Last night’s Hawaii Five 0 episode was a special one as all of the episodes that involve Pearl Harbor seem to be. It had a lot of action and there was emotion spun throughout to tug on the heart strings. The recap below provides more detail of both.
In our opening scene we see a young girl driving herself and her grandfather back from just getting ice cream and discussing her breakup from her boyfriend. Clearly they are very close. Her grandfather tells her the boy is an idiot for letting her go when out of the blue a SUV plows into their car. The men in the SUV jump out with masks and machine guns and commandeer another vehicle making a clean get away. Cue the intro music.
After the wave we see Kono driving up to Adam at his new place of work. Adam has secured a job working heavy equipment (a bulldozer) at a construction site. Kono has brought Adam and herself lunch. These two are the cutest couple as Adam tells her that all the guys think she is hot not to mention he thinks she has some incredible sandwich making skills. She tells Adam that he can do whatever he wants to do that he puts his mind to, as Adam seems to be unsure of himself after his release from prison. He tells Kono he never thought he would be working construction but he actually likes it.
Back at the scene of the accident of the girl and her grandfather, Steve and Danny arrive and Lou fills them in on the men that hit them. They hijacked another vehicle and although the girl seems ok, her grandfather didn’t make it. Chin tells Steve that the girl’s name is Amanda and that there’s something else he needs to know.
Steve then goes to talk to Amanda about her grandfather who we find out was a World War II hero and who served on the Arizona. He was one of the last of the Pearl Harbor attack survivors. Steve promises her he will find the men responsible for her grandfather’s death.
Our next scene is of Adam at work doing excavation when he notices a bone in the dirt of the site they are building on. He takes it to the foreman with his concerns of the bone being human. Fearing the job will be shut down the foreman orders Adam to keep quiet and continue his work.
Back at HQ, Steve is watching a video of a documentary of the 75th anniversary of Pearl Harbor which the filmmaker sent to Steve when he inquired about the girl’s grandfather. In the video is the now deceased veteran whose name is Leonard Patterson. While watching, Danny comes in with info on the men who hit the car so they head out to the table where the rest of the team are.
Gathered at the table, the team reviews the video of the men robbing the bank and they see there are four of them. The execution of the crime was organized and precise and Steve recognizes immediately they are military. They also hit military credit unions which the team does not think is a coincidence. Steve asks Chin to collect DNA from the men in the car crash.
Meanwhile at Kamekona’s, Adam has asked Jerry to meet him where he explains his problem with the bone. Adam has brought the bone sample and blueprints of the land that he found it at and wants Jerry to do further research on any previous owners. Jerry agrees but tells Adam that he’s uncomfortable keeping it from the team since he now has his badge. The badge info is news to Adam and Jerry seems hurt no one had found it important enough to tell him. With this news, Adam understands and tells Jerry he just needs hard evidence before telling Kono but he will tell her. Jerry then agrees and tells Adam they need another bone fragment to help with the identification.
Next, the team is at the home of one of the men who robbed the bank and caused the car crash. It seems the DNA research led them there. His name is Nicholas Rider and he is ex-military who served in Afghanistan. Steve is briefing the team and he explains that Rider is highly trained and dangerous. Everyone prepares to enter the home. As they enter and deduct a detailed search, the lights go out and a shootout begins.
Rider jumps out the window but before he does he sets a bomb timer. Steve finds the bomb and orders everyone out fast. As they all barely make it out in time, the house explodes. Steve is thrown free from the roof and gets up to start chasing Rider. Steve closes in with gunfire. Rider takes aim, hits his mark, and Steve appears down and motionless so Rider approaches Steve with his guard down. In that moment Steve quickly pulls up and shoots Rider with one shot to the head. When the rest of the team show up Steve has Rider’s gun and is digging out a bullet from the center of his vest. Everyone is surprised at the size of the bullet Steve pulls out. However the look on Danny’s face and the fact he is shaking his head with No comment look, leads me to believe we will hear more on this in the future otherwise Danny maybe is finally acclimating to Steve’s badass ways.(doubtful)
Back at the excavation site Adam is climbing over the fence at night trying to retrieve another bone fragment. It is night and the site is empty so he digs up the site around the same area in hopes to find another one.
