For a television
series to be in its eleventh season and reach the 250th episode is a huge
milestone worthy of celebration. NCIS Los Angeles celebrated with an
explosive episode, literally and metaphorically, co-written by one of the
main cast, Eric Christian Olsen (Deeks). 'Mother' focused on the show's
most enigmatic character, Henrietta Lange and the results of her past,
selecting and grooming children to become instruments of the U.S.
Government.
There is a permanent
undercurrent of violence in the show. Barely an episode goes by without at
least one dead body and as a general rule, the baddies are shot (and
frequently die) whilst the main characters generally remain
unscathed. The driver for violence among the perpetrators is often
touched on, for example they're motivated by revenge, religion or ideology
and sometimes even love. Rather than exploring the psychology of the
baddies in more depth, 'Mother' instead examines the impact of a life of violence,
as a result of Hetty's grooming.
Ahkos Laos was sent
away by his family to a Botswana
The episode opens
in the usual way with a crime being committed and then a post credit team scene
in the gym. Last week featured a long overdue bull pen scene and here,
the team are once again together, relaxing and having fun with a game of
basketball; Callen gently cheating and Kensi showing off her skills. The
banter, broken by Eric, resplendent in his tight sports kit, comes to an end
when an intruder (Nathasa) with a box is spotted outside the mission. From
there on, the plot develops at an increasingly frantic pace as the team face
threat after threat and race to save Hetty from Ahkos and Deeks from being
blown up.
In an episode that
explores violence, it is no surprise there are some ‘Frank Military-esque’
touches of horror. The box contains a severed hand, a knife piercing the hand
with a note attached it, a cup of blood on Femmill’s kitchen counter replaces
the cup of coffee that Ahkos planted in the opening. In a shot which calls back
to season 9 ‘Monsters’, the top half of Femmill’s bloody torso is positioned on
his bed. And not to waste any body parts, his other hand is in a different box,
holding a ringing cell phone. The shock value illustrates how unhinged and
dangerous Ahkos is; his use of the Dante’s Inferno quotation demonstrates his
delusions of grandeur, and his references to ‘mother’ and referring to Callen
as his brother, is downright creepy.
Violence begets violence,
which is obvious with Ahkos and evident with Callen. The only way Ahkos can
stop is to remove from this world the people who trained him. Callen has
responded with violence (or threats of) when Hetty was at risk from Matthias in
season 6 Praesidium (“we hunt him down, and we kill him”), like he did in
Romania (Kensi, “we have a plan?”, Callen, “Yeah, kill them all”) and the
repeated flashbacks to his mother’s murder as he shot the Comescus when
breaching the Romanian beach house, again to rescue Hetty. In season 9 he
barely thought twice about trading Kirkin's life for that of his father's.
Callen’s penchant for violence is triggered when certain members of his family
are threatened, and tempered by the family he has at NCIS, a support system
which Ahkos was lacking. By contrast, Deeks was exposed to his violent
father as a child and has a darkness which surfaces when Kensi (women) are in
danger (torturing the cleric in Afghanistan
Hetty: He was just
a young boy with potential.
Callen: The kind of
potential that scares most people away?
Hetty: He was just
looking for the same things all of us look for.
Callen: A mother.
Hetty: A home, an
identity, and something to keep the darkness at bay.
Callen: So you took
him in? Trained him?
Hetty: I did.
The team may not
know the details but it is obvious Hetty did the same with Callen. During this
exchange, there are close-ups of Callen and sideways glances from the rest of
the team. His response of ‘a mother’, either demonstrates how wrong Hetty
was in understanding what ‘her children’ were looking for, or how deeply
scarred Callen is by not having a mother. It certainly explains why he would
kill to save Hetty’s life. Sam attempts to follow this through as they stakeout
the cemetery and of course is shut down immediately. He questions why Callen
does this job, his motivations, why he risks his life. At the last question,
the shot moves from a distant and thoughtful Callen, to Hetty. As has
repeatedly been said in the show, Hetty is the closest thing Callen has to a
mother.
As Callen refuses
to have an existential crisis, Kensi and Deeks breach a warehouse. Deeks is
drawn to some soft, 1960s sounding music into an area that is suspiciously
reminiscent of the Kill House in Season 4 and becomes trapped with a bomb with
a timer. Clearly he has not watched enough horror films! There are a few
one liners, black humour and Deeks even fires a bullet at the encased bomb,
only for it to ricochet around the room. This of course allows for some
emotionally heavy scenes with Kensi on the outside, desperately trying to free
Deeks. Simultaneously, the power goes down in Ops, Hetty is kidnapped and taken
by helicopter from the cemetery, the bomb squad are too far out to save Deeks,
and Special Prosecutor Rogers (remember him?), is interrogating Nathasa, the
woman who set this in motion.
The action comes
fast and furious; the number of different scenes edited together demonstrates
the urgency felt by the team. It is fast paced and at no point is that to the
detriment of the plot. With Ops down, there are no comms, and the team are on
their phones tracking Hetty, monitoring the bomb squad, Sam is talking to Kensi
about the bomb, Callen is pressuring Eric. Nell looks like she is on the verge
of a nervous breakdown, particularly having told Hetty some home truths after
placing Eric in danger last week. She has probably the most insightful line,
delivered perfectly:
"This is what
happens when you try to play God in the lives of those you say you love.”
