This week brought us one more closer to the winter finale, which many fans have been talking about a lot lately. However, the episode itself was not just a filler on the way there. This episode was very good and brought about many edge of the seat moments as well as many emotional ones. Take a dive into the recap for the details below.
The episode opens with a girl floating in a life raft just off the shore of Oahu and she seems to be non-responsive.
Earlier than normal the credits roll.
After that we watch as Steve, Danny, and Junior are walking in to HQ. As they are entering we and Junior get to hear the latest debate on the restaurant between Steve and Danny. Junior is smart and stays neutral on the subject and says he is just there to observe.
Once there, everyone sees the new and improved Jerry at the table with short and well groomed hair. (looking good Jerry) Jerry’s new look is very much to everyone’s liking and Danny refers to him doing it for the new dating site he just joined. Jerry neither confirms nor denies this accusation.
Jerry then gets down to business and fills the team in on the woman found. He informs them that she was found at 8:30 AM that morning and she is currently at Kings Medical Center unconscious. The doctors confirm that she had been on the water for at least eight hours. She was identified as Monique Sims. Monique owned a PR firm on the island and was a familiar face on the social scene. Jerry also shares that he found out that she was also an old acquaintance of Adam and that they had been on the board of trustees for the new art institute. Steve asks Jerry to call Adam to see if they can get any additional info on her.
At that time Tani comes in with information on Monique. She spoke with her assistant and she had been on a yacht called the Serenity. The owner was Nathan Diamond who is a rich hedge fund guy. Tani made a call to his people to get the names of everyone on the yacht and they told her they would get back to her with that info.
Steve makes a ship to shore call to the Serenity to which there is no reply. Junior suggests using the radio frequency to locate the yacht’s position which Steve has Jerry do. Once done, the satellite pictures show dead bodies on the deck, thus the reason there has been no response to Steve’s call. Steve has Jerry call the Coast Guard to inform them they have a situation on hand.
Next we see Steve and the team who are now with Noelani flying out to the yacht on a Coast Guard helicopter. Noelani is clearly stressed at the flight as she keeps her eyes closed and clenched most of the way. When Danny shares that flying is safer than driving to calm her, it is Danny that then becomes stressed to learn that only refers to planes and not helicopters. Helicopters are in fact more dangerous than driving by a longshot to which Danny addresses Steve as to not sharing this info with him prior. Steve ignores the question and meanwhile Junior tries to calm Noelani down with calm words.
When they see the yacht below, Steve states that they will go down and clear the scene, then bring Noelani in to do her thing when it is safe.
Now on the yacht, the team makes a search only to find a total of eleven people dead. To make matters worse it looks like they have died from a bio chemical pathogen of some sort and now they, themselves, have also been exposed, as Tani clearly points out.
Steve calls Lou to let him know the bodies, and now the team, have been exposed to this virus and tells him to get in contact with the hospital to let them know that Monique may have also been exposed. Steve also tells him that they will stay on the yacht to contain the virus.
Steve calls up to the Coast Guard helicopter pilot and asks them how long they can stay hovering. He is told they only have enough fuel to be able to stay another 8 minutes or so and then they must leave in order to get back safely.
Steve then informs Danny, Tani, and Junior that they have to stay on the yacht because they have been exposed and they cannot risk exposing anyone else. This was a hard decision for Steve to have made and he understands their concern. He also tells them that they need to do whatever they can in the next 8 minutes to gather evidence to send back to the CDC for evaluation. This includes getting a tissue sample of one of the victims to send it up to Noelani to help identify in order to get an antidote.
Tani is not too comfortable with this and Danny isn’t either. Steve tries to calm their concerns but doesn’t help a lot. Junior however seems to be doing alright with it.
They photograph the bodies and send everything up to Noelani. While discussing the crime scene, Junior points out something is not adding up about how and why these people would have had to been killed using a pathogen. Steve agrees and concludes that this must have been a test for the pathogen in a controlled environment to see if it would work for whatever the real purpose was intended for.
