Hawaii Five-0 viewers never know what kind of show they’re going to see in a given week.

Last week’s episode didn’t bring much plot development – long- or short-term. It mostly offered bickering between McGarrett and Danno, which I’ll charitably classify as character development. This week, Season 3, Episode 4 flipped the script by focusing mostly on the week’s investigation – which, in a nod to Halloween’s approach, involved a headless horseman. What attention was given to the long-term McGarrett story arc was centered on the complete inability of Steve, the macho Navy SEAL, to control his mother.

The episode begins with a young couple visiting a fortune teller (Bai Ling, The Crow), who tells the woman that she will be touched by death. The next morning, we see that the woman grooms horses at a polo club where her boyfriend is a player – in more ways than one, we’ll discover later. He takes his horse from her and heads for the polo grounds for a solo practice. We see him knock the ball up and down the field. But when he goes in for a goal, his head is severed by a barely visible wire strung between the goalposts. The horse continues running while a rubbery-looking head bounces in the goal area.

[Cue the boffo theme song, Season 3 version.]

After the opening credits, McGarrett wakes up in bed with Catherine and hears a noise downstairs. He grabs a gun; Catherine a baseball bat. He tells her to stay in the bedroom: “You’re not coming with me.”

“Then you’re coming with me,” she responds as she moves to the door. They creep down to the kitchen where the discover … McGarrett’s mom, Doris (Christine Lahti), making breakfast. “I told you it was safer upstairs,” McGarrett tells Catherine.

Once Catherine beats a hasty retreat, McGarrett chides his mother for coming to the family home, where Wo Fat could find her easily.

Doris: “You know, you security system sucks.”
Steve: “You know what? Stop. Okay, what are you doing here?”
Doris: “I never left the island but … I think you already knew that.”
Steve: “You persuaded WitSec to turn the plane around.”
Doris: “I can be pretty persuasive.”
Steve: “I remember, Mom. Why’d you do it?”
Doris: “I wanted to come home. I’m tired of running.”

That, and the fact that she obviously cut some kind of deal with Wo Fat at the end of the season premiere. But before Steve can ask her about that, he receives the phone call summoning him to the polo field.

At the crime scene, Max makes the team wait while he demonstrates his theory about how the victim parted ways with his head. When they speak to the girlfriend, she tells them about the fortune teller’s premonition.

Danno and Kono head off to visit the fortune teller, who recalls that the victim had declined a mobile phone call for someone his Caller ID identified as “Al.”

The Pastry Diversion

Shortly thereafter, Chin Ho shows up at the McGarrett homestead with coco puffs – pastries filled with chocolate cream with a dab of chantilly frosting – from Honolulu’s Liliha Bakery.

“I hope you don’t mind,” he tells Doris, “but Steve asked me to bring you by some breakfast.” While she recognizes Chin Ho from his high school football days, Mama McSpy doesn’t buy the breakfast claim. “Oh, how nice,” she says. “Except that I’ve already made breakfast and Steve knows that, so I really hope you’re a better cop than you are a liar.”

After waxing nostalgic for a moment about how she used to buy coco puffs for the kids back in the day, she tells Chin Ho the score.

Doris: “You can tell my son that, whether or not he cares to acknowledge it, I’ve been taking care of myself since before he was born. I’m actually pretty damn good at it. So, you can stay here, have that cup of coffee, talk Kukui High football; if you want that, I’m game. But if you’re here just to babysit me, you can leave right now. But the coco puffs … stay with me.”
Chin Ho: “I’ll take my coffee black.”
Doris: “Good choice.”

On the way back to the office, Kono ridicules Danno for his belief in psychics. But when they arrive, McGarrett has discovered that the victim had continued to receive payments from his previous polo club, headed by a guy named Al.

Operating on the theory that the victim had been blackmailing his former manager for horse doping, McGarret, Danno and Kono head off to a polo match. When they try to question their suspect, he leads them on a chase across the field as a game is being played. Eventually, McGarrett tackles the guy just in time to save him from being trampled by a horse. Later, under questioning, the suspect admits to the doping and to paying off the victim, but provides an alibi for the time of the murder.

“You know, I really, really wanted Al to spend the rest of his life in prison,” Danno says. “Son of a bitch almost got me trampled to death while a bunch of 1 percenters sipped champagne and cheered.”

Next, a boot print from the murder scene sends McGarrett and Danno back there to question the club owner and his attractive, assertive wife. While this is going on, their son bursts in asking about an “accident.” He acts surprised when he’s told about the murder, and suggests that he must have been the target because he’d traded practice times with the victim.

Back at Five-0 headquarters, Steve is surprised to find Chin Ho.

Steve: “What are you doing here? You’re supposed to be on Doris detail.”
Chin Ho (whispering): “You’re mom saw me coming a mile away.”
Steve: “Why are we whispering?”
Doris (emerging from Steve’s office): “Coco puffs? Really Steve, I thought you were smarter than that. Don’t blame Chin. I forced him to bring me down here.”
Chin Ho: “She’s very persuasive.”
Steve: “I know.”

Steve takes Doris back into his office, where they bicker yet again about whether she needs protection. This time, Doris appears to prevail.

