We open on Mosley drinking alone at a bar. A man nearby starts chatting her up and invites her up to his room. She joins him and immediately changes into a robe from his bathroom. Dang, Mosley! The pair clink glasses to toast their very, very new relationship, and then HE THROWS THE DRINK IN HER FACE and they start hand-to-hand combat. Wait, WHAT!?!? I did not expect that! This whole opening scene is amazing. They proceed to straight-up trash the swanky hotel room, and not in a sexy way, as she stabs him with a corkscrew and chokes him with her robe tie before finally knocking him out.
Well. That was fun.
Callen’s at the boat shed where he’s clearly been sleeping. Sam is acting equally odd as he’s just swimming around in a wetsuit under the boat shed before breakfast. Callen asks for absolutely no explanation for this, which is great. They exchange notes: Anna isn’t returning Callen’s calls and Mosley’s son is somewhere unknown on Sam’s boat. Still no one knows where Hetty or Mosley are, despite there now being a BOLO out for Mosley, which is concerning since Rogers is still running his investigation to get to the bottom of Hidoko’s death.
Back at the office, Nell and Eric have discovered that Quantico refers to the LA branch of NCIS as “The Graveyard” because everyone winds up dead. Lovely, and not inaccurate. As Callen and Sam examine the crime scene in the hotel room - it looks like Mosley killed the guy from the night before - they have the wonder twins track her.
Eric finds that she recently researched info on local cartels and we’re given a little background on local cartel culture: the Los Asesinos cartel is secretly controlled by Ella Juanega who hates the Molina cartel.
As all of this is going on, Deeks is called in to discuss What Happened in Mexico with Rogers, and Kensi gives him the heads-up to be as long-winded as possible because they need plenty of time to pursue this Mosley situation without having someone looking over their shoulder.
So Deeks has been given the green light to do his thing in full force, and it’s as funny to us as it is frustrating to Rogers. He acts out his own stories, repeats things, and goes on wild tangents. His answer to the question of why he was in Mexico with NCIS was, “Why wouldn’t I be in Mexico with NCIS?”
This goes on for a while.
Cut to a nail salon where Mosley is apparently having clandestine meetings with Los Asesinos members. She offers them, wait WHAT? SHE OFFERS THEM INFO ABOUT CALLEN - including his real name and all sorts of personal info - in exchange for meeting with Juanega.
Not cool, Mosley.
She heads off to the Los Asesinos compound for a chat with the cartel boss, and it turns out Sam and Callen are a step ahead of her as they’re staking out the place. They have some dragonfly-sized drones that they are trying to use to get a mic near the scene, but neither Callen nor Sam have any drone flying capabilities and keep crashing and destroying the tech. What follows is a long montage of grown men wasting a lot of government money. Meanwhile, Eric observing back at Ops ready to strangle them.
The tech wizard finally takes over and successfully lands a drone, getting ears on the situation. The cartel has forced Mosley to change into a sweatshirt from Daryl’s wardrobe when he was Negan’s prisoner on The Walking Dead and she offers Juanega all the info she could possibly want on the NCIS team with an asking price of $1 million.
Everyone listening in gets ticked that she’s selling them out - you know, at this point, I don’t think she is, I think it’s a trick - and extract her as soon as she’s out on the road again. She claims it’s not what it looks like and then a car full of dudes drive up with automatic rifles and freaking Molotov cocktails and they THROW ONE ON SAM’S CAR.
Y’all, I gasped louder at that than I have when any actual human has been injured on this show.
Callen and Sam drive away with their entire hood fully engulfed in flames - honestly, it looks very cool - and pull into a car wash to extinguish it.
Missing all the fun is Deeks, who is still talking to Rogers. He says that all he remembers was getting on the plane and waking up in a hospital, which, considering how severe his concussion was, is probably more or less accurate. Rogers gets fed up with the attitude, turns off the camera, and says probably the only thing that could get Deeks to take this seriously.
“At the end of the day, this was a serious international incident that left a young woman dead… Is that the best way for you to honor a fallen team member?”
At Ops, Nell has discovered that Mosley has completely cashed out of all of her finances - I imagine it would be odd having a job where your coworkers could look into all of your bank accounts - which makes Nell think she’s planning to run. They track her phone and hear her calling the other cartel, offering the same NCIS personnel info for immunity for her son.
She sets up a meet with the new cartel, claiming she’ll have a member of NCIS with her as an offering.
The team figures out what’s going on - she’s trying to double-cross the cartels. Since none of them are involved in her plot, they figure their buddy Turk must be.
They head to the site of the exchange - Kensi nearby with a sniper rifle - and wait. Los Asesinos shows up with her million dollars cash and shortly thereafter the Molina cartel shows up, ready to do the same.
As soon as the cartels see one another they start firing. Mosley and Turk jump out of the way and Mosley splits, telling Callen that the whole thing was a ruse to protect her son. Turk admits it was his plan from the beginning; now the two gangs are trying to kill each there instead of trying to kill Mosley.
Problem solved, I guess. But dang, that was a big risk.
Speaking of risks, it’s time to put a bow on the What Happened in Mexico investigation. We see every single team member recount the exact same story, word for word, in their depositions. Which is impressive that they all memorized it so well, really.
Mosley contacts Rogers to say she ordered the team into Mexico and Hidoko went of her own free will. Unable to do anything else, Rogers is forced to conclude his investigation and exonerate the team and Hetty.
As he’s on the way out, Deeks says “Bye, neighbor!” to Mr. Rogers. Well done.
