WARNING: There are lots of spoilers ahead. But, as the episode really falls apart at the end, I don't think it would be a bad thing to warn you about why I felt so frustrated by this particular episode.
This is a rather frustrating episode to watch. That's because it is excellent and I really enjoyed it...only to be maddened by a really, really bad final scene. And the worst part about it is that they really didn't even need to do this scene and the show could have ended just fine without it.
"The Diamond That Nobody Stole" begins with a cat burglar sneaking into a home and robbing a safe. However, oddly, he finds an old film canister and opens it--only to find microfilm. Not wanting to pass up an opportunity, the guy takes this as well as a valuable jewel. Later, he develops the microfilm and finds it's some sort of top-secret document. Instead of turning it in to authorities, he contacts the owner, Djabara (Eric Braeden) and offers to sell it back to him--not realizing what a very tough character Djabara really is. Eventually, Djabara is able to piece the crime back together by first tracking down the pawn shop owner and torturing and killing him. As a result, he then finds the burglar and does the same. As he's about to make the deal with someone from some unfriendly government, a shot rings out--Djabara is killed and Steve and Five-O capture the enemy agent.
At this point, I was quite impressed by the show...and I liked how it ended with a mysterious party killing Djabara. HOWEVER, the show couldn't leave well enough alone, as McGarrett HAD to catch the person responsible for this. There were two HUGE problems with this--there were only two minutes left for this AND no sort of logical buildup preceded this. In the final scene, Steve captures Djabara's mother-in-law as she sells the REAL microfilm to an enemy agent. But there had been no indications whatsoever that she was involved in any way--and there was no way McGarrett could have known--NONE. It would be like writing a mystery novel and having the killer revealed on the final page...and this killer had never previously been mentioned in the book!!! This, to put it bluntly, sucks! Yes, sucks--a word I don't bandy about. In fact, in almost 10000 reviews, this is probably the first time I felt compelled to use it. Sucks, sucks, sucks!! A couple things to note about the episode. First, when the cat burglar is robbing the safe, his wrist flashlight and the light shining on the wall around the safe don't even come close to matching. It's obvious some unseen person was actually shining the light. Second, in the dead cat burglar's room, I noticed that the picture of the presidents (with a HUGE Nixon in the middle) and the one showing flags of the world were in the office of baddie Simon Oakland in the previous episode. Normally you wouldn't notice this, but I had just finished watching the other episode on DVD.
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