This week’s NCIS is fire.
No, but literally, the victim in “Ladies’ Night” dies in a conflagration, Kasie (Diona Reasonover) pursues a clue in a kiln, and our gals relax over an indoor fire pit with some meats and cheeses. Let’s recap!
The team’s anticipating a free Friday night, with McGee (Sean Murray) taking himself to the movies while his family’s out of town, Torres (Wilmer Valderrama) planning to hit the gym, and Knight (Katrina Law) and Kasie figuring out what to wear for Robin’s (Lilan Bowden) mysterious “crafty chic” ladies’ night.
There’s dialogue gold in this scene, with McGee praising Night of the Living Dead’s subtle critique of rampant American consumerism, Torres replying, “I don’t think America got the message,” and Kasie wondering aloud if crafty chic is anything like boho glitter or kindergarten couture. I’m telling you, this is the team content I want.
The weekend prep is scuttled when Petty Officer 1st Class Jennifer Garcia is found dead in a fire that destroyed part of a local antique shop where she was posting items to the store’s website while the owner’s on a Buddhist retreat.
Jen’s distraught boyfriend, Dan Holloway (Cameron Gellman), says he was there keeping Jen company but fell asleep on the couch and woke up to find the place in flames. He ran to get help and had to be stopped from charging back in to try to rescue her.
He then asks if Torres believes in soulmates, and Nick responds that he’s not sure but would like to. “That is worth running back into any fire for,” Dan tells him.
At the crime scene, a handsome firefighter (Greg Perrow) banters with Knight while she snaps photographs, joking that he took the job because he wanted a Dalmatian. He asks her out to dinner, but since she’s already got plans, he settles for taking her number and promising to send her pics of his firefighter calendar shoot. GET IT, GIRL!!
NCIS, Ladies Night, Gary Cole, Katrina Law
Katrina Law and Greg Perrow.
Oh, also, Jen was strangled, and the fire was intentionally set. We’ve got a murder, y’all.
Kasie, giving “NCI-yassss” in her “crafty chic” boots and leather pants, manages to pull texts from Jen’s phone showing a nasty fight with Dan that night. He admits they fought over him forgetting their anniversary but says he rushed to the antique store with flowers and a gold necklace, and they made up.
Then again, he reacts violently when they suggest that he killed her, which isn’t great for a man who served time for aggravated assault after getting into a fight at a club. Also not great? A lighter engraved with his initials at the fire’s point of origin.
That’s enough for the team, and they stash Dan in NCIS lockup until the courts are open again on Monday morning. (Sidenote: the Constitution’s guarantee of a speedy trial requires a first appearance within 48 hours of your arrest, so I think this is a violation of Dan’s rights. But I’m a mere ex-wife of an ex-prosecutor, so please don’t take any Con Law advice from me. And also, don’t let it keep you from enjoying the rest of this delightful episode.)
Anyway, McGee and Torres agree to put off their Friday plans and finish up at work so Knight and Kasie can scoot out the door to commence with ladies’ night.
NCIS recap: The return of Torres’ perfect nemesis
The evening starts in ugly overalls at a lovely pottery studio, where a convo about Knight’s firefighter flirtation and Kasie’s panic-unmatching with people on the dating apps is interrupted by Palmer’s (Brian Dietzen) emailed autopsy reports, which reveal a melted gold necklace on Jen’s body.
Robin tries to shut down their shop talk, but Knight and Kasie excuse themselves to have a hiss-whisper conversation that ends with Kasie putting her own necklace into the kiln to test a theory: if Jen’s necklace was “squished by strangle hands,” as she puts it, it would melt differently than an intact one.
When the white-haired, swishy-skirted pottery shop owner (Zachary Barton, in pitch-perfect casting) finds them tinkering with her kiln, Jess informs her, “This is official NCIS business.”
“This is a pottery studio,” the woman shoots back, adjusting her funky glasses as she realizes that Kasie changed the heat setting. She kicks the trio out as the smoke alarm starts to sing the song of its people, vowing that they’ll pay her back for the pearl-glazed earthenware bowls lost to the unsanctioned kiln-based forensic science.
NCIS, Ladies Night, Katrina Law, Diona Reasonover
Katrina Law, Lilan Bowden, Diona Reasonover.
At their next stop — a cute wine bar with a cute waitress — Robin brushes aside Knight’s attempts to distract her with pictures of Mr. December, even though he got to pose with a Dalmatian! She accuses Jess and Kasie of ruining their night out, just like Torres always does.
The NCIS duo gently remind her that their job is life-or-death important, but Robin insists that they all need to find a work/life balance, at one point snapping, “I don’t care about the cheese, Jess!”
First of all, let’s not say things we can’t take back. Second of all, Paige the waitress (Charlie Morgan Patton) overhears and performs an incredible “I want no part of this” 180 with her hands full of charcuterie. Forget the work/life balance; I want my preserved meats!
After she unloads her frustrations with Nick’s work obsession, Robin does a bit of a 180 herself, asking who would’ve killed Jen if it wasn’t the boyfriend. “Is this some kinda test or somethin’?” Kasie asks out of the side of her mouth, but before long, the women have sweet-talked Paige into using up the restaurant printer’s toner to spit out crime scene photos for them to pore over.
They apologize for staying past close, but Paige says they’re the most interesting table she’s ever waited on. Then she compliments Kasie’s jacket, Kasie compliments her hair, and the sparks are palpable. YES, BABY GORL!! GET IT!
