Hawaii Five-0 3x06: I Ka Wa Mamua

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It's 2001, and Danny and his semi-attractive female partner are trying to take down a coke smuggling operation. They get the drop on one guy, but as they're about to arrest him, two more guys get the drop on them. Things don't look good for our heroes.

Especially with the weird lighting from that window.

Then it's the present again, and Danny is telling Steve the story of how he busted some cocaine dealers in 2001 while they're on a stakeout. But, right in the middle, a Middle Eastern-looking dude walks past and the guys have to chase him. For what I think may be the first time in the history of this show, Danny's actually the one who catches up with the guy. Which is strange, because he's built for power, not speed. Anyway, a short shootout ensues, and when the guy's lying dead on the ground, Danno checks him out and finds that he's strapped with an explosive device including bolts and nuts for shrapnel, and a proximity sensor for 'screw you guys'-ness.

Things really don't look good for our heroes.

We come back from commercial, and it's nine hours earlier. Danno is out with Grace buying a dress for a daddy-daughter dance, the entire concept of which creeps me the hell out. Duty calls, though, and before he can even finish paying, Danny gets called away to deal with the aftermath of an explosion. And he gets his balls busted for being a terrible dancer. It's just not his day.

McGarrett does some quick sleuthing, and Max reassembles a dude from the chunks that were left, and they find that he was a known terrorist who blew himself up while trying to assemble a bomb. Steve says terrorists don't work alone, so things are just getting started.

Knee bone's connected to the thigh bone... well, it used to be.

Some quick detective work leads them to a house with another terrorist. They have him covered, but he doesn't want to be taken alive, so he pulls an empty gun and makes Steve and Danny kill him. A search of the property finds surveillance photos of hard and soft targets, as well as a wall filled with explosives. They also find a receipt for a car rental that leads them to a rental car on a local army base where the Secretary of Defense is holding a ceremony for a Three-Star General's retirement. Inside is enough explosives to just ruin the party. Fortunately, it's not a very complicated bomb, and the local army bomb tech manages to disarm it in short order.

The car's GPS leads them to another house, but nobody's home, and so begins the stakeout we saw earlier. The show burns through the story so far in a quick recap, and we're back to watching Danny stand in front of a proximity sensor. To help keep his mind of things, Steve gets Danno to finish his cocaine bust story.

Back in 2001, Danny and his partner Grace are tied to chairs and getting worked over by Terrence Howard and Tip "T.I." Harris. They need to know how the cops found the place so they know if more people are coming and who squealed. Their interrogation technique is simple and involves a lot of punching Danno in the face... and a little shooting his partner in the gut.

Only a little, though.

His partner's dead, and Danny's about to get his hand chopped off when the bad guys hear sirens outside the building. Seeing it as the distraction he needs, Danno smashes his chair into Terrence Howard, driving a meat cleaver into his chest, then he picks up a gun and kills the other two guys in a brief shootout. He pauses for a moment to shoot the defenseless Terrence, then he runs outside to see if he can flag down a passing cop car. There are plenty of them driving past, but no one stops because off in the distance, the World Trade Center is burning.

In the present, the bomb tech successfully disarms the device, and Danno gets to go to the daddy-daughter dance.

He's surprisingly light on his feet.

What I Liked
-Random shots of girls in bikinis. Because why not?

Visit Scenic Hawaii!

-The picture that comes up on her phone when Steve calls Catherine. You know it's love when your goofy face is something she actually wants to see.
-The guy Danny arrested in 2001 is a hilarious stereotype. He's like a live-action Johnny Tightlips. I'll bet he sees a lot of things.
-The second bomb tech. The first one was a serious business type of guy, but the second looked like he was having some fun.

What I Hated
-The episode opens with a montage of shots that's supposed to be New Jersey in 2001, but some of pieces look like stock footage from the 1980s. It's really strange.
-Danno and old Grace go to take down a cocaine smuggling operation by themselves. In the US, they send a freaking SWAT team and a tank to your house if someone mails you some weed, but a major, mob-related coke operation gets two officers without any backup? That just completely defies believability.
-A big chunk of the episode is devoted to the fact that if Danny moves, the bomb will explode. But, before he knew the bomb had a proximity sensor, he was moving all over the place, and even opening the guy's shirt should've been enough to set it off. I'm fine with ridiculous TV explosives, but they should at least be internally consistent.
-One of the guest stars in the episode is Kendall Jenner who (and I apologize for robbing you of your innocence if you didn't know this) is the Kardashians' younger half-sister. Getting acting work because your sister filmed herself having sex with a guy must be weird.

Final Thoughts
Why the obsession with 9/11 on TV this past Monday? Both Hawaii Five-0 and Bones ran episodes about it. At least I think they did. I only saw 800 commercials for Bones, not the actual episode.

Michelle Borth needs to stay out of the sun. I'm no dermatologist, but it looks like she's suffering some damage. That's just one of the dangers of working a job where you have to walk around in a bikini all day.

I think he's supposed to be punching him in the gut, but for one or two of the swings Terrence Howard takes at Danno, it looks like he's punching him in the crotch. Which is a dick move.

Chin and Danny have both just outright murdered a guy. Sure, both guys deserved it, but it's still really hard to root for killers.

In general, I'm okay with TV episodes that split the story into a flashback and a present-day plot, but this one also had a flashback within the present-day portion. That's some odd storytelling, and I wasn't a fan. There were enough good bits to keep the episode from being a total loss, though.