Heidi Cullinan

Three years ago after watching the first few episodes of Lucifer, I made it my mission to become a contributor at HEA USA TODAY just so I could talk about the show. For three years, I’ve set alarms to make sure I catch the episode, risen at 5 a.m. to rewatch and type up reactions and recaps around deadlines, illnesses, appointments … Every year, as is the case right now, I write the finale from a convention, leaving a teaching event’s evening cool-down early so I can watch in my hotel room (always searching my phone to figure out the local station on the way). Right now, it’s 6 in the morning in Reno, in fact, and I’m eating some eggs, having tea and setting up my phone to replay the episode so I can recap for you.

I really hope this isn’t my last time I sneak up to a hotel room or get up at 5 or set an alarm to catch an episode.

As I’m sure everyone knows by now, Friday we found out Lucifer wasn’t slated for renewal. However, if you’ve been anywhere on the Internet since then, you know the LuciFans did not take this news lying down. #Lucifer, #SaveLucifer and #PickUpLucifer have been trending worldwide since the news broke, with millions of tweets logged and more on the way. A petition for some other network to pick up the show was started immediately and, as of this writing, was at 150,000 signatures. It will be higher by the time you read this. The actors, creators, writers, showrunners, crew—everyone involved with the show has been lobbying on the hashtags (the official ones are considered #SaveLucifer and #PickUpLucifer), and no news has leaked, but you get the idea that something is afoot, that the devil is not dead yet. They warned us all weekend we’d be even more ready to rescue the show after we saw the finale.

They were right.

Lauren German as Chloe, Tom Ellis as Lucifer and Kevin Alejandro as Dan in Lucifer. (Photo: Jordan Althaus, Fox)

We open with Lucifer and Chloe watching Charlotte’s body being taken away on a stretcher. Lucifer solemnly remarks, “I’ll never get to see her again.” Chloe misunderstands, thinking he means because she’s dead, but he clarifies, meaning Chloe will see her in heaven, but he won’t because she’s absolutely in heaven—being carried there by an angel seals the deal—but as the lord of hell, he’s not getting back in, so no go for him. And he’s sad. When he tells Chloe this, saying, “She’s gone somewhere I simply can’t follow,” she gives him one of her, “I’ll just be patient with your nonsense” looks.

She’s more worried about Dan right now, and rightly so. They have no leads, no witnesses, and Dan won’t take time off. He’s too focused on finding Charlotte’s killer. Ella’s also broken up, and can’t find any clues. Pierce shows up, flat and unemotional as ever, telling them he knows it’s hard, but he wants them to focus because time is of the essence. He also tells Dan to go home. Dan resists at first, but goes when Chloe promises to find the killer for him.

Pierce holds Lucifer back, wanting to know where Amenadiel is, since he and Charlotte were so close. Lucifer says he thinks he knows and withdraws the feather. Pierce is shocked and clearly upset because his plan was to frame the mortal angel for his crime. Difficult to do when he’s no longer mortal and in heaven. Lucifer also shares Amenadiel’s theory that the reason he lost his wings, Lucifer his devil face and Pierce his mark were all due to their own self-punishments rather than God’s. Pierce scoffs at this idea, but Lucifer is starting to believe it.

Dan goes to Charlotte’s place, sees all her things just as she left them, including the waffle maker he’d just given her. He throws it across the room, breaking a glass table, and in the carnage he discovers the binder of evidence she’d been collecting on Pierce to prove he was the Sinnerman.

Meanwhile, Pierce himself meets with one of his henchmen as Sinnerman, talking about cashing in on an old favor. The man is surprised to see Pierce is scared, but Pierce tosses him around a little, insisting this just makes him more dangerous. They mention the woman back at his place, which can only be Maze. Pierce says to keep her alive, because he may need her. “Don’t worry,” the man says. “My best men are on her.”

The woman is indeed Maze, drugged, chained to pipes and beat up. “Linda,” she murmurs as she wakes in a haze. “Don’t worry about your friend,” one of her captors says to her. “You’ve got bigger problems.” They laugh to each other, remarking that she doesn’t seem that scary. Then, still drugged and way under par, Maze breaks the pipe and beats them all down. She makes it into another room, which is also full of men, this time bearing knives. We don’t get the idea that they’re going to fare much better than the first set of thugs.

At the precinct, Chloe worries about Maze—she had to get another sitter since Maze didn’t show up. Lucifer assures her she’s fine, because she’s Maze. He’s more focused on his astonishment at the number of cases Charlotte was prosecuting and how dangerous they were. While they’re poring over the files, Dan rushes in, wild-eyed and clutching Charlotte’s binder. “Try not to react,” he says, and then tells them what he discovered, that Pierce killed Charlotte, because she was investigating him for being the Sinnerman.

Tom Welling as Pierce in Lucifer. (Photo: Jordan Althaus, Fox)

Chloe tries to deny this, but of course Lucifer says yes, it’s true, and he’s known for some time. Dan and Chloe are upset with him, but he says he’d been trying to tell them the truth to no avail. “You said he was immortal, and that’s a completely different thing,” Chloe says. “Is it?” he asks. “If I’d have told you he was the Sinnerman as well, would you have believed me?” Chloe insists she may have, since that’s something that exists and not a metaphor he made up. “I’ve never made up anything, Detective,” he tells her. “I always tell you the truth, no matter what.”

Dan drags them back to the matter at hand. “Do you believe me, Chloe?” She’s not sure, she says, and before Dan can try to convince her further, Ella calls them out because Pierce wants to address the precinct. He’s making a speech about Charlotte, it turns out, and it’s deeply personal and emotional, a plea to catch her killer at all costs. It’s this that convinces Chloe. “Pierce doesn’t get emotional. He’s lying. He did it, didn’t he? He killed Charlotte.” The three of them, Dan, Lucifer and Chloe, are now united to take him down.

Their initial planning meeting gets off to a rocky start, though. Dan is full of rage, wanting nothing more than five minutes to rough Pierce up, and Lucifer keeps trying to tell truths no one wants to hear about how Pierce is actually Cain, the world’s first murderer. This is where you first start to feel the burn and ache in the show’s cancellation, because the veins and bones of season four are forming around you in this room; you see and feel how the new Scooby gang is setting up, and you want it like you want air, and you know the network just closed the door on you.

Chloe says the first thing Pierce will be looking for is a fall guy, so he’ll plant evidence, and that’s exactly what happens; Ella finds “new” evidence on a third sweep of the scene, a cigarette butt with DNA on it, with a match. It belongs to someone Charlotte was investigating, conveniently enough. Pierce comes in during the announcement, so it’s not like they can hide the evidence from him. Instead, they decide to take a different approach. They want to find the person helping the Sinnerman, the one who owes him a favor. Hopefully, they can get them to flip on him.

They go to the suspect’s house and let him in on the game, that he’s being framed. He’s reluctant to play along until they discover the murder weapon in his desk drawer, at which point he’s incredibly cooperative. Unfortunately, his entire house is full of potential accomplices, as he’s having a party, and every one of the guests has a motive.

We cut now to Linda, who is wrapping up with a client who has a fear that everyone is out to get him. He’s had a real breakthrough that day, which unfortunately is undone as a bloody Maze breaks through the door and holds a knife to his throat and asks him if he’s threatening Linda. Linda gets Maze to back down (and her client out the door). “Are you okay?” Maze asks. “Yes, I’m fine!” Linda replies, her tone implying this is a silly question as she’s not the one beaten up. Maze smiles a beautiful smile, whispers “good” and crumples to the floor.

Tom Ellis as Lucifer. (Photo: Jordan Althaus, Fox)

Linda, Dan and Lucifer try to scope out the party with the host, but it’s impossible. The guest list is made up of people with dirty secrets they’re trying to cover up by charitable donations. They have no time to get through everyone before Pierce will get suspicious as to where they are. Then they realize they’re going about this the wrong way. Everyone at the party has open dirty secrets, which means the Sinnerman didn’t help them. They’re looking for the one person present who appears squeaky clean. The person who fits that bill is the host’s chauffeur—and he is the person who had the favor called in. He killed a biker, and he called the Sinnerman for help. He got his record erased, but not the guilt in his heart.

How they got the information out of the chauffeur, however, is by Lucifer’s devil whammy, which Dan has never seen live. Dan had been threatening the man when Lucifer pulled him off to ask what the man truly desired, and Dan is furious. “You interrupted my interrogation for a stupid parlor trick?” “It’s not a trick,” Chloe says. “I don’t know what it is, but it works.” Lucifer has led the interrogation now, and when the man says he still feels guilty, that he can’t look in the mirror, Lucifer looks at him with understanding and says, “You see a monster.”

Dan asks for confirmation that the Sinnerman called in his favor this morning, and the chauffeur says yes, but he didn’t see him. He only got a burner phone and information about dead drops. Chloe asks for the phone, and Dan says they let the framed man lawyer up to buy them time, but they still don’t have any real leads. Lucifer suggests it’s time they ask for some help.

Dan meets Ella at the precinct, in what looks like the stairs of the parking garage. It’s not the most careful of meets, and he looks a little unsteady. People occasionally pass them. He asks her for a favor and not to tell anyone about it. The next scene is her walking into Pierce’s office, saying Dan came to her with a burner phone to examine but told her not to tell anyone. She says he sounded crazy, going on about some frame job. (I will confess, I legit shouted at my television at this point.) Pierce is of course happy to take the phone and tells Ella Dan isn’t in any trouble, he promises. As soon as Ella leaves, of course, he’s on the phone telling someone to take care of the officer who’s on to him.

The next scene is Dan in his house, passed out around beer bottles as the guy we’d seen earlier as the Sinnerman’s henchman comes in with a gun drawn. Surprise: Chloe is also in Dan’s apartment, and Chloe and Dan are packing, too. Dan wasn’t passed out at all. This was all a setup to get Pierce’s man.

Kevin Alejandro as Dan and Lauren German as Chloe in Lucifer. (Photo: Jordan Althaus, Fox)

Meanwhile, Lucifer has gone to confront Pierce at the precinct—this is such a delicious scene, I must say, containing some of my favorite lines. Tom Ellis is in his prime here, peak devil, though one could argue that’s him throughout this entire episode. Lucifer tells Pierce he knows he killed Charlotte. Pierce tries to brush it off, insisting they caught the killer, but Lucifer isn’t playing. “The detective isn’t here, so I’m invulnerable. But you’re not.” He grabs a chair and puts it behind Pierce. “Sit. Down. Or I’ll make you.”

Wicked devil. So delightful.

Pierce sits, and the interrogation begins. “For every lie, I will break a body part,” Lucifer promises. So Pierce doesn’t lie. He explains he didn’t mean to kill her, that he was after Amenadiel. Lucifer isn’t exactly pleased to hear Pierce planned to kill his brother, either, and wants to know why. Pierce explains his plan about killing God’s favorite son to get his mark back, to which Lucifer responds with laughter.

“When I first landed in hell, I’d just led a rebellion against dear old Dad. Everyone hated me for it, myself included, I’ve come to realize. I felt like a monster. When I looked at my reflection, there was my devil face.” Pierce interjects that this was God’s punishment, but Lucifer shakes his head. He explains how he’s realized after speaking with the chauffeur that he felt like a monster before he became one. “I think I gave myself that face.”

Now it’s Pierce laughing. “What about your wings?” Lucifer has an answer for that, too. “I’d just saved Mum, and I’d decided to tell the detective the truth. I felt better about myself than I had in well…ever.” He didn’t feel like a monster anymore. He tells Pierce he didn’t think his curse lifted when Chloe fell in love with him, because he knows Chloe didn’t fall in love with him. It was because he’d been selfless for once in his miserable life, and for the first time, he deserved his mortality.

Pierce is angry when Lucifer says Chloe never loved him, and it looks like he might hit Lucifer, but Pierce is smarter than that. Calling Lucifer out for being vulnerable because he wants to be good, he shouts for officers and accuses Lucifer of attacking him, and of course Pierce is believed.

Chloe is angry at Lucifer for confronting Pierce instead of distracting him, but Ella stands up for him, saying it was tough for her, too, when she passed him the phone. Chloe tries to call him to get him to confide in her, laughing off Lucifer’s nonsense about him being Cain from the Bible and saying she’s concerned about him, but Pierce sees right through her. So Chloe switches tactics, first telling him to turn himself in, then promising to get his guy to turn and find Pierce, one way or another.

Aimee Garcia as Ella in Lucifer. (Photo: Jordan Althaus, Fox)

Back at Linda’s office, Maze comes to. Linda has been nursing her wounds, and she wants Maze to stay still and heal. Maze says she has to go, that being around humans makes her weak, just as Pierce says. Linda shakes her head. “You look like you fought 10 people and ran a mile to get here.” Maze raises a cut eyebrow. “Twelve people. Four miles.”

“You did that for me,” Linda says. “To save me. Emotions are hard, but that’s why they make you strong. And this is the strongest I’ve ever seen you.”

Maze tries to get up. “Linda,” she begins. Linda shakes her head. “You don’t have to say anything. Your actions speak plenty.” But Maze sits up despite the pain. “That’s the thing. Actions are easy for me. That’s why I need to say it. I’m sorry.”

“Me, too,” Linda says.

My heart. This ship is my whole heart.

At his lair, Pierce surveys the carnage Maze wrought, and he also picks up one of her hell knives, the kind that can kill even angels and demons.

Lucifer and Ella talk on the rooftop, musing over the loss of Charlotte and Pierce’s betrayal. Ella is particularly upset. “I know God works in mysterious ways,” she says, “but this many bad things…I’m having a hard time finding any reason. Why would he do all this?” Lucifer shakes his head. “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but…I don’t actually think it’s my father’s fault.” He explains he doesn’t think it’s God pulling the strings, but that we’re the responsible parties. We have no one to blame but ourselves. “Screw that,” Ella says. “I blame Pierce.” And she lets the “Big Guy” know they’re on rocky ground.

Chloe confronts Pierce’s henchman. During her phone call with him, he said the man wouldn’t flip because he had leverage on the man’s sister. This is what Chloe presses him on, saying they’ll protect her for him if the helps them. The man doesn’t believe them. Dan asks for a second alone and basically threatens him, letting him know he’s a corrupt cop who’s killed and doesn’t regret anything. He points the murder weapon at the man’s head and basically threatens him with it. The man relents, saying he’ll help them if they can prove they can truly protect his sister and gives them her address.

Lucifer and Chloe go to the address, and Dan and Ella stay behind to watch their hostage. Chloe is upset, though, saying this is her fault because she didn’t believe Lucifer sooner, but she’s frustrated because he always gives her so much nonsense. “I always tell you the truth,” he insists, but she says, “No, you always tell me your truth.” She keeps insisting he’s speaking in metaphors, and she’s done humoring them. He’s not a devil to her. Moved, he says he doesn’t see himself that way either, lately. They table their discussion until after the case is solved.

While they’re going in, Ella and Dan discover their hostage is an only child—Dan and Chloe are walking into a trap. They try to call to warn them, but it’s too late. Dan and Chloe are already inside, in a space where their calls aren’t getting through. And of course instead of a sister, there to meet them are Pierce and his men.

He only wants Lucifer, he says—Chloe is free to leave. He would have just left, but he knows Lucifer won’t stop until he finds him. “You don’t have to die, Chloe. Step aside.” Lucifer agrees, telling her to do just that. Chloe won’t, of course, and stands between Pierce and Lucifer. “I don’t want to die. I can’t, not without stopping you.” She pulls her gun and shoots. The man next to Pierce shoots Chloe in the shoulder, and she falls against Lucifer, who cradles her protectively against him. “This can’t be happening,” he whispers, aching and furious at once.

His gaze meets Pierce’s.

“Finish it,” Pierce shouts.

Then everything goes completely crazy.

Kevin Alejandro as Dan in Lucifer. (Photo: Jordan Althaus, Fox)

Shouting, “No!” Lucifer unfurls his wings and wraps them protectively around Chloe as bullets rain around them. He’s holding Chloe, so he’s still vulnerable, and his wings are stained with blood, and he screams the entire time. Chloe is passed out. When the smoke from the gunfire clears, there’s a litter of bloody feathers, but nothing else.

On the roof of a nearby building, Lucifer cradles Chloe as she wakes up. She wasn’t injured after all, as she’s wearing a bulletproof vest. All there is is a hole in her shirt. “What happened?” she asks. “You’re safe. That’s all that matters,” he insists. “We need to find Pierce,” she says, and a breath later you hear the sound of wings flapping, and he’s gone. She looks around, finding herself alone on the rooftop.

Lucifer bursts through the windows to re-enter the battle as the avenging angel, taking out enemies with single strikes of his bloody wings. I can’t tell you how many times I hit 10 seconds back on my streaming service writing this recap, not because I needed to but because it’s just such an incredible sequence. In every conceivable way, this is the teaser of the season we want to experience next. Lucifer kicking ass with those wings for 24 (48, 70 million) more episodes.

On the roof, Chloe is pacing as she speaks to Dan, who is finally telling her about the trap she already knew about. She’s shaken up as the truth Lucifer has been trying to tell her all along fully dawns on her. Then she hears gunshots and hangs up to rush to the scene.

The gunshots are Pierce shooting a gleeful Lucifer, who of course is immune to the bullets since Chloe is so far away. Pierce whips out Maze’s knife, but Lucifer isn’t upset. “A fair fight it is, then, Cain.” Pierce fights with the knife, but Lucifer fights barehanded, dodging blows and maneuvering easily around his opponent, knocking him to the ground after suffering nothing but a graze.

“I promised you I’d find a way to kill you,” he says, then slams the knife into Pierce’s chest. “And I am a devil of my word.”

Pierce asks after Chloe, relieved to know she’s OK. He musters up some bravado, wondering what he was so afraid of regarding death, since he has no regrets. Lucifer reminds him that, oh, yes, he does: his murder of Charlotte, the innocent victim. “Deep down you know you’re a monster and that you belong in hell,” he says, and as Lucifer speaks, the flames reappear in his eyes, and his devil face returns. “Because no matter what you tell yourself, you can’t outrun what you’ve done.”

Pierce grabs him. “And neither can you,” he says, laughing manically as he expires.

Chloe walks in, calling out to Lucifer. He rises and turns to her, in full devil face. Eyes wide, she draws back in shock. “It’s true,” she whispers. “It’s all true.”

And the season ends.

There is so much brilliance in that ending. We have been yearning for this dark Lucifer to surface as much as we’ve wanted his lightness. We want the devil face and the wings, and in this final sequence, we got both. As Pierce appeared as the final foe and Lucifer tucked his wings away to face him down, there was a wickedness in his expression that was terrifying and wonderful at the same time. There’s our fallen angel. It isn’t that we don’t want to see him redeemed, that we don’t want him with Chloe. We do want him with Chloe. But we don’t want him quite redeemed yet. This darker chapter, this richer loam, this is the main course we’ve been teasing toward, and now our appetite is fully whetted and prepared.

Lauren German as Chloe and Tom Ellis as Lucifer in Lucifer. (Photo: Erik Voake, Fox)

I can’t even mourn the series, because I cannot believe for a moment this will be allowed to stand as a final episode. Every single poll of popular series online is crushed by this show. The actors and showrunners can’t use their phones anymore because their Twitter notifications have broken them from fans tagging them in #SaveLucifer and #PickUpLucifer efforts. Every time I use one of them and say anything even slightly witty, I get nothing less than 50 retweets because people have been living, and I do mean living, on those hashtags. The fans of this show are passionate for so many reasons. A number of them are here for the diversity, for the LGBT overtones and outright inclusion. It’s an insanely global phenomenon as well. The idea of studios cutting off this passion is unthinkable.

I won’t say goodbye, because I don’t believe this will be my last Lucifer post. I will say, though, that I have loved writing up recaps and reactions for this show more than I can say. I love the writers, the actors, the producers, and I can feel and see the hard work they all put into each episode. It’s been my pleasure to contribute to the fandom these past three seasons, and I look forward to contributing again in the future, wherever it takes us.

Lucifer, you’re a devil of your word, and the devil of my heart. I look forward to seeing you again very soon.

An author of contemporary, historical and paranormal romances featuring LGBT characters, Heidi Cullinan is best known for stories of characters struggling with insurmountable odds on their way to their happily ever afters. Find out more about Heidi at www.heidicullinan.com and be sure to follow her on Twitter and Facebook.

MORE ON HEA: See more of Heidi’s Lucifer posts

We’re at the penultimate moment in season 15. Two episodes left, and we’re down two team members, plus the occasional Ducky sighting. What is this “New Chapter” going to look like?

We start to find that out tonight. Let’s watch …

Mark Harmon as Gibbs in NCIS. (Photo: Bill Inoshita, CBS)

We open at a beautiful home, where a memorial service is taking place for a decorated Naval officer we know only as Phil at this point, who went down with his personal sailboat. Neither boat nor body was recovered. Various folks, many of them in dress uniform, are leaving small tokens of remembrance inside the empty coffin. One of them is Gibbs, looking quite fine in his black suit and tie. He leaves one of the old-fashioned, handheld lathes he’s used on the sailboats he’s made. We learn that Gibbs helped Phil build the very sailboat that took him to a watery grave. Phil’s wife tells Gibbs that she knows NCIS and the Coast Guard did all they could. She says they both knew Phil shouldn’t have been sailing in “that weather,” so we take it to mean he went down in a storm. I don’t know, because I’m all distracted. The moment I heard “Coast Guard,” I wondered if maybe we’d get a return visit from one of my very favorite occasional guests, Coast Guard Special Agent Abigail Borin. (Please, please, please!)

Phil’s very attractive wife smiles and tells Gibbs she never understood their passion for their “projects,” as she calls them. “Bourbon and boats,” replies Gibbs. “Don’t overthink it.” She gets teary and tells Gibbs she would appreciate it if he would take any of Phil’s tools that he might like. Gibbs waves off that offer, but she insists that Phil would want Gibbs to have them, that she doesn’t even know what all is down in Phil’s project-making man cave. Smiling while crying, she asks him again, and Gibbs says he’ll take a look.

He goes down to the workshop, sees a photo of himself and Phil at the marina and keeps it. He checks the size of one of Phil’s work boots against his own foot, then turns the overhead light on to look at the tools hanging from the wall. I’m thinking Gibbs is going to find some kind of clue or something that will tell him Phil’s death wasn’t an accidental drowning. I did not expect that clue to come in the form of a secret passage. Gibbs goes to take down a saw, but when he pulls on it, the whole wall swings out to reveal a door that looks like something you’d see on a submarine — air lock and watertight — with the kind of circular steering wheel handle and lever latch you have to spin to open the door.

Gibbs pulls the lever and turns the handle. The door opens to reveal a set of stairs heading to an even lower level. The stairs, too, look like something you’d see in a submarine. When he gets to the bottom, there are two utilitarian bunks, a small kitchenette, all of which look recently used. Then a man comes in from behind a curtain near the back, making Gibbs jump. He says, “It’s about time.” I don’t think I’ve ever seen Gibbs look so startled, but we quickly learn why when he says, “Phil! What the hell?”

Now that’s an intriguing opening!

Cue awesome opening theme song and credits (with Abby and Reeves still present!).

Guest star Susan Walters as Marcy Brooks in NCIS. (Photo: Bill Inoshita, CBS)

We open with McGee coming into Abby’s empty lab. He says he still can’t believe she’s gone. This brings Bishop out from the other room, slightly annoyed that McGee has come early. Apparently, she gets her alone time in the lab from 8:45 to 9, and it’s his turn from 9 to 9:15. This is something they are doing to help them process their grief at losing their co-workers. Enter Torres who, we learn, said he didn’t need alone time in the lab due to his time deep undercover making it easier for him to process losing teammates. As it turns out, he was wrong about this one. McGee wonders aloud why, a week later, it’s still hitting them so hard. (Well, Reeves is dead, not just somewhere else, so a week isn’t that long a time …) Enter Sloane, who replies that it’s hard because it’s like losing family. She says that now that the alone time she set up for them has merged into a group session, maybe they’re ready to sit down with her one-on-one and … yeah, they all flee the room.

Now we’re back in Phil’s submarine bunker. He is eating God knows what from a can, animatedly explaining how he was out on his boat when another boat shows up and suddenly opens fire on him. He goes overboard to keep from getting shot and they ram his boat and sink it. Phil, still a strong swimmer, manages to make it to shore. He heads to the table to show Gibbs a map of where he thinks it all takes place, then finally realizes that Gibbs is still sitting on one bunk, saying nothing. (All I can think of is, surely Phil’s wife knows he’s alive, right? He is not letting her go on upstairs with a memorial service letting her think he’s dead. I mean, please. But she sure looked sincerely grief-stricken.)

Gibbs says he’s waiting to hear why. Phil is confused, wondering why what? Turns out Phil thinks he’s been in his bunker hiding from whoever is coming to kill him for only a day or two. Gibbs picks up the empty bourbon bottle and tells Phil it’s been six days, and the only reason why he’s there at all is for Phil’s memorial service. This stuns Phil, who did, in fact, not tell his wife he was down there, in an effort to keep her safe from whoever is trying to kill him. He was just thankful she hadn’t been on the boat with him. Gibbs demands to know why on earth Phil didn’t contact him sooner, and Phil says he called Gibbs the moment he made shore. He left a message with “some British guy.” Oh boy. Gibbs ducks his chin and shakes his head as he realizes what’s happened.

Gibbs tells Phil he has to tell his wife. Then Phil has an idea. He says the fact that whoever was trying to kill him thinks they’ve gotten away with murder gives him and Gibbs a tactical advantage. “They won’t know we’re hunting them,” Phil says. “We’re hunting?” Gibbs replies, clearly not remotely on board with any of this. We fade to a nonplussed Gibbs black-and-white.

We come back to Vance’s office where he is none too pleased to learn that Gibbs has agreed to Phil’s idea about keeping the fact that he’s alive a secret while they look into who shot at him and sank his boat. Vance says the longer they take, the harder it will be to explain to Phil’s wife. Gibbs smiles and says it’s good they work fast. Vance reminds them they don’t have a full-time forensic scientist on board. Gibbs tells him the team has to move forward. Vance says he’s interviewing candidates, but replacing Abby won’t be easy and may take some time. Gibbs reminds him that cases won’t wait. Vance says he’s open to a temporary solution. Gibbs smiles and says, “Good,” then turns to leave. Vance realizes Gibbs had already decided to do just that and asks Gibbs when he was going to mention that. Gibbs just smiles and heads out.

Guest star Don Lake as Phillip Brooks in NCIS. (Photo: Bill Inoshita, CBS)

In the Bull Pen of Orangey Goodness, McGee and Torres are going over Phil’s information. He’s married, no kids. His Navy salary pays for his boat hobby, and he also dabbles in real estate, owning a few local commercial properties. Torres says maybe one of his tenants had a beef with him, that it wouldn’t be the first time someone wanted to kill their landlord. McGee wants to know if Torres is speaking from personal experience. Why yes, yes, he is. Ow. Phil also has a clean record in the military and with the law. He was reprimanded for mentioning the Navy in a political tweet demanding pay raises for schoolteachers (his wife is a third-grade teacher), but that’s the extent of his run-ins with the law, military or otherwise. Torres is just surprised one of Gibbs’ friends knows how to tweet. Heh.

While they are talking, Bishop is sitting at Reeves’ desk and realizes that it’s been completely cleaned out. His phone has been erased as well, so she can’t verify that Phil contacted him the day his boat went down. Torres suggests she contact MI6, that maybe they did it. Enter Gibbs, who tells them to contact the Coast Guard, that he wants everything they found when they processed Phil’s boat. Bishop tells him they already went over the reports of what little wreckage they found. Bishop says they can take another look, but Torres and McGee both mention that would be hard without a forensic scientist. They’ve filled in for Abby when and where they could in the past, but their skill set is limited.

Aaaaaand, enter Ducky and Kasie Hines! Just as we suspected when she was introduced in the episode One Man’s Trash earlier this season, she’s going to be stepping in to fill Abby’s shoes. At least for now. (Should we mention to her that they brought in three people to fill Tony’s shoes and only one of them — Torres — is still on the show? Sure, we’ve got Sloane now, but the attrition rate is not comforting.) Kasie says hello to a completely silent team, then adds, “That’s not awkward at all,” and wants to talk to Gibbs before heading to the lab. But he’s already in “grab your gear” mode, so there will be no slow, settling in time. For any of them. He heads out and Kasie shrugs. “Or, I could just jump right in.” Heh. I do like her. I think she’s kooky in a different way from Abby, and I like that she has a tie to Ducky, so that’s the team bond (instead of like Abby with Gibbs … once upon a time), so there’s possibilities here. I’m open to seeing where they go. I’m guessing the show is, too. She’ll either find her niche or end up mysteriously gone, like Agent Quinn. Or killed off, like Reeves. So, yeah, you go on and get comfortable. Don’t worry about a thing.

We shift to Phil’s bunker. He tells us he prefers it down there to the open-floor-plan kitchen his wife wanted. Torres is looking around with some serious side-eye. As Phil tucks into the fast food they brought him, he tells Torres that bunkers are all the vogue again. I don’t think Torres is buying what Phil is selling. They inform Phil they’re moving him to Gibbs’ couch while his wife is out at grief counseling. (You know she’ll be relieved he’s alive, but man … if I was her? And I got put through hell like that while he’s happily chowing down on fries and a milkshake? Yeah, I don’t know after that.) Phil tells Torres to get his laptop, too, mentioning how most victims have had contact with their attacker. Torres is all, “Thank you, detective,” side-eye firmly in place.

Brian Dietzen as Palmer in NCIS. (Photo: Bill Inoshita, CBS)

Then Marcy (wife) calls down the stairs to the workshop after Gibbs. Ruh roh. Torres heads up first with a bin of tools. Marcy is surprised, saying she supposed Gibbs wanted more tools than he thought if he brought help with him. Torres keeps Marcy occupied, giving her his condolences, while Gibbs sneaks Phil out of the basement right behind them. And it’s amusing and all, when Phil pauses as Marcy talks about how hard it is, not getting the chance to say goodbye, and Gibbs has to yank him around the corner and out of the house. But … I just hope when the truth comes out, Phil realizes he might still be closer to dying than he thought. Just sayin’. Marcy goes on to say how hard it is when the person who was just there beside you is suddenly gone forever, and Torres grows serious as he says he understands that feeling completely.

In Abby Lab (which remains Abby Lab … for now), Kasie is setting up shop like an astronaut doing a prelaunch check. She tells McGee she went to space camp. He did, too, as we know. Only, we find out Kasie’s wasn’t so much “camp” as it was comet-watching from the back of her uncle’s truck. But she follows the same protocols. We also learn she’s talked to Abby and gotten her blessing, which McGee is happy to hear. Enter the Coast Guard agent, who is none too happy to hear that NCIS is going over her findings again. She wants to know if they have some new evidence, and if so, she wants to see it. McGee tells her Gibbs just has a “hunch” and they’ll let her know if they find anything. She leaves, and boom, Kasie finds residue left from a bullet strike in some wood from the boat.

Up in the Bull Pen, McGee is sharing this info with Gibbs and Torres, calling Kasie their “forensic astronaut.” Torres says the finding confirms Phil’s story, which Gibbs takes exception to, saying he didn’t know Phil’s version of the events should be in question. Bishop pipes up that maybe it should. She’s been scrubbing Phil’s laptop and has found some very questionable photos she isn’t sure Gibbs wants to see. Of course, Gibbs wants to see, as do we. And … whoa, Phil’s got a lot more to answer for than letting folks believe he’s dead. We get a whole slew of photos showing Phil in bed with someone who is definitely not Marcy. Torres asks who the woman is. Gibbs says she’s motive. Fade to an unhappy Gibbs black-and-white.

Good episode thus far!

So we come back to Phil making pasta dinner for him and Gibbs. Adorbs. Except for that whole cheating slimebag thing. Well, Gibbs confronts Phil with the photos, and it turns out they’re fakes. Sometime doctored photos of Phil and Marcy, inserted the other woman and tried to extort money from him, saying they’d show them to his wife. So Phil showed them to Marcy and explained it was a scam. He didn’t tell Gibbs because it was a year ago, so he couldn’t imagine they were connected to his attempted murder.

In Abby Lab, Kasie tells McGee that the photos are indeed fakes. Good ones, but fakes. McGee comments on how that was fast, and Kasie tells him it took her hours to figure it out. McGee says he meant that she just came out and told him, where Abby used to wind her way to the point. So Kasie rewinds (as in backs up, making a rewinding sound) and starts again, this time explaining how she could tell from looking at the lighting and pixilation and metadata that the photos had been digitally doctored. She makes a Tatooine reference in the middle of it all, earning her another notch in McGee’s plus column. (And I love that my autocorrect actually recognizes Tatooine.) As McGee turns to leave, he says, “Good work, Abs,” then freezes. He looks back at Kasie and apologizes, saying he’s been saying that for 15 years and it’s habit. Kasie says not to worry, that she’d love to be somewhere for that long and have those kinds of normal habits. McGee nods, but the moment has clearly made him sad. Kasie watches him go and looks kind of sad for him, too.

Mark Harmon as Gibbs in NCIS. (Photo: Bill Inoshita, CBS)

In Sloane’s office, she sees Bishop pacing outside her door and invites her in. Shift to the two of them playing darts, with Bishop throwing hers with a great deal of … energy. She’s upset that MI6 tried to wipe Reeves’ existence as if he was never there. Sloane finally calls a stop to the game, telling Bishop not to “dart angry.” Heh. Bishop apologizes for hitting the wall, and Sloane says how she was never a fan of “Cheeto dust orange anyway.” HA! Seated now, Bishop says she thought she was past the angry stage, but no. She realized that all the photos of the two of them, from their trip to Scotland, up to photos in the coffee shop right before he died, were on his phone and she never asked him to send her any. Because he was only on loan from MI6 as a liaison officer, MI6 took the phone. Bishop says because he wasn’t considered an NCIS agent, his photo won’t be on their memorial wall.

We shift to Gibbs and Torres at the commercial shop in the strip mall leased by the woman in the doctored photos with Phil. She rents the space from him. Turns out the strip shopping center has seen better days and still looks largely empty. As they peer in the windows, the woman in question comes out, hammer in hand. She calls them “suits” and reminds them she told them the last time that if they came back, there’d be hell to pay. And with that she goes over and hammers out one of Gibbs’ headlights. Gibbs calmly pulls out his badge and says, “Federal agents?” She immediately looks contrite, swears, then shrugs and says, “Coffee?” Ha. I like her already.

Over coffee, McGee admires the old, antique office equipment that ol’ Hammer Time and her father restore and sell. She inherited the place when her father passed away. She says she doesn’t make much, but there’s a reason the machines are still around, and someone has to fix them. A woman after Gibbs’ own heart! She apologizes again and explains that there have been investors hanging around wanting to rebuild the place as “hipster hair bars and free-range condos.” Heh. She tells them that Phil usually deals with them, then says how she was crushed at what happened. Gibbs asks if she and Phil were close. She says Phil liked her dad, and when she took over, he said he’d rather collect rent from her than sell out. So, she had peace of mind. She asks why they are there, and Gibbs opens the folder. She recoils at the sight of the photos of her and Phil. McGee rushes to tell her they know they’re fake. She’s all, “Yeah, you think? He’s like a grandpa.” HA. Gibbs says she’s never seen them before, and she nods and adds that now she can’t unsee them either. Heh. She says she thinks the investors might have been behind it. She said they were really aggressive and even had a model made on spec. Maybe they were willing to go even further. She doesn’t know they’re names, but they left the model behind in one of the empty shops.

We’re down in the garage with the model, and this thing is huge. Takes up a long table and is a few feet tall. Bishop is ogling the covered dog park, even though she doesn’t have a dog, and Torres is on board once he sees the pool with swim-up bar and cabana. Enter Gibbs for an update. Bishop tells him they traced the model to an investment group from Maryland and pulls up a photo of three smiling, handsome, successful-looking young men. Turns out the men had to borrow money just to have the model made, meaning they were desperate. McGee wonders if they were desperate enough to try blackmailing Phil. If Phil had fallen for the scheme, getting that much cash together would have forced him to sell, but Phil called the blackmailer’s bluff and went to the police instead. So were they then desperate enough to try to kill him? They don’t want to question the men directly, or they might suspect something and lawyer up. McGee mentions how all three of the investors belong to the same golf club, so maybe they should schmooze them there. Only, none of them play golf. Torres says he might know someone who could help. We move to the golf course where Mystery Golfer impresses the trio with his hit off the tee. Turns out it’s Palmer. HA. With Torres as his caddy, Dennis. Double ha. Fade to a caddy Torres black-and-white.

Back at the course, Palmer is killing it and ticking off the investors. By the time Torres tells him to dial it back, it’s too late. Torres overhears one of the men on his cellphone reassuring someone that Phil’s death was ruled an accident and not to worry. He tells Palmer to offer to buy drinks. Palmer says how losers usually buy, but calls “mercy code” and offers a round of drinks on him, and the investors happily agree. While they go inside, Torres tells the other caddies they can take a break and he’ll wipe down the clubs and bags. They head off and he goes to the bag of the investor who was on his phone, knowing the man stored it in his golf bag. As he’s reaching in to pull the phone out, who should walk up but Marcy. Naturally, she’s surprised to see Torres there, dressed like a caddy. He shrugs and says he’s moonlighting. One of the other caddies comes back to see if “Dennis” needs a hand, and he says, no, thank you, then turns to Marcy and tells her Dennis is his middle name. Oh boy.

Wilmer Valderrama as Torres in NCIS. (Photo: Bill Inoshita, CBS)

In Vance’s office, he and Sloane have a brief chat about the team. She says healing is a process and how bringing Kasie in was a good idea, that Gibbs knew new energy would help. Vance tells her to keep him posted, then she leaves as Marcy is shown in. She wants to know if Phil was murdered, citing Torres joining Gibbs at her house and how she saw him again at the golf club she and Phil have belonged to for years. She says if Phil was involved in something, she doesn’t want them protecting her, she wants to know. She tearfully tells him she’d like to bury her husband in peace. Vance agrees that she does.

Down in the Bull Pen, McGee is typing on an antique typewriter. Sloane enters and, seeing the typewriter, asks him if he’s working on a new book. He says no, he’s typing up an evidence log. She likes it. McGee didn’t realize that Sloane knew he wrote novels, and she tells him she’s read both of his books and is a big fan. He says how no one really read the second one, and she says how that one was better than the first. He agrees, and she says he should write a third one, sell it as a movie. He says how writing before marriage and kids was easy, but finding the time now is impossible. She says things shift when you have someone to come home to. He says how his job is dangerous and time consuming, and she asks him why he decided to become an agent. He says that’s a good question.

Bishop enters and says she has another one. She puts a photo on the screen. It’s the body of the Coast Guard agent who delivered the evidence to McGee and Kasie, with a bullet wound in her chest. Now I’m glad we didn’t get the Abigail Borin guest spot. Bishop says her body was found two hours ago.

Down in Gibbs’ basement, Phil is wowed by Gibbs’ current work in progress, while Gibbs is on the phone, talking about a body coming in. He hangs up and Phil wants to know if that was about his case, and what’s up with there being a body. A knock at Gibbs’ front door interrupts them. Phil, a little panicked now, wants to know who that is. Gibbs tells him to stay there and heads up. Vance and Marcy are at the door. Vance tells Gibbs it’s time. Marcy wants to know time for what. Then she sees Phil poking his head around the corner from the basement stairs. He waves. Shocked, she breaks into a huge smile and runs into his arms. Phil hugs her and gives Gibbs and Vance a big thumbs-up. Then Marcy moves out of his arms and gives him a good crack right across the cheek, calling him a son of a bitch. Gibbs gives him another thumbs-up. Mine is for Marcy. Heh. Fade to a ruh-roh black-and-white.

Guest star Susan Walters as Marcy and Mark Harmon as Gibbs in NCIS. (Photo: Bill Inoshita, CBS)

Down in Ducky’s Digs, Palmer, Ducky and Bishop are standing over the Coast Guard agent’s body. Bishop says she was found in her parking garage by a neighbor. She took three bullets to the chest, which makes two agents they’ve had in their morgue in just a few weeks. Ducky offers to help and Palmer finds a piece of blood-soaked paper in the agent’s pocket with the name Sandy on it. Bishop pulls Ducky aside and asks for his help in getting her a photo, any photo, of her and Reeves together. She’s contacted MI6, but so far hasn’t had any luck. Ducky said he’d contact his former colleagues and see what he could do.

Upstairs, Gibbs and Phil enter, with Phil saying how his wife wanted an explanation, but then refused to talk to him and sent him back down to the bunker for a bit. You go, Marcy. (Pro tip: Don’t keep things from your wife. If she’s your true partner, there are no excuses. Just … don’t. Also? Same goes for husbands.) We learn that they have put a security detail on Phil’s house while NCIS tries to solve the case, so Gibbs tells Phil to go home, fix his marriage. Phil asks how he’s supposed to do that. Gibbs tells him he’s not the guy to ask. HA. Gibbs gets a call from Kasie.

