Thoughts About Callen and Hetty as Season 13 Begins

 

Now that season 13 of NCIS:LA is officially under way and since Gemmill has stated that he might continue to explore (also known as revise) the Callen-Hetty relationship and Callen’s backstory, it seems like a good time to review what viewers already know before what viewers already know is thrown out and discarded to make room for whatever new and/or conflicting ideas the writers come up with. Before getting to some of the retcon flashbacks, there’s a lot in what Hetty’s done for Callen, and what she hasn’t done, that tells us more about the relationship than the writers probably realize, and most of it doesn’t reflect well on Hetty.

Let’s start with the Callen-Hetty relationship. First, there’s the death of Callen’s mother, Clara. The responsibility for her death falls squarely on Hetty’s shoulders. According to Hetty, Clara was “desperate” to get out of Romania with her children. This suggests two things: first, it suggests that Nikita was not with her or even in the area and was unable to help her, and second, it suggests that Clara was likely in hiding as anyone would be who was being hunted by people seeking revenge (just like Sam’s family went into hiding when Tahir was hunting them). Clara gets in touch with Hetty who agrees to help her, but not only does Hetty not make their scheduled meeting, but it was her scheduled meeting with Clara—which Hetty cancelled at the last moment without notifying Clara—that brought Clara out of hiding and enabled the Comescus to kill her. And, of course, since Hetty didn’t know about Callen and Amy, she did nothing to help bring them to America.

Hetty shares these details with Callen after they returned from Romania when Hetty tried to convince the Comescus that Callen was already dead. Her lie was uncovered and the only reason she didn’t die in Romania was because Callen and his team rescued her. If she had died, it’s unlikely Callen would have ever learned more about his mother, but after Hetty’s confession, he’s remarkably forgiving to a woman whose inaction resulted in his mother’s death, his separation from his sister and her subsequent death, and spending 15 years—many of them unhappy and abusive—in the foster system. But after this attempt by Hetty to right the grievous wrong she did to Callen, what else did she do for her “son”? It turns out, not much.

She made no attempt to locate Callen’s father even though she knew he was searching for him. Her attitude was that knowing who his father was, how he arrived in the U.S., and knowing his given name were of no real importance. Those were the past, and he needed to focus on the present. There might have been reasons Hetty didn't help Callen in his search beyond simply moving on, but the writers never made it clear if there were. In season 5 when the Comescus resurfaced, determined to kill Callen, it was Arkady who provided clues about Callen’s father, clues Hetty then followed to provide a little more information but nothing definitive. It’s not until the final episode of season 6 that Hetty provided more information (some of which turned out to be erroneous), and the only reason she had this information was because Callen had already asked Beale to conduct a search and Hetty took over the search. If Callen hadn’t asked Beale to search for information, would Hetty have taken the initiative and done so? There’s nothing to indicate that she would have, and there’s nothing to indicate that she gave any thought to helping Callen find his father except when the circumstance presented itself or after Callen had already uncovered some detail. There was no indication she ever went out of her way to use any of her intelligence contacts to help Callen in his search.

And what about his relationship with Anna? Compare Hetty’s actions when Kensi, Deeks, and Michelle needed help with Hetty’s inaction when Anna needed help. Hetty sent Kensi on a mission to help Jack, who wasn’t a team member but was Kensi’s former fiancée, and when Kensi got in trouble, Hetty sent the entire team to rescue her. Sending the team to rescue her was the right move; sending Kensi into a mission without all the details was not. Nevertheless, Hetty proved how much she cared about Kensi by sending the team who eventually rescued her and Jack. When Deeks was investigated by the LAPD in connection to the shooting death of his partner—an act Deeks committed—Hetty did what she could to “protect” him from the LAPD investigation, even getting a man “lost” in the prison system.  And when Michelle was kidnapped by Tahir, Hetty pulled out all the stops, managing to convince her higher ups to release an international war criminal to try to obtain her release. These actions showed Hetty’s willingness to do whatever she could to help Kensi, Deeks, and Sam. And what did she do when Anna was being investigated for shooting a Russian mob boss, under suspicious circumstances, a man who had kidnapped Arkady, already killed two people, and tried to kill his own sister? She questioned Callen about his feelings and tried to get him to see things from Anna’s point of view. As far as viewers know, she didn’t use any of her influence to try and get a deal for Anna or call Admiral Chegwidden—an accomplished attorney with many contacts in the judiciary—to see if he could help. It seemed that Hetty expected Callen and Anna to “work through” this situation. Hetty was essentially telling Callen to suck it up and deal with his girlfriend’s problems. And even after Joelle got Hetty and Anna on board for her Volkoff plan, Hetty made no deal with the CIA for Anna once the plan had been carried out. This meant Hetty had no problem sending Callen’s girlfriend into exile, and there’s nothing to suggest that Hetty did anything during Anna’s exile to try and reach a deal so that she could return to Callen and Arkady. If that wasn’t disinterest by Hetty, it comes close.

