NCIS: Hawai’i Deserved Better. We Deserved Better

CBS has just canceled NCIS Hawai’i and the overwhelming feeling is sadness. But it’s not just sadness. It’s anger. It’s impotence. And yes, it’s an ever-present sense of: what else could we have done? What is the shifting goalpost, particularly for a diverse and well-received show, part of a franchise that just celebrated 1000 episodes, featuring the franchise’s first female lead and first LGBTQ+ ship?

The sad answer seems to be there’s nothing NCIS: Hawai’i could have done differently. This decision has very little to do with the show itself.

And I have issues with the shortened Season 3 of NCIS: Hawai’i, a show I have loved since the beginning. Not huge issues, but issues that could have made the show better, and issues I hoped to see fixed in a Season 4.

No one who has spent 14 years with Sam Hanna would complain about more of him, but the storyline the show used to bring him to Hawai’i never really made much sense. Sam was supposed to be looking for Hetty alongside Callen, and if he wasn’t tying up that loose NCIS: Los Angeles end, then why was he even in Hawai’i? The show still hasn’t told us, and all the time spent setting up a new thing for Sam feels like time wasted that could have been spent with the characters we already knew — or at least, integrating Sam into the dynamics.

Then there’s the criminal lack of Kacy, our main ship. We’ve gotten little moments here and there, but we didn’t even get one episode that was truly about them, and even the undercover hour felt just like the setup for more (that now we’ll never get) than a substantial amount of Kacy. Procedurals live and die by their ships, and if Season 3 floundered a little bit it’s because it had way too little of the main ship that made the show as interesting as it was.

Even with these issues, NCIS: Hawai’i still feels like a superior bet going into a possible Season 4 than a prequel based on Leroy Jethro Gibbs, a character we’ve already had on NCIS for almost two decades, and a Tiva spinoff that, as good as it sounds on paper, still involves a man who has a history of workplace harassment. Mark Harmon built the NCIS franchise, but Harmon won’t be on screen for the prequel. And sure, we loved Tiva, and our nostalgic hearts probably always will, but it’s hard to ignore the Michael Weatherly-shaped elephant in the room. CBS is fine settling harassment suits in his stead but not good with continuing with the most diverse NCIS spinoff. Is that what we’re hearing?

Because yes, that’s what we’re losing. The first female-led NCIS spinoff. The most diverse. The one featuring a main LGBTQ+ ship. And what are we gaining? More Gibbs? More of his rules? The backstory on some of them? Sounds like riveting television.

In the end, TV is a business. We understand that. The numbers have to make sense. Sometimes they don’t. But the case of NCIS: Hawai’i doesn’t seem to be as clear-cut. This isn’t an under-performing show no one was watching. This is a show that did well, part of a beloved franchise that’s set to continue. The problem is just that, with a stacked schedule going into next year, CBS had some tough decisions to make. And in Hollywood, when tough decisions have to be made, diversity always seems to lose out. That’s the name of the game.

And on Lesbian Visibility Week, too. Talk about rubbing salt in the wound.

NCIS: Hawai’i deserved better. The entire cast deserved better. And we, the fans, deserved so much better than this.