And HEY!!! Gibbs is back in Abby Lab. Finally. Sans Abby, of course, but it’s nice to see him there, all the same. No more sending other agents down to do what he always used to do himself. Let’s see the Kasie/Gibbs dynamic begin to unfold, shall we? They have cute banter, and I’m liking the vibe. In the midst she mentions how she’s a temp, and he’s all, “You can’t be half pregnant,” so I think we’ve found our permanent solution. Kasie shows him how she tried to digitize the spot in the paper found in the dead Coast Guard’s pocket, but it reads “Sandy Dunes” and Kasie says unless they’re looking for a porn star … HA. Gibbs says it’s probably the name of a boat and Kasie puts that together with the fact that the calls the Coast Guard agent was making before she was shot were to a marina’s, that’s probably true. Kasie thinks it might be the boat that went after Phil. All of this in more cute banter that views better than it transcribes, but the vibe is unfolding. If we needed any additional proof that Gibbs has already found his replacement, as he is heading out he asks Kasie what she likes to drink. Confused, she tells him rum and Coke. HA. He says at work, and she tells him iced tea and starts to explain where she gets it, but he’s gone and she’s all, “Ookay,” and we’re all, “Hello, Kasie, and welcome to NCIS.” I love and will miss Abby, but if this gets us back on more regular footing, case-wise, and it seems to be doing just that? I’m in. Right now.

Brian Dietzen as Palmer and Wilmer Valderrama as Torres in NCIS. (Photo: Bill Inoshita, CBS)

In interrogation we have the investor who was on the phone during the golf match. He calls Torres “Caddyshack” and wants to know why he’s there. Enter Gibbs. They lay out the whole case, including how Investor Dude will lose millions if he doesn’t secure the location before his loan comes due, which is shortly. At first Investor Dude is all, “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” but when they show him a photo of his boat — Sandy Dunes — and comment on how they know it was out the same night that Phil’s boat went down, he changes to “charge me or let me go.” Gibbs says he thinks he has enough for Investor Dude to do 30 years for attempted murder. ID is all, Charge me then, and Gibbs and Torres walk out. On the other side of the glass, Bishop notes to McGee that ID didn’t skip a beat when Gibbs said “attempted murder” and they think he knows Phil is still alive. Gibbs comes in and tells them to pull Phil’s phone records.

At Phil and Marcy’s, Phil is still trying to talk his way out of the doghouse. Marcy thinks he loved the boat (also named Marcy) more than her, but Phil says losing her is the only thing that would really kill him and he was trying to keep her safe. Enter Gibbs. Marcy says they probably want to be alone, but Gibbs says he’s there to talk to them both. He thinks Marcy was the one who tipped off the investors that Phil was still alive. He shows Phil phone records and says Marcy has actually been calling ID a lot. Phil is still trying to catch up, and Gibbs is all, “Are you going to make me tell him?” Oh, Marcy. She whispers for Gibbs not to, and Phil is all, “Tell me what?” Gibbs stares down Marcy, but she doesn’t immediately come clean, so Gibbs hands a folder to Phil containing more photos, only these are real. They show that Marcy and ID are a lot more than friends. Aw, now I feel sorry for Phil.

Phil asks if she wanted him dead, and she says no, that ID had nothing to do with that, then looks to Gibbs and asks if that’s true. Phil wants to know how long the affair has been going on, but he doesn’t seem heartbroken or outraged. Maybe it’s shock, but I’d be expecting a bigger reaction. She says they’ve been together two years, they met at the golf club. Now Phil looks heartbroken. Oh, Marcy. Oh, Phil. She turns to Gibbs and says she knows she screwed up, but she’s not going to prison. Gibbs holds up handcuffs and says, Somebody is going. Dang, Gibbs. You go!

Back at HQ, we learn that Marcy agreed to testify that ID was at the marina the night of the attack. So, I guess it’s over then? That was kind of … short. But OK. Bishop asks about the dead Coast Guard agent, and they look at a photo of her as Torres laments that they have another dead cop. They’re all silent for a long moment, then McGee says they need to call it a night. McGee and Torres head out. Ducky enters as Bishop is packing up her laptop. He hands her a photo of Bishop and Reeves in Scotland. He recalled that Reeves knew how much Ducky loved that part of the Highlands and had texted that photo to Ducky. Aww. He says he hopes it helps. Bishop smiles and says it does.

The next morning McGee, Bishop and Torres are all back in Abby Lab. They agree that starting fresh in the morning didn’t work. They’re still sad, still grieving. They learn that each of them had been in to talk to Sloane that morning as well. Torres says it turns out he’s human after all and that losing Reeves was like losing a brother. McGee asks them if they remember why they became an agent. He ends up shrugging it off and says forget he asked.

Enter Kasie, who thinks, given their long faces, that the bad guy must have gotten away. McGee assures her that ID is going to prison for trying to kill Phil and the Coast Guard is building a case against him for the murder of their agent. Kasie does a double fist pump and rushes in to give McGee a big hug, thrilled at the news. McGee is surprised she didn’t know, but realizes no one told her. Kasie says she must not be on the memo list. McGee tells her it doesn’t work that way. Kasie tells them to hold on for a moment as she runs to the other room. McGee asks what she’s doing, and, all but dancing now, Kasie says she has to call her mom to tell her she made a difference. McGee smiles and says he remembers now why he became an agent. The three of them nod in agreement.

Guest star Don Lake as Phillip Brooks and Mark Harmon as Gibbs in NCIS. (Photo: Bill Inoshita, CBS)

The ringing of a cellphone has them all turning to see Gibbs and Sloane standing in the doorway. The whole gang. In Abby Lab. No more Off Limits Places now. All for one and one for all. I don’t know why it couldn’t be that way before, but I’m sure glad it’s back to being that way now. And while I am sorry they killed off Reeves — I really liked him — I do agree that the team numbers were getting a bit unwieldy. I think this is a good number. And a good group. Gibbs takes the call, then hangs up and tells them to grab their gear.

And the new chapter of NCIS has officially begun. I think I’m going to enjoy reading this new story.

Let’s keep the “new chapter” vibe going. Coming on June 26, readers will get to find out what happens in the next chapter of my Blue Hollow Falls series when Bluestone & Vine hits the stands. If you haven’t had the chance to dive into my series set in the Blue Ridge Mountains, this giveaway is for you! Drop me a line at donna@donnakauffman.com with “I want to catch up with Blue Hollow Falls” in the subject line. The lucky winner will receive a signed print copy of the first book in the series, also titled Blue Hollow Falls, along with a digital copy of book 1.5 in the series, the e-novella, The Inn at Blue Hollow Falls. I’ll announce the winner right here next week!

In other news, I am also happy to announce the winner of a signed advance copy of Bluestone & Vine from last week’s giveaway. Come on down, Deborah Robinson! Drop me a line to donna@donnakauffman.com with an address and your prize will be on the way to you!

Meet me back here next week when we find out how season 15 will wrap up … and maybe a hint at what season 16 has in store. I’ll bring the popcorn!

Until then …

Donna Kauffman is the USA TODAY (and Wall Street Journal!) bestselling author of 70-plus titles, translated and sold in more than 26 countries around the world. Born into the maelstrom of Washington, D.C., politics, she now lives in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, thankfully surrounded by a completely different kind of wildlife. You can check that out for yourself and more at www.donnakauffman.com. She loves to hear from her readers (and NCIS viewers!). You can write to her at donna@donnakauffman.com or visit her on Facebook or Instagram.

MORE ON HEA: See a fun Down & Dirty interview with Donna and read what she learned while writing Blue Hollow Falls

EVEN MORE: See more of Donna’s NCIS posts

We’re here. The end of season 15. Seems like only yesterday we were tuning in to find out what happened after the cliffhanger ending of season 14. Will they leave us hanging tonight?

Maria Bello as Sloane in NCIS. (Photo: Sonja Flemming, CBS)

We delve into Sloane’s backstory tonight. Should be interesting. Of course, we just got done delving into Reeves’ backstory and we all know how that turned out. Heads up, Jack!

We open on a rainswept night as Director Vance gets out of a vehicle and heads into what appears to be a crime scene in a restaurant. He meets up with a local police officer who called Vance to come to the scene. The sergeant explains that “the suspect” attacked a man in the restaurant, the maître d’ took an elbow to the chin trying to break up the altercation. “The suspect” then threw a bottle and shattered the front window of the place. The victim fled. Vance heads over to the squad car containing “the suspect” who kept saying they had to call Vance. Vance looks inside the car … and there is Sloane. She looks haunted as she tells Vance, “It was him, Leon.”

Cue awesome opening theme song and our last credits with Abby and Reeves. Sniffle.

12 hours earlier …

McGee is entering the Bull Pen of Orangey Goodness while on the phone with Delilah. From the sounds of things, Delilah set up one of the NCIS crew on a date and wants to know how it turned out. My guess is it was Sloane and … yeah, I don’t think they have to hold their breath waiting for good seats at the wedding.

A brief chat with Bishop and Torres reveals that yep, Delilah set up Sloane with a friend of hers who is in from Chicago. Torres wants to know why Sloane needs setting up, and Bishop is all, “Oh please” and comments on the challenges facing single women. McGee explains that Sloane didn’t need setting up, Delilah just thought the two might hit it off. McGee isn’t keen on the whole plan. If things go south on the date, he’s worried it might make things weird. Bishop agrees that that is a risk. Enter Gibbs, who says, “So’s a bomb on a Navy destroyer.” Indeed.

Guest star Brian Jimenez and Maria Bello as Sloane in NCIS. (Photo: Sonja Flemming, CBS)

Gibbs isn’t sure if it’s a bomb or a bomb threat but sends the team to find out as he heads to the elevator. He tells the crew he’ll catch up later. Torres tells Bishop it’s just as hard for a handsome guy out in the dating pool. Bishop disagrees. McGee just wants to put the whole thing behind him.

McGee, Bishop and Torres board the destroyer. They learn that all but 15 crewmen and the security detail searching for the bomb have left the ship. They are led into a bathroom where the bomb threat was discovered. Not hard to miss. On a mirror are the words “Bomb on Board.”

Back in HQ, Sloane hurries to catch the elevator and Vance hurries in with her. Both are a little late to work. Sloane explains she had to go back home to get a change of clothes because she forgot she had “a thing” that evening. Vance does the eyebrow wiggle and says he’s glad she’s starting to enjoy life in D.C. Sloane admits she doesn’t miss San Diego as much as she thought she would and is glad she took the job. Vance said he was planning on doing her six-month review later that day, but will take their little elevator convo as a sign that things are fine. Sloane jokes that was the easiest review she’s ever had as they part ways and head to their respective offices.

Meanwhile, Gibbs is at a cemetery with a bouquet of yellow flowers. He lays them on the tombstone where his wife and daughter are buried. “Happy birthday, Shannon,” he says to his wife, then shakes his head as emotion grips him. And we fade to that Gibbs black-and-white.

On board, Torres finds the bar of soap used to write the message and they bag that for Kasie to check out. The commanding officer comes in and says that everything below three deck has been cleared. They team is above that deck. McGee tells the CO that the crew will be confined to base while the investigation is ongoing and the ship will have to remain in port. He nods.

Sean Murray as McGee, Emily Wickersham as Bishop and Wilmer Valderrama as Torres in NCIS. (Photo: Monty Brinton, CBS)

Down in … uh … Kasie Lab? Yeah, I’ll have to work on that over the summer. Palmer enters while Kasie is jamming on her headphones. He touches her shoulder, and she has him in a wrist lock a moment later, then apologizes profusely. Palmer admires the self-defense move, and she explains that right after that move is the groin kick. Palmer says he hopes Gibbs never startles her. HA. Palmer asks why she doesn’t hook her music up to the speakers, and she says she likes it loud. Palmer says that’s fine and hooks it up, and we’re all treated to some Woolly Bully. Enter Torres, who immediately tells them to turn it down. Buzzkill. He’s got the mirror and soap from on board ship for Kasie to process. Enter Vance, who tells them that the boat has been cleared. No bomb. But the ship was on a 48-hour maneuver and that bomb threat clearly derailed that mission. SecNav wants to know who was behind that derailment, pronto.

Upstairs, Bishop enters Sloane’s office. Sloane hands her a stack of files of the crewmen on board the destroyer that she’s determined might have some reason to pull the bomb scare. Bishop notices the dress that Sloane has hanging from a dart on her dartboard. Heh. They talk about the blind date and Bishop offers to be Sloane’s bailout call. After she explains what a bailout call is to Sloane. Ha. They both agree that dating sucks. (It’s been a while, but hear, hear!) [I actually had to look up here, here or hear, hear. Sigh.]

Gibbs enters the Bull Pen and asks for an update. Turns out five crewmen asked for emergency leave and two were denied, so they’re pulling them in to find out if the bomb scare was meant to keep them in port. Torres and Bishop silently bicker over who should ask Gibbs where he went earlier that day. Bishop draws the short straw, but gets “the look” from Gibbs and decides she doesn’t really need to know. Gibbs shifts the look to Torres, who makes out like it was all Bishop and he’s fine. Oh, Torres.

Back on board the destroyer, the CO is on the phone with someone who is annoyed by the ship still being in port. The CO hangs up when McGee comes in. McGee tells him they’ve arranged to talk to the two sailors who were denied emergency leave. The CO says he can’t believe either of them would pull such a stunt, but he goes on to say how long overseas tours are hard on families. He looks at a photo of his family and says he’s fortunate that his family understands. McGee sympathizes, saying he used to count the days waiting for his father to come home. Turns out the CO served under McGee’s father and they have a laugh over how McGee’s dad would have handled the bomb threat. (Keelhauling is mentioned.)

Rocky Carroll as Vance and Maria Bello as Sloane in NCIS. (Photo: Sonja Flemming, CBS)

We shift to the restaurant where Sloane and Date are having a very nice time. So nice that Date blows off his bailout call, then they have a laugh about it as Sloane explains she just learned what those were and hers would be coming in any second. Sloane’s phone rings and they laugh. Date offers to go get their coats while she takes the call. Sloane tells Bishop she won’t be needing the call. Bishop wants to know if it’s love at first sight. “More like lust after two cocktails,” Sloane says. HA. Then a man comes up behind her and orders a drink at the bar. On hearing his voice, Sloane freezes. Bishop asks if she’s OK, and Sloane says yes and hangs up. The man speaks a few more times, then feels Sloane’s gaze drilling him and turns around. He smiles, seeing the attractive woman, then asks if they’ve met before. Sloane says his name … then she launches herself at him. They tussle, he runs for the door, she throws a bottle in his direction as he escapes, while others grab her and hold her back. The bottle shatters the glass window, and she screams for someone to not let him get away, right when her date walks back in with their coats. Dude. I’m so sorry. We fade to a violently angry Sloane black-and-white.

Yeah, that won’t be awkward at work at all.

We come back to where we began. Vance is in the squad car with Sloane now as she tells him the man’s name. We get a flashback to Afghanistan with Sloane and her Wingos team. She’s being tortured, and she recognizes the man from the restaurant as one of the men who tortured her. She says they can’t let him get away. Vance gently reminds her that she always said she never saw the man’s face. She tells him it was his voice. She’ll never forget that voice. Vance reminds Sloane that the man she’s referring to was killed in a drone strike. Sloane shakes her head, still in a highly agitated state, saying, “No, no, not anymore.” Sloane says the only reason she could sleep the past few years is because she knew he was dead. Now she will never sleep again. She begs him that they have to find the guy. Vance says OK, but gently asks her how much she had to drink. She worries that he doesn’t believe her. He says he wants to, but he needs all the information if he’s going to get them to release her into his custody. She tells him it was three drinks. He nods, tells her they will get the guy in the morning. She shakes her head and says no, they have to find him now. Vance says he’s not making that a question. They will start in the morning with clearer heads. She nods but doesn’t look at all happy about this. (I guess not, since she’ll be reliving her torture all night long now.)

The next morning, Torres and Bishop are going to talk to the two sailors denied emergency leave. One is a man, one is a woman, and Torres automatically dismisses the woman, saying women don’t make bomb threats. That stops Bishop. Torres asks McGee how date night went, and he says he doesn’t know, then calls Torres Gossip Girl. HA. Bishop tells them about the bailout call and how Sloane was having a blast. Torres says Sloane’s date is a lucky guy, saying Sloane is “cool as hell.” McGee just shakes his head, not wanting to be in the middle of any of this. He tells them that Delilah called Date, who told him Sloane got weird, so weird he’s already on a plane back to Chicago. Bishop is surprised to hear that, and Torres wants to know more, saying maybe Sloane is crazy. Bishop comments how he just said Sloane was cool. Torres says, “Cool can be crazy sometimes.” McGee can’t figure out what happened. Enter Gibbs, who says he doesn’t know, but is more interested in them getting to those interviews. Apparently, the sailors haven’t made it to the interrogation room yet. Enter Vance, who calls down from the second floor, saying he’ll need to see McGee in his office. Ruh roh. Poor McGee. This piques Gibbs’ interest, but all he says is he’ll see McGee later.

Maria Bello as Sloane and guest star Pej Vahdat in NCIS. (Photo: Sonja Flemming, CBS)

Up in Vance’s office, he tells McGee to pull the surveillance video around the date-night restaurant from the night before and compare the credit card receipts against the terrorist watch list. McGee asks what or who he’s looking for, and Vance says he’ll know when he sees it. He tells McGee he’s to tell no one of Vance’s request. Enter Sloane, who asks McGee if he’s heard from Date. McGee stammers, says no, then makes a quick exit. Sloane wants to know what Vance has found. Vance says McGee is starting the search. She asks if the police found anything, and Vance reminds her that the police are more interested in the woman who attacked the guy than they are in finding the guy. He counsels her to be patient. You can imagine how well that goes over. She exits the office.

In the hallway outside the interrogation room, Bishop is on the phone with Delilah. She hangs up and tells Torres that the date went way worse than McGee even said. Turns out Sloane was arrested. Gibbs rounds the corner just then and the three of them stand off in silence. Then Gibbs says, “Let’s do this,” and we’re on to the interrogation. Gibbs enters the room behind the two-way to find Ducky. Ducky tells him Vance asked him to stand in for Sloane, though didn’t say why.

They talk to the guy first, and he tells them he wanted to stay behind to try to win back his girlfriend, who told him she was seeing his best friend now. In hindsight, he’s glad his leave was denied, as it saved him from possibly beating the guy to a pulp. They talk to the girl who asked to stay because her mom was fighting cancer. Her mom intervened and told her CO that her lifelong dream was to be in the Navy and this was her first overseas mission. Mom didn’t want her cancer to stand in the way of that. She promised to fight as long as her daughter was away. On the other side of the glass, Ducky and Gibbs agree that neither of the two sailors is guilty.

In Kasie’s Abby Lab, she’s running through the video from the restaurant and trying to run a match of the guy Sloane attacked to the terrorist database but having no luck so far. Enter Gibbs. Startled, Kasie quickly clicks off the screen showing the videotape from the restaurant and turns to the bomb threat forensics. She tells him they got a partial print, but nothing popped, so she’s running it through touch DNA. Gibbs turns and looks at the monitor, which is still doing the facial rec scan for Sloane’s case. The case Gibbs doesn’t know about. She tries to play it cool, but Gibbs eventually sees the video. Kasie says she can’t tell him, only McGee. Oops! Then she gets a hit on the facial rec and Gibbs interrupts her trying to play coy by telling her she needs to tell Vance, now. He exits.

Up in Sloane’s office, she pulls a photo from her drawer showing her and three of her teammates from Afghanistan. She has a flashback to her torture, where they hold a gun to the head of her teammate, seated in front of her. She is sobbing, begging them, but they pull the trigger anyway. A knock on the door pulls her from the memory. Enter Vance, who shows her the photo of the guy matched in the database. His name is Nigel Hakim. Turns out he was born in Saudi Arabia, raised in the U.K. and considered a great humanitarian, raising millions for Afghan women and children. Sloane says she has to meet him, has to hear his voice again, to know for sure. Vance tells her Hakim is currently a guest of the U.K. Embassy, so he’s protected with diplomatic immunity. Agitated before, Sloane calms down and tells Vance she needs to hear his voice, one more time, just to be sure it’s not the man who tortured her. Vance says they’re already not too happy with her, so if he can arrange it, she’ll have to tread very lightly. She says she can do that. Yeah, we’re not all that sure. Neither is Vance. She tells him he knows she can. And we fade to a stern-faced Vance black-and-white.

Rocky Carroll as Vance and Maria Bello as Sloane in NCIS. (Photo: Sonja Flemming, CBS)

We return to Sloane and Vance standing at the top of the stairs. Sloane tells Vance maybe she was wrong. It all happened fast and she had been drinking. Vance tells her she’ll owe the man an apology if that’s the case. She says she’ll give him one. They part and Vance glances down to the Bull Pen to see Gibbs watching him. He walks back to his office, and Gibbs shakes his head.

We see Hakim pacing inside the conference room. Enter Vance and Sloane. Hakim also has a woman with him, possibly a rep from the embassy. Vance introduces Sloane to Hakim, saying they’ve already met. Hakim smiles, says, “You could say that.” Sloane’s expression is impassive as she walks toward him. She calmly asks him why he ran. Vance intercedes and invites them all to have a seat. He says he ran because Americans have a bad habit of shooting people. Vance mentions he didn’t go to the police to report the attack. He says his work as a humanitarian is best done quietly, so being involved in a bar brawl might actually cost the lives of the people he’s trying to help. Sloane opens his file and says it shows he’s been working in Afghanistan since 2007. He nods, says he’d just started his humanitarian efforts then. Sloane comments that that was right about the time she and her teammates were being tortured by a man called … yeah, I’d have to see it to spell it. He smiles and says, “And you lived to tell the tale.” Then he adds, “My sympathies.” And now I think he’s guilty. He admits that everyone had heard that name, but he had also heard that man was killed in a drone strike. Sloane says, “Allegedly,” which is when the embassy gal pipes in, astonished to realize that Sloane is implying that Hakim reminds her of her captor. Sloane interrupts and asks Hakim to say the word infidel, saying that’s what he called her and her friends. He demurs and Sloane loses her temper and everyone gets in an uproar. Hakim and Embassy Gal get up to leave and Sloane hurries after them, offering a sincere and, from all appearances, heartfelt apology, saying her actions from the night before were indefensible. She extends her hand, asking for his forgiveness. He takes it, and she tugs him in close. EG steps in, and Hakim steps back, saying he hopes Sloane gets the help she needs.

Vance gets in Sloane’s face, tells her to get her act together. She tells Vance she’s never been so sure of anything in her life: She knows that’s the man who tortured her. Vance tells her she’ll have to get past it, to take time to get herself together, and he forbids her from making contact with Hakim. She says, “Or what?” And he very angrily tells her she’ll be fired.

Down in Kasie Abby Lab, she’s upset that she failed with Gibbs and made him mad. Palmer and Ducky tell her that above all else, Gibbs is a Marine who respects the chain of command. If he knows she was obeying a direct order, he’ll understand. She is relieved, assuming that Gibbs always follows orders. Ducky says, “ish.” HA. Then the computer lights up and Kasie has a match for the partial fingerprint taken off the soaped mirror. They wait to see who the match is and show surprise when the face pops up, but we don’t get to see. I can only assume it’s the CO, since he’s the only other sailor we’ve met.

Aaaand, bonus points for me as the team shows up at his house as he’s playing basketball with his kids. CO tells McGee and Torres that due to the bomb threat, he got to see his son graduate, then asks if they found the person who made the threat. McGee says yes, but wants to ask CO a question. He asks if there was family aboard the ship before it departed and he said yes. Turns out it was CO’s son who did the threat, so his dad wouldn’t miss his graduation. Son tells CO that he missed so much of Son’s life, he worked so hard to make honor roll, he wanted his dad there that one day. McGee tells Son that he understands how hard it is, he’s been where Son is. He tells Son that it’s just as hard on CO. Son sincerely apologizes and so does CO.

Sean Murray as McGee and Emily Wickersham as Bishop in NCIS. (Photo: Monty Brinton, CBS)

In Sloane’s office, she’s obsessively rolling gray paint over the orange walls. Enter Gibbs. She tells him she’s getting herself together by painting the walls. Better than putting her fist through one. He says to let him help. She turns to him, then says OK, they’re all adults here. She takes off her blouse leaving on only a tank top, then turns to show him her deeply scarred back. “Help me with this.” She flashes back to when she was being whipped.

We return to her office and she’s seated on her couch, across the coffee table from Gibbs, who is seated in a chair. She tells him she and her team, the Mighty Wingos, were held for nine months. She said every few days, we’ll just call him Hakim, found new games to play with them. He knew after a few weeks they had no intel to give, so he just messed with them. Brutally, savagely, knowing they had nothing to give. Gibbs mentions that it was Hakim’s voice that gave him away and Sloane nods, saying she wishes she had kept her cool that night, that she could have taken him down in some dark alley somewhere. Gibbs tells her it’s not worth it. Sloane takes exception to that, saying near the end, Hakim started a new game. Since she was the only woman, he figured she’d be the weakest, so he made her be the one to choose who died next. We get flashbacks to her teammates telling her it’s OK, they understand. She says it will never be OK, they’re all dead.

Gibbs nods at that, then asks how soon after her teammates were all killed did Vance’s military team show up. Sloane says it was days later. Hakim slipped out, but Vance took out the rest of them, then helped her out to safety. She says she’s owed Vance ever since. Gibbs smiles, nods, says that explains a lot. A subdued Sloane tells Gibbs that other than Vance, he’s now the only other person who knows the full story. Gibbs tells her the story dies with him. Sloane nods and says once Hakim is dead, she’ll feel a whole lot better. Gibbs quietly says he doubts that, and we all know he knows of what he speaks. Sloane starts to object, and Gibbs quietly tells her that his wife’s birthday was the day before. He said that his wife, Shannon, and his daughter, Kelly, were killed together. He tells Sloane that he hunted down the man who killed them and put a bullet in his head, thinking that would ease the ache in his heart. “Nope,” he says, shaking his head. “Not to this day.” Sloane’s expression is both stark and filled with pain. Gibbs tells her she’s the only one he’s ever told.

Cut to Gibbs stalking into Vance’s office, saying, “You don’t tell me about Sloane.” Vance holds him off, as he’s on the phone. Vance hangs up, clearly upset with what he just heard. He tells Gibbs he had his reasons for not telling him about Sloane, but then goes on to tell him that no DNA tests were run on the bodies found after the drone strike. So Sloane’s torturer could still be alive, and all along Vance was questioning her sanity. Gibbs wants to know what they have to do to confirm that Hakim is the torturer.

Vance tells Gibbs he needs to see a man in a VA hospital in Northern Virginia. He was the man Vance was sent to recover when they stumbled across Sloane. Turns out the same man who tortured Sloane tortured that man. He now suffers from PTSD and has early-onset Alzheimer’s. Gibbs wants to know what he could possibly give them, and Vance reveals that he recorded the session with Hakim and Embassy Gal earlier, so he has his voice on tape. Maybe this man will recognize it, too.

At the hospital, Gibbs wheels the man around outside in his wheelchair. He seems completely out of touch with what’s going on. He doesn’t recognize Vance, even when he mentions how they met. Vance plays the recording of Hakim, and the man immediately has a severe reaction, screaming the same name that Sloane did, of the man who tortured them. That seems beyond cruel, no matter why they need confirmation. Gibbs holds the man, and we fade to black-and-white.

Rocky Carroll as Vance in NCIS. (Photo: Sonja Flemming, CBS)

That evening, Gibbs goes into Sloane’s office to find her gone and the wall half painted. Vance calls and tells Gibbs he just left the British Embassy. EG didn’t believe Vance when she told her who Hakim really was, but she did tell Vance that Hakim had booked an early flight back to London. Vance is on his way. Gibbs tells him Sloane is gone and so is her weapon. Gibbs heads down to the Bull Pen and tells McGee to ping Sloane’s phone. He gets Bishop to call her contact at the FAA and find out what airport Hakim is leaving from on his chartered flight. Torres goes to Gibbs’ desk, says he knows Sloane is in trouble and asks what he can do to help. Gibbs tells him to put a BOLO out on her so they can find her before she does something stupid. McGee says there is no ping, her phone must be off.

Gibbs goes to McGee’s desk and says he knows McGee has been working on Hakim for Vance and to tell him what he knows. McGee tells him how Hakim has raised millions for humanitarian aid for Afghan women and children for the past 15 years. McGee says Hakim’s record is clean. Gibbs wonders if it’s too clean.

Up in MTAC, Bishop is asking her FAA friend about the charter flight when Gibbs enters. FAA Friend says she just gave that same information to Sloane. She gives them a rundown of all the info and Gibbs tells her to call the airport and tell them to hold the flight, but don’t give a reason or mention NCIS. She says, “Copy that.”

Sloane enters the airfield. Gibbs and team are racing toward the airfield, too, in two vehicles. Torres tells McGee he knew Sloane had secrets. McGee says it’s complicated. Torres says he likes that. I think now is really not the time for that chatter. Sloane exits her MINI Cooper (same as mine, only blue!), gun in hand. Gibbs swerves up, gets out. Sloane just says, “Don’t.” Gibbs jogs around the car and catches up to her, asking if anything he said to her made sense. Sloane counters by asking Gibbs if anyone could have stopped him from doing what he did, taking down the killer of his wife and child. Gibbs says he’s not there to stop her, but she can’t do it alone. They approach the plane, which still has the door open and the stairs lowered to the tarmac. Other cars swing in, and the rest of the team gets out. The pilot and co-pilot step to the doorway and the team each raises their weapons. They tell the surprised captain they want his passenger. Only to find out that Hakim canceled that flight and chartered one out of Reagan National instead. Lift off was 10 minutes ago.

Disgusted, Sloane says they lost him and stalks back to her car. Gibbs calls out to her that they will get Hakim. We shift to the plane with Hakim on board. He rises, walks to a different cabin where we see a passenger with a hood over his head. WHAT? Hakim slides the hood off and reveals a beaten and bloody VANCE. Didn’t see that coming!

However, dude, if you want to get away clean and go on with your life, taking Vance just ensured that will never happen. Silly villain. I’m assuming this is payback for Vance shooting Hakim’s squad dead. And yep, Hakim tells Vance how he couldn’t believe his good fortune to find “the hero” after all these years. He leans in close and tells Vance that he killed so many of his brothers, then his lips curl and he adds, “Infidel.”

Fade to a black-and-white TO BE CONTINUED.

They did it to us again!!

But I gotta admit, while the subplot was kinda weak, this one is pretty dandy! We haven’t had a really nasty Big Bad in a long while. This will fill that void nicely.

OK, OK, before we say our goodbyes to season 15 for good, we have one last bit of business. Last week I put the first two releases in my Blue Hollow Falls series up for grabs (so you could catch up before the next in the series, Bluestone & Vine, hits shelves on June 26!) Thanks for the enthusiastic entries and for all your thoughts and feelings about how this season has gone. It’s certainly been a roller-coaster ride. Let’s end the suspense for our final regular season winner. Come on down, Marianna Menna! Send your mailing address to me at donna@donnakauffman.com and I’ll get your prize in the mail to you!

I know our weekly regular season get-togethers are over for the summer. I’m excited that we’ll be seeing each other again this fall. BUT WAIT! That doesn’t mean we can’t hang out a little this summer. As I’ve done for the past several summers, I’ll be recapping classic NCIS episodes periodically all summer long — and there will be fun, beachy giveaways, too!

Earlier this year, the cast of NCIS picked their favorite episodes. I’ll be choosing from those favorites to kick off this classic recap summer. Join me on June 12 when I start off, rather fittingly, I think, with Pauley Perrette’s (Abby) favorite pick. The episode is Bloodbath, from all the way back in season three.

See you then! I’ll bring the popcorn!

Donna Kauffman is the USA TODAY (and Wall Street Journal!) bestselling author of 70-plus titles, translated and sold in more than 26 countries around the world. Born into the maelstrom of Washington, D.C., politics, she now lives in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, thankfully surrounded by a completely different kind of wildlife. You can check that out for yourself and more at www.donnakauffman.com. She loves to hear from her readers (and NCIS viewers!). You can write to her at donna@donnakauffman.com or visit her on Facebook or Instagram.

MORE ON HEA: See a fun Down & Dirty interview with Donna and read what she learned while writing Blue Hollow Falls

EVEN MORE: See more of Donna’s NCIS posts

Heidi Cullinan

Well, I really thought that post for A Devil of My Word would be my last of this season, but I’m certainly not complaining. Here we are, sitting on not one but two bonus episodes, delivered back-to-back last night. I’m recapping/commenting on the first of the two, Boo Normal, today and will do the second, Once Upon a Time, tomorrow, in part so I can rewatch it and the pilot together and catch every overlap.

In case you have been living under a rock (or in the case of many HEA readers, deadline hell), though we don’t have specific details on what’s happening, it’s quite clear something is, and every tweet that is made with the hashtags #SaveLucifer and #PickUpLucifer garner attention that help find the show a new home. I’m talking about tweets made at any time. So if you have an account or an inclination to make one, tweet about anything, including this post, but especially your love of the show, and use those tags.

All right, let’s start what we came for and tuck in to Boo Normal.

This is an Ella-centric episode, so we open with Ella walking down the sidewalk, smiling and greeting everyone by name with peppy music in the background. She enters the murder scene — the house/business of a child psychiatrist — and promises the corpse she’ll found out what happened to her as she begins to take photos. Her phone rings during her investigation, and it’s her brother, who seems to be in some kind of trouble. Of course, Lucifer, who is on the scene in real time, is causing trouble, taking pictures down his pants with her camera. She takes the camera back, and as Chloe approaches, she confesses to them both that her brother has moved back to Detroit, and now her family wants her to come back, too, and of course Ella being Ella feels she should listen. So the trouble we sensed wasn’t for her brother; it was for her. Or perhaps we should say, for everyone in L.A. who will miss her when she goes.

Aimee Garcia as Ella in Lucifer. (Photo: Jordan Althaus, Fox)

Lucifer doesn’t like this and tries to argue, but Ella ignores him and focuses on the case. The psychiatrist was murdered with blunt-force trauma, specifically the missing bookend from the shelf behind her. Or, rather, the bookend started it, and then she tripped and hit her head on the coffee table. They also find hair under the victim’s fingernails and some of the blood wiped away from her head wound, which they think was done by Beckett Wilson, the doctor’s next patient, who called her death in to the police.

Dan has Beckett in his car with him, taking her back to the station, hoping to get her calm enough to talk. She’s crying, but he has to ask her if she wiped up blood. She says she doesn’t remember, because everything is so fuzzy. He says that’s OK, they can talk later. Is there anything she needs? She says a Slurpee would be nice. He smiles and tells her a Slurpee it is.

At the crime scene, Ella is about to leave, saying her cheerful goodbyes, when she spies a tiny strip of blood on the closet door. Opening it, she finds a little boy, Felix, who had an appointment that morning, but he’d forgotten his violin at the psychiatrist’s house, so he went back to get it. Chloe wants to interview Felix, but Felix’s father warns the boy’s shyness will make this difficult. He laments the loss of his son’s doctor, since she was helping him so much and that with her help he had progressed so far in school.

Ella is already sitting with Felix — Felix is the one with blood all over his hands, so clearly it was he who tried to wipe it away. She offers to wipe it off and, in her Ella way, gets him to talk. She confesses she was in a terrible car accident at his age and saw lots and lots of blood. She promises him he’ll be OK. He tells her he didn’t see who did it, and she thanks him for telling her. Chloe hands the parents her card, and they take him away.

In the lab, Ella is examining something through a microscope when a woman appears. Shocked, Ella says, “Ray Ray, what are you doing here?” It turns out Ray Ray is the ghost who used to follow her around when she was younger, who she thought wasn’t around anymore but now is back. She’s in the middle of telling Ray Ray to go away again when Chloe comes in, effectively seeing her talk to herself.

She distracts Chloe as best she can, telling her about the interesting finding she had about the hair under the victim’s nails: it wasn’t hair at all, but synthetic fur, and the gunky “blood” was in fact ketchup. Chloe goes to the victim’s house to investigate, and Ella plans to join her.

First, however, she has to ditch Ray Ray, who isn’t pleased at being ignored. Ella keeps insisting they’d agreed when she left Detroit five years ago not to see each other anymore, but Ray Ray says she doesn’t remember this. She argues it’s cool to be someone who can see ghosts, and that normal is boring (I enjoyed this personally, since it’s almost a logline of one of my titles), though Ella clarifies she can see a ghost. She says she likes how things are now, who she is now. She likes being open and honest, and Ray Ray says by all means continue. Ella says she can’t do that if she’s someone who sees ghosts and points out all the times she tried to talk about Ray Ray and got made fun of.

Ray Ray says she’s actually there to help Ella with work stuff, which Ella finds highly suspicious, until she considers Ray Ray might know the victim, though she wonders why Ray Ray didn’t lead with that. “Ghost rules,” she says. Ella is suspicious again, since this has never come up before. When Ray Ray says she’ll go away after she helps her solve this case, though, she decides to go with it. Anything to get back to normal, boring or not.

Tom Ellis as Lucifer and Kevin Alejandro as Dan in Lucifer. (Photo: Fox)

Speaking of the case, Dan has run into a small but significant hiccup: He’s lost his witness, he confesses to Lucifer. She ran off with his phone. That’s why he’s come to Lucifer, because he needs help. Lucifer will help, but it will come at the price of being made fun of — gleefully — all day long.

While that adventure begins, Chloe, Ella and Ray Ray begin their investigation, which is also a kind of torture for Ella. As Ray Ray chatters, Ella shushes her — but of course Chloe thinks Ella is talking to her and regards her with confusion, since she hasn’t said anything. Now Ella has to pretend she’s stubbed her toe, which Chloe clearly isn’t buying. It’s also clear Ray Ray is having a bit of fun with this.

Ella hits the jackpot in a closet: She finds a furry suit, which Chloe doesn’t understand at all, and Ella tries to explain, but essentially even when Chloe is undercover during this investigation as a furry, she doesn’t ever get it, which I find so Chloe and quite charming. Because she keeps trying so hard to get it, but that’s why she can’t ever get it. Being a furry is just about being a furry. It’s pretty pure and whimsical, and basically anti-Chloe.

There’s a ketchup stain on the furry suit, which means the victim was wearing it before she died, and to wrap everything home, Chloe finds a threatening message on the answering machine that references “Wesley is mine” and an upcoming furry meet. (OK, two things. One, an answering machine? A landline? I guess so, I have one, and I’m Of a Certain Age, but damn. Two, they didn’t check the answering machine in the first sweep? But we’ll ignore this for the sake of dramatic effect. We’ll say nobody could believe anybody still had an answering machine.)

Now we get, gloriously, Chloe in a furry costume. The only thing dampening this is that Lucifer isn’t with her, but I’m getting the feeling since there is such minimal contact between them this episode, this is part of some adjustment period post-revelation after the end of season three? (Remember, these were supposed to be season four episodes.) In any event, we’re treated to Chloe in the fox furry costume, attempting to ask random furry attendees if they “know Wesley,” only to get porpoise sounds and water sprays in response. Ella encourages her, though, and tries to get Ray Ray to give some extra details. Ray Ray can’t come through, though — not even a little bit. Ella realizes the story about knowing the victim isn’t true at all, and Ray Ray says it’s more personal why she’s here. Ella says if somehow solving this case will send her on, she’ll do it. Ray Ray just nods.

Chloe’s campaign to find Wesley turns abruptly violent as another furry begins to punch her out, calling her by the victim’s name and wrestling her to the ground. Ella comes out to help, but Chloe already has the costume head off and her badge out so she can make her arrest. But when they get the suspect to the station, it turns out Wesley is the furry persona (fursona) they were fighting over, and the suspect had no idea the victim was even dead, and she has an alibi. They do get a lead, that the victim had been in a fight with someone in her office, because she’d mentioned it to the suspect. No names, unfortunately.

Meanwhile, Lucifer tracks Dan’s phone using his phone, leading them to an amusement park. Dan is uncomfortable because he hates them, especially roller coasters. Unfortunately, according to Lucifer’s phone, Beckett is currently on the scariest one in the park, and when Dan jumps into the seat next to her to confront her, she gets out and he ends up strapped in and sent on the ride while Lucifer holds on to the kid.

