Roundtable Discussion – Part Two: NCISLA Mid Season 7 Review

It’s that time again….The wikiDeeks staff  is back with another roundtable discussion and a review of Season 7 so far. The team has a lot to say about this season but we all agree it’s been a banner Densi year so far and we’re looking forward to seeing what the rest of the year brings. Join the discussion in the comments section below and let us know your thoughts. Here’s what our contributors had to say…

Part Two

Diane: So do we want to talk specifically about “Internal Affairs” and the episodes leading up to it? Because I think this first half of the season has really been a Densifest so far, which has been very nice, but I don’t know what we’re going to get in the second half.  How about if we talk a little bit about how much you liked “Internal Affairs,” because I’m assuming everybody here did, and what they did right, and maybe some of the things that they could have been improved on.

Karen P.: I thought one of the things that they did really well was everything leading up to that episode, where they dropped all these little hints that now when I go back and rewatch these earlier episodes from this season, I see even more to those hints. Like in the season premiere when he’s telling Kensi for the first time about his ex-partner who was killed and he tells this lie to her about how he was killed, and then he looks up at her to basically see if she bought his lie, and it’s so interesting to look back on it now. They dropped hints like that throughout, leading up to it, that were just the right amount of vague but foreshadowing.

Diane: I just happened to watch it again last night, and going through it, it pretty much starts out with Callen’s attitude. What was the whole thing in the beginning where Callen and Sam come up to Granger and say “We need to know what’s going on,” and he says, “You should have known a whole lot sooner.” I’m not exactly sure what that meant. And then of course Callen takes it to Hetty because he’s pissed off because he’s not sure what game she’s playing. So what did you guys get from that?

Tess: I thought Granger figured they would have confronted Deeks at some point during the six months that this was going on to say, “Why are these people looking into you? What’s going on here? There’s got to be something going on. It’s not like you took doughnuts from the local coffee shop and didn’t pay for them. If they’re going through your garbage, what’s going on?” And did Sam and Callen even mention the Internal Affairs investigation once during the first half of the season?

Diane: I don’t think so.

Tess: It was always Kensi, Granger and Hetty.

Lindy: What I took from that was he didn’t think they were paying attention. It’s almost like they didn’t care. I remember that line when Callen confronts Hetty about “Do you really want us to look into this? You brought him here,” which I really instantly disliked. But she says, “Don’t you want to help Detective Deeks?” So it’s like they’re creating a little bit of tension here between those two characters, Callen and Deeks, and it’s like Granger’s kind of realized they didn’t really care that much. And that’s sad.

Gayle: I’ll add on to what Tess said. Building up toward this, they all knew this Internal Affairs investigation was hanging over his head, and they did keep getting these little hints about them being followed, and those kinds of things. The other thing that I took from that exact scene was the issue that it seemed like Granger and Nell and Eric had been working, and Kensi had been figuring out where Deeks was, that they were holding him, and the guys were sort of just taking a nap. And so obviously, that was the response that Granger should have had if that was the intent.

Karen S.: Honestly, the first part of that show made me really upset because Callen and Sam are doing their little banter back and forth and they don’t even mention Deeks, they don’t care that he’s in jail, they don’t care if anything’s going on, and it really kind of upset me that they weren’t concerned about figuring out a way to get him out.

Lindy: Agreed.

Randy: Agreed, yes.

Lindy: And why do we think that is? I thought that was very odd. Was it just a way to bring some banter in to lighten the atmosphere or is there more significance to that?

Randy: Yeah, I think there was something. I don’t know if it’s something the writers are planning to bring up later on in the season, but especially between Callen and Deeks, there always seems to be, even more so from when Sam was questioning Deeks’ character because of his dress and his haircut, Callen’s just doing more of that. I don’t know if it’s the lone wolf aspect of his character that keeps people at a distance. He and Joelle broke up over New Year’s. Sam’s probably Callen’s only friend that we’ve seen or even heard about, and I just wonder if Callen in his upbringing of foster homes has never been able to trust anyone. That there’s so few people that he really trusts, that with Deeks and then this IA popping up and hanging over them because it would impact NCIS as well… Maybe he is worried that things that Deeks has done in his past may come back to not only haunt him but haunt the rest of the team. But it did really kind of tick me off when he and Sam were just kind of carrying on like it was no big deal when one of their teammates was in jail.

Lindy: I was really kind of baffled by it to be honest. When Sam was in jail, everybody went bananas. And when you think about Callen’s background… I keep flashing back to Romania where he’s after the Comescu’s and he says, “Kill them all.” I mean, he’s not exactly perfect.

Diane: Yeah, he has been, throughout this whole season, dropping a lot of hints about his uneasiness with Deeks. In fact, this morning if you guys happened to be up at six o’clock this morning, there was a marathon going on, and the last show was “Omni.” And of course, the last scene is Callen saying, “I don’t want you here.” So, this has been going on for awhile. I think it had almost as much to do with Deeks being tortured as it was, he’s not sure why Hetty brought him here, he definitely still has no idea why he’s here. And I’m not sure if he still wants him here.

