Warning: SPOILERS for the NCIS episode “Knight and Day” are ahead!
We’re still pretty early into NCIS Season 22’s run on the 2024 TV schedule, but a lot’s happened to Jessica Knight over the last several weeks. In the Season 22 premiere, she decided to turn down a REACT promotion at Camp Pendleton and return to the team in Washington D.C. Then she and Jimmy Palmer were finally able to find closure with their romantic relationship ending, and in the last episode, she even got to take part in the wild ‘70s throwback.
This week’s episode, “Knight and Day” saw Katrina Law’s character making an unlikely friend in the middle of a case. However, what’s really intrigued me after seeing this episode is the villain from Alden Parker’s past who was introduced and if we could see more of this person.
Knight Made Friends With The Subject Of This Week’s Case
The case in “Knight and Day” revolved around Melinda Radmore, previously Willis, the wife of defense contractor Freddy Radmore and a major D.C. powerhouse in her own right. The Radmores’ penthouse apartment was broken into while Freddy was having an affair with fellow high society member Sheila, though she was able to shoot the intruder using one of the guns in the Radmores’ panic room. While it was initially thought that the culprit intended to kidnap Freddy given his government connections as CEO of Radmore Industries, it was soon realized that Melinda was his real target.
As such, Jessica Knight was hired to protect Melinda while the team tried to figure out who was after her. Knight and Melinda had already gotten off to a bad start when the latter arrived at the crime scene in her apartment and was, frankly, rude to the former, and she didn’t let up, taking particular issue with how Knight dressed. However, they found some common ground when Knight accompanied Melinda to her posh country club and played some doubles tennis with her.
It was originally thought Melinda Radmore was being targeted because of the $50 million endowed to her charity, the Brighter Days Fund, which finds homes for orphans. But that proved not to be the case at all, although the real reason did still involve an orphan. It turned out that Melinda was not the real Melinda Willis, who died in 2002 at the age of 18, but rather April Day, who grew up in a trailer park outside of Kansas City and graduated as both homecoming queen and valedictorian of her high school, then disappeared.
April was romantically involved with the homecoming king, Jason Marino, the son of Carla Marino, the matriarch of the biggest crime family in the Midwest (more on her soon). Jason wanted nothing to do with his family’s criminal activities, so he and April ran off, with April taking Melissa’s identity. Sadly, Jason was killed in a motorcycle accident at age 20, when April was three months pregnant. When April later arranged a memorial service for Jason, she met a reverend who convinced her to give the baby up for adoption so she could have a better life. She did just that and deliberately chose to never learn where her daughter was out of fear that Carla would come looking for her one day.
Well, 20 years later, that’s just what happened, with Carla being behind the kidnapping plot. She even later nabbed both April/Melinda and Jessica Knight to get a genetic sample that she used to track down the location of her granddaughter, Lauren. Fortunately, they’re able to prevent Carla from meeting Lauren, and soon after she leaves town. By the end “Knight and Day” (see what they did there with that title?), Knight and April had become quite friendly. Knight even accompanied April to the flower shop where Lauren was working so April could meet her for the first time, and the two women also agreed to play another game of tennis together.
I don’t necessarily think Melinda Radmore will become a recurring character on NCIS, but it is nice to see Knight make a non-work friend. At the very least, it might be nice to see Melinda one more time during Season 22 to see them hanging out again. Oh, and there was also a side plot this episode about Jessica coming back from a party with a jacket she initially thought was Nick Torres’, but actually belonged to a bass player named Kyle, the son of an actuary named from Bethesda named Herman Goldweather. Are we going to see Kyle appear in a future NCIS episode? I doubt it, but hey, maybe this will end up being her first post-Jimmy relationship.
We Met An Old Adversary From Parker’s FBI Years
When the “Knight and Day” case began, Alden Parker was in the dark as everyone else about what was going on. However, upon learning about Jason Marino, it was revealed that he had history going back with Carla Marino. Back when he was at the FBI, Gary Cole’s character had spent years trying to nab Carla back in Kansas City, to the point that she was quite familiar with him. So when Carla was apprehended at Lauren’s flower shop and brought back to NCIS, Parker handled her interrogation. Unfortunately, he wasn’t able to hold her, as the men who kidnapped Knight and Melinda didn’t implicate her. She returned to Kansas City afterwards, but is this the last we’ve seen of her?
The combination of Parker’s past with Carla and the fact that he hung up a picture of her next to his desk in the bullpen leads me to think not. It would be one thing if Carla and Parker didn’t know each other at all, but the NCIS writers chose to have these two go way back. That’s not to say that Carla will become a big bad like new NCIS Deputy Director Gabriel LaRoche has been set up to be, but I’d at least like her to show up one more time to Parker can finally bring her to justice (and pave an easy way for Melinda/April to return, too). That would make another good personal arc for him alongside the mystery of the title girl he hallucinated seeing in the Season 21 finale.
New episodes of NCIS air Mondays at 10 pm ET on CBS, and afterwards, they can be streamed with a Paramount+ subscription. NCIS: Origins is also currently airing, and NCIS: Sydney Season 2 and the new Paramount+-exclusive series NCIS: Tony & Ziva will both be released on the 2025 TV schedule.