Ella and Ray Ray are back at the crime scene, where Ray Ray makes a mention of what they should do after the case closes, and Ella becomes upset again, realizing Ray Ray has lied again. Ray Ray says she isn’t lying, she is there for personal unfinished business, it’s just not about the case. It’s about Ella. She doesn’t want her to move back to Detroit. Her brothers leech off of her, but everyone who is friends with her in L.A. knows who she is but look out for her. Ella is slightly mollified, but their moment is interrupted by someone at the door. They hide in the closet as the masked intruder comes in and begins rummaging in the desk, but when Ella makes a noise, they come out and fight. The man runs away, and Ella gets a gift: a broom handle full of the man’s fingerprints.

Kevin Alejandro as Dan and Tom Ellis as Lucifer in Lucifer. (Photo: Fox)

When Dan gets off the ride, Lucifer greets him with a shirt and hat with a photo of him on the roller coaster featured prominently, and apparently there are enough for the entire precinct. Beckett is reportedly off getting churros, but of course she has run again, this time with the keys to Lucifer’s car and Dan’s badge.

The results for the fingerprints were too smudged to ID, but they did get chalk and rosin, and Chloe got surveillance footage of a car speeding away right after the fight. There’s a bumper sticker for a middle school on the car, and they remember the child who’d left his violin at the victim’s house. Rosin is used for violins. They decide to check out the music teacher at that middle school. He checks out, too, that he was there, and he apologizes for scaring her. He was there to retrieve a check he’d given to the victim, fearing it would make him a suspect. He was trying to bribe the psychologist because he was afraid she was going to advise his parents they homeschool him so he could focus on his violin and that he’d lose him as a student because she’s recommending he take private lessons and invest more time on the violin. He’s convinced Felix is destined for stardom. He has an alibi when she was murdered. He does confirm Beckett is a nightmare and he’s not surprised she’s involved.

Dan hasn’t caught Beckett, however, and is currently chasing her in the parking lot as she drives off with Lucifer’s car. Lucifer calls in Maze, who takes a moment to mock them both for their incompetence, but then she agrees to find Beckett and finds her pretty much immediately, because she’s Maze, which is short for Amazing. Beckett is at Lux, trying to get a drink with Dan’s badge. Dan pulls her aside, explains the hot water she’s in now as a murder suspect, and gives her a speech about how everyone makes mistakes, but what matters is that we learn from them and try hard to fix them. He gets the real truth from her now, that she was hustling someone named Roscoe at the time of the murder at a pool hall, and the reason she was crying was because she’s allergic to fragrance, and the office reeked of perfume when she found her.

Ella looks as if she’s about to tell Chloe about Ray Ray, but she bails at the last second and babbles about something else. Chloe sees through it and says she knows she’s nervous about moving home, and she understands, and she’s worried about her. “I know you won’t be the same if you leave.” She basically expresses her concern and her love, and Ella hears and appreciates her. She also tells Ella she knows who the next suspect is, and they go together to confront them.

Ella stays in the car, though, saying she’ll catch up in a second. She wants to talk to Ray Ray alone, to explain why she didn’t go through with her confession, but Ray Ray says she knows and understands. She’s afraid people wouldn’t accept her. Ella says it’s more than that, that she doesn’t know what it’s like for people to look at her like she’s crazy, and she says if her friends here looked at her like that it would break her heart. Ray Ray says her friends here are her real friends, but Ella says Chloe is all about things you can see and verify, so she’d never get it.

Aimee Garcia as Ella in Lucifer. (Photo: Fox)

While they’re talking, though, Ella spies a construction dumpster at the neighbors’ place and gets very excited. She runs off, and Ray Ray follows.

Chloe has taken them to Felix’s parents’ house, and she’s talking to Felix’s mother, who is wearing freesia perfume. She’s happy to talk about Felix, who apparently loves the violin so much he sleeps with it and is utterly committed to his instrument. Chloe asks if he would ever leave it behind at a therapist’s office, and she says no, never. Chloe asks how she felt when the therapist suggested Felix be homeschooled, but the mother is puzzled and says that’s not right. The therapist had said he should stay in school and branch out into new activities. That’s what her husband had told her. Chloe wants to know where her husband is.

Ella is currently digging through the dumpster, because she’s convinced this is where the murder weapon would be. She says you wouldn’t throw the murder weapon in your own trash, but the neighbors’ always looks good, and a dumpster is the best. She finds it, complete with dried blood, but just as she does, Felix’s father comes at her with a bat. Chloe shows up just in time, complete with the revelation that Felix didn’t leave his violin there, that he followed his father in time to witness the murder and has been covering for him ever since. (I have to say, they should have seen the violin at the murder scene then, or noticed the lack of it, but again. We’ll put this in the same box as the answering machine.) The father says they don’t understand, he didn’t want his son to have no life, that he wanted him to learn to be normal at the therapist’s office, not become less and less engaged by being homeschooled.

Ella interjects by saying no, his son isn’t normal; he’s special. He’s amazing. The father says nothing, and Chloe arrests him.

As the crime scene is wrapped up that night, Ella blurts out to Chloe, “I see ghosts.” Then she amends it to seeing one ghost and explains Ray Ray, how it began, how long it’s happened, that it stopped and now started again. She gets very specific, and she tells Chloe she hopes she doesn’t think she’s crazy, then asks if that is what she thinks. Hopefully, nervously.

Chloe — patiently, gently — says no, she doesn’t think that at all. She says she’s seen a lot — a lot — crazier things. “Besides, there’s nothing you could tell me that would change the way I feel about you.” Then she hugs her and asks if she’s OK. Ella says she’s never been better … and also declares she’s not moving back to Detroit.

Ray Ray triumphantly declares, “Told ya!” then promises to leave, as agreed. Ella says she’s OK with Ray Ray watching her back “like a ghost guardian angel,” since it seems like that’s what she’s been doing. Ray Ray smiles as she agrees and says, “Smell ya later, Lopez,” before she departs.

At the precinct, Lucifer unveils a poster of Dan on the roller coaster. Shaking her head, Ella tells him, “Smell ya later, Lucifer,” as she walks off, but he gets a strange look on his face and asks her since when does she use that particular turn of phrase. She says it’s something her friend Ray Ray says, and his expression gets stranger. We cut to the penthouse at Lux, with Lucifer looking around warily and a touch angrily. “I know you’re here,” he says. “Come on, time to show yourself.”

Tom Ellis as Lucifer. (Photo: Fox)

We hear wings, and he says, “Hello, Azrael.”

Ray Ray is on the other side of the room, wings and all, and she says, “What, too cool to call me Ray Ray anymore?”

Lucifer points out endearing nicknames are for siblings who didn’t abandon him for millennia. She counters she’s been busy, and he should try being the angel of death. “A lot of people die, Lu.” When he isn’t mollified, she acknowledges he’s ticked, but she says she didn’t know how to reach out. She lost her favorite big brother. She chides him for the rebellion and her failure to reach out to him both. “Nobody’s perfect,” she says.

He asks why she’s there now, and she explains she tried to pick up Ella at her death during the car wreck, but it was a false alarm. Ella’s so positive, though, that she didn’t want to leave, so she kept hanging around, and when Ella thought she was a ghost, she went with it. When Ella became bothered about talking to invisible people, however, Ray Ray sent her to L.A. to meet Lucifer.

This upsets Lucifer, considering it more manipulation on the part of God, but Ray Ray says no, she did it for Ella as much as him. “I thought at least two of my favorite people could be together, since I couldn’t be with either of them.” “So that’s the only reason you’re here?” he asks. “Pretty much,” she replies. He huffs, and as he pours a drink, he misses the rush of wings signaling her departure. He starts to ask her a question, but as he turns around, she’s already gone.

Ella is in the lab, and Lucifer finds her. He congratulates her on her decision to stay in L.A. She starts to babble about forensics stuff, and when she stops, worried he’s just humoring her, he says not at all and sits down to listen more intently. She launches into her spiel in full, and he smiles and takes it in, as Azrael watches from the other room, smiling before departing this time for real.

I have mixed feelings about this episode being aired now. You can feel so many threads that should be season four inside of this, track laid in place for other episodes we have not seen, and while I know they can rewrite and set up the whole thing again for wherever it lands, it does make me a bit sad this won’t be cast into the canon. (I will not speak of if, only when.) I really want Ray Ray to come back, because she was great, to start. I don’t care if she’s invisible or partially visible or what; she was fantastic. I want the full angel cast involved, man.

There are a lot of fun games to be played with trying to imagine where this was to sit in the lineup. Lucifer and Chloe have almost no contact. Are they not speaking? Has she not accepted him yet? There’s a total nod to their relationship in her acceptance of Ella, and this makes me think the episode is used as a stepping stone to her coming to terms with Lucifer as the devil. Ditto her trying so hard to accept furry culture, down to literally putting on the suit. She still can’t grasp it, but talk about a metaphor for just-the-facts Chloe Decker attempting to make sense of the strange world she’s become surrounded by. Ditto Dan, who gives Beckett the speech about it doesn’t matter what mistakes you’ve made so long as you try to change. He’s speaking about Charlotte, maybe, or himself? Both? We’d know, if we’d have had the season.

There’s something to the whole “We all make mistakes” thread running through the episode, and if I had more time I’d watch it again so I could really suss it out, but I know some of you reading this have already watched it four or five times and will do it more justice than me. I have a feeling that was part of the season’s arc as well.

We’ll discuss Once Upon a Time tomorrow, and in a different fashion as it’s utterly a stand-alone. This episode is a one-off, but there are also no one-offs in Lucifer. It’s why I love the show so much, because they’re always laying pipe, pulling threads and wrapping us up until all of a sudden we’re in the thick of it all. Yet what I appreciate just as much is that it still feels light, that I can tune in to the episodes and know they’re not going to make me feel so depressed that I was sorry I turned on the television. As I’ve said before and will say again: Romance authors and readers love this show because that’s the same promise our genre gives. A great time, a thrilling ride, but the covenant of safety (and a little sauce on the side). I love that Boo Normal can be withdrawn out of the middle of an intended season, viewed independently, yet still reveal all that richness and promise.

I’ll end here for now, but we’ll pick this up again soon. Until then, keep watching and keep tweeting.

An author of contemporary, historical and paranormal romances featuring LGBT characters, Heidi Cullinan is best known for stories of characters struggling with insurmountable odds on their way to their happily ever afters. Find out more about Heidi at www.heidicullinan.com and be sure to follow her on Twitter and Facebook.

MORE ON HEA: See more of Heidi’s Lucifer posts

Heidi Cullinan

I saved the write-up of this episode for a separate installment and separate day because I wanted to be able to give it an in-depth treatment, and because as I mentioned yesterday I wanted to first rewatch the pilot again to properly prime myself. I felt some of the echoes in it as I experienced Once Upon a Time in my first viewing, but I knew I’d need a refresher before I started this review. I wasn’t wrong.

Before we get into that, we need to make note of all the interesting things about this episode, far beyond the fact that it is a true deviant from the timeline, a “what if” installment founded on the premise that this is a story from an alternate universe. That alone is notable, but we have several other fun facts to illuminate before we carry on. First, this episode was directed by Kevin Alejandro, aka Detective Dan, and I’d like to say he did an incredible job. Also, the voiceover of God was done by none other than the original comic book Lucifer creator and all-around creative genius himself Neil Gaiman, one of my personal heroes so high on a pedestal I actually don’t want to meet him because he’d become human and I don’t know what I’d do then.

The last thing I’d like to point out, though, is related to Gaiman: There are a few very nice homages in this episode (as there are throughout the series) to the original comics, and there was in the last episode as well, which I meant to point out but failed to because I was in a bit of a time crunch. (Azrael is the Angel of Death, but of course in Gaimanverse there is a character named simply Death, also female, who visits the Lucifer and Sandman verses but also has her own series, and you should honestly read them all. Death is incredible.)

I’m so, so glad this episode made the light of day, because it’s a gem, a literal crystal in our hands, reflecting and refracting backward, forward and around into the present. It shows us not only what might have been, it reminds us what was, helps us see better what is and, best yet, what is still to be.

I’ve babbled enough. Let’s dig in.

Tom Ellis as Lucifer. (Photo: Fox)

We open with Chloe chasing a criminal into an alley and then being taken down by a hail of bullets in a manner in which it’s clear she cannot in any way survive. As she falls to the ground, Gaiman (who we will soon understand is playing God) begins to speak in voiceover. “Once upon a time there was a world just like ours, but with one small change that changed everything.” The scene continues; a man we don’t know laments over Chloe’s death, though he calls her Bonnie. She murmurs a dramatic line, spits up blood — and then a director yells cut, and she gets up. Ah, we realize. Chloe isn’t dead, and she apparently isn’t a cop in this world. She’s an actress.

As she walks off set, she chats with her stunt man, Strider, whom she praises, and he praises her back. He also tells her he’s going out to celebrate tonight, and she should come so he can tell her all about some sensitive news he has that he can’t talk about there. She reluctantly agrees, and we cut to Lux at night, where Lucifer is singing My Way at the piano under a spotlight as the room listens intently and then applauds enthusiastically as he finishes.

We also get a shot of Maze, very briefly, as he sings; you’ll notice she has on a mask as she bartends, and it covers half of her face. In this universe she is much, much more Gaiman Mazikeen, not the Maze we know and love. This is a harder, edgier Mazikeen. Under that mask — which is made of silver — is her deformed devil face, which she cherishes. She doesn’t speak often.

God speaks to us again as Lucifer finishes and mingles through the crowd. Chloe and her stuntman friend are entering the club as well, underlying God’s point. “Amazing what changing one tiny detail can do. A butterfly flaps its wings, and good friends are strangers.” Lucifer notices Chloe and appears to appreciate her beauty, but they largely ignore each other, Chloe going to her friend, and Lucifer welcoming Charlotte Richards, who is his attorney in this universe. They’re discussing the Lux Vegas expansion. They also get a bit busy in the penthouse, though Lucifer can’t follow through, saying he isn’t in the mood.

He wonders if he’s been in L.A. too long. Maybe he needs somewhere new? Charlotte suggests he sign the papers on the deal, and he thinks that’s a good idea. He goes to his safe full of cash — the PIN is 666 — and hands her a hefty chunk.

Now we’re with Linda, who has different hair and glasses (I’m here for the hair, but not those glasses), and she’s counseling Chloe, who is also expressing feelings of boredom. Linda suggests perhaps she tries different roles, since she keeps playing cops. Or perhaps she simply use different eyes. Chloe thanks her, then suddenly it breaks and we realize we’re on a set and this has been a taping of a show where Dr. Linda counsels celebrities live. Linda and Chloe walk off, chatting as old friends.

God addresses us again as we watch Lucifer strolling down the stairs at Lux during the day, the bar empty. “People accuse me of being controlling. And yes, I may have booked Chloe and Lucifer’s path, but what if I didn’t? Would they still get together?” Lucifer goes up to a man lying on one of the couches and chides him for being passed out there, only to discover the man is in fact dead, stabbed by an implement. God finishes his sentence. “Normally it would be impossible to get an answer to that question, but I can. Just one of the benefits of being God.”

Lauren German as Chloe and Tom Ellis as Lucifer in Lucifer. (Photo: Fox)

After a commercial break, we return to Lux, now swarming with police. God sets the scene for us as Dan leads the investigation. “It’s amazing the effect a family can have on a man’s moral compass. Or in Dan Espinoza’s case, the lack of a family.” Dan certainly doesn’t seem as if he’s done well without Chloe’s influence. He has no qualms about pocketing money found on the body, just so long as the cameras in the room don’t catch him doing it. Lucifer has a different nickname for him in this universe: Detective Dildo, and he has a great deal of resentment for him based on his considering Delilah’s case — the pilot episode’s case — open and shut. This means the murder we know, Delilah’s producer and former fiancé, got away with his crime and made quite a bit of money on her posthumous record sales, and he was never terrorized by Lucifer’s devilish hounding.

Lucifer makes it clear he’s going to solve this case, since his Vegas deal got put on hold because the murder happened in his club and his history with the LAPD and Dan in particular make him convinced nothing good will come of their work. Dan scoffs and remarks that Lucifer will be taking the easy way out, but Lucifer is offended by this, saying absolutely not, he never takes the easy way out. He wants to find the correct person who did this to make sure they get punished for their sins. Dan tries to threaten him, but Lucifer of course isn’t dissuaded. When Dan says, “I swear to God,” Lucifer replies, “Must you bring my father into this?”

Another God voiceover. “My son and I … well, let’s just say I don’t think I could change anything that would make our relationship less complicated. But then fathers can have a dramatic impact on their children’s lives.” We watch Chloe walking down the steps at the precinct, and as God continues to speak, God lets us know the one thing he changed in this universe. “Take Chloe Decker. Her dad died 20 years ago of a gunshot wound. That loss changed her. Inspired her to follow in his footsteps to become a cop. So what was that one small thing I changed that changed everything? All I did was move one small bullet a few inches to the right …” Chloe goes into an office, where her father is very much alive.

Detective Decker hugs his daughter, calls her Monkey and asks about her career, but she wants to talk about the case. He’s more than a little belittling, not taking her seriously in any manner, not even when she gives him new information, that Strider had just gotten his dream job, driving for NASCAR, and he wasn’t at all the type to get involved in a barfight, which is how the police are considering the murder. Her father refuses to let her get involved or, honestly, take her seriously. You get the idea here that perhaps that bullet staying on target wasn’t exactly a bad thing, given the police department we’re looking at. Not that this is a bad man, but Chloe is definitely the better cop, and she’s shooting movies instead.

Lucifer is already doing amateur detective work, driving not his usual black car but a red one, and he’s visiting none other than Ella, who is, may I say, smoking as a bad-girl car fencer who helps him ID the implement used to stab the victim — Lucifer removed this well before the police arrived, and he’s asking Ella to help him use it to ID the killer. She can ID the implement as a type of screwdriver (he’d thought he’d seen her use it before, and he was correct), but she says it’s strange because the end has been sharpened. It’s a pro racer tool, probably NASCAR, and there’s a lot of identifying marks on the handle which would lead back to the killer. (Does make one wonder why they left it on the body.) There’s another mark that was sanded out, though she thinks she can dig it out. He leaves her with some money (per her insistence) for her troubles and goes off to continue his work while she does hers.

He heads to the NASCAR track, where, not at all to our surprise, he runs into Chloe, who has come there for her own investigation. They assume the two of them are together, and they also assume they’re both official, even though of course they’re both completely fake. Now we get to the fun part: Chloe and Lucifer facing off, and it’s a fascinating blend of everything we’ve known and nothing we’ve ever seen. There are absolute parallels to their first meeting: Chloe’s skepticism, his as well, especially as he regales her career as an actress, which now has so many more roles to reference. But this Chloe also isn’t remotely as closed off as she was in the pilot or even as she is at any point in the universe we know. When she fights with Lucifer, she’s composed and self-assured, but she also has a lightness to her, an easier heart than she does in our universe. So perhaps the world is a better place for having her as its detective, but the toll it takes on her is apparently significant.

Fight with Lucifer she does. She gives him information about Strider, who was about to get his first job here, and because of his death now someone else is driving in his place, and isn’t that interesting? This is all the information Lucifer needs, so he thanks her and begins to walk off. This annoys her, and she stops him. At this point he finally introduces himself, and now she’s the one dismissing him as a “boozy, half-in-the-bag club owner,” because she certainly doesn’t need his help. They essentially have a competition as to who is going to solve the murder better, and they’re having a great time doing it.

Lauren German as Chloe in Lucifer. (Photo: Fox)

This universe really isn’t all bad.

Dan really is, though. He’s stealing money out of the evidence room, I’m assuming — he’s skimming money, that’s what’s happening, and Charlotte catches him. She doesn’t turn him in, though. She basically says, let’s go for a bigger fish. She wants access to Lucifer’s safe in his penthouse, to which she knows the combination now, but she needs Dan’s access, which he can get since it’s an active crime scene. Help her, she says, and they can split the money. The initial sparks of their attraction also flare, which is wonderful to see.

I should have mentioned that as Chloe is playing cop, she’s using her alter ego, Detective Bonnie Genero, which you’d think someone would pick up as one of her famous roles, but nobody is. She’s just running through the NASCAR areas and getting every bit of access she needs. Except Rex, the guy she needs to talk to, is already on the speedway on his practice run. Also on the speedway is Lucifer, who goes out into the middle of the track, puts his hands together and prays.

Even before he put his hands together, I knew what was going to happen, and I started grinning. On Twitter, as time stopped and Amenadiel appeared, the hashtags erupted with “The dress! The dress is back!” Because Lucifer’s brother isn’t a fallen angel here. He’s in full regalia, wings and all, and yes, in his holy robes, or as the LuciFans prefer, “the dress.” He’s gorgeous in anything you put him in, but this is a fine, fine look, sir.

The brothers have their little spat, but not in the same way as in our universe. In the pilot, Amenadiel comes to Lucifer on his own, and he’s increasingly furious and insistent in his demands Lucifer return to hell. Here it’s Lucifer who is always calling Amenadiel, and while they’re not on the best of terms, Amenadiel is annoyed with Lucifer and impatient at best, not ready to begin a war. Their last exchange in the pilot is Lucifer looking forward to ripping out Amenadiel’s heart and eating it, and that doesn’t at all seem to be a metaphor. You don’t get any sense here Lucifer intends to do anything but manipulate his brother’s powers for his own ends, and Amenadiel doesn’t seem inclined to stop him. In fact, Lucifer notes Amenadiel doesn’t ever seem to be busy and comes very quickly when he calls. Amenadiel admits it’s been a few years since he’s been home to the Silver City, and Lucifer somehow knows more of the gossip of their brothers and sisters than he does. It’s Amenadiel’s pride that keeps him away, because he hasn’t completed his task of getting Lucifer back into hell, so Lucifer suggests his brother spend his time engaging with humans while he’s here, something Amenadiel has deliberately refrained from doing. With this shocking suggestion rolling in Amenadiel’s ears, Lucifer waves him off, yanking Rex out of the car as time lurches forward again, sending everything into chaos.

Of course no one understands how anything happened — how did Rex end up out of the car and in Lucifer’s grip, how did Lucifer avoid being killed — but Lucifer ignores all of it and focuses on his interrogation. Except the pit crew block his way, and Rex is swept away by Chloe, who shoves him into a trailer and uses movie police tactics, shouting at him and beating him up, leading the witness instead of using actual detective skills. Rex says he didn’t kill Strider, though, that he wanted to go into retirement, but Chloe keeps pushing, threatening until Rex says he’ll tell her everything she wants to know.

Lucifer appears in that moment, and he gives away Chloe’s real identity, blowing her cover as well as the threatening mood. He makes up for it by using his “what do you desire” whammy, which leads Rex to tell them he wants a good story because they follow good stories. Drama. He wanted Strider to replace him because it would have built up a sense of rivalry due to Rex’s history with Strider’s father. He also lets them know Strider really needed the money to pay off someone at work. Now they have another lead.

They walk off, still bickering, though Chloe suggests they work together. Lucifer isn’t interested, though he’s drawn in because Chloe knows who Strider was fighting with at work and won’t tell him unless he works with her. Now he’s intrigued, and Deckerstar is officially a go.

We check in briefly with Dr. Linda, who is faced with a sticky moral dilemma. Her show isn’t doing great with ratings, and her producer wants her to reveal the affair of the wife of one of her guests for shock value. She’s reluctant, but she has to choose what she wants, a boost or integrity?

Tom Ellis as Lucifer. (Photo: Fox)

Back to Chloe and Lucifer: They’re on one of Chloe’s set, where Erica, one of the co-stars, was reportedly hurt on a stunt and wanted Strider to be a witness on a settlement. He refused, and it didn’t go over well with her. She might have killed him out of revenge, or that without an eyewitness she’d have a better chance at getting her money. Chloe can’t talk to her because they fight; she suggests Lucifer go “do his thing” to her. Of course, when he goes to talk to her, the thing he does is sex, and while that’s happening, Chloe’s father appears to chide her for impersonating a cop and working with that “mentally ill night club owner” Lucifer, who at that moment chooses to amp up the volume on his “interrogation” of Erica.

While Chloe is trying to ride that one out, Charlotte has gotten into the penthouse. This is one of my favorite scenes.

I gave you a little lowdown before about Mazikeen being different in this universe; here you see her in her full glory, and once again we’re scrubbing very close to the comics. This Mazikeen is the warrior leader of the Lilim, those descended from Lilith. (I’m out of column space to explain Lilith. Go give yourself a nice Babylonian/Jewish mythological Google.) Mazikeen is once again wearing her half-mask, but also her dark cloak, and she’s accompanied by other Lilim. They confront Charlotte as she’s stealing the money, and Mazikeen asks her why she wants it. When Charlotte starts to lie, Mazikeen cuts her off. Fondling one of her curved hell blades, she says, “Tell me the truth, and it’s yours.”

Charlotte hesitates, clearly unsure of how to handle this, but after a last flounder and lie, she goes all in. “Because I deserve it.” Smiling evilly, Mazikeen asks, “What would you do with it?” Charlotte looks her dead in the eye and replies, “Whatever I damn well want.” “I’ll take that as a promise.” Mazikeen lets her go, telling her to embrace her deepest, darkest desire, telling her to basically become so sinful and full of darkness that she gets to torture her more later. She advises Charlotte and Dan to never be seen in L.A. again. “Everyone knows you don’t steal from the devil.”

I mean, I love our world. I do. But I would also watch this Lucifer.

Chloe meanwhile is still getting scolded as Lucifer emerges, tousled and with his shirt half open. Her dad is enraged and walks off, and Chloe is disillusioned, thinking her father is right, that she could never actually solve a murder. Lucifer says he thinks she can, that he believes in her, and he points out he discovered something important: Erica was absolutely uninjured and flexible in unfathomable ways during their encounter, and also chatty. She’s faking her injury. She said she needed money, but so did Strider. Initially, he was working with someone else on a heist onset and they’d split the money, but then he got the NASCAR deal and left her high and dry.

Lesley-Ann Brandt as Maze in Lucifer. (Photo: Fox)

Lucifer checks in with Ella, bringing Chloe. Ella is a huge fan and can’t believe she gets to talk to her inspiration in the flesh. She was going to take a different career path, but “living fast and free” like Bonnie was something she just had to do. Ella also produces the information filed off the murder weapon: “Last Lappers.” She doesn’t get it, but Chloe does, and so does Lucifer. It’s from a movie. This means the tool is a prop, and Chloe thinks this all goes back to Rogers on the set. They rush back to investigate.

They decide to catch him in the act — he must be ready to steal something else, and he is: They see him driving off in one of the onset cars. Lucifer starts to take off after him, but Chloe says no, she’s trained for this, and she drives the two of them in their car chase after Rogers, putting the cherry on top of this beautiful alternate universe. She catches him, too, and gets him to confess by pretending they found his prints on the murder weapon, and he reacts enough to reveal he truly is the killer, so they go after him. He ends up on a remote part of the set, with a gun of course, and Lucifer finds him first.

Rogers shoots Lucifer, but of course all he does is put a hole in his shirt and get Lucifer to reveal his devil eyes. Rogers backs up in fear and continues to shoot, but all that happens is he runs into Chloe, who takes him down. Chloe was afraid of the gunshots, she says, but lucky for Lucifer, he must have grabbed a prop gun. Lucifer discreetly hides his bullet-riddled shirt with his suitcoat.

Chloe’s dad arrives on the scene, and when Lucifer thinks he’s going to chide her again, he praises her instead. Her father is open and honest with her and admits he didn’t want her to become a cop because he didn’t want her in danger, not because she couldn’t handle it. He apologizes, but says a parent just wants what’s best for their child. Lucifer watches all this, clearly aching a bit. He liked it better when both their fathers were jerks. Chloe says maybe his father will surprise him, too.

“I’m not holding my breath,” Lucifer says.

Speaking of God, he’s back as we pan over everyone from the episode spinning out into the rest of their lives: first, Lucifer and Chloe sitting together at the crime scene, then Ella smoothing out a signed Chloe Decker poster. “Choice is a funny thing. Give someone different options, different circumstances, will they themselves end up different? Sure, they might end up with a different job, find inspiration from different people, but will they be the same person at their core?”

We watch Mazikeen placing a heated mask on the face of someone who will be one of her servants — the mask will fuse to and disfigure part of her beautiful face, but the woman is ready. We also see Dr. Linda’s guest crying, and Dr. Linda clearly looking saddened by her own choices. “Some might continue down a darker path, never knowing there was a different way, their potential buried deep down, but still there. Some make immoral choices instead of moral ones, but they’ll still have the same conscience. The question is, will they ever make the choice to listen to it?”

We see Amenadiel in plainclothes walking in Lux, attempting to approach humans, almost touching a woman in what appears to be an attempt to speak to her, but in the end he doesn’t. “And sometimes it isn’t the right moment in someone’s life to make a certain choice. And no matter how badly you want to nudge them in the right direction, you know they need to find it on their own.”

Charlotte and Dan are driving down the highway at night in a convertible, happy and holding hands, running off with Lucifer’s money. “And some people find love in the strangest of situations and are somehow happier for it.”

Finally, we go back to Lucifer and Chloe, sitting together on a bench at night, Lucifer sipping from his flask. “Well, that was quite fun, wasn’t it?” he asks her. She says it was fulfilling, and she thinks she might like to play detective for real. Lucifer says maybe he’ll tag along. “Never going to happen,” she says. He smiles. “Care to wager?”

“And some,” God says, “No matter how you shake things up, end up making the same choices, are drawn to the same people. The same passions. So all seems to have ended well. Does that mean I never should have manipulated things to begin with? I have a better question. Wouldn’t you do the same, in my shoes? After all. A parent just wants what’s best for their child.”

Lauren German as Chloe and Tom Ellis as Lucifer in Lucifer. (Photo: Erik Voake, Fox)

And there, for now, we are at our end.

If you watch the pilot in conjunction with this episode, you will see it follows much the same pattern in the way the two of them meet up, the way they fold together and begin their partnership. Where each of them are, what their relationships are with the people around them and even their personal moods are quite different. How quickly and easily they fall together is also different — interestingly, it seems they’ll fold better together in this one. It’s because of that I deliberately left in every word of God’s dialogue in the recap, because it’s so key, especially the last line. In so many ways, viewing this slice of the universe alone, you think this is the better version for the two of them. So you can’t help but wonder, why not this, God? Why did you insert yourself into the narrative? He says it’s because he wanted what was best for his child. So we’re led to believe the story we know is better for Lucifer. With all the hardships, all the struggle to get to Chloe, the way we’ve known is better. The benefits of a god’s eye, I suppose, is that you can see all the outcomes, not only the scene before you.

Would we know it better had we viewed this in situ as it was meant, in season four? Where would this have been placed? Our universe is different now, too. Wherever Lucifer ends up, be it on a streaming network, another broadcast network or living on only in fandom, these episodes are now here in this moment in time, at the end of season three as we wait to hear.

While there are definitely higher powers at play, remember, LuciFans, you’re the real gods. Keep up those voices. Keep tweeting. Listen to the captain, William Shatner, who suggests every Monday night we hashtag party #Lucifer as if the show is still airing and get it trending, and of course continue keeping #SaveLucifer and #PickUpLucifer alive. The devil needs a favor right now. How glorious would it be to have him in our debt? Let’s go give it a try.

I’ll see you next episode.

An author of contemporary, historical and paranormal romances featuring LGBT characters, Heidi Cullinan is best known for stories of characters struggling with insurmountable odds on their way to their happily ever afters. Find out more about Heidi at www.heidicullinan.com and be sure to follow her on Twitter and Facebook.

MORE ON HEA: See more of Heidi’s Lucifer posts

It’s taken me a few weeks, but I’ve finally picked myself (and my soul) up off the theater floor after having seen Avengers: Infinity War. Turns out, no matter how much I thought I’d prepared myself for the inevitable onscreen deaths, yeah, I wasn’t anywhere near ready. Also … everyone I thought was going to get it is still alive. For now at least. It’s gonna be a loooooong year until part two, and I’m not entirely convinced I have to see Ant-Man and the Wasp (I was seriously meh on that movie). Captain Marvel, on the other hand … clearly going to be a giant piece to the puzzle of the ultimate resolution.

Tom Holland as Spider-Man, Robert Downey Jr. as Iron Man, Chris Pratt as Peter Quill, Dave Bautista as Drax and Pom Klementieff as Mantis in Avengers: Infinity War. (Photo: Marvel Studios)

While Infinity War was definitely a gut-punch emotionally, there were a few glaring plot holes my writer brain is willing to overlook. This was a good movie, but I certainly don’t put it above Black Panther or Civil War in the Marvel canon. As a fan of large casts (anyone who’s read my books knows this to be the case), what I really enjoyed was seeing how the various factions played together. The ego-clash between Tony Stark and Dr. Strange was probably my favorite, although who can’t help but giggle helplessly at the combination of Thor and the Guardians of the Galaxy? Something tells me Chris Hemsworth is going to do just fine in the revamped Men in Black movies. He’s got great comic timing. The writers and directors, for me at least, did a great job at defining each group, their goals, their conflicts and keeping those individual personalities distinct and identifiable. The movie did the one thing I wanted and needed: It entertained.

Alden Ehrenreich as Han Solo in Solo: A Star Wars Story. (Photo: Jonathan Olley, Lucasfilm)

Speaking of entertainment, I thoroughly enjoyed Solo: A Star Wars Story. As most of you who have read my blogs before, I’m a Star Wars fan from way back. Star Wars: A New Hope was the first movie I ever saw in the theater and it helped shape my expectations as well as my creative mind. These days, especially after the three that-will-not-be-named prequels (poor Hayden Christensen — I know he’s a good actor, but ugh), I head into most Star Wars movies with low expectations. Nothing will ever live up to the chill-inducing excitement Empire (still the best SW movie, IMO) or Jedi created for me. And now that Carrie Fisher is gone, every one begins with a pang of sadness, even if Leia isn’t a part of the story. All that said … I thought Solo was fun!

Let’s get this out of the way: Harrison Ford is now and forever shall be Han Solo. There’s no arguing that. However, I was surprised at just how much of that same twinkle Alden Ehrenreich possessed. Every once in a while a look, a grin, a line was uttered, and I could see what the casting people probably did. This was an impossible task, finding someone to fill the younger shoes of an iconic character, but I have no complaints.

Donald Glover as Lando Calrissian in Solo: A Star Wars Story. (Photo: Jonathan Olley, Lucasfilm)

That said, Donald Glover steals every scene he’s in. I’ll admit, I’m not that familiar with him, but did catch him on Saturday Night Live a few weeks ago and was super impressed with his versatility and on-screen charisma. He crackles with talent. I’m not sure anyone else could have taken on the role of Lando especially after seeing this performance. Charming, debonair and, boy, did he get that inflection and intonation Billy Dee Williams carries with him to this day. It wasn’t an impersonation so much as a revelation. I’m definitely a fan now.

As for the story itself, well, yeah, nothing surprised me. It didn’t particularly take any chances which is OK. It was a safe movie. It didn’t set the fictional world on its ear and the who’s-betraying-who scenario was less than shocking. I can’t seem to get past Emilia Clark’s voice — every time she speaks, I hear Daenerys (not her fault, I know), but she fit into the cast nicely. Woody Harrelson is certainly making a new name for himself as the mentor character. Definitely reliable in that role for sure.

Story doldrums aside, I’ll say this. Ron Howard (who took over directing this film well into production) understands and gets the hero’s journey. Beat for beat, act by act, it’s right there for all writers to examine and discern. And that reliable way of storytelling is what I thirst for. That and the fact that this is just flat-out fun. If you’re not going to see this because of ho-hum reviews, you’re doing yourself a disservice. It takes a bit to get going (the first 20 minutes were concerning for me as I was rolling my eyes), but once Han and Chewbacca are on screen together … now there’s the magic. And that’s all I want in my summer movies. A bit of magic and fun.

Sandra Bullock as Debbie Ocean plots a heist with her crew, played by Sarah Paulson, Rihanna, Cate Blanchett and Awkwafina, in Ocean’s 8. (Photo: Barry Wetcher)

Which brings me to the next few weeks. As a die-hard fan of Steven Soderbergh’s Ocean movies (well, two of the three anyway), I so can’t wait for Ocean’s 8 (directed by Gary Ross), which opens next week. This is Girl power taken to the nth degree as Sandra Bullock picks up where her fictional brother Danny Ocean left off. Just the previews alone make me happy, or maybe it’s just seeing Cate Blanchett and Sandra on screen together. Or perhaps it’s just that after a year filled mostly with testosterone, I’m ready for a serious dose of estrogen-boosted crime and caper.

As far as my TV viewing, we certainly had a roller-coaster ride of season-enders, didn’t we? I’m still in aggravated mourning over the cancellation of Lucifer. Seriously, what was Fox thinking? Here’s hoping rumors of it being picked up by another network are true, because I seriously need that charming, grinning, devilish hero back on my screen next year. Especially after that ending!

Pauley Perrette as Abby in NCIS. (Photo: Cliff Lipson, CBS)

NCIS bid a fond farewell to Abby, but also took out my favorite secondary character as well, Clayton Reeves. There was so much potential with that character, but I knew when he was happy with his life that he’d be getting it. Seriously messed up, but it gave Abby the reason I anticipated for leaving. Hopefully, they’ll be keeping Kasie on. She’s delightful and quirky in a completely different way than her predecessor.

Supernatural didn’t disappoint me one iota, except that now we settle in from the hiatus from hell (ha — kinda built-in there, isn’t it?). Can’t wait for what next year holds in store for Dean and Jensen Ackles as he finally plays a new character for what I anticipate will be a long stretch.

Happily, CBS decided to wait and air Elementary through the summer, which means my TV screen won’t go completely dark. And yay! An unexpected early pickup for yet another year. This one definitely took me by surprise, but then again, it’s a huge money maker for the network overseas. If you still haven’t jumped on board this Jonny Lee Miller and Lucy Liu adaptation, now’s a great time to get to watching.

Until next month, happy viewing, everyone. And of course, as always, happy reading!

A geek since birth, USA TODAY bestselling romance author Anna J. Stewart loves writing romance featuring strong, independent heroines for multiple lines at Harlequin. She lives in Northern California where she deals with a serious Supernatural, Sherlock and Star Trek addiction. When she’s not writing, you can usually find her at fan conventions or at her local movie theater. Check out her 2018 Daphne du Maurier-nominated romantic suspense, Gone in the Night. Visit her online at www.AuthorAnnaStewart.com.

MORE ON HEA: See what MaryJanice Davidson says about Infinity War

EVEN MORE: See more of Anna’s posts

It’s summertime and you know what that means! No new NCIS eps. Wah! But wait! I’m here for you with some classic NCIS episode recaps (and fab giveaways!) to help tide us over during the long, hot drought.

I read a TV Guide article (originally posted Jan. 17, 2012) where the cast discussed which episodes were their favorites and what it was about them that gave them that special designation. I thought it would be fun to give them the classic recap treatment.

Screenshot of Pauley Perrette as Abby in the NCIS season three episode Bloodbath. NCIS airs on CBS.

I’m kicking things off with an episode from 2006, directed by one of my fave NCIS directors, Dennis Smith. From alll the way back in season three, this is one of Pauley Perrette’s favorite episodes. As most of you know, she played the role of our much-beloved and recently departed Abby Sciuto. Here’s what she told TV Guide about the episode Bloodbath:

“It was one of the hardest episodes for me to do because Abby’s being stalked, and I’ve been hideously stalked in real life. I was afraid of how that was going to affect me — that’s like bringing my home life to work. I was scared in the beginning, but it ended up being really cathartic.”

Sounds harrowing, both personally and professionally. Not sure how I feel about that. Let’s dive in and see how it all plays out, shall we?

We open with a middle-age couple checking in to a motel. Wife is complaining about the roaches they encountered on their last stay. Husband is pooh-poohing her account, saying as an entomologist, he knows bugs and they didn’t see any roaches. The young room clerk assures them they’ll be fine, that they take pride in how clean their rooms are, but if the room isn’t to their satisfaction, he’ll give them a free upgrade. And we all know where this is going, right?

Young Clerk opens the door, and Husband and Wife enter what looks like a scene from a horror movie where body parts were put through a blender. (Yes, that awful.) Husband says, mildly, that they’ll take the upgrade. HA.

Cue awesome opening theme song and credits. Gibbs is so young! Hello, Tony! And Ziva! And Director Jenny! Ah, you’re all so missed.

Screenshot of Cote de Pablo as Ziva and Lauren Holly as Jenny in the NCIS season three episode Bloodbath. NCIS airs on CBS.

Speaking of Director Shepard, she and Ziva are in her office, talking what sounds like tactical mission op planning, but turns out to be tactical couture discussion as they help Abby decide what shoes to wear to court. (You can imagine the options.) Heels is the unanimous decision. Now it’s time to talk clothing. Enter Tony, who says Abby could just go with the heels. Oh, Tony. (His easy comedic timing is most sorely missed!) He collects Ziva as it’s grab-your-gear time and says how he saved her before they started braiding each other’s hair. She teases that who knows what that might have led to, making Tony do a double take, and that’s the other thing I miss. Easy, is-it-flirtation-or-is-it-not? that doesn’t quite cross the line or diminish either partner.

