#h50 – 4:03 – What’s in the Box?

Ka ‘oia’i’o ma loko (The Truth Within)

Once again, I have to thank bookemdanno.net for the pics.  She saved me from a long, laborious process yet again ❤

Mrs Van Horn is looking very alluring  while making a fruit salad, and hoping that Mr Van Horn is horny.  By the looks of the house, this couple is loaded. There’s a little bit of sexy talk, then they adjourn to the outdoors where she pushes him into the pool, and just as she is about to disrobe and join him, BANG!BANG!BANG! and she belly flops into the water.  As Mr VH screams out her name, the three masked intruders shoot him too and he’s also now floating in a pool of red.  Now they really are loaded.  We hear the sound of a baby crying.

Steve wakes up alone and goes looking for Cath, who is pensively gazing out to the ocean.  Today is her last day, and she’s worried about leaving the navy.  Steve gives her a pep talk telling her it will be difficult, but she’ll handle it fine.  It doesn’t bother him that she’ll be working with her ex. (Yeah, right.)  Cath calls him a liar, liar pants on fire, and he admits it, but says he trusts her and that’s all he needs.  I’m going to admit that I’m not a huge McRoll fan, (eek! my Twitter following has just plummeted) but I like this scene.  It’s tender and full of pretty.  Steve’s guns are impressive.

Steve, Danny and Chin (and what looks like pretty much most of HPD) are at the House of Horn, where they discuss how the elaborate security system was bypassed by the shooters.   The place looks pretty torn up, but obvious expensive items have not been taken.  Danny hears a baby crying, and rushes past an HPD officer and picks her up to comfort her.

Max is speaking ze German on the phone, because there’s more to him than meets the eye.  He’s negotiating on Steve’s behalf to buy a special gift for Cath’s retirement.

Danny: Oh, that’s nice. You got a personal shopper now.

Steve: Why you gotta be like…what, are you jealous now?

Max: The request was more akin to a  favour solicited by one BFF to another.

Danny: Oh, you guys are BFF now, I didn’t know that.

Steve and Max: BFF Boom!

Danny: I think that’s adorable, cute.

I love this entire scene.  Love.it.

Max reports that there were three shooters, then they are interrupted by Alani, Mrs Van Horn’s sister who has come to see her.  She’s believable in her grief (unlike a lot of S1 guest stars who didn’t look that upset that their loved one had died.)  Steve and Danny have on their compassionate faces.

Chin tells Danny that Kono and Adam have made it to Hong Kong.  Danny says that HPD are rounding up all of Michael Noshimuri’s known associates (did I hear wrong or did he really mispronounce Michael’s last name??) and that K and A should be safe for now.  He tells Chin to keep his chin up and they discuss the evidence on the case so far.

All the Van Horn valuables will go to Hewitt – Phillip Van Horn’s brother – the black sheep of the family who has spent his trust fund  and is now broke.  His personal access code to the security system at the house was used to bypass the system.  Steve and Danny visit Hewitt’s hotel room where he is playing #sockgame with two ladies *cough* and discover that he sold his code to some guy for $15,000.  He doesn’t know the guy’s name, but remembers what he looks like.

And now we come to the cargument.  Danny is still rabbiting on from last week about how Steve shouldn’t LET Cath work with Billy.  LET.Cath.  I’m not saying anymore.  Ok, I lied.  According to Danny and the law of nature, if a girl rabbit and a boy rabbit are stuck in a cage for a long time, something will happen.  Going on this assumption, Cath’s entire naval career would have been full of ‘somethings’ due to the large amount of boy rabbits in the navy. I’m rolling my eyes a lot at this conversation.  And waiting for some serious discussion on the comments 😉  I’m wondering if Danny is speaking from personal experience…but not sure if it was Rachel with a boy rabbit, or himself with a girl rabbit.

Back at HQ, Chin discovers the only item missing from the House of Horn is a  150 year old scrimshaw (I had to google what that actually is) which is also the least valuable item on the insurance list.  The artifact is inscribed with the crest of the Royal League, an old Hawaiian secret society no longer in existence.  Phillip’s great-great-grandfather, Jonas Van Horn was supposedly a member.  Not much is known about the society, but Chin reluctantly thinks he knows someone who can help.

The boys make their way to the basement of Jerry’s house.  It turns out that Chin and Jerry were at band camp together.  Chin looks a little sheepish at this point.  He asks Jerry about the Royal League and Jerry responds that they were like the Hawaiian Illuminati.  When shown a picture of the scrimshaw, Jerry exclaims ‘Holy Fox Mulder, this could be the key!’  The key to a 700 year old priceless treasure – the Medici rings, stolen in the late 1800s.  Jonas Van Horn and several members of the Royal League were rumoured to have smuggled the rings back to Oahu, but no-one knows where they are.

Duke calls with the information that due to Hewitt Van Horn’s description of the buyer of his security code, they have a match with a Griffin Moore, who has a previous history of counterfeiting and art fraud, among other things.  They locate Moore’s hideout, and discover plaster, modelling clay and the ashy remains of someone who had been shot in the back of the head.  Is it Moore? Have the three masked men eliminated him so they can find and keep the Medici Rings themselves?

