Hawaii Five-0: Tidal Wave of Truth

So, unexpectedly to me, this episode aired Sunday night…whoops. Note to self: please stop setting series recordings to only record new episodes that air on their normal night. Anyways, I just learned tonight (Wednesday night) that I had an episode to recap, so I’m here watching it for the first time while writing. Not my style, but ok. I just hope this Sunday night special isn’t as big a letdown as the Bears game was to us Chicagons….Chicagans?…Chicagoites? Chicagoans?…yeah, I think Chicagoans wins…thanks, spell-check, for somehow knowing that.

The episode begins with some spectacular surfing crashes, and Boomer teaching Danno to surf. I remember distinctly Danno saying he hates the beach, and hates the idea of surfing, but now he wants to learn because Grace (that’s his daughter to those of you who’ve wiped her from your memory due to her bad-for-even-a-child acting) wants to learn to surf. Boomer has him practicing on safe, dry land. Danno tells her it’s embarrassing to be doing this on dry land, but she tells him that she wants him to master the basics before he gets wet. I can’t tell you how many times ladies have said something similar to me…ugh. Anyways, Danno keeps complaining, and cavalierly (turns out that’s a word…) tells her he’s ready to hit the waves…

Gee, where do you think his sudden “courage” is coming from?

…so she tells him to go for it. Then he looks at the waves, and they’re huge, and people are crashing left and right. He feels his balls retract into his stomach, and tells her he’s good learning the basics for a little while longer. And then there’s a siren, and for a second it sounds like War Pigs is about to start playing, but it turns out it’s a tsunami siren! Good thing Danno didn’t get in the water!!!

Now, watching the intro and seeing all those high-rise hotels right on the water, I begin to wonder how they can even afford their insurance when it has to protect them from mayhem like tsunamis.

OMG, Becky’s not even hot!!

So, post intro, McG and his hot navy girl-toy come running down the stairs, trying to get dressed on the way down…I’m sure I could make a tsunami-orgasm joke here, but it’s just not coming…

Oh…I crack myself up.

Anyways, McG and his hot friend come running down the stairs because their phone are ringing, and clearly downstairs is a good place for both people who seem to be on-call 24-7 to leave their phones. Oh, and there’s this moment that makes me feel like I’m 13 again and watching scrambled porn at 4am on the TV in the basement…

Is his shirt off?!? I…wait…yeah, his shirt’s off!! OMG SHIRTLESS!!! The McRib is back!!

Except that I wasn’t watching for abs back then…I’m only watching for them now for my loyal readers…but…hey…trying to get this shot from the recording…was pretty much…just let me have this, guys, geez….

I was just trying to figure out why I thought I recognized McG’s ladyfriend, but I couldn’t figure why, so I went to IMDB. Turns out I’ve not seen anything she’s been in, so I guess I don’t recognize her, but in glancing though her career, I found this gem…

Aptly named Komodo vs Cobra…

The synopsis, as offered by IMDB, is “Two random dudes and one hot girl (Michelle Borth) are running away from a terribly rendered giant Komodo Dragon…” Michelle Borth is his girl-toy. I literally copied and pasted that. Also, “Borth?” What a tragic last name. Sounds like she belongs on Star Trek…

Sorry for the aside, but I thought you should all be made aware of this cinematic masterpiece. Maybe one day, when she’s hugely famous, this will be her Robin Sparkles.

Their respective bosses are calling them telling them about the tsunami. Navy chick tells McG that they’re going to take the fleet out to deeper water and “ride it out.” McG’s like “the fact that you’re calling it that tells me you’re not ready.”

So, Danno is picking Grace up from school and telling her everything will be ok, and she should be happy because she gets to leave school early, when McG calls and tells him that the head of the tsunami warning center has gone missing. Since Grace’s mom and step-Stan are out of town, Danno enlists the help of our friendly Goomba to watch his daughter…though he seems concerned that the Goomba may eat her…

…which will give a more literal meaning to “dropping the kids off at the pool.”

McG and Danno head into the tsunami center to see how things are going and get some background on the guy that’s missing. The second in command, some dude named Sheldon that you’d recognize if you’d seen Avatar or watched Bones the last couple seasons, is under pressure from the Coast Guard Captain to classify the tsunami…he’s having a really hard time doing so, and finally caves and declares it a class 3. Of course, since there are no tsunamis coming from Lake Michigan, that means about as much to me as Threat Level Orange. But we’re led to believe that a class 3 is bad…maybe the worst…

Danno can’t seem to understand how an entire team of scientists is having so much trouble just because one dude is missing, and Sheldon takes them into his office and explains that they’ve been getting conflicting data the whole time. Sometimes it’s huge, sometimes it’s only average. There’s a joke in there. Apparently the good Doc, who’s missing, is the only one who’d have a chance at discerning this data.

