NCIS: Los Angeles season 9 premiere review: Deeks, Kensi, and Sam developments
When it comes to Sam Hanna, the great news here is that you don’t have to worry about him leaving the team anymore. At the center of the case tonight was a possible missile threat courtesy of North Korea. By the end of the hour, we learned that this entire threat was largely a hoax in order to drive another terrorist operation. Sam started off the episode at the beach enjoying some fishing (surprisingly, not all that much was said about Michelle’s death in the episode), and it took him thinking that the world was about to burn down in order for him to come back.
Then, we bore witness to Callen driving him and Sam into the ocean inside an ambulance when said ambulance actually contained a dangerous bomb. That was a part of the plan that was going to kickstart the host coming into effect. The team succeeded in their mission, but they still got themselves drenched in the process.
Insofar as cases go, this one was an insane start for new Executive Assistant Director Shay Mosley (Nia Long), who was coming on board as a replacement for Granger. First, she saw Sam and Callen cause mass pandemonium, and she also realized that separating Deeks from the rest of the team probably wasn’t all that great of an idea, either. He very much proved his worth. She brought with her a new agent in Harley Hidoko who is her assistant, someone who actually caught Eric and Nell doing a little bit of Hetty-hunting (though she didn’t quite know what they were looking at).
As reported earlier here at CarterMatt, there is no real reason to worry about Hetty’s fate. After all, at the end of the episode it was revealed that the character is actually staying in Vietnam at the moment, and is looking to pursue a valuable case tied to her past. (We were never THAT worried about Hetty leaving for good, but we’ll admit that the show had us paranoid thanks mostly to what happened on Blue Bloods just a mere matter of days ago.)
Great news for Kensi and Deeks
Beyond of course the news that they are engaged and Deeks doesn’t have to work out of the LAPD in a room with all of the dogs, his mother knows about their engagement! Granted, she didn’t learn about it from him. We don’t think the show did a really good job of explaining why he didn’t want to tell her (did he really think that she’d be that much of a source of aggravation), but there were nonetheless some interesting moments between Deeks and his mom that came through in the hour. Take, for example, Marty walking in on her with another guy, otherwise known as the most awkward thing to see imaginable right around the time you’re meaning to tell her you are getting married.
As it turns out, Deeks didn’t even need to go there to tell his mother the truth — she had already learned it from Kensi’s mom.
CarterMatt Verdict
There were a few little issues here and there with NCIS: Los Angeles tonight, namely that they could’ve done more with Deeks and his mom and also Sam dealing with what happened with Michelle. Nonetheless we’d be silly to not praise the show for the crazy ambulance sequence or some of the Deeks dog-related humor. (Plus, did we mention Eric was dressed as a giant avacado at one point?) Also, we’re very curious to see where the Hetty reveal leads.
What did you think in regards to the NCIS: Los Angeles season 9 premiere? Sound off now in the comments!
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