Episode Title: “A ia la aki” (“From This Day Forward”)
Writers: Christina M. Kim and David Wolkove
Director: Bryan Spicer
Previously on “Hawaii Five-0:”
Episode 4.03 “Ka’oia l’o Ma Loko” (“The Truth Within”)
Relationships are at the heart of everything in this week’s episode of “Hawaii Five,” including a runaway bride murder mystery.
Maybe it’s the fact that “5-0” has spoiled us with so many action-packed episodes that makes this one seem especially quiet. Aside from a scene at the top of the hour where a car careens off the side of the road after a near head-on collision with a truck, it’s a rather low-key episode. Oh and Adam (Ian Anthony Dale) shoots a yakuza thug in the leg, so that counts for something.
Somehow, Adam and Kono (Grace Park) managed to transport the man sent to kill them from the jungles of mainland China to Hong Kong in the trunk of a car. Once they arrive at their new hideout, 5-0’s own Bonnie and Clyde tie the thug up and begin to question him. Instead of giving them answers, the thug mouths off in Japanese at Adam, who promptly puts a bullet in his leg. Kono’s not cool with such tactics, after all she’s still a cop on the other side of the planet. But Adam explains it’s the only way to get the answers they need.
While in Hong Kong, Adam and Kono argue over how best to interrogate a yakuza, Danno (Scott Caan) and McGarrett (Alex O’Loughlin) are at the movies with their respective girlfriends, Gabby (Autumn Reeser) and Catherine (Michelle Borth). It’s a chick flick, something McGarrett has apparently never seen and thus Danny has to do a lot of explaining to the annoyance of other people in the theater. Meanwhile, McGarrett is probably wishing they went to see “The Expendables 3” when a call comes in. There’s a dead body, so McG will have to ask Catherine if Jennifer Aniston gets the guy at the end.
The victim is Brad Dixon, a con man who showed up at the wedding of Nathan Cotchin and Dahlia Swain. Nathan happens to come from a very wealthy family and Dahlia happens to be Brad’s sister. Earlier that day, Dahlia walked down the aisle, about to take her vows with Nathan when she spotted Brad among the guests and hightailed it out of there. Now, Brad is dead and Dahlia is nowhere to be found.
It’s an intriguing setup to a case that gets McGarrett and Danno talking about relationships again. While McG is trying to keep cool as Catherine starts working for her ex-boyfriend, Billy’s security firm, Danny is debating what to tell Gabby, who got a job offer in Denver. Truth be told, “5-0’s” fanbase would probably rather watch McG clothesline a baddie after a high-speed chase than listen to Danny hash out his feelings with Gabby, but the writers keep these scenes quick and to the point. Danny tells Gabby to go for the job in Denver while putting their relationship on hold for a while to avoid confusing his daughter, Grace.
Back to the case, 5-0 learns that Dahlia and her brother pulled off a number of “sweetheart” scams in Europe. When they were caught, Dahlia testified against Brad and came to the states. 5-0 suspects she’s pulling the same scam on Nathan, but his mom, Barbara (Hey, it’s Rebecca De Mornay, still rockin’ the same hairstyle she had in “Risky Business), doesn’t believe it. After all, she had her lawyer run a background check on Dahlia and came up with nothing.
Using her phone’s cell signal, Chin (Daniel Dae Kim) finds Dahlia trapped inside her car after it went off the side of the road. When she regains consciousness, Dahlia tells 5-0 a man approached her car as she cried for help, but instead of coming to her rescue, he kicked further down the valley. Evidence reveals the mysterious man was Dahlia’s brother, Brad. Dahlia tells 5-0 her feelings for Nathan are real and that her brother forced her to go all along with the scam after their parents died. When he appeared at her wedding, Dahlia got spooked and fled.
So who killed Brad? The team theorizes it had to be someone who knew about Dahlia’s past, which leads them to Barbara’s lawyer, Allen Kingston (Bruce Nozick). When he realized who Dahlia really was, Kingston planned to force her to offer him a piece of the action from the scam – only there was no scam.
5-0 puts a wire on Barbara, and when she asks Kingston for a copy of the background check on Dahlia, he pulls a gun on her and demands five million dollars. That’s when 5-0 busts in and makes the arrest. Later, Nathan shows in Dahlia’s hospital room and the two are married as McG and Danno stand witness.
It’s hard to get mad at this show for not giving us a big shootout or chase scene when they hit us with a happy ending like this. A little sappiness every one in a while doesn’t hurt, as long as “5-0” keeps up the usual ass kicking.