And then there was the situation with Nikita. Not only did Hetty not help Callen find his father, but after Nikita was sent back to Russia, she blocked  Callen’s own attempts to find him because he had asked her to and she evidently felt more loyalty to Nikita than Callen. The idea that an NCIS Special Agent needs "protection" is an old device and no longer a valid reason for Hetty's actions, if it ever was.

[Hetty did get Callen a good deal on his house in season 2 (he paid for it, but she arranged the deal). That was something good she did, but other than that, it’s hard to think of another time when she did much for him or those he loves.]

And then there are the flashbacks that make no sense and contradict Callen’s original backstory created by Brennan. This is especially true about the flashbacks in season 12.

First, the flashback in “If the Fates Allow” makes no sense for several reasons. First, it is out of character for Callen. In season 5 Callen explained to Kensi and Deeks that he was removed from his foster parents, the McPhersons, when he was 10 because McPherson beat him and Callen finally took the broomstick and beat McPherson with it. A boy who takes action and beats an adult when he’s 10 is not a boy who’s going to shrink from a bully a year later. Also, according to Hetty in “Pushback,” Callen changed foster homes every few weeks or every few days except for one, the Rostoffs. As we learned in this discussion between Hetty and Nate, Callen stayed with the Rostoffs the longest, 3 months. But according to this flashback, Callen stayed with this foster family for at least 2 months, and 2 months is more than 8 weeks—which is not “every few weeks.” The final reason this flashback makes no sense is that Hetty would not be interested in a boy who showed fear and let others fight for him; Hetty would be much more interested in Raymond, the older foster brother who fought for Callen. So, this flashback isn’t true to either Callen OR Hetty.

The flashbacks in “A Fait Accompli” are just as implausible. The idea that Callen would have established a relationship with a young woman that was intimate and strong enough to influence his future to the extent that he considered moving and joining her father’s business flies in the face of everything we know about him, the foster kid who shut out people and found it hard to trust others from the time he was a child until he became team leader at NCIS (the fact that he was still a loner when he joined NCIS was mentioned several times by Hetty). If he hadn't been emotionally close to her, leaving her would not have affected him or been a difficult decision as it was shown to be in the flashback. And the idea that Hetty used finding his father as the reason to convince Callen to leave a “normal” life behind and then offered him NO help in his search makes her not simply manipulative but a liar of the worst kind, preying on the vulnerabilities of a person she supposedly cared about. In addition, it completely ignores the fact that Callen worked for the DEA, FBI, and CIA before he joined NCIS. So, the writers expect viewers to accept the conversation in the car between Hetty and Callen and then accept that he then went to work for another agency and then another and then another until he finally began working for Hetty? Or do they expect viewers to believe that Hetty was working for another agency when she and Callen had this conversation?

The fact that Hetty has done so little help to Callen during the many years she’s known him is not indicative of a person who cares for him, but just the opposite. I don't think this was the intent of the writers, but when viewed in comparison to what she's done for others on the team, it's hard not to notice how little she's done for him. And none of the flashbacks suggest any special affection for him, either, and all of them contradict the original backstory for Callen created by Brennan and revealed in earlier seasons. Too many of the revisions that Gemmill and the writers are doing to the Callen-Hetty relationship are not exploring or explaining it, but destroying it. And too much of the revisions to Callen’s backstory are not character development, but character confusion and diminishment.

The writers could bring more balance to the Callen-Hetty relationship if they approach the relationship more honestly than they have in the past and stop trying to whitewash Hetty's actions and thinking that the single statement she made to Mosley is of more importance in defining her relationship to Callen than her actions have been. At some point, the disconnect between what Hetty says and what Hetty does needs to be recognized and accepted by Callen, and he needs to confront her about it.