Merry Evasion, Merry Occasion and Hawala introduction
Merry Evasion it is when one survives a Home-Invasion, an Ambush, a flurry of bullets fired at you and running out of ammunition. Merry evasion it is when one receives unexpected gifts that are called lifelines to get out of your otherwise dead-end journey. Merry Christmas it is and it is certainly a merry occasion to celebrate for Lily and the Senator to have suvived the Bosnian Roda mission to kill them. Merry Christmas it is and a Merry occassion to celebrate for Kensi to reconnect to her LA OSP office, get the lifeline support to survive a dangerous mission she is on and more importantly reconnect to what she misses most, her partner. To Kensi is how they toast this Christmas time. And a nice rollout of Hawala story for the 5x13 Allegiance story. Granger spoke about Hawala money coming into Pakistan which is usually a precursor to an organized act of terrorism.
(We get to know that Senator was having a secret Bank account. And the Senator owes the NCIS LA a debt…..so I am thinking, he might possibly help the NCIS LA team to Granger’s team in Afghanistan in the next episode.)
An entertaining episode watching Lily, the senator's daughter with Callen and Sam. Good knowing that Kensi is replacing the sniper who got decapitated on the same mission earlier. Surprised that Sabatino did not much flirt with Kensi. And Hetty gifts a lifeline support with the satellite phone so that Kensi can survive the dangerous mission she is on. Hetty also gifts a secure line to Densi. And this time it is Eric who is missing his partner Nell. Awww! But Shaggy and Velma - Not done. Neeks Partnership worked but personally I say no to the Scooby Doo references. I cannot take it anymore about those Shaggy jokes.
Kensi has really a good Christmas with the Christmas Party going on and a chat with her lover-boy on phone who is still stuck on calling her his Partner. Hahaha!!! of course I am not expecting anything…. but still partner is a thing of past now. Oh Wait!! Does that “Partner” mean "Work Partner" or "Life Partner". Oh No!! Partner also called himself Monty. Awww!! Monty being awkward, moping around the house and listening to Tori Amos (so he cannot get himself to surf ?? or do anything else? Poor guy!). Monty be making Pot Roast in Crackpot for the Holidays if he already did not :)
They hear each other's voices over the phone unexpectedly, out of the blue, and their emotions are all over the place. They are tongue-tied and yet they go on as it comes to them on the spur of the moment. There were spontaneous confessions of Miss you guys! which just meant "I Miss Home" for Kensi and "Its Not Home at all Without You" for Deeks when he realized as he talked that all he can see at his place is Monty moping around listening to Tori Amos, which is kinda awkward. True, Kensi far away from home misses LA, her office, her team and him. It is where her heart and home is. And Deeks who is at his home, is living a listless existence with doing nothing that he usually enjoys doing from his home. It sure is no longer looking a home to him, its a house where he makes his dog Monty mope around listening to sad music that he keeps playing. Having made themselves light with their heart's condition known to the other, they get on to banter at what they are usually great at, discussing Christmas Plans. Yeah, right ! The one in LA with access to clubs is going to cook Pot Roast in CrackPot with his dog Monty as company and the One in the mountains of Afghanistan, out in the cold is going to go clubbing with boys. That's our boy and girl !
But a word of advice to the writers. Afghanistan is 12 and half hours ahead of Los Angeles and no way Kensi, Deeks and Hetty are in same time zone. They cannot have nights at the same time. Can this be taken care for future episodes? Its an advanced geeky and techie age even for entertainment, so may be we can keep that realism, a little bit. How about Kensi in daylight talking to Deeks at night or vice versa ?
Episode Analysis In Detail
Episode
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5x12 - Merry Evasion
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Merry Evasion - what is it ? It should have been Merry Christmas for Lily Lockhart. Instead it became Merry Evasion for her as she escapes being killed in several attempts on Christmas Eve with the help of NCIS LA big brothers, Sam and Callen.
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Writer
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Kyle Harimoto
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Do not know about Kyle Harimoto much except for the fact that he writes for Hawai Five-O and this is his second episode on NCIS Los Angeles this season. He started in this season and has earlier written 5x03 Omni. Going by the action sequences, we can see that he is big on action sequences and goes for explosions like Joseph C Wilson. The story did not have lot of banter, but talk that tells us more of story and throws light on the characters. Kind of racy where you won’t analyse much except go by what the writer shows. There’s no hidden meaning to be unravelled. And the scripting was very good to shift in parallel about the two storylines of LA mission and Afghanistan Mission. For ex: When Eric asks Hetty is Kensi is gone for long and the immediate next cut we have is for Afghanistan set. That enables great editing. And Lily's banter was throwing off the hints of what's to come next.
