It was a dark and stormy night. No, wait, that’s what we’ve been having here in Honolulu for the past few days.

The premiere of the sixth season of "Hawaii Five-0" merely looks that way, opening with a gloomy moon glowing over the ocean. It’s the prelude to yet another action-packed adventure featuring our campy cabal of crimefighters in an episode that has a bit of everything the show has come to represent — history, banter, ohana, ("family"), along with gruesome violence and giddy gunplay.

Since those of you who didn’t join us on a warm but dry Waikiki evening won’t see this for two more weeks, applying the term "spoiler alert" to this story seems particularly redundant, but I’ll tell you, there’s a huge spoiler in this episode that happens fairly early. I’m putting it at the very end, just to make sure that it doesn’t catch your eye somehow as you read through. If you dare, wait until Sept. 25 at 9 p.m., 8 p.m. Hawaiian and Central Time on your CBS affilate to see what it is.

The episode hops back and forth between two storylines. I’ll try to recap them as best and as briefly I can, but this episode had a lot going on.

As mentioned earlier, the episode opens on a moonlit night, but as the camera pans down to the ocean, we see a pirate flag and an old schooner, followed by some torchlit canoes being rowed ashore. Gnarled, mean-looking faces fill the screen, and we know we’re in bad company. The words "Honolulu 1884" written in John Hancock style script flash on the screen.

The pirates are in town to sack Honolulu, which they do with appropriate nastiness. They invade a formal banquet for the king, snatching among many treasures a landscape painting.

Switch suddenly to modern times, and one of the pirates, now transmogrified into an old man, is seen in a fuzzy video recounting the scene. A dead man is in front of the TV, and as the saying goes, he isn’t telling any tales.

Switch to opening credits, which have some new shots of our heroes.

When we come back, we’re at the wedding of Kono and Adam, and the lovely Tia Carrere is emceeing and singing. Almost everyone looks very happy, except for the guys, who are at a table discussing the appearance of Gabriel, Chin Ho’s evil brother-in-law. In last year’s finale, he intercepted Chin Ho outside the wedding and threatened him, and the guys figure he’s up to no good, hint, hint. There’s also some touching — very touching — scenes between Steve and Catherine, recently returned from Afghanistan.

Here’s where the story splits. The newlyweds are going to do what newlyweds do, and the guys are on to the murder. At the crime scene, there’s a lot of video cassettes, including one labeled Washburn and made back in the 70s. The video itself is wiped clean, so they figure the murder has something to do with whatever was on that video.

They find out that Washburn, supposedly 104 when he did the video (made on Beta, giving Jerry a chance to geek out with his knowledge of the format), was a pirate who took part in the 1884 raid and is telling the story on the video. The murdered guy is involved with a historian of some sort who’s investigating the story. The team figures the murderer found out about the video and is looking for the hidden treasure, killing anyone in his path.

Meanwhile, Kono and Adam are getting all snuggly over breakfast. Kono looks fantastic, (as she did in a stunning yellow Versace last night), and then the doorbell rings and it’s a delivery man covering his face with a big box. But in fact it’s Gabriel, and before you know it, he’s tasered Adam and Kono and they’re in trouble.

We go back to the crime solving, and Steve and Danny drive out to visit the wife of the murdered guy. Driving, of course, is where the boys banter, and there’s some good stuff here. The trip itself results in some more background on the pirate angle.

Then we cut to some building that needs to be evacuated because of a supposed gas leak. Turns out it’s Bishop Museum, the institution that houses artifacts of Hawaiian history and culture, and the gas leak is a setup for a thief. And it’s that painting, the one stolen by the pirates in 1884, that he’s after, but before he can get away, a security guard intercepts him. Then, a nicely dressed woman, ostensibly a museum visitor, conveniently steps in, and voila! the thief has a hostage and we have a commercial break.

