We open with a man stiffing an outdoor cafe waitress on the tip, then immediately being bagged by an armed-to-the-teeth REACT team. Not the brunch vibes the diners were going for, and also, serves him right. Tip your service people!
But also, it really did serve him right. Paul Morton (Morgan Peter Brown) turns out to be the Poet, a hitman responsible for the recent death of a Lt. Commander Willis. And with such a prize capture in the building, it naturally attracts the attention of NCIS Deputy Director LaRoche (Seamus Dever).
LaRoche shows up at the same time as Delilah (Margo Harshman), who’s there to help Kasie (Diona Reasonover) track down the source of the anonymous email that tipped them off to the Poet’s whereabouts. And hey, those crazy kids went to school together! McGee is displeased about the chummy vibe between his wife and Gabe, as she calls him. Even the nickname makes him do a full-body shudder.
McGee’s in the middle of another of his LaRoche rants — LaRants, if you will — when Delilah offers the advice we all wish we could give to our friends and loved ones who obsessively complain about that one person they loathe above all else: either confront him, or shut up about it.
Gary Cole in ‘NCIS’ episode ‘Killer Instinct’
McGee chooses to shut up (for now) because it’s time to question the Poet, who swears he doesn’t know who hired him to kill Willis or the next man on his list, another Naval officer. He then lives up to his name by reciting “I Have a Rendezvous with Death” by Alan Seeger and slumping against Torres (Wilmer Valderrama), dead.
Cool cool. Sure, Seeger wrote that poem about accepting his own mortality on a World War I battlefield, but being a creepy assassin is close enough, I guess.
Maui teen faces 10-year sentence for stealing pet pig, killing it for $1k
KHON Honolulu
Palmer (Brian Dietzen) then ups the creepy factor by singing Victoria’s morning pancake song as he sews up the Poet’s autopsy Y incision, figuring the man would appreciate it. Okay, that’s cutely creepy.
Then we’re immediately back to plain ol’ creepy when Palmer explains that the two bruises on the Poet’s forearms were from him digging his own fingers into his own flesh to break the two glass capsules implanted there years ago. One contained a chemical that would kill him mixed with a protein to make it inactive unless the second capsule was also broken to activate it.
That’s — actually kind of genius, especially if the Poet was a clumsy fella who needed that kind of precautionary measure. Put just one fatal glass capsule in my arm, and it’ll be approximately 20 minutes before I bash it against a door knob by accident and die.
Anyway, the team learns that the Poet’s second target served with the late Willis on the Atlas, a Navy railcar.
Let’s all join Torres in asking, “Wait, for real? The Navy has a train now?” And it certainly does! The Navy provides security for the Department of Energy’s top-secret train that ferries spent nuclear fuel to an undisclosed location twice a year. In the show’s version, both Willis and the second target are in charge of that security detail.
LaRoche offers to get in touch with the DOE while the rest of the team finds the client who ordered the hit. But before he leaves, he asks McGee about dietary restrictions for the home-cooked dinner that Delilah agreed to but didn’t tell him about. McGee’s mad because he hasn’t looked at the bright side yet: This is the perfect opportunity to snoop through LaRoche’s medicine cabinets and make fun of his interior design.
Kasie discovers that the Poet used jeweler Gemma Wood (Michelle Lukes) as a go-between to broker deals with anonymous clients, so Torres goes undercover as the man himself since news of his death hasn’t left NCIS HQ.
When he arrives, Gemma’s dealing with an obnoxious client in an enormous beret who swans out of the shop in a $20,000 diamond necklace that Gemma cut her a $5,000 break on. (Here’s hoping it only cost $10,000, and Gemma did some upselling.)
Torres makes quick work of Gemma’s shockingly incompetent security guard, and the two sit down to talk about whether she’s the one who submitted the anonymous tip. She coolly states that she has other means to eliminate the Poet should she choose to do so, then is called away by an irate woman at the front of the shop.
It’s Knight (Katrina Law), making a stink about selling the ring her cheated-on-her-with-her-sister husband bought her. It gives Torres time to plant a bug in Gemma’s office, and he leaves with a threat that Gemma better set up a meeting with the client — or else. He also spends the rest of the episode annoyed that Knight thought he needed help, which is pretty on brand.