The bulk of the story is written for Sam and Callen along with Lily Lockhart, who are the protagonists evading getting killed by the Bosnian Roda. Merry Evasion it is for SCallen and Lily scenes alone count for one third of episode time surviving the home-invasion, ambush, explosion,firing and on foot going dark. One fifth time is spent solving the case and one-tenth time in gathering intel on the case. The blend into Afghanistan story with Christmas Gift connection between Kensi and Hetty was nicely done.
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Director
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Karen Gaviola
John Peter Kousakis-for Afghan Story
Editing by Eric Wilson
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Karen Gaviola has directed on episode per season on NCIS LA and all of them have been entertaining. She goes by the story and directs accordingly paying good attention to the screenplay.
Very good editing and scripting to accommodate the two storylines in parallel. Editing was taken up by Eric Wilson.
20% of the Episode time is taken by Afghanistan Story. The bulk of the story is written for Sam and Callen along with Lily Lockhart for Merry Evasion, who are the protagonists evading getting killed by the Bosnian Roda. Merry Evasion it is for SCallen and Lily scenes alone count for 30% of the episode time, followed by 16% of episode time shared by everyone working at the same time on the case. Otherwise Neeks and Hetty-Eric have only 6% time each on field/case pair-wise. Total becoming 58% on case and rest 22% being Bull Pen Christmas bonding, Case Opening, Ops Mission briefing along with Hetty gifting to Kensi and Deeks for Densi time. The bridge between LA OSP and Afghanistan in this episode is Hetty who gifts satellite phone to Kensi and through that "only true lifeline" for Kensi explains the mission objectives and what she has been sent for.
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Episode Summary
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Senator Lockhart’s daughter has home invasion. Someone tries to kill her and soon she is fighting for evasion out of the situation. The State Department assigns the case to NCIS LA to investigate the case if is not just a random Home Invasion.
And its Christmas time and both teams in LA office and Afghanistan celebrate Christmas.
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Okay episode. As suspected by NCIS LA team, Lily’s Home Invasion has everything to do about her father’s occupational work. Senator Lockhart has worked in Army, made enemies with Chinese PLA and Bosnian Roda (ParaMilitary Force) and during his longest time in Bosnia, he eliminated warlords and now they are back to avenge their father’s death. The Bosnians cannot get to the Senator and hence they go after his daughter.
In Afghanistan, Kensi meets up with Agent Sabatino. She gets to know from him that she was replacing the earlier sniper of her team who was found dead decapitated. Hetty instructs Kensi to keep looking for outliers within her team at Afghanistan as most certainly they have a leak in the team who is sabotaging their mission and needs to be smoked out.
The most important backstopping for the next case Allegiance is planted in this episode by Kyle Harimoto. Granger spoke about Hawala money coming into Pakistan and Senator was caught holding a Hawala account. And the Senator feels indebted to NCIS LA for saving his daughter’s life, so the next episode we will have NCIS LA team reaching out to help Granger’s team in Afghanistan over the Hawala money transfer in the next episode.
And the ending of the episode was beautiful with Hetty’s gift and the chat over the Satellite phone gifted by Hetty. Deeks referred himself to Monty! Good Coding there, if anyone is running surveillance on them. But the same timezone even when Afghanistan is 12 and half hours ahead of Los Angeles is bit too much to digest.
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NCIS Personnel Highlights and Bull Pen Fun
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Neeks - Nell and Deeks partner, Sabatino returns and is with Granger, Hetty’s thoughtful gift and we have the boys playing it all together.
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Deeks to Sam and Callen - Mele kalikimaka Boys !!! Its also Hawaiian Christmas greeting.
Callen and Deeks again matching up. “Christmas cards, Display on Fireplace” and supported by Eric too. "January 3rd" … "Minimum" in Unison
Other than that,not much. Everyone was working hard on the case. All resources were used up. Even Hetty had to be on the field with resources being short as Callen and Sam go dark. Nell is pretty good in action.
