Season 14, Episode 16 -- "Sleeping Dogs"

First off, if this is your first time reading a review of mine, I'm not the reviewer who only has good things to say about an episode. In fact, I've had very few good things to say about recent episodes of NCIS:LA, and this review isn't going to be much different. That's because the two most important things to me in an episode are the writing and the acting. The acting, at least by the regular cast, is almost never an issue, and I always enjoy seeing the cast. I just wish we could see the entire cast more often. I had high hopes for this episode since it should have focused on Callen and the Drona Program story arc, but I was disappointed, as I have been too often, by the writing. (This review includes spoilers, so if you haven't watched the episode, you've been warned.)

If someone watched "Warrior of Peace" followed by this episode, they would never guess that the same writer wrote both episodes. "Warrior" was a well-written, tightly constructed story with emotional impact; this episode was none of those.

One thing I've noticed about Bartels episodes is that he has a tendency to be unfocused or to focus on unimportant or guest characters more than on the main character. That was a main problem with this episode. The only character affected by the Drona Program is Callen, and yet Callen really wasn't the focus of this episode. And it began at the beginning.

First thing, I have to say that the very first character killed in the intro wasn't anyone I cared about because dog owners who stand there calling their dog when their dog runs away are just plain annoying. The scene then shifts to a little breakfast scene with Rountree, Fatima, Summer, and Jordyn--a scene which went on much too long and included details that were inane. Jordyn told a ridiculous story about Rountree running alongside her school bus to give her the lunch she'd left at home. Evidently, Bartels didn't realize that the fastest recorded human was Usain Bolt who ran almost 24 mph and the idea that Rountree was that fast is stupid. (Plus, a school bus only travels that slowly when it pulls away from a bus stop.) This isn't the first time writers have inflated the accomplishments of the two new agents, and it makes them more cartoonish than real. It also seems like none of these people actually work for a living the way they get to work whenever they feel like it (this scene obviously wasn't taking place at 6 am).

Then there was the conversation between Kilbride and Shyla which also went on too long and included a reference to Ninja Turtles. Why would either Kilbride or Shyla know these characters? It sounded more like a reference from Bartels' own life than anything either of the characters would know. 

Finally, there was the Callen and Sam scene where Callen asks Sam to be his best man. What an emotionally empty scene. First, Anna has chosen an absolutely hideous outfit for Sam: a leprechaun green tux with tails (all that was missing was the top hap and pot of gold). No way Anna would've chosen that. If Bartels wanted to make a playful comment, he should've at least made it relate to something we already know about the character. For instance, Bartels could've focused on Anna's love of Russian food and maybe had Callen mention that Anna wanted to include meat pudding on the dinner menu. But he focused on the clothes because that's how he wanted to introduce Callen asking Sam to be his best man, and it didn't work. Sam's joke that maybe Callen should ask Castor to be his best man because he and Castor went out for drinks fell flat because it didn't make sense. Callen going out for drinks with Castor is as believable as Gibbs going out for drinks with someone from the NCIS accounting department. And the idea that Castor admires Callen so much that he's now dressing like Callen is idiotic. These things aren't funny. They're stupid and reflect the writer's lack of respect for or understanding of the characters he's writing about. Castor, even though a minor character, works for OSP and is an agent in his own right. He's not likely to develop a "boy crush" on Callen or seek his approval suddenly after working with him for years. And Sam saying he'll talk to Anna about his outfit is sort of insulting. Will Anna pay more attention to Sam's opinion than she will to Callen's, or is Callen not willing to tell Anna what he thinks? Either one is a terrible take on the relationship between Callen and Anna, and the idea that he wouldn't say something when he told her in front of a stranger that he didn't want her father officiating their wedding shows the inconsistency in their scenes. Such inconsistency is ridiculous this late in the game. But I think the worst thing about this scene--the worst thing about recent scenes dealing with the Callen and Anna relationship and upcoming wedding--is that the writers are making it something funny, something ridiculous instead of treating it with any dignity and genuine affection for either character. 

