The NCIS: Los Angeles winter premiere aired on Sunday night, bringing to an end the long hiatus for the show.
Since only six episodes have aired so far in Season 13, NCIS: LA has a lot more stories to tell during the winter and spring months.
This latest episode is NCIS: LA Season 13, Episode 7, and it is called Lost Soldier Down.
During the night, the NCIS team investigated the apparent suicide of a Navy intelligence officer who was thought to have taken LSD before jumping to his death. It was also a night that mostly played out without Kensi.
Actress Daniela Ruah, who plays Special Agent Kensi Blye on the NCIS cast, actually directed this episode, so it was easier to just have her character be off the screen for the night.
NCIS: Los Angeles recap for the winter premiere
The episode started with a Navy officer having hallucinations and then a scene of him falling many floors from an apartment complex.
At the offices, Callen was ending a mysterious phone conversation that he lied about when Sam asked him about it. The call had been in reference to a woman, but we were left to guess. Anna? Hetty? Someone else?
Then, Deeks walked in, talking to Kensi on the phone about their backyard. He then let NCIS viewers in on the fact that Kensi was in Mexico, thus explaining why Daniela Ruah could be behind the camera this week. Callen mentioned that she had “a good team around her” down there, and Deeks talked about surprising her by creating a zen garden before she returned.
The NCIS: Los Angeles team is on the case
Fatima and Admiral Kilbride filled in the team on the death of the Navy officer and that he and another person on his ship had used LSD. The team was tasked with getting to the bottom of it, figuring out who the supplier was, and if any national secrets were at risk due to the drug use on the ship.
The team did a lot of investigating, which included interviewing people who had worked with the officer who had died, a boyfriend that he had recently struck up a relationship with, and someone who had been distributing LSD on the ship.
But it turned out that it was his counselor who had slipped the officer some LSD because she claimed to have felt really bad for what he was going through. He took it in the form of a CBD gummy, never actually knowing that it was LSD he was taking. It led to him falling from his balcony and dying. The counselor was arrested when the team figured it all out.
Outside of the investigation, it turned out that Callen had located one of Hetty’s proteges (from the files he got into during the season premiere). He had been reluctant to tell Sam about it because Sam had warned him about pulling at that thread. Rather than really listen to Sam’s warnings, Callen pretended to bump into the woman once he located her, and convinced her to go on a date with him (without revealing who he really was). More to that story will likely come in future episodes.
It turned out that Fatima was also pretending her injury from a previous case was worse so that she could remain working in the offices and not in the field. Kilbride figured it out and tried to express to her that his door was always open.
Later, Kilbride also seemed just fine when it seemed like Fatima’s mental recovery was lagging behind her physical recovery. Because she came clean to him, he told her she could have as much time as she needed to get her mind right.
NCIS: Los Angeles airs Sundays at 9/8c on CBS.