NCIS: LA - The Patton Project - Review: "That's Not What We Do"

We open on a man visiting a girl in what appears to be some sort of hospital - whether she’s in for mental or physical concerns is unknown. The conversation makes it VERY clear that she is expected to carry out some sort of suicide bomb on a plane, with her son on board. She’s getting out in four days - maybe this is a jail and I totally misread the situation?

Cut to the team out in the middle of nowhere, waiting on a contact. Tobin Shaked pulls up - a former Mossad man whose daughter they recently saved - and tells them there’s new intel about the Patton Project. The Patton Project, you’ll remember, is the group that inspired the radicalism Kensi had to fight last season when the U.S. soldiers held their own nuclear base hostage. Turk shows up to corroborate the evidence, saying that Patton Project members have started to meet at Venice Beach.

The team isn’t sure about all of this, but Ochoa basically tells them that their actions in Mexico have justified their involvement in something like this. The team does a little bit more research to determine the kind of man they’re getting involved with and it becomes clear that that the last Patton Project member that Shaked identified was tortured to death.

Callen confronts Ochoa to say that the team is not just a bunch of assassins for hire and he basically says tough luck.

The team stakes out Venice Beach (honestly, HUGE miss that none of the actors were doing pull-ups in this scene, that’s literally what Venice Beach is for) for a meeting between two members of the Patton Project and Kensi ID’s Colonel Trevor Lawford speaking with someone. Lawford gets away and when they corner the unidentified contact, he throws himself off a building in a weirdly slow motion scene.

The team collectively decides that they’re not executioners, so Shaked says that if they’re unwilling to kill Lawford then the what Patton Project does from here on out is from them.

The Wonder Twins discover that Lawford has recently visited over 50 psychiatric hospitals, which is not good news. He’s praying on the unstable and using them to carry out his mission. The team tracks him to a hotel and arrest him.

As Sam and Callen are questioning Lawford at the Boat Shed, Ochoa brings Shaked in to conduct his own questioning. He kicks the partners out and blackmails Lawford with falsified recordings of his wife and daughter in order to get him to confess his involvement with the Patton Project. That’s definitely not legal, and there’s no way the team is gonna deal with this guy for longer than they have to.

They confirm that the Patton Project’s mission is to start a war between Muslim countries and the U.S., and the Wonder Twins have recently discovered that Lawford has been going through airport security over and over, searching out weak spots. They determine that he must be setting up the people he’s brainwashed in mental institutions to bomb planes that are carrying Muslims previously on the no-fly list, thus resulting in the assumption of guilt on the Muslims.

Through a little computer trickery/hackery, they find there’s a flight about to take off with a girl Lawford has recently visited and a previously no-fly Muslim onboard. They ground the plane and Sam walks through it with Lawford until they ID the woman from the beginning clip.

She’s holding her baby through all of this, y’all. When Kensi is examining her and calling in the bomb squad later, that seems to also be the fact she has the hardest time with. She was going to suicide bomb a plane while holding her own baby.

Kensi promises her she’s going to get her the help she needs. I certainly hope wherever she goes this time does not allow unidentified visitors.

Back at the office, Callen and Sam confront Ochoa about the fact that he’s seemingly volunteered them for assassination duties, but he avoids the entire conversation by presenting Sam with a new car.

Sam and Callen take Turk to get some drinks and I’m ready for Hetty to come back.