Hawaii Five-0 3x10: Huakaʻi Kula

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Danny and Steve are out on a camping trip with the legally-distinct-from-the-Girl-Scouts Aloha Girls. Danny's there as Grace's father, and Steve is there to teach the girls how to survive in the wilderness. McGarrett starts by teaching the girls how to kill a wild boar, so Danny tries to get him to take it down a notch. Steve responds by teaching the girls how to properly throw a knife.

They make a good team.

One of the girls wanders off for a minute, and when McGarrett finds her she's with Tom Arnold, who's suffering from dehydration and a pretty serious leg wound. Steve patches him up as best he can, but when he tries to call in the paramedics, Tom pulls out a revolver and takes the girl hostage.

Tonight, Lucy's going to earn her hostage badge.

When they get back to the camp, Danny tries to convince Tom to take his car and let the girl go, but he's not interested in leaving. Instead, he shoots Danny, then locks him, the girls, and the troop leader in a supply shed, and takes Lucy and Steve deeper into the jungle. Fortunately, the bullet wound isn't too bad and the troop leader's day job is as an ER nurse. Even more fortunately, the shed is poorly constructed and, using a few tent stakes, the troop manages to pry up the floor and dig a hole so Grace can slip out and unlock the door.

Unfortunately, Tom had the foresight to disable Danny's car and the Aloha Girls' van and to smash all their cell phones. But, one of the girls is a technowizard and she manages to jerry rig a couple phones together so Danny can get a call out to Chin.

I'm not sure if the fact that she's Asian makes it racist or not.

Meanwhile, Tom is pissed off and crazy. When a hiker stumbles across them, McGarrett manages to pass him a clue as to where they're going, but when he tries to leave, Tom shoots him in the shoulder and he falls down a hill. Tom's jazzed but he tells Steve that the next time he steps out of line, he'll be the one who gets shot.

Chin sends the local Conservation Officers to help out. Danny gets a gun and a satellite phone, and he and the troop leader head after Tom. The troop leader's father taught her how to track, and they manage to follow the trail until they lose it near the hill with the injured hiker. He tells him what's going on, and Danny sprints off to meet up with Chin on the trail.

Some quick detective work shows that Tom was a security guard on a plane that was transporting diamonds for a local exhibition. He jumped out in mid-air over the jungle, but lost the goods and that's why he didn't want to take Danny's car and leave. When they finally track down the bag with the diamonds, Tom's so happy that he loses concentration and McGarrett beats him up and takes his gun. It looks like Steve's got it in the bag until Tom's accomplice arrives.

And he's not nearly as much fun as Tom was.

Bad Guy #2's pretty ticked off that it took Tom so long to find the diamonds, and he's not at all interested in the fact that Tom's leg is severely injured and probably infected. However, he is ticked off that Tom's late, so he puts a few bullets in his chest. Lucy and Steve use the momentary distraction to get the hell out of there, but Bad Guy #2's in hot pursuit.

McGarrett gets Lucy to hide while he leads the bad guy away. Steve's fast, but the jungle's thick and he's unarmed, so when he comes to a stream he has to cross, he's pretty screwed. The bad guy catches up, and just as he's about to execute McGarrett, Danny shows up to put two in his back.

No need to book 'im, Danno.

Back in civilization, Adam's brother Michael is getting out of prison after ten years. Baby brother's all smiles and hugs when Kono and Adam pick him up at the airport, but later he seems a bit miffed that his brother's trying to legitimize the family and is dating a cop. Chin's not too happy about things, either. A buddy of his at the FBI sent him photos of his favourite cousin consorting with the head of the local Yakuza and hugging a known killer. Still, everything seems relatively fine until Michael sneaks into his brother's room to return Kono's gun in the middle of the night... and to watch them sleep.

One can see the allure, but it's still kinda creepy.

What I Liked
-McGarrett teaches the girls about the 'kill zone' on a boar. It's very important.
-Grace is bummed that her dad was kicked out of the scouts. Danny's a heck of a role model.
-Danny hates the jungle and the jungle hates Danny. That's the relationship one ought to have with something that's constantly trying to kill you.
-McGarrett rats out Tom to his partner. Not cool, man.
-Tom Arnold was delightfully manic. He was injured, so there was no way he was going to stand up to McGarrett in a fight, but with a gun in his hand and that crazy look in his eyes, I actually bought him as a legitimate danger.

What I Hated
-Danny and the kids get out of the supply shed a little too fast. In TV time it took them until morning to dig themselves out, but in real time they found their way out over the course of a single commercial break. Being locked up was considerably less of an impediment than Danny's 'does anyone have food and water?' speech would lead you to believe.
-Bad Guy #2 takes over for Tom at the end of the episode. I understand that by that point Tom Arnold wasn't really a believable threat, and they still wanted to do some action stuff, but it would've been nice to have a little build up for Bad Guy #2. He literally comes out of nowhere.

Final Thoughts
Hawaii Five-0 has had some really good guest stars this season: Shelley Berman, Ed Asner, C. Thomas Howell, and now Tom Arnold. Next week they even have George Takei. I guess a couple free weeks in Hawaii is pretty good at enticing actors to do the show.

This was a pretty good episode. It had a good villain and I didn't find the girl who was taken hostage even slightly annoying. The ending to the A plot was a bit weak and the B plot was a tad thin, but nothing about either plot was too bad. Overall, it wasn't enough for a really high score, but the consistency the show's shown over the last two weeks has me hopeful.