Unfortunately, we go back to the gruesome scene, as the team processes the horror. (Here, I won’t be wanting any more of this popcorn. More for you.) The motel is part of off-base housing that is used by military personnel to house visiting family and the like. The previous occupants checked out two days earlier, and there was no forced entry. The team determines that the blood that is literally splattered everywhere (and I mean everywhere) is human, but they can’t identify any of the, uh, chunks of human detritus that are also strewn everywhere. Also, the suitcase full of what appears to be packets of cocaine would belie that this is a drug transaction gone horrifically awry.

Ducky chimes in that he’s noted that none of the, uh, leftovers have any muscle or bone, it’s all connective tissue, and appears to have been surgically excised from said muscle and bone, none of which appears to still be on the premises. So … does that mean they excised it while the person was still alive? Because, gah. And how did said perpetrator leave without a trail of … everything following in his wake? Ducky says there were three persons, and whoever did the dissecting is a trained professional. (A dang untidy one, but OK!)

A so-very-young McGee is tracking previous guests who also happen to be surgeons or doctors and coming up empty. Tony is exhibiting his standard annoy-McGee behavior by wadding up papers with various quotes printed on them and tossing them toward McGee’s trash can and missing. Turns out that the quotes are from a calendar that was previously on McGee’s desk. He objects to Tony destroying it, telling him it was a gift. Tony mocks it right before we learn that the gift came from — say it with me — Gibbs. “Nice calendar, boss.” Heh.

Both McGee’s and Ziva’s digging into past residents has come up empty. We do learn that one of the maids had her key stolen, so that’s how the perp gained entry. Tony takes the lead and we go to the Screen of All Knowing. The blood spatter all came from a central point. Abby found bits of the smashed TV embedded in the bathroom mat, meaning the mat was wrapped around the TV to muffle the sound as the TV was broken. All adding up to show that the crime scene was staged. The victims were killed elsewhere. Gibbs tasks Tony with figuring out where the victims were killed, seeing as he’s doing most of the work anyway. Tony’s smug grin is cut short when he misses his chair and goes straight to the floor. Heh.

Ah, the laughter is short-lived as we go down to Ducky’s Digs where they have little sheets of connective tissue draped everywhere. (Seriously, you can have the rest of my Coke Zero now, too.) G-A-G. Ducky tells Palmer it’s like putting a jigsaw puzzle together. (Yeah, I’ll stick with the ones that have pictures of birdhouses and antique tea tins, thanks.) Enter Gibbs, and Ducky tells him that they have the remains of at least four different people and quite possibly more. However, it’s not a serial killer situation. As the camera pans around the various “meat puzzles,” Ducky says he realized while assembling them that the remains they have are the same kind of tissue that is left behind after surgery, meaning it’s highly likely the tissue they have is medical/surgical waste. (All snacking has officially ended. In fact, now seems like a good time to start a nice fasting regimen.) Now, could we please, please change the view? Ducky and Gibbs draw the conclusion that the team is being set up, but why and for what purpose?

Screenshot of Sean Murray as McGee and Pauley Perrette as Abby in the NCIS season three episode Bloodbath. NCIS airs on CBS.

Down in Abby Lab (thank you!), she is examining the contents of the white powder packets. Enter McGee who couldn’t wait for Abby to e-mail him the results. Abby quickly realizes that McGee came down in hopes of seeing Abby in her “court suit,” which looks remarkably like one of Director Jenny’s outfits. Abby says she just had to give a deposition and won’t have to go back. She suddenly freezes, says she smells almonds, then tells McGee they have to run, that whatever is in those packets has cyanide gas. They run out of the lab, with McGee literally dragging Abby out when she trips. They close the steel door, she hits the alarm, and the sign flashes that the lab is secured. We fade to a ruh-roh black-and-white.

We return to the hazmat team going over the lab. When Abby added her testing chemicals to the powder, it created a cyanide gas. She and McGee would have been dead within three minutes if they hadn’t gotten out when they did. Director Jenny, Gibbs and Tony discuss, and Gibbs thinks it’s all part of them being set up, but they still don’t know why or to what end. Jenny dismisses that it was someone targeting Abby, because who would want to do that? Tony maybe, but not Abby. HA. It must be something else. While McGee and Abby are getting cleansed from their exposure, Tony did a little digging into Abby and hands Gibbs a folder, saying she’s been hiding something.

Screenshot of David McCallum as Ducky and Pauley Perrette as Abby in the NCIS season three episode Bloodbath. NCIS airs on CBS.

We don’t learn what as yet. Instead, we’re in Ducky’s Digs as Abby and McGee are breathing oxygen through masks while Ducky continues to work on getting them back to rights. Abby is embarrassed that she created the hazard with her testing chemicals, but adds that she couldn’t have possibly presumed that any drug dealer would cut his cocaine with cyanide. Ducky says their exposure was brief enough that they should be fine. Enter Gibbs, who concurs, saying the two of them don’t have permission to be sick. Heh. And aww.

Abby assures him she’s fine and apologizes again, saying it was a newbie accident and that the only thing that got damaged was her ego. Tony and Ziva tell her that they think it wasn’t an accident, that someone might be targeting her. Abby is all, “Who would want to kill me? Tony maybe, but …” Heh. Come to find out, Abby was dating a guy and things got a little out of hand. So much so it ended with her getting a restraining order against him. Gibbs asks her why she didn’t tell him. An embarrassed Abby says she wanted him restrained, not beaten to a pulp with a baseball bat. HA. Also, true!

Apparently, Lover Boy can’t accept that they’re over. He even has a website dedicated to all things Abby, his “dark angel.” Despite the fact that the guy cleans up crime scenes for a living, which would seem to give him access to some pretty gruesome stuff, perfect for setting up a fake crime scene, Abby insists he’s not the guy they’re looking for. Abby realizes they’re going to go talk to the guy anyway and asks Gibbs if he could please pick up her red studded dog collar while he’s there. Heh.

That evening, Gibbs, Tony and Ziva walk up to the offices of Lover Boy and hear loud music coming from inside. Peering inside, they see one guy sprawled across the counter, blood pooling, another on the floor, also in a pool of blood, and enter, guns drawn. Only to walk into the middle of a staged scene that Lover Boy was photographing for … what, I can’t imagine. Turns out the guy on the floor is a dummy, and LB tells them he was taking before and after shots for his new crime scene cleaning business brochure.

Screenshot of Mark Harmon as Gibbs in the NCIS season three episode Bloodbath. NCIS airs on CBS.

LB thinks they’ve come to hire him and starts handing out brochures, saying he’s never worked with NCIS before. Tony comments on how that might have been hard due to the restraining order against him. He starts to play it like he has no idea what they mean, until Gibbs removes what little personal space there is between them and informs him the only reason he’s still able to walk is because Gibbs didn’t know about him sooner. HA. LB immediately comes clean (such a bad pun) and is actually kind of kookily charming. He says he was trying to apologize to Abby, that he’s been in therapy and now he realizes that he was projecting his own issues onto her and now he’s sorry.

Ziva starts showing him photos of the crime scene, asking him if that looks familiar. He says no, but for two grand he could make it look good as new. HA. Gibbs doesn’t find him as amusing as I do and once again closes the breathable space between them. LB says he’s on antidepressants and he’s much better, even has a new girlfriend. Tony tells him if he has an alibi for the past few days, he’ll be golden. LB says that the full moon brings out the crazies, and given that, he’s spent the past two days with the metro police department. Golden alibi.

Back in HQ with the full moon gleaming in through the windows, Abby exclaims that there is no statistical proof between the phases of the moon and human behavior. Enter Gibbs and Tony, who tell Abby that LB’s alibi held up. He cleaned eight crime scenes in four days, surrounded by detectives the entire time. None of the scenes would have given him access to the kind of material found at their crime scene. Abby smiles, believing she is off the hook. Ziva says LB might have had an accomplice but admits that they can’t find anyone else in Abby’s orbit who looks good for the crime.

Gibbs wants suspects. Ziva says she’ll look up medical waste companies and see if any reported anything stolen or otherwise tampered with, and Tony says he’ll interview lodge personnel to see if anyone had a grudge with the cleaning staff. (If so, quite the grudge!) When McGee can’t come up with a task he should be tackling, Gibbs tells him to go home and take Abby with him. Abby swears she’s fine, that LB is her only stalker and since it’s not him, nothing to worry about. Gibbs says he doesn’t want her home alone. Aw.

Screenshot of Sean Murray as McGee and Pauley Perrette as Abby in the NCIS season three episode Bloodbath. NCIS airs on CBS.

Over at McGee’s place, Abby is playing video games and informs McGee when he enters that she’s completely reconfigured the game so it plays better. McGee turns the game off, says it’s bedtime. He’ll take the sleeping bag, she gets the bed. She says they’re both adults, they can sleep in the bed together, and teases him about keeping his hands to himself. She can’t find her toothbrush in her bag and McGee says he still has her old one in his bathroom. She smiles, says that’s creepy and teases him that maybe he should take the sleeping bag. It’s funny thinking back to the time when these two were together, and even now, when it’s not that far beyond that. Abby comes out of the bathroom with a cute ladybug toothbrush and says that’s not hers. She’s in underwear, tank and an unbuttoned shirt and the whole vibe is so … early days. Their dynamic was very different then. Now they seem a lot more siblinglike. Abby goes to leave, thinking her toothbrush fell out in his car. McGee says Gibbs would kill him if he found out he let Abby leave the apartment, so she says fine, he can go look. She says she’ll just use his toothbrush, and he caves. He tells her not to answer the door, she’s all, fine, whatever, and goes right back over and turns the video game back on.

A knock at the door has her running to answer it without checking. It’s McGee, who gets mad at her for opening the door. He needs his car keys to unlock the door and tells her if she doesn’t listen to him, he’ll tie her up. Abby thinks that sounds like fun, earning a McGee eye roll. He leaves, she goes back to the video game. Someone knocks at the door and she runs right back over and opens it. (And I groan because, come on. She’s trusting, sure, but don’t make her a stupid heroine.) Her smile fades because, yep. Hello, LB. Fade to black-and-white. (Also, how did he know she was at McGee’s place?)

LB comes in, he wants to start over. Abby grabs McGee’s old-fashioned typewriter and throws it at him. (I cringe. Not the typewriter!) LB is all quasi-charming, saying he’s there to save her after what happened in that apartment. She manages to cuff him to McGee’s industrial shelving and he’s touched that she kept the cuffs he gave her. Turns out, he has the keys to them on a chain around his neck. Her path to the exit blocked, she runs into the bedroom, yelling at him to go. He reminds her he can pick locks and picks the lock to the bedroom door. She runs to the bathroom and locks that door, then searches for something to use as a weapon. We see the door opening, someone entering ever-so-slowly, step by step, aaaaand Abby, standing on the closed toilet seat lid behind the shower, just barely refrains from beaning McGee with the lid to the commode. Great weapon choice. Abby runs and hugs him. They hear the sound of a scooter engine whining into the darkness and turn to see the open window. McGee shows her the toothbrush he found in his car.

Screenshot of Mark Harmon as Gibbs and Michael Weatherly as DiNozzo in the NCIS season three episode Bloodbath. NCIS airs on CBS.

The next day at HQ we learn that LB has fled, McGee is ticked about his typewriter and the computer parts that were also injured in the melee. No one feels sorry for him. (But me! That typewriter, though … insert heart-faced emoji here.) Enter Tony, who pulls a data card from his camera. On the Screen of All Knowing, we get to see shots from LB’s place, where he has an entire shrine built to his undying love for Abby. It’s way past creepy. (It also kind of strikes me as … I don’t know … thoughtless, perhaps, that despite Pauley Perrette having a very high-profile case against her very scary stalker in real life, the show thought this was a great plot concept to center around her character. From her comments, it doesn’t sound like she was given yay-or-nay say-so on it, just “how am I going to handle this?” And please don’t @ me with how she ends up saying how cathartic it was and went so far as to claim it was a favorite episode. Even if that was their hope when crafting the plot — I don’t buy it, but let’s pretend that was the case — what a chance to be taking with someone’s emotional well-being.) Maybe I was better off not knowing the backstory.

Where were we? Oh, right. Putting a fictional character through a harrowing reprisal of a real-life situation suffered by the actress who portrays her. Got it. McGee has discovered that LB has found a way to worm into Abby’s computer so he’s been able to track her that way. His shrine shows he’s been tracking her quite intently and the new girlfriend was more of a one-date acquaintance at best. McGee says he can track back through the wormhole to find where LB is located, and Gibbs tells him to coordinate with Abby. McGee says he will, just as soon as someone convinces her to come out of the elevator.

Screenshot of Mark Harmon as Gibbs and Pauley Perrette as Abby in the NCIS season three episode Bloodbath. NCIS airs on CBS.

Gibbs immediately goes to the elevator and opens it, spying Abby seated, tucked into a corner. He smiles paternally, enters and sits next to her. She tells him that only five out of the millions of deaths each year occur in elevators. She has a stun gun from Ziva, pepper spray from McGee and brass knuckles from Director Jenny. Gibbs tells her that no one will hurt her, he won’t allow it. This brings back memories from her last episode on the show, the one Gibbs recalls as he looks at her lying in a hospital bed, recovering from a gunshot wound. This is the relationship we all missed for the past season and a half while they danced around the fact that the two actors don’t film scenes together any longer, for whatever reason that no one wants to talk about, so everyone resorts to all kinds of other speculation. Whatever the reason, what a shame. This was a core relationship to the show. It was harder seeing what it had become, than to not see it at all. Bon soir, dark angel.

Gibbs and Jenny share some banter in MTAC about the bigger plot arc from that season that we won’t get into here and how she chose the wrong time to give up caffeine. While she covets his coffee, Gibbs also explains that though LB’s company was used to clean all those crime scenes, giving him his alibi, that doesn’t mean the detectives on hand paid any actual attention to who, specifically, was doing the cleaning.

We also learn that Abby is being called back to court. Someone (aka LB) alerted the defense to the fact that she’s now in protective custody and Jenny explains that the defense attorneys plan to use the situation Abby is in to prove she makes bad choices and discredit her testimony. They don’t care if they’re being used to draw her into the open so LB has another shot at her. Jenny gives him the name of the defense attorney, a woman it turns out that Gibbs already knows, and he, in turn, leaves Jenny his cup of coffee. Gibbs says that if Defense Attorney wants to talk to Abby again, she can do it at NCIS HQ.

Screenshot of guest star Mimi Kuzyk as Ginger in the NCIS season three episode Bloodbath. NCIS airs on CBS.

Enter DA Ginger and her diminutive client who is being sued for embezzling $10 million. He claims he’s innocent. DA Ginger tells him to button it. Ginger and Gibbs swap subpoenas. Hers says she gets to question Abby. His says he gets a copy of the e-mail that tipped them off to Abby’s situation. They face off, Ginger finally hands over a printout of the e-mail, which gets handed to McGee in hopes it helps them track down LB’s whereabouts. Gibbs takes Ginger to the elevator where Abby has set up office. Bert the Hippo is keeping her company. The night grows long and the agents are weary. McGee still hasn’t been able to narrow down LB’s location, but he’s working on it. Gibbs tries to send Ziva home, but as long as Gibbs is there, she’s staying. Tony and McGee concur. While there is a threat against Abby, they are staying.

Screenshot of guest star Eddie Jemison as Terry in the NCIS season three episode Bloodbath. NCIS airs on CBS.

Abby has moved to her lab and set up a bedroll. She tells Ducky the elevator ceased to be cozy after she’d been interrogated for an hour by DA Ginger. Ducky gives her a whistle that will shatter her attacker’s eardrums. Which is cool and all, but what would keep it from shattering hers? I guess that’s better than getting killed, but … ouch!

McGee finally narrows down on LB’s location and it turns out he’s managed to tweak the computer into making himself a pass to get into the Navy Yard, where NCIS HQ is located. Ruh roh! Abby gets a call and thinks it’s from Palmer, but no. It’s LB, who says he really needs to see her. Abby isn’t a fan of that idea and tells him that in no uncertain terms. He tells her she’s not as safe as she thinks she is, and we see him behind her, peeking in through the window. (Now I’m not snacking AND I’ll be double-locking all the doors tonight.) Abby spies him at the window just as the team races in, guns drawn. LB takes off and Gibbs orders them to lock down the Navy Yard. He promises Abby they will find him. She says she can’t stay at the Navy Yard, but there is no safe place. If he can get to her there, he can get to her anywhere. Gibbs disagrees, and we know what that means.

Screenshot of Pauley Perrette as Abby and Mark Harmon as Gibbs in the NCIS season three episode Bloodbath. NCIS airs on CBS.

Cue scene of a very tired, very drunk Abby absently sanding Gibbs’ boat and swilling his whiskey straight from the bottle as she has taken up residence in his basement. Enter Gibbs, who shows her how to sand with the grain, saying she should sleep. She says she tried, but only saw LB when her eyes were closed. She slurs her words as she tells him how she doesn’t get why people drink when they’re depressed given alcohol is a depressant. So, now she’s still depressed and nauseated. She says she feels guilty about the whole thing, and Gibbs does a little reverse psychology on her, making her defend herself until she realizes that she really isn’t to blame. Then he tells her that Tony called and they picked up LB and have him in custody.

Back at HQ, LB is in interrogation with Gibbs and Tony, while Abby and Jenny watch from the other side of the two-way glass. Abby is convinced that LB will find some loophole to crawl out of, but Jenny assures her that won’t happen. Abby, in horn rims and her court clothes, is picked up by a federal marshal to go make her court appearance. Jenny assures her Gibbs won’t let LB crawl anywhere but to jail.

Only, plot twist! LB insistently claims he wasn’t the one who tried to hurt Abby, that he’s been trying to help her (in his own twisted way). He says he had nothing to do with the cyanide and didn’t know she was in trouble until Gibbs and company came to his office that night. He went back over all of his many, oh-so-many, photos of her and found one guy’s face showing up again and again. LB also tells them he was only able to get into her computer and communication devices because someone else had already done it and he piggy-backed on them. Gibbs can tell he’s being truthful, and they put the disc in and look at the photos LB compiled. Sure enough, the same man’s face shows up again and again.

Down in the garage, Abby climbs in with the federal marshal and bingo! It’s That Guy!! Off they go, with Abby chattering away, while back at HQ, they learn that the real marshal had his tires slashed and hasn’t left yet. So the race is on to find the man who has Abby. She realizes when her phone rings and That Guy grabs her wrist to keep her from answering that something is wrong. She can’t open the door, either. No handles inside.

Meanwhile, the team is scrambling to find them. Gibbs and Tony are tearing through the streets while Jenny, Ziva and McGee work from HQ. McGee pins down his location, and Tony says they’re right where her phone is pinging. Gibbs pulls over in what looks like a warehouse area and jumps out, finds Abby’s (flip!) phone on the ground. They look around, and as a big tractor trailer pulls out, they spy the black government van. They hear screams coming from inside the van and race toward it.

Screenshot of Pauley Perrette as Abby in the NCIS season three episode Bloodbath. NCIS airs on CBS.

When they jerk the door open, That Guy comes tumbling out, one end of the stun gun stuck in his chest while Abby repeatedly keeps hitting the juice, making him scream each time. He looks a lot worse for wear. Abby, on the other hand, looks like a superhero in heels. She’s yelling at That Guy while she’s zapping him, making Gibbs (and me) chuckle. No rescue necessary.

Abby is leaving court, annoyed that all of her testimony was thrown out and DA Ginger’s smarmy client was let off the hook. She’s mostly annoyed because her testimony wasn’t tossed because of her bad taste in men but based on science. Ginger and Smarmy come over and Ginger tells Abby not to be upset. She always knew the science would get tossed because whether it works or not, “scent technology” remains unproven, and is therefore inadmissible. Ginger just used the whole bad judgment thing to throw the opposing lawyers off her planned attack.

Screenshot of Pauley Perrette as Abby and Mark Harmon as Gibbs in the NCIS season three episode Bloodbath. NCIS airs on CBS.

Abby tells Smarmy he wasn’t found innocent, just not proven guilty. Smarmy says he’ll be too busy sunning in Bora Bora to care. Which is when Gibbs and Tony cuff him and tell him he’s under arrest for hiring That Guy to try and kill Abby to keep her from testifying. He apparently didn’t pay TG enough of the money he embezzled to keep him from talking. They point to the beat-up TG who is standing by the police car, cuffed and looking annoyed. Ginger races after her client, telling him to keep quiet. HA. Good twist.

Our final scene is Gibbs back in interrogation with LB. He tells Gibbs he knows he was right, that he saved Abby’s life, figuring out who was after her. Gibbs tells him that he was a distraction who allowed TG to get as close to Abby as he did. LB denies this, of course, telling Gibbs how much he loves her. Gibbs then tells him how the police found his car, found the gun inside and the suicide note supposedly written by Abby. LB is all how that was a last resort, in case Abby didn’t realize how much they loved each other.

Screenshot of guest star Vincent Young as Mikel and Mark Harmon as Gibbs in the NCIS season three episode Bloodbath. NCIS airs on CBS.

He gets up and paces, looking at the two-way window, saying if Abby didn’t love him, why couldn’t she take her eyes off of him. This is when Gibbs gets up and walks out of the room, but not before switching off the lights, leaving the room on the other side of the two-way illuminated for LB to see. The empty room. He loses it, screams Abby’s name, over and over, as Gibbs walks down the hall. Fade to a final black-and-white.

Nicely done. Except for the quibble about the too-close-to-real-life part, definitely a classic ep. What did you think?

While you are pondering, let’s give away some summer swag, shall we? I have a brand new book coming out on June 26. Bluestone & Vine is the second book in my Blue Hollow Falls series. The lovely Joyce Taber from The Cotton Thistle designed a beautiful bookmark charm exclusively for this release. You can win a signed, advance review copy of the book and the bookmark charm by entering this week’s giveaway. How? Simple! Drop me an e-mail to donna@donnakauffman.com with “I want Bluestone & Vine swag!” in the subject line and you’re in! I’ll announce the winner in the next classic recap column on June 27! Don’t forget to check back to see if you’ve won!

My next classic NCIS recap will be one of Rocky Carroll’s (aka Director Vance) favorite episodes, Internal Affairs from season five. Join me, won’t you?

Until then …

Donna Kauffman is the USA TODAY (and Wall Street Journal!) bestselling author of 70-plus titles, translated and sold in more than 26 countries around the world. Born into the maelstrom of Washington, D.C., politics, she now lives in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, thankfully surrounded by a completely different kind of wildlife. You can check that out for yourself and more at www.donnakauffman.com. She loves to hear from her readers (and NCIS viewers!). You can write to her at donna@donnakauffman.com or visit her on Facebook or Instagram.

MORE ON HEA: See a fun Down & Dirty interview with Donna and read what she learned while writing Blue Hollow Falls

EVEN MORE: See more of Donna’s NCIS posts

We’re back with another summer classic episode. I’m recapping episodes marked as favorites by the cast of the show from a TV Guide article from Jan. 17, 2012.

Mark Harmon as Gibbs in NCIS. (Photo: Michael Desmond, CBS)

This week we’re revisiting one of Rocky Carroll’s favorites. He had this to say about the season five episode where we meet Leon Vance for the very first time: “The first episode that I was ever in is probably the one that will always stand out. In learning and getting my footage, I had a little bit of an advantage, because Mark Harmon and I had worked together on Chicago Hope for several years, and he was the only person that I knew who was connected to the show. I think he smoothed the path a little bit for me and let everybody know, ‘This guy’s all right with me.’ If you only know one guy, it’s good if he’s the star of the show.”

Leon Vance made his entrance to the show in the midst of one of the most emotionally fraught story arcs of the show’s entire 15-season run. I’m both looking forward to diving back in, and have a little trepidation as well. (Because I know how it all plays out down the line. And I’m a fan of happier endings.)

We open with our team (look how young and fresh they are!) working hard to save old case files to the permanent database. Ziva is hole-punching and binding while McGee has cords running all over the place sending stuff to the database. He’s paranoid that Tony will spill his coffee on the cords. The expected McBanter between the two ensues, ending with Tony “spilling” a cup of hole-punch confetti and giving McGee a temporary heart attack in the process. Naturally, enter Gibbs as the confetti flies.

Gibbs wants to know why no one is picking up the phone, only for the team to discover the phones are dead, then — ruh roh — the whole system shuts down and McGee is now in a full panic. That is all forgotten the instant the FBI arrives to inform our merry band of agents that they’ve shut the place down for a pending investigation. Seems the body of a certain someone washed up on shore that morning.

By FBI, of course I mean Agent Fornell (YES! This show is always better when the Fornell-Gibbs fractious bromance is on full display). And by “certain someone,” I mean the Big Bad from the La Grenouille story arc (the one where Tony loses his heart to Big Bad’s daughter while deep undercover). The body is none other than “The Frog” himself, and given the ties between him and Gibbs, Tony and Director Jenny Shepard, it’s not surprising the FBI is putting the hard eye on the crew. You can imagine how thrilled Gibbs is with this little display. Director Jenny looks none too thrilled either, and not a little shaken by the news. She and Gibbs share a meaningful look as we fade to black-and-white.

Cue awesome opening theme song and credits!

We’re back, only to discover the entire team, including Ducky and Abby, has been put on ice in the fenced evidence locker in the building’s basement. They’re being guarded by an FBI agent who isn’t saying much. Abby isn’t taking the ordeal well. Tony points out they’re not being held for crimes committed, so much as because the team themselves may be valuable evidence.

Upstairs, Fornell is escorting Gibbs to NCIS’ interrogation room. Gibbs is wanting to know how Fornell came to get this case. Fornell notes that his intimate knowledge of the case made him the obvious choice. Gibbs sees that as perhaps grounds for conflict of interest. Fornell assures him that the evidence points to one of the NCIS crew. In the perfectly spot-lit interrogation room, Gibbs takes his usual seat and Fornell, still standing, simply says, “Other side.” Gibbs gives him a look, then moves to the other side of the table. And we’re off to the bromance races!

Someone pokes his head into the room on the other side of the glass, only to be told by a toothpick-chewing someone that he doesn’t drink coffee. From our vantage point of many seasons later, we know immediately who this is. Hello, (not yet director) Leon Vance!

Back in interrogation, Fornell shows Gibbs a gruesome photo of The Frog, sans his eyes. (Gosh, thanks. Anyone want half a turkey sandwich? I’m suddenly not so hungry.) Gibbs isn’t surprised by the photo, which Fornell notes. He says the NCIS team had extensive contact with The Frog back on the day he died and notes Frog was almost killed in a car bomb explosion. Gibbs tells him that bomb was meant for Frog’s daughter. Fornell is undeterred. He tells Gibbs that it looks like someone had a personal grudge with Frog and wonders if Gibbs ever figured out who it was. Gibbs says no. Fornell points out the team boarded a boat that Frog was supposedly on the day he died. Gibbs says they just missed him. Fornell says that the time they boarded roughly coincides with The Frog’s time of death. Gibbs tells Fornell that he, Ziva and McGee were in their offices all night, securing the warrant. Fornell says he’ll have to verify the timeline, prompting Gibbs to ask him if it’s his — Gibbs’ — alibi he’s after.

Gibbs tells Fornell that before working on the warrant, he was at Director Jenny’s house. Fornell points out that they know from her phone records that The Frog was at her house that night, too. Gibbs has a flashback to the conversation he witnessed between Jenny and Frog, where she claims Frog believed her father took a payoff. Frog says he was the one who paid her father, so he knows it to be true. She pulls a gun, says what Frog did was actually kill her father. Back in the room, Gibbs tells Fornell that he left, and Frog left, but he doesn’t share the flashback.

Fornell wants to know why Frog was there. Gibbs says he was seeking protection. Fornell says maybe they should have given it to him, then asks Gibbs if he’s protecting anyone now. Gibbs flashes to Jenny, angrily stating how she’d worked a decade to bring Frog down, prompting Gibbs to ask her what Frog did to her. Back in the present, Gibbs realizes that Fornell is actually trying to nail down Jenny’s alibi and says as much to Fornell. Fornell confirms this by asking Gibbs if he could verify Jenny’s whereabouts after he left her house that night. Back in flashback-land, Gibbs tells the gun-wielding Jenny that the gun she is pointing at Frog isn’t loaded. Later, when the two are alone, he asks her if he hadn’t told her the gun wasn’t loaded, would she have pulled the trigger? Jenny says she guesses they’ll never know.

Sean Murray as McGee, Michael Weatherly as DiNozzo, Cote de Pablo as Ziva, Pauley Perrette as Abby, Mark Harmon as Gibbs and Rocky Carroll as Vance Sean Murray as McGee, Cote de Pablo as Ziva, Mark Harmon as Gibbs and David McCallum as Ducky in NCIS. (Photo: Michael Desmond, CBS)

Back in the room, Gibbs leans in and tells Fornell that if he plans on charging the head of NCIS with murder, he better have the evidence to back it up. Fornell shoots back that he wouldn’t be there if he didn’t, which seems to set Gibbs back for a moment. Fornell says that Jenny’s beef with Frog has nothing to do with the assignment, but she dragged NCIS into it, so now they’re tainted by that, too. Gibbs shoots back that when it’s all over and Jenny is exonerated, Gibbs wants the file Fornell has on the matter. Fornell says if that happens, he just might do that. As their conversation ends, the door opens from the room on the other side of the glass, and Leon Vance steps into the hallway. So stern, Leon.

Upstairs in Jenny’s office, she, too, is being watched over by an FBI agent. Vance enters. Jenny knows him, says she’s surprised to see him. He said the SecNav thought his presence was needed. Jenny realizes he’s there to oversee things because she is the suspect. She calls him Assistant Director Vance. He keeps staring her down and she says, “You gonna ask for ’em?” Then pulls open her desk drawer and puts her weapon, badge and keys on her desk, all under the steady gaze of Vance. Vance tells her that as acting director of NCIS, he is relieving her of her duties. She’s suspended pending the investigation. And, given Vance is still the director all these years later … yeah, I don’t need to be reminded how this is ultimately ends. Fade to black-and-white.

Gibbs leaves the interrogation room and encounters Vance in the hallway. Toothpick clamped in his teeth, Vance is quite the cowboy in this scenario. Interesting how characters change and mature over time. I forgot he was like this, once upon a time. Vance hands Gibbs a few dollars and some change, tells him it’s for the cheese danish. Gibbs replies that that was eight years ago. “Nine,” Vance corrects him. So they have a history. Gibbs asks if he’s the one behind the FBI’s fishing expedition. Vance says the bureau is doing the fishing, he’s just driving the boat. Oh, Leon. So cocky with it, too.

McGee is heading to interrogation and asks Gibbs what he should say. Gibbs tells him to tell the truth, that he’s done nothing wrong. McGee has a flashback to when Gibbs asked him to hack into the CIA. Back in the present, Fornell notes how McGee seems a little … nervous. Oh, McGee. That’s his default position. Fornell tells him straight off he doesn’t care about the hacking McGee has done. What he wants to know is who put him on the path of Jenny’s father. He thinks it’s Jenny, but McGee tells him it was Gibbs. He says Gibbs was curious why Jenny was going after The Frog so aggressively. Fornell corrects him, saying Gibbs doesn’t get curious. He gets suspicious. HA. Also? True. He wants to know what Gibbs suspected, and McGee tells Fornell that they think Jenny believes that Frog killed her father.

Fornell wants to know what the nature of Tony’s undercover assignment with The Frog was, asks for the details. McGee tells him he wasn’t brought in on those details. Fornell finds that hard to believe, but McGee stands by his statement. Fornell counters that McGee was part of the investigation, so surely he knew. McGee is having flashbacks to that mission, his involvement, the moment Jenny spies Frog on their surveillance screen.

When we come back to the present, we’ve moved from questioning McGee to Ziva. Fornell wants to know the nature of the part of the mission that took them to Canada. Ziva flashes back to that night, to having Frog in her cross hairs, waiting for the fire order from Jenny. Fornell steps into that flashback, telling Ziva he knows she was there to kill Frog because as a trained Israeli agent, that’s what she does. She states she was there for mission safety and was never given a fire order. Fornell, now standing behind her, bent down so he is both literally and figuratively breathing down her neck, says the only reason she wasn’t given that order is because Jenny gave her the stand-down order at the last second, after they learned there was a deep undercover agent on scene, handling The Frog. Ah, Trent Kort. Boy, it’s not nice to see you again. (Remember the good old days and these long, tangled, interweaving stories? I loved them even as I hated them because they never ended well for at least one series regular. Well … I guess in that regard, things haven’t changed much at all.) Fornell tells her that Jenny manufactured the entire mission so she could get close enough to Frog to kill him, then lays the photo of the eye-less Frog in front of her.

When the photo is picked up, we discover we’ve moved on to Fornell questioning Ducky. Ducky says he met the man only once, but found him rather interesting. Fornell says Frog was fished out of the harbor that morning, dead less than two days. Ducky notes the M.E. who performed the autopsy and tells Fornell she is very good at her job. Ducky says he would still like to see the body, that another set of eyes wouldn’t be a bad thing, but Fornell flatly denies the request saying cause of death wasn’t in question. Gunshot to the head. He’s more interested in Ducky’s profiling capabilities. Ducky tells him that after his encounter with Frog, he was asked his opinion on the man. He has a flashback to telling Jenny that Frog wasn’t a typical arms dealer, that he wasn’t prone to using violence to solve his problems. Jenny tells Ducky she thinks Ducky liked the man and it’s clouding his judgment. Ducky counters that perhaps it’s not his judgment that is being clouded. Smoke! Fornell counters that he wants Ducky’s opinion of how Jenny acted when Ducky gave her his opinion. Ducky is honest and says she exhibited “obsessive behaviors.”

We shift to the gang down in holding in the evidence area. Ducky is telling Gibbs about his interrogation with Fornell and how he’s trying to paint a picture of Jenny that puts her behind the bull’s-eye. Gibbs counters that Fornell already knows all the information Ducky is telling him, that it’s merely confirmation. Ducky thinks Fornell is holding something back and asks Gibbs if he thinks maybe Jenny did do it. Gibbs flashes back to Jenny telling him that she will have another chance to get Frog someday. Gibbs goes to leave, and the agent in charge of watching over them tells Gibbs can’t leave. Ruh roh.

Gibbs puts his hands on the agent’s lapels, smooths them and tells him he’s going to have to stop Gibbs from leaving. The agent might have gulped a little. The elevator doors open just in the nick and Vance exits, asking if there is a problem. Gibbs says, “Only if you want there to be.” Vance smiles (and I reallllly want to snatch that toothpick out of his mouth. We get it. It’s his quirky trait. He’s cocky.). He tells Gibbs there are rules for a reason and Gibbs agrees, saying he has rules of his own. Vance says he’s heard that. More calmly, Gibbs asks Vance if there is any real reason to keep them all down there. We are all thankful when Vance takes that nasty toothpick out of his mouth and tells Gibbs that he’s well aware of his relationship with Jenny and how he’s not comfortable with intimacy between management and staff. Ooh, so much more smoke. There might be a fire!

Gibbs holds Vance’s gaze dead steady and says, “Me, either.” Vance seems to size him up on that, but the verdict isn’t obvious. He does, however, turn to the team and says if Fornell has interviewed them, they are free to go. Then — sigh — he pops the pick back in his mouth and reminds them they are not to investigate this case. Yeah. Good luck with that, Leon. Now spit that thing out. Gibbs turns to the team and motions them to follow him, saying there’s work to do. McGee reminds him they can’t investigate the case. Gibbs nods and says, “We investigate the FBI.” Hoo boy! Fade to a more satisfactory black-and-white!

Sean Murray as McGee, Cote de Pablo as Ziva, Mark Harmon as Gibbs and David McCallum as Ducky in NCIS. (Photo: Michael Desmond, CBS)

Gibbs’ basement is serving as HQ. Gibbs hands McGee his ancient computer (after blowing dust off the closed case), and when McGee says there’s no way to connect it to the world, Gibbs puts his old flip phone on top. HA. McGee says he’ll make it work, but he’ll need a way to get into the FBI files. Gibbs hands him the ID pack he took off the guy who was guarding them in the evidence locker. Heh. Gibbs sends Ducky off to sweet-talk the M.E. who did the autopsy on Frog out of her report.

Back at the real HQ, Abby and Tony are still waiting to talk to Fornell. Bored, Abby is going through an evidence box. Tony asks if there is food in there, and she finds an old Twinkie-type snack in an evidence bag and tosses it to him. Ew. (On the age, not the treat. Because … Twinkies.) She unearths a deck of Tarot cards and prepares to summon forth the cosmos, when Fornell comes to whisk her off for questioning. She looks worried, and Tony calmly tells her to do what she does best. “Dance?” she replies, confused. “Talk,” he counters. And off she goes. Tony reaches across the table and turns the Tarot card over to reveal The Hanged Man. Gulp.

Abby confounds Fornell with her chatter, derailing the interrogation entirely as she explains to Fornell that his entire theory is flawed because he’s presuming that a murder happened right under Gibbs’ nose, and that’s impossible. Because Gibbs knows all. She proceeds to do the deep dive into that theory, and we hop back to Gibbs’ basement where Tim and Ziva are doing the whole “a little to the left, no, the other way” dance as McGee tries to secure a connection from the ancient computer to the outside world. All that’s missing are foil hats and bunny ear antennas. (If you have to ask … enjoy your youth. Life comes at you fast.)

McGee manages to get in enough to read line code and finds the address of a witness who was questioned. He tells Gibbs that he might be able to convert the crime scene photos to dot matrix if Gibbs has a printer, whereupon Gibbs plops an old dot matrix printer right next to him. Ha. (Also, I love the bouncy Music of Humor soundtrack.) Gibbs sends Ziva out with a knife, directing her to the FBI surveillance car. He adds that he wants her to slash their tires, not their throats. Ziva merely smiles at that. (We miss you!)

Back in interrogation, Fornell has joined Vance in the room on the other side of the one-way glass. Abby is still seated in the room, her hand cupped around one eye like a telescope trying to see through said glass. Fornell is telling Vance he’s not entirely sure she’s all there. Nicely done, Abby. Abby suddenly “remembers” that Jenny asked her to do some personal forensic work for her. We flash back to Jenny asking Abby to find out who belongs to the fingerprints on a drinking glass and bottle Jenny hands to her. Abby tells Fornell the bottle and glass were left in her study, and the prints belonged to a dead man, Jenny’s father, who died years ago. Abby tells them that Jenny suspected maybe the CIA was trying to mess with her head, or frame her. This prompts Vance to smile at Fornell and put the toothpick back in his mouth, then comment on how Abby might be smarter than they’re giving her credit for. This right before Abby presses her nose and palms to the glass. HA.

We cut to Gibbs entering the lobby of a hotel, presumably the address McGee found, then following a woman back outside. As she climbs into the cab, Gibbs leans down and flashes his badge. Asks the woman inside the cab if he can buy her a cup of coffee. The camera pans around and we see that it’s Frog’s daughter, and Tony’s now lost love, Jeanne Benoit. Fade to black-and-white.

We come back to Ducky laying out large printouts of Frog’s autopsy, arranging them on a piece of plywood until they make a man-sized portrait of Frog in Death. (There goes the popcorn I was enjoying …) He’s chatting with Frog, as you do, telling him he’d hoped they’d meet again under better circumstances. I’m sure Frog would agree. Ducky notes various anomalies on the dead body and I find my keyboard suddenly has my full and undeterred attention for the duration of this little convo. Gah. I don’t need to see the stippling gunpowder pattern, Ducky. That’s your job. M’kay? Ducky surmises that either Frog, a normally overly cautious man, let someone get awfully close to him with a gun, or the gunshot wound was self-inflicted. An opinion shared by the initial M.E. Ducky wants a clue to why the FBI thinks he was murdered when Ducky’s conclusions are that Frog killed himself. He spies something in the printout of Frog’s hand and cryptically comments on how that’s a clue.

We shift to Gibbs and Jeanne sharing coffee by a cart. She tells him she was on the way to his office for questioning. Gibbs says he has different questions. She asks if they’re about Tony and he says no, they’re about her father.

We shift back to interrogation as the last member of the team enters, calling Fornell “Toby” and saying how last they met, Fornell had some not-so-nice things to say about Tony. (I think that was when he found Tony and his wife, Diane, asleep on a couch.) Tony says he hopes Fornell knows better these days than to think that of him. Fornell says Tony must have grown if Jenny chose him for an extended undercover operation. Tony off-handedly says, “Yeah, she played matchmaker.” Aw. This was such a heartbreaker. I was less than thrilled with how they handled their reunion in Tony’s finale with the series. But that’s for another day. This scene, however, is everything.

