NCIS: Sydney Season 2, Episode 5, “Shucked” takes a while to get where it’s going, but the episode is worth the wait. The CBS spinoff finds its groove in a story about human trafficking that allows the personalities of its characters to shine through. Sometimes, the Australian series feels more like a generic crime drama that happens to have the NCIS acronym attached to it; this is an installment that would fit right in amongst the original NCIS episodes.
“Shucked” starts out with the murder of Petty Officer Rueben Daniels, but evolves into a plot about smuggled abalone, and then a story about human trafficking in a strip club. The ultimate conclusion may not surprise anyone who’s watched this franchise regularly, but there are enough moments that turn things left instead of right that audiences will be entertained. The one part that falls flat is what normally doesn’t work — but the rest of it is a pretty good way to pass an hour.
NCIS: Sydney Season 2, Episode 5 Dives Into the Black Market
Audiences Won’t Expect the Abalone Angle
The first plot twist in NCIS: Sydney Season 2, Episode 5 is that the victim turns out to be a participant in a separate crime. It’s the reverse of the twist in stories like NCIS Season 22, Episode 10, “Baker’s Man,” which had audiences suspecting Alden Parker’s potential love interest before the show revealed she was actually being held hostage by a drug kingpin. In “Shucked,” Rueben and his roommate Craig are stealing abalone, which happens to be a valuable commodity. That’s not something that fans will likely expect. But NCIS: Sydney uses that as a jumping-off point to chuck a couple of other quirks into the mix.
Most notably, the criminal middleman in the episode happens to have a past with Evie Cooper, which makes this the second episode in a row that’s included some more details about Evie’s history. She and DeShawn Jackson pay a visit to Marvo at his warehouse full of suspect goods, and there’s the usual fun banter — as well as the usual foot chase. None of this is novel, but it’s entertaining and keeps the plot moving forward. The writers could have stopped there and come up with a smuggling plot that would have been fine enough, yet they add in another layer by pivoting to a third crime: sex trafficking out of a strip club that Craig frequents. What started as a homicide case winds up delivering all kinds of criminal activity, and luckily the script is able to throttle back down in the fourth act so that the plot doesn’t muddle itself.
NCIS: Sydney Tells a Familiar, but Sturdy Human Trafficking Story
Season 2, Episode 5 Delivers the Beats Viewers Want
The real heart of “Shucked” is the sex trafficking plot, which is a topic that other TV crime dramas have covered. Most recently, the Dick Wolf universe did it in FBI Season 7, Episode 12, “Manhunt.” Like that episode, the NCIS: Sydney storyline revolves around a pair of sisters who have been trafficked. The difference is that on this show, Kim Dang is part of the trafficking ring only to find out what happened to her sister Ahn, who disappeared the year before. Kim is determined to find Ahn, while also having developed a romantic relationship with Craig. That emotional throughline doesn’t really blossom until the fourth act, when Kim confronts club owner Razzie about her sister. But it’s handled efficiently enough that when Kim and Craig are reunited near the end, audiences are happy to see it. They’re even happier to see Michelle Mackey find where Ahn is being kept.
The bad guys in Season 2, Episode 5 are stereotypically one-dimensionally bad, and the good guys are sympathetic enough. As soon as the viewer meets Razzie — when Mackey and JD Dempsey visit her club to question her about Rueben — it’s very clear that she’s up to something simply by her brass attitude. Her bouncer Bobby is the typical big, tough and mostly silent type, meant to intimidate the other characters when necessary. Craig is a sort of sad-sack type, a guy who genuinely means well but doesn’t have the best sense, so viewers feel bad for him.
And as far as the main cast, everyone is on their A-game. Mackey is in full boss mode, Dempsey is bantering with Mackey, and Evie is sassy as ever (plus she gets to do an American accent). She gets one of the better lines, when she makes reference to events from the prior episode. It’s an appreciated bit of continuity.
DeShawn Jackson: I crushed the raving scene.
Evie Cooper: Like you crushed babysitting?
The only character who doesn’t pop is Kim, because she’s given a very stoic personality. That’s understandable to a point because she’s keeping things close to the vest. But her relative lack of emotion makes her harder to connect to. The audience is rooting for her to succeed, but they don’t feel like they really get to know her. For the most part, though, NCIS: Sydney has enough sparkle that the familiar themes don’t matter.
NCIS: Sydney Struggles With Its Personal Subplot
Blue’s Reveal Seems to Hint at Another Serialized Story
The weak spot in NCIS: Sydney Season 2, Episode 5 is something that the show has struggled with before: the personal lives of its characters. The subplot in “Shucked” is that Blue finds a birthday cake personalized to her in the office fridge, and instead of being excited, she tries to hide the cake. She then explains to Doc Roy “Rosie” Penrose that she doesn’t actually know her date of birth — and then chooses not to elaborate, leaving both him (and the audience) having to guess why.
This reads more like the setup for an ongoing reveal about Blue’s past, because in the immediate moment, whether or not she knows her birthday is not a game-changer. But if it leads to something bigger about a character who is written more like an archetype, then it could pay off in spades. Blue and Doc Roy are the two team members who feel the most unoriginal. Audiences have seen the quirky tech expert and the wise mentor type on numerous other shows, including the original NCIS. Yet second seasons of shows are the time to dig deeper into the characters, so perhaps NCIS: Sydney wants to also have an ongoing personal storyline in addition to the mystery it’s building.
“Shucked” isn’t pushing any boundaries, but it knows what it is: an efficient mystery delivered in 42 minutes. It has just enough quirk to it that the fans are having fun, down to the impromptu dance party that breaks out in the final scene. NCIS: Sydney Season 2, Episode 5 is one of those instances where the series sets itself apart from the rest of the franchise, because the characters have their own distinct personalities. Add in another piece of the ongoing storyline — letters written by Colonel Rankin to his wife Natalie, which might hide some important details about the people he was working for — and there’s enough to satisfy viewers.