Over at HQ, Steve walks in with files on a flash drive. They reveal the four men were contracted by a security firm to provide security for civilians in Afghanistan. When Afghan civilians were killed they were sent home and now seem to be hitting military credit unions for a payday. The lead man’s name is Lee Campbell. Steve doesn’t think they have enough to make anything stick so he has HPD put a tail on them. Steve gets a call and leaves to take it.
Back at the excavation site with Adam, his foreman motions Adam to come into the office. His foreman explains he had security cameras put in for company thefts and saw Adam enter the site. He tells Adam he’s fired and the look of deflation on Adam’s face is heartbreaking.
Next, at HQ we see Steve watching an interview with one of the survivors of Pearl Harbor. It seems that the filmmaker recognized Steve’s name and sent it over for him to see. What Steve finds out is his grandfather, who Steve is named for, volunteered to go below the decks of the Arizona to flood the ammo storage before the flames reached it. This was quite a sacrifice but it was not an empty one as it saved a lot of men that day. The name the filmmaker recognized was Steve’s grandfather’s name, Ensign Steven McGarrett, which is why he thought Steve’s name sounded so familiar to him.
Danny had come in to hear most of it and was surprised to learn that Steve never knew any of that. Just then Chin comes in with information on Lee Campbell. An undercover tailed him to a military credit union in Pearl City and they reported he had walked inside unmasked. Meanwhile, over at the credit union, Lee goes over to the undercover officers and tells them to just tell McGarrett to come see him at the diner up the street if he wants to talk to him.
Now at the diner, Lee is having breakfast when Steve walks in and sits down at the table. The two men proceed to have their own version of a military standoff. Clearly drawing a line in the proverbial sand they quickly determine the difference between good guys verses the bad. Steve informs Lee that the man in the car they crashed into is not only dead but that he was 93, Navy, and one of the last living survivors of Pearl Harbor who actually served on the Arizona. Although still not admitting anything to Steve, this new information does seem to affect Lee to the point you almost feel sorry for him.
Back at Kamekona’s, Jerry’s filling Adam in on the information he has found. The property was redeveloped in the nineties and the original owner had to do a geological survey which had to be signed off by the department of historic preservation. It was determined that the property had never been marked for burial grounds. Jerry looked into the previous owners who to him seemed to check out ok. However, Jerry also checked out the realtor for the previous owner and discovers his wife went missing and has never turned up. His name is Daniel Nesmith and it turns out he was also having an affair, so Adam and Jerry don’t think it’s a coincidence there could have been a body in the foundation of the house Nesmith sold. Jerry wants to tell Five-0 but Adam wants to wait till morning to tell Kono as he wants more evidence. During their meeting Kono also calls and Adam leads her to believe he is at work, so he has lied to Kono which is not a good thing.
Back at HQ, Chin and Danny are viewing new information on Lee. They have footage of Lee at the credit union he visited that day as he met with the manager to discuss an extension on a lien payment for a home of a property he doesn’t own.
This new information brings Danny to that home to find out what the relation is. Inside we see Danny and a young woman talking about her husband’s death in Afghanistan. Turns out he was in the same unit as the other men who are robbing the banks. She and her young son are alone and were struggling until Lee and the others started helping out. Danny tells the young woman what the guys have really been up to and she thinks they are being railroaded just like what she believes happened in Afghanistan. Danny provides more details and she is so upset that she vehemently asks Danny to leave.
Back at HQ, Danny fills Steve in on his visit to the woman. Steve thinks this was revenge for the death of her husband and also why the Afghan civilians were killed causing Lee and his unit to be sent home. Now they seem to be robbing military credit unions to help the widow. Danny tells Steve the bank manager said no to the extension and they now have to come up with seventeen thousand by the next day or the widow and child are out on the street.
