"The Gunrunner" is 50

It's the 50th Anniversary of S03E20 "The Gunrunner".

The episode follows the double-dealing of arms trader Ben Cunningham (Paul Burke) who has his own wife Claire (Marian McCargo) kidnapped! He tries to bleed more money from the country of the Republic of Malanesia and made a deal with revolutionaries fighting the country. One of those revolutionaries is Bajano (Philip Pine) who is behind Claire's kidnapping with Ben's help.

McGarrett and the Five-O crew are interested in finding Claire. That's the known crime in the episode: kidnapping. However, in their digging they discover Ben is trying to play both ends against the middle with his wife getting hurt the worst in this.

Mr. Mike has a great review here: http://www.fiveohomepage.com/5-0log3.htm#68 His 2 1/2 star rating is fair in my opinion because there are a lot of jumps in logic in this one.

For starters, one of the mysteries is at the beginning in the course of Claire's kidnapping. It seems Ben killed a guy but he was actually killed *before* the kidnapping. How McGarrett jumps to this conclusion is not made extremely clear, he just jumps to it. Another point, is how McGarrett and his team discover Ben is behind the kidnapping. It's logical yes, but it seems something is missing along the line.

I consider this one of the "meh" episodes of the series and it's been a while since I've watched. I will watch it if I'm in a certain mood. A couple of scenes stayed with me though from my previous viewings.

The first is just after the shootout at the pier when the rebels try to steal the guns for their side. As Kanjil (Daws Dawson) lays dying and McGarrett tries to get information out of him, there is a serious shoving match between Ben and Danno! It's pretty wild.

The second is the ending. After the shootout in the shack where Ben and most of the kidnappers, including Bajano, have died; McGarrett walks Claire out informing her that she now has ownership of the weapons. She plans to dump them into the Pacific because she wants nothing to do with them. I hope they made a nice artificial reef. :p

Happy 50th "The Gunrunner"! :cool: