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Five-0 Redux: Sheltering the devil puts ‘Hawaii Five-0’ in the eye of the storm

COURTESY CBS

As a dangerous hurricane heads for Oahu, McGarrett (Alex O’Loughlin) and the Five-0 team are tasked with protecting El Diablo (Raoul Trujillo), the head of a murderous cartel who is being hunted by an assassin.

Living on an island, we all know we are sitting ducks if bad weather is headed our way. We can evacuate to a shelter or another spot on the island, or take off to a neighbor island, but if a hurricane is coming, it most likely will affect the entire Hawaiian chain. So unless we’re willing to get on a plane and head to the mainland, we’re pretty much stuck right where we live.

This week’s episode, “Ho‘opio ‘ia e ka noho ali‘i a ka ua” is Hawaiian for “Made prisoner by the reign of the rain.” The title is an olelo noeau, or a Hawaiian proverb and poetical saying, which means “when the rainy season comes, one is kept indoors.” The saying describes how most islanders usually react to all bad weather, and how we tend to stay where we are in order to take care of our ohana and our hale — our family and our house.

The episode incorporates a case of the week that takes place within Five-0’s hale during an impending hurricane. Written by Rob Hanning and directed by Karen Gaviola, Steve McGarrett (Alex O’Loughlin) and the team must take in El Diablo (Raoul Trujillo), the leader of a major drug cartel, during Hurricane Kim, which is headed for Oahu. The problem is that Iolani Palace has been named an emergency evacuation shelter, thus leaving McGarrett, Lou (Chi McBride), Adam (Ian Anthony Dale) and Jerry (Jorge Garcia) to help with the evacuees, as well as trying to keep El Diablo, also known as Alejandro Vega, from escaping for the fifth time.

While the team has their hands full at Five-0 headquarters, Danny (Scott Caan) is staying at his own hale, as he has offered to shelter his ex-wife, Rachel (Claire van der Boom), and their son, Charlie (Zach Sulzbach), since her home is in an evacuation area. And while the island is dealing with mandatory evacuations, and HPD is stretched thin, McGarrett sends Tani (Meaghan Rath) and Junior (Beulah Koale) to drive out into evacuation areas to help with safety. Tani is pulled indoors when a couple who refused to evacuate takes her hostage.

THE DEVIL GETS HIS DUE

The episode starts three days before the hurricane is about to hit the islands. El Diablo is having lunch at Liliha Bakery, an actual bakery and coffee shop in Honolulu, which is famous for its fresh baked goods — especially its Coco Puffs. He sits at the counter and when his darling waitress Kalani (Jacqui Lynn Phung) asks him if he saved room for dessert, he makes the understatement of the year when he says, “Heard that’s what you are known for here.” She suggests the chantilly cake, which if any of you have tried it before, is a little slice of heaven.

Appropriately, the devil does not get his taste of paradise, as he hears the sirens coming for him. He grandly tips Kalani $100 for the excellent service, and walks outside and kneels in the suspiciously empty parking lot. The FBI arrives and arrests him, and Agent Sam Collins (Ted McGinley) tells Kalani she has “a story to tell your kids. You just waited on one of the most dangerous fugitives in the world.” Before they can cart Mr. Devil away, he yells to Kalani, “I’ll be back for a slice of that cake.” And like Kalani, we break out in chicken skin as an evil smile slides across his face.

So we have met the devil and felt him walk across our graves. Fast-forward three days and the news is silent about El Diablo being arrested at one of the most famous and popular bakeries in Hawaii. It is instead reporting that Hurricane Kim is about to hit the islands. The news reporter (played by real-life Hawaii news reporter Mahealani Richardson) says “Kim is expected to reach 155 mph with torrential rains.” She reminds everyone that if they are “in an evacuation zone, please relocate to the nearest designated shelter.”

And shelter is just what the FBI needs right now. They call McGarrett and inform him that they have caught Vega, and they were supposed to relocate him to a Supermax prison on the mainland. But all flights are grounded because of the hurricane, and their safe house is in an evacuation zone, so they are going to use Five-0 headquarters to house him until the storm is over.

NO ESCAPE FROM THE REIGN OF RAIN

Thus, McGarrett and the Five-0 team have their case of the week unceremoniously deposited on their doorstep. McGarrett informs the team that El Diablo “is responsible for hundreds of deaths; many of them civilians.” Lou asks, “Exactly why are we bringing this garbage into our house?” McGarrett tells him it’s to make sure the devil gets to prison since he has escaped so many times before.

But Five-0 seems to have a problem, as it looks like someone is in the palace to break El Diablo out again. They lose electricity because of the storm, and after the backup generators crash their camera surveillance, Jerry and Lou head to the main server control room to reboot the system. They find all the cables to their network video recorder completely severed. While Jerry apologizes to McGarrett for not being able to fix it right away, they see blood and find a sheriff’s deputy stabbed and bleeding on the floor. They pack his wound and try to keep him awake until help arrives.