In Kill Beale Vol
1, Hetty admitted she no longer wants her job. Here she doubts her abilities
and believes she has failed Ahkos, Callen and the rest of the team. She has no
answers for Ahkos and can only apologise. He constantly refers to her as
mother, sharing that his only good memories took place with her at the museum,
before accusing her of abandoning him. In an oblique reference to Hetty
and Callen’s earlier conversation in Ops, Ahkos challenges her on the purpose
she gave him in life, which was to violently take life away from those who
threaten the peace. It sounds like he too, just wanted a mother to love and
protect him. He is a tragic character and feels tremendous guilt at the
lives he has taken. Yet his actions to achieve his revenge are fascinatingly
circular; his cold and calculating manipulation in murdering Nathasa's family
under the guise of a black op missile strike, then training her to exact
revenge on Henrietta Lange is a twisted version of Hetty’s moulding of ‘her
children’.
Smiles are few and
far between, but there is almost a comedic moment between Callen and
Ahkos. Callen breaches the museum on his own, doesn’t announce himself as
NCIS. He shoots to kill and without a backwards glance, fire execution shots as
he passes each prone body. This dark side of Callen is occasionally hinted at
but rarely seen. He is so focused when he enters the exhibition area, that
Ahkos, who was waiting around a corner, simply punches Callen in the face and
sends him sprawling. Considering the stylish manner Callen was sliding
on his knees, the cold manner in which he killed the accomplices and the
slow motion shot of her entering the room, it seemed like a slither
of black humour emerged with that one punch. The tables are turned when
Hetty saves Callen from Ahkos and tells him ‘no’ when he makes a move to fight
Ahkos. Instead Callen becomes a passive, frozen observer, watching in horror,
as the mother comforts the son she has killed.
A violent death at
the hands of Hetty, up close and personal with the knife she once gave him, was
the only outcome for Ahkos. Hetty recites lines from Dante’s Inferno, the
same ones she read to him as a child in the same museum, seen earlier in
flashbacks. Ahkos entered the gates of hell years before (as per the first
quotation written on the note pinned to the severed hand). The words he fondly
remembers, that Hetty softly repeats as he dies, relate to emerging on the
other side of Hell, towards the stars, which in this context represents peace
for Ahkos. He has no chance of redemption or entering heaven.
The frenetic pace
of the episode continues even through the scenes with Hetty and Ahkos. They
talk, Sam and Callen are driving at speed towards the museum, Rogers
The calm after the
storm takes the form of the second tete a tete between Callen and Hetty in as
many weeks. Callen still has blind faith in Hetty, even though she has kept
secrets from him, moves ‘assets’ around the chess board and has groomed
children into a life of violence, killing one son to save another. Earlier Sam
forced Callen to think about the reasons why he does this job, for what reason
does he risk his life daily, stating it’s practically the only life he’s ever
known. Now, he answers Hetty:
Sometimes when we
finish a big case, two or three days later, I go back to where it all happened.
And I just sit there and I watch. Now it's a guy walking his dog, or a couple
holding hands, kids playing around. And I think about all the violence and
chaos that was there just a few days before. And now it's just life. And I know
that we gave them that life. In that moment, this world seems like it's worth
fighting for. And my role in that fight, in all this, it makes sense to me. You
have never failed me, Hetty. Or anyone on this team. And you never will.
It is a long speech
for Callen and one that suggests that he is still values the peace and
happiness of others more that his own. Is that why, although he has a glass, he
never actually drinks with Hetty at the end. How many children did Hetty
introduce and groom for a life of violence? Callen asks the question, one which
Hetty declines to answer, mirroring the same question he asked her in anger, in
season 4 Raven and the Swans. And in another example of the circular
nature of Hetty and her children, what has or will now happen to Finn, the
teenage boy Callen himself found with ‘potential’? Like last week, Mother sets
up further questions about the future of Hetty at NCIS. For two weeks now,
after always projecting an image of confidence to the world, she is full of
self-doubt, in front of Callen at least. This is further compounded by Special
Prosecutor Rogers (whose presence in Ops remains a mystery), but his superior
interrogation techniques secured him the information he needs to bring down
Henrietta Lange.
An episode
exploring Hetty’s past and her orphans is long overdue. Several have been
introduced in the past - Lauren Hunter, Grace Stevens and now Ahkos Laos.
Hunter was cold and calculating, and Grace placed herself in danger by becoming
intimate with villains. The aspect of the violent life to which Hetty
introduced them, indoctrinated them has stifled their emotional development.
Maybe Hetty has misread what children want? All Callen and Ahkos wanted
was the love, protection and nurture of a mother.
This was an
excellent episode, written by Eric Christian Olsen and Babar Peerzada and
directed by Dennis Smith. Mother is intelligent, dark, moving and
thought-provoking, both for the characters and the viewers, and stylishly shot
and edited. NCIS: Los Angeles
On a side note,
there were 12 minutes from this episode to trim it down to 42 minutes - I
sincerely hope there will be a writer’s/director’s version on the S11 DVD.