Fornell ponders aloud whether Jenny directed Tony to sleep with Jeanne. Tony demurs on that. Fornell asks Tony if he had a problem becoming intimate with the subject. Tony easily says no. Fornell mentions how Tony developed feelings for her and how unprofessional that was. He asks Tony how that happened, and through a montage of mental flashbacks of the two of them together, Tony says, “Gradually.” Fornell, smug and smiling, back when we really, really didn’t like him, asks Tony if Jenny directed him to break Jeanne’s heart and how that felt. What little smartassy façade Tony has been able to maintain slips, and he tells Fornell that it’s beginning to feel more like a therapy session than an interrogation. He wants to know why Fornell is so interested in Tony’s feelings, and Fornell tells him, “Because you had them.”

Back in the park with Gibbs and Jeanne, she tells him it’s odd being back in the city. Jeanne, a doctor, says she took a job in Gabon, Africa, that her commute to work every day was made in a canoe, and the only thing she had to avoid were hippos. Gibbs asks her if being there helped, and we assume he means help her get over Tony. (She ended the relationship when she found out he was an agent, assuming everything they’d done was a lie, or based on one, which, in the end, was the same thing to her.) She says it helped some people, but that she couldn’t get what happened out of her head.

Gibbs tells her that whatever it was she told the FBI, they’re convinced her father was murdered. Jeanne says, rather flatly, that he was. Gibbs asks how she can be so sure of that. She turns to Gibbs, who is not looking at her, and says, “I thought you knew what I saw that night.” Gibbs, still not looking directly at her, asks her what she saw.

Michael Weatherly (in back) as DiNozzo, David McCallum as Ducky, Cote de Pablo as Ziva, Sean Murray as McGee and Mark Harmon as Gibbs in NCIS. (Photo: Michael Desmond, CBS)

We shift back to Gibbs’ place. With the dot matrix printer whirring away, printing the layout of the boat Frog had been on before his death, Ziva has created an outline using tape on the floor. They re-create where the shell casing was found and try to piece together what happened. If Frog didn’t kill himself, then that means he let whoever did kill him essentially walk right up to him and shoot him. Why would he do that?

Back in interrogation, Fornell laments on how Jeanne must be suffering from her heartbreak. Such a lovely guy. Tony says he didn’t mean to hurt her, and Fornell comments on how he didn’t really have a choice, seeing as she was in love with him, too. He says he doesn’t know that. Fornell tells Tony he’s a better liar than that. Tony flashes back to him telling Jeanne he loves her, to her smiling, to them kissing, then he looks at Fornell and smartass Tony is back. He says, Sure, the whole thing was a lie. After all, he was lying the whole time he was with her, too, so why believe anything he says?

There is anger underlying the smart-aleck tone, and he calls out, “Are you getting this?” to Vance on the other side of the glass. “Because it’s good stuff.” And we know it’s killing him. (We really miss you, too, DiNozzo!) Vance’s expression remains flat, and yes, the toothpick is firmly in place. In the room, Tony sighs, still annoyed, and tells Fornell, that yes, Jeanne was in love with him, too. Fornell asks him how he thought it was going to end, saying there could be no happily ever after. That seems to hit Tony a bit hard, though Fornell has a point. He reminds Tony that on the day her father died, there were two attempts on Jeanne’s life.

Fornell comments on how Tony barely saved her from the gun-wielding drug pusher then almost lost her to a car bomb. Tony’s all, “Yeah, maybe you guys ought to figure that out.” Fornell comments on how it might have been one of Frog’s enemies. Tony, who’s past having it now, agrees, given the man was an international arms dealer, he had one or two enemies out there. Fornell keeps hammering, saying that Tony knew better than anyone that Jeanne was the key to getting to her father. He wants to walk Tony through the night Frog died.

Back in the park, Jeanne gets up to leave. Gibbs asks her again what she told the FBI. She is agitated now and says she told them what happened the night her father was killed. Gibbs asks her how she knew what happened (given she wasn’t there).

In Gibbs’ basement, Ducky shows Ziva the autopsy printout of Frog’s hand and asks her about the dark mark on the back of his hand. Ziva says it’s a pressure point and demonstrates with McGee’s hand, making him wince.

In interrogation, Fornell tells Tony that Ziva told him she left Tony alone in Jeanne’s apartment, and a phone call to him the next morning went unanswered. Tony said he went for a drive. Fornell reminds him his car had been blown up. Tony said he took the company car, that he needed to clear his head. Tony tells Fornell he wasn’t plotting anything, he was upset. Fornell says of course he was. The woman he loved was running for her life and Tony couldn’t protect her.

We start flipping back and forth between scenes in a rapidly building pace.

In the park, Jeanne is walking away and Gibbs is right behind her, demanding to know if Jeanne knew who was with her father that night on the boat. She says yes.

Flip back to Fornell, hammering Tony, saying that as long as Jeanne’s father was alive, she’d never be safe. Tony had to know there was only one way to ultimately protect her.

In the basement, Ziva is making a gun-to-the-head motion to McGee, while his hand is trapped in the pressure-point grip, meaning he couldn’t defend himself.

In the park, Gibbs is hounding after Jeanne, asking her to tell him who pulled the trigger. She turns and says, “Tony,” right as, back in the basement, Ziva says, “Bang.”

Fornell smacks the table in the interrogation room, accusing Tony of killing Frog. That takes Tony aback. His eyes widen, and he says, “I did what?” And we fade to black-and-white. And take a breath!

We’re in Gibbs’ basement with Gibbs, Ducky, Ziva and McGee. Ducky repeats what Gibbs must have just told them, that Jeanne says she saw Tony shoot her father. Ziva and McGee admit he had motive and means. Ducky tells Gibbs that no two suicides are the same, and yet he’s seen Frog’s mode of death once before, down to the last detail, including the mark on the hand. Gibbs seems to have already come to that conclusion. He says it’s the same as Jenny’s father’s suicide. McGee comments on how it was determined that Jenny’s father didn’t commit suicide, and Gibbs nods, then takes out his phone, saying, “Someone is missing from this party.”

Back at HQ, Vance is seated at Jenny’s desk as she walks in with Fornell. She tells Vance not to get comfy and how she’s had agents crawling all over her place that day and wouldn’t tell them what they were looking for. She’s casual enough, but there’s no mistaking the tense undercurrents. Fornell comments on how Frog was killed with a Glock and that they know Jenny has a second weapon for personal use, and it’s the same model. Only, they can’t find it. She replies that they could have just asked her. Vance asks her. She says she gave it to The Frog and flashes back to doing just that in her study that night. She tells Fornell that Gibbs witnessed her do it. Fornell says that works for him. Frog took the gun from Jenny, Tony took it from Frog. Jenny frowns at that, and they tell her Tony is in custody. Vance says they have an eye witness on the dock that puts Tony on the boat. Jenny’s not having it and reminds them a person on the dock would be hard-pressed to see that, in the dark, from that distance. Fornell says how he thinks Jeanne would recognize her boyfriend, prompting Jenny’s eyes to widen more. She makes it clear she’s not a fan of them taking the recently heartbroken daughter’s word for it. Jenny angrily says if they turned her entire department upside down based on Jeanne’s testimony, then Jenny wants to talk to her. Fornell says no way, but Vance agrees to it right away. Well. This should be fun.

Rocky Carroll as Vance in NCIS. (Photo: Michael Desmond, CBS)

We have a kind of surreal interrogation scene. Vance and Fornell are on the other side of the glass. Jeanne is seated when Jenny walks in. Jenny is uber calm, the epitome of smooth. She sits and first softly apologizes for putting Tony in Jeanne’s path, for crossing the line. She then quietly guides Jeanne through that night, through her anger and pain. Finding out the man she loves wasn’t who she thought he was, finding out her father was an arms dealer. First, Jeanne blames Tony, then she says she did it, but Jenny keeps calmly walking her through her emotions, and we learn the truth is that Jeanne didn’t go to the marina at all. At the last second, she decided against it, she was too angry at them both. She assumed her father would come to her, find her, as he always did when things were bad. When he didn’t, she knew something had happened. Jenny tells Jeanne she understands how angry she must have been, while also grieving, and racked with guilt, but even if Jeanne had gone to the marina, Jenny tells her she’s not sure she could have saved him. Then Jenny gets up and gives the men on the other side of the glass a quelling look, like, “You could have just asked me from the start,” then just as calmly walks out of the room.

Vance and Fornell are like, “Who do we talk to now?” just as Gibbs opens the door and with a smile says, “How’s the case?” HA. Fornell tells Gibbs the case is falling apart and he doesn’t need Gibbs to make things harder. Gibbs says he’s there to solve problems, not cause them, and he ushers in Trent Kort. Gah. Kort. Boy, does his story end up having a very, very long and twisty life. (I don’t miss him.) CIA Trent informs Fornell that he’s all done working the case. We get a flashback to Jenny asking Kort for his help with Frog and him informing her it wouldn’t end well. In the present, Fornell explains to Vance that Kort was Frog’s handler. In turn, Kort informs them that Frog was killed by an associate who has since taken over Frog’s arms dealership. Fornell wonders aloud if Kort just confessed to killing Frog, and he replies that the CIA doesn’t assassinate folks. “Not on American soil,” Gibbs chimes in. Vance asks for Kort’s “get-out-of-jail-free card,” meaning paperwork from up the chain of command proving his story is true. He hands it to Vance, saying, “Eyes only.” The paperwork says that the hit was sanctioned, that Frog wanted to retire and, uh, now he’s retired. Well, then.

Vance says he’s all done, and they can head out now. Gibbs snags Kort’s hand before he can leave. Using the pressure-point dig, making Kort flinch, Gibbs leans in and asks him who killed Jenny’s father. Kort smiles, says that the man took his own life, then removes his hand from Gibbs’ grip and walks out.

Fornell and Gibbs walk out together. Fornell asks Gibbs if there was anything Kort wouldn’t say to keep his long-term op intact. Gibbs says nope. Fornell wonders if Kort might have said anything to shut the FBI investigation down before they dug too deep. Fornell walks through the night in question, stating that Jenny gave Frog the gun, saying he had the bullets (he’d removed them earlier), so he might as well take it. That explains how the gun got to the yacht, and Gibbs agrees that would be true. Fornell says that according to Kort, he then used that same gun to kill Frog. And let’s that statement hang there, then says, “You’re right. She’s cleared.” Gibbs asks for the file, which is in Fornell’s hand. He lifts it up, says, “Maybe,” then walks away. Heh. Oh, Tobias.

Final scene. Kort walks around the corner on his way to exit the building, but runs right into Tony’s hard-swung fist. Nice connection, too. Tony tells Kort that Frog wasn’t just an operative, he was somebody’s father. Kort gives a sudden shove and sets Tony right back, causing Ziva to step forward. Then Kort stalks off. Tony is ragged, Ziva standing there, and then down the hall, Jeanne is being escorted out. She shifts her gaze, Tony averts his as well, and it’s all just awful. Ziva snaps at Tony to “be a man.” Tony rounds on her, his anger palpable, and reminds her that Jeanne accused him of murdering her father. Ziva repeats herself, then asks him, “Who is the bad guy here?” Ziva tells him to go tell Jeanne what she needs to hear. Tony looks like he wants to refuse, but Ziva holds his gaze, and he relents and walks off after her, still angry and tense.

Tony walks up and asks the agent escorting Jeanne out to step aside. He tells Jeanne how sorry he is that she got caught up in all of it. She cuts him off, steps in closer and asks him if any of it was real. He holds her gaze a long time, then says, “No.” (And my romance-writer heart clenches into a tiny, deeply unsatisfied fist.) She steps into the elevator, turns to face him, her eyes rimmed with tears, and whispers, “I wish I never met you.” Her face crumples as the doors close between them. And yeah … I get why he did it, but that’s not how I write the stories. So, I don’t have to like it.

Up in Jenny’s office, she comes back in to find Vance packing up. She stows her badge and weapon in her desk drawer, saying she hopes she’s not hurrying him off. Vance comments that he understands Jenny is taking a few weeks of personal time. She apologizes and says she never intended for him to have to step in and handle things. He says he didn’t mind, but his wife (hi, Jackie!) wasn’t so understanding. She notices a toothpick lying on the edge of her desk, asks if it’s his. He tells her to keep it. She knocks it off her desk. HA! I knew I liked her. Gibbs enters as Vance walks out. He mentions to Gibbs that he owes the FBI for two sets of car tires. Heh. Gibbs nods, tells Vance to bill him.

Gibbs comments on the fairy-tale ending. (Oh, I don’t think Tony and Jeanne feel that way.) Jenny agrees, though, saying, “The Frog is dead, the jesters have left the court.” Gibbs adds, “And the queen is back on her throne.” She tells him if he’s expecting a knighthood, she’s misplaced her sword. Gibbs shoots back, “Maybe it’s with your gun.” Ooooh! Plot twist!

Gibbs comments on Frog’s odd quirk, being a gun dealer who never carried a gun. Jenny says, “Except that night.” We have a flashback to the same scene of Jenny pushing the gun at him, saying he has the bullets, he can protect his own self. In the present, Gibbs asks her if that’s how it happened. She said that’s how she remembers it. (Her overly precious, sweet-miss mode of speech is getting a bit tiresome here.) She asks him if he remembers it differently, essentially challenging him to disagree with her. Gibbs flashes back to that night again, and after their little exchange, we see Frog place the gun back on Jenny’s desk, next to a folded piece of paper, telling her that by not protecting him, she’s signing his death warrant. In the present, the two hold their gazes a long moment, then Gibbs says, “Long live the queen.” Fade to a Queen Jenny black-and-white.

And that was how they used to do it in the good old NCIS days!

Well, this story might not have had a happy ending, but I know a story that does. Cue shameless plug! My brand-spanking-new book, Bluestone & Vine, just hit the stands yesterday, and though there is a lot of laughter and, yes, a few tears … it all works out in the end. The fun part is how they get there! Looking for a feel-good read with a bit of an emotional punch? I hope you’ll look it up!

I know one person who won’t have to worry about that! The winner of our last giveaway gets her very own signed copy and a lovely bookmark charm exclusively for this release by The Cotton Thistle. Come on down, Deborah Dumm! Drop me an e-mail to donna@donnakauffman.com with your address, and your goodies will be on their way to you!

If you haven’t had the chance to dive into my Blue Hollow Falls series, but you’re intrigued, you’re in luck! This week the giveaway will land you a copy of the first two installments in the series, Blue Hollow Falls and The Inn at Blue Hollow Falls. Want in? Drop me an e-mail to donna@donnakauffman.com with “I want to go to Blue Hollow Falls” in the subject line and you’re in! I’ll announce the winner in the next classic recap column in two weeks’ time, on July 11. (Don’t forget to check back to see if you’ve won!)

Next up we take a stroll down memory lane and recap one of Michael Weatherly’s (Tony DiNozzo) favorite episodes, alllll the way back to season one, with Dead Man Talking.

Until then …

Donna Kauffman is the USA TODAY and Wall Street Journal bestselling author of over 70 novels, translated and sold in more than 26 countries around the world. Born into the maelstrom of Washington, D.C., politics, she now lives in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, where she is surrounded by a completely different kind of wildlife. In addition to her NCIS recaps for USA TODAY’s Happy Ever After blog, she is also a DIYer, a baker, a gardener and a volunteer transporter for the Wildlife Center of Virginia and Rockfish Sanctuary. She loves to hear from readers (and NCIS viewers!). You can drop her a line to donna@donnakauffman.com. For more info about her latest releases, please visit her online at www.DonnaKauffman.com.

MORE ON HEA: See a fun Down & Dirty interview with Donna and read what she learned while writing Blue Hollow Falls

EVEN MORE: See more of Donna’s NCIS posts

Anyone who loves TV Land’s Younger is familiar with the story arc of Marriage Vacation, the fictitious breakout debut novel and the introduction of its author to the fold. Fortunately for fans, it was taken outside the fictional context and is as good as it’s made out to be. As much as I love reviewing indie romances, I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to talk about Marriage Vacation, especially as a fan of the show.

It’s going to get a bit metacognitive, so bear with me: Kate — who is supposed to be a facsimile of the fictional Pauline Turner Brooks’ character — realizes how unfulfilled she is after going to a friend’s wedding solo. She has the perfect life and family, but over the years has developed a sort of unconscious resentment toward her husband, Karl, for living his dream while hers remains stagnant. After a friend suggests going to Thailand for some R&R, she spontaneously plans a trip, thinking she will be gone a week at most, but ends up staying there for months. Not only does she get a chance to resume her writing, but she gets the opportunity to really step outside her comfort zone and contribute to a cause greater than her and her Upper East Side life. Whether it’s finding her Zen or helping refugees, Kate finds purpose in helping others, making deep-rooted friendships along the way with people who know her outside of her identities as a mother, a wife and a hostess. As one month rolls into the next, Kate has finally begun to figure out who she is, but it comes at the cost of her family and her marriage, and she must figure out how to fight for her family without losing herself in the process again.

While we aren’t too privy to the dynamics of Kate and her family, her experiences of being a relegated member of the family shine through in her flashbacks and letters she writes to her husband. As fans of the show, we are compelled on principle alone to dislike Pauline, Charles’ estranged wife because we are rooting for him and Liza. Her character is crafted to create conflict, but this novel — while we don’t know how much of it is a mirror of their relationship — allows us into her psyche and to sympathize with her, not so much as a woman who is being dropped by her husband to be with someone else, but as one whose goals got waylaid because of her family and how she fights hard to get them back on the right track.

Marriage Vacation is both rich in prose and emotion (and the infamous page 58), tightly woven together by flashbacks of a couple on the brink of failure, teetering on the edge and trying to find their way back to each other before it’s too late.

Deeply entrenched in nostalgia, Marriage Vacation gives Kate the agency to temporarily step away from the trappings of her married life and put herself first for the first time in over 10 years. The experiences she has in Thailand and the people she meets are so vivid and multidimensional that readers might find themselves unwilling to part with these characters, even as Kate is preparing to go back to her reality.

We don’t hear too much from Karl here — his role is constrained by Kate’s perception of their relationship, but his gestures in their past are swoony enough to make us root for them and wish for him to finally prove himself.

Objectively, we know there will be some resolution to their relationship — he is not meant to take a greater role in a book that centers on a woman’s vacation away from the institution that has kept them together. As viewers, we are aware of who Karl, er, Charles is meant to be with, but this novel evokes sympathy for Kate and her TV counterpart and admiration for a woman who ignores the societal criticism that comes with her bold decision, challenging the stereotype that women cannot have a family and pursue their aspirations simultaneously.

Kamrun Nesa is a blogger, writer and hopeless bookworm. Give her a good happily-ever-after and you got yourself a new best friend. She works in the publicity department at Grand Central Publishing, but will recommend only indie romances for HEA. Follow her on Twitter and Instagram.

MORE ON HEA: See more of Kamrun’s indie romance recs

It’s good to be back! Sorry for the unexpected delay in my return. I had a run-in with an angry gall bladder (mine) and try as I might to break up with him, he was determined to give things another chance. He’s on notice, though. Even a hint of side-eye, and he’s outta here!

Mark Harmon as Gibbs in NCIS season one episode Dead Man Talking. (Photo: CBS)

I’m especially happy to return to this particular classic episode. As you know, this summer I’ve been recapping the favorite episodes of various cast members. Michael Weatherly talked to TV Guide back in 2012 about his favorite episode, choosing one from his very first season on the show, which also happens to be the show’s first season as well.

Weatherly chose Dead Man Talking telling the magazine, “That was our 19th episode, and it could be the first that was a true blending of all the elements — the first one that you could say, that’s an NCIS episode. It has the whole package. It starts when Pacci, one of our special agents who worked in the squad room, gets gutted in an elevator. We go to the crime scene and his entrails are out. It’s grim. And within one act, I’m undercover, tracking a transvestite, who I end up making out with in a bar. It’s hijinks galore.”

 As you all know, I’m not a fan of the grisly parts, but I am a huge fan of hijinks! Let’s take a trip in the Wayback Machine, allll the way back to April 2004, and see what our fledging team of agents is up to.

We open with an alarm going off in an unknown building causing the security guard to gripe to the night janitor. He’s convinced the fire department guys are purposefully setting off the fire alarm as payback for him making them sign in. He gets up as the elevator descends to the lobby, not about to take the stairs for a false alarm … only to back up a step when the doors slide open to reveal a disemboweled (gah!) body of a man lying on the floor of the elevator.

Cue awesome-even-in-season-one opening credits and theme song! Hello, Tony DiNozzo! Hello, Caitlyn Todd!

In the Bull Pen of Orangey Goodness, Tony is sliding on his shades, getting ready to leave for the day, but pauses to answer the phone on Kate’s desk — something he knows she frowns on. He gets as far as getting the guy’s name when Kath enters and makes him hand the phone over. She sets a date with the caller, then typical sibling-like/co-worker banter ensues between her and Tony after she hangs up. They continue as they head to the elevator, turning back only when called to by Gibbs, who enters from the other side of the bull pen. One look at his face has both agents forgetting all about their little back-and-forth. Gibbs tells them that Agent Pacci, who sat right behind Kate, has been found murdered. The trio each has a little flashback to their co-worker, the most important from Gibbs, who recalls Pacci asking to speak to him about a cold case, but Gibbs brushing him off to a later time. Pacci takes it in stride, commenting, “what’s one more day?” What, indeed.

At the scene, the local police detective called in Gibbs when he realized the body was that of an NCIS agent, and Gibbs thanks him for letting NCIS take lead. Tony and Kate head up to the fifth floor where the fire alarm originated, while Gibbs goes to talk to the security guard and night janitor. Ducky and an unnamed agent turn to the body and I turn quite decidedly back to my laptop monitor. Even for NCIS, this one is rather up-close-and-gris-LY. Gah. Squared. Ducky comments on how hard it is to be detached when the body is someone they know, but the work goes on.

Sasha Alexander as Kate in NCIS season one episode Dead Man Talking. (Photo: CBS)

The security guard tells Gibbs that someone went out the rear emergency exit, tripping the alarm, but there is no security footage. The building is being retro-fitted with a new system that is, as yet, not online. The guard doesn’t recall Pacci entering the building, which annoys Gibbs given the size of the small lobby. Security Guard says he might have been signing construction guys in and out at the time. Gibbs demands a list of everyone working on the building and the floors they are working on.

Ducky tells Gibbs (with the Violins of Appropriate Intrigue playing in the background) that Pacci didn’t die from the disembowelment, but more likely from a bullet to the neck. Ducky adds he’d have bled out quickly. Certainly a better choice if those were the only two options. Ducky says Pacci was shot elsewhere, given the lack of blood (well, there certainly seems like a LOT of blood, but no pool of it, no.) He adds that the disembowelment happened in the elevator. I add that I hope we move on from this elevator scene soon. I can’t unsee it, so they really don’t need to keep showing it to me. Please.

Gibbs tells Ducky about putting Pacci off about a cold case and how it feels like his fault. Ducky disagrees, of course, but we all know Gibbs is all about it now. He takes a call from Kate who has found the pool of blood, starting on the sixth floor. They trailed it backwards, she explains, as we get a visual of Pacci stepping out of the staircase on the sixth floor and taking an immediate gunshot to the neck. He went back down the staircase, clutching his neck, made it to the fifth, pulled the fire alarm, then made it to the elevator. So much more blood. So much.

So, the question is, who got in the elevator and gutted him between the time he pulled the fire alarm and the time the elevator descended to the lobby, because not a big time frame there.

Back in the bull pen, the team somberly takes a look at Pacci’s desk, with Gibbs wearing rubber gloves as he uses Pacci’s keys to unlock his desk drawers. They find his service revolver, and Gibbs surmises that Pacci left it behind because he was tailing someone and didn’t want to have to identify himself or risk setting off an alarm. Gibbs tasks Kate and Tony with checking out Pacci’s house while he goes over his case files. Kate is surprised Gibbs wants them to go now, that night, and quickly says she’ll make a call then get right on it when Gibbs snaps at her. Tony tells him he doesn’t have to make any calls and heads away, leaving Gibbs to sigh, knowing that he’s on edge about the case already and that his team knows it now, too.

While at Pacci’s apartment, the phone rings. Tony answers it only to discover it’s McGee, who had been trying to retrieve a three-year-old file Pacci had asked him to dig up. It’s in reference to a car accident, but McGee hadn’t as yet looked at it. Tony tells him Pacci has been murdered, and McGee express his sympathy. Tony tells him to bring the file to NCIS HQ in the morning.

The following morning, Gibbs enters Abby Lab, Caff-Pow in hand. (Ah, those were the days!) She was able to figure out the kind of bullet used and that it was fired from a small, easy to conceal Smith & Wesson. No hits in the data base, though. Gibbs asks her to search the hard drive on Pacci’s computer for anything related to the cold case he was working on.

Down in Ducky’s Digs, Ducky confirms the cause of death and the post-mortem gutting. Gibbs asks if it was “rage or ritual” and Ducky thinks it was neither. He thinks the killer was looking for something. Ducky spied a small something inside Pacci via x-ray, so small it would have been hard to find. The killer knew the alarm had been pulled and had limited time, so he’d just slashed his way in. Ducky extricates the item, with the same unnamed assistant helping him. Turns out it’s a small memory card from a digital camera. Gibbs tells Ducky that Pacci knew he was dying, and he knew Ducky would be doing the autopsy. He knew Ducky would find the memory card. “Dead man talking,” says Gibbs. No fade to black-and-white. Those started later. Sigh. It’s just not the same.

Down in Abby Lab with Tony and Gibbs, Abby is going through the photos, which are of a woman clearly being surveilled. Tony thinks she’s a hottie. Abby thinks she’s too old for him. Tony disagrees, saying she’s about his age. Abby smiles, “that’s exactly my point.” HA. Abby says they were all taken in the past two days. Enter Kate who says that none of the workers at the building remember seeing Pacci, but they did find Pacci’s NCIS issue camera at the bottom of the stairs.

David McCallum as Ducky in NCIS season one episode Dead Man Talking. (Photo: CBS)

Enter a flustered McGee who is late seeing as he had to park in the visitor’s parking. Oh, young padawan, you’re not a probie yet! Gibbs takes the briefcase out of McGee’s fumbling hands and yanks the file out, immediately pulling the material from the folder. McGee explains it’s a civil investigation of a car accident that happened in a neighboring county three years prior. Naval officer was killed. Tony tries to scrounge the sandwich McGee had packed in his briefcase but Abby intercedes and puts it back, grinning madly as she introduces herself to McGee. Ah, right. This is also pre-Abby/McGee relationship, too. Heck, it’s pretty much pre-everything. It’s Season 1. Ha.

Gibbs recalls the case, saying the commander involved in the crash had been under investigation for credit card fraud, but died from injuries sustained in the crash before the case could be pursued. The money he stole was never found. Gibbs surmises that Pacci must have found a lead on the money and bets is has something to do with the woman in the photos. Gibbs says he’s going to bring McGee over for the case and tells him and Tony to go find out who the woman is and what connection she might have to the cold case. Abby asks McGee (who has extraordinarily red lips in this. Not sure why.) if he needs a place to stay. HA. Meanwhile, Kate asks Gibbs how the commander died. Gibbs hands her the file. He was burned to death. Kate finds that a bit suspicious. Like … maybe the commander faked his own death and is off somewhere living the high life with the money he stole?

We’re back down in Ducky’s Digs with Gibbs and Kate asking Ducky to look at the commander’s autopsy report. Pacci had it pulled, so he must have suspected something. Ducky comments that the ME who did the autopsy is very competent, and he’d be surprised if the man missed something. But he agrees to look over the file as requested. Well, ordered. Though Kate does add, “please” after Gibbs strides out. Ducky asks Pacci for some direction, earning raised eyebrows from The Assistant Who Shall Not Be Named.

On board ship, Gibbs and Kate talk to the commander’s harried CO, who said he’d told Pacci everything he could remember just a few days ago. Gibbs tells him Pacci was murdered the day before, and the man seems suitably abashed. He tells Gibbs that the commander was his supply commander and he was shocked when the man was suspected of the fraud. He adds that many people had access to the credit card data, though, so that’s how he likely pulled it off. Kate asks for clarification. CO tells her that Commander asked for a cut back in the cash being disbursed, then set up dummy credit card accounts along with all the many, many real ones that were set up by sailors seeking credit when they couldn’t get cash. Small charges were made to these faked cards, so they’d go unnoticed, but the money accumulates when there are so many of them. They ask how he got caught. CO tells them that he got away with it for four years, then got greedy and tried to bilk the entire Atlantic Fleet Command. He made twelve million off them before somebody realized what he was up to. No one knows where the money ended up. When Commander died, his accounts showed only the normal amount of money for a man of his rank, which is why CO says he’s not sure Commander was the one who did it. Gibbs asks him exactly what Pacci asked him about. Turns out all Pacci wanted to know was who the commander was dating, and CO had no idea.

Back at HQ, Tony is impatiently waiting for McGee to nail down Mystery Woman’s address. He does this with a combination of tree bark, Victorian streetlamps and USPS mail boxes. Don’t ask. He hands the street address to Tony who sends McGee off to get him some coffee while he finds out who lives at that address. He has a name as Kate and Gibbs enter, telling Kate he figured it out through process of elimination. Enter McGee with the coffee as Gibbs heads out with Tony. He takes the coffee and thanks McGee for finding the address (heh) then, after sipping it, goes back to Tony’s desk, spits the coffee out into Tony’s trashcan, followed by dumping the coffee cup in the trash, too. With a glare at McGee, he heads out, with a forlorn and coffee-less Tony behind him. Kate is amused. As am I.

Sasha Alexander as Kate and Mark Harmon as Gibbs in NCIS season one episode Dead Man Talking. (Photo: CBS)

As Tony and Gibbs walk along the same street as the address, Tony relays that he’s learned the woman — Amanda Reed — just bought the townhouse, paid in cash, no mortgage, new country club member and apparently an all-around upstanding citizen. Gibbs is unimpressed. Sounds like suddenly new money to me. Tony asks if he can go question the woman, saying he can “work her,” but Gibbs says Pacci was surveilling her for a reason, and until they figure out what the reason is, they aren’t approaching her. Gibbs is figuring out where Pacci was when he took the photos. In an unrented upper floor apartment across the street, from the looks of it.

Gibbs approaches the man sweeping the sidewalk in front of the building Pacci used as his spy hole and asks if he’s the manager. The man says no, he just has a thing for sweeping sidewalks, which earns an instant smile from Gibbs. Tony is brushing something off of Gibbs shoulder as Gibbs asks if the man has an apartment for rent. He looks at the two of them, then asks if they’re “together.” This earns a smile from Gibbs, Tony and me. Gibbs shows him his badge and the man says he had another guy who flashed the same badge. Turns out he just took a few photos, then left. Gibbs asks to see the apartment. Cranky once more, the manager wants to know if it’s for photos, or to rent. Gibbs promptly says, “rent” and, like magic, the guy is all smiles again. He tells Tony they’re picking up where Pacci left off. Stake-out time! Tony’s stoke meter is high.

Back in the bull pen, Gibbs assigns Tony and McGee to the second shift, prompting some concern from Kate. Tony insists McGee looks up to him, like a mentor. Gibbs offers Kate that shift with Tony instead. Suddenly she’s thinking it will help to build McGee’s character. Heh. Kate says that Amanda has no driver’s license or car, but that’s not rare in the city. Tony finds a connection between Amanda and the Commander. Apparently the townhouse she bought was in his family for generations until it was lost in a bankruptcy. Tony has a call in to the real estate agent who sold the house to Amanda. Enter McGee who says he’s had a secure phone line installed into the apartment, and the van is loaded and ready to go. McGee tells Gibbs that Pacci requisitioned the same equipment, but never picked it up.

In the apartment, Gibbs is filming Amanda as she enters her brownstone. Kate is down on the street. Gibbs talks to Abby through a headset. She’s linked to the camera surveillance and can see what Gibbs sees. She said she finished going through Pacci’s computer, but didn’t find much there. Said Pacci was more old school and didn’t save much to his computer. Kate enters and gives a rundown of where Amanda went while she was out. Starbucks and to pick up a prescription. They watch as she enters the rooms inside her townhouse. Kate spies a Prada handbag, notes how expensive it is.

Tony talks to the chain-smoking real estate agent. She tells him that Amanda wrote a check for the full amount, so she didn’t really get to know her or have to run any of her financials. She said Pacci first asked her about the townhouse three years ago, requesting he be told if it became available. The agent forgot until after she sold it but contacted him anyway. She was surprised that rather than be upset, Pacci was excited to hear the news.

Sean Murray as McGee in NCIS season one episode Dead Man Talking. (Photo: CBS)

Gibbs is looking at Pacci’s computer trying to figure out why Pacci was interested in the Bangkok Visitor’s Bureau. Enter Tony and McGee for their shift. Tony relays the real estate agent info, then McGee says he’s traced the last three residences where Amanda lived and all of them were located within ten miles of where the commander was stationed at the time. Gibbs tells Tony the next day is trash day, so he wants the two of them to go through hers after she takes it out. Kate informs Tony that the sole bathroom had better be as clean as she’s leaving it when she returns in the morning. Tony is all, “what do you think I’m going to do?” She tells him she’s seen him fire his gun and doesn’t trust his aim. HAA! They leave and Tony tells McGee they have to play some prank on Kate. McGee reminds him that a prank on Kate will be a prank on Gibbs. Then he says since she’ll definitely be expecting them to do something, they should do nothing, which will drive her crazy. Tony loves this idea, and the bromance blooms.

Down in Ducky’s Digs, he tells Gibbs that from what he can tell, the original autopsy was carried out accurately and thoroughly. He also tells Gibbs that the ID was made using a DNA sample as the body was otherwise too badly burned. Gibbs tells Ducky to get the tissue samples back from the county where the autopsy was performed and have Abby run the DNA again. Ducky comments that he heard that the director asked Gibbs to speak at Pacci’s memorial service. Gibbs says he couldn’t do it, it wouldn’t feel right, given he feels responsible for the man’s death. Ducky laments this choice, but Gibbs heads out.

Back in the apartment, McGee is going through Amanda’s trash, splayed out on a plastic sheet on the floor while Tony ogles — er, observes — Amanda on the phone in her apartment, annoyed about something, while she’s also putting on her blouse. He’s in full cartoon-hearts-for-eyes mode, and McGee just rolls his eyes. He tells Tony he found nothing in the trash but banana peels and mango remnants and proof that she appears to purchase every beauty product sold on tv. Amanda heads out to her stoop steps to do a little container gardening and Tony suddenly needs to get some fresh air. Ruh roh. Gibbs won’t be happy about this.

Ducky drops off the samples with Abby, all dressed for Pacci’s memorial service. He tells Abby the original DNA testing was done properly by a reputable lab with fully competent results, but Gibbs wants her to test them again anyway. Ducky happens to notice the screen behind Abby of the patched in surveillance camera. Abby asks McGee why Tony is across the street talking to Amanda. McGee, still cleaning up the splayed trash scrambles over to the camera. We listen in as Tony talks to Amanda about wanting to paint his door but how the historical society is giving him grief. Apparently that’s what she was kvetching about on the phone, so she laments the situation with him. Abby tells McGee that if Tony gets nailed for this, McGee goes down with him, and that whatever happens, he is not to lie to Gibbs. She tells him Gibbs is like Santa Claus, he’ll know if McGee is lying.

Gibbs and Kate enter the apartment later that day, still dressed for the memorial, which they just attended. Kate thinks the place looks too clean. McGee says he found nothing in Amanda’s trash. Gibbs knows McGee is nervous about something. Kate takes a call from the guy she is dating and steps in the other room, so Tony — who is manning the camera and sonic mic — casually swings the mic around so it picks up her conversation. Oh, Tony. Kate catches him and asks for permission to shoot him. Gibbs casually says, “Mm hm.” Heh.

Abby pops up on the patched computer screen telling Gibbs he’s a genius for getting her to re-examine the DNA testing. She didn’t run the test, because she didn’t have to. The remains she has have a completely different blood type than the commander. So … bingo! Commander is still alive! McGee comments on how he’s somewhere living with all those millions, prompting Tony to mutter, “Lucky bastard.” Gibbs walks to the window and adds, “Not for long.”

Sasha Alexander as Kate in NCIS season one episode Dead Man Talking. (Photo: CBS)

If Weatherly hadn’t spilled some specific beans in his “why I love this episode” chat, I might not have put it together, but clearly we all know where this is heading now, right? Which actually makes what else is yet to happen that much more entertaining. Oh, Tony.

Speaking of, Tony and McGee’s bromance continues to bloom as Tony makes movie references that McGee doesn’t get, and he confides in Tony that he’s trying his hand at writing a mystery novel. Then Tony sees the mailman leave a small package on top of Amanda’s mailbox and hops down to see who it’s from, much to McGee’s dismay. Amanda catches him in the act, but he charms his way out of it, saying he wanted to see her again. She invites him inside. Oh, Tony.

Back at HQ, Kate and Gibbs have already learned that the tech who ran the original DNA testing died in a car accident two years prior. Now they learn he and the commander were school chums. Gibbs puts together the fact that Commander has killed whoever it was he used as a body double in the car crash that supposedly killed him, killed his school chum after his DNA-faking services were no longer needed, killed Pacci when he realized he was tailing him, leading Gibbs to wonder if he’s now on to them tailing him as well. Ruh roh, Tony!

Gibbs calls McGee, finds out where Tony is, then has the surveillance feed patched in so they can listen as Amanda invites Tony to a nearby pub for a meal and he accepts. She says she’s going to change and will meet him outside. Tony races back across the street, only to have McGee hand him the phone. Gibbs demands to know what the heck Tony is doing and he tells him he saw and opening and took it. Gibbs tells him, “Good.” Tony is surprised by this, then Gibbs tells Tony that he is now the bait, that he suspects the commander is watching them watch Amanda, like he watched Pacci. He tells him good luck and to stay out of elevators. Then slams down the phone. Ouch. Suddenly that date doesn’t sound near as much fun.

Mark Harmon as Gibbs, Sasha Alexander as Kate and Pauley Perrette as Abby in NCIS season one episode Dead Man Talking. (Photo: CBS)

Gibbs and Kate grab their service revolvers and run to the elevator. Abby arrives just as the doors are closing so Gibbs pulls her in with them. In a back and forth that aggravates Gibbs and me just a little, she finally comes out and explains that all the fingerprints she ran off the cosmetic jars they confiscated from her trash belonged to Amanda … and to Commander. Commander IS Amanda. (Which … yeah, we kind of figured.) All those houses Amanda owned near where Commander worked? I’m guessing that was how he managed his double life. And what nailed him is that he came back to buy back the family home and Pacci was on the trail again. Kate puts the rest together, realizing that Tony, yes, is on a date with a guy.

Shifting to said date, Amanda is running her hand up the inside of Tony’s thigh and he’s all about it. If she wasn’t a serial killer, I might have a completely different thought on this, because, you know, folks digging folks is all fine with me, gender regardless. But since she is who she is, she gets no pass from me. She gets what she gets. And … so will Tony. Oh, Tony. Gibbs calls Tony and he tries to answer but ComManda puts the moves on him and gets him in a deep-dive lip lock. McGee is at the bar, not knowing what to do, but otherwise unaware of the real situation.

ComManda gets up to go to ladies’, and Tony calls back Gibbs, who tells him what’s what. And that ComManda likely killed Pacci. Tony’s reaction to finding out he was just lip-locked with a dude fades instantly and he’s all very special agent now. He hangs up as she returns. She slides in, all “I’m famished” and notices he’s not eating. He’s stone-faced and she tries cozying up to him, wondering if he’s the same man she just left. He asks her if she’s the same woman. She asks what changed and he tells her he doesn’t know where to begin. When she puts her hand on his thigh, he rests his gun on top of her hand, then tells her to open her purse. Ruh roh, there ComManda!

She pushes Tony’s hand away, discharging his gun. She screams as she gets up and tries to run, and men jump in and on Tony to help “save” ComManda. McGee enters the fray and a brawl is about to break out when ComManda runs right into the barrel of Gibbs gun, which is now leveled in the middle of her forehead. He tells ComManda that the man’s name was Agent Chris Pacci, and that he was a friend. ComManda, gun in hand, stares down Gibbs, then goes to lift her weapon, and dies right where she stands, a bullet through her brain, courtesy of Special Agent Leroy Jethro Gibbs. And that’s how you do a eulogy.

