NCIS Season 22, Episode 17, “Killer Instinct” is a good episode that’s just one step away from being great. The CBS show finally devotes some screen time to fleshing out the season’s villain, Deputy Director Gabriel Laroche, and it seems like Laroche will be given more depth than being the shady bureaucrat fans met in the season premiere. But the episode walks right up to the line of making that bold plot choice — and then backs away from it in favor of keeping with the status quo.
“Killer Instinct” starts where some other TV crime dramas would end: with the arrest of a notorious, enigmatic hitman. Of course, there’s some unfinished business that the suspect leaves behind. This episode is a strong return to form after a few weeks of NCIS struggling with both plot and tone, and one that is efficient in bringing the show back around to its ongoing storyline. Yet there’s no denying the missed opportunities that could have broken this installment out of the procedural mold.
NCIS Season 22, Episode 17 Gives Laroche Some Actual Screen Time
Seamus Dever Does His Best With an Expanded Role
“Killer Instinct” is devoted to addressing Season 22’s ongoing subplot about whether or not Laroche is a bad guy. Timothy McGee has been driving that train since the season premiere, but it hasn’t really reached full speed because Laroche has only had limited screen time. After that first episode, his biggest appearance was in NCIS Season 22, Episode 9 — quite a while ago. It’s been more than time to deal with this story, and the writers do it in a pretty interesting way: by putting McGee and Laroche in close quarters. How they get there feels very forced; it just so happens that Laroche and McGee’s wife Delilah went to the same university, so after just one meeting she’s calling him “Gabe” and suggesting a dinner date. But that can be overlooked because of the payoff.
There’s some fun in seeing Laroche’s home and meeting his wife Tammy, played by Life Sentence alum Brooke Lyons. But the actual value is in getting to see Seamus Dever stretch the role out for more than a scene or two. The Castle actor has been fairly underutilized as Laroche to this point; he pops up to be annoying or difficult, and then leaves again. He’s still somewhat annoying in “Killer Instinct,” but at least Dever is able to play Laroche as a complete person, not just the Deputy Director of NCIS. And in the episode’s climactic minutes, all the superiority and the smarm goes away, and Dever is great at revealing Laroche’s vulnerability. For the first time all season, he feels like a human being instead of an archetypal TV bureaucrat.
That makes the rivalry between McGee and Laroche far more interesting. It no longer feels quite so one-sided, although some of the dialogue between them in this episode is a little cliche. But just when it seems like NCIS is going to do something incredibly cool with Laroche that would turn the entire season upside down, the writers make a U-turn back to basics.
There is a boatload of story potential in NCIS Season 22, Episode 17, and none of it is realized. The writers stick to what is tried and true, with several scenes veering into “smart people being not so smart for the plot’s sake” territory. For example, the NCIS team spends the whole hour investigating the hitman, since they know he’d killed one Naval officer and targeted another. But it’s not until late in the episode that the hitman’s broker has to tell Nick Torres and Alden Parker that someone else is finishing the job. This should be one of the first things to come up, since the suspect was arrested in the middle of plotting another hit. Just because he’s dead doesn’t make the contract go away. But if Torres and Parker aren’t so late to catch on, then the writers can’t have the dramatic sequence of the new hitman (hitwoman!) showing up at Laroche’s house.
There’s also an excellent performance by Michelle Lukes as Gemma Wood, the aforementioned broker who doubles as a high-end jeweler. Fans may recognize Lukes from her role as Julia Richmond on the criminally underrated Cinemax action series Strike Back; she could easily be playing an NCIS agent or a lead character on another show like this. Portraying Gemma barely scratches the surface of what Lukes is capable of, but she gives the episode some additional energy and gravity. And since her character is still relevant to the story, given that one of her other clients is Parker’s nemesis Carla Marino, one can only hope that Lukes returns before the season ends.
Timothy McGee: My phone records. My bank records. You keeping tabs on me?
Gabriel Laroche: Only because you’ve been keeping tabs on me.
But the biggest lost chance is that NCIS doesn’t follow through with humanizing Laroche. In fact, there’s even a few moments where it seems like he’s going to get a heroic sendoff, as he volunteers to leave the house and sacrifice himself in order to protect McGee, Delilah and Tammy. That would have been one heck of an ending and weirdly thematically fitting, given the show’s history with high-ranking NCIS officials. Yet even skipping that, it would have been so much more interesting to reveal that perhaps Laroche wasn’t evil and that he, too, was on the hunt for the real villain. Instead, McGee finds a sticky note with the word “Nocturne” on it, learns that’s the name of a government server, and ends the hour by telling Laroche that he knows about it. Both characters just go back to where they started.
NCIS Season 22, Episode 17 Is the Beginning of the End
With Just Three Episodes Left, There’s Little Time to Waste
Gabriel Laroche wearing an apron and gesturing toward Timothy McGee in a brown suit on NCIS TV showImage via CBS
NCIS Season 22 is almost over; there are only 20 episodes in the season, so the writers have only three more chances to finish up all of their storylines. “Killer Instinct” does accomplish quite a bit in that respect. It explains more of Laroche’s history, re-introduces Carla into the picture, and reveals that McGee was actually in line to become Deputy Director until a report written by Laroche tanked his chances. There are also a few references to past episodes; it’s revealed that Jessica Knight still has the fake wedding ring she wore in NCIS Season 22, Episode 11, “For Better or Worse.” Everything feels like it’s slowly coming together.
While this episode doesn’t give all the answers — what exactly Laroche is into remains unclear, plus there’s the Lily thing that remains open for Parker — it provides enough to keep the audience on the hook. And particularly in the third and fourth acts, it ratchets up the drama more than enough for viewers to move forward in their seats. There’s just even further that NCIS could have gone if the series had chosen to break away from TV crime drama expectations, rather than embrace them.
