Is it easy to wrap up a long running popular show? Perhaps. If you're given plenty of advance warning ahead of time, a good ending is possible.
Unfortunately, in this case, not much advance warning was given to this show in order to properly plan an ending. In fact, there was probably only like, 1 or 2 episodes left to write before finishing this Season when the news was given! This show was lucky to get an extra episode to try and come up with an ending.
And well, since this obviously wasn't planned out to be the last Season, this will obviously look like a totally jammed packed and crowded finale. And that was definitely clear in this 1st episode.
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Things I liked:
The very nostalgic looking new opening credits. Yeah, they revamped the opening theme one last time to show scenes from way way back in this show's early years as sort of a 'look how far we've come' thing. And it even included this very old happy looking pic of Hetty from mid Season 1:
(She always looked good in red)
The silly car chats with Callen and Sam. Yeah yeah, pretty silly, I know. But hey, they've had some good chats over the years while driving around LA!
Things I disliked:
The case. Yeah yeah, 1 last case, whoopie. But when there's so much else to wrap up, is a case that just drags on really that important?!?!
The flashbacks. Plenty of them, including that #bossqueen moment between Hetty and the admiral at the end of Season 12! Except that 1 along with a few others were never brought up in this episode! Why include flashbacks of topics that won't be covered till an episode later?! I basically only wanted to hear about Hetty after seeing that flashback!!!
While Kensi didn't say that she was pregnant at the end of this episode (didn't think she would), she DID at the start complain about feeling sick from eating Deeks's very bad leftovers. (dude, clean out your fridge!). Think it's just ordinary food poisoning? Or is it the classic and very dumb cliche of ' You puke up some food all of a sudden, looks like it's just food poisoning or direaea, then Doc's about to tell you you're pregnant'? 🙄🙄
And yes, as mentioned above, Hetty's status wasn't brought up, at all. Whether or not she's finally on her way home, or is already home and is just hiding out somewhere, I don't know! (As usual)
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Seriously, how obvious can it get from this that this will be 1 very rushed finish?! (As I unhappily predicted from the day this show was cancelled).
So, now it's down to the last 1. Case to quickly wrap up, then there's the wedding, Hetty showing up in some way, then the reception afterwards, then everyone's happy ending, and probably other things to be included. And 1 last week for interviews and hopefully some press site reasurring me about Hetty.
1 last big surprise to finally give me something that I truly want, or 1 last betrayal because of some dumb excuse or because I never really mattered when it came to wanting Hetty to come home?
Time will unfortunately tell.
And here is the final trailer that CBS has made for this show: