Purity (4 X 20)
WRITTEN BY: Joe Sachs
DIRECTED BY: Eric Laneuville
After all the controversy surrounding the Red episodes, it’s good to see our LA team back at work and together again  and free from all the Red Team diversion.  Tonight Callen and company are investigating a military death which may have profound homeland security implications.  Joe Sachs (Drive) has written his second episode this year and Eric Laneuville’s returns behind the camera for the first time this season.

In this episode, a communal water jug has been found to contain a lethal dose of cyanide and has already killed a Navy officer and incapacitated another. The team needs to find out if this is an isolated incident or the work of terrorists.  Jihadist groups are taking credit for the death but Sam has his doubts after reading the internet chatter. The source of the poisoning is coming from a water cooler which was probably tampered with before the bottle was opened and Deeks just found the murder weapon…and empty syringe.   Callen and Sam are trying to get more information from the other victim but other than a discharged sailor that caused some problems in Lt. Gordon’s past…they still don’t have much to go on.  But one dead sailor is the least of the problems for the team.  A two hundred pound drum of cyanide is missing from a factory and could kill close to a million people.  Things just went from bad to worse!

Callen and Sam track down Gordon’s protagonist who is now out of the military.  The only thing he can share is that Gordon seemed to be a man with a lot of secrets.  Does this have anything to do with the cyanide poisoning?  Deeks and Kensi run down the janitor who installed the jug from the water cooler.   Other than a new lead regarding a strange man hanging around the club looking for work, the killer is still out there and if things were bad before….Sam and Deeks just found out there are more drums missing with the potential now to kill four millions people.  The stakes just got higher!  People are having heart attacks and if it’s not in the water delivery service jugs, then it’s in the city’s drinking water.  It looks like a local attack….maybe homegrown?

Kensi and Deeks finds the source of where the cyanide may be getting into the drinking water and Eric and Nell track down a possible radical group called Designing a New America (love their acronym-DNA) who may be using guerrilla tactics to  make their point.  Seems like the team may have found their homegrown terrorists.  Callen infiltrates the group after bring Sam down during a protest. (I’m surprised Sam didn’t have a few words for Callen after their head-to-head.   Callen finds it all goes back to the beginning of the story with their first suspect who is the leader of the radical group.  Oh no, Callen is forced to drink the cool-aide!!  Luckily, he has the antidote close by and gets to live another day.  (The man has more lives than a cat!) The team goes on to take down the radical group and secure the cyanide despite the tears of a misguided child.  Callen does a great job talking the kid off the ledge.  The ball tossing scene at the end was a nice touch but I’m not too sure any child after all that brain washing would act so normal a few days later.  But it was nice to see Callen showing his parental side.

I have to say it wasn’t one of your more exciting episodes but it had a few shining moments for individual members of the team.

Show Highlights:

I loved seeing Ron Howard’s father Rance Howard as the old man who let’s Kensi into his house to check the water system.  Dwarfs?  That can’t be good!

Always enjoy seeing Sam in uniform.  Also fun to see Callen getting in Sam’s face too.

Hetty has such a great sense of humor, doesn’t she?  I loved her April Fool’s joke on Deeks.   Did you see the look on his face when he thought he was going to be fined over $100,000!  I think he would rather be drinking that cyanide instead!  Ha!

Best Lines from the Show:

Deeks:  If you built a time machine and didn’t tell me about it, I’m going to be pissed!

Eric:  Close…it also starts with a C and ends with an E.  Anyone, anyone?  Ding…times up…we were looking for cyanide.

Bromance Moments:

Sam:  God, I love algebra.  It’s logical.  It’s clean.

Callen:  That’s right.  You use to be a mathalete.

Sam: No I wasn’t a mathalete.  I was a junior math Olympian.  There’s a big difference.

Callen: You guys count on your fingers, or something?

 

Densi Moments:

Sam:  Kensi seems to have lost something.

Deeks:  Shocking!

 

Kensi:  We’ll take the bikini bar?

Deeks:  What?  We will?

Kensi:  I don’t like to see him beg and plus he would mope all the way to Point Mugo if we didn’t.

Deeks:  This is fantastic news but I don’t beg.

Kensi:  Oh, you beg.

Deeks:  I definitely don’t mope, because you’re the moper…you’re like MopyDick.

 

Kensi:  Feel free to take the pole for a spin.

Deeks:  Touche.

 

Check out our interview with ER alum, Lily Maryie, who played Ashley Hong on tonight’s episode.  She has some interesting insights on working in the entertainment industry and why she had a blast working with the NCISLA team on Purity.  We want to thank her for taking the time out to speak with NCISLA Magazine!

Looks like we’re going to have another break next week but when we return it’s the long awaited Densi-centric episode we have all been promised, written by Dave Kalstein and Gil Grant.  Later that week, our roundtable panel of writers will be back again to talk about the episode and to see if some of our predictions came true regarding the Box! (I predict by then that the damn prop will soon have an agent and publicist!)  Join us again in two weeks for Resurrection (4X21) and check out my review and the subsequent discussion.

Follow me on twitter @phillydi