Hawaii Five-O: Spike!!!

In Pohang, South Korea…wait…this is Hawaii Five-0. South Korea isn’t close to Hawaii! And it’s not even an island!     Right? Google confirms! US Military is transporting a prisoner, who is apparently a weapons dealer who’s pretty deep in the terrorism game. The arms dealer starts showing off how much he knows of our hero just to prove that he’s done his homework on the guy who’s been chasing him around the world for the past five years. The phone rings. It’s Dad. Our hero is about to ignore it when the arms dealer tells him he should answer it, because he doesn’t speak to his dad nearly enough.

Worried Face!

He answer the phone, and it’s his dad…who’s being held at gunpoint! By SPIKE?!?!?! He’s the arms dealer’s brother! The tragic anti-hero returns! The ladies swoon! Spike takes the phone, and he and McGarrett chit chat about the weather, baseball, and little things like trading dad for brother.

Dad talks Spike into giving him the phone back, and tells his kid that he loves him, and that no matter what he can’t give in to the bad guys. Spike snatches the phone back and pistol whips the shit out of him.

McGarrett tells Spike that he’ll hunt him down and kill him, but just then a helicopter comes over the horizon. Somehow the pilot knows exactly which car the arms dealer is being held in, because he blows the other two up! That’s a risky move, blowing up 2/3 of a prisoner transport when you’re trying to save the prisoner…

Rambo McGarrett drags his prisoner out of the transport unit and starts shooting everyone. Everyone is dead except Rambo and his prisoner, who uses a brief window of opportunity to run over to a body and pick up a gun. McGarrett shoots him in the neck!

OUCH!!!

Just then, big bro calls, and is quite displeased to hear of his brother’s death. So displeased, in fact, that he shoots dad in the head! NO!

But then again, what kind of Cop TV show worth a damn would have a hero that doesn’t have a tragic backstory, right? So it’s probably a good sign that old man McGarrett bit the dust.

INTRO!

They kept the same theme music! Nice!

My first thought regarding this show is how glad I am to see Grace Park (of Battlestar Galactica fame) back on TV. Finally.

When McGarrett lands back on Hawaii, he’s met by the governor. She tells him that she’s sent out APBs all across the island, and he tells her that there’s no way she’s going to catch Spike with roadblocks, because he’s gone into hiding.

She tells him that she’s putting together a special task force. She promises him the immunity and means that he’ll need to take down Spike and other such baddies now that the trusty ol’ wooden stake won’t do. Somehow, though, the promise of full clearance to blow shit up isn’t enough for our hero, and he passes on her offer, but she hands him her business card before she leaves.

Next up we see Jin (ok, ok, his name isn’t Jin, it’s Chin-Ho Kelly, but he’ll always be Jin to me) comes in as if from nowhere, talking about how the Chief of Police is  from the mainland and has no idea how the island works. Is this a LOST crossover?

UDDERS???

Little James Caan, aka Scott Caan, aka Danno is on the phone with someone about getting a warrant. Apparently, despite what Jin had to say, someone is trying to figure out who popped McGarrett’s dad. At least briefly. There’s a large pink bunny in the passenger seat, which we meet with confusion. He gets out of the car and runs up to meet his daughter (we assume thanks to the hug), and then asks what she’s got in her hand. It’s a bunny. A real one. Her step-dad bought it for her for animal show and tell.

Just a hare better than the carnival toy I bought you…

Daddy Danno and daughter take off for school, and we’re back to McGarrett, who is illegally trespassing on a crime scene…his dad’s house. He does a little CSI work before wandering into the garage. Somehow, the fact that his dad called him “Champ”  on the phone leads him to believe that there’s something really important in the toolbox with the “Champ” sticker on it. With zero regard for the fact that he’s slapping his own fingerprints all over the house, he opens it. Inside is a key! And a cassette player!!!

He listens to the tape – apparently Dad was investigating some crooked cops. Just then Danno busts in! And there’s shouting and yelling and gun pointing and penis-measuring!   They show each other their….IDs! And the guns get put away. Danno tells him he can’t be there because it’s an active crime scene. McGarrett tries to show off his sleight of hand by attempting to sneak the tool box out with him.

