After a number of recent episodes
where the team has been separated, Re-entry reconciles the four main characters
in their familiar partnerships. Sam and
Callen are out in the field, tracking and recovering valuable pieces of a
rocket that blew up shortly after launch, leaving Kensi and Deeks to interrogate
suspects and follow the leads in LA. Unfortunately
for fans of Nell and Eric, this week it was their turn to be split up. Nell went on the field trip with Sam and
Callen, monitoring their progress from base camp, and Eric held the fort in ops
- although not without lack of trying to get out of the workplace.
This season there has been a
continual build up that seems to be leading to Deeks making career and life
changing decisions. This week the
featured opening bull pen scene has Deeks explaining slow TV to Kensi, after he
watched eight hours of a boat crossing a Fjord.
It follows from his confiding in Callen last week that he wants a safer
life; and like Callen, Kensi doesn’t understand. In fact she comments that she was waiting for
explosions and pirates - anything that picks up the pace and provides an
adrenaline rush. In this context, it is
breaking the conventions around how Kensi defines herself in comparison to
Deeks. Thinking back to conversations
earlier in season nine’s The Silo, as well as the bar scene between Deeks and
Callen last week, Kensi will not give up
her career and so the give in the relationship may well have to be driven by
Deeks. In next week’s episode he shares
his dream of opening a bar with Kensi, which surely opens up the question of
his future and it will be interesting to see how this plays out over the rest
of the season.
In direct contrast to Deeks’
desire to slow down his pace of life, Eric is either on a caffeine or sugar
rush, summoning the pair to ops, running up the stairs and almost running out
the door in anticipation that he’s going in to the field to analyse programmes
and codes to investigate why the rocket exploded. Although this was ‘over the top’ Eric, it
didn’t fall in to the clown version that has a tendency to emerge. His eagerness and enthusiasm are contagious
and even Mosley seems taken with him.
Her asking Kensi and Deeks to ‘manage’ Eric was rather endearing.
With the exception of Eric, the
slower pace of this episode allowed Hetty to interact with Harris Keane, who was
rescued alongside Hetty in Goodbye Vietnam Vietnam
It is questionable as to whether
Keane’s return is purely to allow that very conversation to take place. He has not been mentioned since the rescue so
bring him up six episodes later is curious. It allows Hetty to follow through on her promise
that Keane’s home is with them and highlights his PTSD after his years of
abandonment in Vietnam
Hetty: “It's so good to see them happy. They've had a rough couple of years but they
look out for each other.”
Elsewhere it is very much
business as usual as the field agents investigate the case around the rocket
explosion. Kensi and Deeks tackle the
interrogations and track the bad guys to a golf driving range which of course
led to some amusing scenes with an impromptu undercover mission. Deeks even managed to have a bet with the
minor bad on the range - before all his equipment was thrown off the top deck
piece by piece in an exaggerated yet hilarious move. Sam and Callen searched for the rocket’s
missing payload which was discovered by a pair of young campers, prompting a
race against time to find them before the other bad guys did. It was the Iranians who wanted the payload
and the reasons why the traitor in the field (a seemingly flustered NRO Chief
of Staff, Melissa Gates) assisted them, was never explained. It was a good twist though, as the team
finally realised there was an insider.
Re-entry is a solid episode that
draws on all the elements of what the audience enjoys most about the show. The four main characters are back in their
established partnerships which allows the banter between them to flow seamlessly. It was great to see the team arriving back at
ops together at the end; their camaraderie illustrates how close they are and
how much they need each other.