NCIS: Sydney Season 2, Episode 2, “Fire in the Hole” has every reason to be terrible. Any time a TV crime drama throws its characters into an undercover situation, the premise has the potential to become gimmicky (see: The Rookie Season 4 sending Chen and Bradford undercover as two characters who just happened to be very similar to them). When the joint NCIS-AFP task force crosses paths with faux pirates, this seems like an episode that isn’t going to take itself seriously.
“Fire in the Hole” starts with the murder of Bradley Shiels, an American sailor who is using his break from the Navy to captain a tall ship that’s used for Sydney Harbor tours and pirate parties. DeShawn Jackson and Evie Cooper wind up going undercover to figure out why someone is willing to kill for the James Craig. But what makes the episode work isn’t the pirate idea — it’s what NCIS: Sydney does once that proverbial ship has sailed.
NCIS: Sydney Season 2, Episode 2 Avoids Pirate Humor
The Episode Sidesteps Most Pirate-Related Cliches
The NCIS franchise has done plenty of quirky cases of the week; there have been several just in NCIS Season 22 — including Episode 13, “Fun and Games,” which centered around Kasie Hines’ gaming group. NCIS: Sydney seems like it’s doing another one of those episodes, but quickly pivots to be something more serious that just happens to be set amongst a pirate-themed wedding. This is the biggest advantage of “Fire in the Hole.” The episode doesn’t waste its time with pirate impressions, bad pirate-related humor or other jokes that would have felt both forced and incredibly corny.
Instead, the plot concerns a group called the Sons of the Sovereign Soil, who see Australia as being under the thumb of the United States and are determined to liberate the country by causing a scene. They’re not a novel adversary for the team; the only one who gets any kind of depth is their leader, miner turned terrorist Alex Hart, who basically just glowers and snarks with Evie. But making the case of the week a modern fight to stop a terrorist plot ensures that it holds the audience’s interest once the novelty of seeing everyone in pirate costumes wears off (which is fairly early on). It’s interesting to see how the good guys fight crime when they don’t have as much technology at their disposal.
Not having DeShawn and Evie play characters also means that the episode can spend its time on their genuine reactions and conflicts, instead of having to keep up a facade and then get to the heart of the matter. The only honestly corny part of the episode is when Evie, stalling for time, leads the whole wedding party in a rendition of The Bangles’ hit song “Eternal Flame,” and that’s so hilarious that it doesn’t matter how random it is. Michelle Mackey and Jim “JD” Dempsey take a bit more of a back seat in this episode, given that most of it takes place on the boat, but that’s fine considering their prominence in many other episodes. NCIS: Sydney is able to spread the screen time around and have just enough fun while still getting down to business.
NCIS: Sydney Offers a Much More Interesting Storyline
Episode 2 Is a Marked Improvement from Episode 1
Season 2, Episode 2 is a much stronger outing than the NCIS: Sydney Season 2 premiere, because it’s a fully self-contained story that has a clear point. The premiere struggled because it was so focused on resolving the cliffhanger from the end of Season 1 that it didn’t break any new ground, and left audiences who hadn’t seen the first season largely in the dark. With that story — and all of the angst that came with it — in the rear view mirror (for the most part), “Fire in the Hole” is able to let the characters’ personalities shine through a bit more and only worry about putting together a good, fast-paced adventure.
It won’t take viewers long to connect Mackey and JD’s story about preparing for a VIP reception on an American destroyer to the hijacked ship plotline. The audience will likely be ahead of the NCIS team on that. But there’s still some reasonable bumps in the road, such as JD figuring out that Hart and his crew aren’t trying to blow up the American vessel USS Perez — they’re trying to get the Perez to attack them and start an international incident. The moments in which Mackey pleads with the ship’s commander Armitage to understand this aren’t as tense as they could be, but they get the job done. There’s also DeShawn learning that Evie can’t swim, which could easily just be played for laughs, but that actually comes into play later when she saves JD’s life — at the potential cost of her own.
Evie Cooper (to Hart): Governments don’t negotiate with terrorists. Especially lame ones.
Fans will not be shocked that the standoff between the hijacked ship and the USS Perez comes down to the last minute, because that’s how TV storytelling usually works. What is a surprise is that part of the resolution involves the entire wedding party overwhelming Hart’s minions in a fun but short brawl. The show deserves points for not just making 20+ hostages random background figures to be worried over. Even though most of them don’t even get names, they’re able to participate in saving themselves, and there’s something satisfying in watching them do it. NCIS: Sydney is able to spread its wings further in Episode 2, and that shows in the finished product.
IS: Sydney Continues Its Serialized Plot in Episode 2
Yet There’s Little Character Development This Time
“Fire in the Hole” does continue the serialized storytelling from NCIS: Sydney Season 1 — but only in a brief exchange between Mackey and JD, when he tells her that the doctor who implanted Rankin’s pacemaker has been dead since 1983. This affirms that the conspiracy is still going to be a big part of the show in Season 2, and it will be interesting to see how the writers parse that out. If they can do it organically within other plots as they do here, it should work very well. It only became a problem in the premiere because there was litlte room for anything else. And by drip-feeding asides in future episodes, the writers can also give fans a sense that they’re putting the big mystery together along with the NCIS team.
The one area that the episode is lacking in is any significant character development. Evie and DeShawn both apparently dying provides the show with two big dramatic moments, and it’s lovely to see them end the episode supporting one another. But these moments seem like things that will be forgotten by the next week. There’s nothing that changes the characters going forward. Audiences will have to keep waiting to get any sense of where individual story arcs will be heading in Season 2. NCIS: Sydney Season 2, Episode 2 is a great one-off adventure that’s able to avoid pitfalls other shows would have fallen into, but there’s still a lot more left to figure out.
NCIS: Sydney airs Fridays at 8:00 p.m. on CBS.