'Hawaii Five-0' Recap: Ua Lawe Wale

Recap by Hollywood.com

S2E2: Last week's season 2 premiere of Hawaii Five-0 featured quite the shocking final scene (OBLIGATORY SPOILER ALERT!): Jenna and Wo Fat are in cahoots!

This week's episode, however, doesn't address that storyline very much at all -- that is, save for a brushed-over scene in which Jenna appears to be leaving the task force to find her long-missing fiancee -- focusing instead on a new addition to the task force, a new nemesis and the subtraction of one its members.

It all starts with a paddleboard competition whose champion turns up missing when it comes time for the trophy presentation. The young woman, Jen, is nowhere to be found, and as we soon learn, this is kidnapping case crazy enough for the likes of a Dateline special. The icing on the cake is that Jen has a heart defect that requires medicine, which, of course, she no longer has.

Before McGarrett and his team can even start their investigation, meanwhile, they learn that Gov. Denning has assigned a quasi-watchdog to their group: Officer Lori Weston (guest star Lauren German), a former Homeland Security agent.

McGarrett is immediately wary of (and flirtatious with) the stunning new "babysitter," but there isn't much time for bickering and nonpleasantries between the two, as they must begin their kidnapping case in earnest. They think they've got a lead when they learn of a young man named Matt Porter, but before long they discover that he is not an abductor but rather an "extractor" who essentially rescues those in need -- from a cult, for example.

And that's when McGarrett, Lori, Danny and Chin Ho begin to unravel the case: Jen is adopted; she was born into a cult, the leader of which (guest star Bruce Davidson) is her grandfather and wants her back after finding out that, despite Jen's mother's best efforts to trick into thinking that she'd died, she's in fact alive. And soon enough, Jen is back on his compound.

But so is Five-0! After a video-game-esque shootout and an escape attempt, via air, by Jen's grandfather (with his weakened grandfather in the passenger seat of his small jet), McGarrett gets his man. That's followed, eventually, by a touching encounter between Jen's harmless biological mother and her adoptive parents meeting at the hospital.

All seems on the verge of ending well -- but as is usually the case with Hawaii Five-0, an ominous cloud is cast over the whole gang in the final scene, and tonight's episode was no exception. After an investigation by Hawaii's Internal Affairs, Kono is stripped of her badge completely as a result of her role in the events of last season, and Vincent Fryer (guest star Tom Sizemore), head of IA, makes it clear that he will lay down the law harshly upon the rest of the group in order to enforce the governor's no-lenience policy. So ... uh-oh.

TOP FIVE MOMENTS FROM TONIGHT'S EPISODE

1. This quote from Danny to Lori, about McGarrett: "I apologize he lost his manners somewhere between the womb and kindergarten."
2. The introduction to Tom Sizemore, who is mysteriously shown from the behind for several seconds before turning around and nonchalantly facing Kono -- and us -- in her apartment!
3. This lovely, if odd, non sequitur courtesy of Lori, to McGarrett: "Dont you just hate that? The top-off. Ya know, you get just the right mix going coffee, cream, sugar, all working in perfect harmony and then when you're not looking, waitress comes, tops you off. Ruins a perfectly good cup of coffee; its why I switched to tea. They dont mess with that."
4. McGarrett presses Kaye -- who, let's not forget, is playing for the bad-guy team -- on what's been bothering her, and it seems momentarily as though she may be caught, only to reveal, as noted earlier in the recap, that her fiancee may be alive. Hmmmmm....
5. The climactic, Wild West-style shootout at the cult's compound