Lindy: I have a thought that’s going to take us into the end of the season. One of my thoughts has always been, maybe they’re setting this up for the ending. I know they’ve kind of talked about and hinted that Sam is going to have a decision to make at the end that’s the hardest one he’s ever had to make. And I’m wondering if they’re not going to pit Deeks and Callen, and he has to choose between those two. Callen’s his partner but Deeks saved his life and saved his wife’s life and was tortured because of it. So I was just wondering if this isn’t one of those little things where they drop hints forever and ever and ever and then bring it to fruition down at the end. Just a thought.

Karen P.: I love that idea and I really hope they do it. Or you should write it!

Lindy: I’m always wrong, you know that. I’m always wrong. [Laughter.]

Diane: Let’s talk a little bit about another side of the episode… We already knew that Kensi knew that Deeks killed Boyle. When did we know in “Internal Affairs” that she knew?

Lindy: I don’t think she ever did on that show.

Karen S.: When she was looking on the laptop, and she closed her eyes and closed the laptop, right before Deeks’ mom came over with the casserole, I kind of think she found something at that point that led her to believe that he was guilty.

Karen P.: I think maybe even when she visited him in jail, and as soon as he says that Tiffany didn’t kill anybody… well how would he know she didn’t kill anybody unless he was involved in the killing somehow? I feel like he gave himself away at that point. You see her face shift and then she runs away. So to me I think that maybe was the moment where she knew for sure.

Lindy: Yeah but after that is when she confronts Hetty and she tells her that she’s pissed and “We know he’s not guilty.”

Randy: She may have been saying he’s not guilty of murder. Killing someone in defense of yourself or defending someone else, that’s different than premeditation. That may have been her point… syntax, you know?

Tess: I agree that the scene where she’s closing the laptop is where she figured it out, but I also think that Deeks’ mother arriving at that point explained where he was coming from. Because when she walked in and she said, “I let a bad thing happen to him when he was a kid…” Deeks has been in the business of protecting females since he was eleven years old basically. And here was a seventeen year old girl that was getting knocked around by a cop who was getting sucked into this criminal transaction that was going on, and nothing good was going to happen to her and she was just going to be a dead seventeen year old prostitute on the street unless he confronted him. And we don’t know how that confrontation with Boyle went anyway. That could have been self defense as much as anything else.

Diane: I didn’t hear this one line the first time I watched the show, but when she goes into Kensi’s house, and she says, “Did you ever think of moving that trash can closer to this room?” I got hysterical, because I didn’t hear it the first time. That was a great line.

Tess: Pamela Reed was a brilliant choice to play his mother.

Diane: Oh yeah.

Lindy: One question I’ve got for everybody is… at the end where they’re asking everybody to go out for drinks and Deeks said he was in and Kensi questioned him about talking to his mother and he doesn’t seem that he wants to do that. Their relationship is interesting… I didn’t quite know how to take that. I don’t know if he doesn’t want to be around her that much, or what? It was confusing to me.

Tess: I think his mother is a long day. She’s a good woman, she is a nice person, but she is a long day. [Laughter.]

Karen S.: I think she’s one of those harpy kind of moms.

Tess: Not harpy, but she’s walking into Kensi’s apartment, she’s cleaning up and talking about them having children. You met the woman six weeks ago- no! Let’s just turn the volume down a little bit. I just think his mother likely is an exhausting presence from time to time and he had had a full day.

Gayle: Yes, I believe she would be a long day, first of all. I see it from the standpoint of when Mom does come into jail, and of course they get into all of his childhood, so that’s obviously not a topic that he’s readily wanted to revisit. And on this day of all days, when he’s been taken into custody and he’s trying to sort of keep this lie intact, and he’s got to get into this physical confrontation with this bad guy and escape… just let the guy go have a drink and go home!

Diane: What I don’t understand is where did this woman come from? How far away was she? It’s obvious that they had a good relationship and he became close to her after what happened with his father and everything, but why during “Personal” did he say when Kensi asked him “Who’s your next of kin?” and he said, “That’s a good question.” Why is she not in the picture at that point? Or are we having canon problems again? Is there a story behind all this?

Lindy: I don’t think he wants her involved in all that goes on around him being undercover because I think she would freak out if she knew the danger he was in all the time. I don’t think she could handle it and I think he knows that and I think he doesn’t want her anywhere close to all that stuff.

Tess: She was calling the dead-for-ten-years Johnnie Cochran to get him out of jail. I can only imagine what a delight she would have been at the hospital after he had been shot. She would have been calling C. Everett Koop or whoever the current Surgeon General is to fly in and take care of her son. I think she’s a great character and she seems like a lovely woman, but it looks like he has been managing her his entire life, and if he’s shot and getting better, he’d rather worry about that than his mother going down and inspecting the Jell-O making to make sure he’s getting proper food. [Laughter.]

Lindy: Yeah, she was really concerned about his complexion.

Tess: She was concerned about every… That whole scene in Kensi’s apartment is hilarious with moving the garbage pail and managing the lives of their future, and unborn, children. Let’s just not go there yet.

Karen P.: To me it’s so interesting, because it becomes so clear why he’s head over heels in love with somebody like Kensi who is so strong and tough and self-sufficient, and everything that his mother isn’t. And he doesn’t have to worry about Kensi the way he has to worry about his mom, and that’s got to just feel so freeing for him.

To Be Continued Tomorrow……