Hawaii Five-0 came back strong this week with a solid episode featuring the regular cast and a couple of good guest performances.

Diehard H50 fans online, and pretty much anybody who watched CBS this week, saw the promos with Star Trek icon George Takei. He played Chin Ho’s moonshiner uncle, whom Chin Ho and Danno visit for information on local bootleggers. Alas, the scene in the teaser was his only one.

That said, Takei did do some acting. Most of his appearances these days simply require him to play some version of himself. H50‘s writers had him in overalls, sporting a couple days’ worth of beard, and gave him laconic lines that choked off his naturally mellifluous delivery. If a viewer didn’t already know it was Takei, he or she might not have recognized him. H50 regular Masi Oka, who played the son of Takei’s character on  NBC’s Heroes (2006-10), was not in the scene.

With all due respect to Takei, the top guest performance in Season 3, Episode 11 was turned in by Tristan Lake Leabu (Superman Returns) playing a kid named Ethan, who provides the week’s mystery.

The hour begins with Steve and Catherine eating  in his truck at the Rainbow Drive-In, a real Honolulu eatery that has been in business for a half century. Catherine is busting Steve’s balls for thinking the drive-in qualified as the “someplace special” he’d promised to take her.

They’re getting into a pretty good cargument when a gun-wielding man tries to carjack them. Cut to Steve dragging the beaten-up guy into a police station where Sgt. Duke Lukela (Dennis Chun) is manning the desk.

• Duke: “Looks like somebody’s made Santa’s naughty list.”
• Steve: “This genius tried to carjack me.”
• Duke, to suspect: “You sure picked the wrong cop.”
• Suspect: “Crazy man ripped out my nose ring.”
• Duke, to Steve: “Make sure you put that in evidence.”
• Steve: “Absolutely.”

As Duke leads the suspect away, Steve notices Ethan handcuffed to a desk. He’s been left there to cool off after breaking a window at the precinct. Steve sits down with the boy and asks why he broke the window. “The only way I could get someone to pay attention to me,” Ethan says. It seems his father is missing, and Ethan fears something “really bad” happened to him.

Ethan has no other family, so Steve and Catherine drive him to his father’s country store, where they find blood spatter from a shotgun blast and trail of blood showing where someone was dragged away. Robbery? No, the cash is still in the register.

Steve decides to take in the kid while they look for his father. “I like this kid,” he tells Catherine. “Of course you do,” she replies. “He’s you at 13.” Catherine takes Ethan home to get some clothes. When she goes into the basement to retrieve a suitcase, she finds it full of cash.

Meanwhile, Kono has checked with the emergency rooms and found that a John Doe whose blood matched the blood from the store was dumped at a local hospital and died during surgery. Video shows a hooded figure unloading the injured man and driving off; the license plate reveals that the car belongs to Ethan’s father.

Without getting into all of the plot twists, some off-the-books business put Ethan’s father between a couple of bad characters. Steve, Danno and Chin Ho go on a raid hoping to find him, but they are too late. All they find are the father’s car and a couple of dead goons in the yard.

Meanwhile, Ethan waits at home with Catherine. They’re playing poker when they hear somebody at the door. Ethan runs to the door just as his dad is forced through at gunpoint. Catherine realizes what is going on and hides before the gunman finds out she’s there.

The gunman wants the suitcase with the cash Five-0 has taken away as evidence. Needless to say, he’s unhappy when Ethan brings him the suitcase and it’s empty. Before he can act, Catherine triggers a smoke alarm, then jumps him when he goes to investigate. As we learned in Season 3, Episode 8, Catherine knows how to handle herself in a fight. For once, Five-0 doesn’t arrive in the nick of time, but that’s okay. Catherine tosses the gunman down the stairs, leaving him out cold on the basement floor, seconds before Steve and Danno crash through the door.

• Steve: “How’d you like that timing?”
• Catherine: “A little slow. I got it under control.”
• Ethan: “She’s right.”

The main story took up most of the hour, so what passed for a secondary plot involved an effort by Kamekona (Taylor Wily) to purchase a helicopter for the tour business he plans to open. He persuades Danno to pose as the buyer, figuring a haole will be quoted a better price. The main takeaway from the scene is that a second helicopter in the background is painted somewhat like the one flown by T.C. (Roger E. Mosley) on Magnum P.I. (1980-88), another show about a former Navy SEAL set in Hawaii.

The final scene features a couple of wardrobe gags. The well-rounded Kamekona, predictably, shows up in a Santa suit. Steve arrives in a tuxedo and carries Catherine off (literally) to that special dinner they’d discussed in the opening scene.

Notes

•  TV Guide has credited Christine Lahti with one of the Best Performances of 2012: “Playing Steve McGarrett’s believed-dead mom Doris, Lahti has an unenviable task: She must keep viewers guessing about whether she’s to be trusted while also contributing to and expanding the show’s mythology. While the latter may not come until the end of the season, Lahti has been adept at switching from kickass former CIA agent with secrets to heartbroken mom who wants nothing more than her kids’ forgiveness. We still don’t know what side she’s on, but we can’t stop watching her hoping to find out.”
• The Television Without Pity website has placed Steve among the naughty rather than the nice in 2012 – for a familiar reason: “He takes advantage of Catherine’s access to information ALL the time by playing the boyfriend card. Don’t be a user, McGarrett!”