Daniela Ruah Clears The Confusion Over Her Absence In NCIS: Los Angeles Season 14 Episode 4

The fourth episode of "NCIS: Los Angeles" Season 14, titled "Dead Stick," focuses primarily on the family of Sam Hanna (LL Cool J) — specifically, his father and his son. Much of the episode is devoted to a plane crash involving Sam's son Aiden Hanna (Tye White), whom the Navy believes is directly responsible for the incident. Aiden and his father are forced to try and clear his name, eventually collecting enough evidence to prove that Aiden was not at fault and actually helped save another man's life as his plane went down.

On top of that, the episode also saw Sam struggling to find a new caretaker for his father, Raymond Hanna (Richard Gant). By the end of the episode, it's clear that all three generations of Hanna men have grown much closer due to their tumultuous experiences throughout the episode. Although it's evident that the episode itself was mainly focused on the Hanna family, one extremely confusing aspect of the episode is the unexplained absence of several main characters from the series — including Special Agent Kensi Blye (Daniela Ruah).

Not only was Kensi Blye completely absent from the Hanna family storyline, but she was also nowhere to be found in the episode's B-story about Devin Rountree's (Caleb Castille) quarrel with the LAPD. Luckily, actor Daniela Ruah recently revealed the true reason for her absence in episode four — and explained how these sort of abrupt absences actually happen several times each season.

During a recent interview with TVLine (in which "NCIS: Los Angeles" star Daniela Ruah discussed her work as a director within the series), Ruah explained that her mysterious absence from "Dead Stick" was simply a logistical choice by the showrunners. "What the audience probably doesn't know is that every one of us [on the cast] is out of four episodes a season now," Ruah revealed. "That is just a structural, logistical thing that our show is doing now. So, sometimes in the beginning, it's like, 'Oh, they had to take Rosa somewhere' as a justification, but that's essentially why there are going to be episodes where some characters are just simply not there."

Ruah's comments certainly make it seem as though her abrupt disappearance from Season 14 Episode 4 is actually par for the course within the series — and is related more to scheduling than to anything else. Although some fans might be reassured to know that Ruah's absence was not anything to worry about (especially considering the high amount of cast turnover in "NCIS" and its various spinoff series), others might be shocked to learn that each cast member is actually expected to miss four episodes a season.

In any case, it appears as though there's a perfectly reasonable explanation for Daniela Ruah's absence in certain episodes, as well as the absences of other cast members throughout Season 14 of "NCIS: Los Angeles."