After these opening scenes, most of the things in the plot didn't work. Like too many of the NCIS:LA writers recently, Bartels made the plot much more complicated than it needed to be and lost the handle. The first complication was the mention of Hetty. Hetty is like the albatross in The Rime of the Ancient Mariner: She hangs around the neck of every NCIS:LA writer. The idea that Hetty--over in Syria still trying to clean up her own mess--has information about what Pembroke is doing is laughable, but Gemmill was the one with the bright idea to create a major story arc involving an actor who appeared in a total of one episode in season 13, so the writers are forced to keep her character in play. While Hetty was more acceptable in the early seasons as a former operative turned operations manager, her metamorphosis into an omniscient being by Gemmill is absurd. (One of the most frustrating aspects about this episode is that it would've been so easy to leave Hetty out of it and still involve OSP: simply make one of the first victims a former Marine or navy intelligence officer and make Leah the second victim. That would've brought OSP into the picture and established a connection to Drona.) But Bartels took a different path that, as it progressed, became confused.

Callen told someone besides Sam and Nate that he'd made contact with Leah? Not bloody likely. The first two victims are killed by individuals wearing masks who sneak up behind them and execute them with a single gunshot to the head. Leah, however, is attacked by three people in a parking structure who don't sneak up on her or kill her but do manage to shoot her several times. Why the different approaches? Is a parking structure not as conducive to a surprise attack as a park or someone's backyard? It seems the only reason for the different approach was to keep Leah alive. Nobody cares about Leah. Plus, the three attackers were wearing masks, so how was she able to identify Anthony? Why, if Anthony wasn't in danger, was he leaving with a go bag? Who was he running away from? And Callen didn't go to the the building where Pembroke might be because questioning Anthony at that moment was more important? Seriously? Why not let Anthony sit in the room guarded by Castor while Callen and Sam go to the building? There's no way Callen wouldn't have gone if there was a chance of finding Pembroke. Instead, Pembroke's "operational center" is discovered and investigated by agents who have no connection to either Pembroke or Drona. Hard to imagine Sam would've let someone else go after Tahir or Deeks would let someone else go after Kessler, but sure, Callen isn't going to go after Pembroke. What the three subjects were doing for Pembroke, who Anthony is, and who the people who attacked Sam, Rountree, and Fatima at the building are was unclear. When questioning Anthony, Callen would've known that the idea of bringing legal action against Pembroke wasn't any more likely to happen than when the detainees tried to bring legal action against the CIA officers for their actions because the Drona Program was sanctioned. And the questioning session produced nothing useful.

The climax was underwhelming. Castor is subdued in the hospital (even though there's a nurse's station a few feet away from Leah's door), Anthony doesn't want to kill Callen--he wants to kill Pembroke (but he was after Leah? and is it completely out of the realm of possibility that Leah had been trying to warn Anthony?), all the people shooting at Sam and the others are killed (turns out at least one was a Drona subject). The idea that Anthony and whoever else he's working with don't want to work with Callen to find Pembroke is (I'm running out of synonyms for "stupid") asinine. Callen has access to all kinds of information and connections that could prove useful. It would've made far more sense for Anthony to have, at least, approached Callen and feel him out about his feelings for Pembroke before simply writing off working with him completely. 

There are final scenes between Kilbride and Shyla, Fatima and Rountree, and Callen and Sam, but none of them are anything special or memorable. And the whole "bonding" between Callen and Castor is too stupid to even be a joke. It's stupid because it's not true to his character: Callen isn't going to suddenly "hang out" with random guys from work just because he and Anna are getting married.

This episode should have been intense and emotional; instead it was neither. And that was because of the way Bartels constructed the story. Unlike "Warrior," in this episode Bartels didn't focus on the trauma or anxiety these events should've created in Callen. My biggest complaint about the way this story arc is headed is exactly what happened with the Katya story arc: Callen is being pushed aside by another player (Anthony, and maybe even Leah who both reappear in episode 19) just as Callen and Anna were pushed aside for much of the Katya story arc by Joelle. Bartels has a bad habit of focusing too much on characters that don't matter instead of focusing on the characters that do matter. It was his laser focus on Callen in "Warrior" that made that episode so far superior to this one. It's ridiculous to imagine that somewhere between "Of Value" and this episode Callen suddenly decided that he isn't interested in finding Pembroke anymore. This was a definite "dog" of an episode.