Basically, though, it seems clear that Hawaii is about to get effed.

Personally, I’m guessing that these crazy anomalies either mean the wave is frickin’ huuuuuge, or that someone has been tampering with everything out in the ocean, or at least the transmission, because they wanted to use the confusion for something else. I’m going with number B on that. I would love to be right here…

Jin calls to tell the boys that the good Doctor seems to have been the victim of foul play…wuh-oh. Danno notes the coincidence of the only guy in the world who could figure out this tsunami going missing WHEN THERE’S A TSUNAMI, and Jin points out that coincidences take a lot of planning. This further supports my theory. They’re going over the crime scene when a chunky Lindsey Lohan comes in unannounced, and it turns out she’s the good Doc’s daughter. She insists that she’s not going anywhere until they figure out what happened to her dad, which is idiotic beyond words, and Danno plays the “I’m a dad, and I know your dad would want you to be safe” card.

Outside Boomer finds some skidmarks on the driveway and paint on the Doc’s car, and an empty sandbag, but not much else. Back inside Jin and McG are looking at the logs from the Tsunami Warning Center’s terminal, and apparently had two failed login attempts using “1015” as the password, before entering his correct password of “CourtneyRose.” Seriously, dude…your daughter’s name? That’s the kinda password an idiot would put on his luggage…also, seriously…the security log for the Tsunami Warning Center doesn’t capture IP address? What kinda operation is this?? Anyways, McG deduces that the Doc was trying to send a message with the “1015” thing.

Then, McG’s old neighbor and surf instructor…the one who saw the dirty cop set the bomb that killed his mom…calls and tells McG that there’s no tsunami coming, which sparks another lover’s quarrel between Danno and McG…it kinda turns into a science vs faith thing, with Danno on the side of science…

“…and next you’re gonna tell me there’s no such thing as evolution.”

McG seems to believe that his old neighbor may be on to something with this whole “someone is blowing smoke up someone’s okole” (which, incidentally is the only word aside from “aloha” that I know in Hawaiian), and when Danno jokes that the only people profiting from this are gas stations and people selling bottled water, he whips the car into a u-turn and heads back to the TWC!!!!

Boomer and Jin are back at H50 HQ, and Jin is apparently talking to his old flame on the phone, checking on the hospital’s evac status. Boomer gets mad about this, since I guess her coz isn’t a grown-ass man. I wonder why Jin doesn’t just tell her the truth about how it was him that called everything off? Oh well.

At the TWC, McG asks the Sheldon how they get all their info about the tsunami. He gives an explanation about buoys and satellites and it confuses the not so scientifically inclined Danno, who asks for the explanation to be simplified. Sheldon gives him the “field trip version.”

Complete with a dickhead condescending kindergarten level visual aide.

So McG excuses the guy, telling him he’s been very helpful, and Danno doesn’t understand how. Apparently this episode Danno is special. McG calls his hot Navy lady and asks her to see if there’s a second signal being transmitted on the same frequency as the satellite in space, which would be picked up and of course read by the TWC. Danno can’t figure out why he would even care, and keeps interrupting his phone call, and I’m confused because seeing the logic behind asking that question is pretty much SpED easy. She says there is another signal, and it’s being sent from a boat in the harbor. ZOMG@! I was right!!! Danno figures it out as McG hangs up the phone, and McG looks at him like he can’t believe it took so fucking long.

“I can’t believe that took you so fucking long.”

So, of course, the car ride to the boat is more Danno bitching at McG about if he’s wrong then they’re going to be literally sleeping with the fishes…but, since they’ll be dead, not sleeping, “literally” would actually be wrong, right? I mean, it’s not as bad as “that was so funny I literally peed my pants,” but still.

So they get to the harbor, and we’re only about halfway through the episode, so some serious shit remains to go down. Jin calls McG and tells him that “omg they were wrong, the wave is coming in way faster than expected…like right fucking now!!” and McG looks out at the water…

It’s like the wave was wearing a padded bra…talk about falling short of expectations…

Clearly the tsunami isn’t coming…McG and Danno find the particular boat from which the fake signal is coming, and inside is a kinda cute chick listening to music and doing something on her laptop. Of course, when she sees McG, she does the opposite of normal and runs away from him. Someone please give him the memo that arresting female suspects shirtless would be far easier. Anyway, she gets a pretty good head start, and looks to be getting away from McG when out of nowhere Danno comes in showing the world that he, too, can execute a badass takedown.

