involved, he gets to be the one who flies out of nowhere and gets the takedown.

They get the guy back into interrogation, but he’s not too gung-ho on the whole confessing to murder. He swears he didn’t kill Jake, nor rob him. Jake’s sister was apparently the one who was running these restaurants, until recently, when she was fired. The plot thickens!

Taylor meets up with Franklin in his office, and immediately regrets her decision to leave her pepper spray at home…

I mean, if I could get away with it, I would, too…

It turns out there’s some Australian tea tree oil on the sticky side of the duct tape. Also under the duct tape is blood spatter, indicating that Jake was shot before he was taped to the chair. Taylor asks another one of those questions that makes me think she was probably hired for her looks and not her brains… “Why would he shoot him, then tape him to a chair?” I mean, this is a shot in the dark, but I have to guess the killer probably did it with the hopes that the cops would assume that whoever was robbing people also killed Jake. I know, I’m good. I could totally work for the cops on one of these shows.

It turns out that Jake’s sister may not have actually been fired. Jin is able to learn that, according to the company, she left the restaurant biz to go work at Jake’s charitable foundation…a move they find slightly puzzling because it’s probably a good pay cut. Then Danno informs everyone that according to his will, Jake’s business and money go to his son…after he turns 25, and until then are handed to his sister. Holy potato, she’s looking more and more guilty. Let’s just hurry and arrest her now!!

Locke calls McG to inform him that they’re meeting with Mokoto tomorrow, so maybe they can find out a bit about Shelburne. McG teases him a bit about Kensi, and Locke hangs up and heads into his house. He notices something is off, and pulls a gun from his freezer, and sees it’s Wo Fat, so he squeezes the trigger, and…Wo Fat had already found the gun and emptied it. Locke quizzes Wo Fat about Shelburne, and Wo Fat isn’t too pleased that Locke knows that word. I just wish I knew how to spell it, because I’m wildly guessing here. Anyways, he asks Locke to tell Daddy McG that he’ll be reunited with his son soon, and pulls a gun. Locke was ready for this, and knocks the gun away, and things go all Chuck Norris in a hurry.

Repeated roundhouse kicks? Don’t mind if I do!

Wo Fat proceeds to beat the unholy shit out of Locke, and finally gets him on his knees and starts strangling him with his phone cord. Locke, this is what you get for having a corded phone. You deserve to be strangled with it. Locke gets ahold of a knife block and smashes Wo Fat in the face with it, then dives for the loose gun, but by the time he turns to shoot, Wo Fat is somehow already out the door.

McG and Danno head out to meet with Jake’s sister. She tells them that Jake didn’t fire her, that she left the restaurant stuff to work full time for the charity. She starts to figure out that they think she killed him, and isn’t too happy about that, and then McG asks her if she or Jake had a gun. She says not really, but there was one at the charity gym that Jake had taken off of one of his underprivileged youth. So they all head to the gym.

At the gym, McG immediately is drawn to a package of wipes that he learns have…you guessed it…tea tree oil in the ingredients. So there’s that. Then they head upstairs to the desk that the gun is locked in…only to find that there’s no gun. Bro-in-law tells them they only people who knew about the gun were him, Jake, Jake’s sister, and the kid that Jake took the gun from, named Boriero. This same kid also no longer trains at Jake’s gym, because of an argument he had about going pro. Jake refused to sponsor him, so he split. Danno and McG head over to his residence. Boomer gives them a little background, and advises that no one engage this dude in hand-to-hand combat. At his house, they see his Jeep just sitting wide open…and in that Jeep…

This hardly seems like a good place to stash a murder weapon.

Just then Boriero comes out of his house and asks why they’re snooping around his Jeep. McG pulls his gun, but Boriero bolts. He, too, will learn why you never fucking run from McG. He runs up some stairs, and they have a crazy chase across the rooftops, but Danno just runs back down and hops in his car and drives along following him from the road. The chase ends when Boriero runs into a surfboard warehouse. McG and Danno follow him in, and separate to look for him. Of course, that means he gets McG 1 on 1, but it doesn’t matter because it’s Steve Fucking McGarrett. Yes, “Fucking” is his middle name, and he doesn’t reserve it for just the ladies.

They throw a few punches at each other, and then McG slips in and tackles him onto his shoulder. Boriero yells something about how he was supposed to have a fight tomorrow, but now his shoulder is fucked. Just then McG notices a hospital bracelet on him, and it provides an alibi for the murder. Boriero is very cooperative in the interrogation, and tells them that he wasn’t really the one trying to go pro, but rather the Bro-in-Law was the one pushing for it. This prompts a bit more digging, through which Boomer finds that Bro-in-Law bought duct tape and heavy-duty cleaning supplies from a hardware store just a few blocks from Jake’s place right around the time of death.

They head out to the gym and arrest the bro-in-law. He tells his wife that it was an accident, that Jake reached for the gun and he panicked. Then says sorry about 20 times…

Sadly for him, being sorry doesn’t make you any less arrested.

And now we’re finally back to the beginning. We now understand that MgG is filling in for Boriero in this charity fight. What does that mean for you guys?

First, I’m not sure how Taylor’s head hasn’t exploded yet. This is too much sexy for any mortal…

McG may have met his match here…

But counters with the Flying Sexy Punch!

It is not enough…

Anyway, the fight ends badly for McG, but you all got skin so what do you care? After the fight, McG gets a text from Locke – “Get to Mokoto’s right now.”

He hurries out there, and Locke tells him that Mokoto is dead. He also tells him about Wo Fat’s visit. Locke feels that he and McG are responsible for Mokoto being dead, and tells McG that the farther down this path they go, the more bodies will be piling up.

Am I the only one who thinks that Locke may be not so good? It was a perfect theory up until the part where Wo Fat tried to kill him. I just…I don’t know. I’m just starting to get a pretty wicked “bad guy” vibe from him, that’s all.