NCIS season 24 kicked off with quite an eventful premiere, which ended with a moment we never expected would one day come: Tony DiNozzo becoming the director of NCIS! Now, a week has passed and Tony is finally getting started in his new position, though Torres and Knight aren’t exactly sure what this will mean.
As the pair heads up the elevator to the office with McGee, Knight admits that she thought NCIS Director McGee would have had a nice ring to it, to which McGee quipped that he wasn’t likely on the shortlist for the position. We also learn that Ziva called Knight and is concerned about Tony eating donuts; she’s been enlisted with keeping him on his diet. As they near the floor, McGee assures them things might be different, but they’ll survive as the elevator doors open to chaos and an evacuation of the building.
Tony gets up on the table to address the group and informs them the building has been cleared for reentry after the biohazard alarm was triggered. It was a false alarm, but he uses the moment to take the opportunity to welcome them to their all-hands meeting. He assures everyone that his vision is that the truth is he doesn’t have a vision and they don’t need to understand him. Their job is to solve cases, and his job is to support them, which he does as the team head out to investigate their latest case.
Speaking of our case, the episode opens with a couple hosting a dinner party with their friends that quickly takes an unexpected dark turn. As Linda, the wife, gets up to get drinks, the room goes quiet, and she finds that all of the guests and her husband have passed out. She then hears a noise at the door and watches as a group of armed men enter the room. She hides out in the pantry as the men close in before leaving the house. It seems the whole op lasted less than two minutes, and there is no missing cash or jewelry, with the gunmen taking nothing.
Parker drops in to bring Tony some treats and an update on the case. No signs point towards Mallory being compromised, but the Navy changed her access codes just in case. After the update, Tony makes it clear to Parker that he knows what this office means and he has no intentions of letting Vance down as Parker heads out.
Torres and McGee sit down with Linda and her husband, Greg, to interview them about the dinner party as we learn that the group has been getting together for years now. They seem just as surprised as NCIS that nothing was taken from the house, failing to give the team much to go on.
Down in the lab, Kasie has hit a dead end as Tony arrives to surprise her as he drops in with the intention of getting to know her a bit better as she checks out the lab. He then grabs McGee to chat a bit over coffee as Tony takes off his director’s hat to ask Torres about his probe. Much to his surprise, McGee notes that he doesn’t have one, as Tony orders him to find one, to which McGee jokes about Tony being his probie given McGee happens to have experience filling in for the role. Their conversation is interrupted when Knight arrives to inform them that after the dinner party break-in, three of the dinner guests had bonfires after the party, hinting at a cover-up.
Shortly after, Linda reports her husband missing, as Greg never came home, and the team begins looking for answers. Footage shows Greg was being followed before his disappearance, and it's not long after that a hit on the BOLO comes through informing Knight that Greg's car has been found... and his body was inside it.
McGee goes to see Linda to question her on who might have wanted to hurt her husband, which surprises her, as the police had informed her he had a heart attack, which caused the accident. McGee goes over the evidence of the case, including the neighbors burning evidence and her husband being followed, but Linda turns him away, not wanting to even entertain the idea of her husband keeping something from her. With some pushing from McGee, she recalled seeing a small brass key on his keychain, which she didn’t recognize as just being something for work.
Back at NCIS, Tony drops in to see Jimmy as we learn he’s been crashing on his couch while trying to find a place in the city. As they chat, Jimmy informs Tony that Kasie found traces of poison, confirming this was murder, as Jimmy informs him he found it in the key hidden on his body. Torres and Knight head out to follow the lead, heading to the storage unit the key is from. As they search for the unit, the pair talk about Tony’s struggle to accept this role. as he seems to keep injecting himself into the actual case. When they finally reach the unit, nothing could have prepared them for the sight they'd witness: a unit full of dozens of eyeballs.
It turns out the eyes aren't human eyes but rather pig eyes. Kasie believes that Greg was trying to extract an enzyme used to make drugs, and her hunch is that the neighbors were in on things.
With help from Tony, the team is able to track down the man trailing Greg before his death, and Torres and McGee head out to track down the suspect. As they kill time, McGee admits he's worried that Tony is going to make some serious enemies on the hill, as the director's job is no easy job, as McGee reminds him it's okay to worry about a friend so long as you always have their back.
McGee and Torres bring in their suspect, a man named Carl, who has a history with drug arrests. As Knight prepares to sit down to question Carl, Tony accompanies her for the interrogation as he realizes Ziva has put her on watch duty after Knight throws away his coffee. As they press Carl for information, he informs them that he now works as a fixer and was hired to get the formula back after Greg and his neighbors had been working on a $30 billion hair growth drug after research was stolen.
Carl's story tracks, but thankfully Kasie finds a lead. Her conversation with Tony about thinking outside the box led her to look into the vacuum from the scene. It turns out the vacuum's motherboard triggered a fail-safe, which led the team to a hacker who was hired to hack into every smart home device within a two-mile radius with a camera.
The man turns the footage over, and it leads NCIS back to the CIA. CIA agent Russell Cross informs Parker that last year the CIA became aware of a deep cover operative with an unknown endgame. They got a lead on a cell, but all that gave them was a zip code. They had been good at staying hidden until Greg screwed up with his own desires. While the CIA did gas the scene, they did not murder Greg.
He relays a video from the dog feeder that shows Linda killed Greg. It turns out that the pair were never married; it was all a cover, and she killed him to preserve their opp. McGee prepares to head out to arrest her, but Tony makes it clear they will let her go so they can monitor her movements as he hints that something big is coming.
Tony picks up on McGee’s unsureness and realizes that McGee has been tasked with telling him to stay in his lane. Tony points out that the director's job will kill your soul from time to time. He’s going to do his job as director, and when he needs to blow off a little steam, he’s going to bust some bad guys with the team, as it’s the only way he knows how to survive the job. That's when the conversation takes an unexpected turn as Tony points out that the only reason McGee isn't didn't get the director's job is because the Secretary of the Navy has another job planned for McGee: hers! That's right, it seems SecNav is looking to retire and wants McGee to succeed her!
It's going to be interesting to see what that means for McGee and his future, but we're excited to see where this storyline goes as the season progresses.
NCIS airs Tuesdays at 8/7c on CBS!
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