Will Police Reform Lead to Deeks Becoming an Agent on ‘NCIS: LA’?

Meredith Jacobs November 23, 2020, 11:15 am

Eric Christian Olsen NCIS Los Angeles Season 12 Episode 3 Deeks — CBS

[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for Season 12, Episode 3 of NCIS: Los Angeles, “Angry Karen.”]

Is LAPD Detective Marty Deeks (Eric Christian Olsen), who has been the NCIS team’s police liaison since the end of Season 1, finally going to make the jump to agent this year?

It’s come up before on NCIS: LA; operations manager Hetty Lange (Linda Hunt) had an application for him early on in the series. But he’s remained LAPD all this time. However, due to police reform — this CBS procedural is one of several not shying away from questions raised in the real world — his position with the federal agency is very much up in the air moving forward.

As his crime-fighting partner and wife Special Agent Kensi Blye (Daniela Ruah) learned in “Angry Karen,” he’s already been recalled. “LAPD is undergoing a public safety review to avoid defunding and part of that is the cancellation of all partnerships and liaisons,” he told her after she found the memo in their bar. It’s temporary, she noted, and she already had a couple solutions: Hetty could just do what she always does and pull some strings or he could finally become a full-time NCIS agent. “Maybe this is a good thing. Maybe it’s time that you become one of us,” she said.

But Deeks was much more pessimistic. “No one even knows where Hetty is,” he pointed out. (She hadn’t shared her location with Renée Felice Smith’s Nell Jones when she called in the intelligence analyst, who had quit, to fill in for her in the premiere.) And if he’s an agent, he could be transferred anywhere.

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Is he right on either count? Hetty is completely MIA (we haven’t heard from her since the premiere), and it’s unclear if she’ll even be in a position to help Deeks. The best she could probably do is fast-track him into FLETC for training and probably ensure he stays in Los Angeles. And while Nell is being Hetty, at least for the time being, and she has shown that she can get things done, she likely wouldn’t be able to step in to help the LAPD detective in this situation.

If Deeks does decide to become an agent, he wouldn’t be the first to attend FLETC this season; former FBI agent Rountree (new series regular Caleb Castille) did prior to it and has been already learning the ropes from the rest of the team in the first three episodes.

Densi NCIS Los Angeles Season 12 Episode 3 Kensi Deeks Bar

(CBS)

And though Deeks was in the bar while Kensi went off to deal with the November 22 episode case, as we’ve seen this season, the bar isn’t getting much business. There’s only so long that can continue; he and Kensi do need to get back in the field, together as partners again, sooner rather than later.

Of course there’s the question of whether or not he should become an agent. Sure, he does act as liaison with the LAPD at times, but is it really necessary for the team to have someone in that position still? Over on NCIS, Ziva David (Cote de Pablo) was initially the liaison for Mossad but eventually resigned and joined NCIS. It may be time for Deeks to do the same.

This could lead to more discussions about their future — they were trying to have kids last year — and their careers. It’s come up quite a bit in the past, and this might end up spurring them into really making a decision about how long they can continue on with their jobs and a potential family since they do seem to want to eventually get out.