Season 14, Episode 12 -- "In the Name of Honor"

 

Now that the winter hiatus is over, the show is in the final run before the series comes to an end. And I wish the episode that had ended the hiatus had been better, but the writing continues to be an ongoing problem with the show. The writer of the episode, Matt Klafter, is a new writer for the series. The first solo writing he did for the show was the season 13 episode, "Where Loyalties Lie." That episode, like this one, was too complicated in the overall storyline, with too much talk and too little action. This episode also made it painfully obvious how much Ops needs a regular tech person. What's the point of having six field agents if one, two, or three of them end up working in Ops? But I'll get to that further in the review.

The opening scene was very reminiscent of the opening scene in "Reznikov, N.," but it didn't have the same emotional impact as that opening had for me because of the background built in to the Reznikov storyline and because what comes after the rescue in this episode didn't carry the same emotional impact; it wasn't personal for any of the main characters. After the opening, we see Fatima and Ali working on defense in the OSP gym area (I'm guessing their instructor is one of the men working with Noah Herbert aka Jocko Willink who Kilbride hired in season 13). This isn't the first time Fatima has been shown to be physically stronger than Ali, and, for me, that's a stretch. While Ali might not have gone through FLETC training, I'm not buying that he's physically weaker than Fatima. It's one thing if he was pretending to be weaker (the way Deeks sometimes pretended to be hurt), but he comes across as though he really isn't as physically strong. 

From the gym we go to the armory and Callen and Sam. It was nice to have some banter between them even if the conversation was confusing. First, Sam's talking about seating on a plane as though he's been on a flight recently (hence Callen's comment about him being a bully), but later in the same conversation, Sam says that this will be the first time he'll be miles away from his father. First, that's not accurate. (Episodes in a series don't exist alone; they need to be cohesive with each other, and the writers--and showrunner--need to remember what's happened in earlier episodes so that there isn't a lack of continuity. Unfortunately, this lack of cohesiveness and continuity has been a problem for several seasons.) This isn't accurate because in the crossover which aired just before the winter break, Sam was back in DC and then he was in Hawaii, and Raymond wasn't with him in either location which means Raymond was separated from him (Sam even mentions getting back to his father when he's in Hawaii). Second, Callen doesn't offer to look in on Raymond while Sam's visiting Aiden (which seems to be the reason for his trip although it isn't specifically mentioned). That is not like Callen, at all. Callen would not only offer to look in on Raymond; he would give Constance, his caretaker, his number to call should there be an emergency. (It's the little things like this that show the writer isn't as familiar with the main characters as he should be.) Then they head to Ops where Fatima and Rountree are waiting to brief them on their case.

Zahar, a Navy lieutenant working with a defense contractor, has apparently disappeared. It's mentioned that she's been working with a team to develop anti-detection technology for the Navy's nuclear subs. (There's a small bloop here when Rountree says, "The following day . . ." because the following day is actually that day according to the timeline given.) What stood out to me was that ONI is the department/agency requesting NCIS look into her disappearance, and Ali--who we just saw in the OSP gym--is nowhere to be seen. Ali worked with NCIS earlier in his position with ONI. Why not now? If he had, that would've freed up the NCIS agents. Instead, because there is no regular tech person, Rountree stays in Ops while Kensi & Deeks, who have yet to be seen, go with Fatima to talk to Zahar's parents and Callen and Sam, instead of going to talk to Zahar's CO, go to her apartment. Kilbride is already on his way to talk to the CO (because there aren't enough agents when one is covering Ops). It also seemed odd that no one wanted to talk to her team members. If someone with classified information is missing, aren't the people who work with that person usually questioned? They didn't even conduct a background check on them. 

Kilbride speaks to Zahar's CO--and tries to recruit him as a leader in NCIS which seems just a little odd (made me wonder if Gemmill wanted to add him to the cast in season 15). He's another man who's had a difficult childhood (Does NCIS recruit any other?). Kilbride figures there's some reason the Navy is so concerned about Zahar's disappearance. Turns out, she was involved in a briefing on a top secret recon mission, and Kilbride isn't in the loop. (That seems strange since he's head of Covert Operations). The CO mentions that SEAL Team 2 will be sent in to hostile territory if there is a question of the mission being compromised by Zahar's disappearance (this is a subtle clue because in season 2 Sam mentioned that this SEAL team is the only one trained for arctic warfare in the episode "Imposters").

Kensi, Deeks, and Fatima visit Zahar's parents at their restaurant. It was nice to see Kensi and Deeks together in the field (too bad Fatima was with them), and Deeks sitting in the back seat wouldn't happen unless Fatima yelled, "Shotgun" first. (Fatima came with them because Dari is the Afghan dialect of Persian, so it's not surprising Fatima speaks it since she's Iranian.) Anyway, during this conversation, we learn that Zahar's parents moved to the U.S. 30 years ago (Zahar grew up in Northridge). For me, this made the whole idea of the "arranged marriage" storyline implausible, promoting misconceptions regarding arranged marriages within the Islamic communities. Just a few reasons why follow.

