NCIS: Sydney Season 2, Episode 1, “Heart Starter” feels more like a lukewarm conclusion than a season premiere. The episode wraps up the cliffhanger from NCIS: Sydney Season 1 (mostly), but does very little to set the stage for what will happen after that. And any new viewers, or fans who don’t remember what happened in the Season 1 finale, get little help. It’s a fine ending to the existing story, but underwhelming for the start of a new season.
“Heart Starter” picks up exactly where Season 1, Episode 8, “Blonde Ambition” left off. NCIS Special Agent in Charge Michelle Mackey is holding Richard Rankin at gunpoint, demanding to know his role in the kidnapping of her partner JD Dempsey’s son. As for Dempsey, the Australian Federal Police officer has his own ideas about how to move forward. What follows is a standard “good guy gone bad” story, which does enough to satisfy viewers but could have been much more.
NCIS: Sydney’s Serialized Narrative Holds Back the Season 2 Premiere
Viewers Get Little Sense of the Show’s Future
It’s important to remember that NCIS: Sydney isn’t a traditional NCIS show; it’s an international spinoff, produced for the Australian TV channel Network 10 by an Australian creative team. It’s similar to Law & Order: Criminal Intent Toronto — it borrows the American branding and the idea, but it’s best treated as its own separate entity. One wonders if NCIS: Sydney would even be airing on CBS if Hollywood hadn’t gone through the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes of 2023, just because it’s truly a different show that happens to exist in the NCIS universe. And that’s where the problems with “Heart Starter” begin.
The narrative in NCIS: Sydney is far more serialized than the other NCIS shows. The characters and events in play during this episode aren’t just from the Season 1 finale, but stretch back throughout the first season. The gist of the Season 2 premiere is the hunt for Ana Niemus, the mercenary whom everyone had been pursuing for awhile now. A “previously on” at the start helps explain some of these events, but a quick clip reel isn’t enough to gin up any emotional stakes — which is what the episode primarily relies on. There is a mystery about where Niemus is, but the story is more focused on JD and what he does to catch her. However, it never goes deep enough for anyone who isn’t already interested in these characters to care.
There is some resolution at the end, as Niemus is shot by Mackey and both Mackey and Dempsey get their jobs back, but the final scene makes clear that the serialized approach will continue for at least part of Season 2. Audiences who appreciate that kind of storytelling will be thrilled with that. But those who are more used to the “case of the week” approach taken by NCIS and NCIS: Origins will feel like they got dropped into the middle of the book. There’s little setup for anything else past the Niemus story — only one major character reveal, no other investigation, no hints about any future subplots. It would have been better to air this as Episode 9 of Season 1 and start relatively afresh in the second season.
Most of the NCIS: Sydney Characters Don’t Stand Out
Season 2, Episode 1 Is Mainly Focused on Mackey & Dempsey
NCIS: Sydney Season 2, Episode 1 offers very little in the way of character development. The emotional arc surrounds Dempsey, and how far he’s willing to go in order to get revenge on the people who abducted and nearly killed his son Jack. That’s a powerful story point for any hero, which is why it’s a fairly common TV crime drama plot. But despite all the angsty looks from actor Todd Lasance, there’s never any real feeling that Dempsey is going to do something he can’t take back. What’s supposed to be the big “oh, no” moment — when Dempsey calls Niemus and gives her Rankin’s location — isn’t allowed to marinate with the audience, as he tells Mackey about a minute later. Fans should be shocked and wondering about Dempsey’s loyalty, but the episode skips right over any potential suspense.
Lasance and co-star Olivia Swann fare better in a scene at Mackey’s apartment, in which Mackey confesses to Dempsey that she’s also a parent: she has a teenage son, Trey. Mackey’s explanation about being a teenage mother — and Dempsey wondering aloud if she would have told him about Trey under normal circumstances — is the kind of material that brings TV partners closer together. The duo still don’t feel as close-knit as some of their predecessors, and the way Mackey is written overall feels like the writers are trying to channel Jane Tennant from NCIS: Hawai’i. But in those scenes, viewers see why these two characters are a team, and why the story is also personal for Mackey, not just Dempsey.
JD Dempsey: What’s the worst they can do?
Michelle Mackey: You really wanna find out?
As for the rest of the NCIS: Sydney cast, their characters fill the expected roles in moving the story along and little else. The episode tries to create some humor in DeShawn Jackson being named acting Special Agent in Charge and no one taking him seriously, but the jokes are brief and not that funny. The in-office tension between the team and Bert Carter never fully materializes; Carter arrives to interrogate everybody else about how Niemus escaped custody, but most of that happens off-screen, and Jackson never gets to push back hard enough against Carter’s temporary regime. Much like with Dempsey, there should be a big emotional beat that doesn’t come.
Where Will NCIS: Sydney Season 2 Go After Rankin’s Death?
The Next Cliffhanger Provides Some Opportunities
The big shock is that NCIS: Sydney Season 2, Episode 1 ends on another cliffhanger. Though audiences are shown snippets of Rankin’s funeral at both the beginning and end of the episode, the last scene reveals to the audience that the entire thing was staged. A still-comatose Rankin is being held at an “undisclosed medical facility,” while Carter and Mackey look on, with Mackey pointing out for the audience’s benefit that Rankin has important information about the bigger bad guys. It’s a gutsy move to end an episode that was so centered on resolving one cliffhanger with another cliffhanger, but that shows how serialized the storytelling is.
There are some different ways the season can go with this. How long will it be until anyone else learns that Rankin isn’t dead? Do the writers make that an ongoing source of tension, or just push it off-screen until they’re ready for him to wake up? And when will they get there? It would seem too late to leave it for the Season 2 finale, but it’s also exactly the kind of bombshell that other TV crime dramas would use in a finale. But that’s the underlying issue with the NCIS: Sydney Season 2 premiere. It’s so centered on its serialized story that there’s nothing else going on, be it character moments, or humor, or something else for the team to worry about. It even takes a while to remember who all the characters are. It’s admirable that the writers are doing something different, especially since they’re primarily writing for a different TV audience. But the series could do with a little more of leaning into what’s made NCIS so popular.