NCIS: LA double bill
Sep. 7th, 2017 05:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shallowness4.11 Drive
Caught up with this, and from the outset, I was glad I did because it featured an old legal client of Deeks’s. In the opening tag I went from ‘Don’t phone and drive!’ to ‘Actually, you’re in the opening tag, you’re a goner anyway’ to ‘Oh, you know Deeks.’
I can’t be bothered to work out if this was aired around the time of the film of the same name, but although it revolved around stolen cars, the opening tag was about the only time anyone drove around LA at night.
There was post-Christmas kiss Eric and Nell. My theory is that her resolution is about complicated feelings about kissing him, because they ended that scene grinning at each other as if they’d been engaged in what the human race would recognise as flirting instead of the awkward version the show had come up with. I also doubt that Nell doing without technology over a weekend would last much longer than Sam and Kensi’s resolutions did.
Kensi was a bit brutal about Deeks’s link to Jenny and her daughter. (Turned out his instincts about keeping Jenny and Talia were right, though.)
Lots of very nice little details in this episode, actually, from Kensi having greeted the Latino landscaper in Spanish, which just seemed like a character moment, turning out to be dangerous because he was the black hat; that you could see Deeks still twirling the arrow in the background of a wide shot at the garage; the way he went off to change a shirt because he thought Kensi had picked up on his (not subtle) hints about his birthday. She hadn’t, and I liked the twists of ‘aw, that’s a nice thing to do to the guy who saved her life’ to ‘ugh, he is a criminal who took advantage of the situation. Make him pick up the tab, Kensi.’
Meanwhile, I’ll take any shout-out to Bringing Up Baby, and the complicated set up to get Kensi in with the gang, meaning Callen and Sam were in cop uniforms did unsurprisingly lead to trouble.
4.12 Paper Soldiers 4.14 Kill House (for some reason shown out of order)
TEAM! The plot required the fab four (do they have a name as a grouping?) to be taken apart by a team whom they and Granger suspected of being baduns, and so they kept being beaten. I didn’t think ‘not working together as a team’ fully explained why they kept falling into traps that I saw a second after they’d been set and before the team realised. Some of it was them acting as individuals maybe, bad calls from Callen as the leader, Deeks not passing on info once, but it was mainly the plot requiring it and them being set up to fail as part of the training.
Anyway, as things got ratcheted up – first by the death of an annoying character, then by Granger not having told our lot everything and then Nell. Got. Taken. – we had a reason and a scenario where our team could ‘trust their training’ (and Kensi got to use real knives. Ahem.) The character development for Nell was the best thing, as she was smart enough to catch Callen’s drift, the bad guy underestimated her and she saved herself. I also loved the moment where Eric played the grown-up to Hetty and Granger, who were disagreeing about who was in charge, pointing out that Nell. Was. In. Danger and they needed to focus on that. The hug and the reaction to Nell saying she was interested in training to be an undercover operative, maybe, was heartwarming. But it was a canny exploration of Nell as a member of the team, the team being the super seven, and how they all felt about her – I could live with even more Kensi-Nell interaction, SHOW – reflecting how the viewers felt.
I also think that, after G, and even though she luffs them all, Hetty has a major soft spot for Nell because they are both small and mighty.
But Hetty managed Callen very nicely. I thought they were on better terms with Granger now than they were for the purposes of this episode. Obviously, his keeping our team in the dark and what he did to the leader of the other team deserved censure, but Hetty deflected the wrath of Callen very nicely. ‘Aw, Mom, you made me feel sorry for the other guy.’
Some nice vulnerability from Deeks and Kensi as the ‘weaker’ members of the team in that scenario. But I think, beyond the broad team feels this ep gave, this was a weaker one than the last. I watched this live the same night as I'd seen the previous episode.
Promising news about Arrested Development season 5 here. After season 4, (and 3, if I’m honest) I want it to be less clever(-clever) and more funny, and yes, to have more of the family interacting.
Caught up with this, and from the outset, I was glad I did because it featured an old legal client of Deeks’s. In the opening tag I went from ‘Don’t phone and drive!’ to ‘Actually, you’re in the opening tag, you’re a goner anyway’ to ‘Oh, you know Deeks.’
I can’t be bothered to work out if this was aired around the time of the film of the same name, but although it revolved around stolen cars, the opening tag was about the only time anyone drove around LA at night.
There was post-Christmas kiss Eric and Nell. My theory is that her resolution is about complicated feelings about kissing him, because they ended that scene grinning at each other as if they’d been engaged in what the human race would recognise as flirting instead of the awkward version the show had come up with. I also doubt that Nell doing without technology over a weekend would last much longer than Sam and Kensi’s resolutions did.
Kensi was a bit brutal about Deeks’s link to Jenny and her daughter. (Turned out his instincts about keeping Jenny and Talia were right, though.)
Lots of very nice little details in this episode, actually, from Kensi having greeted the Latino landscaper in Spanish, which just seemed like a character moment, turning out to be dangerous because he was the black hat; that you could see Deeks still twirling the arrow in the background of a wide shot at the garage; the way he went off to change a shirt because he thought Kensi had picked up on his (not subtle) hints about his birthday. She hadn’t, and I liked the twists of ‘aw, that’s a nice thing to do to the guy who saved her life’ to ‘ugh, he is a criminal who took advantage of the situation. Make him pick up the tab, Kensi.’
Meanwhile, I’ll take any shout-out to Bringing Up Baby, and the complicated set up to get Kensi in with the gang, meaning Callen and Sam were in cop uniforms did unsurprisingly lead to trouble.
TEAM! The plot required the fab four (do they have a name as a grouping?) to be taken apart by a team whom they and Granger suspected of being baduns, and so they kept being beaten. I didn’t think ‘not working together as a team’ fully explained why they kept falling into traps that I saw a second after they’d been set and before the team realised. Some of it was them acting as individuals maybe, bad calls from Callen as the leader, Deeks not passing on info once, but it was mainly the plot requiring it and them being set up to fail as part of the training.
Anyway, as things got ratcheted up – first by the death of an annoying character, then by Granger not having told our lot everything and then Nell. Got. Taken. – we had a reason and a scenario where our team could ‘trust their training’ (and Kensi got to use real knives. Ahem.) The character development for Nell was the best thing, as she was smart enough to catch Callen’s drift, the bad guy underestimated her and she saved herself. I also loved the moment where Eric played the grown-up to Hetty and Granger, who were disagreeing about who was in charge, pointing out that Nell. Was. In. Danger and they needed to focus on that. The hug and the reaction to Nell saying she was interested in training to be an undercover operative, maybe, was heartwarming. But it was a canny exploration of Nell as a member of the team, the team being the super seven, and how they all felt about her – I could live with even more Kensi-Nell interaction, SHOW – reflecting how the viewers felt.
I also think that, after G, and even though she luffs them all, Hetty has a major soft spot for Nell because they are both small and mighty.
But Hetty managed Callen very nicely. I thought they were on better terms with Granger now than they were for the purposes of this episode. Obviously, his keeping our team in the dark and what he did to the leader of the other team deserved censure, but Hetty deflected the wrath of Callen very nicely. ‘Aw, Mom, you made me feel sorry for the other guy.’
Some nice vulnerability from Deeks and Kensi as the ‘weaker’ members of the team in that scenario. But I think, beyond the broad team feels this ep gave, this was a weaker one than the last. I watched this live the same night as I'd seen the previous episode.
Promising news about Arrested Development season 5 here. After season 4, (and 3, if I’m honest) I want it to be less clever(-clever) and more funny, and yes, to have more of the family interacting.