Back in the bull pen, Gibbs is going through all of Pacci’s personal effects, telling Kate it’s force of habit, making sure his family doesn’t get any unnecessary surprises. Abby, McGee and Kate talk films like The Crying Game and Victor, Victoria. We learn ComManda was scheduled to have a sex-change operation in Bangkok, and Abby wonders what it would be like, having your “inside plumbing on the outside.” Then Kate finally turns to Tony, who is sitting with an ice pack on his head (thanks to the bottle-over-the-head he took in the brawl) and he tells her go ahead and come at him, he can take it. She leans over his desk and asks him, “So, what was it like, tonguing a guy?” And yeah, Tony decides he’s not all that ready. No fade-to-freeze-frame-black-and-white forever encapsulating Tony trying not to reconcile with the fact that he liked it just fine, thank you. Just credits. So, a little anticlimactic, but good ep. Hijinks and mayhem, grisly murders and plot twists. At least they began as they have gone on.

What say you?

Well, what I say is that someone has waited three whole weeks to find out if they’re the winner of the giveaway posted in my last recap! Thanks for the enthusiastic entries, thanks for sharing your thoughts about the episode, the show in general and the recaps. I enjoy them all. The winner of a copy of the first two installments of my new Blue Hollow Falls series is? Come on down, Brooke Showalter! Drop me an email to donna@donnakauffman.com with an address and your prize will go right out to ya!

New giveaway? Sure! I have a brand, spanking, new book out, the third title in this series, Bluestone & Vine and a lovely canvas tote bag to carry it in. Want in? Drop me an e-mail to donna@donnakauffman.com with “Bluestone & Vine & a tote? Count me in!” in the subject line and you’re in!

I’ll announce the winner in the next classic recap column in two weeks, on Aug. 1! (Don’t forget to check back to see if you’ve won!)

Next time we take a stroll not quite as far back down memory lane with a recap of one of Cote de Pablo’s favorite episodes, from season three. Join me as we take a look back at Under Covers.

Until then …

Donna Kauffman is the USA TODAY and Wall Street Journal bestselling author of over 70 novels, translated and sold in more than 26 countries around the world. Born into the maelstrom of Washington, D.C., politics, she now lives in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, where she is surrounded by a completely different kind of wildlife. In addition to her NCIS recaps for USA TODAY’s Happy Ever After blog, she is also a DIYer, a baker, a gardener and a volunteer transporter for the Wildlife Center of Virginia and Rockfish Sanctuary. She loves to hear from readers (and NCIS viewers!). You can drop her a line to donna@donnakauffman.com. For more info about her latest releases, please visit her online at www.DonnaKauffman.com.

MORE ON HEA: See a fun Down & Dirty interview with Donna and read what she learned while writing Blue Hollow Falls

EVEN MORE: See more of Donna’s NCIS posts

We’re back other classic NCIS recap couch where this summer I’ve been recapping the favorite episodes of the cast members, past and present, as told to TV Guide in this article from 2012.

Cote de Pablo as Ziva and Michael Weatherly as DiNozzo in NCIS. (Photo: CBS)

This week we’re taking on one of Cote de Pablo’s favorite episodes, which I know is also a fan favorite as well. We’re going all the way back to season there where our dynamic duo of Tony DiNozzo and Ziva David go under cover and possibly get under the covers all at the same time. Setting up a classic “did they-didn’t they” storyline that has outlasted both of the characters’ run on the show. Yes, I’m talking about episode eight, Under Covers.

Let’s dive right in.

We open with Tony and Ziva in a very posh hotel room, he in a nice suit, she in a silky green dress. Tony is marveling over the 200-channel wide-screen TV when Ziva approaches, closes the cabinet door and let’s Tony know that watching television is the very last thing she has in mind. Right about this time, a good part of the viewership was on the edge of their couch, breath held, waiting to see if their long-held dream was about to come true, praying the scene before them wasn’t going to turn out to be an actual dream. They look deeply into each other’s eyes, then he lowers his head, and … shockingly, no phone rings, no plot twist steps in and interrupts them from doing what we all know they’re about to do. And oh boy, do they! The camera pans down, and we see that slinky green dress slide to the floor to pool around her high heels. Fade to black-and-white.

Aaaaand, then for possibly the first time in the history of the series thus far, we are not happy to hear our favorite theme song and see the amazing opening credits. Darn them!

But it’s too late. The shippers are already shipping and the fan fiction has gone straight to scorch. We’ve gotten what we wanted … Tony and Ziva. Locking lips. And hopefully a whole lot more!

Except … we know. Right? We always knew. We couldn’t be getting that lucky. And certainly neither are they. It’s episode eight, for goodness sake. Not the finale, an honor which this turn in their relationship would certainly demand. So … what is it? And why are they?

Well, we don’t scoot over to the Bull Pen of Orangey Goodness. Oh no. They’re going to tease us until we can’t be teased no more. We see clothing, his and hers, strewn on the floor around the bed, and our pathetic needy hopes are restored. Could they? Would they? The camera pans up and our eyebrows do the same as we spy our two are-they-aren’t-they lovers, looking an awful lot like, oh-yeah-they-did. There is a lot of bare skin, his and hers, with the two of them tangled under the covers. Tony is lying on top of Ziva, who looks into his eyes and whispers … “Do you think they bought it?”

Michael Weatherly as DiNozzo, Mark Harmon as Gibbs, Cote de Pablo as Ziva and Sean Murray as McGee in NCIS. (Photo: CBS)

Wait … what? Who is they? In short order we learn that they are, indeed, on a case, and this is all an act for the possible Peeping Toms or Tillys who are surveilling them right this very second. Tony wants Ziva to know that’s his knee … you know … there. Ziva doesn’t care what it is and tells Tony he can get off of her now, but Tony comments on how it’s only been 10 minutes and he’s got a reputation to uphold. So … maybe another 40 minutes, you know, to keep the reputation in good standing? Ziva is surprised by the 40-minute marathon man’s estimation of his prowess, and she immediately flips the tables, and Tony. Now she’s, um, on top of things. She sucker-punches him — knees him maybe? — all under the covers, of course, making him wheeze and ask what that was for. She smiles and says, “Because that was definitely not your knee.” HA. She covers that comment with a brief kiss. And her lips might be saying yes, but her eyes are definitely signaling that playtime is over.

While the sucker-punch was a buzzkill for Tony, our buzz wanes as we shift gears from the bedroom to the morgue and a bloody dead body. Geez, Show, not even a little cigarette puff? And I don’t even smoke. The bloody body is that of a woman, still in a body bag, partially unzipped. Ducky is in a tux (so smooth, Mr. Kuryakin!) and comments on how beautiful the woman is. Um … yeah, if you look past all of the blood and the part where she’s dead. Ew. Gibbs is there, too, and tells Ducky her name and that she’s responsible for murdering 25 people. Over on the other table is her husband, also quite the looker, if you, you know, overlook all the blood and him being quite dead as well. Turns out they are Canadian citizens, and also contract killers.

We learn they were killed in a car accident two days ago, and Ducky laments that he will be missing Giselle after waiting months. Gibbs apologizes about Ducky’s girlfriend. Ha. Before Ducky can correct Gibbs, in strolls Director Jenny Shepard, who tells Gibbs that Giselle is a ballet and teases him about needing to get out of his basement more often. This triggers a flashback of some European city and a much younger Gibbs and Jenny, flirting over dinner, with some hand-kissing going on. Back in the now, the two share a little smile, before Jenny turns to Ducky to discuss the newly arrived couple. Well, well, then. So, this is officially the Fifty Shades of NCIS episode? So much happening, and not nearly enough of it on screen where we can droo—uh, I mean, assess its backstory relevance and forward story advancement.

Jenny explains that the reason NCIS has the bodies is tied to the couple’s job description, and the fact that two U.S. passports were found on their bodies, in addition to reservations at the very hotel where the Navy will be holding its annual birthday ball. The shindig will be attended by all the Navy brass, Jenny included, as well as political bigwigs. Gibbs tells Ducky that he needs to find out as much as possible on the killer couple so NCIS knows why they were in D.C. We learn that Tony and Ziva are staying at the hotel taking Killer Couple’s place, in hopes of finding out who they came to kill. But, at the moment, they are flying blind. Ducky jokes that while he’s known to talk to his patients, they don’t exactly respond. An impossibly young-looking Gibbs tells Ducky to “listen harder” and exits the morgue.

Back at the hotel, Tony and Ziva are still taking the whole “undercover” thing quite literally. Now I’m the buzzkill, but it’s not like Killer Couple were there on their honeymoon. So … why all the time in bed? Couples do actually stay in hotels and go out and do other things. Is this the only way they could figure out how to communicate with each other so anyone possibly surveilling them wouldn’t hear what they’re saying? Because … yeah. Turn on a water faucet. Put some music on and slow-dance. This is a pretty over-the-top solution (pun maybe intended?). Titillating, for sure, and maybe a way to shut up the fans demanding a Tiva union by giving them a little heat without actually advancing the duo’s relationship? Also … if they’re “flying blind” and don’t know anything about the couple other than their occupations and that they’ve apparently got a hit job in D.C., why do they think anyone is surveilling them? What do they know that we don’t know? Does Gibbs know? So many questions.

Back in bed … Tony wants a back massage, Ziva says yes, then, as he moans in delight, Tony is foolish enough to tell her that his mother thought Ziva wasn’t good enough for her son. More pain for Tony. We also get the answer to the surveillance question. Not the why or the who, but that it is definitely happening. This was a few years ago, so all the agent who is watching them is getting is the hazy heat signature of the two bodies in the room, and the sound thanks to an apparent bug in the room. The sound she is getting is mostly the weird ’70s Muzak Tony and Ziva have been playing in the room this whole time. Surveillance Agent’s partner enters, toting what looks like a sniper rifle (no, I don’t need to know the make and model number, or the entire history of snipers, I’m good with “looks like a sniper rifle” because, you know, TV.). Surveillance Agent tells Sniper that the two have been having sex the whole time and appears quite bored. They continue to watch and listen as room service enters Tony and Ziva’s hotel room.

Cote de Pablo as Ziva and Michael Weatherly as DiNozzo in NCIS. (Photo: CBS)

Back in the hotel, the room service attendant is none other than McGee, who, under the guise of bringing them flowers and a cheese tray, sweeps the room for bugs, finds one and covers it with the cheese tray lid. He also notes the state of the bed linens and the fact that his fellow agents are dressed only in bathrobes and asks them, a bit curtly, if they need room service. Tony asks for a Red Bull, prompting McGee to say that will keep Tony up all night. Knowing looks are exchanged between our supposed lovebirds. Oh boy. With the bug covered, McGee says they are OK if they whisper. Then Gibbs pipes to the earbuds McGee also snuck in to Tony, and our Maybe Lovebirds learn that the flowers McGee brought in have a very clear video cam feed and Director Jenny is looking at, well, all of Tony, he of the loosely belted bathrobe. HA. Gibbs also brings up my point, that they’re married assassins, not vacaying at the Playboy Central.

The phone rings and Jenny directs Tony to have Ziva answer. She answers like the trained assassin she is both pretending to be and actually is trained to be and is told by the man on the other end that there is a cellphone in the Bible in the nightstand. Ziva turns the Bible so Tony, Gibbs and Jenny can see the phone. The man instructs her to keep it with her at all times and that she and Tony have dinner reservations in the hotel restaurant, promptly at nine. We get more maybe-fake-flirting as Ziva playfully tells Tony she’ll be dressing up for him that night. This prompts Surveillance Agent and Sniper to also get dressed for dinner. The contrast of bored SA and shaggy Sniper messily eating carryout pizza with our upscale Killer Couple couldn’t be made more plainly.

We finally skip back to HQ as Abby exits the elevator decked out in a poodle skirt, full ’50s regalia and bowling shoes. Turns out she was two frames away from a perfect game before being unceremoniously dragged back into work. She and Gibbs enter Ducky’s Digs, whereupon Gibbs puts a carton of the Killer Couple’s personal effects on a table and tells Abby to wire up so she can transmit whatever she finds directly to Tony and Ziva. Her mission is to dig up whatever she can that will help Tony and Ziva convincingly portray the real Killer Couple. As Abby turns, we see there is a skull and crossbones on the back of her pink satin ’50s jacket. Heh.

Gibbs is back to watching our Maybe Lovebirds as Tony looks around the room, affording Gibbs a view thanks to the camera in the oh-so-dapper horn rims he’s now wearing. He calls Ziva sweet cheeks, one of many such endearments he’s used thus far, prompting her to call him “my little hairy butt,” which does give him pause. Heh. Neither Tony nor Ziva recognize anyone in the crowded dining room, but the glasses allow Tony to take and transmit photos of every face so, back at HQ, Abby can run them through the system and see if they get any hits. Our surveilling couple enter and take their seats, but are, as yet, unknown to Tony and Ziva. Everyone has earbuds on the NCIS team, so Ducky revealing the contents of the deadly and dead duo’s stomachs kind of puts the damper on Tony’s enthusiasm for his shrimp cocktail. Ducky telling him that Mr. Deadly of the Killer Duo was a lefty, leaving him to awkwardly try to cut his steak left-handed. Ziva is highly amused and enjoying herself immensely.

She takes a call on her cell and turns it toward Tony, allowing Abby to catch the cell number. I guess they didn’t have “Unknown” back then? McGee is at the bar by the entrance to the restaurant from the hotel lobby where he can also surveil the bathroom entrance. So much going on. Abby is frantically running a search on the number, and finally they pin it down as a pay phone in the lobby of the same hotel. Ziva keeps their handler talking, joking about not getting paid enough and bypassing the fact that their handler seems to think they should have recognized their target, while McGee and Tony hustle toward the lobby as quickly as possible. Unfortunately, Handler is gone by the time they reach the bank of phones. Fade to black-and-white.

Back in HQ, Abby tells Gibbs she has a photo of every man in the restaurant, all of them Navy or political bigwigs. One of them is the target. The problem is figuring out which one. In MTAC, Gibbs brings Jenny up to speed, saying they didn’t get a picture of Handler, and Tony and Ziva are continuing their stay at the hotel, seeing how things play out. She asks if they’re tracking Handler, and Gibbs is all, “Gee, why didn’t I think of that?” And Jenny begs fatigue. He smiles, says how she never could pace herself. And we whirl back to yesteryear and their time together overseas, where they were working together and brief clips of the two of them in flagrante delicto make it very clear that there wasn’t any “maybe” to the part of whether they were truly lovebirds. Or at least very lusty sex partners. Back in MTAC, they share a knowing look, and she counters with, “Positano.” Gibbs takes immediate umbrage, reminding her that was a mere week after he took a bullet. Their shared look lingers a moment longer, then we return to business.

Michael Weatherly as DiNozzo and Cote de Pablo as Ziva in NCIS. (Photo: CBS)

Gibbs brings her up to speed on what they know and says they are matching the photos from the restaurant with the registered guests, putting names to faces. Jenny asks what if the target isn’t attending the ball but merely a guest at the hotel. Gibbs says that Ziva told Handler that she didn’t know their target would be surrounded by Marines, and Handler was not surprised. So Gibbs takes that to mean that the ball is why they are there. Gibbs tells Jenny that nothing else is going to happen that night, so she should grab a nap in her office. She says she’ll refill her coffee, then refill it again when the caffeine wears off, just like Gibbs does. He smiles and tells her she’s not him and she smiles that much more sweetly and calls him a chauvinist. He laughs, says maybe he is, then bids her good night and heads to the exit.

Jenny calls him back, says she’s torn between listening to her director side, which tells her to flood the hotel with FBI and take down the bad guys before they can do their damage. Her agent side says if she does that, the rest of the cell currently operating in D.C. would scatter and they’ll lose their chance to round them up, too. She knows Gibbs would let his agents stay the course but asks his opinion. He says if he were director, he’d let his team have another 24 hours, and if that didn’t wrap things up, then call in the FBI. She asks if he’d really do that. He smiles, says, “Nah,” then adds that that’s why he’ll never be director. HA. Oh, Jethro.

Our Maybe Lovebirds are snoring the night away as SA and Sniper watch on. SA enters their hotel room with coffee, while Sniper tells her he watched the earlier tape of Killer Couple and how hot it was. SA immediately shuts down any ideas he might be having, telling him if he needs anything else, call room service. She tells him they’ve seen their target now, so they won’t be there much longer. So … who is this Killer Duo’s target? Our Killer Couple? Or one of the military bigwigs?

Turns out the one sawing logs is Ziva. HA. Tony tries to quiet her and gets a gun put in his face, even as she’s not totally awake. She rolls back over, Tony mutters she’s a crazy chick, Ziva sleepily calls him her little hairy butt, and the two try to get comfy. All the while, Jenny is watching them via MTAC, sipping coffee and smiling. More fond memories?

The following morning McGee is back in room attendant regalia and shows Gibbs a package he found on his doorstep addressed to Ziva. Gibbs opens it to find a pair of sunglasses with two sets of lenses. McGee will find out what those are about when he brings them to Ziva. (Who used McGee as her “mule” because she knew he wouldn’t open the package himself.) McGee watches them on screen at HQ and tries to wake Tony to no avail. Turns out Ziva is awake and has been since five, complaining of his snoring. She offers to do the job for McGee. She pours a little water on the side of his head and yep, he’s awake!

In Ducky’s Digs, he’s training Palmer in making neat stitches (which I did not need to see). He’s annoyed that he couldn’t reach Palmer to get him to come in earlier. Enter Gibbs. Ducky runs down the rather useless info he was able to glean from the post-mortems, then says he found a small symbol tattooed on the inside of each of the Killer Couple’s ring fingers. An infinity symbol. He wants to review his notes again, in case he missed anything else.

Michael Weatherly as DiNozzo and Cote de Pablo as Ziva in NCIS. (Photo: CBS)

Meanwhile, Ziva and Tony are less enamored of each other after a night spent listening to each other snore. Ziva puts on her new sunglasses, and we learn that they can detect a wide range of light sensors, even from long distance. She spies the room in the hotel across the street from which they are being surveilled. (I am still unclear why they ever assumed they were being watched. Supposedly this couple was hired to come kill someone. Why would they think someone was watching them? Someone other than their handler, anyway?)

Ziva reports her findings to HQ, and Gibbs says they’ll need a distraction to keep SA and Sniper preoccupied.

We shift to SA and Sniper watching via a pair of heat-sensor binoculars. Sniper wonders how long they can keep it up, and we see a blurry heat sensor image of a man on top of a woman, appearing to be having sex with her. The sounds being made would seem to cement that supposition. The truth is, as we swing over to Tony and Ziva, he’s been doing push-ups over her for what feels like hours while she fake-moans. Tony complains about the push-ups while Ziva all but snarls as she counts his reps.

Meanwhile, Gibbs and McGee are closing in on the hotel room across the street, guns drawn. Gibbs tells Tony to give it the “big finish,” causing Sniper to tell his partner they could make a fortune putting those tapes on the Internet. She reminds him of the couple’s day jobs and how she wouldn’t recommend it, just as Gibbs and McGee bust into the room. Everyone has guns drawn and they’re all barking out their creds. Gibbs and McGee being NCIS. And SA and Sniper, as we can now see from the backs of their jackets … FBI. Ruh roh. Fade to black-and-white.

The FBI agents are at HQ now, marveling over how his NCIS co-workers were willing to go all the way to sell their cover story. McGee shrugs it off as them playacting. SA and Sniper are all, yeah … no, definitely not playacting. McGee watches the two on screen, struggling to come to grips with what might have happened.

Over at HQ, Jenny is worried about having ticked off the FBI after inadvertently sabotaging their operation, until Gibbs reminds her that the FBI also knew there was a planned hit on a Navy function and didn’t exactly come and read in NCIS, despite that being their jurisdiction. She is annoyed that she didn’t think of that, and Gibbs tells her she really needs to get some sleep, that he’ll take care of smoothing over the politics. She laughs at that idea and the two cute-banter some more, then Gibbs goes downstairs just as Fornell (YAY!) storms in, all fire and fury. Gibbs and Fornell go head to head with such heat it looks like one of those heads is about to get ripped off momentarily and it’s a toss-up on which one. Gibbs barks at Fornell to take the conversation elsewhere and they storm into the elevator, leaving their collective agents behind them, worried about what is going to happen.

Of course, as soon as the elevator doors slide closed, Gibbs hits the stop button and Fornell offers him some gum. HA. Fornell says how they both really managed to screw things up this time and they set about figuring out how to fix it without their respective directors going at each other directly. I say it every time, and I mean it more each time, but I love these two. They agree in short order that NCIS will take 24 hours to try and pin down the target and who Handler is, then the FBI goes in and makes the collar. Everybody is happy. Gibbs starts the elevator again while Fornell ponders why everyone thinks the two of them are bastards. (His word.) Gibbs laughs, says, “Because they know us?” HA. Then the elevator doors open, and their expressions go instantly hard and angry as they storm out. Love, and more love.

Michael Bellisario as Chip and Pauley Perrette as Abby in NCIS. (Photo: CBS)

In Abby Lab we get another blast from the past with Abby’s intern Chip! But that’s a whole ’nother story. The two are working their way through all the photos from the restaurant. Abby discovers that Mrs. of the Killer Couple was pregnant when she died and relays this info to Gibbs. Over at the hotel, SA is dressed up as a maid while she debugs Tony and Ziva’s room. Tony watches her, and SA hits on him. Tony realizes she was the one who’d been watching him and Ziva all weekend. She asks him out for drinks, and he readily agrees, just as Ziva walks out of the bathroom and announces she’s pregnant. HA! SA calls off their date and leaves before anyone can explain. Ziva seemed oblivious to what she interrupted, but after SA leaves she casually tells Tony she’s wasn’t his type anyway. Heh.

They get a call from Handler, who blocked the number this time. Tony answers. Handler talks while he strolls down the city street, telling Tony he has permission to discuss a price adjustment given the increased risk, but they will need to do that face-to-face. He tells Tony to go down to the lobby in one hour and a black Lincoln will be waiting by the curb. Handler hangs up and tosses the phone in the trash. Gibbs and Fornell are in MTAC, listening to every word. Fornell says he has teams in place to follow the Lincoln, and Gibbs tells Tony and Ziva to take the meeting.

Tony wonders if Mrs. Killer Couple knew she was pregnant and why would she take the contract hit and endanger her child? Ziva feels certain Mrs. KC knew and says that maybe they needed the money. Kids are expensive. Ziva, who has been cleaning her gun the whole time, tells Tony that they may be walking into a trap. He asks if she’s nervous. She smiles and says no, she’s excited.

All the teams are in place, watching outside the hotel in person and via screen in MTAC as Tony and Ziva head down in the elevator with a hotel staff member on board. Jenny enters MTAC and says this meeting reminds her of one of their missions. Gibbs reminds her that she took a bullet in the thigh on that mission, and she nods, says she has the same bad feeling about this one. Gibbs transmits orders to Tony and Ziva not to take any chances. Anything feels off, they abort.

Lincoln pulls up, and man and woman get out, Lincoln leaves. Wrong Lincoln. Meanwhile, Chip finally gets a hit. He decided to run facial rec on all the hotel staff, too, and finds one with a murder rap. And yep, same waiter who is in the elevator with Ziva and Tony. We see Killer Waiter pull a gun with a silencer on it and aim it at the backs of Tony’s and Ziva’s heads … and we fade to black-and-white.

The elevator door opens, and Killer Waiter tells them they’ll be getting off here. The doors open to reveal Handler and another guy, who tells them they’ll be meeting there on the third floor. Ziva handles it in stride, playing the annoyed Mrs. Killer, and how they could have come down to the third floor without an armed escort, thankyouverymuch. Handler is unperturbed. In fact, he calmly admires Ziva for getting their floor and room number vocalized for her “friends” who are listening. Too bad Killer Waiter has a signal jammer, so no one can hear them. Ruh roh. Blown cover. Handler tells his cohort to escort the pair to the designated room, and if either of them resist, “Shoot the woman.” He seems nice.

Back at MTAC, when Ziva and Tony never make it to the lobby and McGee doesn’t find them in their room, it doesn’t take long for Gibbs, Jenny and Fornell to put things together. There are too many rooms to go through between their floor and the lobby. Jenny tells them they will wait until Ziva contacts them. That to do anything else would jeopardize their cover. Fornell asks what happens if their cover is already blown. Jenny says nothing, but we all think the same thing: Well, then it’s too late anyway.

At the hotel, Killer Waiter smashes Tony’s and Ziva’s earwigs, while Handler tells them that no one tries to leave the mercenary-for-hire business. Ah, so I’m guessing they tried to quit when Mrs. Killer found out she was pregnant. Also, Handler still thinks they are the real Killer Couple. Tony and Ziva are tied to chairs, their backs to each other. Tony smart-mouths Handler and earns a punch to the face for that.

Cote de Pablo as Ziva and Michael Weatherly as DiNozzo in NCIS. (Photo: CBS)

Handler asks where the disc is. Tony asks what disc and earns another punch. Ziva takes up the conversation with Handler, playing it off like she wants to sell him the disc, asking him what it’s worth to him. Each comment earns Tony another punch to the face. Handler counters by asking Ziva how much it’s worth to her, as Tony continues to take a beating.

Back at HQ, Abby runs through all the photos they took in the restaurant, and she spies Handler through the window in the door to the kitchen. She ran him through the system, got his name, and the info that he is a contract assassin wanted in five countries. Which begs the question, why does a killer hire other killers to do a hit for him?

Back at the hotel, Handler tells Ziva that out of professional courtesy, he’s had his cohort go easy on a very bloodied Tony. Ziva tells Handler to let Tony go and she’ll tell him where the disc is. Killer Waiter comes over with a silver case containing some very nasty blades inside. Handler takes one and tells Ziva she will tell him either way. Handler, Cohort and Killer Waiter leave the room after telling the two to consider their options. Tony tells Ziva to tell Handler the disc is in their room in a place only she can show him. McGee will likely be there, and that would be their best hope. Except, as Ziva points out, that as soon as she leaves, they will probably kill Tony. He tells her he didn’t say it was a perfect plan.

We skip over to Ducky’s Digs, where he has discovered a tiny gold heart-shaped piece embedded in Mrs. Killer Couple’s eye. One that only someone would see if they were staring intimately into her eyes, like a lover. I’m guessing that’s the disc? Ducky doesn’t know what it is and tells Palmer to take it to Abby, who confirms that there is a tiny disc embedded in the heart containing two files. One has all the info on the Killer Couple, including the house they purchased, and essentially all the plans they made for their post-killer life. The other file has all the info on Killer Couple’s clients. That is what Handler wants. Gibbs and Fornell finally realize that Killer Couple weren’t hired to do a hit, they were hired because they are the hit.

Mark Harmon as Gibbs and Lauren Holly as Jenny in NCIS. (Photo: CBS)

In the room, Handler has the blade and Tony puts his plan into motion, even knowing they will likely kill him. It’s their only chance. Handler has Ziva untied, but calls Killer Waiter to go clear their hotel room before they head up. Ruh roh. Heads up, McGee! Waiter enters, gun with silencer drawn and spies McGee looking out the window. As Handler and Ziva go to leave their room, he tells her she got greedy. She tells him what she got was pregnant. Surprisingly, Handler is charmed by this news and seems sincere in congratulating her. He asks if it’s a boy or a girl, and she says they want to be surprised. He smiles, says that’s the best way, and clearly you can see he is a father. Tony clues in to this and says how she has morning sickness every single day, one commiserating father to another. They chat back and forth on whether Handler plans to kill them and he admits he hasn’t decided yet, but mentions again how contract killers can’t just walk away from the job. If they could, he’d be at his daughter’s fifth birthday party. He tells Ziva to give him the disc and they’ll see, play it by ear. Handler tells cohort that if he’s not back in five minutes, to kill Tony. So, not all that undecided, then. As soon as Handler leaves, Cohort gets the knife anyway. He smiles and tells Tony that was just to get her to help them, a little white lie. Ruh roh.

Ziva enters her hotel room and sees McGee sprawled on the floor. She runs to him, and Handler says he hopes she wasn’t counting on her backup. She smiles and stands, telling Handler that wasn’t her backup. Handler turns, and his face runs right into Gibbs’ swinging fist. McGee gets up as Ziva tells them the floor and room number where Tony is being held. Fornell exits the bathroom where we see Killer Waiter is, all tied up. He orders his team to descend on Tony’s room as they all head out.

Tony is delaying things by talking to Cohort, buying as much time as possible, talking about his impending fatherhood, having a little DiNozzo running around. Oops? Nope! When Cohort questions the name, Tony is all, “Yeah, that’s my full name. Special Agent Anthony DiNozzo.” Right before he gets up and swings his chair around, taking Cohort down by a hit to the side of the knee. Just in time for our team to come racing in to save him. Only to find Tony, still tied to a chair, straddled over Cohort while he kicks him around the head a bit, asking how that feels. Ziva runs over to him and tells him to stop. Tony, all amped up from almost dying, looks at Gibbs and asks for a divorce. Ziva merely shrugs. HA.

Back at HQ, Tony has returned from the emergency room and everyone is clucking over him, including Ducky, who is once again wearing a tux. After much banter, it’s decided that McGee will drive Tony home, though Ziva offered. Ziva asks why McGee, and Abby says, “Because he wants to live?” HA. Enter Gibbs, who asks Ducky if he is going to the ballet after all, and he says no and shows off his chest full of military honors. He says he has been asked to escort Jenny to the Navy Ball. Enter Jenny, who descends the stairs, all regal in her gown and a whole lot of cleavage on display. She and Gibbs share a smile as she takes Ducky’s arm, and they head out. The rest of the team helps Tony to the elevator, then Abby ducks back for a second and wishes Gibbs a happy birthday. Aww. He thanks her and is finally alone at his desk. He pulls out a flask that has a bullet in it. On it are the engraved names of his wife and daughter. “I miss you guys,” he says, running his fingers over the engraving. Then he unscrews the cap and says, “Semper Fi.” Fade to black-and-white.

Now, THAT is the NCIS I remember. Ahh. Truly one of the classic episodes of all 15 seasons.

What is your favorite episode? Drop me a line to donna@donnakauffman.com and let me know. I’ll draw a few titles from the influx of mail, and those will be our classic recaps for what remains of our summertime fun.

We also have a bit of other business to finish up. I put a copy of my book, Bluestone & Vine, and a lovely canvas tote bag to carry it in up for grabs the last time we met. Thanks so much for your enthusiastic entries. Our winner this week is Kate Sparks! Kate, e-mail me at donna@donnakauffman.com with your address and I’ll get your goodies in the mail to you!

Let’s do that same giveaway again this time around. Want in? Drop me an e-mail to donna@donnakauffman.com with “Bluestone & Vine? Pick me!” in the subject line and you’re in!

I’ll announce the winner in the next classic recap column in two weeks. I can’t wait to hear what episodes you’re dying to get the recap treatment. Tune in on Aug. 15 to find out!

Until then …

Donna Kauffman is the USA TODAY and Wall Street Journal bestselling author of over 70 novels, translated and sold in more than 26 countries around the world. Born into the maelstrom of Washington, D.C., politics, she now lives in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, where she is surrounded by a completely different kind of wildlife. In addition to her NCIS recaps for USA TODAY’s Happy Ever After blog, she is also a DIYer, a baker, a gardener and a volunteer transporter for the Wildlife Center of Virginia and Rockfish Sanctuary. She loves to hear from readers (and NCIS viewers!). You can drop her a line to donna@donnakauffman.com. For more info about her latest releases, please visit her online at www.DonnaKauffman.com.

MORE ON HEA: See a fun Down & Dirty interview with Donna and read what she learned while writing Blue Hollow Falls

EVEN MORE: See more of Donna’s NCIS posts

Hope your summer has been a good one so far. As per usual, I tend to post less frequently during the summer months as TV viewing slows to a trickle. Not because I’m not watching, but because there isn’t much to talk about. I tend to spend as much time searching through my streaming services as I do actually viewing shows. As was the case last month. Between BritBox, Acorn TV, Netflix and Prime, there had to be something new to discover and obsess over, right?

Right.

I’ve long declared that British crime dramas are far more enjoyable for me. I’m not saying they’re better, just different. There’s a reality about them; they don’t dumb things down as much, and they assume their viewers have actual brains. That could be why I tend to be cautious when trying new American-produced crime dramas. I can now add Bosch to my list of obsessions. Even as I type this, I’m trying to figure out a way not to just say it’s possibly the best police show I’ve ever watched (and I say that as a fan of NYPD Blue, Hill Street Blues, The Closer ... I could go on).

Screenshot of Titus Welliver in Bosch, an Amazon Original.

It isn’t often these days that I find a show I binge. And by binge, I mean watch two to three episodes in a day and can’t stop thinking about the show after. Trying to get my word count in faster so I can get back to the TV. That just doesn’t happen a lot. But with Bosch? Wow. Just … wow.

Disclaimer: I’ve not read the Michael Connelly books (yet). I don’t think that matters, honestly. The TV show or movie is never what the books are. They aren’t supposed to be. A book is a book. A show is a show. A movie is a movie. Expecting them all to be equal is an exercise in irritation and futility. This series is stellar, from its procedural attention to detail, to character analysis and development, to the cases being solved. The internal politics and machinations that go on in and around the unit is both disturbing and fascinating and, I have no doubt, for whatever reason, completely honest in its depiction.

Whoever cast Titus Welliver in this role deserves any and all accolades possible. I’ve watched him in various roles over the years (Lost, Supernatural, Deadwood), and he’s long been a favorite. He’s one of those actors who just melts into whatever role he’s playing. Bosch is no different. Wait. No, I’m wrong. Bosch is different because, in this viewer’s eyes, this is the character Welliver was born to play. The quiet intensity of a cop with a dark history, a thirst for justice and no patience for the crap and “stuff” that lands on cops and detectives every day is portrayed to perfection. Even when you don’t agree with what he’s doing, you understand why he’s doing it. For frequent readers of this blog, you know motivation is a big thing for me. Sometimes it’s the main thing when it comes to a complex character.

Screenshot of Titus Welliver as Bosch and Winter Ave Zoli as Amy in Bosch, an Amazon Original.

The supporting cast is just as impressive. The characters and their relationship to Bosch are real, honest and, at times, heartbreaking. People are complicated. Their emotions and history make things even more so. This is a show that doesn’t shy away from any of it. It displays, in full color, just how complex people, even fictional ones, can be, and maybe that’s why I enjoyed the first four seasons so much (come on, season five!). There honestly wasn’t a time I wasn’t thinking, Well, that’s inconsistent, or Nope, not buying that. It all worked, even when someone’s actions, statements or plans made me cringe. This is gut-wrenching cop television at its absolute best and, for writers, a deep examination of character and interaction that can only improve one’s craft.

But … then I turned back to my British channels and found a new gem: Hidden. I’m practically down on my knees praying for a second season. While also a crime drama, there can be no comparison to Bosch. It’s a completely different animal and yet … just as riveting.

Sian Reese-Williams as Cadi and Sion Alun Davies as Owen in Hidden, streaming on Acorn TV. (Photo: Acorn TV)

Set in Wales (like another favorite of mine, Hinterland — produced by the same team, actually), Hidden explores one crime through its season. You see the story from all perspectives as the episodes unfold. You see their lives (in some instances) before the crime, during and after. More important, you feel the story in your bones.

Sian Reese-Williams as DI Cadi John is part ordinary character, part extraordinary detective. I’m not sure I’ve ever watched a detective portrayed with such gentle control of a situation. The way she questions suspects, the way she goes about digging into this case in the hopes of pulling everyone out alive, is both intense and heart-wrenching. As a writer, I’m often looking for those elements that make a character, a setting, a plot stand out and appear different, something that will make me look at things in a new way. Shows like Hidden (which streams on Acorn TV) inspire me to think outside the box both for my characters and story lines while never forgetting I’m writing about possible actual people. The secondary story of Cadi dealing with her sisters and their father’s impending death gave me chills. Not because of the grief they are obviously heading into, but because of the authenticity. Everything about this show was just so real.

So in that way, Hidden and Bosch can declare triumph.

Sandra Bullock as Debbie Ocean plots a heist with her crew, played by Sarah Paulson, Rihanna, Cate Blanchett and Awkwafina, in Ocean’s 8. (Photo: Barry Wetcher)

My last post ended with my declared excitement over going to see Ocean’s 8. It’s a very good thing I declared this year my year of fun — where I was going to enjoy whatever movie I went to see simply because that’s what it’s meant to be: fun. I’ll say Ocean’s 8 was definitely that. But it wasn’t much more. As a friend of mine says, it was “cotton candy for the brain.” How I longed for some actual character development for the majority of the characters. Or even any of the characters. Even more, I wanted to know why they were pulling this caper. Was it alluded to? I think so. Was this somehow a setup or even a “prologue” for an upcoming teaming with the crew from the previous Ocean’s movies? Entirely possible. There wasn’t much depth. There was a lot of sparkle and shine, and OK, I loved seeing an all-female-driven heist movie even if it didn’t rise to the level of sneakiness of its predecessors. Will there be an Ocean’s 9? Probably.

But until then, I’ll head back to the theater, this weekend to see a movie I can’t believe I’m looking forward to: Mission: Impossible–Fallout.

Because sometimes you just need some loud, adrenaline-inducing fun.

Until next blog.

Happy reading — and viewing.

A geek since birth, USA TODAY bestselling romance author Anna J Stewart began her life-long obsession with TV and movies back in the ’70s with shows like Wonder Woman and The Bionic Woman, but Star Wars, Stephen King and Nora Roberts made her want to be a writer. Her latest release is Tome Wardens, a paranormal romance trilogy. Read more about Anna and her books at www.authorannastewart.com.

MORE ON HEA: See more of Anna’s posts

Thank you all SO much for your fabulous response when I asked you to share your favorite NCIS episode. I loved seeing all your notes and thoughts. Given there are well over 300 to choose from, I was surprised and delighted to see a few episodes get multiple nods across the board. So many good episodes were given the nod, bringing back so many great memories, thinking back on them.

Mark Harmon as Gibbs and Leslie Hope as Sarah Porter in the NCIS season 11 episode Past, Present, and Future. (Photo: Ron P. Jaffe, CBS)

How was I ever to narrow it down to one choice? Many of you chose episodes from season 12 through season 15, and I’m thrilled to tell you I’ve recapped every episode of those seasons! You can find them right here at HEA. There were also requests for some older eps I’ve covered in the past few summers of Classic NCIS recaps (also stowed here at HEA for your reading pleasure!)

Even with taking those episodes out of the running, I still had too many to choose from, so I went old school and wrote down the names of the episodes that had multiple requests, put them in a bowl and drew out this week’s winner. And boy, is it a doozy!!

Drum roll, please! Join me as we trip back down memory lane to season 11 and the episode titled Past, Present, and Future. Yes, it’s “that episode” where Tony and Ziva finally lock lips for real … right before Ziva departs the show for good. Sob!!

So. Many. Feels. I know!

You grab the popcorn, and probably a big ol’ box of tissues while you’re at it! I’ll hit the lights, and let’s dive right in, shall we?

First, we get some previouslies that show we’re jumping right into the fray. There’s been an explosion. SecNav is dead. Gibbs is back from Iran. Fornell and Vance discover that a new terrorist cell has formed and their next target? Ziva David. Tony is trying to get a badge to Ziva but doesn’t know where she is. He asks a foreign covert operative to find her, but the best he can do is find the dead bodies she left behind. A necklace hung on a photo of a much younger Ziva with other family members is proof she was there, a message she purposely left behind. As the previouslies close, she’s yet to be found and Tony is still searching for clues …

As we open this episode, we see a plane flying through the night sky and are told it’s late May. Inside the plane, Tony is seated by the window but turns to see Ziva smiling at him. It has a bit of a dream-sequence haze to it as she calmly tells him not to worry, that they’ll be OK. And then the figment of his imagination vanishes, and Tony’s actual seat mate is asking if he’s OK, if he wants to get out of his seat. He shakes his head … and we jump straight to amazing opening theme song and the always awesome credits!

The plane has landed, and it’s daylight in Tel Aviv. Tony deplanes to the tarmac and is met by two men who call him Agent DiNozzo. They are Mossad agents and ask him to come with them. They tell him they have information, so it will be worth his while. Tony follows them to the car. Moments later, he is exiting an elevator where he is received by Orli Elbaz, the director of Mossad, and Adam Eshel, the Shin Bet/Mossad agent Tony asked to help find Ziva. (Oh, Costas Mandylor, how did I forget about you? Hubba hubba.) Ahem. We first met Adam in season 10, in the episode titled Berlin, and if Tony seems a little prickly around Adam, it’s because he’s one of Ziva’s love interests. Elbaz assures Tony they are all focused on one thing only: finding Ziva. (Love Marina Sirtis in this role. So much goodness in this episode.)

We shift to Vance’s office. Gibbs and Fornell enter to find Vance with the new secretary of the Navy, Sarah Porter. They bring her up to speed on the leader of the new terrorist cell, Brotherhood of Doubt. The supposed leader is Benham Parsa. His whereabouts are unknown, but Fornell has a man who sits on a board of an anti-terrorist organization, who can likely link Parsa directly to the Brotherhood. A photo of that same anti-terrorist man was found in the Brotherhood’s compound, so NCIS and Fornell think he is the next target. Fornell has him stashed in a hotel and is moving him to a safe house after this meeting. SecNav Porter makes it known that her first order of business is stopping the attacks, and her second is bringing those who committed them to justice by any means necessary.

