Hawaii Five-0 “He Kane Hewa’ole (An Innocent Man)” 

The 5-0’s dip a toe into “what’s in the booooxxxxx???” territory when an unfortunate turn of events places Kono and Kelly in a high-speed chase that kills the driver and leads to the discovery of a head in a box. The actual crime turns out to be an even yuckier crime of opportunity for money. Along the way, we get Greg Germann as a nice guy with no ulterior motive, Reiko Aylesworth as the one Kelly let get away and the wonderful Tzi Foon Ma (who I cannot find any credits on aside from this but he was very familiar) as the driver’s dad, Mr. Chi, with whom McGarrett bonds and makes things as right as he can under the circumstances.

(As I write this, I realize this show has already outrun Three Rivers. Boo YAH!)

We start with Kono and Kelly driving around and chatting about being cops and the commitment, yadda yadda, when the radio alerts them to a chase and Kono asks Kelly if they can pursue, and he says sure. She drives like a bat out of hell after the guy, weaving in and out of traffic before a spike chain sends the car they’re chasing ass over elbow, ejecting a box and mangling the driver. Kono opens the box and is alarmed, so pretty quickly we detour to gruesome.

As the McGarrett house, Danny arrives and walks in without a courtesy knock, which McGarrett checks him on, and they banter about that and a part for his dad’s 1974 Mercury Marquis that McGarrett ordered online that was not delivered as promised. They get called to the scene and after being briefed about the head in the box, McGarrett goes straight to the driver demanding answers and he whispers “Ming-Hua” before he dies. They ID the driver as Han Chi, and that leads them to an auto junkyard where McGarrett and Danny meet a man working on a car. They chat with him (McGarett speaks Mandarin, don’t you know) under the guise of looking for the Marquis part when a little boy runs up, and the older man, Mr. Chi, calls him “Ming-Hua.” McGarrett immediately decides Han was not a bad guy but a pawn.

They take Mr. Chi to ID Han’s body and he weeps and runs out. Then Max tells McGarrett that the autopsy on the head indicates lead and iodine so they figure gunshot and thyroid cancer patient are possibles. Kono and Kelly go to the hospital to determine the latter, and there’s some talk around Kelly maybe not wanting to be there but he says he’s fine. He paces in front of the elevator while Kono begs off to get some information and as the elevator doors open, there’s the one person he didn’t want to see—Dr. Malia Weston (Aylesworth). They awkwardly hug and chat a little and then Kelly’s focus goes straight to an engagement ring on a chain on her neck. Their conversation tells us that he gave it to her, their engagement ended, and she kept the ring because he told her to, but he’s surprised she’s wearing it. She tells him that everybody thought she ended it and that really hurt, so I’m guessing the ring on her neck screaming DUMPEE instead of DUMPER is OK?

Kono walks up and the temperature in the room drops to the basement, so there’s definitely more to THAT story. The immediately relevant plot point is that Malia can ID the head—he’s a thyroid cancer patient at the hospital.  Danny and McGarrett call his house and the line is busy, so they go looking for the victim’s wife, Nicole, and find the murder scene and the place ransacked. Separately, Kelly pieces together from the damaged GPS that Han was going to see Nicole’s dad, Robert (Germann), to deliver the head. Before that, Kono interviewed the man who rented Han the car, a contractor named Spenser, but he had checked out OK.

The pieces fall together fairly quickly that Nicole faked her kidnapping and had her husband killed to pocket $5 million from her dad and run away with Spenser, who Danny shoots at the money drop with Robert. They also find the rest of Duncan in the trunk of Spenser’s car. McGarrett goes to meet Nicole at the airport in Spenser’s place, seething at what she did. He does the exposition fairy thing and then hands the arrest to Danny.

We close with McGarrett going to see Mr. Chi to tell him they caught the folks who set up Han, and he gives him papers signed by the (unseen, again!) Governor, fast-tracking U.S. citizenship for him, his wife, and Ming-Hua. Mr. Chi starts to tear up and says he has something for McGarrett, too—the part he needed for the Marquis. He tells McGarrett to call him if he needs help installing it.

Then we get a lighter conclusion back at HQ, part of an odd ongoing thread in the episode, with Danny and McGarrett watching CHiPs and fighting over who’s Estrada and who’s Wilcox. They agree they’re both Estrada. Then Kono and Kelly come in and Kelly credits the show with his biker tendencies and Kono says she’s never heard of the show (bullshit!), but pronounces Wilcox to be the cute one, so Danny and McGarrett immediately say “that’s me.”

This was another emotional episode for McGarrett and I like that they’re giving O’Loughlin the heavier material. I was surprised that Danny was the less invested one—in a couple of spots, he’s cavalier about Duncan’s demise, calling him “Jack,” for jack in the box. Very intriguing turn there with Kelly having an ex almost-wife. We’ve heard about how much he lost being booted out of the force, but now we have an extra puzzle piece there that it also affected him at home. Yay that Daniel Dae Kim (and Grace Park) had more to do. I didn’t watch Lost so I don’t know if Aylesworth and Kim had scenes together there or not, but I liked them together here.

Programming alert—no new episode Monday but there is a new episode tomorrow (Sunday) after football!