Last week's episode of Hawaii Five-O featured a two-generation story of divorce. Melanie Griffith plays Danno's mom. (Which leads me to wonder, when did Melanie Griffith get old enough to play the mother of a police detective? How time flies.) Danno is expecting his parents to come for a visit, but his mother arrives alone and announces that she is leaving his father.
Later in the episode, Danno talks with his daughter and his mom about his own divorce and how hard it was to tell his daughter that he and her mother were not going to be married anymore. His daughter tells Danno that she remembers that night well and remembers that he then went into his own room and she could hear him crying.
The episode is an interesting twist on a familiar theme. Instead of a character's impending divorce dredging up memories of his parents' divorce, here the parents' impending divorce is bringing back a flood of memories and emotions about his own divorce -- and about his feelings of failure and disappointment as a father.
1 comment:
I saw this episode and thought it was interesting as well. As someone who works with children of divorce, I was struck by the very last seen where it is the child who comforts the adult about their divorce. The scene itself was touching, but it started me thinking about how many of these kids are forced into that role of comforting a parent rather than dealing with their own loss and their own feelings. I know I have personally encountered many kids unwilling to talk about their own hurts because they are afraid that in voicing them they will add to the hurt their parents are already going through. It becomes a tragic cycle where the child never gets to process the grief that they feel over their loss.
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