“You know this many people worked here?” Torres (Wilmer Valderrama) asks in TV Insider’s exclusive sneak peek from the milestone 500th episode of NCIS, airing on Tuesday, March 24.
It’s a valid point. He and Knight (Katrina Law) are already on a semi-crowded elevator when the doors open to reveal even more people looking to get on. “Glad I showered this morning,” she remarks, and he replies, loudly, “I don’t think anyone here followed your lead.”
Then the speculation about what’s going on begins, first with Knight and Torres — “That’s what I love about you, you don’t miss a thing,” she says after he shares his thoughts — then with Palmer (Brian Dietzen) and Kasie (Diona Reasonover), already seated downstairs.
“I heard from Dominic in the motor pool that terrorists are planning on shutting down the entire internet,” Palmer says.
McGee (Sean Murray), meanwhile, is trying to actively find an answer on his computer, but all he has is, “Director Vance got a priority message from DOD last night, but for some reason I’m blocked.” And yes, he’s trying to fix that.
Torres then turns to Parker (Gary Cole) to ask what he thinks, and the entire team notices their boss’ silence. Watch the full sneak peek above for more, including Vance’s (Rocky Carroll) speech.
It was in the March 17 episode that Vance revealed the bad news to Parker that it’s actually NCIS, not Army CID, being shut down. He’d been fighting for the agency but ultimately lost.
“We get to see Vance’s Papa Bear in a way we haven’t necessarily seen him before. He cares about this agency and would do anything to protect the agency. And yet he’s also vulnerable. We don’t necessarily see Vance — we have, like when his wife got killed 10 to 12 years ago now, we saw a vulnerable side of Vance. We don’t usually see a vulnerable side of Vance, so being the head of NCIS has always come at a cost for him, and we’re going to see more of that vulnerability in this episode,” executive producer Steven D. Binder told us.
He added, “We’re going to see that you can’t keep our team down, that even when they’re at their lowest and you think that — there’s just no stopping them. They’re so good at what they do.”
What are you hoping to see in Episode 500? Let us know in the comments section below.