[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for NCIS Season 23 Episode 2 “Prodigal Son (Part II).”]
NCIS gives Parker (Gary Cole) the closure he needs with Carla (Rebecca De Mornay) after she killed his father, but in doing so, it also set up two new mysteries for Season 23 with the Tuesday, October 21, episode.
An explosion on board the ship onto which Parker followed Carla seemingly kills them both — but it’s quickly revealed that not only was Parker not on board (he left “51” so the team would know, referring to Gibbs’ rule, “Sometimes you’re wrong,” and hid out at Gibbs’ cabin) but neither was Carla. She faked her death. Instead, she makes off for Cuba with her granddaughter, with whom she’d painted herself as a nice grandmother. Parker, of course, wants to track her down immediately, but first, he has to have a very awkward reunion with his sister, Harriet (Nancy Travis). She didn’t blow him up, though her orders had said to before the explosion on the boat, but she does arrest him for interfering (and other charges).
The two briefly talk when Parker’s in a cell, and he’s realized by this point that when he was a teen, she was the one who told on him when he boosted a car, landing him in juvie. She argues that he was spiraling fast and she did what she had to to make sure he survived. She’s doing the same here, pulling him back from the edge. She doesn’t think he sees the damage he causes, but Parker insists he knows the role he played in Carla killing their father, putting him in her orbit. “I don’t need another lesson, I need a sister,” he tells Harriet.
And once Carla’s located and the DOJ doesn’t want to make a move, it’s Knight (Katrina Law) who appeals to Harriet, sitting in autopsy near where her father is in one of the drawers, to let the team, including Parker, go after her. He knows Carla better than anyone, and he needs to save someone (Carla’s granddaughter Lauren) t0 make up for those he couldn’t. Harriet concedes and frees Parker, and the team does rescue Lauren, with an unarmed Parker appealing to Carla as a mother and grandmother and tricking her with words he claims came from her late son. When she follows him and raises her gun, McGee (Sean Murray) and Torres (Wilmer Valderrama) shoot and kill her.
The episode ends with Parker and his sister, Harriet, together over their father’s coffin — he’s getting full honors at sea. She assures him their dad was proud of him (he carried a photo of the two of them in his wallet), and they, along with the team in the passageway outside, sing “Take Me Home, Country Roads.”
But before that are two very intriguing moments. Vance (Rocky Carroll), who earlier had preferred to stay in the dark as to whether Parker was still alive, gathers the team in his office after Carla is dealt with. When McGee asks if Parker still has a badge, Vance remarks that an academy instructor once said, “You can patch a hull, replace an engine, but once the compass goes bad, the whole ship is lost. It’s still moving, just in the wrong direction.” He’s not going to let that happen to this team or agency, and he’s planning to make that clear to Parker. But he keeps Torres back after dismissing McGee and Knight. We don’t see what he has to say. Does Vance want Torres to keep an eye on Parker? Is it about something else? Why doesn’t Vance want McGee and Knight to know?
Then, Palmer (Brian Dietzen), who found that the coroner’s report and death certificate for Parker’s mother don’t match, a sign someone’s hiding something, finds Kasie (Diona Reasonover) staring at her computer. The lipstick on the glasses in Parker’s apartment that suggested to them it was Carla who killed his dad — and which they know to be true — can’t be the crime boss’, apparently; Kasie had uploaded Lauren’s DNA and there was no familial match. There was another woman in Parker’s apartment the night he was killed, someone before Carla. They’re keeping it a secret until they find out more. But who could that woman be? Could it be Parker’s mother is alive? (Would there have been a familial match to Parker then?) Could it be the mysterious Lily, an adult version of the little girl that Parker hallucinated?
What are your theories about why Vance wanted to talk to Torres and who that lipstick belonged to? Let us know in the comments section below.
NCIS, Tuesdays, 8/7c, CBS