NCIS Season 22, Episode 14, “Close to Home” is an episode that viewers will enjoy, but forget shortly after it’s over. The CBS show serves up another light, easy to figure out mystery — this time starring Jimmy Palmer. And like similar episodes in Season 22, the case of the week is more about the featured character’s personal life than any sort of investigative drama.
“Close to Home” starts with Jimmy’s 14-year-old daughter Victoria finding a duffel bag of cash and reporting it to Nick Torres. Relatively quickly, the team connects the money to an unsolved bank heist from 15 years prior. But the plot is secondary to Jimmy and Victoria’s relationship, and NCIS reminding fans that Jimmy and Jessica Knight still have unfinished business.
NCIS Season 22, Episode 14 Has Little in the Way of Suspense
Audiences Will See Most of the Story Coming
What happens in “Close to Home” won’t be considered one of the more suspenseful NCIS storylines. The team sets out to solve the bank robbery case, but once Kasie Hines announces that a partial print on some of the money belongs to HVAC repairman Carson Marcone, it’s pretty easy to deduce where the missing money is. From that point on, the pieces drop into place almost as soon as they appear on screen, which leaves the audience feeling like they’re one step ahead of the agents. That doesn’t make for a great case of the week.
The biggest example of this is how NCIS woefully underuses Kevin Can Wait star Erinn Hayes. Hayes comes into the episode relatively late as Jimmy’s new neighbor Wendy Hill, and because Wendy is immediately cozying up to Jimmy, it’s obvious that she will have some connection to the robbery. But while it’s not implausible for her to be the “Saratoga Specter,” the audience knows that the writers usually throw in a late twist, so it’s also not surprising that Wendy admits that the Specter is actually her father. The stolen $5 million was hidden in the ducts of her home, and Marcone had discovered it before being murdered by Briarwood security guard Rhonda.
“Close to Home” would have been more effective with a different story structure that allowed Wendy to enter the picture earlier. NCIS could thus have played with the idea of her being the bank robber for a little longer, perhaps with Knight digging further into her history and her concerns being dismissed as jealousy. Instead, while the case gets closed, there’s not a lot of drama or suspense along the way. The episode is really about Jimmy, Victoria and to a lesser extent Knight, with the investigation fitting around that.
NCIS Doesn’t Do Much With Its Domestic Premise
Season 22, Episode 14 Relies on a Familiar Idea
“Close to Home” wants to riff on the TV trope of two characters solving a crime in a seemingly picturesque community. Numerous crime dramas have done stories like that over the years, such as The X-Files in Season 6, Episode 15, “Arcadia.” That’s just one example of a very familiar concept, often used to highlight the romantic tension between the investigators. The only box that NCIS doesn’t check is making Palmer and Knight go undercover as a fake couple. It utilizes their status as exes instead — but not enough of the episode takes place in Briarwood to truly lean into that concept.
Audiences do meet a couple of Palmer’s neighbors, but other than Wendy and Rhonda, they’re all introduced in brief snippets during the same scene at a community “happy hour.” Give Palmer credit for coming up with the idea as a way to gather suspect fingerprints and DNA. Yet that sequence mostly leans on one joke about how he’s inexperienced at being undercover. There’s also one moment of dramatic license, in which Palmer starts out wearing thicker glasses with a camera inside them, and then comes back to the van to change back to his regular frames. The difference between the two pairs is obvious. When he goes back to the community rec room, anyone should notice. Yet NCIS skips over that even as Wendy gets very close to Palmer.
Dr. Jimmy Palmer (to Parker): This is my community. This is where my family lives. If ever there was a time for me to step outside my comfort zone, this is it.
There are things that NCIS could have done to make this episode more colorful and add more suspense to the story. Perhaps cutting out a small, albeit mildly entertaining, bit about Alden Parker’s “living legend” status among true crime fans would have given the writers a few more minutes to throw something else into the overall plot. There’s another comic relief beat about Parker and Timothy McGee bringing Victoria snacks and interrupting her interview that isn’t that funny either. While Parker and McGee obviously care about her, one would think they’d also recognize the seriousness of the questioning. As it stands, “Close to Home” is a fair enough mystery — just not a particularly memorable one.
NCIS Focuses on Victoria and Jimmy Palmer’s Relationship
The Father-Daughter Dynamic Isn’t Anything Out of the Ordinary
Everything that happens in “Close to Home” is meant to draw attention to the relationship between Victoria and Jimmy. For better or worse, though, it’s just a prototypical parent-child relationship no different than any other TV drama. The teenager frets about growing up and feeling smothered by the parent, while the parent worries about their kid growing up too fast. In the end, the case of the week brings them back together. Viewers don’t learn anything new about either character or their dynamic. So while it’s lovely to see Jimmy and Victoria get back on the same page, it’s another part of the episode that’s predictable.
NCIS Season 22, Episode 14 isn’t a terrible episode, but it relies too much on elements viewers have seen before and doesn’t do enough to add something unique or special into the mix. Erinn Hayes is charming enough as Wendy Hill, but not around long enough to fully get the most out of her guest appearance. The best part of the episode is the sort of moral of the story: Palmer learns that he’s not “just the M.E.” and has a lot more to offer both the team and his family. But there have been much stronger Palmer-centric episodes. This one comes across as a playful detour, and there have already been a few of those this season. While it’s admirable that NCIS wants to spread the attention around to all of its main characters, the episodes themselves leave something to be desired.
NCIS airs Mondays at 8:00 p.m. on CBS.