Hawaii Five-O: Skeleton Keys in the Closet

The episode begins with some Andy Garcia looking guy in the back of a rather large SUV.  He calls his son, who’s some kid with a Justin Bieber haircut, at 6am to wake him up for an early morning cram session before an important test. Because clearly middle-school aged kids have tests that require 6am cramming. Geez.

Shameless iPhone4 plug!

Bieber asks his dad if he can go on a camping trip with some friends, and his dad says no, but then tells him that if he aces this test then they can talk about it. The kid calls his dad a dic….tator. Dick tater? Apparently dads these days aren’t quite as badass as they were when I was growing up. If I called my dad a dick tater he’d have punched me square in the eye. Dad is on his way to a very important meeting, but is still on the phone when a white SUV t-bones the shit out of his car.

You can get a good look at a t-bone by sticking your head up a butchers’s ass…

Guys get out of the car and start shooting everyone, and the kid is still screaming into the phone wondering wtf is happening. The gunmen put a sack over dad’s head and throw him into a car.

Post intro, there’s a narrative by McG’s dead dad, talking about how he told his kid to be anything in the world but a cop, and at least we know that this is a normal family since McG clearly is a cop now and thus doesn’t heed his father’s advice. All the while, McG and Jin are just giving the ladies some eye candy.

Because nothing says “manly” like riding a Harley without a helmet. Well, that and Old Spice.

It turns out that the voice-over is just McG listening to the tape recorder he found in the toolbox. Danno walks in with some fried donuts or something, and McG gives him a hard time about wearing a tie, because it’s too hot for a tie in Hawaii. Danno asks him about what’s in the fuckin’ box, and he tells him that it was more questions than answers. Just like watching another show that was filmed in Hawaii…(Lost, to clear that up).

Apparently the coast guard hasn’t yet found Spike, which is cool to hear that there’s at least a serial aspect to this show. I hope Spike comes back with a fury.

The Governor  calls McG to tell him that Andy Garcia got abducted, so they need to find him. Apparently he was a pretty big deal, and was with the NSA and such and this could be a major national security threat.

Our heroes get to the crime scene, and Jiin gets the cold shoulder…

This guy is way too uptight to live in Hawaii. Hire some better actors, please…

Boomer tells Jin that her Police Academy graduation is that night, and she wants him to be there. Jin doesn’t want to go, it seems, because he’s afraid that they’ll associate her with him. Odd, considering that he already said last week that they knew she was family and wouldn’t take her seriously. Also weird considering that they’re on the super secret task force and who cares what the blue-collar guys think anyways, right?

So Boomer is sad because Jin may not go to her graduation, and Jin tells her to stay with the car while he goes to find the security tapes from the camera that was just conveniently overlooking the parking lot where the shit went down.

Danno and McG decide that it was definitely not a local job, which I guess means it’s a professional job. It turns out that the two men that were in the car with Andy Garcia were  bodyguards. Boomer finds the iPhone in the car, and they realize that they have a witness…which may not be the right word, since it was someone who pretty much would’ve heard a crash. Oh well, off to interview him. Well after some gratuitous shots of Hawaii.

“You’d rather be here” is all I’m getting from this…

Bieber has no idea where his dad was headed…which is pretty normal for a middle school kid. Some big meeting. He can’t figure out why people would want to kidnap his dad…because he’s “the most boring person in the world.” I guess that’s a pretty normal opinion for a kid to have of his parent. He’s stunned to find out that his dad had hired bodyguards. I guess it does kinda fuck up the whole “my dad can beat up your dad” thing. My dad didn’t need bodyguards. The kid can’t believe that the last time they spoke, he called his dad a dick tater.

Some blonde comes running into the room freaking out about what happened. Understandably, as it turns out that it’s Andy Garcia’s girlfriend. So the police let Bieber go home with Andy G’s girlfriend, which I’m pretty sure doesn’t happen in real life. I would think that she’d have to be his legal guardian for the cops to let her take Bieber home, but oh well…

Clearly Bieber wants to go home with this one for a a reason…

They send Boomer over to the girlfriend’s house, at least, so I guess it could be worse. McG and Danno head over to the airforce base, because they learned that Andy G had an appointment there in the morning.

It turns out that Andy G was going to expose some massive security threat to the USA. He was on his  way to meet with the Air Force general when he was kidnapped, it seems.

Jin is just now working on reviewing the surveillance footage, and notices that a dude from team bad guys got shot in the smash & grab, and didn’t make it back into the rape van before it drove away. Thanks to some quick work, he’s able to tap into the other security cameras and find the hurt guy sneaking into the nearby building. Immediately our heroes are on the way!

Is it just me, or does Hawaii Five-O get a better budget than most precincts?

In addition to being a bit jealous of the brand new Camaro being driven, I can’t help but giggle a bit at Jin’s motorcycle riding attire…

A bullet-proof vest, but no helmet…srsly, even as a cop you’re probably more likely to die in a motorcycle wreck than you are getting shot in the torso…

Our heroes run into the hotel where the mysterious bloody-gunman seems to be hiding. Since they clearly don’t want to alarm anyone, the board the elevator very discretely…

Lesson number 1, kid. Always make sure you’ve got a bullet in the chamber before engaging in a gun fight.

