S08.E04: Black Market

[Trey]

Quote

A Triad assassin poisons a Homeland Security agent; the discovery of a warehouse of counterfeit purses reveals a money trail to stolen government funds; Nell joins the team in the field.

[anna0852]

Am I crazy?  I thought  the start time for this was 8:30. I missed half the episode! 

[secnarf]

You didn't miss much.
It struck me as a very filler episode.

And please for the love of god, I do not want to see any relationship between Kensi's mother and Granger.

I am also supremely annoyed that Kensi responded to Hetty when she was unresponsive to Deeks (and even her mother).

[anna0852]

Yeah, I caught the last half hour and I agree with you. Fortunately, I don't think Granger would go there. To me that scene felt like him realizing it was one of those times when he had to pretend to be human and interact with world  in a non 'extremely terse' manner. I don't think he was expecting to run into Julia and the whole thing just got awkward.

I did like him telling Nell to just call him Granger. 

Not happy Hetty got the hand squeeze. She had better have gone after Deeks before he got out of the building. 

I'll have to reserve commentary on the first half until after I see it! Stupid CBS. Can't wait for football season to be over. Maybe we'll get lucky and Bull will tank, leaving a 9 pm slot available on Tuesdays.

[EtheltoTillie]

Whatever the flaws, I was still a bit teary eyed at the end. 

Is this really supposed to stay in the Sunday slot?

[Jaybird]

This was a pretty awful episode.  The plot was incoherent, the efforts at humor were forced and missed the mark badly. The funniest moment for me was the hand squeeze, and I'm pretty sure that was supposed to be dramatic.  

[Skycatcher]

It was so Mary Sue of Hetty to get the hand squeeze, but she did give a trained agent a direct order.  I can accept that somehow that got through to "Miss Bly" when softer approaches didn't work.  But yeah, she better hit the floor running after Deeks. 

But as Deeks, I'd be a bit put out that my "fiance" squeezed the boss's hand, and not mine!  (Quote marks because she hasn't said yes yet.)

Edited October 17, 2016 by Skycatcher

[MissLucas]

Well, Hetty ordering the hand squeeze reminded me of Gibbs ordering the DiNozzo not to die in the plague episode - bit of mothership DNA shimmering through.

I was glad Nell is a horrible driver - at least one skill missing from the little human Swiss Army knife.

[llewis823]

Does anyone else think Deeks is going to lose the ring? He did not put it back in the little cup with a secure lid - he stuck it in his pants pocket. 

[Jillibean]

Quote

Yeah, I caught the last half hour and I agree with you. Fortunately, I don't think Granger would go there. 

Oh, I totally thought they were going there. And I will continue to think so until proven otherwise. These writers are not generally subtle. I'm sure they would have liked to pair Roberta with Granger for the Deeks hijinks, but that would make no sense whatsoever. At least Julia has an appropriate temperament for Granger and previous experience being married to a Marine. But yeah, I will now be surprised if this doesn't come up as a plot point much later in the season when Kensi is rehab-ed and back with the team. 

I'm not really sure why they thought it was important to have Hetty be the one who coaxes a response out of Kensi, though I'm sure it is just part of the "Hetty is magical and omnipresent" thing they think they have going on with her. I can see the interpretation that Kensi would respond to orders above all else. But I personally don't feel Hetty had earned that moment with Kensi and wasn't a big fan. 

Quote

I was glad Nell is a horrible driver - at least one skill missing from the little human Swiss Army knife.

Except that Kensi is also a bad driver. There used to be tons of jokes about it. So while Nell kept insisting it had nothing to do with stereotypes, both female agents are now canonically bad drivers. (Raises eyebrows at writers.) I was hoping more would be made of Nell not being able to help Deeks bring down the Chinese assassin--it would make sense for her skills not to be as honed, and in that moment I really felt that was what they were going for. That the assassin got away, that she likely wouldn't have gotten away if Kensi were there, and that therefore she was going to step down in favor of a more trained person (Anna) coming in. Instead, it wasn't mentioned and it became all about Nell just feeling weird about taking Kensi's place. 

[MissLucas]

I thought Kensi was a good driver? Why else would Hetty have allowed her to drive her Porsche Spider? Or maybe her driving skills are plot-dependent? I honestly can't remember.

[anna0852]

When did Kensi get accused of being a bad driver? 

