This season of NCIS hasn’t been bad, it’s just been… quite a bit stagnant.
The March 24 episode, however, marked an awaited return to lively form.
Listen, it’s hard to tell bakery-fresh procedural stories for 480-plus episodes — let alone more than 1,000, if you count the franchise as a whole. (Gosh, remember Episode 1,000?) Still, the mothership had impressively held up fine since the back-to-back-to-back exits of Emily Wickersham, Maria Bello and then longtime front man Mark Harmon, followed by the passing of David McCallum.
This season, though, has been hit-or-miss. It started out well enough, with the head-fake of Jess relocating to California and the introduction of seemingly sus NCIS Deputy Director LaRoche, positioned as a nemesis for McGee. But LaRoche largely vanished, and we were asked to believe that Jess and Jimmy, two grown adults, would take weeks to deal with the state of their relationship.
There have been memorable-ish episodes — including the time the team had to avert a literal World War III in a matter of hours. But there also have been groaners, most notably the fake wedding. The show also begged us to care one whit about Nick’s secret romance with… Jessica’s sister!!! Whom we’d met… once, I think? And then after their off-screen romance was outed, Nick and Robin… shared maybe one scene together?
Last season’s finale teed up a new mystery about a hallucination/memory that Parker had while on the brink of death, but Season 22 never seemed to know what to do with that, slow-rolling it to a degree that invited you to lose the thread (and interest). Speaking of Alden, he’s sweet on… who, Dr. Grace? Melina Kanakaredes’ Greek bakery lady? Yeah, I’ve lost track. (Senator Miller, we hardly knew ye.)
I do wonder if NCIS is hampered by its place among the current NCIS series. Origins is very much doing its own thing, squarely focused on character — I’d be hard-pressed to recall a case Franks, Gibbs et al have worked on. Sydney meanwhile is simply having all kinds of fun. It’s NCIS (or more accurately, NCIS: Los Angeles) on a low dose. It’s hard to make another petty officer found dead by a white rail fence exciting when Sydney is zip-lining into pirate-themed schooner weddings attended by all manner of exotic, poisonous animals.
Regardless, this week’s NCIS episode, “Moonlit,” was possibly the most entertaining episode of the season, and for the most random of reasons: it brought back Special Agent Dale Sawyer, played by Zane Holtz in his fourth appearance since Season 18, as Nick’s “perfect nemesis.” Nick’s fixation on Sawyer’s luxe truck was understandable and consistently amusing.
The show then flipped the script by forcing Sawyer, who’d been caught moonlighting, to serve as Parker’s team’s “probie,” and Nick for one had alllll the fun in the world with that. The Case of the Week itself was interesting, it set up Alden for a great Jaws reference, and it led to Nick and a humbled Dale reaching a certain peace.
“Moonlit” also dug in and gave us the Lily mystery insight we’d been patiently waiting on. Gary Cole got a pair of meaty scenes with Francis X. McCarthy (as Roman Parker), as Alden learned some hard truths about his mother. Most fatefully, one night when Alden was a lad, his mom drove him home while drunk. Chastised by Roman, Mom headed out into the night and wound up wrapping her car around a tree. Dad’s disclosure led Alden to dive into the microfiche and find a decades-old newspaper article about the deadly crash.
The newspaper’s accompanying photo showed a few random bystanders observing the crash site… wee “Lily” included. Parker then again saw “Lily” right there in his home!