photo: cbs

NCIS: Los Angeles
Keepin’ It Real

Original Air Date: Nov 3, 2009

Annette – TwoCents Reviewer
annette@thetwocentscorp.com

A big spender and life of the party secretly passes something to another dude in a handshake (oh so slick). Then he takes a header off the rooftop bar – was he pushed or did he jump? I guess our NCIS LA crew will find out!

Our dead partier is Corporal Valdivia who has been diagnosed as suicidal. The family is requesting that his death be investigated –which G questions. Apparently, unlike the crew in Washington who always investigate suicides as homicides, the LA team just assumes a suicide is just that – oh how they’re wrong.

Valdivia has rented an apartment off base, so G and Sam go to investigate – man Sam can pick a lock quick. They find receipts for 160 copies of Guitar Hero. A bit strange.

Valdivia had a broken jaw with no bruising meaning he got it right before he died – suicide just became murder. Big Spender was hosting the parties at the bar where he was killed. He paid for everything and the most recent party cost $27,000 which he paid in cash.

The Guitar Hero games were being sold online for half of what Valdivia paid for them. Eric does some checking in to the shops where Valdivia bought the games (which unrealistically takes about 3 seconds), and they realize that all the games were bought with top-quality counterfeit money.

Valdivia’s bunkmate Walder (who was the guy that V passed the gizmo to at the party), is missing, and Eric finds his car – it’s gone off a pier. Divers pull the car out but there’s no sign of the body.

The Secret Service shows up to talk about the counterfeit money – Agent Giordano. She is staying to work with the team hoping that the counterfeiter and murderer is the same person. She is also coming on to G quite strongly, who’s not interested.

Security camera footage of the car driving off the pier shows that there’s no one in the car. As a bunch of people rush to see the car go in the water, one man is walking the wrong way – Walder. He’s headed back to the hotel where Valdivia was killed – when G and Sam approach, Walder takes off – Sam catches him just before he jumps off the roof. Sam also finds the gadget that Valdivia slipped him in the beginning.

Walder tells G and Sam that Rick Pargo killed Valdivia. He’s been charged with forgery and counterfeiting but never convicted. While in Iraq Walder and Valdivia were clearing a building that housed presses. They find plates that are used to make American money so they smuggled them back into the US. Someone tipped off Pargo who contacted them – he took the plates and printed some test batches, but since the paper was sub-standard, Valdivia was supposed to destroy the bills – instead he used them to buy the video games to sell online. The thing in Walder’s pocket is a serial number generator, which Agent Giordano tries to get back by interrupting G and Sam’s interrogation of Walder – which kind of ticks off G.

Our requisite undercover op – Kensi poses as Walder’s girlfriend and goes to talk to Pargo. She claims to have the right kind of paper and she wants to strike a deal. She strikes up another meeting time. Pargo threatens to kill her if the deal goes south.

G goes undercover as the paper guy. For someone who’s supposed to be so smart, and beat the rap seven times, Pargo buys in to G’s story pretty easily.

Pargo’s partner turns out to be Gunny Pallet, Valdivia and Walder’s CO who Sam interviewed early in the episode. Pallet takes the fake $20 million that Pargo and G printed and is planning on switching it with a real shipment of $20 million heading to Afghanistan and Iraq. Pallet killed Valdivia because he was spending the counterfeit money before he could make the switch.

G has a rule about not dating cops. Apparently he dated a cop, and it seems as if he was in love, but that’s all we know. A little more insight into G!

This episode was OK. All the characters just seem a little too over the top or too stereotypical. I’m still just not feeling this how. What did you all think?