Callen has been tagged as one, to the point that he had to go to traffic school back in Season 1 (Hetty was pretty gleeful about not letting him get out of it), but I don't remember anything about Kensi's driving.

I think it's a nice nod to the overall team friendship that Nell feels weird about taking Kensi's place. Talk about awkward. It's not like last time, when it was clearly a temporary thing because Kensi was on assignment. Everyone knew she was coming back. This time, she's hurt and badly. There are no guarantees she'll return and Nell might be feeling that taking the slot is like admitting that there is good chance Kensi won't be okay.

After seeing next week's promo, I wonder if the person that Deeks says needs help is his Mom? Roberta has always struck me as slightly unstable and if she's now having issues, he might be saying he just can't handle that as well right now without taking leave from work. Which gets ECO out for an episode or 2, since he and his wife are expecting their second child any day now and he presumably needs a week or two off.

5 hours ago, Jillibean said:

 

I'm not really sure why they thought it was important to have Hetty be the one who coaxes a response out of Kensi, though I'm sure it is just part of the "Hetty is magical and omnipresent" thing they think they have going on with her. I can see the interpretation that Kensi would respond to orders above all else. But I personally don't feel Hetty had earned that moment with Kensi and wasn't a big fan. 

Hetty has not earned that moment at all. And in my head, she was either texting Deeks or chasing down the hall about 2 nano-seconds later. Following purposeful commands was a huge step forward and the appropriate medical personnel need to be notified as well.

Edited October 18, 2016 by anna0852

[Jaybird]

Kensi's bad driver rep comes from that episode where she was partnered with Callen (and Sam with Deeks), and her driving made him carsick.  Personally I prefer that she not be Little Miss Perfect at everything.

[MissLucas]

But Callen's the only one who ever complained - he probably just got carsick because he's used to Sam's driving style or the car. Hetty giving her the Porsche counts more for me. She's also not perfect, the show has established she's a slob who does not like to work with computers.

[secnarf]

I feel like the characters' driving abilities are more dependent on the plot or whatever joke they want to tell, rather than inherent characteristics. ymmv

[betsyboo]

3 hours ago, anna0852 said:

After seeing next week's promo, I wonder if the person that Deeks says needs help is his Mom? Roberta has always struck me as slightly unstable and if she's now having issues, he might be saying he just can't handle that as well right now without taking leave from work. Which gets ECO out for an episode or 2, since he and his wife are expecting their second child any day now and he presumably needs a week or two off.

<FYI, ECO & SWO had their baby in August. Esme Olivia><if it matters to anyone>

[Jillibean]

1 hour ago, MissLucas said:

But Callen's the only one who ever complained - he probably just got carsick because he's used to Sam's driving style or the car. Hetty giving her the Porsche counts more for me. She's also not perfect, the show has established she's a slob who does not like to work with computers.

She also once pulled out without looking and got into an accident, preventing them from following a suspect--which Deeks gave her a hard time about. And in the first season I'm pretty sure there were a number of jokes about her destruction of various vehicles through careless driving, though I might be misremembering. I mean, I don't care about Kensi's driving. I just think it's ironic that they scripted Nell as having a conversation that explicitly mentioned that her bad driving wasn't related to being a woman when they have made bad driving jokes at the expense of both female field agents. And I personally found it weird in context, since the conversation was basically, "Sorry my driving makes you miss Kensi!" when it's in fact been implied that Deeks gave Kensi a hard time about her driving also. 

Quote

I feel like the characters' driving abilities are more dependent on the plot or whatever joke they want to tell, rather than inherent characteristics. ymmv

And this, I totally agree with. It has annoyed me on more than one occasion that I seem to remember more about things that have been referred to or introduced on this show than the writers. 

[anna0852]

22 minutes ago, betsyboo said:

<FYI, ECO & SWO had their baby in August. Esme Olivia><if it matters to anyone>

Wow I totally missed that! Congrats to them.

[Rambler]

Why would NCIS be investigating the murder of two DHS agents? What did they have to do with the Navy? Sheesh the writers on this show are getting lazy. Just have the poisoned guy’s friend be a sailor or have the party be at a house that an admiral was trying to sell or something. There wasn’t even the obligatory line from Granger where he says: "The head of the DHS asked us to investigate because he suspects a mole within the department and the FBI can't do it because they are all busy investigating Hillary’s e-mails."