Warning: SPOILERS for the NCIS episode “Prime Cut” are ahead!
The penultimate episode of NCIS Season 21 arrived on the 2024 TV schedule tonight, with “Prime Cut” seeing Wilder Valderrama’s Nick Torres and Katrina Law’s Jessica Knight traveling to Texas as part of the team’s latest investigation. Story-wise, this episode was pretty by-the-numbers, and it included a subplot focused on Sean Murray’s Timothy McGee and Margo Harshman’s Delilah Fielding-McGee figuring out how to remodel their kitchen. However, the Texas trip was entertaining enough that it makes me want to see the CBS show do more travel episodes.
The victim on this week’s NCIS episode was Marine Captain Tom Riley, who was was thought to have died two years ago in a San Diego ship crash, but he’d actually survived, forged a new life for himself as Tom Wade and moved to Farnsworth, Texas, where he found a job at the Firecreek cattle ranch, owned by the powerful Bannon family. Tom had also been helping out the nearby church as a way to atone for accidentally causing the ship accident that killed three fellow Marines, as well as formed a secret romantic relationship with Jackson Bannon, son of family patriarch Carl Bannon. Things seemed to be going pretty well for him in Texas all things considered.
Unfortunately, Tom discovered that the cattle carcasses coming from the Bannon ranch were being used to smuggle meth, and when he went to Washington DC to investigate a Bannon-owned meat packing plant, he was killed and cut up. Initially Torres and Knight thought Carl was behind the murder, but it was actually arranged by another ranch employee running the drug-smuggle operation without Carl’s knowledge. She tried to escape on horseback, but Torres followed her on his own steed and soon apprehended the culprit.
Most of the Texas-set scenes in “Prime Cut” took place on that ranch, but it was nonetheless nice to watch an NCIS episode partially take place somewhere that isn’t Washington D.C. and the surrounding nearby areas. And while I acknowledge that it doesn’t make any sense for NCIS to suddenly become a globe-trotting show given that the starring characters are based in the United States’ capital, not to mention how much more expensive that would make production, I’m hoping some money can be set aside for more travel episodes. The Texas trip has been the most I’ve been interest in an on-location shoot since Mark Harmon’s NCIS exit involved Leroy Jethro Gibbs, McGee and Alden Parker going to Alaska, so imagine if we could get episodes where some or all of the characters go to places like New York City, the Pacific Northwest or somewhere in the Midwest?
In fact, having the NCIS characters travel a bit more could help keep another corner of this franchise alive. Last week, CBS cancelled NCIS: Hawai’i after three seasons, a move that “blindsided” lead actress Vanessa Lachey, and her costars also had no idea that was going to happen. So while the show is about to come to an end, if there’s a way to get the NCIS crew out to Hawaii, that can be a way we can check in on those characters. This could also easily be done for the Los Angeles and New Orleans spinoffs that ended a while back, and I would also be delighted if some kind of crossover could be arranged with NCIS: Sydney, which has been renewed for Season 2.
Since NCIS has been renewed for Season 22, and that season is guaranteed to be longer than Season 21 since there are no writers and actors strikes to delay production, my fingers are crossed that there will be at least one travel episode in the next batch, if not several. And if I’m ever in the mood to watch past travel episodes, I can always stream NCIS with my Paramount+ subscription.