It doesn’t go so well…

Danno calls him out, and tells him to leave the box. McGarrett calls the Governor! McGarrett swears an oath over a cell phone! WTF. He takes the box, tells Danno that it’s his crime scene, and walks out.

BOOM. McGarrett’ed

Some time later, McGarrett pays a surprise visit to Danno, and tries to get up to speed on the case. Danno seems a bit bitter that his crime scene was yanked away from him like that. It turns out that Danno had a wire put on a guy named Danton, who is a suspected arms dealer and who may or may not have killed someone else with the same gun that killed McG’s dad. McG then forces Danno to join his team.

On the car ride out, Danno’s wife calls, and thanks to the fact that he’s got the screeching violins from Psycho as the ringtone for her, McG astutely deduces that the marriage didn’t end so well. The have an adorable conversation centering on the fact that Danno does not like being in Hawaii, and is only there because his wife remarried and took their kid there.

Our courageous duo arrive in a trailer park, apparently where Danton is hanging out. McG is a little bit too gung-ho and just charges forward towards the trailer in which Danton is suspected to be living. Danno’s warning about how they should ask for backup was pretty well justified, it seems, as this Danton prick busts out a little Pacino action.

Yeah, yeah…little friend…we get it…

He just starts randomly shooting, and almost shoots his girlfriend, and then hits Danno through the wall! Danno down!! McG, in his infinite wisdom, checks to see that Danno is ok, then just runs in the door that was just shot out by Daton and his assault rifle.

Apparently this is one of those cases where size doesn’t so much matter, since Danton, with his assault rifle, is running away from a guy with a .38. WTF. Just stand and shoot him, maybe…but whatever. McG chases him out the back of his trailer, and there’s a really cool action scene where apparently a guy doesn’t notice that there’s a car stopped in the road and runs into it at full speed while McG slides across the trunk.

This wouldn’t be necessary if they’d stop giving driver’s licenses to old people…

McG and Daton have a nice little standoff, and Danno comes out of nowhere and shoots Danton in the back of the head. Well, I guess you could say the Danton lead is a dead end…

McG heads back inside the trailer, and finds a little Asian girl. She’s Chinese. I know this because he asks her what her name is in Mandarin and she responds in kind. Three semesters barely passing Chinese in college was not wasted on this moment here!!! How McG knows Chinese is a bit unclear, however apparently off camera he has a whole conversation with the girl and learns that she was smuggled in from China a few days ago with her family, and was sold to Doran.

We get another “we’re not emotional, we’re just angry at each other” moment from McG and Danno…it seems that Danno is mad that McG won’t say “thanks for saving my life,” and McG is mad because Danno shot their only lead.

So now that their only lead is dead, they need a new place to start. Since there’s clearly got to be a connection between the Chinese girl and McG’s dad’s murder, they decide to work the kidnapped Asian girl angle. So…where should they start?

lol racist….

So they try to get Jin to tell them something about who might be running the smuggling ring that brought the girl in, because they think that it may be the same people who are helping Spike escape. He doesn’t want to talk, though, because he’d basically be a sitting duck for retribution. It comes out that Jin was let go from the Hawaii PD because he was accused of being on the take. Of course he didn’t actually take the money, because Jin would never do something like that! McG believes him because daddy McG trusted him, and so Jin joins the team!

Jin gets them a meet & greet with his informant from back in the day, since that’s what informants (especially the confidential kind) do. Anyways, they bribe him, and he’ll only talk to Jin, so McG and Danno have to wait by the car.

If these two don’t look like cops, I don’t know who does…

A little asian girl who’s about 5 years old asks them if they’re cops, because they “look like cops.” lol. Remember that large pink bunny that Danno had in his car earlier in the episode? Well, he gives it to the little girl to get her to leave. Convenient, right? The good news is, they got a name for the human trafficker.

