Hawaii Five-0
“Ka Hale Ho’Okauweli”
October 28, 2016
Honolulu, 1940. Two officers respond to a noise complaint. The camera lingers on the doll sitting on the home’s front porch. Its eyes may or may not move. The woman who answers the door is sporting two black eyes. She cowers as they ask if she’s okay and if her husband is home. The lead officer insists on coming in and she reluctantly unchains the door.
The officers walk into a home in shambles. Pictures hang askew. Lamps are knocked over. The radio futzes with static. A little girl sits huddled on the floor. She sing-songs to herself, “Go away. Please, go away.” She tells the officer he needs to leave. He’s going to make “him” angry. The front door flies open. A presence seems to enter the house. The mother cries out a frantic warning in Japanese. The other office translates.
She says the house is haunted.
The lights flicker. Books fly off the shelves. Objects float suspended in the air. Officer of the second hurries the mother out of the house. Officer of the first reaches for the little girl. He’s hurled through the air and pinned against the wall. The little girl pleads with the entity not to hurt him …
And that’s the story Moonlight heard from McDaddy who heard it directly from the desk sergeant who was working that night and it was in the papers the next day. These are all true facts. Caano calls it a sad attempt to frighten him on Halloween – one that isn’t going to work.
The house is swarming with HPD, CSU, and Max. Yay! Max is back! And continuing his traditional Halloween homage to the film legacy of Keanu Reeves. This year, he’s John Wick. Caano notes the wedding band Max is wearing and compliments his attention to detail. Max agrees it is a costume detail, but says he’s wearing a ring because he married Rumer Willis. Thus continuing Show’s tradition of Rick Springfielding weddings.
Congratulations are offered all around. Mazel tov! Ho’omaika’i ‘ana! Body’s this way.
The 64-year-old victim is a former TV medium. Max doesn’t find it surprising that Miss Cleo would live in the 1940 Haunting Hause. Jin says it looks like a home invasion, but on the 911 call, Miss Cleo says an “it” is in her house. Max gives the body a once over and determines she died of sudden and catastrophic cardiac arrest brought on by overwhelming emotional distress.
“Whatever it is that she saw, it literally scared her to death.”
Boomer and Adam drive to an undisclosed location for a weekend getaway. A bloodied woman staggers out into the road in front of them. Oh, no. Nope. Don’t they know this is a favored Boone ruse on The Vampire Diaries?
THIS IS HOW THE VAMPIRES GET YOU. Adam and Boomer need to run this lady over and just keep driving. They’ll thank me later.
Instead they let Elizabeth lead them to the scene of a car accident. The friend who was supposedly trapped inside is now nowhere to be found. They follow a trail of blood into the woods. At the end of the trail they find Dana – bound and gagged.
She looks beyond Boomer and her eyes go wide. Boomer turns and dodges just as the masked man swings the butt of his shotgun at her. A second attacker comes at Adam. Fight fight struggle fight. Boomer has the advantage until Elizabeth cracks her over the head with a branch.
Seriously, y’all. Everything I know about not dying in the woods or in a haunted murder hause I learned from Supernatural and The Vampire Diaries.
Miss Cleo’s assistant Nicki says the psychic had recently become terrified of being alone in the house. She was convinced she was being haunted and Nicki came to believe her. She tells them it wasn’t just a few isolated incidents. “Trust me, there is something very wrong with this house.”
Grover pulls up the home’s security footage. Miss Cleo runs down the hall on the phone with 911. She screams and collapses to the floor. A glowing black figure is standing behind her. It evaporates into thin air.
Clearly she was killed by a Dementor. I used three different email addresses in an attempt to get a decent Patronus from Pottermore. I got a dolphin, a buzzard, and a west highland terrier. These are all terrible Patroni that may or may not be worse than a shrew. I would argue they are all worse. [Ed. note: All of those Patroni would do a hell of a lot more to protect you from a Dementor than a God damned shrew. Even you have to admit that.]
Eric arrives and expresses concern about the hause’s haunted reputation. Caano explains that he scares easily. Eric lays the blame at his uncle’s feet. Picture it! 1995. Eric was 10. He and his friends were trick-or-treating solo for the first time. A few houses in they realized they were being followed by mask wearing creeps.
The boys ran and Eric was separated from his fellow Power Rangers. He found himself surrounded by knife and axe-wielding maniacs. Caano chuckles that it was pretty great. He says Eric lost his mind.
“Also lost control of my bladder. Took me til high school to shake the name Pee Pee Russo.”
Boomer, Adam, and Dana are driven to a murder compound full of armed and white masked Benders. Apparently the trio are the deadliest game. They’re led into a warehouse where they’re all shackled. Adam has to laugh. He’s starting to think trouble follows his missus around. Nothing like his ever happened to him before they met. Boomer thinks she could say the same.