Pauley Perrette as Abby and Mark Harmon as Gibbs in the NCIS season 11 episode Past, Present, and Future. (Photo: Ron P. Jaffe, CBS)

Back in Israel, Tony asks Director Elbaz why she wants to find Ziva. She tells him that her predecessor, Ziva’s father, Eli, would have wanted Elbaz to make sure Ziva was safe. Adam enters and tells them that the three men found dead at the David safe house were common criminals, no political connections. Elbaz implores Tony not to let his distrust of her make it harder for them to find Ziva. Elbaz asks when Tony was last in contact with her. He shows Elbaz a photo that Ziva sent him two days prior, one of her and her brother Ari from a much younger time, well before he shot Agent Todd and before he, too, was killed. By his own sister. (But that’s a whole ’nother story!) Tony has heard nothing since.

Adam returns and shows Tony a photo of a kibbutz where Ziva and her siblings went as children. Yesterday, a teacher there said he saw a woman matching Ziva’s description walking the grounds. She buried a note in the gardens, then fled. Tony looks at the note. It is a paper she wrote as a child, a list titled “I Will,” with things she planned to do in her life, including ride a horse and visit America. That list has been crossed out and below that in black marker are the words “stop this for him.” Adam says the handwriting, both young and new, is a match to Ziva. Tony asks what her new line means, and Elbaz says that is what concerns them. Fade to black-and-white.

We return to Adam showing Tony the apartment where Ziva grew up, saying she showed it to him once. Tony pauses, then grudgingly but sincerely thanks Adam for looking for her when Tony asked. Inside the apartment, they meet a woman who grew up with Ziva in that apartment building. She asks if Ziva is OK.

Meanwhile, back at HQ, Antiterrorist Guy is with Fornell. Seems he’s not all that keen on the idea of protective custody. To him, altering his life in any way means the terrorists win. Gibbs tells him if he doesn’t keep Fornell in his hip pocket, he’s a dead man. AG reconsiders and agrees to Fornell’s protection. Fornell boggles that Gibbs got him to agree after Fornell spent the day making the same argument. Fornell quietly says, “Save me,” as he passes Gibbs on his way to escorting AG out. Gibbs smiles.

At the apartment building in Israel, Ziva’s childhood friend serves Adam and Tony tea. We learn that she had an “I Will” list also — it was when they were learning English. Their teacher told her and Ziva to bury them in the ground and think about them every day, and they will come true. She does not know why Ziva crossed out their childhood list or what “I will stop them for him” means. She has not seen Ziva since her father’s funeral months ago. As Tony and Adam go to leave, she tells Tony that Ziva mentioned him at the funeral, and her friend could see what she felt for him. She picks up the list and hands it to Tony, smiling, saying, “Perhaps the him is you.” Tony looks stunned.

We move to MTAC, and McGee is communicating with Tony via the big comm screen. McGee is reading the “I Will” list, saying he’d have thought Ziva would pick ninja before ballerina. Tony says maybe it was before her “ferocious phase.” HA. McGee learns Tony is working with Mossad and says their resources should be of some help. McGee tells Tony he figured out where Ziva was when she sent him the text with Ari’s photo and sends the Internet café address to Tony.

In Abby Lab, Abby has been working on the bullets that were fired at Gibbs and Tony (previous episode). The bullets are nothing special, no way to track them, but she says that Homeland says the shooter was on the roof of the building across the street. They have one witness saying they saw someone up there, but Abby’s got nothing to prove that. Gibbs asks if she can beam her mock-up program showing the bullet trajectories to McGee. Abby rolls her eyes, calls him Captain Kirk and says she can’t beam them up but she can send them up. Gibbs asks, “Captain who?” in response to being called Captain Kirk. Abby smirks at him, and Gibbs makes a face at her, and it’s all adorable and makes me miss their scenes together even more than I already did.

Pauley Perrette as Abby in the NCIS season 11 episode Past, Present, and Future. (Photo: Ron P. Jaffe, CBS)

McGee tells Abby and Gibbs that the witness who saw someone running from the roof was the building maintenance man for the same building the shots were fired from. He was at lunch across the street at the time and had more than a few drinks, so perhaps he wasn’t seeing things too clearly. Abby says if the shooter wasn’t on the roof, then he was in a room on the top floor. McGee says Homeland interviewed all the tenants on that floor but one. She didn’t answer the door. Moments later, we see Gibbs and McGee bang their way into the woman’s apartment, calling out their credentials. They find her dead on the floor, where she’s been for some time. Fade to black-and-white.

Down in Ducky’s Digs, he says the woman fought before she was strangled. McGee says she was a pharmaceutical rep, but the shooter left the drug samples untouched, not even bothering to make it look like a burglary. Gibbs says the shooter is a pro, the place is wiped clean, no prints. Ducky says he might have partials. The shooter did an eye gouge on the woman, who is wearing contacts, so perhaps there are partial prints on the lenses.

Fornell and Gibbs meet at his regular diner, with Fornell moaning about protecting “Ricky Ricardo” aka AG, and how it’s “not all conga drums and babalu.” HA. While AG wines and dines his fellow wealthy friends to get them to invest in his organization’s plans to thwart terrorism, Fornell has to ride along and pretend to like it. He orders banana pancakes and extra extra bacon, telling a bemused Gibbs that’s what he craves when he’s agitated. Heh. My love affair with these two never wanes. Fornell tells Gibbs that he has to make a hospital trip to see a billionaire philanthropist presently losing a battle with cancer. AG plans to see the guy who wants to donate a bundle to AG’s organization before he dies. Gibbs says he seems like a guy worth seeing, earning an eye roll from Fornell, who says Gibbs is lousy at cheering him up. Gibbs pays the tab for them both and tells a surprised Fornell, “You wanted cheering up.” Fornell shoots back to the departing Gibbs that he can’t be bought. Gibbs just laughs and leaves, and Fornell looks back at his feast and changes his mind, saying of course he can be bought. Heh. Seriously, when NCIS comes to a close, give these two a show. I’m there.

At Mossad HQ, Tony is reviewing tapes of the comings and goings at the Internet café but no sign of Ziva. When the director mentions a hospital is across the street from the café, Tony wonders if maybe she was seeking medical help after the attack at the safe house. He bets the café Wi-Fi reaches across the street. They shift to the camera view in that direction and immediately spot her on the tape. She’s talking to someone, who they discover upon zooming in is her childhood friend from the apartment building. The same friend who said she hadn’t seen Ziva since her father’s funeral. Tony takes off, presumably to search out said childhood friend once more.

Gibbs brings a Caf-Pow to Abby in Abby Lab. She found a fingerprint on the contact lens and tracked down a former Army soldier who was dishonorably discharged and served two years for aggravated assault but not before being trained as a sniper. It all fits and Gibbs is certain he’s the hired shooter. Abby seems down and when Gibbs asks her what’s up, she tells him she’s worried that she won’t be able to help them figure out who is trying to kill the people she loves. Given it’s a “brotherhood,” that means there are more of them out there. Gibbs tells her that the ID on the print is a good start. He kisses her forehead and tells her that they will get them, that they will get them all.

Tony catches up with Childhood Friend, who happens to be a doctor at that same hospital. She patched Ziva up after her attack at the safe house and took her home with her so she could rest. Things were fine until they talked about the old days. Turns out, while Ziva was out saving the world, Ari and Childhood Friend were falling in love. He was going to propose, then Ziva went and killed him, and well, she told Ziva all that and Ziva tried to explain what happened and begged for forgiveness, but CF could not forgive that, and so it was buh-bye, Ziva. Tony asks her where Ziva went and she says she doesn’t know. Tony gets in her face, reminding her she lied to him, and she says if he had been anyone else, she’d have told him the truth, but why should Ziva have the man she loves when she took CF’s from her? Tony works on that revelation for a few tense moments, then tells CF he will find her before striding away, determination on his face. CF calls after him, saying Ziva is gone, that when she left that night, she was not the same person.

At Mossad, the director tells Tony that they feel that Ziva’s absence is voluntary, so the search is over. She says she knows Tony agrees with her, then hands him a hefty file that contains everything Mossad has on the David contacts. Tony asks for the director’s help in getting back the necklace Ziva left as a signal at the safe house. The director smiles and tells him to check the file, then walks away. Tony opens the file, and the gold chain with the Star of David pendant is there in a small clear bag.

Sean Murray as McGee and Mark Harmon as Gibbs in the season 11 episode Past, Present and Future. Guest star Omar J. Dorsey is in the background. (Photo: Richard Cartwright, CBS)

Fornell and team pull up at the hospital with AG in tow. Fornell is going over all the rules they set in place for the meeting, and AG is nodding, then he pauses to take a call. Fornell starts to bark at him, as he just got done saying no calls without them present. AG points out he’s with Fornell and stops and takes the call. As Fornell turns back toward AG, there is a huge explosion inside the hospital. Fade to black-and-white.

When we come back from the break, it’s now October. McGee and Gibbs are in MTAC talking to Tony via the giant comm screen. Tony is now sporting a beard, and we learn he’s still tracking Ziva’s contacts, trying to find her, all these months later. We learn that they haven’t gotten their hands on Parsa yet, nor have they found the sniper. We learn that Fornell is still commenting on how if AG hadn’t taken that phone call, he’d be dead. This is when Gibbs tells McGee that unless Tony has booked a flight home, an update is wasted on him. Tony hears this and asks Gibbs if he wants Tony to give up on Ziva. Gibbs says that’s not what he meant. Tony asks if Gibbs is giving up on Ziva, and he barks that he didn’t say that, either. McGee tells Gibbs to just say what he’s meaning to say. Gibbs tells Tony that if Ziva doesn’t want to be found, he’s not going to find her. There is emotion in his voice when Gibbs tells Tony he should respect that. Tony says he does respect that, then he says he needs a few more days, to follow up on the one contact. That he needs a little more time. Gibbs tells him to do what he has to do, and Tony nods. Then Gibbs makes a motion to end the transmission.

On Tony’s end, we see him close the laptop he was using to communicate with Gibbs and McGee. He looks shaken and says, “You know how hard that was.” The camera pans around and we see Ziva standing in the doorway. She is dressed in soft clothes and her hair is down and curly, a bit lighter from the sun. She says Gibbs was wrong, that she did not want Tony to find her, but he did. Tony says he should have told Gibbs. Ziva walks away into what looks like a rustic farmhouse, upset with him, and Tony follows her inside, saying he had to take the call. She turns and says he didn’t have to do any of this. She asks him why he’s there, and he says because she invited him. She says that was before, and he counters, “Before what?” Her eyes are glassy, and she simply tells him he should not have come and leaves the room.

In Vance’s office, he’s telling SecNav that his team is doing all they can in terms of the Brotherhood. SecNav says the president wants to see results. Gibbs politely (no, really!) intervenes and says SecNav could help. She tells him, given his reputation, she expected Parsa to have been dispatched long ago. Gibbs says the one guy who could help them, the same guy from JSOC (Joint Special Operations Command) who went with Gibbs to Iran, might be persuaded to work with them if he received a direct call from SecNav. She agrees and instructs Vance to put the call in right then and there.

Tony walks into the farmhouse and sits at the opposite end of the couch from Ziva. He hands her the necklace. She calls it an old friend and thanks him. He says she asked how he found her, and he tells her that at first he was looking ahead, thinking that if he knew how she thought, he could figure out where she would want to go. But then he realized she wasn’t looking ahead. She was looking back. He tracked her to the place her mother was killed, to her grandparents’ graves and finally to the house where she was born, the house they are sitting in now.

Ziva tells him that after her father died, making the trip into her past seemed important. Then she saw her childhood friend and it changed. Tony tells her that she had no choice regarding Ari, she had to kill him, and one person loving him doesn’t change that. Ziva charges back, saying she loved Ari, too, and the rest of her family, and she can’t help but wonder that every person she’s killed, someone is out there grieving for them, too. Tony tells her she was doing her job, and she has to leave it at that. Ziva says she thought after leaving her friend that by going to those places, she would get her thinking back in line with that, but instead, all it did was make her realize that the one constant in all that pain was her. Tony tells her that is not who she is, and she tells him that is exactly who she is, exactly what she’d made of herself. She tells him that was not who she wanted to be, who she planned to be. Tony says he knows, which confuses Ziva and makes her frown. He smiles gently and takes out the list. “You wanted to be a ballerina.”

Michael Weatherly as DiNozzo and Cote de Pablo as Ziva in the NCIS season 11 episode Past, Present, and Future. (Photo: Sonja Flemming, CBS)

Ziva takes the list and folds it up, tells him it was supposed to stay buried. Tony tells her that Elbaz was looking for her, too. She dips her chin, says that girl, meaning herself as a child, was strong. She says that girl could have walked away from her father’s world, then things would have been different. She gets up and walks to the window. Tony tells her it’s never too late. Ziva looks at him and tells him yes, it is. He walks over to her, tells her she’s back in the home she was born in, that the universe is begging her to wipe the slate clean. He takes the sheet with the list and tells her he noticed there is plenty of room on the back. Then he says, “Maybe I can help you with that.” (Man, I miss these two.)

Gibbs meets with the JSOC guy who took money from the Brotherhood to set up Gibbs. He’s awaiting trial, saying he’s lost his family, lost everything. Gibbs says he knows they can track how Parsa connected to him to get him to do what they wanted. JSOC Guy tells Gibbs that he tried everything he could think of to trace the calls he got, even using JSOC resources, but came up empty. This is not what Gibbs wants to hear. JSOC Guy says he knows Gibbs found the Brotherhood hideout in Arizona, but that all the communication that came to him came through Florida. Gibbs tells him this is the chance he has to make things right and he may not get another chance. JSOC Guy says he wants to make amends and he means it. Gibbs gets up to leave and tells him that’s fine and reminds him that in order to do that, JSOC Guy has to do what’s right, and not just what’s right for him.

Gibbs gets ambushed by a big guy as he goes to get in his truck. They two go at each other pretty well, until the big guy throws Gibbs into the bed of his pickup truck. Big Guy bellows that Gibbs has no idea what’s coming at him that night. Gibbs rises with a tire iron and clobbers Big Guy upside the head, knocking him out. “Neither do you,” Gibbs tells him. Ha.

Outside of the farmhouse, Ziva places the folded-up list in a box and buries it in a hole she has dug. Tony is with her. When she’s done covering it up, they stand and Tony asks her if she feels better. She says no, but that it’s a start. He tells her that she doesn’t have to do this alone. Tony asks her to come back to D.C. with him. She smiles with a Ziva eye roll and counters that the first thing on her new list was “I will let go of the badge.” Tony tells her he’s not talking about NCIS, that he doesn’t care what she does. He asks her to come home. To come home with him.

He moves closer to her, so they are well into each other’s personal space. His voice is a whisper, and his eyes are glassy with emotion as he tells her he knows she wants to change, and that it’s hard. She starts to step back, but he takes her hand, and she turns to him as he tells her he will change with her. He lifts their joined hands and kisses hers. She searches his gaze, his is on hers. She frames his face with her hands and leans in, as if to kiss him, but presses her forehead to his instead. “I’m fighting for you, Ziva,” he whispers, his eyes filling. She whispers back that she knows. And I remember how annoyed I got when the show zoomed back on the pair of them, now hidden by trees … and then bounces us back stateside. AUGH.

We’re in the interrogation room with a very beaten-up Gibbs talking to Big Guy, who delivered that beatdown. The man says that he got paid to take Gibbs out of the picture. Gibbs asks who hired him and he says he just gets text messages, then money afterward. He tells Gibbs that JSOC Guy might not know it, but he was the one who led Big Guy right to Gibbs. He tells Gibbs that maybe he needs to question JSOC Guy a little harder. McGee sticks his head in and tells Gibbs he has something. Gibbs and McGee are in the room on the other side of the two-way glass as McGee tells Gibbs that he went through Big Guy’s phone and tracked all the numbers that came into that phone. Most of them were dummy numbers and it took him a while to get past all the subterfuge, but eventually he made it to an actual business, and lo and behold, it belongs to AG! The bombs that went off in the hospital and when the former SecNav was killed were linked to the same numbers, which means that phone call AG supposedly took outside the hospital was actually him detonating the bomb. Apparently, he only joined the anti-terrorist organization to help destroy it. Gibbs instructs McGee to call Fornell and send every agent to the safe house where AG is being held, the FBI, too. Gibb goes back into the interrogation room and asks Big Guy to tell him what was supposed to go on that night. Big Guy asks what happens if he doesn’t tell him. Gibbs puts the crowbar he used on Big Guy’s head on the table and smiles.

Guest star Omar J. Dorsey and Mark Harmon as Gibbs in the NCIS season 11 episode Past, Present, and Future. (Photo: Richard Cartwright, CBS)

Fornell and AG are in a car heading to see the same man who was in the hospital last time, which answers the question of what is going down that night. Fornell opts to ignore the incoming call from NCIS. McGee has the team assembled at HQ, and they head out. We see the sniper set up with his target being the security set up on the billionaire’s rooftop as Fornell and AG approach his home. Seems the billionaire has opted for hospice care at home for his final days. AG tells Fornell that the dying man is about to donate $2 billion to fight terrorism. Well, AG can’t let that happen now, can he? Ruh roh, Fornell!

Sniper takes out the billionaire’s security team and radios that the men are down and the place is all theirs. Then JSOC Guy enters the room where Sniper is set up. Sniper is surprised to see him, but says things are going like clockwork. JSOC says he can’t go through with it, and we see he’s holding a mighty big knife. The two fight as Gibbs closes in on the sniper room. He finds the sniper dead on the floor and JSOC mortally wounded in the abdomen, leaning against a far wall. He presses against the wound, but it’s clear JSOC doesn’t have long. He tells Gibbs that AG’s phone is the trigger, and Gibbs moves to the window where the sniper rifle is still set up. He takes a seat and sets up.

Fornell and crew arrive. He gets out first and sweeps the street. He notes that he doesn’t see the billionaire’s security guys on the roof. AG swings his legs out of the back seat of the car but remains seated as his phone rings. Fornell asks him if they need to review the rules again, and AG assures him he knows them by heart. Fornell is blocking Gibbs’ clear shot at AG. All AG has to do is answer the call, touch the green button on the phone screen and boom. Fornell barely moves out of the way, and Gibbs fires, taking out the phone and AG. Nicely done. From Fornell’s yelp, I’m thinking he took a crease out of him, too. That shouldn’t make me laugh, but given it was Fornell’s backside that was in the way, it does get a bit of a snicker.

Down on the street below, AG’s body is being wheeled away. Fornell is being wheeled on a gurney to the waiting ambulance. He would be on his stomach, given he’s been shot in the behind. Gibbs tells him it was a “through-and-through,” prompting Fornell to say, “Through the ass!” HA. So much classic about this episode. Peak Fornell. Vance and Gibbs agree that AG was just part of it. Parsa is the one pulling the strings, and he’s still out there. That story yet to be told. (Well, back then, anyway.)

Now can we please go back to the farm?

Not quite. We go back to an airport instead. It’s nighttime, and we see Ziva and a clean-shaven Tony walk toward the tarmac and the waiting plane, the overhead announcer mentioning the flight to Dulles is now boarding. Tony turns to her and says there is still time to change her mind. He asks her what he’s going to tell everyone. She tells him to say that he was right, that Ziva has to start over. Tony tells her that’s not going to be enough for Abby. Ziva tells Tony to tell Abby that she is honoring Gibbs. That is when Tony realizes that it was Gibbs she was talking about with the “stop this for him.” She tells Tony she wants to make Gibbs proud. She says Gibbs taught her to follow her heart and she knows that she has to do this alone. She has to let go of everything, or she will be pulled back to where she started. Her voice is choked up as she tells him, because she loves him and knows the feeling is returned, but her point is a valid one. (Even if we’re all yelling at our TVs for her to just keep ONE thing!) Tony’s features smooth out then, and he asks her if she’s planning to call Gibbs, and she says she doesn’t know if she can. He smiles and says it will be fine, she knows how he is on the phone, he’ll let her do all the talking. HA. She laughs even as tears make her throat catch.

She pauses, catches his gaze and says, “Tony.” Then she adds, “You are …” He says, “Handsome, funny, what?” Their gazes are on each other, and she smiles and says, “Loved.” He cups her head and kisses her, intently, then lifts his head, then kisses her again, more gently this time. He lifts his head and their gazes remained locked, everything in their eyes that remains unsaid. He tells her this isn’t easy. He lets her go, begins walking backward, saying, “Hardest one-eighty of my life.” She remains standing there, a small smile on her face, eyes swimming. He finally turns and walks the rest of the way to the plane. You can see her tremble as she tries to manage her emotions as he climbs the steps. He pauses at the top and turns, smiles, waves at her as she smiles in return. Once he’s inside, her smile fades and she simply looks devastated. Or heartbroken. Or maybe a bit of both.

On the plane, we see Tony write “I Will” on the top of a lined sheet of paper. He ends up clicking off the pen without writing anything on the list. He goes to tuck it inside a pocket in his jacket, then frowns, feeling something else in the pocket. He pulls out the chain with the Star of David and smiles. Another invitation?

Mark Harmon as Gibbs and guest star Omar J. Dorsey in the NCIS season 11 episode Past, Present, and Future. (Photo: Richard Cartwright, CBS)

It’s nighttime at Gibbs’ house, too. He pulls a bottle of beer from the fridge and presses it against the swollen eye Big Guy gave him. He holds it there a long moment and keeps it there when his phone rings as he heads to the kitchen table to pick it up. He sits down, opens the beer as it continues to ring. When he sees it’s Ziva calling, he takes a very long pull from the bottle, and it’s hard to tell because his face is pretty beaten up, but he looks up as if to will the tears back, or whatever emotion is rising inside him at this impending call. He swallows hard and it’s more than the beer clogging his throat. He finally answers the call, puts the phone to his ear and looks utterly miserable as he finally says, “Hey, Ziva.”

Fade to black-and-white. And I need some more tissues, please!

We talk about classic episodes, and we all have our different favorites, but I think we can agree that this one definitely belongs on that list.

I want to thank you again for sending me your favorite episodes and talking about why you loved them. It made me want to start watching from the beginning all over again.

I also appreciate all of you who have gone out and picked up one of my books, either from your favorite bookshop or from your local library and given my “other work” a try. Your kind comments and lovely reviews mean a great deal to me. Thank you!

Let’s go out with a smile, shall we? The winner of a copy of my current release, Bluestone & Vine, and a lovely canvas tote bag to carry it in is Dee Scheett! Dee, thanks for entering! I’ll get your prize out to you this week.

With multiple “other work” deadlines upon me, I am taking what’s left of the summer off so my editor will let me come back and play when season 16 premieres on Sept. 25. I hope you’ll join me back on the recap couch as we see what new, future classic episodes might be coming our way this fall!

Until then …

Donna Kauffman is the USA TODAY and Wall Street Journal bestselling author of over 70 novels, translated and sold in more than 26 countries around the world. Born into the maelstrom of Washington, D.C., politics, she now lives in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, where she is surrounded by a completely different kind of wildlife. In addition to her NCIS recaps for USA TODAY’s Happy Ever After blog, she is also a DIYer, a baker, a gardener and a volunteer transporter for the Wildlife Center of Virginia and Rockfish Sanctuary. She loves to hear from readers (and NCIS viewers!). You can drop her a line to donna@donnakauffman.com. For more info about her latest releases, please visit her online at www.DonnaKauffman.com.

MORE ON HEA: See a fun Down & Dirty interview with Donna and read what she learned while writing Blue Hollow Falls

EVEN MORE: See more of Donna’s NCIS posts

Anna J. Stewart

It’s been a sloooow, slow summer, at least where my TV viewing is concerned. It probably has to do with my multiple deadlines, but I’ve really been on the search for shows that don’t feel like such a time suck and really, well, suck me in.

And talk about a sloooooow buildup, I think the promo for Amazon Prime Video’s Jack Ryan started about a year ago? Could that be right? Sure feels like it. Don’t get me wrong, this show hit my to-be-watched list the second it was announced. But as time wore on and the air date seemed to stretch into infinity, I had to ask myself, Would it be worth the wait? Well, now I know.

Yes. Let me amend that. Most. Definitely. Yes.

I’m old enough to remember seeing The Hunt for Red October in theaters. I loved it then, still love it now (Sean Connery’s Scottish-accented Russian aside). I was at the theater for every single Harrison Ford offering. Loved them all. But this Jack Ryan … boy, talk about a new-world take. An authentic take. An in-your-face, real-world take that I believe the character’s creator, Tom Clancy, would have been incredibly proud of.

I’m that rare romance author who really doesn’t care for romantic movies. I like romance in my movies, but romantic comedies? Love stories? Eh. I’ll wait for the DVD, and even then, they aren’t my go-to. I love the big, action spy thriller, blow-them-up, dig into your brain to figure things out kind of stories. But I also want a story that has heart, that has emotion. I want a story with well-developed characters portrayed by talented actors, well-thought-out plots and threads that don’t treat me like I’m stupid, and filled with GMC (goal, motivation and conflict) that feeds my writer brain. In all that, Jack Ryan scores huge. And also, I think I just liked it so much because Jack Ryan is a really good guy. Sometimes too good. In this day and age, I just really want someone to cheer for.

John Krasinski as Jack Ryan. (Photo: Jan Thijs, Potomac River Productions, Amazon)

John Krasinski is on a serious roll right now. Granted, I never watched The Office, but enough of my friends did that I know who he is. His movie The Quiet Place (he directed, wrote and starred in it) seems to be the unexpected breakout of the year (yay!), and now add American screen hero to the list of his accomplishments. This role is a natural fit for him. He just slides right in, and we, as the viewer, are better for it.

Here’s where Tom Clancy hit a home run when he created this character: Jack Ryan has a code. It’s a code he does not waver on. Not even when he should (and there’s one really big part where I just wanted to smack him). But that means he’s flawed. Flawed characters are good because perfect characters are boring. Despite Jack’s experiences, he essentially believes most people are good, even when faced with the overwhelming evidence that they (we) are not. If you’re expecting the mythology to be the same for this character, stop. This is an entirely new creation. The bones, the core of who he is, remains, but all things surrounding him have been updated and refitted to reflect current-day events.

And perhaps that is where this show really caught me off guard. They could have easily kept the focus on Ryan and his search for the terrorist Suleiman. Middle Eastern terrorists are nothing new (thank you, Jack Bauer and … every other show on the planet). What this show did was to give as much attention to those terrorists as far as who they actually are, including what their lives were like before. It addresses why they became what they became. By the end of the first episode, after seeing what happened to Suleiman and his brother in Lebanon, I said to myself, “This is how terrorists are made.” Except … it wasn’t just the one incident that had them turning to this life. It was a lifetime of them. Of course, this isn’t to say that what he was doing or became was right, but for me, right is sometimes in the eye of the beholder. Just as evil is. Is what Suleiman did wrong? Absolutely. Do I understand why he did it? Yes. And that’s when this show won me over.

I also applaud the writers for not shying away from the refugee aspect of the story. Over the past few years, I’ve found it incredibly difficult to watch the news reports of refugees fleeing their countries for various reasons. But I’ve always managed to maintain some emotional distance. That was not the case watching this story unfold. The journey of Suleiman’s wife, Hanin, as she tries to escape with her two daughters from Syria into Turkey and hopefully somewhere, anywhere else, sliced my heart in two. I couldn’t even imagine having to cope with a situation like that. How can I when I live a very fortunate and free life? But those scenes? I felt transported. I felt as if I was there, in those camps, hearing those cries, dealing with the stench and the violence and the despair. The no-holds-barred depiction of the refugee camps, the smuggling of human beings, the absolute fear and terror reflected in those people’s eyes, was eye-opening for me. The ending for Hanin is romanticized when compared to the true horrors a lot of people from that part of the world must endure. This is Hollywood, of course. But those images are going to haunt me for a long time. And I owe those writers a debt of gratitude for that.

John Krasinski as Jack Ryan and Wendell Pierce as James Greer in Jack Ryan. (Photo: Jan Thijs, Potomac River Productions, Amazon)

This is a show that chose not to shy away from anything, including the failings of our own government and agencies. As an aside, I absolutely loved Wendell Pierce as James Greer. Definitely flawed, certainly conflicted, but steadfast and stoic in his determination to protect this country. Another hero I needed. On the fun side, I geeked out a bit with the whole money investigation aspect of Ryan’s analyst job. Love all that computer stuff.

Now, all that said, I didn’t love everything. Jack’s “romance” with Dr. Cathy Mueller, while a nice respite from the violence and conflict of the main story, really fell short for me. I think the writers should consult some romance authors for help in creating authentic relationship conflict, because honestly? Huge yawn. I like these two together, they’re cute (not particularly what you want to say when it’s an action-adventure show), but Cathy’s “outrage” over learning the truth about Jack’s job, when she knew he worked for the government, when she works for the government at times, completely missed the mark. Seriously eye-rolling silly overreaction, actually. I’m happy Jack found someone to make him smile and someone who gives him a chance to be silly and romantic and all, and I suppose if I’m going to find a flaw in here, it’s good that it’s with this aspect. Eesh. I might have to turn in my romance author card for that one.

Julie Graham, Rachael Stirling, Crystal Balint and Chanelle Peloso in The Bletchley Circle: San Francisco. (Photo: BritBox)

So that was last week. This week, I’ve finally dived into the new episodes of one of my favorite (and often overlooked shows), The Bletchley Circle: San Francisco. For those unfamiliar, the original run (The Bletchley Circle) was two seasons long and revolved around a group of women in Britain who had worked as code-breakers during WWII, yet found themselves pushed aside after. They put their talents recognizing patterns to work and caught criminals, usually murderers. I’m not sure where you can stream those original episodes now, but this new incarnation can be found on one of my favorite streaming services, BritBox. I’m so grateful that the service chose this series as its first original content production. Moving the setting to San Francisco in the early 1950s gives it a breath of fresh air as it brings two of the original cast members to the Golden State in search of a serial killer responsible for the death of one of their friends during the war. With a new cast, a new location, new social issues, but the same feel, the attention to detail and fascinating examination of patterns and logistical data make this absolute must-watch television for me. And now that all the episodes are out (they released one a week), I can binge to my heart’s content.

As soon as I finish writing this book.

Which means it’s time to say farewell. Until next month.

Happy reading … and viewing!

~Anna J

A geek since birth, USA TODAY bestselling romance author Anna J Stewart began her life-long obsession with TV and movies back in the ’70s with shows like Wonder Woman and The Bionic Woman, but Star Wars, Stephen King and Nora Roberts made her want to be a writer. Her latest release is Tome Wardens, a paranormal romance trilogy. Read more about Anna and her books at www.authorannastewart.com.

MORE ON HEA: See more of Anna’s posts

Anya Summers aka Maggie Mae Gallagher

I don’t know about you, but this has been one hot, incredibly long summer. I am so ready for fall with its cooler temperatures. But that’s not all fall brings, and no, I’m not talking about the deluge of all things pumpkin spice, I’m talking about the fall premieres for our favorite television shows. Granted, we no longer have the television desert wasteland that was the summer months to contend with, now that we have the rise of streaming services like Netflix, Hulu and Amazon Prime that drop an entire season on us in one day.

But the fall TV premiere season is an annual tradition and one I tend to look forward to. So I bring to you my Top 5 returning fall shows that I am most excited for this year that you might want to add to your to-be-watched list.

Outlander. I adore this show. I think that the producers and the writers, in concert with the actors, have brought this tale to vivid, stunning life with such masterful skill. With the way the show left off in the season-three finale, I’m on the edge of my seat to see what will befall Jamie and Claire this year.

Caitriona Balfe as Claire and Sam Heughan as Jamie Fraser in Outlander. (Photo: Starz)

The Big Bang Theory. It’s the last season for Penny, Leonard, Sheldon, Amy, Raj, Howard and Bernadette. We left off with Sheldon and Amy’s wedding, and I’m on the edge of my seat wondering how they are going to wrap up this show with the brilliance and humor we’ve all come to know. (And yes, there will be tears at the end because I love this show.)

The Gifted. This one surprised me last year in its freshman debut. I typically try to stay away from new shows because of how many are canceled either during or after their first season. But I snuck this one in last year because it’s a Marvel show, and I was so glad I did. It’s set in the world of the X-Men, but they have disappeared, leaving behind bands of mutants who are trying to survive in a world that wants to round them up. It follows a family who learns their kids are mutants and who will do whatever it takes to keep them safe. The cast in this is phenomenal, led by Stephen Moyer of True Blood fame. I can’t wait to see where they are going to take this series — it has loads of potential. And I’m also praying that it doesn’t experience a sophomore slump.

Abigail Spencer as Lucy, Matt Lanter as Wyatt and Malcolm Barrett as Rufus in Timeless. (Photo: Sergei Bachlakov, NBC)

Timeless. I’m so mad at NBC for canceling this show and truly wish Netflix or another network would have picked it up. It’s brilliant and intelligent. However, I will give NBC props because they are going to give the show, if not a proper ending, a two-hour finale to close the show out. I’m not even sure that this will be a fall show, but I’m still putting it here because I and other fans of the show should have had another season to look forward to.

Superstore. I love this show. It is witty and fun, set in a store that’s a cross between a Target and a Walmart, with a hilarious cast of characters. Oh, and it’s set in my hometown of St. Louis. I get a kick out of them mentioning places in my town. With the way they left things at the end of season three, with a certain intrepid couple getting together and having their first time together caught on camera, I’m totally stoked for this season. I highly recommend this show.

Thanks for stopping by! What are some fall shows you can’t to see? Plus, if you get a chance, check out both of my latest releases, Taken by the Beast, and The Dungeon Fantasy Club boxed set of eight full-length novels, my first series with publisher Blushing Books.

See you next time for some more of my geeky lists.

Romance cover art

About Taken by the Beast:

Gemma’s life was nearly perfect. She’s just graduated from college and is heading off to graduate school in the fall. She and her best friends are taking a trip she’s always dreamed about. Only, nothing goes as planned. After being chased on the streets of Dublin by a freaking monster, they get sucked into a portal and wind up on another world. As in, not Earth. Now she can’t find her friends, but there is this really hot, naked guy who calls himself a king and is offering her aid.

There’s only one teensy little problem: He says she’s his mate and is planning on keeping her—forever. Oh, and there’s one more thing: He’s a beast most of the time. And Gemma has to decide if she’s willing to give up everything for the one man she’s meant to be with in the universe.

About The Dungeon Fantasy Club boxed set:

Sometimes all it takes is a simple wrong turn to change your life for the better…

Deep in the Scottish countryside is a club like no other. Where the Doms are tall, gorgeous, loyal and protective. Where the women are strong but like to be tamed. Where all your deepest fantasies can come true.

The Dungeon Fantasy Club.

This is the complete set of all eight full-length, scintillating, spicy romance novels by bestselling author Anya Summers. It includes…

Her Highland Master: Zoey gets herself lost in Scotland and finds herself without a place to stay. The sexy Scot, Declan, makes her a tantalizing but scandalous offer: Stay in his home for the week, free of charge, and spend each night warming his bed. When Zoey’s past catches up with her, will Declan be willing to risk his heart to become Her Highland Master?

To Master & Defend: Dominance. Submission. Honor. After a scorching one-night stand with her knight in shining armor, Ophelia will have to face old hurts, and decide whether or not she can trust Tobias with the most precious of gifts.

Two Doms for Kara: Zeke and Chase make Kara an enticing offer: to submit to them on their trip. But they’re her business partners, so Kara shouldn’t get involved. Should she?

His Driven Domme: In the race of his life, Jesse moves out of the driver’s seat and willingly becomes Lucy’s passenger. Jesse will have to convince Lucy to enter the fast lane with him – and prove that he’s willing to submit to all of his Domme’s utmost desires. Can he make the ultimate sacrifice and give up control – for love?

Her Country Master: After a scorching night with Elise, the dominant alpha male in Tyler recognizes she might just be the woman for him. Can Tyler, the country Dom, convince the certified city girl to trade bright lights for starry nights? Or will her secret destroy their happiness before it’s even begun?

Love Me, Master Me: What begins as a bit of fun and play in the dungeon soon turns into a relationship, where Delilah finds herself healing under Bastian’s passionate touch. When the demands of her career and a threat from her past intervene, Bastian must use every note in his arsenal to convince Delilah that theirs is a duet worth singing. But can she be convinced to trust him with her heart?

Submit To Me: Hunter couldn’t be more shocked when he runs into Veronica, the first love of his life, and the woman who broke his heart. Veronica’s only thought, however, is the secret she’s kept hidden for ten years. When the truth is revealed, she moves heaven and earth to shield the most precious person in her life from the fallout – even if it means leaving the one Dom she knows she could give her whole heart to.

His Wired Dom: When Kat attends her oldest friend’s wedding in Scotland on New Year’s Eve and meets Will, she feels as though she has finally met a man worthy of submitting herself to body and soul. Can she convince Will to be the Dom of her dreams, or will he treat her like precious glass and walk away?

—

Anya is a bestselling and award-winning author published in multiple fiction genres. She also writes urban fantasy and paranormal romance under the name Maggie Mae Gallagher. A total geek at her core, when she is not writing, she adores attending the latest comic con or spending time with her family. She lives in the Midwest with her two furry felines.

Find out more at www.anyasummers.com.

MORE ON HEA: See more of Anya’s posts

Anna J. Stewart

I’m writing this having just taken my seat in the theater for Bohemian Rhapsody, a movie I’ve been looking forward to seeing since they first announced it was being made. Movies like this, movies that tap into the core of what made me who I am (what child of the ’80s didn’t think Queen wrote their personal power anthems?) are pretty much critic-proof for me. I haven’t read the reviews, because I don’t care what anyone else thinks. This viewing is for me, and I cannot wait!

One movie I wasn’t particularly excited to see was A Star Is Born. That doesn’t sound quite right since I’m a Bradley Cooper fan from way back (hello! Alias!), and I’ve always thought Lady Gaga is super talented. But let’s face it, ASIB isn’t exactly a romance writer’s dream story. Yes, it deals with a romantic relationship, but it definitely doesn’t have the required HEA. It isn’t even in the same universe as a happily ever after. So what did I think?

Lady Gaga as Ally and Bradley Cooper as Jackson in A Star Is Born. (Photo: Clay Enos)

The fact that three weeks later I’m still thinking about it, still getting chills thinking about it, still ready to break into tears thinking about it pretty much says it all. This movie is, for me, sublimely as close to perfect as anything I’ve seen in a long while (some story issues aside). The way it was filmed (directed by Cooper as well), the music, the hands around your throat and squeeze of visceral emotions made this movie spellbinding. How do I know this? Well, my Fitbit actually thought I fell asleep because I didn’t move the entire time. It was that good. I’m not even sure I breathed.

If you’re looking for a flawless example of internal conflict for both hero and heroine, this is your movie. If you’re looking for a great example of motivation and goals and character depth and all the things we strive for as writers to achieve on the page, this is your movie. If, like me, you’re looking for an excuse to just let go and cry and sob until your entire body hurts? Definitely your movie. I knew how it was going to end (I’ve seen two of the previous versions), and it still gutted me. This was also the first time I could literally feel two characters fall in love. Like, in my own soul feel it. Performances like that, scripts like that, movies like that just don’t come along very often. Is it for everyone? Nope. I have no doubt there are others who won’t experience it the way I did, and that’s totally fine. But for me, it was glorious and reaffirming of the stories I, along with thousands of other authors, need to tell. As a quick aside, seriously. Come Oscar time, this better rack up the nominations. Yeah, I know. In the grand scheme of life and all, awards mean less than nothing, but some of us are looking for hope and celebration wherever we can find it. If it grabs the nominations it should? I will definitely be celebrating.

Paul Hollywood, Prue Leith, Noel Fielding and Sandi Toksvig on The Great British Baking Show. (Photo: Netflix)

Since my last post, the new TV season has arrived. Ironically, this comes at the same time as I’ve discovered The Great British Baking Show (binge time). Guess which has been taking precedent? I’m having to use each episode as my reward for reaching my word count, but I’m now one of the obsessed! As a rule, I loathe reality and competition shows. They always seem to bring out the worst in people and showcase just how flawed we are as human beings, but this one? It’s so civil. And what they’re making is far better than I could ever do (even though I’m going to start trying!). This show has been a lovely escape that brings a smile to my face with every episode.

As far as the new shows this year that have caught my attention? Do I even have a favorite new show? Yep. Sure do. And it’s the one I least expected to absolutely love. If you’re not watching New Amsterdam, you should be.

