Frequent travelers, did a chill race through your body at seeing that poor man win his battle with the loud people next door, then meticulously prepare for sleep — mask, fuzzy bunny slippers, white noise machine, cover for that awful motel clock — only to catch a couple of fatal bullets through the wall?
This unlucky Willie Lohman (Craig Welzbacher) happened to be next to the room where three combat veterans were shot dead. Knight (Katrina Law) and Torres (Wilmer Valderrama) locate a fourth man nearby, covered in blood and dazedly repeating the badge number for one Sam Hanna.
You remember Sam, right? Navy SEAL turned NCIS: LA special agent? Played with panache by LL Cool J?
When we last saw Sam, he’d joined the NCIS: Hawaii crew, and Very Bad Things happened to his Elite squad in the runup to the series finale.
That experience was so harrowing that Sam pivoted to working on the Hill, wrangling congressional support for various military actions. One silver-haired senator (Dennis Cockrum) is especially awful, putting his reelection hopes over the threat to democracy from a fascist leader in control of an allied country.
But Sam is happy to help NCIS and knows the man waiting for him at NCIS HQ: Mark Davis, a.k.a. Captain Caveman, a.k.a. one of his old covert ops buddies.
But that’s not his longtime trusted friend in interrogation; it’s Mark’s brother, Roger (J. Eddie Martinez). They’re estranged, but Roger got a panicked call from Mark a few weeks ago telling him to contact Sam if there was ever trouble. And trouble came when Roger showed up at the motel room where Mark said he’d be and instead found the three dead men.
To check out Roger’s story, the next stop is Palmer’s (Brian Dietzen) autopsy arboretum, where we see the latest in a string of Sam joyfully greeting all the team members. Honestly, I could spend an entire day watching LL Cool J hug the NCIS regulars and chit-chat about pastries.
This time around, though, we learn that Sam, Palmer, and Victoria have a standing Saturday karaoke date. “He sings,” Jimmy tells Parker (Gary Cole). “I rap, old school.” LOLOLOL forever. Also, Parker’s palpable longing to be included in the weekly song/rap-fest is so overwhelming that if they don’t loop him in, I’ll be writing a strongly worded letter to everybody involved, including Victoria. She’s complicit!
Anyway, we learn that all three of the dead men were unhoused, as evidenced by their hygiene and the presence of bedbugs in their clothes and hair. (Sam and Parker take big steps back at that news, and an affronted Palmer assures them that hello, he washes the bodies before autopsying them.)
Kasie (Diona Reasonover) then breezes in and stutters to a halt when she sees Sam. Once she’s recalibrated her optimism to a lower setting to account for his presence, she tells them that all three victims frequently called Liberty Staffing, an employment services charity.
There, Sam makes an origami animal for one of the clients and bonds a bit with Knight, who knows way too much about losing your whole team. Then we get the news that Callen and Anna are expecting a pup, and I’m honestly not sure if that means human or dog, but either way, congrats to the happy couple!
The woman in charge of Liberty Staffing (Sharon Gardner) confirms that the dead men were clients, and she knows Mark, too. He’s been working at a building supply store, where, Parker learns, he’s been buying lumber, rigging equipment, and an air compressor.
The discovery leads the team to a summer camp-turned-militia training facility, complete with barbed wire, a watch tower, a stabbing dummy — and a land mine that Sam prevents Parker from walking into at the last second. Oooh, Mark, what are you up to?
Comparisons of the bedbugs in the bunk confirm that the victims were staying there, and a map of targets for a possible terrorist attack has Mark’s handwriting all over it.
Mark’s job yields more clues when security footage shows him getting decked by a Navy vet named Desiree Mason (Shein Mompremier), who was intercepted trying to leave town and whose vehicle tires are covered in mud from the training camp
Desiree fills in some gaps by explaining that Mark hooked her up with some work for Iron Horizon, a private military company that sent her off to protect Colombian warlords. She calls Mark a cold-blooded killer who murdered his pals when they confronted him about being tricked into doing war crimes.
Sam uses a punching bag to work out feelings about not being there when Mark clearly needed him, but when Vance (Rocky Carroll) casually mentions how useful Sam will be at solving this puzzle, it has him pawing through Kasie’s evidence boxes.
He finds his answer in the strange creases on Mark’s map, which turns out to be a flattened piece of origami. When it’s folded back up, it reveals an IP address with a boatload of evidence showing that Mark and the three dead vets were trying to blow the whistle on Iron Horizon.
This gives McGee (Sean Murray) some financials to dig into, and the company’s charitable donations lead them back to the Hill, where the awful senator from the top of the episode blusters until he’s backed into a corner for taking campaign contributions from Iron Horizon. See what happens when you talk down to Sam Hanna?
Senator Blowhard pulls strings to get the team access to Iron Horizon assets, including a nearby docked transport ship full of Russian mercenaries — and Mark.
McGee, Sam, Knight, and Torres creep onto the ship and split into teams of two. Sam and Jess find a badly beaten Mark (Marcus DeAnda), but are intercepted by two Russian baddies. Despite their best efforts to stay quiet, their scuffle attracts the attention of the rest of the ship, and — the Fight. Is. On.
Torres and McGee find themselves in a six-on-two situation, with Tim as one of the two. Respectfully, I always think of McGee as more of a lover-hacker, not a fighter. But he acquits himself beautifully, even when it turns out to be a bad idea to fire guns around the pipes of flammable liquids all over the ships, and they’re forced to switch to fisticuffs.
This leads to the longest and most involved fight scene I can remember NCIS doing in a hot minute. In one location, Torres eyeballs the biggest Russian with a muttered “Yippie ki-yay!” and McGee leaps onto a guy’s back like Bella taking a run through the forest courtesy of Edward, while elsewhere Knight takes a metal pipe to the face and Sam introduces that man’s head to the wall moments later. Great work, everyone!
Nick and Tim are excitedly recounting the best moments from the fight when Sam and Knight emerge with Mark propped up between them. (All I can think is bed bugs, noooo!) Also, how fun seeing McGee’s hair get mussed in the fight. I always forget how long Sean Murray actually keeps it and how cute it is when it’s all floppy.
So who blew Mark’s cover and got his three buddies killed? Why, the employment agency lady, of course. She knew what Iron Horizon was up to and sold Mark out when he brought her evidence of the wrongdoings. Good news: Her arrest means her job’s now vacant! That’s one good deed on her way out the door, anyway.
In the big orange room, a grateful Mark hugs it out with Sam, then Roger. After the Davis brothers depart, Sam provides homemade malasadas for the team to enjoy as they watch security footage of the big ol’ fight. (It’s Jane Tennant’s recipe; her kids love those Portuguese pastries.) And although Vance tries to lure Sam back to NCIS, we learn that he’s not quite ready — not with those rumors of Hetty being spotted on the wrong side of the DMZ.
Finally, despite the team warning him to give up the quest to capture his personal white whale, McGee’s still out to prove that NCIS Deputy Director LaRoche is as dirty as they come. To that end, he asked a DOJ friend to send him an unpublished IG report with LaRoche’s name all over.
Vance intercepts it and warns McGee that he’d better be darn sure LaRoche is guilty or they’ll all get burned. Then he drops the file on his desk and briefly steps out of his office. Good thing Tim’s a fast reader.
