Hawaii Five-0 season 8 episode 11 review: Danny’s Christmas story

Hawaii Five-0 season 8 cast photo

The second episode of Hawaii Five-0 tonight proved to be very different from the first. While that one took you into the future — or what Danny perceived the future to be in his mind — the second one was all about a Christmas bedtime story.

One thing that made this episode different came courtesy of the framing of the story — much of it came via Danny telling Charlie a bedtime story about a new case that Five-0 was recently working on. It started with a very evil Santa and it ended in a shootout. (Side note: Isn’t this story about Santas with guns going to scar Charlie for the rest of his life?). Of course this was a story with a happy ending, but it was a tough one for some members of the Task Force.

We know that the heroes on the show are often members of the Five-0 Task Force, but there were some other heroes who shined bright throughout the hour — they were veterans played by real-life military veterans who sacrificed for the good of the country. They’ve made this world a better place and at the end of the hour, we saw them all celebrated a Christmas party where Steve honored them for all of their work. This was a moving, and a nice reminder to pay tribute to all of the people who matter at a time when we can often get distracted by commercial goods and some other superficial things in the holiday season.

While there was a lot of drama in this episode and sentimental moments, rest assured — there was also plenty of humor. Take, for example, Steve McGarrett breaking into Danny’s house during his bedtime story and eating some of the cookies meant for Danny. Basically the entire final two minutes of the episode was all about whether or not Steve was in the right to come into his house and steal said cookies. It was a nice way to tie up this episode, and the entire first half of Hawaii Five-0 season 8.

We should also mention one other milestone: Junior now has a badge! He still needs to complete his training, but it’s pretty darn clear that he is here to stay and for that we are thankful.

CarterMatt Verdict

A very lovely way for Hawaii Five-0 to wrap up the first part of the season. This was an episode that had virtually everything that we could’ve wanted for a Christmas episode wrapped up in a nice little package. While cliffhangers are good sometimes, the tone of this episode didn’t dictate that we needed one.

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If you missed our review of the first Hawaii Five-0 episode tonight, you can check that out now over at the link here. Also, be sure to see when the show is returning to CBS (at the link here) or like CarterMatt on Facebook if you’ve got a hankering for more news on the show.

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