The premise is relatively simple: Trouble-making doctor takes over administration of a public hospital (meaning open to all) in New York. Max Goodwin likes to stir things up by asking one question: How can I help? Um, cue the fireworks!

I’m not big on medical shows. I watched ER in its heyday, and I might be the only romance author on the planet who has never watched an episode of Grey’s Anatomy. M*A*S*H* might be the only one I watched (and still watch) religiously, and there you go, I just outed my age. LOL. So why would I have even tuned in to the pilot of New Amsterdam? That’s easy. Ryan Eggold.

Ryan Eggold as Max, José Zúñiga as Lou and Zabryna Guevara as Dora in New Amsterdam. (Photo: Virginia Sherwood, NBC)

Eggold was one of the reasons I stuck it out with The Blacklist for as long as I did (once James Spader’s character wore me out). He’s got that sparkling charisma George Clooney had on ER. He’s impossible to look away from, and you can see every emotion he’s feeling written on his face. You can almost hear the thoughts running through his head as he contorts himself into a pretzel to get things done and to get people taken care of.

But Max also has a secret. At least a secret from his pregnant yet estranged wife, Georgia. Max (spoiler alert!) has cancer. And I don’t mean the plot device type of cancer that will miraculously be cured in two or three episodes. Nope. We’re going for the full ride. Add in that we learn he lost his sister in childhood to cancer as well, that just tells me the odds don’t really seem to be stacked in his favor. Hello, internal conflict. Hello, gut-wrenching life choices. Hello to a fabulous supporting cast that includes unique, non-cookie-cutter characters each dealing with their own realistic situations both on the job and in their personal lives. Nothing is trite with this show. Everything shines. Everything commingles and brings into focus a cast of real-life people that make you wish this was how things were done. At its core, New Amsterdam is about hope and the triumph of the very fallible human spirit.

So yeah, hands down, my favorite show of this year so far.

Titus Makin, Melissa O’Neil and Nathan Fillion in The Rookie. (Photo: Tony Rivetti, ABC)

I’m also enjoying Dick Wolf’s procedural FBI. I wish the characters were a little more fleshed out (with the exception of SA Omar Adom, they’re all pretty standard. Side note: Please stop having Jeremy Sisto shout his way through every scene. He’s a great actor. Give him something to work with, writers). And of course there’s the obligatory viewing of The Rookie (every Firefly fan is automatically committed to this, right?). I like it. It’s different enough to be fun, and talk about conflict, both internal and external. Definitely hitting the right buttons there for me.

As I’ve stated in numerous previous blogs, I’m not a fan of sitcoms. Other than The Big Bang Theory (currently in its final season) and Mom, they just don’t appeal to me. But of course that changed with the revival of Murphy Brown, which I’m sad to say has disappointed me a bit. Hard to duplicate that which was near perfection, and boy, they really sledgehammer you over the head with the political bias. What’s saving it for me is the inclusion of Jake McDorman as Murphy’s son, Avery. Part of me wishes they’d just done a spinoff with his character trying to step out from the shadow of his infamous mom. He’s personality-plus and feels so much more natural on camera than everyone else. Maybe it’s just me. Not sure. I’m still watching, but it isn’t the Murphy I was hoping for.

Richard Madden and Keeley Hawes in Bodyguard. (Photo: World Productions/Netflix)

My latest binge, other than The Great British Baking Show, has been the British political thriller Bodyguard, featuring Richard Madden (Rob from Game of Thrones). This one had enough twists and turns to keep me glued for all six episodes, but it’s the final hour that really won me over. They’re saying Madden is now in the running as a potential James Bond. Eh. I don’t feel that way, but that could be my personal belief that the role should go to Idris Elba or Tom Hiddleston. He’s good, don’t get me wrong. But Bond good? Hmmm. I’ll leave it up to you to decide. Treat yourself to this on Netflix. It’s really good storytelling with really good, complex characters (and a bit of melodrama thrown in for good measure).

And so, from my seat in the theater, I bid you farewell until next month. Happy reading, everyone. And happy viewing!

A geek since birth, USA TODAY bestselling romance author Anna J. Stewart loves writing romance featuring strong, independent heroines for multiple lines at Harlequin. She lives in Northern California where she deals with serious Supernatural, Sherlock and Star Trek addictions. When she’s not writing, you can usually find her at fan conventions or at her local movie theater. Watch for her next release from Harlequin, The Rancher’s Homecoming (Return of the Blackwell Brothers), in December. Visit her online at www.AuthorAnnaStewart.com.

MORE ON HEA: See more of Anna’s posts

We’re back! Yes, that’s right, Outlander on Starz is back. Droughtlander is over. And we fans couldn’t be more excited. And guess what? The series inspired by Diana Gabaldon’s books about the time-traveling Claire Beauchamp Randall Fraser has landed in America! Well, North Carolina in 1767 when our nation wasn’t a nation but a group of British colonies under the rule of the British empire otherwise known as The Crown. But enough of the history lesson (but is history ever enough?). Lol. Moving on. Let’s talk about this episode.

Caitriona Balfe as Claire and Sam Heughan as Jamie in Outlander. (Photo: Starz)

Lots of action, but also death, angst, deception and trickery. Which is exactly what we expect from Outlander and the Frasers. And tonight that was what we got — we smiled, shed a tear or two and even pumped a fist at the skies!

Don’t believe me? “Then fasten your seat belts. You’re in for a bumpy ride.” (I am quoting Margo Channing as portrayed by the immortal Bette Davis in All About Eve. Yes, sprinkling in some classic film stuff for the fun of it:).

Now, let’s recap!

SPOILERS AHEAD!

Summary provided by Starz: Claire and Jamie cross paths with Stephen Bonnet, a charming pirate, and smuggler who enlists their help. Claire illuminates Jamie on some of America’s history, leading him to wonder if it’s possible for them to lay down roots in the country that will become the United States of America.

It opens with the stones. Not any stones, but the first stones in America, perhaps, arranged by an ancient people, building what is probably the first gateway through time. Then we hear Claire’s voice talking about how through the ages people have been fascinated by circles. She gives examples of not only the circular arrangement of the stones but also wedding bands …

We transition from a time long ago to North Carolina 1767 (OK, still pretty long ago.

Sam Heughan as Jamie and Caitriona Balfe as Claire in Outlander. (Photo: Starz)

In his three-corner hat, Jamie is hurrying through the streets of a town with a worried expression etched across his face: His friend, Hayes, a Scot, who has been with him since the prison camps, is to be hung for killing a man.

Jamie arrives at the prison or barn where Hayes and some other men are awaiting the noose. He is there to break Hayes out. (Jamie is always at the ready to help his brethren, no matter the risk to himself.) But Hayes shakes his head no. He deserves his punishment. He slept with a married woman and, when discovered by her husband, killed the man.

He does have one request of Jamie, though. The last thing he wants to do before he hangs from a rope is gaze upon the face of a friend, a smiling face, a good friend. Jamie agrees that he will be there for him.

A pause from recapping. I must applaud the set design and cinematography. Not that I was around in 1767, but it looks authentic. With the colors of the buildings and the costumes, the producers of Outlander share what looks to be colonial North Carolina, but it was filmed in Scotland!

OK, we’re back.

Jamie breaks the news to his crew — Claire, Fergus, Marsali, Young Ian and Lesley — that there will be no prison escape. Hayes has accepted his punishment.

Then Jamie delivers on his promise to Hayes. He stands front and center with the best smile he can muster on his face as the gallows fall from beneath his friend’s feet …

Ed Speleers as Stephen Bonnet in Outlander. (Photo: Starz)

Then Lesley, overcome by grief, charges through the crowd toward Hayes’ dangling body. Chaos ensues, and the other men facing the hangman’s noose use the distraction to attempt an escape. Only one of them succeeds, a blond man — and a familiar face for fans of Downton Abbey as actor Ed Speleers played footman Jimmy Kent. In Outlander, he is Stephen Bonnet, but more on him later.

The Fraser family gathers at a pub, and they sing a traditional Scottish song in memory of the late Hayes. It is a requiem, and the entire pub of Scots joins in.

Then Jamie, Claire, Lesley and Young Ian go off to bury Hayes.

As Jamie and Young Ian dig the grave, poor Young Ian recalls his time spent (last season) with Geillis Duncan. You might recall that she took a bath in blood, saying it was good for her skin? SMH. The witch molested Young Ian, forcing him into her bed against his will. Tormented by the experience, he shares his painful memories with Jamie, who can relate, sadly. (Remember Jamie’s abuse by Black Jack Randall?)

When the grave is ready for Hayes, Jamie and Ian return to the covered wagon for the body. But suddenly the body beneath the tarp stands up! It turns out that one of the men slated to be hanged alongside Hayes escaped and hid in the wagon. His name is Stephen Bonnet. He asks Jamie to hide him in the wagon until they are far enough away from the British soldiers hunting for him. Jamie agrees.

Later, the wagon is stopped by British soldiers. But the Frasers are allowed, with the hidden Bonnet, to continue their journey.

During the exchange with the soldiers, however, Bonnet is injured. While Claire treats his wounds, he asks about her wedding rings — she has two. He is mighty interested in her rings …

Bonnet is treated and sets off on his separate path.

Caitriona Balfe as Claire and Sam Heughan as Jamie in Outlander. (Photo: Starz)

Claire and Jamie are alone in the woods and pitch a secure camp. They are exhausted and reflective about their long, painful day. Claire is washing Jamie’s shoulders as they talk about fear, death and love. Claire fears Jamie’s death. But Jamie assures her that when his body dies, his soul will always be hers. A lovely scene follows, an expression of their love and intimacy. And, as all Claire and Jamie love scenes go, it is sensual and intense.

Now it’s time to sell the gemstones, which they are counting on to raise enough money to finance a return to Scotland. Claire and Jamie get dressed in finery to attend dinner at the governor’s home. For some reason (Claire’s beauty, Jamie later points out), the governor takes a shine to the Frasers. He offers Jamie a plot of land and then buys the gemstones for a substantial amount.

Claire explains later that the land the governor offers is essentially a bribe to ensure he’ll have local fighting men when battles breakout. Claire further explains that this could put Jamie on the wrong side of the war coming in eight years, a war the Crown will lose.

They now have the money to secure passage to Scotland for themselves and all their friends.

John Bell as Young Ian and Rollo in Outlander. (Photo: Starz)

By the way, this is about the time when Young Ian introduces Rollo, a big, wolf-sized dog he “won” on the “roll of the dice.” I am already in love with this dog!

At dinner, the happy family is counting their money, and Jamie and Claire announce they are staying in America. Lesley announces he will stay with them, and Fergus and Marsali can’t sail back home because Marsali is pregnant.

Everyone is thrilled with this news.

Now, some of the group are traveling to visit Jocasta, Jamie’s aunt, his mother’s sister, the late Dougal MacKenzie’s sister. We learn that she’s been married many times and widowed many times.

The group travel on a slow riverboat, with the best waterman on the river, a freedman, steering the boat. During the voyage, Jamie gives Claire a medicine kit filled with all sorts of delightful things, including a microscope.

They stop for the night, but guess who’s back? Yep. Stephen Bonnet, and now he has a crew of thieves with him. They beat, rob and kill in quick succession. Lesley’s throat is cut. Jamie is beaten, and Bonnet chokes Claire and takes Jamie’s wedding ring, which she attempted to swallow to keep from Bonnet. Now, all is lost — what will they do next?

Caitriona Balfe as Claire and Sam Heughan as Jamie in Outlander. (Photo: Starz)

It’s a dramatic end to a strong episode. I must admit, I wasn’t completely sold on the use of the Ray Charles classic rendition of America the Beautiful as background music for the violent ending to the episode. But when I watched it a second time, it did make a strong statement.

So, there we have it! Episode one of season four of Outlander is based on Diana Gabaldon’s fourth book in the series, Drums of Autumn.

What did you think? Did you love it? Are you excited the show is back?

I am! And I’ll return next week to chat about episode two, Do No Harm.

Until then!

Denny S. Bryce is a three-time RWA Golden Heart finalist who won the 2014 Golden Heart in the romantic suspense category. She also writes historical fiction and paranormal romance/urban fantasy. Her website is www.dennysbryce.com. You can also connect with her on Twitter (@DennySBryce) or Facebook.

MORE ON HEA: See more of Denny’s posts

There are times when television programming raises the bar and presents an emotional, painful period in history vividly and with compassion. Do No Harm is a thought-provoking, horrifying reminder of a not-so-distant past.

Sam Heughan as Jamie and Caitriona Balfe as Claire on Outlander. (Photo: Starz)

SPOILERS AHEAD!

Episode summary from Starz: Claire and Jamie visit his Aunt Jocasta at her plantation, River Run. When tragedy strikes at the plantation, Jamie and Claire find themselves caught between what’s right and the law of the land, ultimately facing an impossible decision.

This episode begins with a clock.

A black woman is winding a clock, using some instrument to make sure the gears operate correctly. She is adjusting the arms of the clock, checking the time, making sure that this timepiece, a grandfather clock (or long-case clock) provides the accurate time. And as this episode painfully, violently, dramatically shows, time is essential.

After this opening, we are back on the riverboat with Claire and Jamie. His shoulders are hunched, his head down. Jamie is in full sorrow, grieving the loss of Leslie (in last week’s episode, the Scotsman’s throat was slit). Jamie blames himself, and rightfully so, IMHO. Trusting the villainous Stephen Bonnet so quickly, so thoroughly (even though he was slated to hang), Jamie and Claire should share the guilt — and they do. Now, because of Bonnet, they are broke and grieving as they arrive at River Run, the home of Jamie’s Aunt Jocasta, sister of his mother, and a MacKenzie.

The boat docks in front of the colonial plantation-style home — white pillars, large expansive front lawn, wide wrap-around porch. And greeting them is the one and only Aunt Jocasta.

Maria Doyle Kennedy as Aunt Jocasta, Colin McFarlane as Ulysses and Natalie Simpson as Phaedre on Outlander. (Photo: Starz)

She is elegant, attractive and not alone. Her servant is at her side. She introduces him: Ulysses.

Jamie is thrilled to see his aunt after so many years. She comments on his size and asks about his red hair, and then she meets Claire. But when Young Ian walks up and extends a bouquet, we learn (or confirm our suspicions, since her movements have been deliberate and careful), she is blind. She can see only shapes and shadows. But she will have none of the sympathy Young Ian expresses. Her hearing is extraordinary. She is “the envy of many a gossip.”

Next, there is a scene about a skunk, and it was fun to watch. If I’m going to trust the show’s facts on indigenous life in Scotland (or as it turns out Europe, too), there are no skunks in Scotland. But we aren’t in Scotland. This is North Carolina. So, when Young Ian and Rollo burst into the room, reeking to high heaven, Jamie is worried. Is the stench poisonous? Are the boy and his beast at risk of death? Claire puts an end to Jamie’s fears: They won’t die, but they need to get rid of the stink.

John Bell as Young Ian and Rollo in Outlander. (Photo: Starz)

While Young Ian is sent off to find the man who can cure him and Rollo of the skunk odor, Claire and Jamie are led to their room. Claire meets two servants (slaves), and when they address her as mistress, she invites them to call her Claire. Their reaction is hesitation and shock. Claire remembers the time zone in which she is now living and amends her statement by requesting to be called Mistress Claire.

Claire has been noticeably uneasy since arriving at River Run. Now, as she looks out her bedroom window at the fields filled with slaves, she is angry and disgusted, and we know she won’t be able to hold her tongue much longer.

In the next scene, Ian and Rollo are in need of a good scrubbing to rid them of the skunk stench. His discussion with the “vinegar man” cracked me up. It was all about hairiness: Ian has little, or no, facial hair, and the man with the skunk cure is so hairy that he notes: “One look at my buttocks and you’d think my daddy was a Buffalo.” He also comments about his popularity with the Native American women (which had to be more his dream than reality). This prompts Ian to inquire about the “Indians” and the rumors he’d heard about their savagery. The hairy man explains that there is violence, but mostly it is between tribes.

Ian remarks that it sounds like the Campbells and MacDonalds in Scotland. They can’t be in the same room without a fight. He then adds that Indians don’t sound that much different from Highlanders.

Sam Heughan as Jamie and Maria Doyle Kennedy as Aunt Jocasta on Outlander. (Photo: Starz)

Aunt Jocasta in the next scene is explaining River Run to Jamie. The land produces indigo, cotton, tobacco, lumber. She also boasts about her 152 slaves. She then speaks of her generous nature, since she “purchased” her slaves in family groups, vs. splitting up parents, sisters and brothers. Claire is listening, too, but she doesn’t let Aunt Jocasta’s words pass unchallenged. She asks pointedly if the people she’s bought would call her actions a kindness. Jocasta is surprised by the question and Claire’s tone.

Jamie later meets one of Jocasta’s overseers and counters the man’s suggestions for what to grow near the river. Plant rice near the river to yield a better crop.

That evening, Jocasta is throwing a party. While dressing, Claire’s pale skin, slim waist and dark hair are discussed. As the servants help Claire dress, the blind Jocasta asks Claire her opinion of River Run. Claire can’t keep the disapproval out of her voice (when has she ever?). Jocasta asks if she is a Quaker (Quakers didn’t support slavery). Not wanting to be too forceful on the subject of slavery (just yet), Claire explains that she is not a Quaker but she did provide some Quakers with medical care, and they shared their anti-slavery beliefs, which she believes as well.

At the party, Jocasta interrupts the celebration to make an announcement: She has named Jamie her heir, and he will commence his duties as master of the estate immediately.

Of course, she didn’t mention any of this to Jamie beforehand. And Jamie and Claire look shocked. It is familiar, however. Public surprise announcements are a MacKenzie trait. Jamie points out Jocasta’s similarities to his Uncle Colum.

In their room after the party, Claire is distraught. She and Jamie cannot accept Jocasta’s offer. Claire refuses to own slaves; Jamie agrees. But if he is the master of River Run, maybe he can do something to make a difference — he will free the slaves of River Run.

So, now Jamie is on a mission to free the estate’s slaves. Of course, he is challenged and asked, How do you propose to run a farm without slaves? To be freed, a slave must have saved a life, one of a litany of laws designed to keep a slave a slave, laws that are insurmountable. Jamie is at a loss. Since he can’t legally free the slaves, he must refuse the inheritance. He reminds Claire of the British governor’s offer of land, which he would run without slaves. Claire repeats an earlier warning: Accepting the land would put Jamie on the wrong side of the war that’s coming (the Revolutionary War).

But before this issue can be resolved, Jamie is summoned by his Aunt Jocasta. There is a problem. Rufus, a slave, was struck by an overseer with a lash and responded by cutting off the ear of his attacker. The price to be paid by any slave causing harm to a white person is death.

Jamie and Claire arrive at the scene. Jamie has two pistols. Rufus is being hauled up onto a tree limb by a rope tied to a hook impaled into his stomach. The mob is in a frenzy. Jamie pulls out his pistols to stop the horde.

Maria Doyle Kennedy as Aunt Jocasta, Caitriona Balfe as Claire and Sam Heughan as Jamie on Outlander. (Photo: Starz)

Claire demands Rufus (still impaled by the hook, but the rope has been cut away) be taken to River Run. Claire puts her surgeon skills to work. Ian helps, and after a few tense moments, the surgery is successful. It appears Rufus will recover.

Jocasta comes in, dismayed. Why are they treating the boy since he must be hanged? The law is the law.

A mob gathers outside of the house. They want Rufus, and they want him now. Jocasta delays the inevitable by promising to deliver Rufus by midnight. They need a little more time.

Claire talks to Rufus when he wakes up and marvels at where he is (in the River Run living room). He knows he’s broken the law. Claire comments that the man whose ear Rufus sliced off was a “son of a bitch.”

Rufus is stunned. He’s never met a woman who talks that way. Young Ian adds, You’ve never met a woman like my Aunt Claire.

Ulysses is watching, keeping an eye on things. He warns Claire that saving the boy’s soul is the only thing that should be done for him now. His life cannot be saved from the mob.

Claire and Jamie face a dilemma. Rufus is healing. They don’t want to turn him over to the mob. Maybe they can claim he escaped, but then they are told that the overseers will get their pound of flesh by killing the slaves who worked alongside Rufus that day. Ulysses says that it would’ve been better if Rufus had died on the hook.

Sam Heughan as Jamie on Outlander. (Photo: Starz)

Jocasta tells Claire and Jamie that they must turn Rufus over to be executed. Claire refuses. She won’t let this happen.

A mob of madmen looking to lynch young Rufus gathers outside the house. Claire knows the mob will tear him apart.

Jamie asks Claire if she can do for Rufus what she did for Colum in season two with the tea. Solemnly, Claire prepares the tea. Jamie watches. The mob can be heard roaring in the background.

Unaware of the poison, Rufus drinks the tea. Claire asks him to tell her about his sister (they were taken by slave traders while playing in a tree near their mother’s house). He talks about how he loved to fish in the river at night and play with his sister. He passes away, and Jamie recites a prayer as he carries his lifeless body to the mob. They don’t seem aware that he is already dead, and they seize his body, wrap a knotted rope around his neck, drag him across the lawn and lynch him.

Maria Doyle Kennedy as Aunt Jocasta, Sam Heughan as Jamie and Caitriona Balfe as Claire on Outlander. (Photo: Starz)

Claire and Jamie stand on Aunt Jocasta’s porch, staring in anguish at what the mob is doing to Rufuss body, but also they are staring at the crowd of madmen in disgust.

The episode ends.

Next week, we’ll be back with The False Bride.

Until then!

Denny S. Bryce is a three-time RWA Golden Heart finalist who won the 2014 Golden Heart in the romantic suspense category. She also writes historical fiction and paranormal romance/urban fantasy. Her website is www.dennysbryce.com. You can also connect with her on Twitter (@DennySBryce) or Facebook.

MORE ON HEA: See more of Denny’s posts

Love. Love. Love this episode.

I have been jonesing for some Roger and Brianna — yes, I am that girl. This episode gave me just the lead-in I needed from them for this season.

Episode summary from Starz: Jamie and Claire search for a place to call home with Young Ian and John Quincy Myers, a local mountain man. Meanwhile, in the 20th century, Brianna and Roger’s romance heats up and then fizzles during a road trip that winds up highlighting their differences.

SPOILERS AHEAD!

Richard Rankin as Roger and Sophie Skelton as Brianna in Outlander. (Photo: Starz)

The establishment shot is of a giant stag seemingly made of twigs shimmering in the light of a bonfire.

We open in 1970 Inverness. Roger is closing up the old house, and Fiona and her fiancé appear to have purchased it. She’s getting married. And Roger is on his way to America to sing at a Scottish festival. He’s also going to visit a lass studying engineering at MIT (Brianna!!!!!). They’ve been in touch with each other over the years since Claire stepped through the stones to find Jamie. Hooray! But it’s been a while since they’ve seen each other.

At River Run, it appears to be the next day after the death of Rufus. Jamie and Claire won’t be staying on at River Run. They can’t abide slavery. Aunt Jocasta isn’t thrilled with Jamie’s departure, but she does have some parting gifts — a small bag of coins and some silver items formerly owned by Jamie’s mother.

Colin McFarlane as Ulysses, Maria Doyle Kennedy as Aunt Jocasta and Natalie Simpson as Phaedre in Outlander. (Photo: Starz)

There’s a lovely moment between Jamie and his aunt, who wishes she could look upon his face just once more.

Now, we cut to Jamie and Young Ian. This young man doesn’t want to be sent back to Scotland. Jamie wants to protect him by sending him home to his mother (which is what he promised). But Ian speaks up for himself with bold (and accurate) examples of how much he’s experienced in the past few years (months, weeks, I’m not sure ). He’s a man and can make up his mind about where he wants to settle. He wants to stay with Jamie and will write the letter to his mother. Jamie agrees.

Of course, we can’t leave River Run without another confrontation — a one-on-one scene between Claire and Jocasta. At first, we think Claire will get out of the room without a struggle, or at least without being the recipient of Jocasta’s sharp words. Frankly, Jamie’s aunt makes excellent points in this scene. Jamie is giving up his rightful inheritance and the chance to be a laird and why? Because he loves Claire and she won’t stay at River Run as long as there is slavery.

Mr. Myers joins Jamie, Claire and Ian as their guide through the Blue Ridge (I’ve been there!).

In 1970, we are back with my new OTP (One True Pairing!), Roger and Brianna. And guess what? These two whacky kids are taking a road trip to North Carolina.

Dairy Queen, burgers, French fries and grease-stained wrappers and a map tossed in the backseat. An old car … OK, new to them, but I remember those days, summer trips with the adults in the front seat and the youngsters in the back playing “on the road” games. However, I don’t remember anything about the “cat game” Brianna and Roger are playing.

Brianna quickly loses interest in the cat game. She can’t help but comment on how pretty Roger is (I agree). But our Brianna is frisky. Poor Roger nearly drives off the road when she reaches over (while Roger’s hands are on the steering wheel) and gives him a healthy smooch.

Sam Heughan as Jamie and Caitriona Balfe as Claire in Outlander. (Photo: Starz)

The highway (or backroad) dissolves into a dirt trail, and the car is replaced with a horse-drawn cart and Claire and Jamie on horseback.

Mr. Myers mentions his time spent with the Cherokee, and Ian doesn’t hesitate to make remarks about the man’s experience with Cherokee women. Eyebrows rise, but Ian’s enthusiasm doesn’t wane. Later, Mr. Myers needs to venture in another direction, separating from Jamie and Claire. Of course, Ian wants to go with Mr. Myer. Not thrilled with the idea, Jamie and Claire do agree to let him go. They will meet up later.

Jamie and Claire are alone and talk about where they might go next. Jamie offers to go to Boston, but Claire wants them to go someplace they build together and call home.

Sam Heughan as Jamie and Caitriona Balfe as Claire in Outlander. (Photo: Starz)

I enjoy when the show takes a breath and gives us some of the beauty of the land, and the times between the violence and rough adventure that are so much a part this couple’s attraction. As they ride, Claire and Jamie talk about Brianna and Frank. It’s an easy conversation. Jamie shows no jealousy about the close relationship between Brianna and Frank.

The clouds darken and thunder rolls. Jamie and Claire take a moment to rest.

“I would lay the world at your feet, Claire, but I have nothing to give you.”

The mule runs off, and Claire jumps on a horse to find the animal. (I might’ve screamed at her, something like, “Keep your behind with Jamie — out there is DANGER!”). She didn’t listen.

We quickly shift scenes and return to North Carolina in 1970. Keep in mind that Roger and Brianna don’t have any idea about what happened with Claire and whether she ever found Jamie. I like how this plays into this episode.

The twosome is at the festival and ready to dance, and Roger is all about the dance and connecting with Brianna. The only purpose of the scene is to show the bond growing between them.

We are back in the woods with Jamie. And here comes the mule — but guess what? No Claire. (Of course, NO Claire. I told her to stay with Jamie — but she never listens.)

Caitriona Balfe as Claire in Outlander. (Photo: Starz)

Lost in the woods, Claire falls off her horse when a bolt of lightning scares the animal. She hits the ground, unconscious.

In North Carolina, 1970, the festivities at the festival continue. Roger is a sought-after musician. (Actor Richard Rankin — no double needed here — he sings, he plays guitar, looks pretty … le sigh). OK, I’m back …

Following the stage show, Brianna and Roger walk to their respective cabins, but first some kissing (yes!). Then Roger says good night and heads for his cabin. Brianna stops him. She has purchased a gift for him, a book that lists the Scottish settlers in America. He knows everything about the history of the Scots in Scotland, what about America?

She also has a bottle of booze. Yes, Brianna is my kind of girl. They go to Roger’s cabin and hang out, chatting about this and that. Roger stands and walks over to stare at the head of the stag on the wall. Suddenly, Brianna’s blouse is tossed over the animal’s antlers. Roger is a happy guy. And there is more kissing. But then he abruptly stops kissing (darn it!) and says, This needs to be perfect.

Brianna says it is perfect.

And if we didn’t know already — Roger is an old-fashioned kind of guy. He gives her a bracelet with wording that declares his love. In the next minute, he’s on one knee proposing. YES, he is proposing marriage. Brianna’s fun, sexy night is over.

This is classic Brianna and Roger (in case you haven’t read the books and part of the reason I love them so much. Talk about conflict!!!!???)

“If you don’t care enough to marry me, I don’t care to have you in my bed.” Those are Roger’s words. (WHAT?)

Before you know it, they are arguing, and Brianna hauls off and slaps him (after he makes a rude remark lovemaking and you know). Well, this is a beautiful scene, but painful. Poor Roger. He loves her, but she isn’t ready for what he is offering (and I can’t blame her — he did rush the moment, to say the least).

Sam Heughan as Jamie and Caitriona Balfe as Claire in Outlander. (Photo: Starz)

Back to Claire, she finds a skull, and the next thing we know she sees ghosts. Jamie is searching for her, getting soaked in the storm. Keep in mind, if she hadn’t run off after the mule, none of this would be happening.

So, Claire is examining the skull. I’ve got a feeling there is a reason. There are also some stones with it. What has she discovered? Well, whatever it is, we’ll hear more about it sooner or later. But I believe it has to do with the original stones. The ghost returns, and after walking toward her, he walks away. We then see that part of his scalp is missing.

At the festival, the burning of the stag is about to happen. Bagpipes are playing, and Roger is looking around for Brianna. They left each other in an unsettling way. Both begin to apologize, but Roger is still in the same place. He wonders if she’s changed her mind. She says no, which means he can’t do it.

Richard Rankin as Roger in Outlander. (Photo: Starz)

I love, love, loved the scene with the introduction of the various clans. When the MacKenzies are called, Roger walks toward the bonfire with the torch in hand, joining the other members of the different clans. He adds his torch to the flame, looks back toward the bleachers where he left Brianna. But she is gone.

He looks SO sad.

FYI: You can count on me being a mess throughout this season, especially when it comes to Brianna and Roger. Just a friendly warning.

Claire fell asleep and wakes up, searching for her boots. They’ve vanished. (Don’t ask.) She follows the trail of boot prints, which lead her — surprisingly — to Jamie, who is waiting for her at the riverbank.

We have the big hug reunion.

He is thankful she had the smarts to come back to the stream. Claire remarks that she’s never been here before. Goose bumps.

The teeth in the skull have a silver filling, which wasn’t invented for 100 years. Claire is astonished (as am I — I am enjoying the overarching mystery of the stones and time travel that is always a part of Claire’s story).

The next day, Jamie and Claire find a patch of strawberries. It is the emblem of the Fraser clan. It sounds to me like this land is speaking to Jamie.

Standing on a boulder, looking out over the land, Jamie declares they’ve found their home, and they will call it Fraser’s Ridge.

More hugging. Musical score swells. Credits roll.

Wow!

Can’t wait until next week’s episode, called Common Ground.

Until then.

Denny S. Bryce is a three-time RWA Golden Heart finalist who won the 2014 Golden Heart in the romantic suspense category. She also writes historical fiction and paranormal romance/urban fantasy. Her website is www.dennysbryce.com. You can also connect with her on Twitter (@DennySBryce) or Facebook.

MORE ON HEA: See more of Denny’s posts

I think I’ve mentioned I’ve read Drums of Autumn by Diana Gabaldon, the fourth book in her series and the inspiration for this season of Outlander. I must say I thoroughly enjoyed how the producers, writer and director handled Jamie vs. the bear — a highlight of the book was made into well-done, tense, edge-of-your-seat cable television.

Sam Heughan as Jamie and Caitriona Balfe as Claire in Outlander. (Photo: Starz)

But what I truly enjoyed about this episode was the meticulous care given to building the foundation of Claire and Jamie’s home: Fraser’s Ridge.

SPOILERS AHEAD!

Summary provided by Starz: Having been led by providence to Fraser’s Ridge, Jamie, Claire, and Young Ian begin to build a home in the Blue Ridge Mountains. But their efforts are stymied by unwelcoming neighbors and a bloodthirsty bear that ravages their settlement. In the 20th century, Roger tried to reconnect with Brianna by searching for proof that her parents found each other in the past.

What I like to call the opening establishment or statement shot begins with a Cherokee dressing for what some might assume is a battle. And there we have the theme of this episode — assumptions.

Next, we are with Jamie and the British governor of North Carolina. Jamie is signing the agreement that gives him 10,000 acres of land in North Carolina. The governor also takes the time to make the point that Highlanders have a lot in common with the “Indian savage.” Jamie responds with an observation in response (which I love): Savagery comes in many forms.

Tim Downie as Governor Tryon in Outlander. (Photo: Starz)

Jamie’s astuteness in so many areas is sometimes passed over (in previous episodes/seasons), IMHO. I am enjoying him showing off his canniness and the experiences (with and without Claire) that have made him a better man (and ever-growing character on the show).

Next, Claire is grocery shopping with Marsali, who, you will recall, is with child. She is missing her mother and shares this and her fears of her upcoming birth and motherhood with Claire. We can see this touches Claire, and we can guess why (Brianna).

Then Jamie, Ian and Fergus enter the store. Everything is packed and loaded, and it is time for them to depart for Fraser’s Ridge. Of course, Fergus and Marsali will stay behind and join the other Frasers later, after she gives birth.

Sam Heughan as Jamie and Caitriona Balfe as Claire in Outlander. (Photo: Starz)

There is a joy and sadness here because Jamie and Claire are excited about building the house on Fraser’s Ridge, but Marsali reminds Claire (and Jamie) of Brianna. Claire won’t be with Brianna when she gives birth to a child, and this thought saddens her.

Soon, we are treated to another visit to the cliff overlooking Fraser’s Ridge (or the Blue Ridge Mountains?). Young Ian stays back — he doesn’t like heights.

Within minutes, the threesome (Claire, Jamie and Ian) are making camp and making plans to build the house.

Oh, it so happens that as I write this recap, I am in North Carolina — on my way to a writing retreat in Atlanta. The trees in this episode of Outlander look like the trees I’ve seen as I drive through the state. Seriously!

Back to the show: Young Ian calls out to Jamie and Claire. A group of Cherokee have come. Of course, Jamie and Claire and Ian are fearful. They can’t help to react to the rumors of “savages.” However, I give Jamie credit. As the standoff comes to pass, Jamie takes a knife Claire slips to him. The confrontation is brief. Jamie walks toward the Cherokee, who are armed (rifles or muskets would be the proper name).

Caitriona Balfe as Claire and Sam Heughan as Jamie in Outlander. (Photo: Starz)

Since there is a language barrier, this encounter is more of a stare-off. Except Jamie drops the knife on the ground, a symbol to show that this is his land. He tells the Cherokee his name. Without a fuss, the Cherokee depart.

Next, the scene shifts to Oxford University in 1971 where Roger is a professor. We can tell he’s still sulking over Brianna (we assume) as he chats with a friend who invites him to attend something, but he refuses. He’s still so sad …

Anyway, he starts to thumb through items in his desk: the sketch of him and Brianna inside the book Brianna gave him as a gift while they were on their road trip to North Carolina.

As he reads through the book, a history of Scottish settlers to North Carolina in the 1760s and 1770s, he becomes the voiceover for the next scene. I like what the director did here. Cross-cutting the past (1768) and the present (1971), and Roger’s “aha moment” as he realizes that the Fraser’s Ridge he is reading about might belong to Jamie and Claire. Surely a shot in the dark, but one worth investigating.

In 1768, the Cherokee have returned to the Fraser camp armed and riding on horseback (before, they walked up to Jamie), definitely upping the intimidation factor. They throw stakes into the ground. All parties need to mark territory and boundaries.

At Oxford University, Roger’s historian brain has been busy. He’s found a document that proves something he and Brianna did not know — did Claire ever find Jamie? Well, he has the answer, and it’s yes! He telephones Brianna (remember, she’s at school in Boston).

They engage in some painful-to-listen-to small talk (the strain between them is thick and crosses an ocean). Eventually, Roger gets around to giving Brianna the news: Claire found Jamie. They owned property in North Carolina in 1768.

Brianna is thrilled with the news. However, the awkwardness and distance between her and Roger still exist. They say goodbye (no romance, no makeup, just goodbye).

Claire and Jamie are chatting one night by the fire in the woods (the house is not built yet). Claire reminds Jamie of the ghost of the Cherokee she saw the night she was lost. She thinks maybe she was wrong. He wasn’t trying to lead her to Jamie, but what if he was warning her? Jamie doesn’t buy it. He won’t abandon the land or where he wants to build the house — he will find a way to live alongside the Cherokee.

Later that night, after they’ve gone asleep, they are awoken by a barking Rollo (Young Ian’s wolf/dog/pet). They also hear noises in the woods. When they go to investigate, they find that their camp has been robbed. The meat and other provisions are gone. They look into the woods when the bushes stir. One of their horses limps into the firelight. It is badly wounded by the claws of a bear — according to Claire.

The next day, Finley, their guide from Aunt Jocasta’s and the man who cured Young Ian of the skunk’s stench, provides Jamie with counsel (along with some food and provisions to help them along). He also suggests that Jamie find a way to endear himself with the Cherokee.

Jamie and Young Ian spend some time together talking about knitting. Young Ian and Jamie can knit. Claire cannot. Young Ian offers to teach Claire how to knit. A sweet, homey scene, but it somehow leads Claire to a need to practice her shooting. She comments to Jamie about how she has always marveled at how speedily soldiers must reload their flint rifles on a battlefield. Of course, we know this scene will come back to haunt us (the viewers) later in the episode.

Later, another night’s rest is interrupted. Jamie, Claire and Ian venture into the woods, torches in hand, but find Finley. A bear has mauled him.

Oh. Oh. Oh. I must say, it is wonderful how often Claire’s skill as a healer (surgeon) comes into play. She has to work fast to save Finley — the bear’s claws ripped him apart.

We are now cutting from the Cherokee’s village and a ritual they seem to be invested in and Jamie in the woods dealing with the bear that attacked Finely.

Caitriona Balfe as Claire, Sam Heughan as Jamie, Adawehi as Tantoo Cardinal (behind Young Ian) and John Bell as Young Ian in Outlander. (Photo: Starz)

This is the scene that had me on pins and needles (cliché, but I had to) because it was intense — dark, bear, claws, Jamie, dark and something strange. And we soon learn just how weird this “bear” is. It’s not a bear: It’s a man dressed up as a bear, wearing bear claws, bear fur and other bear stuff. Still, Jamie defeats the bear.

It turns out the Cherokee tribe banished the man for forcing himself on a woman. He was no longer a Cherokee. One of the tribe explains how this man turned into a bear and also how none of the tribe could kill him — because to them, he was already dead.

But Jamie has helped the tribe by getting rid of someone who was a danger to them. It looks like Jamie won’t have to fight the Cherokee. In the next scene, the Frasers receive visitors: the Cherokee chief. Also, it turns out, several of the Cherokee speak English. Jamie also gets his Cherokee name: Bear Killer!

I so enjoy this mix of fiction, history and mythology. And the next exchange furthers my point when two of the Cherokee women talk to Claire about the visions they’ve seen featuring Claire. She is told, “Death will not be her fault,” among other things.

Roger is back at Inverness. He’d left a few boxes at Fiona’s (his family’s old house). Of course, Fiona is nosy. She wants the skinny on Brianna and Roger, but he is reticent. He does share one bit — the conversation is brief. Eventually, we learn that Fiona always knew about the stones, Claire traveling through time and the whole business. Roger is relieved. Fiona sees this and more. She then goes to a drawer and pulls out a document, and she hesitates to show him. It reports on a fire at Fraser’s Ridge in 1770 something (the actual year is unreadable). Jamie and Claire die in the fire.

Back in 1768, we are treated to a montage. It shows the Frasers (which includes Ian, by the way :), the threesome clearing the land, cutting down trees, working the wood, creating a home.

Once the beginning of the house’s foundation is partly built, the Fraser home is ready enough for Jamie to walk Claire up the steps and over the threshold.

It takes a few minutes, but Jamie walks Claire through the house and his vision of how it will look. They embrace.

Cut away to Roger. He didn’t want to tell Brianna about her mother’s death in the fire, but he’s changed his mind. He telephones her.

Brianna’s roommate answers the phone. She is surprised. How come Roger hasn’t seen Brianna? She is in Scotland. Two weeks. Hasn’t she called him? She went to Scotland to see her mother.

Roger’s face is exactly as it should be: surprised beyond all get out.

While I screamed: She went to see her mother!!!!! What does that mean? Did she? Did Brianna go to see Claire — for real?

Well, we’ll have to see next week in the next episode, Savages.

Until then.

Denny S. Bryce is a three-time RWA Golden Heart finalist who won the 2014 Golden Heart in the romantic suspense category. She also writes historical fiction and paranormal romance/urban fantasy. Her website is www.dennysbryce.com. You can also connect with her on Twitter (@DennySBryce) or Facebook.

MORE ON HEA: See more of Denny’s posts