“On the plus side, it’s never boring.”
Two Benders walk in to interrupt this sweet and tender moment. One reaches up to unshackle Boomer. She chomps down on his ear and boots him in the face. Adam kicks the other and knocks him to the floor. The keys land at Boomer’s feet. She kick flips them into Adam’s waiting hand. He frees himself and uses the chain as a weapon against Bender of the first.
The couple that NINJAS THE SHIT OUT OF SOME MURDER MOFOS stays together.
Bender of the second swings his ax. Adam catches it with the chain. It flies out of the Bender’s hands and embeds itself above Boomer’s head, breaking her shackles. Fight fight struggle fight. Once she’s free, Boomer asks Adam to please tell her he meant to do the thing with the ax and the chain. When he doesn’t answer she tells him to just say yes.
Grace is having the worst Halloween ever, murder and kidnapping notwithstanding. Also, Yay! Monkey! As if being grounded isn’t enough, she has to bear the additional outrage of a babysitter – Hurley. It’s her punishment for last year’s crime. Don’t lie and sneak off to a house party on the North Shore if you can’t do the time. And scene.
After braving the haunted murder hause’s basement Eric steps into a power room to splash water on his face. The tap runs with BLOOD! He cries out and points at the message that appears on the mirror.
CONFESS
So the Spanish Inquisition did it? Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition.
Grover and Jin pull Miss Cleo’s bank records and find the guy she paid $5,000 to break into a cemetery and dig up the grave of Eli Jones. 5 grand?!? I know two brothers would have done it for gas money and pie.
Guy tells them that the casket was empty. Grover and Jin go to the source to corroborate the rest of Guy’s story – that Miss Cleo’s name was scratched out on the inside of the coffin lid.
They learn that Eli Jones was the case that forced Miss Cleo into retirement. She told the missing boy’s parents that he was alive in New Orleans. Two years and thousands of dollars in fruitless searching later, the family learned he’d died within 48 hours of going missing.
Caano summons the team back to the house. CSU has cleared out. The interior is dark and empty. McG, Jin, and Grover walk in. The lights flicker and books fly off the shelves. The front door swings shut with a slam.
“Oh, hell no!”
In this moment, Grover is all of us.
An evil laugh echoes through the house. Moonlight tells Caano to come out. Why, however did he know? “It was a stab in the dark, which is what you’re going to get if you don’t get out here right now.”
Eric shows them what he found. Speakers hidden in the walls. Blood packets in the faucets. Stage wire on the door and bookcases all set to remote control triggers. The stage craft items lead them to a man called Ian Miller. Foreign DNA on his rapidly cooling corpse leads them to Julie Hillman. She was reported as missing in May 2010 and found alive four months later. Max pulls up her photo. It’s Miss Cleo’s assistant, Nicki.
When Nicki disappeared, her desperate parents went to Miss Cleo looking for answers. Nicki had run away; Miss Cleo told them she was dead. Nicki’s father, overcome by guilt and grief, killed himself. When Nicki learned the news she returned home and began plotting her revenge.
Caano is ready to close the book on the case, but Moonlight pauses for a Dead McDaddy Moment. He tells Nicki he understands how her father’s death haunted her. That blaming Miss Cleo was easier than the thought that if she’d just gone home, Spike from Buffy wouldn’t have killed him and he might be alive today.
Running through the jungle. Running through the jungle. Running through the jungle. Boomer leads Adam and Dana to a lonely farmhouse. The kindly owner is happy to let them use the phone he DOESN’T HAVE BECAUSE HE’S ONE OF THE BENDERS. Because of course he is. Because that it just the kind of luck that Boomer and Adam have.
Maynard calls Zed. He’s caught himself a trio of flies. Boomer rushes him, grabbing his gun away and cracking him in the face. Adam uses Maynard’s cell to call HPD. He can’t find car keys, so Boomer says they’ll hole up until the cavalry arrives. They only have the one gun and three shells, so they’ll have to improvise. You might say they have to … MacGyver … themselves some weapons.
They hold off the first wave of Benders with the shotgun, a golf club, and a pot of boiling water. Dana takes a bullet to the arm as they fall back to the bedroom. Shooting shooting shooting. Finally they hear approaching sirens.
The rest of the team arrives with HPD. Boomer says she’s fine. “A few cuts and bruises. A little psychological trauma.” Grover says a search of the farm turned up two shallow graves and video tapes of hunts going back three years. Boomer and Adam’s trip to Turtle Bay uncovered a secret death cult. Ask about it when you call to make reservations for your next vacation!
This is Whitney, inviting you to be with us next week. Be here, Friday at 8:00 p.m. on CBS. Aloha.
Whitney is also watching Supernatural and Timeless. Follow her on twitter @Watcher_Whitney.