Hawaii Five-0 season 8 episode 5 review: Is Alicia Brown cleared?

Tonight’s Hawaii Five-0 episode began with an introduction that CarterMatt is shocked didn’t happen before now: Junior Reigns and Danny.

Alicia Brown closure

From here, we had a little bit of a different sort of reunion: McGarrett and Alicia Brown. Remember what happened with Dr. Madison Gray last season — you know, that story that we’ve been waiting to get a resolution on for the past several months? Well, this episode actually provided that. Alicia admitted to Steve that she purposefully killed Gray in order to ensure that nothing ever happens to her ever again. Not only that, but she was willing to testify to this very thing, risking her future in order to do the right thing.

We’ll revisit Alicia Brown in a moment, but for now let’s go back to a case with Tani and Danny! These two went out to investigate a new case, one that seemed to replicate an ancient Hawaiian myth regarding a man/pig hybrid and a fate that tends to befall those who move their product away from their home turf. The entire case gave Tani the willies, especially when she learned that, (just like with the myth) a woman and a dog may have been at the scene.

Then, after the first death came a second — this one seemingly connected to another Hawaiian legend. Things were getting strange — so strange that they needed a criminal profiler. Enter Alicia Brown. Her trial was interrupted because Five-0 needed her help on the case. Or, did they? Alicia definitely had plenty of questions as to whether or not Steve recruited her on the case just for the sake of getting her out of having to be at trial. That suspicion was accelerated further when Steve, (in the middle of investigating the super-creepy case tonight with the team) was still pressing her for ways that they could get her out of facing jail time.

The case itself eventually led to a woman who was acting out these legends and preparing a ritual in the middle of the woods — half of her face was badly scarred, and in general this had to be one of the creepiest cases we’ve seen in a rather long time, and judging from the end of the episode this is also far from over.

Here’s the good news — in the end, Alicia was offered a deal: 18 months probation, provided that she was available to Five-0 at any time. Pretty light sentence for murdering someone.

Grover’s difficult dilemma

The Grover storyline tonight was a powerful one — he traveled 11 hours on a plane in order to meet a man named Sebastian he never met before, hours before he was about to be executed. What was so interesting about this story, though, was that this man requested to speak with Grover before he died. While he had his last meal he slowly began to tell Grover a number of things that at first didn’t seem to matter. Then, it was revealed that this man knew Clay Maxwell. Remember him? He was Grover’s one-time friend and partner, and since that time Grover held him responsible for killing his wife. Not only that, but this man claimed that Maxwell hired him at one point to kill him.

This was the struggle for Grover: This man claimed that he could prove that Maxwell killed his wife; yet, he wanted Lou to stay his execution in order to learn the truth about what happened. The unfortunate news is that he doesn’t have any jurisdiction here and he couldn’t do much to put Sebastian’s execution on hold.

The scene of the execution may have actually been a little too horrifying for network TV, but it ended with Grover getting a note that was left behind for him with some directions on a map. That was enough for him to get the proof he needed .

What did you think of Hawaii Five-0 season 8 episode 5?

Share in the comments what you thought of the story tonight.

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