Hawaii Five-0: What’s in the F%#kin’ BOX?!?!?

Our episode this week kicks off with Boomer’s moment of badassery, which our writers are careful to include *just* enough of to keep her a relevant character. Thank goodness. Right off the bat, her and Jin are just driving along, minding their own business, when a high-speed pursuit happens to be called in just a couple of blocks from where they are. Boomer kicks it into gear and they’re in the chase!!! Wait, I’m supposed to believe that her Chevy Cruze is gaining on a Mustang? Boomer blazes by the other cops and is right on the guy’s  ass, and a cop coming the other way blocks his path so he turns down a side street, but there’s a spike strip laid out in front of him, so he tries to cut the wheel hard, and flips the car!!! As the Mustang is rolling, a box falls out onto the street. The driver of the car is pinned in the car, and things aren’t looking good for him, so Boomer checks the box and gasps! And then Jin is all like

WHAT’S IN THE FUCKIN’ BOXXXXX!!!!!ONE!!!!

So they leave us in suspense with the intro, and then come back with Danno walking into McG’s residence without knocking or anything. McG asks what happened to the courtesy knock, and Danno tells him it got played out w/ high-fives and bro hugs. Wait, high-fives are played out?

Don’t tell this guy…

Anyways, Danno comes in holding a package, and McG nonchalantly asks “what’s in the box?” which is the network TV way of asking “WHAT’S IN THE FUCKING BOX!!!!” and I can sense the H50 writers are very pleased with themselves, as they should be. And do you want to know why? Well, you’ll have to wait a moment.

So McG gets excited about the package because it’s supposed to be a master cylinder, but it’s not…looks like the order is wrong. And Danno gives him a hard time about ordering a car part from the internet…and I guess I’m confused here, because…well, what’s wrong with that, exactly? The order was wrong. Oh well. Shit happens, move on. Why is Danno as afraid of the internet as my grandmother? McG’s phone rings and they run out the door.

When they arrive at the crime scene, a group of biker cops roll by, and Danno and McG have a nice little nostalgic convo about Chips, which of course, like everything in this marriage, quickly dissolves into bickering over which one of them would be Eric Estrada…

So, to answer the question from a few paragraphs up…and to show why the writers get a high-five from me (hey, if it’s played out I’m bringing it back)…because, well…

This is what was in the fuckin’ box…

They decide it’s probably a serial killer, since who else would shorten a corpse by 10 or so inches, and just then Boomer runs over to tell McG that EMS is pulling the driver from the car, but he’s probably effed, so McG runs over and decides that if this guy is gonna die, he’s gonna die on McGarret terms, and interrogates him. All he can get, though, is “Ming-Hua.” McG identifies that as a Mandarin name. Gold star!! And then our driver dies! And then things get very David Caruso!

“Great, now we’ve got two John Does”

“…and no answers…”

So, back at H50 HQ, we learn a few things. It would seem our dead Chinese guy from the Mustang was an illegal, and further, that while the car was a rental, it was not rented to him, but instead some other guy who reported it stolen that very morning, and hasn’t so much as an ink smudge on his record.

When the subject switches to John Doe #2, Danno jumps in “You mean Jack?” McG gets excited thinking that somehow Danno had ID’d the guy, but Danno explains that it was a joke…his head was in a box, so he named him Jack…Jack-in-the-box…get it? Personally I’d have dubbed him Dick, because Dick-in-a-box would be funnier. Then again, it’s possible I’ve reverted to the maturity level of a 13 year old. I made a Helen Keller joke yesterday, and then laughed at it. Help?

I think you know what’s in the fuckin’ box…

So the guy who rented the Mustang which was presumably stolen by our Asian John Doe is brought to the station for questioning, and Boomer gives him a once-over, but he doesn’t seem to know anything about what’s going on, so she lets him slide.

McG and Danno head to the ME’s office, but Franklin ca’t really give them anything useful, so we cut back to Jin and Boomer trying to get some info off the GPS from the car. They find the address that the kid in the Mustang appeared to be headed to, and that address seems to be an office building…so kind of a dead end…again. Just then, Franklin calls and is able to identify where the Chinese kid spent most of his time…based on his drinking water or some science.

Thanks to this assistance, Danno and McG are able to track down the guy’s dad, who works at a car shop. Turns out that Chon Wang…er Asian John Doe…worked for his dad, and Ming-Hua was his son! Asian John Doe’s dad identifies him as Han, and McG suddenly has flashbacks to his fatherless childhood. He promises to prove Han’s innocence. When he and Danno get back in the car, Danno again mentionms how irritating it is to work with a grown ass man with daddy issues…

“I’d have so much less issue with this if you were about 10 years younger and blonde…oh, and a chick.”

Back at H50, Jin and Boomer are running down more info on Dick. Apparently there was lead in his blood, leading them to believe that cause of death may have been a gunshot wound. Also, the blood work showed that apparently this guy was being treated for cancer. Well, so that sucks for him, I guess. Jin and Boomer head off to the hospital, but something is amiss…

It turns out that Jin’s ex-wife/fiance/I’m not sure works at this particular hospital, and of course Jin bumps in to her almost immediately, and it’s super awkward. It’s weird, though, because last time we heard anything about Jin’s ex, it sounded like he had every reason in the world to hate her, but yet he’s acting very glad to see her…in an awkward way. And then it comes out that Jin is actually the reason they split! Except nobody knew, and they all thought it was her! Including Boomer, who is icier than H20 below 32 degrees when the two of them come face to face. However, the ex is able to identify the dead guy, so that’s good…

What’s cooler than being cool? This…

So now that the dead guy is identified, they’ve learned that he’s married, and try to track down his wife. Their home phone is busy, however, and since apparently this show is at least 10 years old, the hospital only keeps the home phone number on file. Brilliant. Danno points out that no one has a busy signal anymore, so he and McG book it out to the house.

