"Perception" (Season 13, Episode 15)

I applaud NCIS:LA for tackling issues that are timely and sensitive and that demand our attention. Some of these issues might be related to military actions while others might be societal that affect everyone, military personnel included. It seems a no-brainer that a TV procedural drama set in the present day would have episodes that address these issues. My only wish is that the writers for NCIS:LA were better at doing this. It's not that they aren't sincere in their efforts; it's that their efforts too often fall short. As in other episodes, the problem with the writing in this episode takes nothing away from the acting. Caleb Castille does an excellent job in his portrayal of Agent Rountree as the victim of racial profiling and police brutality who also happens to be a member of the law enforcement community. He is admirably supported by the veteran cast.

This episode contained two storylines, and I think the Rountree storyline would've been more effective if it had been tied in some way to an NCIS investigation. As written, it served as an introduction to the episode and even though its ramifications were felt throughout and it produced some powerful scenes, after the initial confrontation it didn't pack the punch that the storyline deserved while the theft of Navy equipment and technology storyline seemed tacked on simply to make the episode "Navy-related." (The theft of Navy inventory was far too simple a case to involve the OSP.)

The episode opens with a group of black girls roller skating in an empty warehouse area. They're doing acrobatic-type moves when a woman photographer, Andrea Bishop, appears behind some equipment and begins taking photos of them. One of the girls notices her and confronts her, telling her to stop taking photos of them. Andrea leaves, dropping a flash drive. The scene cuts to Andrea's apartment. As she enters and begins to put her equipment away, a hooded figure attacks her, she fights back, and when she tries to get her weapon, the figure shoots and kills her.

 After the credits, we're with Rountree who's driving his sister, Jordyn, to the university for a final. During the drive, they engage in good-natured, sibling banter until they're pulled over by two LAPD officers. When an officer asks Rountree to produce his license, registration, and proof of insurance, Rountree moves to retrieve them and the officer pulls his gun and orders him out of the car. Rountree tells the officer that he's a federal agent (but he has no ID because he's working on a special case). At this point, Jordyn exits the car, distressed by what's happening, while people nearby are using their cell phones to film the incident. The other officer restrains Jordyn, and when Rountree makes a move to help her, he's pepper sprayed. Later, when they are both sitting on the curb, Jordyn is despondent because everything is ruined: she'll fail her class, lose her scholarship, not be able to play basketball, but Rountree assures her that he'll make everything right.

Back at OSP, no one is aware of Rountree's situation, but Kilbride, Callen, and Fatima are reviewing the murder of the photographer who was employed by the Navy. The murder investigation gets underway with Kensi and Deeks going to the crime scene while Callen and Sam head to the boatshed to interview Andrea's commanding officer and his assistant, Northcutt and Walsh. It turns out that she was stationed at the Naval Weapon Station in Seal Beach. When Kilbride learns that Rountree has still not checked in, he tells Fatima to find him. Meantime, Rountree and Jordan are released from LAPD custody, and the explanation given to Rountree for the stop was an armed robbery suspect in the area (turns out that wasn't true). Soon after, Kilbride is heard on the phone with LAPD, yelling, and when Rountree enters OSP, Kilbride tells him to go to the boatshed. The rest of the team focuses on the case while Rountree takes the lead on the LAPD incident. It's discovered Andrea took video of apparent thefts from the weapons station, and it seems likely that Northcutt and Walsh lied.

In the boatshed, Rountree meets with Detective Whiting, and, as expected, their conversation resolves nothing. It seemed the only reason to send Whiting was to give viewers another reason to hate her, but since she's in IA, it was strange that she didn't let Rountree know that an internal review was being conducted (that's the likely outcome of Kilbride's call and the reason someone from IA would meet with him, but that's not made clear). Based on the license plate Fatima identified from Andrea's video, Kensi and Deeks find and interrogate the driver involved in the thefts. He claims he only provided transportation and gives them the address where the items were taken--a warehouse in Indio--so Callen and Sam head out to investigate. In the warehouse they find the items stolen from the weapons station, including one "ghost dog." But there should be two. Now they need to find the other one. (It turns out, surprise, that Northcutt's assistant, Walsh, is the thief.) Fatima tracks Walsh, but Callen and Sam are too far out to intercept him and Kensi and Deeks are also some distance away, so Rountree will go--alone--and arrest him (why Fatima doesn't go with him is unclear since others have worked in Ops in her absence). He goes and after returning to OSP, he and Sam have a heart-to-heart about the changes that need to happen.