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Ops Manager
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Hetty Lange
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Hetty is thoughtful this Christmas. Loving but not at all funny. She has all care and kind word of being the mother, the provider to the team. She takes care of all her agents as usual. She registers that Eric misses Nell, tells Callen not to get happy for training Nell on the field as she still has her job to do in Ops, already takes care of Kensi and Deeks by providing them a secure line - a perfect and thoughtful gift for both of them and she is proud of SCallen as always, her Best Agents “Qualified and Driven Men” who can be trusted with anything. And she does not forget Granger’s mission. She reaches out to Kensi and advises on her role duties for her Mission. She asks Kensi to keep a watch on her Task Force and smoke out the leaks. That is so much better than working with Granger who expects Kensi to just read his mind. She brings the perfect Holiday Cheer to Kensi by making her reconnect to LA office through that lifeline Satellite phone giving an opportunity to understand the mission better. She drives away the gloom that Kensi earlier has received news about her replacing the earlier Sniper who was found decapitated. Because if Kensi needs help of OSP in LA, she can reach out to her. Hetty also gifts Kensi an access to another secure line to Deeks. The partners can stay connected even when apart. What could have been a better gift.
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Bull Pen Partnership -1
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G Callen & Sam Hanna
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Merry Evasion it is when one survives a Home-Invasion, an Ambush, a flurry of bullets fired at you with running out of ammunition and going dark after having to throw away cell phones pinged by Sting Rays. All their scenes with Lily are entertaining. Entire Lily (Michelle Trachtenberg’s) scenes are with them and one has to watch the scenes to enjoy. I liked the banter between the three. Lily was able to handle the big guys very well and they could take care of her very well. Things that I can remember top of my head are “Can I know the plan?”....“What’s the plan?” “On Two Run out like a bat from hell”. :)))) And that Slow food versus Fast food was pretty fast throwback from Callen to Sam and Lily. “Do you know the cow’s name?” “Mac! He was big.” :))))
SCallen take 30% of episode time. This is apart from the 20% to total episode time that they spend with rest of the team while resolving the case. The episode was just written for them. Though Kensi's mission in parallel runs smoothly :)
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Partnership -2
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Marty Deeks and Nell Jones
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Its not much but is definitely a start. They just cover 6% of episode time when on field working as the second team. Hetty asks Deeks to partner up with Nell and be on the field for the case. Seriously “Shaggy and Velma” !!! Really ???? Nell called Deeks Shaggy ? May be the entire NCIS LA Scribe likes to call Deeks a Shaggy and he does keep a shaggy hair-style, but a new partner calling him Shaggy - Not Cool. Its still not okay that Deeks did a “Well played Velma” comeback to Nell. Of course Nell can be the Velma of the team being the Intelligence Analyst, but why the so called name calling repeatedly for the man’s hair-style.
So what kind of banter we have here? "Go Kens!" About Urban Tracking and Baseline technique to find out in which direction Sam and Callen went. We learn through their conversation that Nell reads stuff she is not supposed to read, redacted files; but that’s why she is so intelligent with all info. isn't it ?! If Callen and Sam having worked in CIA know about Cache (emergency stock for Agents in Field) in Open sight, Nell explains the same to Deeks. And the final conversation too between them at eggnog time is also good one. But Deeks and Nell were always good friends. Okay I forgive her for calling Deeks Shaggy. She is his geeky friend from the beginning. I have to remember that. I recall Season 2 Disorder - the Christmas episode when Hetty presents just the right kind of gifts when they were both new in the team. She takes special care of the two. You wanna reminisce that, you can read here
http://ncisla-episodeanalysisbysd.blogspot.com/2013/11/2x11-disorder.html
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Ops Room Partnership
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Eric Beale- Tech Operator
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Nell is out in the field. Eric feels proud of her, but misses her. Eric blurts this out in front of Hetty and asks her if Kensi is going to be away for long. And Eric gets the dog released from the Hospital.
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Afghanistan Partnership
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Kensi Blye & Owen Granger
With Sabatino
Granger sends off Harris to Athens and rest of the others to Istanbul for Holidays
Sanders is the previous- Decapitated Sniper on The White Ghost Mission
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Merry Evasion it is when one receives unexpected gifts that are called lifelines to get out of your otherwise seeming dead-end journey. Merry Christmas it is and a Merry occassion to celebrate for Kensi to reconnect to her LA OSP office, get the lifeline support to survive a dangerous mission she is on and more importantly reconnect to what she misses most, her partner. To Kensi is how the team in LA office toast this Christmas time. And a nice rollout of Hawala story for the 5x13 Allegiance story. Granger spoke about Hawala money coming into Pakistan which is usually a precursor to an organized act of terrorism.
Interesting threesome. Kensi and Granger cannot obviously have a conversation but Kensi atleast now has Sabatino to talk to. Welcome change for her. Because of him she gets to what kind of dangerous mission she is on learning that she was replacing a decapitated Sniper. We have Hetty sending the perfect gift to Kensi, a phone, her only lifeline with two secure lines - one to Hetty and another to Deeks. The entire Afghan story arc takes 20% of screen time in the episode. It was interesting growth towards the story.