Doris: “I just want to live my life. All right? I want to find a place of my own and get on with things.”
Steve: “You think Wo Fat is just going to let that happen?”
Doris: “You don’t even know if he’s still on the island, Steve, and I told you: I am done running. I am done, okay? If he comes after me again, I’ll handle it.”
Steve: “Really Mom?”
Doris: “Yeah. I can handle it, Steve. I’ve already given him too much of my life.”

But, yet again, Steve doesn’t ask her about the last confrontation with Wo Fat. Hey, he’s got a murder to solve.

A Shocking History

Remember the son of the polo club owner? The one who said he must’ve been the target because he’d switched practice times with the victim? Who would want him dead? Turns out the kid, Jake (Guy Wilson), had been kidnapped a decade earlier. He eventually escaped, but not before his captors cut off one of his fingers to send with their ransom demand. His testimony eventually sent the kidnappers to prison, but one was released recently.

Steve orders Kono back to the house to protect him. As she pulls up, he and his mother are walking toward a sport-utility vehicle to go somewhere. But Jake drops his keys. He stops to pick them up while his mother moves to the SUV’s passenger door. As she opens it, the van explodes. The mother is hospitalized in critical condition; Jake suffers minor injuries.

Later, forensic technician Charlie Fong (Brian Yang) finds bomb fragments, as well as an extra cell phone that Five-0 suspects might have been used to trigger the bomb. McGarrett doesn’t want to wait for the police lab to study the bomb fragments, so he takes them to Catherine.

C’mon, Steve! This has got to stop! Yes, I’m sure it’s nice to have a girlfriend in naval intelligence, but you head your own state law-enforcement agency. You shouldn’t need to run to her every time you require something high-tech. I think she’s getting tired of it too. This time, she says it’s going to cost you. And I don’t think a meal from Kamekona’s shrimp truck is going to do it.

Steve and Danno bring in the recently released kidnapper. Under their coercion, he admits to planting the bomb for $50,000 but says he was hired anonymously over the Internet.

Back at the ol’ homestead, Doris is all asnoop. Under a floorboard, she finds an old chest with a combination lock. She knows the combination, and removes roll of film. (Remember those?) She cuts open the canister and starts looking at the negatives.

At Five-0 headquarters, Catherine reports that the bomb was planted to target the SUV’s passenger. Chin Ho and Kono report that the extra cell phone was a burner that belonged to the mother, the only number in it was the original murder victim’s and the texts were “intimate.”

“She was having an affair with the headless horseman?” Steve blurts out. “Okay, well this changes pretty much everything.” (No s—, Sherlock.)

McGarrett and Danno race to the hospital to question the woman, but somebody smothers her to death before they arrive. Security video shows her son, Jake, entering and leaving her room around the time of death.

More Daddy Issues

Why would Jake kill his mother and her lover? Jake’s father blames himself. He tells McGarrett and Danno that Jake was angry because he’d discovered the affair – and that his father knew about it but wouldn’t stand up to his unfaithful wife. He also reveals that during the kidnapping, the parents had received an earlier ransom request, before the boy’s finger was cut off , and that while he had wanted to pay, his wife had persuaded him not to – a fact the boy found out from his captors. That explains why he took it upon himself to escape and provide key testimony at the subsequent trial.

McGarrett and Danno find Jake practicing on the polo field. He charges them on his horse, but Steve knocks him off his mount with a gunshot to the shoulder. After he’s handcuffed by Danno, Jake turns to McGarrett and says, “My dad told you I was out here, didn’t he?”

Unfinished Business

Later, as they arrive for dinner at Kamekona’s (which, conveniently, appears to be at or adjacent to the Hilton Hawaiian Village resort), Steve finally asks Doris why she let Wo Fat escape.

“It just happened” she insists. “Wo Fat surprised me. He lunged at me; we struggled for the gun; and it discharged. [Viewers will recall that Wo Fat was brandishing his own gun.] I wasn’t aiming. The next thing I knew, he heard Catherine coming up the stairs and was out the window before I could fire again.”

Steve acts like he accepts that explanation. But a few minutes later, while she’s out of earshot, Danno asks if he believes her. The response, in a word: “No.” And … scene.

Notes

• The furtune teller’s Death card bears the image of a lei floating on the water, evoking a Hawaiian “paddle out” memorial ceremony like the one shown in Episode 2 this season.
• Bai Ling, who played the fortune teller, guest starred on a 2007 episode of Lost. I didn’t follow that show, but a summary indicates that she appeared in a flashback involving Jack (Matthew Fox). To me that suggests that she probably didn’t share any scenes with H50‘s Daniel Dae Kim or Terry O’Quinn.
• Multiple sources are reporting that George Takei (Star Trek, Heroes) will appear as Chin Ho’s uncle in a December episode of H50. On NBC’s Heroes, Takei played the father of Masi Oka, who now portrays H50‘s eccentric coroner.
• TV Line reported earlier this month that Vanessa Marcil (General Hospital, Beverly Hills 90210) will appear in a November episode of H50. She starred on NBC’s Las Vegas with James Caan, father of H50‘s Scott Caan and a guest star last season.

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Stuart J. Robinson, a college friend of the TV Tyrant, is a writer, editor, media-relations practitioner and social-media guy based in Phoenix.