Hawaii Five-O starts out on a lighter note, but things don’t stay that way for long. While Chin and Jerry have visions of a dream high school reunion, Steve (Alex O’Loughlin) and Danny (Scott Caan) take a trek in Cambodia with a disturbing find-a dead body– at the end of the trail. Steve’s mother isn’t the only one with some deadly secrets, and old boyfriends and stiletto heels cause nothing but trouble!
Chin Ho Kelly (Daniel Dae Kim) and Jerry (Jorge Garcia) make their entrance at the 25th high school reunion like Cruise and Hoffman floating down the escalator in Rainman, dressed to the nines, and ready to conquer. Right away, the vibe gets dampened by a stop for nametags, but once inside, things seem to be flowing. Nani (Krista Allen), who clearly wants to be more than friends, still, with Chin, comes on strong to no avail before beginning the Time Capsule trivia. The oldies but goodies fun is interrupted by shrieks of terror over the intercom, as a woman is screaming “He’s trying to kill me.” Completely on the other side of the world, Steve and Danny track leads to try and uncover Doris McGarrett’s whereabouts in Cambodia, only to find a body in the lush foliage. Disheartened, but still determined, Steve takes DNA to be analyzed. Back at high school, by the time Chin and Jerry trace the cries for help, it’s too late, as a woman’s body lies on the stairs from a fall, piercing her heart with their own stiletto that she removed so she could run faster from the killer. There’s little chit chat between Steve and Danny on their military transport home. Steve unwilling to tie his mother to the body, and there’s little chatter about the victim, Laura Richmond, from her family, either. Her siblings, Bradley and Sarah (Mackenzie Astin and Samantha Sloyan), seem to know very little about their sister, apart from her suffering from depression, not knowing anything about a sudden $200,000 withdrawal from the trust of their macadamia nut tycoon inheritance. On the sly, Steve asks Max (Masi Oka) to run analysis on the DNA sample. One sample found on Laura’s body is a card from Tony Gibson (Rob Corddry), another old classmate, who Danny discovers is working as an illusionist in a hotel lounge room, perfectly set up by the Hawaii Five-O writers. Tony tries a disappearing trick, but instead it turns into “Tony in the box” while Steve and Danny take him away for interrogation. His antics don’t show crackup Danny and Steve during interrogation, but he does have a credible alibi with his arrival time at the hotel, and his story that he planted magic playing cards on several reunion guests. Catherine (Michelle Borth) discovers that the trust withdrawal was used to pay the hospital bill of an elderly woman, Nina Johnson (Mary Ann McGarry).
Ms. Johnson cannot make a connection between herself and Laura, but Kono (Grace Park) can, when she notices that Laura is in photographs with Ms. Johnson’s son, Cory, once a champion surfer, who vanished 25 years before, on a moonlit surf. Laura was known to be dating Alan Kim (Peter Shinkoda), but her relationship with Cory, from another school, was secret. When Alan ends up in the ER, nearly beaten to death, the team still sees him as Cory’s killer, but what about Laura? Steve gets a despairing call from Max that the DNA sample has vanished, fortunately, Steve saved a bit, so all is not lost. A connection to an old-school film developer reveals that Laura was after some film left in that Time Capsule, but she never lived to see it happen. Jerry feels much sorrow at Laura’s passing, because to her, he was more than the geeky kid “most likely to be captured by aliens” as noted in the yearbook. “She actually talked to me,” he recalls. He develops the film, revealing Laura, Cory, and her brother Bradley, and the picture of Bradley in the conspiracy comes clear.
The Richmond compound is surrounded by police, and Danny goes to the maze just in time to see Cory’s skeleton body, which Bradley is attempting to move. The chase through the shrubbery maze is too much for even the elite Five-O team without help, so Steve makes a call to Kamekona (Taylor Wily), doing a honeymoon special from his copter, to enlist more eyes from the air. He leads Steve Reich to Bradley, who gets a one armed takedown “McGarrett style.” Chin lets the walls collapse around Alan Kim in the hospital, as Bradley comes forth, confessing that he’s told everything. Alan insists that he “had a life” worthy of keeping such a wicked secret. He details killing Cory, and then killed Laura for trying to uncover him.
Kamekona has fun calculating the bill for his services to HPD during supper. In an earlier showdown with CIA agent Sam Connors, Steve told him the only way he would stop his search is if Connors took his gun. Standing up to the standoff, Steve holds firm, and Connors tells him to come for a late-night meeting at the office. Steve leaves Catherine for the clandestine connection, only to find an empty office building, and no one in the assigned office. A phone begins to ring. Curious, Steve picks it up, and an ominous voice tells him to walk away, that there is no meeting, and there is no agent Connors. Steve assures the voice that no amount of criminal cover-up will deter him.
As of this ministry were not gripping enough, next week, a bomb scare surprises. Steve and Danny. Stay tuned!
