- Title: Hawaii Five-0 – Pukana
- wiki: link
Christmas Eve brings the case of a murdered burglar (Danny Barclay) to Five-0 whose body was dumped in the trunk of an abandoned car in a junkyard. Five-0 picks up the man’s partner (Scott Subiono) but to find the actual crime scene and killer Catherine (Michelle Borth) and Chin Ho (Daniel Dae Kim) search for the final house the victim robbed. Although Chin finds the right house, the owner (James Urbaniak) has good reason for not reporting the break-in and making sure the thief never spoke of what he found in the man’s wall safe.
Meawhile McGarrett (Alex O’Loughlin) and Danny (Scott Caan) get a visit from FBI Special Agent Rebecca Conway (Monique Gabriela Curnen) who informs them that their victim was killed with a gun linked to a serial killer responsible for more than one dozen murders. And now the killer who is known to kill and dispose of his victims after 24-hours of torture has his girlfriend and Chin-Ho Kelly tied-up in his basement. Thankfully the hostages prove resourceful enough to turn their tables on the serial killer and survive until help arrives.
The episode’s B-story involves a puzzle box Grace (Teilor Grubbs) and Danny find on beach during clean-up effort with Captain Grover (Chi McBride) and his daughter (Paige Hurd) which they believe may have washed up nearly three years after the Japanese tsunami. Danny enlists the help of Fong (Brian Yang), which allows Danny and Grace to return the puzzle box and the young girl’s father and only member of his family to survive the disaster. We also get a cameo from Kono (Grace Park) searching Seattle for the missing Adam (Ian Anthony Dale) and the return of Chin’s girlfriend Leilani (Lindsay Price).
The set-up off the episode allows the audience to know far more about the case than Five-0 for most of the episode, which is a bit out of character, although we don’t know what in the safe caused the burglar to be killed (and thankfully the episode doesn’t feel the need to show us the victim’s trophies during the later reveal). The B-story is interesting, even if it does feel a bit shoehorned into the episode, and I’m glad to see more of Kono (although I’ll be much happier when the new mother returns full-time to the show following its winter break).
