What To Know
- NCIS Season 23 is teasing a major storyline involving Director Vance, who is reverting to a strict, by-the-book leadership style.
- The episode “God Only Knows” also advances the arc about Parker’s mother’s suspicious death, with new evidence suggesting it may have been murder.
- Gary Cole and executive producer Steven D. Binder have both teased the bigger picture of Vance’s arc.
[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for NCIS Season 23 Episode 7 “God Only Knows.”]
NCIS continues to tease a major reveal coming about the death of Parker’s (Gary Cole) mother, with the Tuesday, December 2, episode detailing her injuries, but there’s another multi-episode arc that has now been introduced — this one involving Director Vance (Rocky Carroll).
Ahead of the season, executive producer Steven D. Binder told TV Insider as part of our Fall Preview, “Vance became the guy who said no, and then he would turn his back and leave the room while he left his team with the file that they weren’t supposed to read, but he let them read it anyway. For reasons that will become clear, mysterious reasons, Vance is going to go back to his roots as a very by-the-book leader, and that’s going to cause conflict with our characters. It’s going to seem like Vance is working against the team, but we’re going to find out that he’s actually trying to protect them.”
We see just that addressed in this episode, titled “God Only Knows.” Vance interrupts Parker’s interrogation of a chaplain to ask what he’s thinking, arguing he should have cleared it with him.
Vane interrupts the interrogation of a chaplain. “What the hell are you thinking?” Parker asks, “Why? I know what you would have said. Same thing you’ve been saying for months: ‘Tread lightly, Keep it low key. We don’t need bad press.’” The director points out they don’t. “Do you consider that I have a good reason to say those things?” he tells his agent. Parker’s ready to listen, but Vance just looks at him.
Gary Cole told us ahead of the NCIS: Origins crossover that he’s enjoying the scenes that have his and Rocky Carroll’s characters in conflict. “It will soften, but I don’t think it’s going to be eliminated because we’re told there’s a couple of things coming that have to do with the agency itself that are larger than their relationship that might keep them at some kind of odds,” Cole shared. “There’s a lot of conflict going on with who’s going to stay in power at certain agencies, are different agencies going to change, stuff like that.”
The rest of the episode is very Parker-centric, beginning with Palmer (Brian Dietzen) filling him in on the discrepancies regarding his mother’s death. Specifically, the coroner noted acute trauma to the occipital bone, and as Palmer explains, in a front-on collision, there wouldn’t be an injury to the back of the head. So, yes, it is looking like murder, but Palmer would need to exhume his mother’s body to confirm. However, Parker is very much not on board.
“What I don’t understand is why we’re even talking about this,” he tells Palmer. “I asked you to find my mother’s grave. That’s it. Not track down the death certificate or the coroner’s report, and I certainly didn’t ask you to make a federal case out of it and share it with the entire team.” When Palmer tries to protest that he just did what Ducky (the late David McCallum) trained him to, Parker tells him not to bring him into it.
“I told you I was looking for closure. This is the opposite of that. I wanted to close an old wound, not open a new one,” Parker says. “You didn’t know my mother. And if you had, you’d understand. I don’t want these kind of answers. Nothing good can come from this.”
Sonja Flemming/CBS
Parker does begin to open up a bit to the chaplain he encounters during the case, and it turns out Torres (Wilmer Valderrama) isn’t far off when he suggests that the team leader’s problem is with God. The chaplain reveals that he helped arrange Parker’s father’s burial at sea. “Losing a father is hard at any age, and especially the way you lost yours. I was wondering if perhaps you’d talk to anyone about it. Your sister found comfort in faith and prayer. I thought it might help you, too,” he says. Parker shares that his father prayed every night, but it didn’t do him any good, considering how he was murdered. And so, “I don’t need your thoughts and prayers,” he decides. But it does have to mean something — and he can’t ignore — that a photo of his mom falls out of his dad’s bible.
Near the end of the episode, Parker talks to the chaplain again, in the chapel. The chaplain suggests that, despite what the agent thinks, God is talking to him, but he’s refusing to listen. “Answers rarely come from a burning bush or a booming voice. Most of the time, they come from the people closest to us. If you’re truly looking for answers, Agent Parker, then you have to be prepared to not like what you find,” he says.
And that leads to Parker going to Palmer and agreeing to the exhumation of his mother’s body.
What do you think is going on with Vance? What’s your theory about Parker’s mom? Let us know in the comments section below.
NCIS, Tuesdays, 8/7c, CBS