Cath is clearing out her locker and has a little cry.  This is a great scene – she’s taking a huge leap, leaving the only career she’s known as an adult, and embarking on a new journey.  She leaves the locker room and is greeted by her colleagues and Billy, who has organised a farewell cake.

Back at HQ, Steve and Danny find Jerry posing as a tourist at the statue of King Kamehameha. He tells them that some letters written by Jonas Van Horn to a Daniel Frost were recently stolen from a museum in Florence.  He had a friend send him some scans of the letters, which Jerry thinks contain some kind of code.  It turns out that Daniel Frost was an apprentice to Thomas Gould, the sculptor of the statue of the king.  Jerry believes that the rings were smuggled out of Italy in the statue.

Steve’s theory that Moore was creating a fake statue to swap with this one has some big holes in it.  He says that Moore couldn’t get inside the real one without being seen.  (So how the heck is he going to swap them without being seen??)  Anyway, Jerry quickly discounts that by saying that the original statue was on board a ship that sank and and that this one currently on display is the second statue.  The first one was recovered and is now on display on the island of Hawaii.  Kamekona flies them all there, and Steve calls Cath to ask for a…..favour!  Seriously, Steve?  On her last day?  He asks her to try and decrypt the letters.

At the North Kohala Civic Center on Hawaii, Steve is busy smashing the statue, which is made of plaster so we know it has already been replaced as the real statue was cast in brass. At HQ, Chin has surveillance footage of a stolen city maintenance truck.  They discover that the truck was stolen before the murders, but Griffin Moore is not amongst the three men in the footage.  Max tells them the remains discovered at Moore’s hideout were in fact those of Moore.  Chin runs facial recognition on the three men.  Max is carrying a box, and beckons Steve into the office.  He has managed to source a limited pressing of…something, which is Steve’s gift for Cath.  I love this exchange where Steve finds out how much he owes Max ($1326.41!) and Max wont let him have the gift until he pays in full.  Chin comes in to say they’ve got a match on the three suspects.  One is Ellis Gregory, ex-British military.  He and his two partners are wanted by Interpol and were last seen a few weeks ago in Italy, which ties in with the theft of the letters.  Chin continues checking on the whereabouts of the three, while Cath calls to say that there was indeed a code hidden in the content of the letters.

They head off to Cryptology at Naval Intelligence HQ.  I have a hard time believing that they would actually be allowed in here, especially Jerry.  But I guess sleeping with an Intel officer has its advantages.    The message reveals that the keyhole for the scrimshaw is beneath the king’s foot.  Jerry is overcome that he was actually right on this and has to sit down.  I’m guessing his first mystery proved.

Chin says they’ve managed to locate the whereabouts of the suspects and Steve and Danny take one down and find the original statue with the keyhole in the foot.  It hasn’t been opened yet.  After some persuasion, they are told where to find the other two.  Which is at Honolulu Museum of Art. The Van Horns had loaned the key to the museum for display. There is a shootout and Ellis is captured after an unsuccessful getaway attempt on a display motorcycle. Danny tells himself to ‘Book em, Danno.’

In a nice gesture, Steve allows Jerry to open the statue.  The mention of Geraldo Rivera and the opening of Al Capone’s vault was funny.  I remember watching that live on TV (when I was living in the US) and the anti-climax at the big reveal.   Jerry uncovers the rings and is overcome with emotion.  He suggests that they should all work together again, and mentions the Warren Commission.  That would be a big conspiracy to solve, for sure!

Danny pays a visit to Alani to give a stuffed monkey to the Van Horn’s baby.  If he and Gabby ever split up, I’ve always said I’d love for him to get together with Madeline (the Aloha Girls leader) but Alani would come a close second. I think they’d make a nice couple.  And she doesn’t seem the type to leave him hanging at the airport.

At Cath’s retirement ceremony, Steve gives Cath the box, wrapped and everything.  So….what’s in the box?  It’s a limited pressing of a Chicago album (hence the hefty price tag.)  Steve shows some serious thought here as Cath had told him that when she was younger and whenever she was scared, her mother would play this because ‘Chicago always made everything better.’  Steve assures Cath that she has nothing to be scared of, and that she isn’t doing this alone, he’s right here.

After the ceremony, Steve seems a little perturbed by the looks exchanged between Cath and Billy.

This was a great episode for me.  8/10. The COTW was interesting, Danny’s snarkiness was in full throttle, but not overdone. Loved Jorge Garcia, I really hope we do see him again.  As I said, I’m not the biggest fan of McRoll, but the scenes between Cath and Steve were well done.

What do you think of the conversation between Steve and Danny in the car?

Will we see Jerry again?  I hope so!

Does Steve have anything to worry about regarding Billy and Cath?

Is Billy going to get killed off soon?

Tags: #h50, Catherine Rollins, chicago, Chin, Danny, Hawaii Five-0, Kono, liar, McGarrett, Monkey, rabbits, retirement, Wo Fat