Back at HQ, Adam arrives to help Lou and Jerry. Lou fills Adam in on the team’s situation and Jerry has a list of everyone who was aboard the yacht. Jerry ran all of them and nothing unusual came back. Adam does not recognize any of the other people on the boat and says he had been out of that world for a long time. Lou gets a call from the hospital and is told Monique is awake so he and Adam leave to go talk to her.
Arriving at the hospital, Lou and Adam are filled in on Monique’s condition which seems to be that she was not exposed to the pathogen. Lou concludes she must have left the yacht before anyone was exposed. The doctor gives Lou and Adam a history of the pathogen which is compiled of two viruses and is fast moving and contagious. The bad news is no known antidote exists.
Lou and Adam go to talk to Monique who tells them nothing out of the ordinary was going on that she saw. She had developed a headache, went to lie down, and was awakened several hours later by shouting of the guests. She looked outside her door to see Marko holding a gun on the guests. He had been dropped off by another boat after the yacht had already set sail but she did not know him. She shares that she thinks that Marko and Nathan were old friends and that was all Monique knew about him. She assumed he was there to rob all the guests when she saw the gun, so she took the life raft to get away off the boat.
Lou then calls Steve to tell him about Marko, and since he wasn’t found by Steve and the team they deduct that he either had accomplices pick him up, or he was still on the yacht. This made Steve more alert and thus the team performs another more detailed search of the yacht looking for Marko.
Down below in the mechanical room, Steve finds Marko dead holding a case of vials with one broken. The team concludes that it looks like it was broken accidentally because there was enough of it to kill a lot of people, not just eleven. Therefore, maybe Marko was to hand it off to someone. Danny points out that his death was not from the virus but from a flare gun, so maybe there is an antidote after all. They search everywhere but find nothing, showing extreme disappointment on their faces.
At this point Tani heads up on deck and Junior follows. She wants to know how he can remain so calm when he is about to die. He shares some stories about the SEALS and how most recruits will drop out before tests instead of during them, because the thought of what is going to happen is what brings them down. He tells her it is all a mental game and that he will help her through it.
As the hours go by, everyone starts to show early symptoms of the virus. Danny seems to show the symptoms sooner.
Lou and Adam call Steve with an update on the investigation. Adam tells Steve that the CDC is on it and that he and Lou have a lead. They ran the ID on Marko Jones and it turns out it is an alias for an Andreas Koslauff who used to run the Ukraine chemical weapons program. Six months ago he disappeared with materials from a lab and no one knew his whereabouts until now. Steve believes he was using the boat to get himself and the pathogen on to American soil but something went wrong.
Therefore, Adam believes that Marko wasn’t there to rob them and that the passengers were turning on Marko because of the virus. This leads him even further to deduct that Monique lied to him and Lou about getting off the yacht before the vial in the case broke. Just then Jerry comes in with information on Monique’s financials sharing that she had a bunch of shell companies and received five hundred thousand from an off shore account in the Caymans. Steve concludes Koslauff paid Monique to get him on the yacht.
Next we see Monique at the hospital where she is told by the doctor she has a call. Monique tells the caller that there was a problem with the vial case and everyone had attacked Andreas when people started getting sick. She had to get out of there and that she doesn’t have the virus. She tells the caller the cops know about it and are on the yacht. The caller tells her she has one hour to get his money back since she did not deliver.
We next see Lou and Adam arriving at the hospital looking for Monique but they find the nurse dead and Monique gone. Lou orders the hospital locked down. Just as the alarms go off, we see Monique walking out the door dressed as a nurse.
Back on the yacht everyone is feeling worse and as everyone plans their funerals practically giving up all hope, Steve still believes in his team on the ground, and that they will find an antidote. At that time Lou calls Steve and tells him that Monique has escaped and they now need to find her. Now everyone surmises that the buyer is probably looking for Monique as well. Lou and Adam have Jerry working on finding the buyer, however this news seems to even take the wind out of Steve’s sails, too.