Lou comforts the deputy, who tells him his name is Haku (Hawaii actor Bernard Aderhold-Lindsey). He gives them key details about his attacker, and Jerry recognizes Haku’s description as a civilian he spoke to earlier, who asked him why there seemed to be so much security at an “evacuation shelter.” They use Haku’s description and Jerry’s akamai (smart) observation of the mystery man’s wrist tattoo to identify him as Sergio Diaz (stuntman and actor Craig Henningsen), a soldier for the Cervantes organization. Adam points out this is a rival cartel and that he’s not trying to help El Diablo escape, he is there to assassinate him.

Collins has to admit to McGarrett that El Diablo needs to be protected because “Vega agreed to turn state’s evidence against his rivals.” Now McGarrett is completely committed to protecting El Diablo in order to put away other bad guys like him. They realize Diaz probably has help from within Collins’ team because he knows where El Diablo is and the layout of the building — which can only come from an inside source.

They move El Diablo up to the Five-0 offices, and as they come out of the elevator, Diaz is waiting. He shoots all of the FBI agents, including Collins, and he and McGarrett fight it out. It is an epic fistfight/jiujitsu match/MMA brawl. Thankfully, McGarrett gets the upper hand and puts Diaz down.

El Diablo uses their fight to make his fifth escape, and as he is trying to hot-wire a car, the mole who helped his assassin, Agent Harris (Liam McNeill), moves in to kill him. McGarrett and Adam take out the mole, and promptly tell the devil, “You see that? That was your last escape attempt.” It was a good case of the week, with everyone adding their observations and knowledge to figure out the case under interesting circumstances. And without ever leaving Five-0 headquarters.

NO PRISONERS LEFT BEHIND

While the team is stuck at Five-0 headquarters helping civilians and catching the devil, Tani and Junior are out patrolling in order to secure the evacuation areas. Tani runs across a family who refused to evacuate and because they have a little girl, she uses her “officer in charge” voice and tells them they need to go. They seem a little odd, but she thinks it’s the stress of the storm that is causing their reluctance to comply. That is until the husband, Jameson (Greg Serano), pulls a gun on her and ties her up in another room. Their second dumb move of the night.

Their daughter, Emmy (Hannah Raizelle Schwartz), starts to talk to Tani and she incorrectly thinks her mother, Shona (Lili Bordan), is trying to leave Emmy’s dad. Emmy unties her and Tani overtakes Shona and tells the mother she will help them escape. But when Tani lets her go, Shona screams for her husband instead. Still, it is enough of a surprise that Tani gets her gun back and as she points it at the two wayward parents she tells them, “We’re all going to take a breath!” As if to say, evacuation is stressful, but this is ridiculous.

Just as Tani seems to have gotten everything under control, Jameson reveals they are in a stash house and they have $300,000 in cash and product in their house. As bad-guy drug dealers arrive to take Jameson’s stash, they shoot it out with Tani. Thankfully, Tani has a stainless-steel refrigerator to shield her and Junior shows up to take down the last baddie. He had grown worried when Tani didn’t answer her phone. Tani tells Emmy she’s safe and Junior arrests her parents. It’s nice how Tani is always so gentle and sweet with children. It’s obvious she wants to protect them and get them to safety no matter what dangers she might have to face to help them.

DANNY AND RACHEL KEEP INDOORS

The sweetest story of the episode had to be the “smell down memory lane” for Danny and Rachel. As the two storm-proof Danny’s house, they discover a leak in his ceiling. He figures rainwater must have gotten in the attic, and they take down all the wet boxes in the ceiling crawl space. While the boxes don’t contain gold, they do have several bars of deodorant, ones that were Danny’s signature scent when he first met Rachel.

She smells them she says, “Danny, that’s you when I met you,” They laugh together and recall their first few dates when they first fell in love. It’s a sweet moment, but they still seem to be keeping each other at a distance. Perhaps it’s because they don’t want to rekindle something between them and hurt their children again if it doesn’t work out. Or perhaps it’s because they are enjoying being together without fighting and blaming each other for past wrongs or betrayals.

When they wake up sleeping next to each other on Danny’s couch the morning after the storm, they try to play it off as if it was nothing to Charlie who is watching television in front of them. And when McGarrett arrives and notices there’s a bit of awkwardness between the former married couple, Danny blames the weirdness on McG.

McGarrett tells him he won’t talk or give his opinions if he is eating Danny’s pancakes — with bananas and chocolate chips. “See if I’m eating, there’s food in my mouth, I can’t really talk, right?” Danny agrees after asking the Five-0 commander if he is 5 years old. McGarrett looks so happy he’s going to get pancakes that it takes a minute for him to realize something, and then he blurts out, “Why does your house smell like deodorant?” We all know it would take much more than just pancakes for McGarrett to keep his opinions to himself.

OK, it was a bit of a sappy ending to a rather intense episode, but it’s really not “Hawaii Five-0” without Steve and Danny having a bit of a go at each other. And it’s always great when they are getting along and teasing versus cutting and bickering. This is the bromance we all miss and know it is worth weathering a storm to see.


Wendie Burbridge writes the “Five-0 Redux” and “Magnum Reloaded” blogs for staradvertiser.com. Follow her on Twitter and Instagram.


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