Warning: SPOILERS for the NCIS episode “Baker’s Man” are ahead!
There’s good stuff to look forward to on NCIS concerning Alden Parker as Season 22 progresses on the 2025 TV schedule, including seeing how the Lily mystery will affect him and perhaps even some teases for the “flight plan” that’s been drafted for the Kansas City mob. But tonight, the curtain was pulled back on one of the core aspects of Gary Cole’s character: his love of pastries. “Baker’s Man” showed NCIS fans one of the bakeries where Parker’s been getting his delectable treats, and Leon Vance actor Rocky Carroll told CinemaBlend his favorite part about directing the midseason return.
Carroll has been an NCIS mainstay since Vance was introduced in the Season 5 episode “Internal Affairs” and took over as the agency’s director at the end of that season. But since Season 12, he’s also been a frequent director on the show, and “Baker’s Man” marked his 25th time at the helm. I had the pleasure of speaking with Carroll ahead of the episode’s premiere, and here’s what he had to say about his latest directorial experience:
For me, the best part of this was actually having to do scenes where it was less about police work and more about the relationship and how things went south between Eleny and Parker, and then how it all comes full circle again. Because at one point, not only does she lawyer up, she becomes very adversarial to Parker, and everything that he thinks about this woman kind of goes up in smoke, literally. We come full circle to discover that she was as much a victim as anybody else. And then we shoot a scene, there's a great rescue scene in the warehouse where there's an explosion and the cocaine-laced cookies catch fire. So shooting that was a special thing, trying to kind of make all that makes sense and find out, like, ‘Ok, how do we shoot this big explosion scene?’ There are a lot of great challenges in this.
“Baker’s Man” revolved around Alden Parker and his team investigating the murder of an employee at the Kostakis Bakery, run by Melina Kanakaredes’ Eleny. Although Virgil wasn’t affiliated with the Navy, Parker felt it was important for him to handle solving the murder since the young man was secretly being held hostage when Parker stopped by the bakery, and he tipped off Cole’s character that something was amiss before he was killed. It also soon became clear when Eleny entered the picture that there was a special spark between her and Parker, although that became strained as the investigation wore on.
As Rocky Carroll mentioned, the events of the episode revealed that Eleny was being coerced by a drug cartel to smuggle cocaine mixed in with the sugar used at the Kostakis Bakery. This culminated in her, Nick Torres and Jessica Knight being held captive at the drug lab where Eleny was being forced to make more batches of her drug-laced goodies. Fortunately, Torres was able to set off an explosion as a distraction, allowing for the three of them to break free and get the drop on their captors just as Parker and McGee showed up to rescue them. While Leon Vance was nowhere near that scene, it was on Rocky Carroll to figure out how to properly frame that sequence; a challenge he was more than willing to tackle.
By the time “Baker’s Man” was over, Parker and Eleny were back to being on much better terms after he realized she wasn’t a co-conspirator in the drug plan. Additionally, he learned she’d taken out a loan with cartel and got caught up in that mess because she needed money to protect her incarcerated nephew Manny, who was being threatened as part of a protection racket run by his own parole officer, who was also Virgil’s parole officer and the man who killed him. Since Eleny decided to go back to Greece to rejoin the rest of her family, including Manny when he’s released in a month, it’s hard to say if she’ll return anytime soon to develop an actual romantic connection with Parker. If she does, I’d be keen on seeing Rocky Carroll direct the episode where we reunite with her.
Catch new episodes of NCIS Mondays at 9 pm ET on CBS, and stream them afterwards, along with the rest of the NCIS franchise catalog, with a Paramount+ subscription. Oh, and I’d be remiss if I wrap up without saying that it was also confirmed in “Baker’s Man” that Torres is indeed dating Robin, Knight’s sister.
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