Danny had raided the bar and was on the deck drinking a very expensive bottle of champagne when Steve comes and joins him. They discuss Steve’s wino tendencies and banter slightly before Danny begins to tell Steve he has something he wants to share with him. Steve thinking it will be all gushy, says he does not want to go there, that he knows what he is about to say, and that he feels the same way. Danny returns with that he was actually thinking they should add a waiting room to the restaurant and Steve tells him it is a good idea. Danny sees the clouds roll in and some signs of a storm and confers with Steve that this was not good. He says he is going to go lay down.
Back at HQ, Lou, Adam, and Jerry find a bank in Zurich has info on the account where Monique received the money from, but they won’t talk to him. Adam asks Jerry the name of the bank. When Jerry tells him he seems to recognize it and leaves asking them to give him twenty minutes.
Our next scene is of Monique packing a bag full of money and a gun in her hotel room. She gets a call from the buyer telling her where to bring the money but when they hang up, we see the buyer being arrested by Lou and HPD. Adam apparently got the information they needed to get the buyer.
When they arrive to intercept Monique and the return of the money, she runs when she sees them. Lou corners her and she pulls her gun. An officer shoots her in the upper abdomen and she is bleeding pretty badly. Adam tries to reason with her for the info on the antidote to no avail but Lou tells her he will let her bleed out if she doesn’t get him the antidote.
That seems to work because the next thing we see is the Coast Guard helicopter on the way with the antidote flying through a really bad storm at night. Inside, is Lou with a case and the antidote. The pilot tells Lou because the storm is so bad that they only have one shot at lowering the case on the cable. Lou has the pilot patch him through to Steve to prep him.
Prior to receiving the call, Steve stumbles in to see Danny who is lying down and not looking so good. Steve tries to get him to take some water but he refuses. Steve gets the call from Lou and Lou tells him they have the antidote. Things are looking up.
Steve goes out on the deck of the yacht. He is barely able to hold on because of the storm which is getting worse. Junior and Tani come to the deck to help when they hear the helicopter.
Lou attaches the case to the cable and sends it down but the helicopter is tossed back and the cable breaks sending the case into the water. Oh no, things are looking down again. Steve stops Junior from jumping in after it and instead he dives in. Fighting to find it, he finally gets a hold of it only to be too weak to stay afloat. Showing Steve is not infallible after all, he starts to go under.
Junior dives in with a life float and rope. He gets Steve just as he’s going under for the last time and pulls him and the case up. Tani pulls the rope back to the yacht where Steve and Junior are barely able to climb up the ladder onto the yacht. Tani slams Junior into Steve when she pulls him up and that stirs Steve to move. (wasn’t there a better way to get his attention?) Once they get back inside they open the case and see four syringes all intact with the antidote. The team lives to fight another day.
Our final scene is three days later of the four of them in quarantine where it would appear everyone is stuck there for some time until they are cleared of any possible contagion. After Danny talks to Grace and ribs Junior about working out too much, he joins Steve and Tani who are playing chess. Danny and Steve start to banter about the restaurant as It appears that Steve really did not like that waiting room idea after all, and now that they are not going to die, he decides to tell him. Tani beats Steve and needless to say they all are getting on each other’s nerves, especially Steve and Danny. However, there is no escape. Until next week….
This one was really good. It kept you wondering how and when they would get the antidote and in Hawaii Five 0 fashion, nothing was easy about it. The hurricane like storm that blew in from nowhere was an interesting addition. The banter was fun and in balance with the thrill of the save and their love for one another as they fought to stay alive whatever way they could. Of course we missed Eddie again, but there was actually quality time that the rest of the team had together and that was enjoyable. We would rate this one a 9 for a solid script and performances.
