Meta on Commute: 1.02 “’Ohana”

[eumelia]

Body, Mind, Spirit and Heart

Plot. There was a plot?

Oh yes, Toast’s great debut, wish he had stayed – gotta love the lollypopping pot-head with a crush on Danny. “Jersey”, gotta love it. Also, I am forever endeared to Steve for telling us what marijuana is called on the islands.

“Pakalolo”.

Any way, the whole Serbian terrorist plot thing? *handwave* not really relevant to what I have to say. I mean yeah, father-son, danger, yada yada yada, not all the unique and okay, it does give a bit of teeny-tiny insight into Steve, but it’s very dull and doesn’t actually give us insight that is of any real relevance. The procedural part is another way in which the characters are set up, this time as members of a team, as opposed to the Pilot, where they are set up as people with particular character arcs.

In that respect the opening sequence after the credits is particularly fascinating, because Jack’s voice over (quoted below) establishes everything that was wrong in Steve’s original family dynamic. (An NSA agent who spends his time trying to figure out how to hack into the government, is a better father than Jack McGarrett – duh!)

When he was 5-years-old I asked my son, Steve, what he wanted to be when he grew up. “I want to be a cop, Dad, like you.” I told him to be anything but that. The life of a cop is not easy. It’s not that I’m not proud of the work that I did, but more than anything I have regrets. The toll that it took on my family, the way it hurt them - it’s something I think about every day. Now I’m alone here. Losing my wife was almost unbearable, but giving up my kids… that just broke me. I’m so proud of them but they’d never know it. I’ve missed so much of their lives, watching them grow up and all. I guess that’s the way it has to be until I figure this out.

Emphasis by me.

The thing about Jack’s voiceover in this little montage is that it utterly belies the way functional families, and teams, actually work – it’s no surprise that this episode it called “’Ohana”, which we know is Hawaiian for “Family”, because one of the best things about “Hawaii Five-0” as a show, is its portrayal as a family of choice.

The show chooses each sentence by focusing on different teammates:

The life of a cop isn’t easy; is placed firmly in Kono’s court, and in this episode she is once again isolated from the team, kidnapped, taken hostage and is basically the episode’s punching bag – not fun, but at the end she looks at her face in the mirror and is proud of her bruises – battle scars, signs of a true warrior – for Kono, being a cop isn’t just about upholding the law, it’s about being a guardian on the island, more on that in a bit.

[M]ore than anything, I have regrets; Oh, Chin. Chin’s dishonor is a constant in this first half of the first season, it his defining trait. It comes up several time, like a sledgehammer, that he is distrusted and that he is tainted. Moreover, that his taint is carried over to Kono as his relative, not because someone actually suggests this, but because Chin himself thinks he is tainted due to what happened, all of it… say it with me… in the name of love (our hindsight tells us). Love is Chin’s great motivator, more than anyone else on the show, all the things that Chin does is for love and loyalty to family (be it blood or chosen).

The toll that it took on my family, the way it hurt them; No surprise that this is put on Danny as he ushers Grace to a the school bus. Danny’s need for family is epic; he wants and needs structure in order to feel meaningful, a family, in which he knows who he is and that he’s good at what he does.

And Steve is listening to all this. You could take it to mean that the above is Steve projecting what he’s listening to onto his new team, as I said, belying the disturbing dynamic of what Jack describes and the new shiny family he now has to prove he can head – he knows he can, he’s a leader, a team leader, but I don’t think he knows how that is translatable to family.

So, in the opening sequence we have the team doing their separate and individual activities, each signifying different aspects of who they are on the team, let me be so bold as to go symbolic – it may also end up a tiny bit essentialist when it comes to the way their various gender aspects come into play, but that is something the show plays on and I can’t really avoid it.

I have in mind a metaphor of the body when it comes to the team, one that is brought into completion with the final sequence, in which the three men create an initiation ceremony for Kono – she was initiated in the Pilot, obviously, but one must stand on ceremony.

As I said in the meta for the Pilot, Kono is mentored by three men, with the gifts that they give her, they represent the different aspects of a trinity that put together a more stable structure of family.

Steve gives her a gun, a symbol of the physical body. Chin gives her a flashlight, a symbol of the mind and the rationale, a drawback to the notion of enlightenment. Danny gives her a saint medallion, representing the spirit.

All these gifts make an appearance at least once over the course of canon, if I’m not mistaken.

With Steve being the body, Chin the mind and Danny the spirit, Kono’s role is the heart (a role she portrayed in the episode has she comforted the boy with the kidnapped father), but more often than not, each team member gets a chance to be either part of the greater structure – Danny is quite often the heart in the team dynamic, whereas Kono is the spirit. Chin is also the spirit, as often as Danny is the mind. Steve, when he is the heart, is a broken one.

The next Meta of Commute is for episode 1.03 “Malama Ka Aina”, one of my personal favourites of Season 1.