Danno, always being the likable guy, makes small talk with the kid to calm him down, regardless of the fact that his parents were way more freaked out than he was. Also, this does make me wonder why they didn’t ask the family to gtfo the elevator before they decided to use it for official police business…

Conveniently, this bloodied gunman can’t be troubled to not leave a bloody trail all the way out to the roof, so he’s quickly found, passed out on the roof. Danno tries his hand at interrogation with a beautiful narrative on what happens if you don’t get a gunshot wound treated in time, complete with mention of sepsis and organ failure. It’s not really striking fear into the heart of the gunman…

In Soviet Russia…ah, forget it.

McG realizes how futile it is to explain complicated medical conditions to an eastern European, and takes the more direct approach of jabbing the guy’s thumb into his own bullet wound! And now that his thumb is covered in blood, he gets a fingerprint that he can run through the database!

But clearly just jabbing a man’s own thumb into his relatively fresh bullet wound isn’t brazen enough for McG, who drags him over to the edge of the roof and pushes him off!!! But he catches him by the feet and just holds him there screaming, while Danno is also screaming at him that a dead suspect can’t talk. McG pulls him up and they head off to Andy G’s house to see if they could find anything that would clue them in to what he was going to show the general.

Ya know, I’m starting to like these little talks…

They arrive at Andy G’s house and…well, basically it’s a really nice fucking house. However, there seems to be a slight architectural flaw that gives away the location of a secret room, filled with computers. Danno decides he knows someone who can help them with computers. Apparently he busted a kid named Adam Charles, and the whole “never trust a man with two first names” adage comes into play, and then we learn that the only convincing he needs to help our heroes is a bag of Tootsie pops, and this guy could be trouble.

This is basically Justin Long’s character from Live Free or Die Hard. Good to see the semi-original material lasted all of 1 episode.

It turns out that Andy G created a skeleton key, which apparently can be used to just hack any high grade asymmetric encryption – the kind used by important institutions such as the military.

Back with Bieber, Boomer gets the photo of the wounded gunman. She gets Bieber to warm up to her by making him a paper crane. Once they get friendly, she shows him the picture of the wounded gunman, but he doesn’t recognize the guy. Another dead end…

Boomer heads into the kitchen to get some more paper so she can teach Bieber how to make paper cranes, and she uncovers something written in not English. Maybe Serbian? Is that a language? Anyways, she realizes that Andy G’s girlfriend – the pretty blonde named Natalie who just so happens to be in the room with her – is one of the bad guys!

Natalie realizes this deduction has been made and comes at Boomer with a knife! We get our first girl fight of the season!!! YES!!!! They crash outside and there’s a pool! They fall into the pool and keep wrestling. This is a defining moment for Hawaii Five-O – this is the moment where I have decided I will continue watching.

Tastes Great!!! Less Filling!!!

Right when Boomer seems to have it under control, some other Serbian guy comes in with Bieber at gunpoint, and the gig is up. They all go for a nice car ride, when McG calls Boomer, who cleverly starts giving answers unrelated to all of his questions, and he knows something funny is happening. Silly criminals not making her put the phone on speaker.

They go into some warehouse, and Andy G is there! Well, at least he’s been found. For fear of them killing his son, Andy G agrees to do whatever they want. Beiber tells his dad that he’s sorry for calling him a dick tater. He logs into his fancy little skeleton key program with a 5 byte password. I mean, really, this is a serious national security threat and you protect it with a 5 byte password?!? Is this really the same guy with security cameras all over his home?!?

1…2…3…4…5…hey! That’s the same password I have on my luggage!

Justin Long notices that the skeleton key is being used, and it’s being used to turn off the radar. He calls Danno to let him know!

As they’re driving, an unmarked airplane flies overhead. Now we know why the radar has been turned off. They deduce that it must be landing at a nearby sky-diving school, and head there.

Boomer managed to get herself bitchslapped out of the chair and onto the floor to pick up something convenient and sharp, which she proceeds to use to cut through the duct tape binding her hands. She looks out the door to see McG. Danno and McG climb up ladders to get to the top floor of the building.

These ladders are both conveniently and illogically placed!

The Serbians are selling the skeleton key to some other eastern Europeans, when McG and team spring into action! There’s another mini girl-fight! The gun goes off prematurely (which I guess generally happens when we’re watching two girls roll around on the floor, amirite?) and hits a propane tank, causing it to catch fire. Wait, why are there lots of large propane canisters in here, anyways?

McG sees the situation spinning out of control, and plays the hero card.

After shooting the last baddie while hanging from a chain, he notices the imminent explosion and tells everyone to GTFO!!! They all run out, as does the Serbian guy, but in the explosion he’s knocked stupid, and easily arrested.

Boomer looks at her bruises in the mirror for a bit, then walks out into the main room, where the rest of the team is in uniform. They give her a little mini ceremony, which is super sweet and all, and there’s a fade to black.