NCIS: LA - Beacon

Not going to lie, I definitely read the title as 'bacon' when I first saw it. Probably as a result of the bacon I just had for dinner. Nom.

Oh look, Arkady is back! Oh look, he's wrestling with someone. Oh look, an explosion! Oh look.. I'm pretty sure he's dead.

Thank you for the re-enactment, Jon.

Callen is dropping off his lady friend and she's all skeptical about whether he'll actually be around that evening like he says. Makes me wonder what exactly these people do on their days off. Work out? Target practice? Sit around practicing their quipping? She says "I'm still getting used to this". You've had four months lady! Why is this complaining only happening now? Also where the heck have you been for the last four months?!

MISSING: Have you seen this woman? Oh, nevermind. There she is.

Granger doesn't want Kensi and Deeks in the field together. Because they have fun when they're together, and Granger is against that. (Just kidding. It's actually because of that LAPD investigation about him. That hasn't been mentioned for weeks, I'd almost forgotten about that). Hetty says Callen is sad not because Arkady was his friend, but because he was possibly the last link to his father and his family. *Cue the sympathetic tears for the misunderstood orphan hero*

Callen finds a pocketwatch from the KGB on the body, which apparently Arkady always carried with him. He also looks at the burned body and says "There's no way of knowing who this is." THAT'S BULLCRAP. BONES WOULD HAVE IT DONE IN FIVE MINUTES. Actually, Angela would probably scan the head and be like "well various parts of the face burn at different rates so I reverse-burnt them and here's his face."

Not that Angela isn't a genius, but COME ON WHERE IS THE REALITY?!

Apparently Eric has taught Callen that origin stories tend to disappoint. He's not wrong. But Callen likening himself to a superhero is so cheesy... Ugh. Also, apparently Callen has been to Arkady's house a few times. Because "he has a nice pool". Suuuuuuure Callen.

Deeks found some fingerprints and ran through a crime scene scenario. Which Kensi finds pretty hot. I concur, Kensi. Also pretty observant of him. He and Kensi found a deed to a yacht hidden in a frame.

Eric is a little resentful of Deeks and I don't know why... Apparently he's jealous of his hair. But Eric has nice hair too!

Be proud of your hair, Eric. Actually, be proud of your face, too.

He and Nell figure out something smart and then Eric says "I love you!" OH MY GOD. Which obviously was because of how excited he was about her idea, but then he covers it by saying "By that, I mean your mind. Your beautiful, gorgeous mind." AWWWWEEE!!!! And then he makes it creepy/weird again by saying he wants to take some of it home with him and she says that's like a lobotomy and he realizes she's right and I am still squealing internally because THIS IS THE ERIC AND NELL BANTER I'VE BEEN WAITING FOR ALL SEASON!!

I'M SO HAPPY RIGHT NOW!!!

Callen is eating tofu. Voluntarily. That's weird. Apparently it was Joelle's idea. And he actually listened? We finally address the stuff Callen does on his day off, and I was right, it is all work-related stuff. He has no hobbies. And he also sleeps on the floor. What a weirdo.

After Eric has freaked out about the person they discovered in the video footage - we cut to Callen and Sam and Arkady walks up to them all casual and says hi. Which I totally called. Clearly he's alive. It's right in the episode description that a 'murder victim shows up alive and asks for their help.' SHOCKING!

Arkady is funny. He wants bagpipes for his funeral. And the guy in the car is the guy we saw him struggling with at the beginning of the episode, he ended up shooting that guy with his own gun. AND his car was already rigged to explode. What the shit?! Who does that?!! What if he accidentally hit that button on the remote? What if someone rear-ended him?? That is insane.

Arkady is not being helpful, he doesn't want to be in the interview room, he wants coffee, he calls kayaks 'canoes'. But seriously, the boatshed is nice. The Coast Guard finds that the yacht might actually be a cargo ship, because it has a transponder.

Arkady is worried about a random girl who's on his phone, and admits that he set up a deal between American people with ships, and Russians with cargo. Also the guy whose fingerprints were in Arkady's ransacked house was a suspended LAPD officer who now works for the sketchy shipping company. He was the one who Arkady shot and then blew up, but he was working with another guy, also an ex-cop, who they can't find.

