The Birthday That Kensi Forgot
by @Phillydi
For Marty Deeks, this year was the birthday celebration that never was. While on a mission with Kensi, he hinted and danced around the fact that January 8th was a special day! As usual, Kensi wasn’t paying Deeks’ ramblings too much attention and she certainly wasn’t picking up on any birthday hints he was lobbing from the passenger side of the car:
Deeks: They found the key to the evidence they were looking for in a birthday card! Isn’t that amazing?
Kensi barely raised an eyebrow.
After a long day of chasing down bad guys, Deeks overhears Kensi making reservations for dinner that evening. Of course, Deeks is thinking…. She remembered!….Happy birthday to me! He even disappears to put on a clean shirt in anticipation of his birthday celebration date with Kensi. Unfortunately, an intimate birthday dinner was not in the cards for Marty Deeks because Kensi made plans to go out to dinner instead with her partner in crime, Jaime! As Hetty asks Sam to open up a bottle of campaign in celebration of Deeks’ birthday, Kensi is surprisingly embarrassed:
Kensi: I thought it was January 18!
Deeks: Are you serious? But it’s my birthday!?
The expression on Deeks face was heart breaking when he finally realizes Kensi really did forget his birthday and had made plans to go out with someone else. He still doesn’t believe it when he asks:
Deeks: “Hey! I’m the one that’s going to dinner, right?”
Well, at least Hetty remembered his special day and Deeks would have to be satisfied with the bubbly and a quiet night at home alone.
Marty Deeks is a typical Capricorn and despite being disappointed by Kensi’s inattentiveness, he’s a patient man and knows that eventually time is on his side. He’s finally rewarded when a box shows up one day on Kensi’s desk. The infamous box has gone down in NCISLA lore to become a metaphor for the Densi relationship. When Kensi finally gives him the belated birthday present, Deeks decides not to open the box because the gift was in the giving. He doesn’t need to know what was in the container nor does he want to know. It was given to him by Kensi and that would be enough for him. According to Shane Brennan the box will remain where Deeks left it in plain sight, in every episode until he opens it… if at all.
In the spirit of NCISLA Magazine’s birthday celebration we want to know what do you think Kensi bought Deeks for his birthday? The most original idea will get a Decidedly Deeks wrist band! So in the words of Marty Deeks:
WHAT’S IN THE BOX?
Please leave your birthday present ideas in the comments below or click on the word comments….
The box is light but awkward to carry. So it could be anything up to about 15 kilos, I would guess.
I think that she has reused the box from her delivery of something else and placed Deeks’ gift in it, it is filled with packing peanuts/plastic space bags. Her gift is very small but is close to his heart maybe a donation receipt in his name for an animal charity and a tub of surfboard wax.
“The box has following things- kensi’s jelly bracelet, titanic DVD, her dad’s medal, the stuff cobra, her comic book collection and a framed pic of kensi with her dad when she was young and another framed pic of her and deeks showing off their wedding band, which was taken when they were undercover as Justin and Mellisa.In short it has kensi’s prize possession in it.”
kensi considers jelly bracelet’s as her lucky charm but now she doesn’t need them anymore because she has her partner to have her back, who is now her new lucky charm. Stuff cobra, Titanic DVD and her comic book collection are the few things which are extremely close to her which she now wants to share with deeks. Her dad’s medal is something which has always given her strength to go on in her life and has been with her since long time and now she wants deeks to have it as a gift and request to never leave her side. a pic of her and her dad is significance of happy life she once had and now wants to be with deeks. the pic of deeks and her as a married couple is how she sees themselves in future. thus she gives all this to deeks because according to her that what deeks wants from her, to open up and to make him part of her life.
deeks wants kensi and thus kensi gave him all those stuff which are very important to her.kensi gave her prize possession to her biggest and most special prized possession.
I know my idea is not original but here it goes based on the following
1- Kensi’s declaration that she got him what he wants more than anything in the world is a “heavy” comment.
2- We really don’t know Deeks THAT well so we can’t possibly guess what kind of material good he is longing for.
