S2E12: Based on the previews for tonight’s episode of Hawaii Five-0 — what with its promise of Chin’s oceanfront wedding and all — you might think the show was going to take it a little easy on us. Not so!
The episode kicks off with a few young kids doing dumb, young-kid things — in this case trespassing onto and into an old bunker, at the bottom of which they find what appears to be a dead body.
Enter Five-0 …
McGarrett and Max rappel down the “lava tube,” where the seemingly deceased man lies, murder weapon nearby. As they examine the apparent corpse and the license, which bears no resemblance to the man they’re looking at, he springs back to life (only to soon be induced into a coma)! But what follows is an even weirder chain of events.
First the Five-0 go looking for the man whose wallet was found nearby, Rafe Tong. He has a rap sheet that makes him the immediate and obvious suspect, but as is usually the case early on in the episodes, he’s more of a petty criminal, not a murderer. He does, however, offer the name of the victim: Dennis Archer.
Before long, it seems as though Archer might not have been a victim but rather that he was involved in some sordid trip to Hawaii; his wife, in Arizona, had no idea he was there, his savings account was suddenly drained, and he was looking for a girl.
Oddly enough, the girl Archer was looking for, Bridgett Turner, is the very same girl that Vince Fryer — HPD detective and Five-0 rival — is looking for; she’s his Jane Doe. He and McGarrett literally bump into each other during the investigation, meeting in the middle, so to speak and decide to work together and let bygones be bygones.
BUT: Bridgett herself is dead, left in the trunk of a car tied to one Dennis Archer. Which further complicates potential motives and such.
Meanwhile, at the hospital, Archer’s wife explains that their son, Sean, has been presumed dead for over two years but that Dennis held out hope that Sean was somehow still alive and that Dennis might’ve been in Hawaii pursuing a potential lead on that front. The cops further put the pieces together when they mentally replay footage of Dennis handing over a suitcase full of money (his aforementioned savings account) to Bridgett, leading them to believe that perhaps she’d promised him some info on their son’s whereabouts.
They also know that “shady stuff” is going on at the luau where Bridgett worked as a waitress. Before long they’re able to figure out definitively that Bridgett’s boss, Mitch, was running a scam whereby he attempted to con Dennis Archer out of a lot of money in exchange for details about his long-missing son; Bridgett was, for all intents and purposes, a middleman.
The whole operation fell apart when Bridgett grew a guilty conscience and Dennis Archer went after Mitch for lying to him — forcing Mitch (at least in his mind) to kill Bridgett, make it look Dennis’ doing, and then kill Dennis, too. Most of which didn’t work out too well for him.
When Five-0 apprehend Mitch for the murder, they get some more info from the sadistic lifelong criminal: He knows that Sean Archer is, in fact, dead, as bragged about by Mitch’s onetime cellmate in Arizona. It doesn’t take much (see No. 4, below!) for Vince to coax the gruesome details about the murder out of Mitch, and it gives the Archers (Dennis survives the terrible ordeal) a small sense of closure, at long last.
TOP FIVE MOMENTS FROM TONIGHT’S EPISODE
1. McGarrett opens the doors to Danny’s room at the Hilton – where he’s staying temporarily – to find his partner handcuffed (but fully clothed) to Lori. They walk away in embarrassment, although bound to one another. “It’s not what it looks like!”
2. When the Five-0 goes to investigate the scene in the bunker, where it is predictably dark, dank and altogether spooky, the always-ready-to-provide-comic-relief Max pops out in a costume that, although ultimately practical, resembles that of a superhero.
3. The inevitable chase scene, in which Kono blindsides Mitch, who’s running away from Chin and McGarrett, and scissor-kicks him to the ground. And gets a “Yeah, Kono” from McGarrett.
4. This line from Fryer to Mitch (although it doesn’t even do justice to the performance and delivery of recurring guest star Tom Sizemore): “He’s no snitch. He’s an honorable guy. I understand. But, ya know, the question you gotta ask yourself is: How are you gonna spend this life sentence? OK, because if you don’t cooperate with me right now, right here, I will call the warden and I will have him enroll your ass in the ‘Psycho of the Week’ program … Every week, you get to sample the prison’s finest psychopaths, gangbangers, sociopaths. And you can do for the rest of your life, until you leave there in a box.”
5. The wedding scene. The rare happy ending! That is, until Joe and Steve have a not-so-friendly chat to close out the show.