Kasie finds records tying Gemma to Parker’s (Gary Cole) old nemesis, Kansas City mob boss Carla Marino (Rebecca De Mornay). So did she order the hit on the two Navy officers? It’s not outside the realm of possibility since the train runs right through her backyard on its cross-country trek.
When the bug stops transmitting and Gemma slips away, the team head to her shop and find her security guard dead on the floor, his throat slit by a diamond-tipped saw blade used to cut gemstones. It’s frankly a miracle someone so bad at his job survived as long as he did, but if you’ve gotta go, that’s a pretty sick murder weapon.
At the LaRoche homestead, Delilah’s pulled into a conversation with Gabe’s wife Tammy (Brooke Lyons) about AI biomechanical advances for patients with disabilities; although, that somehow turns into LaRoche insulting tap dancers to Timmy “Soft Shoes Savant” McGee’s face while also talking up his own smooth political maneuvering.
McGee’s own maneuvering could use some work because he doesn’t even bother to fake nice with his boss over the coq au vin. But he does take his job seriously, so when the rest of the team finds a photo of LaRoche in Gemma’s safe, McGee urges him to get to safety.
LaRoche, however, isn’t interested in McGee’s precautionary protection or in unnecessarily scaring Tammy, so dinner proceeds accordingly.
While the hosts are in the kitchen preparing for dessert, Delilah full-names Timothy Farragut McGee for keeping secrets (nice callback to the previous episode!) and lectures him about the risk of being fired — as she pours raspberry sauce on his pants to give him an excuse to snoop while cleaning up.
When LaRoche finds McGee missing, he forcibly wheels Delilah back to the table over her protests, which is gross and high-handed. He finds McGee rummaging through his desk, where Tim has discovered a sticky note reading “Nocturne” and a file containing his own phone and bank records.
Sean Murray and Seamus Dever in ‘NCIS’ episode ‘Killer Instinct’
LaRoche admits to digging into McGee’s background since Tim was keeping tabs on him. He seems surprised that McGee suspects him of burning Torres on an uncover mission with the Nexus cartel and admits that, yes, he’s head of security for the Atlas train, but that’s so top-secret that not even Vance (Rocky Carroll) knows.
He also pokes at McGee for being a sore loser over losing the deputy director job, which is not what you need to de-escalate tension, especially when it’s about time to panic Tammy for real. The team finds Gemma trying to flee the country, and she tells them that the question isn’t who’s the client but who’s the new assassin the client hired to clean house on this whole mess, including LaRoche.
Before they can make it to safety, the new assassin arrives to cut the phones and the power, trapping them in the house. With the phones down and the electricity cut, LaRoche’s heroism grows three sizes, and he tells McGee to take the women and leave him to his fate. After all, he’s the one who wrote the report advocating a shakeup at NCIS that resulted in him, not McGee, getting the job. But he now realizes that the team acting more like a family than a federal agency is a good thing.
Thankfully, the man who should’ve had LaRoche’s job has a plan in mind, and when the new assassin strolls in, McGee plays the role of the Poet, shooting LaRoche and distracting her long enough for the team to arrive and arrest her.
Yes, her. The beret-lover with the $20,000 necklace (Lauren McKnight) was the second assassin. Dang, now I really do hope Gemma charged her double. Also, LaRoche was saved by the bulletproof vest Vance gave him when he took the job, with raspberry sauce acting as fake blood, which is a real waste of a delicious dessert topping.
The rest of Gemma’s intel also proves helpful. She confirms that the anonymous client was sporting a Nexus cartel tattoo, although it’s unclear how he might be connected to Carla, who’s just a lover of fine jewelry, as far as Gemma’s concerned.
Adding to the mystery is the discovery that the emailed tip burning the Poet came from a DOD-created service called Nocturne. When McGee learns this, he’s got Rule 39 written all over his face as he grabs the hand LaRoche extends in friendship and yanks him close to hiss the word that he found in Gabe’s desk drawer: “Nocturne.” Then warns, “I’m coming for you.”
Umm, has Timothy Farragut McGee ever looked taller — or, frankly, hotter — than in that moment? But also, why, oh, why would you tell the person you’re onto that you are, in fact, onto them? Don’t let LaRoche know you know he knows you know!