I guess you could say…“BOOM” goes the dynamite…

Please tell me at least one of you got the joke there…I was going to go with the more obvious “I guess you could call it a MASTer takedown,” but technically the mast is the upright part, and the boom is the horizontal part that hit her. So the chick, who was just smashed in the face by the boom, gets up with not a scratch on her. McG calls Jin to tell him that they aren’t literally sleeping with the fishes yet, and Jin points out that the fake warning signal came at 10:15. 1015. The failed password!

McG tells him that they’ve gotta stick to the plan, that there could still be a tsunami (though if they shut off the 2nd signal, wouldn’t the TWC be able to tell either way?), but that the fake tsunami was probably being used as a distraction so some serious shit could go down.

McG returns to interrogate our cute hacker, and she won’t answer his questions. Danno tells her that she’s now fucked both of them, because it’s “Crazy McG time.”

At H50 HQ, Boomer tells Jin that the paint that rubbed off onto the Doc’s bumper belongs to that of a government vehicle…Boomer pulls up a map of the evac zone and you can see where the gov’t vehicles are because they have GPS, but there are too many, so she and Jin go with another plan – to see what major targets lie within that zone…

Back on the boat, McG and Danno tag team the shit out of this hacker chick. They find out she has a daughter and make sure she knows that she won’t see her kid for a long, long time unless she helps. This isn’t the “Crazy McG” I was hoping for. Anyways, she tells them that someone gave her 25k in cash to transmit data every so often, and that the info comes to her in an email and she just passes it on, but she has no idea who’s sending it. Danno asks how she can’t figure that out if she’s a hacker. They give her back the laptop and set her to it. McG asks why it’s taking so long, and she tells him “Rome didn’t burn in a day.”

That prompts aneurism face…when in Rome…

Then, as if by providence, the hacker locates where the emails are coming from, and pops up a handy map complete with red blip. Danno and McG rush the fuck to the red blip.

McG calls Jin to get the latest update – apparently they’ve cross-checked the high value targets in the evac zones with the locations of the gov’t vehicles, and there are only 6 vehicles near major targets…but whatever is going down is going down right then, so there’s no time! McG tells Jin and Boomer to get their shit and meet at the red blip.

The whole gang gets together and sneaks into the warehouse with the red blip, and Boomer finds the good Doc, and he’s being held at gunpoint by a bad dude. They go through all this trouble to create a distraction by having Danno ram a forklift through a loading door, and then McG just runs into the room shouting “Five-0, freeze!!” and the guy draws on him so McG does what he always does and puts two in the chest.

What’d I say last week? On your back with a leg in the air…

Danno is mad at McG for shooting him, but they print him and he turns up in the system as an ex-coast guard guy. Turns out he was kicked out, and, well, was involved in the whole drug bust that put $28 million in cash plus more Ice than Antarctica in that police storage facility that our boys just so happened to rob when Spike had Jin locked in an exploding collar.

Suddenly shit just got real. If they bust these guys, there’s going to be an inventory done on what’s still in the storage place, and they’ll realize that the $10 Mil that the gov’nah denied McG that day just so happens to have gone missing…so now it’s time for Sophie’s Choice. Danno suggests that the alternative is letting the bad guys get away with it…but they all agree that they can’t live with themselves for that.

On the drive over, Danno calls HPD for some backup, and is told that the closest units are 10 miles away, and that the Coast Guard Captain who was pressuring Shelly to classify the tsunami is the one who gave the order! He was probably part of the same CG unit that made the narc bust! The pieces are coming together!!

They show up and find Captain Hale sitting in his truck…McG jumps out and draws his gun and is like “SPREAD YOUR SHIT” and the captain plays dumb…so McG notices the back of his truck has a tarp tied down over it, and with a dramatic flourish shouts

Say ‘hello’ to Coast Guard Captain WINKY!!!!

Well, except he’s expecting drugs and cash, not a penis, but the result is the same. He’s left looking rather foolish, until Boomer plays the role of Dan Marino and notices a sandbag in the back of the truck, and McG notices a LOT of sandbags in front of HPD HQ, and he puts 2 and 2 together and THIS time makes 4, and cuts open a bag and shows them the money!!! McG gives a very somber “Book ‘im, Danno,” and there’s sad music playing, because our heroes are probably going to hero prison after this…

So we get some montage of family reunions…first the Doc and his daughter, then Danno and Grace, and then we go to the gov’nah’s office…she asks to speak to McG alone…he goes in, and everyone paces nervously. Danno assures Jin that regardless of the outcome, they’d have stolen that $10 mil to save his life any day. Then McG comes back out, very quickly…and tells everyone the gov’nah wants to thank them all for another job well done…

…and that the whole $28 mil is present and accounted for. I wondered how they were going to write that out…now there’s the mystery donor to look for!!!