NCIS recap: Gibbs and co. get to the bottom of a meth conspiracy

NCIS returned from a week’s break with a story that started off with a police chase and ended with a meth conspiracy. How do Gibbs and co. get to the bottom of it all?

NCIS Season 15 made it clear that this wouldn’t be an easy episode to figure out. After all, the key witness was a blind woman. Just how was she going to be able to help when she didn’t see anything? Torres soon learned not to underestimate a woman without her sight, because she knew how to use her other senses.

When Gibbs and co. were called out to a sheriff’s car driving into a lake and had the expectation of the body of a petty officer in the back, they soon find themselves in the middle of a bigger meth conspiracy. Here are the top five moments in this fast-paced episode, titled “Sight Unseen.”

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1. The way they handled Annie’s introduction

Unless you read the synopsis, you weren’t going to know that the key witness was blind. Throughout the opening of the episode, this wasn’t a focal point. Instead, it was only when Annie told Torres that she didn’t see anything because she was blind that you realized how difficult the situation would be.

And it wasn’t just the introduction. While we never learned Annie’s backstory (because honestly, we didn’t need to), we learned that our initial thoughts and underestimations were wrong. Torres’ belief that she wasn’t a good witness was turned around, as she made it clear that her hearing made up for her sight. She was the one to figure out there had only been one car the morning the police car went into the water.

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2. Not a usual case

You would think after 15 years, the NCIS writers would run out of stories, right? Well, that’s definitely not the case. What looked like a case of a sheriff chasing after a drunk driver with a suspect in the back was anything but that!

With the help of Annie’s hearing, Gibbs was able to work out that the sheriff was never chasing a drunk driver after all. That was a story to give the sheriff a reason to drive the car into the lake to kill Petty Officer Billings.

Why would he possibly want to do that?

3. Randall Peters

Throughout the episode, NCIS searched for someone named Randall Peters. This was Billings’ business partner, according to his fiance, Louise. It was Randall Peters who (more like which) connected the sheriff and Billings.

Randall Peters was a code name for red phosphorus. This connected to the stolen smoke and flash grenades that had been stolen from Billings’ base armory. Billings was stealing the grenades for the red phosphorus. It was the only ingredient left needed to make meth.

Who could get the other eight ingredients? Someone with pharmaceutical experience and that meant one of two people: Louise or her father.

4. Louise genuinely having nothing to do with it

Always suspect the wife or girlfriend. That is usually the way of NCIS but wasn’t the case this week. In fact, Louise was genuinely an innocent party in the whole thing. It wasn’t clear that was the case until Billings (the petty office from the back of the car) called her and brought her to the meth house.

Once Louise found out, it was only a matter of time for everything to come unraveling. She learned that her father was also involved and sacrificed him for what was right.

All it left was finding the man who had been on the lake at the time of the car crashing into the water. That happened to be the family lawyer, who attacked Annie to ensure she couldn’t figure out it was him. Torres got to her just in time, solving the case and bringing an end to the meth conspiracy.

5. Abby finding a way around the passcode

One of the big problems for the episode was getting into Billings’ phone. After managing to dry it out why dropping the room temperature to 40F (because freezing would get rid of the humidity), she used up nine out of 10 passcode tries. A 10th would mean setting the phone back to factory settings and losing all the data on it. Abby wasn’t willing to risk that, so she found another way around it.

She got Palmer to dip his thumb in candle wax and imprint it with Billings’ fingerprint. This would allow them to open the phone with the fingerprint scanner. In one of Abby’s last NCIS episodes, it was fun to see so much of the episode focused on her brains (oh, and seeing the doll she slept with as a kid).

Next: NCIS recap: 5 best moments in Episode 19

What were your favorite moments of NCIS Season 15, Episode 20? Did you guess the conspiracy? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

NCIS Season 15 will take another break next week but return on May 1 at 8/7c on CBS.