This week's episode of Hawaii Five-0 opens when a delivery truck is attacked and a package apprehended. When the Five-0 realize that one of the deliverymen has lied about details of the attack, they investigate his home, only to find him tied up and in the company of a corpse.

The deliveryman starts the Five-0 on an investigation of an operation of the creation and use of false passports. They manage to trace the origin of the passport distribution to a criminal named Nicky Chang. In order to apprehend Chang and get more information on his trade, the Five-0 tap a jailed criminal to wear a wire and go undercover into Chang’s operation. Upon the criminal’s insistence, he is given a bodyguard: Kamekona, the food stand operator and friend to the Five-0.

When the Five-0 finds out that Chang recently sold one hundred false passports to a single buyer, the threat level of the crime is upgraded, suggesting terrorist intent. The Five-0 manages to catch and deter the plot, which has also resulted in the murder of a low-level document forger with whom White is connected.

McGarrett is still suspicious of Joe White, whom he finds snooping around an antiques store early in the episode. Prior to this, we see a flashback scene from McGarrett’s youth, when his father decided to send he and his sister to the mainland to protect them from the dangers of his work.

We saw the McGarrett-White animosity planted last week, and it surrounds the same theme this time: the possibility that White has killed the Yazuka leader, Hiro Noshimuri. Adam Noshimuri makes another appearance this week, intent on killing White for the murder of his father. However, White reveals to Adam that his father is not dead, simply in hiding, and allows Adam to speak to his father once on the phone.

At the end of the episode, White reveals his secret to McGarrett: Shelburne, the identity wrapped in the mystery of McGarrett’s father’s work and death, is actually an alias McGarrett’s father and White made up together to detract focus away from their investigation of the Yakuza. Wo Fat, the crime lord with ties to the Yakuza, lost his father to Shelburne’s hand: White is the one who killed him. Thus, White decides that he must leave Hawaii in order to protect McGarrett and his loved ones from the Yakuza’s wrath.

Away from the action for most of the episode is Danno, who is helping his ex-wife give birth to her new son. Although it is a difficult time for Danno, he is truly noble throughout, and is a very big help to Rachel.


Top Five Moments From "Pu'olo"

1. Terry O’Quinn allowing a troubled man to talk to his presumed dead father seemed very John Locke-like.

2. The outrageously overt product placement for Subway in the scene where the Five-0 speaks to Kamekona about his closed food stand is hilarious.

3. McGarrett’s takedown of a flamethrower-wielding Nicky Chang by tackling him, armed only with a large box of some kind.

4. O’Quinn shielding a civilian from a drive-by: heroic.


5. The flashback sequence in the beginning of the episode does a good job of planting McGarrett's lifelong father issues.