When we come back, the team has assembled outside the museum. They don’t know where the thief and the hostage are, but they know the painting was the target of the attempted theft, so they figure the murder and the theft are linked.

Hoping to catch the thief and save the hostage, the teams enter the museum, guns drawn, and — now, wait a minute. The items in Bishop Museum are priceless, sacred to the Hawaiian people, international treasures. No one steps in to say, "Hold on, you shoot up ‘da place and the wrath of Lono be upon you?"

Anyway, it doesn’t matter, because thief and hostage are gone. It turns out they were working together, and in fact, it’s the woman, named Cindy Patterson, who’s the real mastermind here.

We get back to Kono, Adam, and Gabriel, who’s beating Adam to a pulp. Gabriel wants Adam to transfer all the moola from his family’s Yakuza business to him, but Adam needs that money to buy his way out of the mob. It’s getting brutal, and what’s worse, Gabriel has invited another guy to the party. He’s wearing a white mask and carrying a briefcase. I think it’s a Japanese-style assassin’s mask, and it looks darn ghostly.

Back to the fellas and that painting. Jerry figures it’s a treasure map of some sort. He thinks the pirates were unable to get off the island and had to hide the treasure, so they tore a hole in the painting to indicate their hiding spot, way, way up in the jungle. Whether pirates really were that good at surveying is another question, but anyhow, the team is off to the mountains, where they find a body in a cave, but no treasure.

The body is the historian, but it turns out he died accidentally, not from being tortured by the thief and his faux hostage, Ms. Patterson. So while a few questions have been answered, the whole thing has been a bit of a wild goose chase. Eventually, the team traces the pair to a boat. They raid the vessel, but they don’t find the couple, only the painting, which has been busted out of its frame.

Things are getting really dicey for Kono and Adam. The masked guy has pulled out one of Kono’s teeth—will we see that lovely smile again?—and is about to rip out another, so Adam relents. He can’t just give Gabriel the account number, though. The transaction has to be performed in person, by Adam, at the bank.

The fellas, meanwhile, are trying to figure out what the real deal is with the painting. Jerry comes to the rescue again, noticing that the frame of the painting actually indicates another location of the treasure. It’s also revealed that the Evil Ms. Patterson is none other than the granddaughter of Mr. Washburn, the pirate, who worked for awhile at Bishop Museum before being dismissed for some as-yet unspecified reason.

So the team heads off to the new site. Kono, meanwhile, is left only with the white-masked torturer while Gabriel and Adam go to the bank. Since this is Hawaii, the white-masked torturer is out on the lanai enjoying the view of the beach, oblivious to the fact that the beaches are public in Hawaii, and that folks often walk along the beach behind houses and might be suspicious at the sight of a guy in a white mask and a black, blood-spattered suit. After all, it’s hot wearing black.

He also has conveniently left a scalpel within Kono’s reach, and quick as a whippet, it’s in his throat, and she roars off in a Ferrari to the bank, thinking it’s faster than a phone call. By the time she arrives, though, Adam has withdrawn his money. There’s a shootout at the bank, and Adam gets shot, so Kono has to pause to check him out and Gabriel gets away.

The guys, by this time, have gone to the new treasure location, now the site of a house. There’s more hostages, but all comes out well, with Steve taking out the Evil Ms. Patterson. A treasure chest is there too, but it contains just a few pieces of silverware and other knicknacks.

It turns out Washburn was fired for stealing the items from Bishop Museum. He’d lied about being a pirate and being part of the raid back in 1884, if it even happened. Aaargh.

The episode ends with the team at the hospital, waiting for the outcome of Adam’s surgery. It’s a desperate situation, especially since Adam and Kono no longer have the money to pay off the Yakuza. Unlike the ending of many "Five-0" episodes, it’s no day at the beach.

And that major spoiler? Here it is, I’m giving you plenty of opportunities to turn your eyes away. This is your last chance:

Steve’s going to ask Catherine to marry him. That’s what he told Danny in the car.