First, there was nothing about Zahar's parents that showed them to be followers of strict Islamic law or traditions. After all, their only daughter was in the military, serving as an officer, and there were no photos of her in her boyfriend's house wearing a hijab. By all appearances she seemed to be an independent American woman. Second, most arranged marriages are worked out between families when the children are young. How was that done if the man Zahar was "promised to" was in Afghanistan while she and her family were in the U.S.?  Wouldn't there have been some paper trail or communication between him and Zahar's parents or between him and Zahar? Even if he was a distant relative, a family friend, or simply a wealthy businessman, the arrangement would involve the future couple. An arranged marriage is often made for economic reasons, but nothing indicated that Zahar's parents needed money. Besides, it's the bride's family that pays the dowry. Finally, would a Muslim man who follows strict Islamic teaching even want a wife who was born and raised in America? Most importantly, arranged marriages are not illegal. But back to the episode.

Fatima's comment about her own parents not trusting the authorities reminded me of the Libyan father and son in "Deadline" who grew up under al-Qaddafi, just as Fatima's parents lived in Iran under a repressive government. Trusting any government authority was dangerous. (Their distrust of authorities probably had more to do with the past than the present.) When Fatima wondered what car rental companies didn't require credit cards, I thought of the "bad carma" company in "Exposure" and then finding Zahra's kidnappers by finding the rideshare service that took them to the van was how Beale discovered that the men who kidnapped Callen's father in "Reznikov, N." were Comescus.

The scene of Kensi and Deeks attempting to remove the sim card from Zahar's boyfriend's phone made me cringe. What law enforcement officer, let alone elite agent, would treat possible evidence like that? Doesn't OSP have any tech people? And then during this scene as Deeks tries his best to mutilate possible evidence, Fatima tells both Kensi and Deeks that Omar, Zahar's brother, isn't close to his parents because they believe in a strict form of Islam and used to beat him as a child for being "too Westernized." None of this makes sense given Zahar's lifestyle and the complete lack of evidence of her being raised with a strict religious upbringing by her parents. There was not even a mention that she attended a local mosque regularly. From here, the story just became more confused.

Rountree identifies one of her kidnappers as a member of an Islamic militia group in Texas who's flying back to Houston that night. Kilbride discovers Zahar had no information vital to the recon mission, so the Navy was upset over nothing. Deeks discovers Zahar's dad has a hotel reservation in Islamabad to attend a wedding (How did he get that information?). He even knows the name of the man in Afghanistan paying for it all. And Deeks miraculously finds a copy of the wedding invite online which indicates Zahar is the bride. (Now that is unbelievable.) So, Deeks, Callen, and Sam decide that Zahar's marriage to Khan was arranged, but she wasn't willing to marry him, so the kidnappers are probably trying to restore the family honor by killing Zahar. And they figure all this out in less than one minute. Wow!

A big question is why do the kidnappers go to the restaurant? The only reason seems to be so the writer can put Kensi and Fatima in danger because the kidnappers aren't kidnapping the parents or killing Zahar in front of them.. And why take Kensi and Fatima someplace else? Kensi and Fatima have no idea where Zahar is, so why don't the kidnappers simply tie them up at the restaurant and then leave and go kill Zahar? But, the kidnappers do take Kensi and Fatima, and, remarkably, Deeks knows exactly where they've been taken--even without their phones or coms. 

This ending was truly ridiculous. For some reason, Sam stops the Challenger far short of the car on fire, and evidently the bad guys have been waiting for Callen and Sam to show up because they're still there. So, of course, they start shooting. Back at OSP, the admiral tells Deeks--who wants to go to the scene--that Sam and Callen need to know where a fire extinguisher is, as if a fire extinguisher is going to put out that fire. Meanwhile, in the car Fatima is awake and trying to wake up Kensi as she struggles to free herself from the rope around her wrists. During the firefight Sam yells at Fatima and Kensi to get out of the car (because they might not know they should get out of a burning car lol)--and then the car explodes. But Fatima and Kensi somehow managed to get out of the flaming car without so much as a singed sleeve or hijab AND they rescue Zahar who, for some unknown reason, is still alive. And then we find out that Zahar's uncle was responsible and her parents weren't. It was unclear exactly what her uncle was responsible for: arranging the marriage, the attempted honor killing, or both. But it didn't make sense. How and when did her uncle know Zahar wasn't going through with the marriage? She'd only just withdrawn the $20,000--supposedly to get out of the marriage. And why did Zahar's brother say what he said about his parents and father? Either they were or they weren't strict Muslims, and nothing suggested they were. It seemed the writer was confused about what was happening and why and who the characters were. (I was also uninterested in the relationship between Fatima and Ali the writer tried to establish. This is partly because I'm not very interested in either Fatima or Ali, but mainly because this is the final season of the show.) This episode reminded me of "Fukushu" which was supposed to be about racial violence but turned out to be about simple economics that had nothing to do with race.

The writer threw in lots of red herrings to throw viewers off track, but the main plot was so weak and so illogical in so many ways, he should've focused on that instead of all the irrelevant things. No matter how many red herrings a writer throws in, they don't improve a poorly written story. Here's hoping some of the remaining episodes are examples of better writing.