Next we see Adam at the door of Nesmith, Adam tells him he works for the company that tore down the house and while digging, he found boxes of things of the previous owners he wants to return to them. He asks him if he knew who they were. The realtor tells him to call him at his office the next day. Trap in place! That night, Adam watching the house sees Nesmith grab a shovel from his garage and leave.
Back at HQ the team is loading up on weapons like we haven’t seen in a while with some major heavy artillery being provided by Steve out of the gun cabinet. As they’re loading up guns, Jerry comes in to tell them an alarm just went off at one of the credit unions so Steve tells Jerry to inform Duke and to get his men over there. The Five-0 is on their way.
While Steve and Danny are heading towards what they believe to be the crime scene, Jerry tells them a second alarm just went off, then a third, a fourth…and WOW the whole board is lighting up like a Christmas tree! Steve realizes what has happened and once again, the team has been played. All the alarms are close in location except for one which is in an isolated area, and it’s a jewelry store.
Steve decides that is the one Lee and his crew are hitting so he has everyone go there. Steve and Danny arrive in time to see Lee and his men leaving the store. The very moment they arrive the gunfight ensues. This by far has been one of the best action gunfights and longest to date. Also in this case, the bad guys are every bit as capable as Five-0 which makes it even better to watch. Steve asks Danny to cover him as he moves closer to Lee.
As Steve gets closer it’s inevitable that he and Lee would come face to face. They do and begin hand to hand combat. Lee is just as good as Steve and for most of the fight has the upper hand. Steve takes a beating, literally! This, too, was one of the longest and best combat fights that has been seen in a while. It includes everything from a fruit stand collapse, crashing through a window, a plastic bag suffocation attempt, and a heavy bar to Steve’s throat. However even with all that, Steve gets the final advantage and Lee suffers a gory death. When done Steve literally lies down completely out of breath.
Back at HQ, Steve is walking Amanda to the elevator telling her that although it won’t bring back her grandfather, hopefully she can sleep at night knowing that the guys that killed him will never hurt anyone else ever again. Amanda thanks Steve for keeping his promise. He tells her to take care.
Back at the table, Kono, Lou, and Jerry tell Steve that they heard from Danny and he talked to the bank about the mortgage foreclosure on the young widowed woman and the bank is willing to work with her so she should be able to keep her home. Good job Danny! Just then Adam comes in and to Kono’s surprise asks to speak to her.
The next scene is Adam and Kono at Adam’s job site looking at the video camera footage the foreman had installed. They see Nesmith there at night digging up a body and taking it from the same area Adam had found the bone.
Panning over to Nesmith’s home where he is being taken out in handcuffs, Kono shuts down the job site. She asks Adam why he did not tell her about what happened sooner and he says he did not want to let her down. In another sweet scene, Kono tells Adam he can never let her down and they head off the site arm and arm playfully joking round.
At McGarrett’s house we see him going through a trunk filled with his grandfather’s things inside. As he looks at them you can see he is moved by the heroic act by his grandfather that he never knew about. He sees the Purple Heart that was awarded at the time and now knows the real reason why.
The final scene is that of Steve dressed in his full white naval uniform standing before the Arizona, while the funeral of Leonard Patterson is heard. Steve is clearly there for both men; his grandfather and Patterson. A salute from Steve is our final emotional scene.
This was an excellent episode. Not only was it the most action packed we have seen in a while but Alex once again hit it out of the park with a strong performance. The original footage of the attack at Pearl Harbor was outstanding and it was placed in the story line exactly where needed and I will go further by saying that as the daughter of a man who fought in that war and has a Purple Heart for the attack on his ship, The Battleship Texas, I’m proud to see a show that still honors those known as the greatest generation. For that reason among others, my rating on this one is a 10.
That’s another one down and it was one the best of an already amazing season. If you want to see some behind the scenes of the making of this one, you can check it out here on one of our weekly wrap-ups that we did. It’s actually is more interesting to look back on after you see the episode. There is no new episode next week so the show will return on the 28th with a Danny-centered episode.
Happy Easter!
Alex, é maravilhoso! ?