Deeks is all sad and sighing and gloomy and Kensi asks him if there's anything bad that IA might find, and he doesn't know how to answer that. Sad Deeks face.

Arkady tells Hetty that's it's 'nice to see her again', and she responds "I wish I could say the same, but my mother raised me not to tell lies."

Haha so witty Hetty. Although that in itself was a lie, because she lies all the time. PARADOX ALERT!

The ship was full of oil. 100 million dollars' worth of oil, to be exact. HOLY SHIT. Damn oil. Apparently that's enough to start a war. No kidding.

I'm sorry, did someone say 'oil'?

The sketchy siblings who own the sketchy shipping company are stereotypically sketchy to the max. And the bad cop who Kensi and Deeks were tailing is on his way to meet them. For some more sketchy dealings, no doubt. Turns out the bad guy is not the one who they were looking for, he's dead and in the trunk of his own car. But they go into the stairway so naturally that concrete interrupts their radio and Callen and Sam can't hear them. Somehow yelling 'gun' and causing mass panic lets all the civilians know who the BAD guy with the gun is... No one ducks and runs from Sam. He didn't even try to shoot Arkady, he just shoots the shipping company owners. And then Sam shoots him. He was a Russian contract killer.

Callen returns the pocketwatch to Arkady and they exchange Russian phrases. Yaaaay symbolic gestures! And Arkady calls Callen 'my friend' as he leaves, so THEY TOTALLY ARE FRIENDS.

Hetty has a feeling that 'the day is not yet over'. And Nell says that the tanker is not where it's supposed to be. So now Hetty wants to talk to Arkady again, but that's gonna be easier said than done.

I really wish there'd been more resolution to the Nell/Eric awkward cuteness, but hey, those few scenes we had with them were a lot more than we've had in recent weeks. I'll take it!
Also, someone give Deeks a hug.

NCIS:LA - Reign Fall

So I knew Daniela Ruah was married, but I had no idea who her husband was until I started following her on Instagram last week - his name is David and HE'S ERIC CHRISTIAN OLSEN'S OLDER BROTHER!!! So not only are they super-close coworkers, but now they're actually family!! How awesome is that!! David's also Eric's stunt double on the show - I bet he wishes he could be his makeout stand-in too... That must be a little awkward. Maybe he should go on Sarah Wright Olsen (Eric's wife)'s show Marry Me? And play her boyfriend? And they definitely must have met through the show, what an adorable little NCIS:LA real-life love story!!

This week is rare and exciting for me, because I'm at home for the holidays I get to watch with my dad! Which is fun! (Except for when he guesses the plot twist like halfway through...) Let's see if he has any interesting commentary...

Explosion prior to any dialogue, that's new... Sam has a Disney-themed party for his daughter, and they name-drop a bunch of characters (he calls Kensi and Deeks 'Lady and the Tramp', and Callen 'Goofy'). OK the first one was spot-on, but c'mon...

I don't see the resemblance...

Eric needs new catchphrases. Some lady named Nicole Borders (what a last name for a special agent) owned the house that was broken into - and the guy sneaking around was a paparazzo.

Callen is now guessing Batman villains (interesting considering Chris O'Donnell played Robin - twice) and Sam still won't budge. It takes him a while to get around to my original guess - the Genie from Aladdin. Sam in blue body paint? I'd like to see that!

Who remembers this?? Look at that suit...

The suspect they need to interview is basketball player, and an old friend of Deeks'. He thinks Kensi is 'baaaad'. Apparently he'd assaulted the paparazzi guy who ended up dead. Hence his 'suspect' status. Kensi has a point - it's kind of a conflict of interest to be suspecting one's best friend (sorry, second-best, after Monty) of murder. But he has an alibi. Thank god. Mr. Basketball player is also not very subtle - winking at Deeks right in front of Kensi.

"She baaaad." Pictured: Deeks and Kensi's best 'Are you serious' looks.

Nell says squinting is not actually bad for your eyes and I turned to my dad and said 'DID YOU HEAR THAT?!!' Thank you Nell! And she kissed Eric on the cheek and he didn't know what to say.