Just once on a cop show I want this to be the result of a bitchin’ party, not a crime scene.

So the wife, Nicole, is nowhere to be found, and they find blood spatter on the wall indicative of a gunshot wound. Cole’s wallet and phone are at the house, and her employer lets our boys know that she didn’t show up for work today. Wuh-oh. They see why the line was busy, as the phone is just hanging by it’s cord. Wait…seriously, not even a cordless phone? These people are living like savages!!! So McG picks up the phone and hits redial, and it calls Hawaiian Airlines. He then *69s the phone to see who last called, and it’s some guy that just so happens to have an office at the address that our dead Asian friend was headed prior to, well, becoming our dead Asian friend.

It turns out that this guy they’re hurrying over to visit is actually Nicole’s dad! He acts shocked by the news that his son-in-law is dead and his daughter is missing. Our boys ask him a few questions, and the whole time we’re just sitting here like “man this guy looks familiar, who the hell is this guy?!?!?” He gets a phone call and tells our guys he’s gotta go, and runs out. And then we’re like

Ooooooh yeah, it’s that guy from Ally MacBeal.

Of course when our are getting to their car, they see the dude running across the street with two metal suitcases. That’s definitely weird behavior for a guy who doesn’t know his daughter is missing and has probably been kidnapped. So McG follows him out to some harbor, and they sit back and watch as a money drop goes down…but the bad dude pulls out a gun and pistol whips the shit out of  Ally’s boss, and this obviously calls for action. They speed down the drive and for some reason Danno decides to dive out of the car while it’s still moving and do this ridiculous tuck ‘n roll move, and they chase the bad guy down an ally! He hides around a corner, and our heroes seem to have lost him, but then he jumps out with a gun! And, in the event that you’d forgotten what happens when you engage McG in a firefight, well…

…you end up on your back with a leg in the air…careful, ladies, McG’s not shooting blanks…

Nicole’s dad runs up and tells the guys that if anything goes wrong they’ll kill her, so this seems like a huge problem. Boomer and Jin arrive, and Boomer recognizes the dead guy as Spencer, the dude she interviewed about the rental car, and is pretty angry with herself for not reading his mind. It’s ok, Boomer, the only reason I knew he was involved is because he got face time. If he wasn’t going to be important, they would’ve just told us about the interview in passing.

So, of course, for some reason this guy has been toting around the headless horseman in his trunk for a couple of days, which is hard to accept considering it’s Hawaii and probably like 85 degrees at least and man that would have probably started to smell unbearably bad by now….

Of course things are pretty dire now, as the guy that should’ve been returning to his bad-guy friends with a cool $5 mil is dead, so it’s just a matter of time until they realize something went awry and decide to whack off Nicole. A team is sent out to Spencer’s house, but no one is home! They find the workshop where a certain head was sawed clean off the body, then they find suitcases and champaine…champane…bubbly with two glasses. Looks like someone, or someones, were counting their chickens before they hatched.

Looks like those chickens just got choked…

Danno notices lipstick on one of the glasses, and they have Jin look to see if Spencer booked a flight…and if so, was there a female companion? Jin calls back to say that yes, Spencer bought two tickets to France for him and a lady friend.

McG and Danno head to the airport, where they just so happen to stumble upon Nicole, who is starting to panic because her jet-plane is leaving and Spencer isn’t there. They tell her that Spence may be a little “late,” if you take my meaning, and they tell her that they know everything. They ask “why kill your husband who was already dying of cancer?” She explains that she’d not have been able to get the $5 mil from her dad that way, so clearly she couldn’t just wait it out. McG tells her that because of her a little boy is going to grow up without his dad…nice that McG seems to have forgotten the fact that the real reason the guy is dead is because he was in the country illegally, so instead of just pulling over for the routine traffic stop he tried to run. If he’d been here legally and just stopped, he’d probably have been investigated in the murder, but eventually cleared. Oh well, why split hairs, right?

So, of course, they can’t just let the show end that way, they’ve gotta let McG go back out to see the Asian kid’s dad and son. Apparently he got the govnah to expedite their citizenship papers. Of course, the guy has something for him, as well…just so happens to be the car part McG needed. Oh, right, it’s not over quite yet…geez.

Excellent use of taxpayer dollars.

Back at H50 HQ, McG and Danno are watching Chips…because mentioning only once or twice wasn’t enough…but of course they’re STILL arguing about which one would be Estrada, and after some rigorous back and forth, they decide that they can both be Estrada. This is like backyard football, except they’re not 9 anymore. I was always Jerry Rice. Boomer comes in, and says she’s never heard of Chips. How old is she supposed to be…because I was still guessing about my age…maybe a couple years younger. But seriously how do you not know what Chips is? And then she says the worst thing of all…she calls Wilcox “hot.” And now Danno and McG have to fight over which one is Wilcox.

Kids these days…ugh.