Hawaii Five-0 “Kai e’e (Tidal Wave)” 

It’s a little sketchy to me to set an episode around a tsunami but I guess you work with what you got, and if it were set on the Gulf Coast, nobody’d sneeze about a hurricane, so there’s that. We begin early in the morning on an already-crowded beach, as Kono (in a teeny weeny bikini) is tutoring Danny (in cutoff jeans, and yes, fairly cut underneath those chinos and button downs he usually sports, so thanks, show!) in the ways of the board and he’s whining about not being out on the water yet. She tells him to go for it so he really looks at the waves and agrees he’s not ready. Then a siren breaks out, Kono says “tsunami,” and the joke’s over as everyone on the beach starts to scatter.

At Casa McGarrett, Steve and the lovely Catherine are descending the stairs in a hurry, getting dressed as they go, and each grabs their ringing phone of the coffee table to get news of the alarm. Catherine says they’re heading out to open waters and then she and McGarrett kiss each other goodbye as they head out the door.

Danny is picking up Grace from school when McGarrett calls him in; Danny hesitates because he’s on solo dad duty, so McGarrett says no worries and they park her with Kamekona. Their case revolves around the head of the tsunami warning center being MIA, which is really out of character for a guy who would have been the first one in the building after the alarms sounded. They head to his house and find signs of a struggle, and while the city shuts down, McGarrett and Danny head out to the beach, tracking a signal that seems to be interfering with the warning system. They find a hacker resending a feed that’s originating somewhere else and that gets them closer to their missing guy.

The whole thing turns out to be a very elaborate hoax on the part of a bitter Coast Guard lifer to retrieve the money from HPD (that the 5-0s tapped when they need $10 million for Kelly) in exchange for him being dumped w/o a pension. The tsunami warning left HPD HQ unprotected and he had the street to himself to fill faux sandbags with the cash. The 5-0s hold their breath while the money is counted and then are left puzzled when the Governor tells McGarrett that it’s correct to the penny, and he knows it shouldn’t be.

So we have a setup there that the Gov (again unseen) was in on the “loan” and is covering up the discrepancy, or somebody else was in on it and returned the cash. We also found out Kelly is still speaking to his ex.  On the casting front, the hacker was played by a sorely underused Agnes Bruckner, who I’d have like to see have a bigger role. The arc with Kamekona and Grace was cute–she cleans him and his cronies out of penny candy after baiting them into a card game. I like that they keep using Kamekona and that he’s such a sweetheart–that he’s part of Danny’s extended family now whether Danny’s on board with that or not. I also liked that Momo knew how to read the ocean better than everybody hightailing it inland, and that it was his reticence about evacuating that tipped the boys that maybe the warning was a misdirect. I was glad to see that Catherine was just there with McGarrett in the morning, and he’s got a life outside of the job.

New episodes return this Monday, and the pilot is re-airing on Sunday. If CBS has padded out the season order, I’d like to know, because otherwise there are only seven episodes left between now and May.