NCIS recap: A starter pistol leads to a bad end
There are two types of people in the world. One's skeptical when a new boss brings in baked goods. The other's grateful. Which type are you?
McGee and Torres align themselves with the first group when Parker leaves a box of Polish kolache in the big orange room, while Knight and Kasie land in the second.
Everybody's universally thrown that Parker's into small talk instead of barking orders, but this new management style still leads to an arrest after Navy Commander Henry Davis, head of the All-Navy sports program, is found dead.
Davis was shot point-blank by a starter pistol, and he had a bag of performance-enhancing drugs hidden in his desk, along with a mysterious participation ribbon.
Unlike the other branches, Navy athletes have to maintain their active-duty assignments while competing at the international level, and Davis trained one athlete at a time. His previous trainee, Petty Office First-Class Jamie Anderson, recently died after being hit by a drunken driver, and his parents hotly deny that he used PEDs to set the Navy records he still holds.
Davis' current trainee, Petty Officer Felix Cross, also denies any steroid usage. He was headed for a dishonorable discharge and alcohol problems before Davis took him under his wing. But his urine tests clean, and he lashes out at Torres for questioning Davis' integrity.
Cross does say that Davis had an argument with Kyle Seward, an all-Navy wrestler who's driving a car he can't afford and had bulked up suspiciously quickly over the past year.
Torres heads undercover to try to score some PEDs from Seward. Their conversation takes place in the recovery room ice baths — no, thank you! — and Torres gets Seward to agree to sell to him. But his inventory turns out to be used shoes, boxers, and sports bras stolen from elite Navy athletes. Yeah, again, no thank you!
After Davis confronted him about the thefts, Seward shut down his online storefront, leaving a buyer named NavyFan92 highly upset. Kasie locates the buyer's address, so off go McGee and Parker.
They find a warehouse with high-tech security measures, and as they wait, Parker tells McGee that he's brushing up on the hidden talents of his new team because they might come in handy.
Case in point, when a woman approaches the warehouse and tries to shut the agents out, McGee's able to jam his tap-dancing foot into the door to wedge it open. Inside, they find a kitted-out lab that the woman threatens to blow up.
She assumes they're from the Chinese government, there to steal her research, and Parker convinces her to do a Google search for his spotted wood thrush birdwatching page to prove his identity. But it's actually a stall while McGee hacks through her security system.
In questioning, Dr. Astrid Fellows admits she's a biomedical researcher who's been buying used clothes for the elite athlete DNA, hoping she can develop a universal CRISPR test to search for genetically modified human genes.
Since they're back at square one with the investigation, Parker brings in a box of Mexican concha — his hidden talent is finding the best international pastries in any city — and suggests they review the case again from the beginning.
But Kasie breaks it for them. Fellows' work showed only one athlete with PEDs in his system: Jamie Anderson, the dead runner. The participation ribbon also belonged to him (he won it in his first-ever race), and that's what it takes for Anderson's father to confess.
A few days prior, maintenance found Anderson's bag of PEDs stuck behind a locker. They turned it over to Davis, who told Anderson's parents that he was going to report the PED usage, which would strip Anderson of his records. Anderson's father confronted Davis, thinking the blanks from the starter pistol would scare him, not kill him.
In the end, Torres leans into the hidden talent that Parker sees in him — coaching — and brings the whole team to meet Cross at the track to encourage him to compete in the Military World Games time trials the following week. Sadly, the camera cuts away before we see who wins the Cross v. Torres footrace, although my money's on the elite athlete.
Stray shots
Between this episode and the tragedy on the Rust set, have we all learned a lesson about "safe" firearms?
I loved Kasie's collection of masks hanging by her lab door! It was such a nice little nod to something that's become commonplace for so many of us over the past year and a half.
Another piece of the Knight puzzle's been revealed: she was a D1 track star.
With this episode, it feels like we're settling into the new routine. The team's getting used to Parker's gentler approach, and they're tackling the types of week-in, week-out cases we've gotten used to. I'm enjoying the way Parker's fitting in to the team. How about you?
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