My issue with this episode isn't with the subject or the acting; it is, as usual, with the writing. It's nice that Gemmill's giving new writers an opportunity; it's too bad he isn't providing the guidance that's obviously needed. If you're writing for a series, you need to be familiar with the premise, the characters and earlier episodes. A writer also needs to get basic facts correct and write an episode that makes sense in all areas even when focusing on one particular storyline. It's also important to maintain continuity for characters between episodes, even minor characters. Unfortunately, all of these are things the series has had difficulty doing for a while. Let's start with the car scene between Rountree and Jordyn. In earlier episodes, it was established that a) Jordyn attends UCLA and b) she plays on the women's basketball team on a scholarship. In this conversation, Jordyn's curious about the gift Rountree's going to give her when she gets all As for the semester. Two problems: UCLA doesn't have semesters (it's on the quarter system), and a basketball scholarship is a major scholarship and pays for housing, so she'd be living in the dorms or close enough to walk to campus. (Some think these are unimportant, but these mistakes immediately told me the writer hadn't done her homework on very basic details.) If Jordyn is a "good" student (and if she's going to ace an organic chemistry final, she must be) on a basketball scholarship, the idea that she wouldn't be on campus at least an hour before her test is an inconsistency. Rountree also mentions that he's working on a "special assignment" he can't tell her about, but he has time to drive her to her test because there's no public transportation in L.A.? And we learn later from Kilbride's comment that Rountree was supposed to be meeting a nuclear physicist. There's nothing in his background that suggests Rountree knows anything about nuclear physics, but whatever the meeting was about, it must've been unimportant because--here's another problem--he had no overwatch and he blows off the meeting. Instead, he gets involved in the Andrea murder case with nary a word of dissent from Kilbride (like why he was driving his sister to school on company time). If these had been the only problems, the episode still might've worked, but they weren't.

How convenient was it that the skater just happened to be carrying the flash drive with her the next day so that she could give it to Sam and Callen when they came looking? And they must frequent that warehouse or be known in the neighborhood because the NCIS agents had no trouble finding them. Also, why does Naval Weapons Station Seal Beach have a "resident" NCIS agent (who'd been investigating the missing inventory for a week), and why didn't the OSP agents speak with him/her? And if the "resident" NCIS agent isn't stationed at Seal Beach, where is s/he stationed? But most of the problems are with the Rountree incident.

After the conversation, there's where the police incident with Rountree and Jordyn takes place--on a public street. These agents are supposed to work primarily undercover (that's why Rountree had ID with his persona's name), but the viral video would seriously hamper his ability to do that work. (This is similar to the problem created by giving Fatima a background as an actor on a popular show.) Second, since Jordyn is a player on the women's basketball team at a major university (and a local university), internet sleuths are going to know who she is and be busy identifying the man with her, and since Rountree's background includes playing football for a major university, he'll be identified sooner rather than later. Too many of the new writers seem to ignore the premise of undercover work, and giving agents these backgrounds makes their characters unbelievable as agents who work undercover. One of the things that works for the four main agents is that none of them have backgrounds that draw attention to them. Too bad the same can't be said for the two newest recruits. (Before someone brings up the video in "Endgame," that video was made by a news crew that agreed not to air it, and Beale created a "kill" program to pull it off as soon as it appeared on the internet.) This problem could've been avoided in several ways, the most obvious one being having Rountree pulled over while working as his undercover persona and without his sister with him. In addition to the viral videos, there's the audio portion of the video recording. Did someone record Rountree explaining that the name on his ID was his undercover persona? Yikes! Another problem is when Callen says that Sam experienced the exact same thing years earlier, but if so, I don't remember it. If the writer's referring to what happened in "SEAL Hunter," there's no comparison between the two instances: in "SEAL Hunter" the FBI had photo and DNA evidence that implicated Sam. If the writer's referring to something that happened offscreen, don't. That was one of the major problems with the debacle that was the mole story arc. Now, I'm no fan of Whiting but her position and conversation with Rountree was in her official capacity as an LAPD officer. That makes it different from her blackmailing Deeks which is not an official LAPD position. And when Rountree says that she's trying to prevent the incident from becoming a "PR matter," which is true, exactly how would it become a PR matter? Is Rountree suggesting he's going to make a public statement? That seems unlikely. Will the Navy? That also seems unlikely since the Navy relies on the cooperation of local law enforcement to help with its investigations. Then there's the timing of Rountree's and Jordyn's release. They were released before Fatima located them. Why? How did the officer know Rountree was who he said he was? Also, the idea that Rountree was able to "shield" Jordyn from the racism that exists is farfetched. Farfetched because she played basketball in high school, and anyone who's been in high school knows that she likely encountered racism when she played, especially if she played in certain cities or states. Besides, she's attending a major university, living in one of the most diverse cities in the world, and she's probably on social media. But for me, the biggest problem was the lack of resolution to Jordyn's predicament. It's no small thing to miss a final at a major university even if you're not on an athletic scholarship, but the writer provided no clue about how Rountree "fixed" things for his sister nor did he even refer to this at the end.

The interaction between Rountree and Fatima felt like they're becoming partners, and her hug was a natural reaction to the events of the day. The episode did include the obligatory Densi baby talk, although it was kept to a minimum, and the conversation about the photo Deeks took of Kensi was cute (although we all know how easily photos from the cloud can be hacked, so there's that). This did bring up a small inconsistency: Is this Deeks who hates taking photos the same Deeks who bored Kensi so much with his vacation photos that she switched seats with Sam to avoid viewing them again? The photo of intertwined hands of various races dropped off at the boatshed for them was a nice touch, but I'm still confused about the age of the child Kensi and Deeks hope to (plan to) foster/adopt. Last week, it seemed they were getting ready for Rosa (the girl from "Land of Wolves"), and then they spent time with her friend (a girl maybe 11-13 years old), but in this episode, they referred to the extra room as the "nursery." I'm just hoping the writers figure it all out.

I hope NCIS:LA continues to address current and controversial issues in season 14, but I also hope the writers do better creating both powerful and plausible scenarios. I have no worries that the actors will be able to deliver.