3- If he really confessed to Kensi his greatest desire, then that happened off camera so therefore the box could contain anything at all!
So, I vote nothing. She knows that Deeks is fascinated and intrigued by the unknown and just loves the game. All he ever wanted was for her to remember his birthday. HIS DAY!!! So, I guess better late than ever.
If I remember correctly she gave him the box right after the episode Wanted. Right after she asked him to not die. Right after she realized death is just a heartbeat away and she could lose her partner anytime. So she just gave him the satisfaction he was looking for.A proof that she cares about him.
I dont know if it makes sense!!!
I think it is probably a key to her apartment, at that point they hadn’t kissed, but she was giving it to show him she trusted him. which for Kensi is a pretty big step and the one thing I think Deeks wants from the team is for them to totally trust him.
I know what’s in the box – love, sunshine and gunpowder 😉 😉 😉
http://www.ncislamagazine.com/haiku-winner-announced/
a year supply of sex wax 🙂
Maybe the box is 1kg of almonds.
Martin like almonds!
In the box there is the ticket to Washington. Kensi she goes away. She will replace Ziva.
So Martin is free!
Kensi is unbearable. For years, she behaves very badly.
Martin has done well not to open the box.
He knows that inside there is nothing important!
I do not have the words to justify Kensi. She went above and beyond.
What he wants Martin? Peace, maybe.
Sorry for translation.
Hi from Rome (10.51)
Monty
Thanks for this article, Diane! ‘Drive’ is an episode that asked a lot of questions about the state of the Deeks/Kensi ‘ship in the middle of S4. After the Blye,K two-parter and the shippy Neighborhood Watch in S3, it seemed the Densi ship would set sail in S4 but the first half of the season did quite a bit of damage to their ‘ship and I think one of the biggest hits it took was in ‘Drive’.
I read somewhere that the writer – Joe Sachs – thought it would be hilarious to have Kensi dump Deeks on his birthday and opt to take Jaime for a meal instead because he ‘saved her’. That’s all well and good but couldn’t Sachs have got to that same point without Kensi being so insensitive and uncaring towards Deeks?
I just can’t imagine Kensi not knowing when Deeks’ birthday is, when at this stage in the show they have been working closely as partners for about two and a half years. So, she ‘thought it was January 18th’. As Deeks would say: Really??
Also, it’s not just the ‘not knowing his birthday’ thing either. It’s the fact that even though she knew Deeks thought she had booked a table for the two of them and was upset when he realised she was dating someone else, she still went right ahead and ditched her partner on his birthday so that she could date some petty criminal instead!! I thought that was an awful way to treat Deeks and it made me wonder if Kensi actually cared about him or not at this point in their ‘ship.
Okay, so, what’s in the box?
Silly guess….a gift voucher for a weekend vacation in a three bedroomed log cabin in Lake Tahoe, tons of fresh snow for skiing, roaring fire guaranteed, hot tub a definite, Kensi’s presence mandatory…..Kensi’s Mom’s presence optional – but we know Deeks thinks she’s a ‘stone cold fox’, so who knows??!
Good analysis, Judy. I hate this episode for making Kensi so out of character. At this stage of their partnership with the level of trust between them she would have never forgotten his birthday. It was ridiculous, and cartoon-like. Unworthy of the level of the show, I thought. If Joe Sachs were really given that autonomy, they really dropped the ball. Frankly, I don’t care about this stupid box, it ought to be a recording of Kensi telling him she’ll take him out to an expensive dinner for his next 20 birthdays.
I refuse to watch that episode ever again and pretend it didn’t happen.
As for the box, I think it is a photo of the entire team in a nice frame. I think Deeks always wanted to be part of a great family and NCIS is his.
I know it seemed terrible that Kensi forgot Deeks’ birthday but she got the date wrong. It’s not quite the same thing. I actually forgot my mum’s birthday this year. I don’t mean that I forgot to call or send a card. I remembered weeks later. I felt so bad. I just had so much going on in my own household with my kids I wasn’t thinking about birthdays at all.
That being said. I really want to know what is in the box. I don’t have any real ideas. Anything I think of sounds so improbable.