NCIS Recap: McGee's 'Dinner From Hell' Came With Quite A Show!
The following contains spoilers from the April 14 episode of CBS' NCIS.
Back at the start of the year, NCIS showrunner Steven D. Binder told my Inside Line column that Special Agent Timothy McGee (played by Sean Murray) would find himself attending the "dinner from hell."
Well, that ominous breaking of bread arrived this Monday night, when NCIS Deputy Director Gabriel LaRoche (Castle's Seamus Dever) and his wife Tammy (Reasonable Doubt's Brooke Lyons) had McGee and wife Delilah (Margo Harshman) over for some Coq au Vin.
Delilah was most amenable to the invite, having found LaRoche — a fellow CMU Tartan — to be warm and charming when she stopped by NCIS to help crack some code. Tim, though, of course has his issues with LaRoche, and not just because he landed the job Tim lobbed for at the start of the season. No, Tim also believes that LaRoche played a role in "burning" Torres' cover with the Nexus cartel.
At dinner, the booze flowed freely — as did Tim's side-eyeing of LaRoche, despite Delilah's best efforts to have her husband simmer down. In a first twist to the evening, McGee found himself having to protect LaRoche when intel from the Case of the Week that the rest of the team was working indicated that the NCIS Deputy Director was a hit man's next target. LaRoche tried to pooh-pooh the notion, and certainly did not wish Agent McGee to alarm his wife.
Helping distract the men from the matter at hand was Tim snooping around the Deputy Director's office, and getting caught. Tim asked why LaRoche has a file on him in his drawer, and La Roche countered, "Because you are keeping tabs on me, Agent McGee." Called out, Tim shared his theory that NCIS' own Deputy Director burned Torres, but LaRoche took umbrage at the accusation. LaRoche meanwhile admitted that McGee lost out on his promotion because of a report that SECNAV read, criticizing the NCIS team's close-knit "family" vibe — written by LaRoche.
When McGee got word that the hit man gunning for LaRoche was en route, Tammy got looped in and everyone took the sitch much more seriously — especially when the cops stationed outside got taken out. While the ladies' prepped a go bag for Tammy, McGee and LaRoche got the idea to do a bit of "tap dancing" for the killer. Meaning, when the hit woman breeched LaRoche's home office, she found McGee (posing as a rival hit man dubbed "The Poet") with his own gun trained on her target. McGee shot LaRoche twice, then squared off against the hit woman, saying he was there to get done what she couldn't. And before she could squeeze off a shot at her "rival," Knight and Torres sneaked up from behind her to diffuse the standoff.
In the immediate aftermath, McGee and LaRoche — having pulled off a successful ruse, complete with a bulletproof vest gifted to LaRoche by Vance — seemed to extend olive branches to one another.
That peace would be short-lived, though.
When Delilah shared with her husband the VPN from which the intel about "The Poet" (the hit man who targeted the Navy officer in charge of a train that transports nuclear materials) had been sent, Tim recognized the government server name ("NOCTURNE") from a note pad inside LaRoche's desk. As such, when LaRoche swung by McGee's desk later to put aside their differences with a handshake, Tim gripped his boss' boss' hand firmly, growled the word "NOCTURNE," and made crystal clear to LaRoche, "I am coming for you."
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