Welcome to season 20 of NCIS! We pick up exactly where we left off in May: Parker’s (Gary Cole) on the run with his possibly treacherous ex thanks to the Raven’s plot to frame him. FBI Deputy Director Sweeney’s (Erik Passoja) still keen to capture Parker, but the team covers while he and Vivian (Teri Polo) track down the accounting firm that might lead to the offshore account tying him to the murder of his former partner.
Parker tells Vivian that he’s lucky to have such a trustworthy group of coworkers around him, and there’s an awkward pause because, well, the finale showed Vivian sending a mystery “It’s done. I have him” text — the same text sent by the person who watched her get kidnapped in the finale.
When Parker steps into the shower, Vivian gets a text demanding that she turn Parker over, and she offers up a place and time to meet. Parker, who’s no dummy, watches it all from the bathroom and sneakily sends the number over to Kasie (Diona Reasonover) to trace.
Kasie, who’s been fussing over the pomato plant that got damaged when Knight (Katrina Law) and Palmer (Brian Dietzen) engaged in a bit of stealthy lab kissing, discovers that Vivian’s been texting with Sweeney. And when Vivian awkwardly turns down Parker’s suggestion for a breakfast spot in favor of someplace with the best pancakes on Earth, he’s on high alert.
And that’s how he ends up nailing Fornell (Joe Spano) in the groin with a napkin dispenser when the poor man approaches their outdoor table. Vivian’s furious that Parker thought she, his ex-wife, would sell him out. (“In my experience, that part’s pretty easy,” says the unlucky-in-marriage Fornell.) In fact, she was in contact with Sweeney but sent him to a diner two towns over to buy them some time.
But like… wait. In last season’s finale, Vivian sent an “I have him” text, which seemed to be exactly how the Raven communicated with his people. Unless Sweeney is the Raven and they were working together all along, Rule 39 would tell us not to trust that she coincidently sent the same text message, right?
Anyway, off the trio go to meet Fornell’s friend Sammy, who discovers that the account used to frame Parker originated in Russia, which is also where the Raven’s biotoxin came from. Also, the vibe between Fornell and Sammy is palpable, and Parker’s still salty about Vivian’s potential betrayal even though she’s all-but-screaming that she still has feeeeelings for him.
Complicating matters, Tennant (Vanessa Lachey) and Ernie (Jason Antoon) arrive stateside to prep for RIMPAC, a massive maritime warfare training exercise. McGee (Sean Murray) suggests keeping the Parker news in-house, and Torres (Wilmer Valderrama)gets the pleasure of speaking the episode title out loud: “Family matter.” But of course, they already know about Parker, because you don’t keep secrets in NCIS-land. Also, Tennant and Torres are also throwing off all kinds of sparks; don’t forget they have a mysterious history personal history that led to the explosive nickname T’N’T.
Now that Parker’s being discredited, several inmates he helped put away are appealing their cases, so McGee and Knight head off to interview one of them. Herman Maxwell, who’s played by Michael Weston and is therefore far too recognizable an actor to be trusted, gets all squirrely when they ask about the Raven. He confesses to hacking into biolabs for a Russian gangster who called himself the Raven, and he’s now terrified that Parker was set up to get him released so the Raven can get to him. So off they go to figure out which Russian gangster might be their guy.
While they work, Torres comments on the heat between Knight and Palmer and admits to feeling protective… but not of Knight. How sweet is that? Lest we forget, in the season 19 episode when Palmer and Kasie almost died from a Raven biotoxin attack, we learned that Nick helped Jimmy with childcare duties after he was newly widowed, so his concern for Palmer’s emotional welfare makes total sense.
The cuteness triples when Ernie joins them in the lab and starts raving about how awesome Jess is. Palmer blurts out that she’s actually dating a guy named Rocko who’s cool, kind, super smart, accessibly handsome, and funny in a corny way. And just like that, Kasie knows how her pomato plant really got broken, and Palmer quietly tells her, “It was still an accident, Kasie.” Yep. Truly loving this odd-couple pairing of Palmer and Knight. (Palight?)
They tentatively identify the Raven as a man named Dmitri Lopuchin and plot to use Maxwell as bait to draw him out. The DC and Hawaii NCIS agents, plus Fornell and Vivian, all gather for Maxwell’s three-car caravan to a safe house. But they get word from Ernie’s NSA contact that Lopuchin is dead, so who’s Maxwell really afraid of? All hell breaks loose when a signal jammer blocks the caravan’s mobile phones, Sweeney pops up to arrest Parker, and a team of heavily armed men appear to extract Maxwell, who Keyser Söze-ed them all.
