S2E7: The Hawaii Five-0 showrunners sure wanted to give us some thrills for tonight’s Halloween episode — and boy, did they deliver, turning in easily the season’s scariest hour.
It all starts, and revolves around, the murder of two young amateur documentarians who were killed while filming from an infamous local sacred graveyard, looking for the mythic “ghost warriors.”
The Five-0 quickly arrive at the scene, and Danny, of course, disobeys the tradition of waiting for a priest to “bless” them before entering the scene of the crime, at which a hand belonging to the male victim is the only sign of the murder.
After the autopsy and some research, Max discovers fingerprints on the female victim that belong to a man named Greg Straithan, but he is immediately ruled out as a suspect, because he’s dead — murdered by his criminally insane girlfriend. Apparently, that is: McGarrett and Co. wonder if this was simply the perfect opportunity for Straithan to have faked his own death. And when they go to exhume Straithan’s body, after a fruitless interview with his hospitalized gilfriend, it is missing, only fanning the flames of their theory.
But Max assures them that Straithan is, in fact, dead, his severed hand found in a bag at the original scene of the crime — which is where they return to look for the rest of the body. It is also there that piece together other clues and conclude that a homeless man (guest star Robert Englund), who warned them previously not to investigate the murder in the first place, is the killer. He is quickly apprehended nearby almost quite literally holding the proverbial “smoking gun” (er, machete).
Alas, though, while he seems quite mean and possibly dangerous, the homeless man is ruled out, as the blood on his weapon was matched to that of an animal he’d hunted. And furthermore, as the Five-0 crew soon discovers, they’re not looking for a serial killer but rather a “businessman who’s selling cadaver parts on the black market.”
At which point they turn to a new suspect: mortuary attendant Tyler Mitchell, who, in hindsight, was mysteriously apprehensive about helping to exhume Greg Straithan’s body. For good reason! The full squad races to the mortuary at which he worked, only to find him dead and realize, yet again, that they had the wrong guy. Mitchell was in cahoots with a hospital employee named Jacob Garrison, who was using the lucrative “body-parts trade” to pay off his extensive debt.
His moneymaking days — and non-moneymaking days — come to an end, however, when he gets caught by Five-0 at his own house and opts to light himself (and his house) on fire rather than surrendering.
TOP FIVE MOMENTS FROM TONIGHT’S EPISODE
1. The opening scene, which features a Blair Witch Project-style slaying — quite appropriate for the Halloween episode.
2. Max, always the comic-relief fall guy, briefs McGarrett and Danny on his autopsy findings in the super-serious murder case — all while dressed as Neo from The Matrix in his Halloween-spirited office.
3. “Nice, Italian marble … You know, by law, youre gonna have to disclose that there was a murder here. Probably have to cut the rent in half … at least. I mean, most people — they wont even rent a place where theres been a violent crime. Ya know, bad mojo, stuff like that. Me, personally, I never minded a little bit of blood.” -Danny, talking to the landlord of the apparent victim Greg Straitham — and hoping to movie into his apartment.
4. The scene in which a scary — but not quite Freddie Krueger scary — Robert Englund is found wielding a bloody machete (and a lot of dirt and grime).
5. The Five-0 gang busts into the mortuary looking for Mitchell, flashlight guns drawn, creaky doors, well, creaking. Lori finds Mitchell dead and in the unappetizing process of being embalmed. Thats when someone sneaks up on her from behind out of one of the many closed caskets in the room and bludgeons her with some sort of postmortem instrument. (She’s somehow basically unharmed, though.) Boo!
