Hawaii Five-0 has had some stellar opening scenes and this one is no different. Just like Reese, the young man we will get to know as the episode goes on, we are disorientated by the opening shots. It’s just Reese and a therapist, who slowly hypnotizes him to imagine he’s in a pool of water and later a forest. As Reese walks through the forest, he suddenly remembers something horrific and time jumps forward. Now, back in reality, Reese leads police to an unmarked grave. The scene masterfully puts viewers in Reese’s mind-frame and even shows us the confusion and vertigo his blackouts lead to.
Before we find out who is in the grave, the show takes a little detour to an insurance convention, where Danny is eager for Steve to meet his sister, Bridget. Bridget (played by Masi Oka’s old Heroes co-star Missy Peregrym) is in town for the convention and seems to be enjoying soaking up the sun with her handsome co-worker a little too much. Danny has been holding on to an image of his sister as a perfect wife and mother, so he’s more than a little disconcerted to see her letting loose in Hawaii. As the case progresses, Danny tries to suss out the real relationship between Bridget and her coworker, Spencer.
Steve has bigger issues to deal with, although his mystery will also involve trying to guess someone’s love life. The grave is of Maggie Reed, a local high school athlete who went missing ten years earlier. Reese, who would have only been eight at the time of the murder, is let off the hook. That leaves Steve and Danny with one lead suspect – Travis Wilson. The original detective assigned to the case swears that Travis and Maggie were in a relationship that turned violent.
He never had the evidence to even prove that Travis and Maggie were together, until the body is found. Max can’t give Steve and Danny a cause of death, but he does find a CD in Maggie’s jacket pocket. The writing on the CD matches the handwriting on Travis’s witness statement and it’s enough for Steve and Danny to pay him a visit.
The cold-case detective basically describes Travis as a loser, but admits that that’s probably what drew Maggie to him. Instead of seeing the scumbag, however, Steve and Danny find a man who is still incredibly shaken by his girlfriend’s death. Travis tearfully admits that he and Maggie were in love and that he always hoped she was alive somewhere. His horrified reaction to pictures of her corpse convince Steve that they should be tracking down other leads.
Which brings them back to Reese. Reese agrees to another hypnosis session and this time remembers something more. The flashbacks are expertly shot and the director knows how to frame young Reese in relation to his surroundings. The yellow of his striped pajamas stands out as he bobs through the trees and sees a mysterious someone digging Maggie’s grave. Reese can’t remember a face, but does remember “Always fresh, always cold.”
This jogs Kono’s own memory. It was the logo for a popular shave ice truck on the island. Steve and Danny question the truck owner, but he protests that he can hardly remember whether or not he has an alibi for something that happened ten years earlier. It doesn’t matter anyway when Travis walks into the station and confesses to the crime.
Danny is ready to admit that Maggie’s death was a lover’s quarrel gone awry, but Steve, who knows a thing or two about guilt, believes that Travis wants to punish himself for Maggie’s death and made a false confession to do so. Steve becomes obsessed and does several speed runs to try and crack Travis’s alibi. He tells Danny that he can conclusively prove that Travis couldn’t have gotten off work, met Maggie, killed Maggie, moved Maggie, dug a grave, and cleaned himself off in the timeframe of the crime. Danny isn’t too thrilled that Steve decided to test that theory out by digging a grave himself, but dutifully follows Steve back out to the gravesite. Steve realizes that the logo wasn’t from a truck, but from a billboard on the road and the two deduce that Reese must have been in a car when he saw the sign. The pieces fall into place. Maggie wasn’t killed in a lover’s quarrel, but in a car crash. It leaves them with only two suspects.
Although the show wants us to believe that Reese’s dad is the culprit because he’s a bit of a pushy jerk, one final hypnosis session proves that it was Reese’s mom. There’s even a final twist. Reese’s mom tries to tell 5-0 that it was just a drunken accident, but finally admits that she then went, found a rock, and delivered a finishing blow so Maggie couldn’t tell anyone about the incident.
The mystery in “Ka Luhi” was deftly told. It had some unexpected twists and turns and was gorgeously filmed. The only thing I would have liked to see would have been Steve interacting with Reese. The beginning of the episode made it seem like it would focus on Reese and the consequences of witnessing such an event at a young age, but Reese really only appears in the hypnosis sessions. He’s more like a machine the team receives clues from than an actual human being. The team interacting with Reese, especially because so many of them have been through their own trauma, might have made for a more interesting subplot than Danny’s sister’s maybe-affair.
Not that Danny’s plot was horrible. At first, it seemed childish that Danny would be so worried about keeping tabs on his sister, but when he explains his reasoning to Steve, the plot deepens and actually adds character development (it’s nice that in the seventh season there’s still room for character development). Danny is worried about Bridget because he knows what it’s like to have an emotional affair with someone. He felt the same thing for his ex-partner, Grace. Danny never acted on it, but still feels tremendous guilt. Bridget’s affair becomes less about a moral pronouncement and more about protecting his sister from the guilt he felt. Bridget has a heartfelt reply, insisting that her situation isn’t the same as her brother’s. She felt like she was disappearing until she got attention from her coworker. Danny isn’t happy with the situation, but enough of the speech gets through to him that he lets the matter go.
The two reconcile over Smoky and the Bandit and burgers, a Williams family tradition.
In addition to the central mystery and Danny’s side-plot, we get one ominous scene about Chin and his niece. Sara usually checks in with him every day, but he hasn’t heard from her in nearly a week. Kono lays down some hard truths for her cousin. She tells him that with all the snooping he’s been doing into Sara’s family, maybe they are purposefully distancing themselves. Chin takes that into consideration, but if he had watched the trailer for next week’s episode, he wouldn’t be so quick to accept the way things are...
What did you think of tonight’s episode? Any predictions for the midseason finale? Let me know in the comments!
