You know what they say about those who hunt monsters…
Alicia Brown and Steve find that out the hard way in an all-new Hawaii Five-0.
Lauren Parker, naïve tourist from Eagle, Wisconsin, is having a bad day. She wanders into a Hawaii police station in a daze, covered in blood. She doesn’t know how it got there and the entire police station reacts by holding her at gunpoint. When she finally meets someone from the 5-0 team, he snarls that no one is falling for her act and that she’s going away for a long time. It’s not a good day to be Lauren Parker.
But not even Lauren Parker is Lauren Parker. Instead, she is Dr. Madison Gray, played by Elizabeth Röhm. No one on the team believes that she can’t remember holding Alicia and Steve hostage, or blowing up Steve’s truck (which Steve probably considers more unforgivable than the hostage taking).
The team sends for a psychiatrist to perform an evaluation. He decides that Madison is suffering from Dissociative Identity Disorder, which means she has multiple personalities unaware of each other. Steve doesn’t believe it, even when Madison passes a polygraph. Lou and Chin think that she’s just tired of running and is hoping to fool a jury. Danny thinks it’s something else. He thinks that Madison is bored and misses Steve. Madison loved playing games and Steve was the only one who could ever keep up with her. Steve is inclined to agree with Danny. He knows that Madison wants something from him. He just doesn’t know what.
Things became vastly more complicated when the DNA results come back for the blood found on Madison’s hands. It’s from Alicia Brown.
That explains why Steve hadn’t been able to get ahold of her. After Madison escaped, Steve assumed she had gone into isolation from the trauma associated with her daughter’s death. Madison loved needling Alicia about the fact that she couldn’t save her daughter from a serial killer.
Looks like Madison missed Alicia too. The blood was a way to lure Alicia, who is totally fine, to the police station. Steve speculates that Madison collected the blood from Alicia four months earlier, when she kidnapped her. Alicia demands to see Madison, but the meeting doesn’t go well. Madison claims that Alicia attacked her and can even point to a mysterious cut on Alicia’s forearm as proof. To Steve’s credit, he doesn’t believe it for a second and volunteers to be Alicia’s bodyguard until the situation is taken care of.
Steve may have been on the lookout for anyone out to get Alicia, but he didn’t count on Alicia marching down to the police station at 4:00 am and threatening Madison with a razor blade she had tucked in her boot. Now that she has Alicia right where she wants her, Madison doesn’t bother keeping up the act. She freely admits that the whole Lauren Parker concept was a ruse. She promises Alicia that what she’s about to tell her will change her life. It does.
When Steve and Alicia first arrived at the station, she talked to Steve about hunting monsters. She said that the old saying is that when you hunt monsters, there’s nowhere to run. It’s incorrect. The old adage is that those who hunt monsters are destined to become one.
It looks like Alicia is becoming just that when the team sees footage of her holding the razor blade to a cop’s throat and breaking Madison out of custody.
Danny is ready to write Alicia off as crazy. She spent so much time trying to get into the minds of psychopaths, she became one. Steve protests his friend’s innocence, but it becomes more difficult when Lou finds out that the two got on a plane bound for Eagle, Wisconsin.
Steve connects the dots. Edward Sears, the serial killer who supposedly killed Alicia’s daughter, is locked up in Wisconsin. Alicia always believed that Sears had arranged her daughter’s death from jail. The team suspects that Madison found the actual killer and is going to push Alicia into taking him out.
Steve and Chin head to the Midwest and interview Sears. Sears convinces them to give him a pen and paper for his confession. I’m not a master detective and even I knew what was coming next. Sears taunts the detectives and sticks the pen in his neck. Don’t give prisoners pointy things!
While going through his cell, Steve and Chin find a series of letters from someone named Benton Jones. Steve suspects he’s the other killer. Alicia suspects so too. Madison gives her a gun to shoot Jones and looks at her surprising protégé with pride and happiness. Everything is going exactly as planned. She then drives off, leaving Alicia in a remote cabin with a suspected killer.
Here’s where the twist comes in. In Wisconsin, Steve gets a call from Lou that puts everything into perspective. The blood on Madison’s hands wasn’t from Alicia Brown, but Sienna Brown, her daughter. Sienna’s still alive, and Madison helped Alicia reunite with her daughter. With an assist from Steve, Sienna is rescued and it looks like a happy ending for both of them. Then, there’s another twist. Madison shows up at Alicia’s house and gives her a gun, baiting her into shooting it. Although it could be yet another misdirect, the end of the episode makes it look like Alicia finally gave into Madison’s head games and became a killer.
The ongoing Madison Gray storyline has been an interesting arc this season, but I don’t think it works as well as it should. Everyone talks about how Madison has incredible levels of persuasion. She could even convince a guy to kill himself with a pen. The writing hasn’t given Madison the charisma needed to be that manipulative. We keep hearing that she’s one of the most brilliant serial killers ever, but all she’s done on-screen is stab Steve when he was off-guard and blow up his truck. It seems to be a big case of telling instead of showing.
Even in this episode, Madison’s character motivations are too murky for the end to make sense. If she wanted to hurt Alicia, why did she bother helping her rescue her daughter? I thought that the big reveal would be that Madison killed Sienna while Alicia and Steve were saying goodbye, relishing the chance to give her adversary something good, only to immediately take it away. That didn’t end up being the twist. If Sienna is safe and sound, does Alicia really believe so much in Madison’s unstoppable brilliance that she thinks that killing her is the only way to take her out? Why not arrest her and just see what happens? The ending was just too messy for it to have the emotional weight the writers were going for.
Did you like this episode more than me? Let me know in the comments!
