HAWAII FIVE-0 Tells Tales of Treasure

A severed hand floats ashore and is identified as belonging to salvage diver Blake Spencer. Visiting Blake’s apartment, McGarrett and Danno find several gold coins in an aquarium. Their first theory, that Blake was killed for the coins, was one of several that fit this episode’s treasure-hunting theme.

McGarrett and Danno brought the coins to a museum where Dr. Gabrielle Asano (Autumn Reeser) said they could have come from the 1682 shipwreck of a Spanish galleon, the Princessa del Mar. If authenticated, each coin would be worth $1,000 to $2,000. Dr. Asano asked to hold onto one of the coins for authentication purposes. Steve was reluctant to give away evidence in a murder investigation, but Danno, clearly smitten with Dr. Asano, agreed to her request.

Working with the theory that Spencer recovered treasure from the Princessa del Mar, Weston (Lauren German) questioned other divers who might know more about the shipwreck. This led her to Jesse Billings (Peter Fonda), host of a treasure-hunting TV show and Blake’s boss at the time of his death. At the same time, Danno’s decision to leave one of the coins with Dr. Asano paid off. Asano reported the coins were fake. When confronted with this information, Billings admitted he had planted fake treasure, but he had no idea Blake–his best diver–knew about it.

Meanwhile, Weston also visited Blake’s mother (Patty Duke) at a nursing home and discovered she suffered from Alzheimer’s disease, believing Blake was in the sixth grade. She wouldn’t be able to tell Five-0 anything about Blake’s recent activities.

Eventually, the Coast Guard recovered Blake’s body, and among the items in his dive bag was a wallet that was found to contain Hawaiian overprint bills. If the Japanese had invaded Hawaii during World War II, the overprint bills would have been declared worthless so they couldn’t be used by looters. When the invasion didn’t happen, the bills were shipped to a cemetery to be destroyed, but $2 million had gone missing.

I don’t know how much truth there is to either story, but the treasure-hunting theme of “Mea Makamae” had me in the mood to go along with such tales. The missing $2 million was said to have been hidden in the coffin of Captain Robert S. Murphy, Blake’s grandfather. Blake had only been interested in recovering his grandfather’s body, giving his family some peace; however, the people he called to help recover the coffin believed he was trying to keep the $2 million for himself.

The treasure-hunting theme provided a good frame in which to plant clues. For instance, though Weston didn’t learn anything directly from Blake’s mother, she recalled seeing a picture of Captain Murphy in Blake’s mother’s room. Similarly, an impression left on Blake’s skull matched a ring Weston had seen on a man who turned out to be Blake’s killer.

“Mea Makamae” also slightly advanced two season-long story arcs: the video of John McGarrett meeting Wo Fat, and Kono’s involvement with Frank Delano (Billy Baldwin). It was the third well-structured episode in a row.