Well, that certainly wasn’t what I was expecting. I feel sorry for an audience member who turned in five minutes late and got a tad confused as to how the exciting conclusion to Chin’s Mexican kidnapping turned into an episode about Lou undercover at a Honolulu car dealership. While I expected that “The Deal”, the winter premiere of Hawaii 5-0’s seventh season, to refer to a deal the team would have to do to keep Chin alive in cartel-infested Mexico, instead it referred to a murder mystery at a car dealership.
Obviously, the writers wanted to end the half-season on a fantastic cliffhanger. Chin has forsaken his badge and given himself up to a vengeful cartel kingpin who has multiple reasons for wanting to kill him. The kingpin is ensconced in a compound teaming with military-trained mooks. The team is stuck in a country that doesn’t wholly recognize their authority and even the police are against them. It’s a thrilling situation and I expected it to be a tense hour of storming the compound and rescuing Chin. Adam even violates his parole and flies down to Mexico himself.
Then, Chin gets rescued one minute later with a well-timed sniper shot.
It’s almost comedic the way the writers so quickly abandon Chin’s storyline. Chin’s about to be fed to hungry dogs and then – boom – the villainous cartel leader is dead and Chin is saved. He has a heartwarming reunion with Sara and even gets to bring her home to Hawaii. Jorge and Maria may have made mistakes, but they are decent people who just want what's best for their niece. After the whole “kidnapped-by-a-violent-drug-cartel” thing, they’ve decided that that means sending her away from Juarez.
By minute eight (I checked), the team is back in Hawaii and focusing on lighter things like Jerry’s sleep-eating habit.
I’m not complaining. To be honest, I wasn’t terribly looking forward to a grim slog through Mexico. The team is back where they belong – on the island. The mystery the writers give us instead of the epic Chin rescue mission was fun, fast-paced, and full of interesting twists and turns.
The highlight of the episode is Chi McBride. When car salesman Mitch Lawson is found dead in his own trunk, Lou steps up to the plate. He’s familiar with the business after spending every summer helping out at his Uncle Kenny’s car dealership. As he tells Steve, Uncle Kenny was “the crookedest bird you’ve ever met” and car salesmen like him could easily bamboozle cops. Lou suggests a different plan of attack. He goes undercover at the dealership as top salesman Roy Watts.
McBride is effective at selling Lou’s absolute delight at going undercover. He’s convinced the rest of the team that the cutthroat world of car salesmen has its own secret rules and protocols and loves getting into the role. Lou quickly realizes that hapless salesman Bob Mason was the one who killed Mitch. The best scene of the episode is Lou confronting Bob with a mixture of smugness and even pity for a murderer so far out of his depth. Bob even thought that conspicuously moving his houseplant to hide the bloodstains was a brilliant plan. He offers Lou his entire commission for the year if he keeps quiet and McBride delivers the line of the episode: “You still think I’m a car salesman?” The “Oh, honey…” is implied.
It looks like the case has been wrapped up but we’re only at the half hour mark. Lou still thinks something isn’t right about the crime. Bob claims that he killed Mitch because Mitch freaked out about Bob selling a car that was reserved for one of Mitch’s clients. Lou doesn’t think that anyone would freak out that much about a $500 commission. He’s right. Mitch had partnered with Lee Sung, a heroin smuggler. The two were using cars to move heroin from India to Hawaii. The team storms Sung’s operation, but can’t find the car Bob sold to his unsuspecting customer. Someone shoots a cop and the car buyer and steals the car.
Then comes the next twist of the episode.
Steve thinks something is still not right about the case. Just like how it was strange for Mitch to freak out about the $500 commission, it is strange for Lee Sung to kill a cop and a civilian to track down one heroin shipment. He interrogates Sung and discovers that Mitch was partnering with someone else.
Some detective work at the dealership reveals that this person, Tad Smith, aka Jared Namal, is a terrorist with ties to several major cells. When Max performs an autopsy on the poor buyer’s body, he finds out that he’s been exposed to gamma radiation. Namal used the car to bring uranium on to the island and is building a dirty bomb.
The team rushes to find Namal, but it doesn’t matter. Namal’s succumbed to radiation poisoning and the team thinks that the case is solved. There is, however, one mystery left.
Earlier in the episode, Jerry was caught by Steve and Lou sleeping at HQ. Jerry admits that he’s been technically homeless for a while and Steve encourages him to find an apartment. When Jerry stumbles upon a listing for Max’s house, things begin to make sense. Max is hiring someone new for the ME’s office, but told Steve that it was just due to too much work. Steve confronts him and Max admits that he is going back to Africa. Steve is 100% supportive and assures Max that if he ever wants to come back to Hawaii, his Five-0 'ohana will be waiting for him.
The episode could have ended on this touching note, but we’ve got one final twist. The bomb wasn’t found in Namal’s possession. Someone has a dirty bomb that could kill half the people on the island.
To find out what happens with the bomb, and how the team will suitably send Max off, we’ll have to tune in to next week’s episode!
What did you think of “Ka’aelike”? Let me know in the comments!