We meet the aforementioned Agent Borders, and she has a fiance who is apparently the one who sent the paparazzo to the empty house - it was on the market and he was just there to check on it. The fiance is also an army dude, and his son is at a military academy.

Callen and Sam have been sent to the military academy to retrieve the son, who is awkwardly formal and won't even refer to his dad as his dad - nope, gotta use the full name and ranking. We get some nice Sam and Callen banter (which Callen even acknowledges as well-done).

This dude is literally bent over backwards. Can't tell if that's because of his posture, or that backpack is too heavy.

Nell finds a link to a bunch of other crimes, and the killer had left behind something at each of them - jewlery, or a bottle of perfume (that revelation is what led her to kiss Eric's cheek earlier). All the victims were parents of children at the military academy. "It's the boy." says my dad. We'll see...

OK he's now withdrawn that theory, given that it might be a serial killer. Tsk tsk.

We learn some things about Sam's dad, and Callen asks if he wants to 'hug it out'. Hahaha. The team has a plan to 'draw out' the killer by using the Marine-dad as bait, since he was the intended target. He makes a snide comment about how Borders has 'the luxury of calling out an airstrike from miles away'. I don't foresee their engagement lasting very long... And oh hey! The stiff-as-a-board kid is capable of hugging!

Deeks goes undercover as an irritating barista, while Callen and Sam sit with the marine. He claims to have enrolled his kid in the military acedemy because 'discipline keeps him off drugs and out of a gang.' Riiiiight. Because forcing a child into the army is the only thing preventing them from being a drugged-out gang member. *Rolls eyes*. Why do adults think all teenagers do drugs all the time?

The marine guy, walking through a parking lot, is oblivious to a LOUDLY accelerating car that tries to hit him - until Callen is able of diving onto him and shoving him out of the way. Although Deeks later refers to the car as a 'sneaky hybrid', so maybe the noise was only for our benefit.

The guy, Richard, claims to have 'needed to take out evil men'. And he keeps muttering to himself. About how he's 'stupid' and 'it's too late'. Methinks Richard may be a little out of it, no? Or, as Deeks says 'a few crayons short of a full box'. I like that one.

Speaking of crayons, I had one of these as a kid. It was glorious.

Richard's father was in the military, as was his brother. The father was killed in combat, then the mother remarried and her second husband just disappeared. Callen manages to track down the mother and bring her to the boatshed in record time. She claims not to know where her other son is either, but then Sam tells her a story about growing up in a military household himself, and she admits to where he is.

They go to investigate his hiding place (an abandoned school that looks suspiciously like the military academy plus some rust - or do all California schools look the same?) and immediately get shot at. Sam pulls a hulk and dives through a window onto the guy. PLEASE TELL ME HE WENT TO THE PARTY AS THE HULK!!! Disney owns Marvel so that would technically still count!!!

It should be noted that this is the most elaborate costume my dad's ever worn. My mom made it.
For Halloween 2009. He was Lysol-man.

Side note - abandoned buildings are really cool. I would love to take up urban exploration. Except for this one - it contains a lab being used to build explosives. Uh-oh.

The second son thinks he's doing all the boys a favour by killing their fathers. He also alludes to having killed his stepfather, saying the guy 'got what he deserved.' Callen disagrees. Then Sam takes him into the explosives room, he steps on a pressure plate, and Sam threatens him so that he'll tell them who the next target is. Shockingly, Sam was bluffing, and the guy tells them who the target is, steps off the place in an effort to blow up Sam and Callen, then freaks out when there's no *BOOM*.

Kensi and Deeks find the next target - then they book it to his house because his son was on his way home, and wearing headphones so he didn't hear them yelling for him. And instead of, oh, I dunno, waiting for the bomb squad, Sam DIVES into the kid, shoves him into the pool and somehow the explosion totally misses them.

OH MY GOD Sam went to the party as Sully from Monsters, Inc. So I was pretty close with the 'giant blue' thing.  That's awesome.

Add a fireball in the background and you've got Sam this episode.

Where the hell was Hetty this episode? and Granger? And why was there just the one scene with Eric and Nell - although don't get me wrong, 'twas a good scene, I just feel like they were used as Google this episode.