Amid the thick haze of flirting, Robin notices that the chakra stones are out of order in a statue on the shop owner’s desk. They surmise that someone must’ve damaged it, then put the stones back in wrong. But Dan said he and Jen didn’t go into the office, so who else was there?
So that’s ladies’ night. The rest of the team ends up having an impromptu guys’ night with McGee and Torres teaming up to mow down cute but lethal teddy bears in Killing with Kindness 3 on the big screen in Kasie’s lab. (McGee’s trying to reach Level 15 Glitter Lord, which requires many sprinkle battles.) Vance (Rocky Carroll) wanders in to join them for pizza and teddy bear carnage.
Long story short, McGee’s in the lab to see Kasie remotely looking up the melting points of metals, which has Torres commenting that Robin hates it when he works during their nights together. Y’know, those two are starting to seem kinda incompatible.
The men are also in the lab when Dan’s cell records finally ping and show that he wasn’t at the antique store all night long, as he had claimed.
NCIS recap: Band-aids don’t fix bullet holes
Off to Parker’s (Gary Cole) plant daddy paradise they go! He’s been having a quiet night reviewing files on his mother’s fatal car accident (he had Palmer pull them), and he capped it off by leisurely playing his grand piano. Truly, who is this Renaissance man?
They review the new evidence and find that Dan went to prison for assaulting Jen’s ex-boyfriend, a walking red flag who ignored multiple restraining orders she took out against him. Parker points out that he also went to Duke on a full scholarship, which means he’s too smart to leave his lighter at the crime scene. Geez, Duke’s really having a moment! (Parker, noooo!)
Although I’m not sure intelligence automatically equals “good at murder,” it gets them all wondering why Dan didn’t tell them about leaving the show to go to a bar 12 miles away.
They pull him back into interrogation, and Dan reluctantly confesses that he got a call from an old friend who’s newly out of prison and newly sober. He walked with him, drove him home, and was willing to become a suspect in Jen’s murder to protect his buddy from violating his parole by being found at a place that served alcohol.
Dan’s mention of finding the door to the antique shop unlocked when he got back has the men headed to the crime scene, where Parker uses bolt cutters to get through a chain link fence blocking off the damaged building. As he does, they chat about how McGee shares everything with Delilah, while Torres shares not a darn thing with Robin.
“All the chemistry in the world ain’t worth a dime if you don’t value the same things,” Parker says as he works. Once they’re through the fence, they find evidence that the front door lock was picked, and when they hear a sound further inside, burst in with shouts and flashlights and chaos.
It is, of course, Knight, Casey, and Robin. (The women avoided hopping the fence in favor of a side entrance.) Together, they discover a super high-end safe that’s been emptied and reconvene to NCIS HQ to ponder the new evidence of robbery.
Palmer, also burning the midnight oil after an impromptu deep-clean of the morgue, turns up with an AI reconstruction of the size of the killer’s hands based on the marks on Jen’s neck.
They head back to Dan, who places his palms on the printout. You were thinking it, I was thinking it, and Parker and Kasie said it out loud: “If the hand doesn’t fit, we must acquit.”
At this point, I’m starting to get nervous about the Law of Economy of Characters because there aren’t many people left to rule out… other than Jess’ Dalmatian-lover.
NCIS recap: It’s a fondue ferret frenzy
Yep, the handsome firefighter heard about the rare books and stamps in the shop’s safe from a buddy who set up the world’s fanciest safe and was interrupted mid-heist. SAY IT AIN’T SO, MR. DECEMBER!!!
When Knight confronts him at a call, he tries to run and is tackled by a firefighter buddy who heard the conversation over the open radio and wants NCIS to take him in before the rest of the team gets wind of their buddy’s evil deeds.
Dan’s heartbroken to hear that some rare books and stamps are what ultimately took his soulmate from him. Poor guy.
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Robin, meanwhile, has a newfound appreciation for the demanding but vital work that Nick and Jess do, and she realizes that she shouldn’t get in the way of this 24/7 job. Then she starts to break up with Torres in front of her sister in the middle of the big orange room. They make their exit to have this conversation somewhere private, but phew, that’s brutal.
Finally, Kasie limps into her lab to trade her cute boots for cute sneaks and finds the Level 15 Glitter Lord image filling her screen, along with a discarded suit jacket that is claimed, to her confusion and glee, by one Leon Vance.
What a delightful episode! I mean, sorry to Dan. But I can’t remember the last time I laughed during NCIS as often as I did this week. Every single character aside was a gem, from Palmer’s finger flex when Robin mentions telling a lot about a guy from his hands to Paige’s full-blown cheese-toting scurry away from the ladies’ night table to the guys’ genuine outrage at being accused of wearing loafers. Kudos to writer Sydney Mitchell and director Carroll for this romp of an episode. (But for real, RIP Jen.)
Speaking of Paige, I’m pulling for her and Kasie to see if their chemistry matches their interests. And speaking of chemistry, do you remember being so young and in love that making out in your car distracts you from a fully-engulfed building fire? Here’s hoping those crazy kids from the cold open can make it work!
Ah, Nick and Robin. If this is truly the end (and it kinda seems like it is), you gave it a good go.
Given a Friday night on your own, do you pick the critically acclaimed movie, the CGI zombie-fest, the luxuries of the gym, or the teddy bear massacre with beloved coworkers? I wish I could say Oscar bait or bonding with coworkers, but me? I’m goin’ with zombies.
