Did anyone actually think that little Sara would go live happily ever after with her aunt and uncle in Mexico? Hawaii Five-0 writers set up Sara’s plot throughout the first half of the season as a ticking time bomb. Maybe Chin should have given her a GPS tracker when he had the chance. There was no way we were going to get to the winter finale without that kid getting kidnapped.
The tone of the opening is a little goofier than the rest of the tone would suggest. It’s Chin’s birthday and the entire cast is celebrating. It immediately takes a dark turn when Chin takes a call from Sara, supposedly happily setting down in Juarez, Mexico, and speeds off on his motorcycle.
The call is actually from Sara’s aunt, Maria Morales. Sara was snatched on her way home from school in a brazen kidnapping. Chin is frantic, but Steve tracks him down and immediately takes charge of the situation when he finds out what happens. The team’s contact at the DEA gives them the dire news about the kidnapping epidemic in Mexico. He warns them that getting the local police involved could lead to the kidnappers cutting their loses and killing the girl. If Chin wants Sara back, he’s going to have to do something himself.
The team, of course, is completely behind him. Chin travelled all the way to Morocco to help out Steve’s family and Steve’s ready to return that favor. The team is headed to the very dangerous Juarez, Mexico, to track down Sara’s abductors themselves.
In Juarez, Steve and Danny get the lay of the land. Murders are down, but kidnappings are up! It’s not a great state of affairs and it gets worse when Steve visits Raphael Ramirez, the king of the K&R game in Juarez. Ramirez makes fun of Steve’s belief that an American badge would get him anywhere in Mexico, but Kono’s sniper rifle guarantees his safe passage. Ramirez denies taking Sara and tells Steve to do exactly what the kidnappers say.
Danny and Lou (a combination we don’t see very often) offer some levity in the episode in their attempts to identify a dead kidnapper at the morgue. Neither of their Spanish-speaking skills are up to par, and Danny rather exasperatedly is forced to hold the morgue attendant at gunpoint. From Hawaii, Max talks him through how to identify a Cajun-style burned body. The poor gagged morgue attendant (he presumably talked back at some point) watches in horror as Lou and Danny scrap the skin off the body to find a tattoo.
Chin is going nuts back at the Morales compound. First, he finds a heart-breaking note to Santa from young Sara. Then, Sara’s uncle, Jorge, admits that he doesn’t even have the million dollars to pay the ransom. Jorge did have the cash, but it was stolen by crooked cops. Chin decides that the only way to ensure the handoff goes smoothly and get Sara back is to steal the money back from the police.
Ramirez offers Steve the million dollars just to get the team to leave (and have a detective in his pocket for later use) and is impressed when Steve stoically turns it down. He gives the team the name of the dirty cop and the team prepares for battle.
The team really has seen everything at this point and prepares for robbing a police station with mild annoyance more than fear (Danny just wants to stay in the car). It’s always fun to see the team in fearless mode, but things quickly turn south when the handoff turns out to be a trap. As Kono warns Chin, Sara was used to lure the team to Mexico.
Throughout the entire season, the writers have been hinting that Jorge Morales isn’t on the up and up. His number was on a drug dealer’s cell phone. He acted cagey when Sara was taken. In a genuinely unexpected twist, it turns out the Jorge and Maria Morales are victims too. Sara wasn’t taken because of them, but because of Chin.
In what was a somewhat forgettable episode in an otherwise memorable season, the team tracked down and killed Diego cartel member Juan Diego. His brother, Carlos, a drug kingpin, is out for revenge. He is holding Sara in his impenetrable compound, guarded by 100 military-grade henchmen. The team realizes it’s a suicide mission. They would do anything for Chin, but before they can formulate a plan of attack, Chin saves them the trouble. He gives himself up for Sara.
Chin tells Kono how proud he is of her, and how much he loves the team. Then, he waits for Carlos’s men to show up with Sara. He didn’t break his promise to protect her. Instead, he made sure that Sara got home safe and counts on the team to take care of her.
Chin’s fate is left up in the air, but I have a feeling we haven’t seen the last of Juarez, Mexico, or the Diego compound. The team never leaves a family member behind.
The show will wait until January to show what happens with Chin, Sara, and the team. I’ll see you then! Let me know what you thought of the episode in the comments!