The telephone talk was one of the first times conversations between Deeks and Kensi after they became official and are sorely missing each other. So when they hear each other's voices over the phone unexpectedly, out of the blue, their emotions are all over the place. They are tongue-tied and yet they go on as it comes on the spur of the moment. They were spontaneous confessions of Miss you guys ! which just meant "I Miss Home" for Kensi and "Its Not Home at all Without You" for Deeks when he suddenly realized while talking to her that all he can see at his place is Monty moping around listening to Tori Amos, which is kinda awkward. True, Kensi far away from home misses LA, her office, her team and him. It is where her heart and home is. And Deeks who is at his home, but is living a listless existence with doing nothing that he usually enjoys doing from his home. It sure is no longer looking a home to him, its a house where he makes his dog Monty mope around listening to sad music that he keeps playing.
Making themselves light with their heart's condition known to the other, they get on to banter at what they are usually great at, discussing Christmas Plans. Yeah, right ! The one in LA with access to clubs is going to go for cooking Pot Roast in CrackPot with his dog Monty as company and the One in the mountains of Afghanistan, out in the cold is going to go clubbing with boys. That's our boy and girl.
To read more about the White Ghost story, check this link
The Afghanistan Classified Mission about the White Ghost
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Others/GK
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Hawala
Slow Food vs Fast Food
Urban Tracking
Tori Amos
Hindu Kush Mountains
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Read here for more on Hawala system of Money Transfer.
And funny is the way Granger drawls “haawaala” :))
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The Screenplay and Editing - Check out the Screen time shared by the characters per the various scenes
5:18 - Equal
5:19 to 6:09 - Scallen and Lily 50 seconds
6:10 to 7:21 - Neeks and Senator 61 sec
7:22 to 10:41 - Scallen and Lily action scene - 200 seconds
10:48 to 11:25 - Scallen and lily - 37 seconds
11:26 to 15:03 - Kensi, Sabatino and Granger - 217 sec
15:04 to 16:48 - Scallen, Lily -104 sec
16:49 to 17:07 - Hetty and Eric - 18 sec
17:08 to 19:20 - Scallen and Lily - 132 sec
19:32 to 20:23 - Eric, Hetty - 51 sec
20:24 to 21:55 - Kensi, Sabatino and Granger - 93 sec
21:56 to 22:37 - Scallen, Lily - 41 sec
22:38 to 24:05 - Neeks - 87 seconds
24:06 to 25:32 - Hetty and Senator - 86 sec
25:33 to 27:46 - Scallen and Lily - 133 sec
27:56 to 29:02 - Scallen and Lily - 66 sec
29:03 to 29:54 - Callen, Bad-guy, Sam, Deeks, Nell - 51 sec
29:55 to 31:19 - Kensi, Sabatino and Granger - 84 sec
31:20 to 32:44 - Lily, Team (Scallen outside and Ops with Hetty, Nell, Eric and Deeks) - 84 sec
32:56 to 36:02 - Scallen, Neeks, Senator, Bad Guys - far too lucky to get organized -186 sec
36:03 to 37:17 - Scallen, Lily, Senator, Eric - 74 sec
37:17 to 38:51 - Team (neeks, Hetty-Callen, Sam - Eric just standing there) - 94 sec
38:52 to 39:41 to 41:18 - Kensi and Kensi-Hetty - 49 sec, 97 sec
41:19 to 41:49 to 42:09 to 43:14 - Hetty and Deeks and Kensi - 30 sec, 19 sec, 65 sec
SCallen - 13min 57sec (837)
Neeks - 2min 28sec (148)
Hetty and Eric - 1m 9sec (69)
Hetty - 1m 26sec (86)
Team/Case - 5 min 21sec (321)
Bull Pen&Ops&Case Open - 5min 18sec
Ending Team Scene- 1m 34sec
Kensi-Sabatino-Granger - 6min 34sec
Kensi-Hetty - 1min 37sec
Deeks-Hetty - 30 sec
Kensi -49 sec
Deeks - 19 sec
Densi - 65 sec
Total - 2527 Seconds - 42.11 minutes
Sam and Callen - 15 min - 30% of total episode time
With everyone - 7 min - 16%
Kensi - 10 min - 20%
Deeks - 5 min - 10%
Hetty - 5 min - 10%
Nell - 3 min - 7%
Eric - 2 min - 4%
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