NCIS Season 22, Episode 3, “The Trouble With Hal” is a typical Halloween TV episode. It’s lighthearted, has some spooky elements, and more than a few jokes about ghosts. But that’s pretty much all the episode has to offer, making it unlikely to have much rewatch value after viewers have celebrated the holiday.
“The Trouble With Hal” involves a Navy SEAL returning home from deployment to learn that someone has been squatting in his home — and that the squatter is dead. To find the killer, the NCIS team has to look into the history of the house itself. What follows is a predictable mystery, but it gets some help from guest stars Donna Mills and Justin Bruening, and it’ll give fans a smile or two before the credits roll.
NCIS Season 22 Rolls Out a Halloween Episode
Episode 3 Is Clearly Designed for the Spooky Season
Many TV shows produce Halloween, Thanksgiving or Christmas episodes to air during the holiday season, and most of them wind up being built around the occasion instead of making the occasion work for the show itself. TV viewers have already seen that with Chicago Med Season 10, Episode 5, “Bad Habits,” which never gelled together because it was trying too much to incorporate spooky elements. NCIS Season 22, Episode 3 is better at setting up a Halloween-themed premise, even if it takes a while to get there: an eccentric billionaire owns a potentially haunted hunting lodge that may or may not contain long-lost treasure. But it still isn’t a great story.
The path from finding Hal murdered in Lieutenant Bryce Prescott’s basement to uncovering Prescott’s family history and the real scheme at hand is a bit more drawn-out than a regular NCIS episode, and fans might feel impatient at points. (It’s interesting that Hal’s name is revealed to actually be Felix Pitts, yet he’s still mostly referred to as Hal throughout the episode.) They’ll also be able to predict certain story elements once the script gets there. Of course Bryce’s grandfather Gavin Prescott was a strange man whose lodge contains a lot of taxidermy and creepy dolls. Of course there’s some ribbing about whether or not characters believe in ghosts, which feels too much like the ribbing about whether or not characters believed in aliens from Season 21, Episode 6, “Strange Invaders.”
Alden Parker: Not like anyone was killed.
Jessica Knight: Not yet. They are Navy SEALs we’re talking about.
“The Trouble With Hal” is not intended to be a game-changing episode. It’s meant to have some fun for Halloween and that’s really all it’s there for. Yet even by that standard, there’s just something missing to make it memorable. The jokes have been done before, the real killer’s confession happens entirely off-screen, and even the emotional ending to the case — in which the treasure is confirmed to be Prescott’s family — is obvious. As far as Halloween episodes go, this isn’t one that will stick with the audience.
NCIS Recruits Justin Bruening and Donna Mills
Guest Stars Make Episode 3 More Interesting
The most interesting part of Season 22, Episode 3 are the actors brought in to play Bryce and Wanda Prescott.Grey’s Anatomy fans will recognize Justin Bruening for his role as Matthew Taylor, the ex-husband of Sarah Drew’s character Dr. April Kepner. He also currently stars as Cal Maddox in Netflix’s Sweet Magnolias, and led NBC’s short-lived remake of Knight Rider. Bruening doesn’t get a lot of screen time, as Bryce’s job is to be the “straight man” to the craziness happening in his home, but the way he plays his character’s bewilderment and irritation gives Bryce more personality than he might have otherwise.
Bryce’s grandmother Wanda is portrayed by Donna Mills, the Daytime Emmy Award winner from Knots Landing and General Hospital, who more recently appeared in several V.C. Andrews adaptations for Lifetime. Likewise, Mills plays Wanda with a certain poise that keeps her from falling into the “arrogant rich character” stereotype. As Wanda helps the NCIS team with their investigation, audiences can see the character’s vulnerability and the love she still has for her late husband. It’s the performance of Mills that sells the message of the real “priceless treasure” being family; the idea itself sounds cheesy, but viewers can tell how much that means to Wanda, and even to Bryce.
The rest of the guest characters are pretty much what audiences would expect, from Felix / Hal’s former cellmate with the nickname “Big Bark” to his overeager girlfriend and partner in crime Mary and even Phil, the delivery guy revealed to be the murderer in a classic case of “show, don’t tell.” He may have confessed, but it doesn’t matter to the audience because they only get an explanation of what he said as NCIS rushes to make time to wrap up its subplots. None of these characters stand out, but they don’t necessarily have to, because the focus is supposed to be on the Prescott family. It feels like there’s a whole story there that audiences will never get to know — and that’s because Bruening and Mills make their characters come to life.
Is NCIS Neglecting Its New Mystery?
Episode 3 Reminds Fans That There Could Be a Problem
The NCIS Season 22 premiere included Timothy McGee’s assertion that new Deputy Director Gabriel LaRoche had something to hide, and then didn’t address it in the next episode. “The Trouble With Hal” gets back to that topic… but only for maybe two minutes when McGee looks up LaRoche’s file on his computer. It begs the question of how long the show will drag out McGee’s theory before giving the fans an answer one way or the other. It’s a great idea for a hook, but it’s not going to work if it’s parsed out in bits and pieces, or if it’s too long before actor Seamus Dever comes back to remind McGee (and the audience) why LaRoche is worth suspecting. It’s hard to hate a bad guy if that bad guy goes a few weeks or a few months without being seen.
Alden Parker (to Timothy McGee): If you were deputy director, you wouldn’t be having this much fun.
There are also two other subplots that vary in their effectiveness. Nick Torres mentions that he’s not quite recovered from his near-death experience while being undercover in said premiere, which is an emotional beat that could be explored with both him and Alden Parker throughout the season. Parker’s brush with death in the Season 21 finale comes up for the second straight episode, which has to be for some bigger reason. NCIS isn’t going to mention it and show what Parker saw without some kind of payoff. Conversely, what’s meant to be a comedic and then bittersweet subplot of repurposing Dr. Donald “Ducky” Mallard’s office just reminds viewers how much David McCallum is still missed. It’s a subplot that isn’t really needed, or at least could’ve been saved for a different episode that had a specific connection to Ducky.
NCIS Season 22, Episode 3 isn’t a bad episode; it’s just a profoundly average one. Its story is more about the Halloween vibes than making a great mystery, most of the guest characters are predictable, and there aren’t even that many memorable lines. It might be about a treasure hunt but there’s no pot of gold at the end of this hour, unless viewers count all of Torres’ leftover Halloween candy.