After a brief discussion at the police station, they determine that in order to get to Spike, they’ll need leverage on this smuggler. How do they plan on doing that, you ask? The plan is to send in someone with a wire to get this guy to implicate himself, so they can force him to give them the info they need.

So who will be this mysterious undercover? I’m glad you asked.

Grace Park! AKA Boomer!!! AKA Athena! AKA Sharon! AKA #8!!!! AKA the hottest frakin’ toaster I’ve ever seen!

So before the mission starts, the boys have a little heart-to-heart on the beach over a cold brew, and the next thing you know they’re BFF. It’s amazing what a cold beer can do, isn’t it?

So Boomer heads in and feeds this greasy-looking Asian guy a story about how she wants to get her aunt and uncle out of China, and how she’ll be able to pay because she works two jobs. Greasy Asian guy notices sand in her hair, and gets worried that she’s a cop. He asks her to take off her dress, and the male contingency on this side of the TV is like “yes please!”

Clearly there’s no wire…

GAG takes a pic and we’re all like “he’s gonna post it on the internets!” but instead he tells her he’s sending it to a guy he knows to find out if she’s a cop! They trace the text message, and it goes to someone in the HPD office! He texts back!!

CAPS LOCK IS CRUISE CONTROL FOR C00L!!!1!!

So GAG pulls out a gun, but instead of just shooting her, he takes a page out of the TV Villain’s Handbook and lets his goons attack her first. The fat guy in the back is a bit slow to react, so Boomer already has the first two goons on the ground when he finally gets up and starts heading her way. He’s got a gun, so this could be a problem, even for a cylon! But then

ROFLSTOMPED!

McG and team come crashing through the wall of the building in a semi! How did they hide it?!?!? Large trucks aren’t that easy for surveillance equipment to overlook!!! GAG starts shooting with some kind of automatic weapon, then runs out the back! McG runs out the side door to stop him! He starts shooting at the car, but he can’t kill the guy or hill never find Spike!!! So he tries to shoot the wheel!!!

McG…this is the windshield. It is nowhere near the wheel. L2AIM. This is bad even by Stormtrooper standards.

His last shot hits the wheel, and the car smashes into a shipping container. GAG is apprehended! Then they hear something in the shipping container! It’s the rest of the smuggled Chinese people. The little girl from earlier is reunited with her family!

GAG is tied to a chair, and isn’t being very cooperative. So what does McG do? Offer a plea bargain? Immunity? Nope. He goes straight for the family. Reminds GAG that once he goes to jail, his family will be sent back to Rowanda, and his 7 year old boy is old enough to be forcefully recruited into the militia there. GAG gets choked up and agrees to help .

It turns out that Spike is on a freighter bound for China! McG and Danno are headed there in a hurry, and request that the Coast Guard prevent the ship from leaving. They get to the dock and the ship is still there! Rather than taking the conventional approach and maybe attempting to sneak aboard, McG revs the engine and drives the police car straight onto the ship. Asian people start shooting at them!!

Things are getting super intense! Danno is shooting everyone, and Spike jumps out of nowhere (just like in the old days!!!) and starts seriously whooping up on McG! And then McG gets kicked off the top of the cargo box they were fighting on!!!

This is precisely why you don’t fuck with vampires. Even if they no longer have their bleached-blonde hair…

McG is laying on his back on the windshield of some piece of construction equipment, and he looks over and sees a gun! Serendipitous! Spike reloads his AK-FO’TY SEVEN! and takes aim. McG grabs the gun and shoots! Spike is down and it is bad! He fell into the water!! Danno finds one live Asian gunman and asks McG what he should do with him. What do you think the answer is?!?

Book ‘im, Danno!

So the gang regroups later on at their new office, sit around and talk, and there’s this super cute cheesy bit where Boomer suggests that they need a name for their little team. Jin says something in Hawaiian and they all laugh at him. Boom suggests “Strike Force” and we all LOL because that’s the kind of name a 6 year old would suggest. What do you think they’ll call themselves? ZOMG MYSTERY!!!!