When we last saw Kensi (Daniela Ruah) on NCIS: LA, she was in a very precarious position: seemingly about to get her leg sawed off by her onetime therapy buddy Sullivan, aka CIA Agent Ferris (Kurt Yaeger). Did she manage to escape?
Um, duh. Thanks to some detective work from… well, the whole team, basically, Kensi gets rescued just in the nick of time — but not before getting into a brutal fight with Ferris, who’s eventually shot dead by Deeks (Eric Christian Olsen) during a final raid. (Side note — it’s kind of hilarious that Kensi never asks anyone about Hetty and Granger’s well-being, since she’s been shown images of their “dead bodies” moments prior. Is the implication that she obviously knew they were fakes? Sure, let’s go with that.)
However, Kensi isn’t the only one who walks away from the mission wounded. When the team arrives at the first location where they believe Kensi is being held, Callen (Chris O’Donnell) is shocked to discover that there is, in fact, a woman tied to a chair there. But it’s not Kensi. It’s his ex-girlfriend, Joelle (Elizabeth Bogush). Joelle spins an unlikely yarn about how she was randomly carjacked by someone earlier that day, and didn’t see or hear Kensi… even though they were supposedly brought to the same location by the same man. But though the pieces of her story aren’t exactly fitting together, everyone accepts it at face value except for Hetty (Linda Hunt), who confronts Joelle and gets her to admit that she’s actually a CIA officer, and was lying to Callen the whole time.
While the team is trying to track down Kensi and Hetty is dealing with Joelle, Granger (Miguel Ferrer) is in stable condition under 24-hour guard in the hospital. The guard is pretty ineffective, however, as a would-be assassin manages to sneak into Granger’s room, and he shoots her right as she’s about to inject something into his medical bag. (It’s through her phone that the team manages to track down the location where Kensi’s actually being held.)
It’s a safe bet that the whole ordeal may prove to be a little too much for Granger, who wearily tells Hetty at the end of the episode that he’s been having death dreams. (The show is planning to pay tribute to Ferrer, who died last month, in an upcoming episode.) In the meantime, Hetty has enlisted the help of retired Admiral A.J. Chegwidden (John M. Jackson) to help clean up the mess left behind by this CIA brouhaha. (He gets off to a great start, whacking Joelle in the back of the head as she’s pointing a gun at Hetty.) Might he be a permanent replacement for Granger?
When all is said and done, the ending can only be described as a happy one as far as Kensi’s rescue is concerned. Deeks is obviously thrilled to get the love of his life back, but his desperate (and violent) behavior during the search for Kensi earned him some sideways glances from Callen, Sam (LL Cool J) and Hetty. Granger is not in good shape, and Hetty’s about to lose her right-hand man. Callen is left sawing away at his dining room table as he tries to process Joelle’s betrayal. And there’s a huge dangling loose end in the form of Sabatino (Erik Palladino), who somehow manages to escape being handcuffed to a car while Deeks, Callen and Sam are rescuing Kensi. Though he spends the bulk of the episode trying to convince Hetty & Co. that he’s actually on their side, he’s already proven that he can’t be trusted.
