“Ne’e aku, ne’e mai ke one o Punahoa” had a subsidiary theme of ungratefulness, which is an interesting twist to Hawaii Five-0’s usual themes. The more prominent theme was loss, as the opening sequence finds Steve sitting in his bed, reliving moments of last week’s episode as he struggles with the death of his mother.
In true Steve fashion, he doesn’t take nearly enough time to allow himself to process and grieve. The thing is, Steve’s manner of grieving is going back to work, which he does in this episode. Steve needs the distraction, to focus on something else. He needs to feel productive and to help someone else, especially when he doesn’t know how to handle his own emotions. No grieving process is the same, but by now audiences know Steve enough to have expected exactly how he would deal with it.
His Five-0 team obviously share concern over Steve’s mental state, discussing it at different points in the episode. While trekking out in the jungle looking for what a crazed criminal left behind, Adam insists Steve can’t handle the emotional burden alone while Junior takes a step back and returns that all they can do is keep an eye on their leader and friend and be there for him as much as they can.
It wasn’t so surprising that Quinn eventually took the initiative to sit in Steve’s truck with him as he lingers in the parking lot of Kamekona’s. Considering the show has spent a great deal of time emphasizing that Steve and Quinn are basically the same person, of course Quinn would be direct enough to approach Steve and see what’s up with him. She ends up cheering him up to some degree, but when she leaves it gives him the moment he needs to finally get back to Danny, who’s been blowing up Steve’s phone with several messages.
Though the episode included Danny via text message and through Steve’s phone call to his friend to update him, I didn’t like that Danny wasn’t actually present. It didn’t feel right. Danny is Steve’s best friend and has been on the show since its beginning-Danny should have been there in person to have some kind of talk with him or to at least share a few moments’ worth of witty banter.
While there was room for Steve’s grieving process to be further explored, I understood that it wouldn’t suit Steve’s character. Steve doesn’t dwell. He just goes on by increments, one step at a time, learning to find footing until he does. That’s why the topic of Steve’s grief would come and go – it was an echo of Steve’s character and an attribute to his personality. Though there certainly should’ve been at least a mention of Steve making funeral arrangements or contacting his sister.
On the other hand, it seems the storyline that received the most attention throughout the episode was Lou’s niece Siobhan (Nia Holloway) coming to town for basketball tryouts. Lou hasn’t had very many storylines centering around him lately, but this storyline didn’t play out at the right time, especially so soon after the emotionally heavy previous episode.
Lou deals with his “ungrateful” niece until he finds out the truth behind her actions and why she’s not appreciating her opportunities. She’s troubled and has had some unfortunate incidents back home in Chicago, which is preventing her admission with a scholarship to a Hawaiian college.
Lou went to all the trouble to arrange a tryout for his niece to play against Metta World Peace, a former professional basketball player. Apparently Lou knows people, and Metta owed Lou some kind of favor. Not to mention that Lou also arranged to have a University of Hawaii women’s basketball coach there to witness Siobhan play against Metta. That’s an opportunity almost no one has, so you’d think Siobhan would stop giving her uncle a hard time and be straight with him.
Instead, she causes more trouble by running off once she overhears Lou and his wife discussing how they would make it work should Siobhan live with them and go to school. She takes off believing she’s not wanted. Understandably her feelings were hurt but she didn’t know the whole story, just like she hadn’t told Lou the whole story of what went on back in Chicago.
Siobhan was being incredibly ungrateful considering all the things her family was doing for her, but she manages to turn it around by the end of the episode-as it turns out, she wants to be a cop like her uncle. The heartbreaking flashback of Lou helping his niece feel safe though her mother’s body was nearby was a powerful influence for Siobhan to decide what career she wished to pursue. She’ll have to learn to be more grateful if she’s going to be a cop, but she does have promise.
Even more ungrateful was the criminal, Ben Tam (Garret T. Sato), who winds up in the jungle in the middle of nowhere suffering from extreme exposure. He is rescued by helicopter when two hikers call it in, but he pushes out the medics, sending them falling to their deaths. He forces the pilot to land and then kills him too. Tam has motive for not wanting to visit an ER – he left 100 million dollars’ worth of heroin back in the jungle, and he intends to retrieve it before someone else does.
Tam is pretty savage, from taking out paramedics in the helicopter to killing a store owner with a snowglobe of all things. Grateful is the last word in his vocabulary, alongside humanity. It just goes to show how money or criminality, or both, can change a person and shift their morals so drastically that it practically erases any morals they once had.
Jesse Johnson made an appearance as DEA agent Richie Gormican, who turns out to be dirty. Instead of turning in the drugs as he said he would, he decides to keep them for himself and pocket the cash. There was something off about Gormican from the start – the guy was too flashy and obnoxious to be an agent. He even flirted with Quinn, who immediately rebuffed his weak advances.
Johnson’s character strongly reminded me of Don Johnson’s Sonny Crockett on “Miami Vice”, but that’s not surprising considering Jesse is Don’s real-life son. It would be interesting to see Richie Gormican again in future episodes, as his character is not your typical DEA agent – beyond turning drug dealer, the guy just doesn’t scream official. Steve never trusted Gormican, but he has a moment where he fears his grief deriving from his mother’s death may have clouded his judgment regarding Richie.
He still got Gormican, but it’s a good question. Steve did go back to work, perhaps too soon, but that’s just how Steve is. Yet, that kind of thing builds up over time and could certainly cloud his judgment-while it may have turned out fine this time and they caught Gormican and stopped the sale of any drugs from the haul, next time it may not turn out so well.
The storyline regarding Cullen (Rob Morrow), who died in an explosion earlier this season, came back to light when Five-0 realized the heroin was related to the “bigger conspiracy” that Cullen had mentioned. Whatever is going on is definitely huge, but their one good link (Cullen’s former fixer) to discovering what that conspiracy is, is murdered in this episode’s conclusion while in the hospital.
This development will no doubt make the Hawaii Five-0 team, especially Steve, more desperate for answers to stop whatever is happening before it’s too late, as well as stop anyone else dying because of it.
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