- Title: Hawaii Five-0 – Ua’aihue
- wiki: link
When a tourist is unknowingly duped into smuggling stolen art into Hawaii and then shot in his hotel room Five-0 accepts the help of an art retrieval expert (Rebecca Mader) to find the person (Henri Lubatti) responsible. Although not specifically a Kono episode, “Ua’aihue” offers Grace Park more to do in the main storyline than any episode since her return to the show following her pregnancy. First she’s used as bait to trap an art smuggler (White Collar‘s Willie Garson) into leading Five-0 to their attempted murderer and then she along with Chin (Daniel Dae Kim) goes undercover at an underground art auction selling stolen art to select connoisseurs.
Despite the complicated motives of their art expert, Five-0’s plan is solid until their target takes the entire home hostage including both Kono and Chin. Always one-step ahead of the police, their art thieves nearly get away with their biggest score, but luckily for Five-0 their quarry wasn’t expecting the cavalry in the form of Jerry (Jorge Garcia) literally crashing into them. Mader and Garson are intriguing guest-casting. With the opening ending left for both characters I wonder if we might see either or both return in a future episode.
The episode’s B-story features McGarrett (Alex O’Loughlin) asking Iron Chef Masaharu Morimoto (playing himself) to help train Kamekona (Taylor Wily) to beat Sam Choy (also playing himself) in a shrimp cook-off. For motives revealed late in the episode, the Iron Chef agrees offering a couple of scenes and training montages before ending the show with the entire Five-0 family on-hand to celebrate Kamekona’s victory.
