NCIS Season 22, Episode 8, “Out of Control,” is a heightened version of a common TV procedural storytelling trope: tying the case of the week to a main character’s personal life, so that the character can have some kind of realization or major life development. When done efficiently, the viewer should hardly notice the overlap. But in this episode, it’s very clear that the focus is on Alden Parker’s personal trauma, and the rest of the plot is stuck in around that.
“Out of Control” refers to someone hacking into people’s vehicles in a sort of sophisticated carjacking idea — one that turns deadly when Navy lieutenant Mason Winslow and his wife Ashley are the next targets. Ashley escapes, but Mason is later found dead and one of the carjackers is also deceased at the scene. The technology fuels an entertaining if unmemorable plot, yet it’s Parker and his state of mind that the episode is really about, for better and for worse.
NCIS Season 22, Episode 8 Digs Into Alden Parker’s Past
His Visions of Lily Are Put Front and Center
The crux of this episode is breaking down something that happened in the NCIS Season 21 finale “Reef Madness.” While fighting to stay alive, Alden Parker saw visions of both his mother and a mysterious young girl named Lily. Lily pops up again on multiple occasions in Season 22, Episode 8, including one instance in which she distracts Parker while he’s driving — causing him to nearly wreck the vehicle with himself, Nick Torres and Jessica Knight inside. Most of the episode revolves around Parker in one way or another. While he’s sort of getting therapy with Dr. Grace Confalone, everyone else is talking about his mental state.
The fact that this is such a Parker-heavy episode means that Gary Cole does the heavy lifting. He’s the one who gets most of the memorable scenes, while the other cast members are either moving the case of the week along or reacting to something involving Parker. That’s not a bad thing in theory, because Cole is one of those always dependable actors who can carry the bulk of a 42-minute episode. In fact, NCIS doesn’t go far enough with him. What should be a climactic moment in which an irritated Parker snaps while in MTAC is quickly undercut by a light-hearted response from Kasie Hines and Jimmy Palmer. It would have been far more effective to let Parker’s anger play out and completely illustrate the depth of his upset, which is presumably what that brief explosion was meant to do. Sometimes, NCIS’ need for humor undercuts the rest of its storylines.
NCIS Pulls Together a Fun Yet Weak Plotline
Audiences Will See the End Coming Ahead of Time
“Out of Control” is a fun episode because of the hacking element, but it’s not necessarily a strongly-written episode. This is one of those storylines that relies on the coolness and/or strangeness of technology to move the plot along. Screen time is filled with lots of scenes either talking about technology or utilizing it in some way. The most memorable scene in the hour involves Knight and Timothy McGee watching their sedan drive away after it’s hacked, and that winds up being played mostly for comic relief — even as it leads the team directly to the real culprits.
However, audiences will be able to guess who those culprits are by the midpoint of the episode. NCIS doesn’t just utilize over-the-top hacking like many TV crime dramas, but also has that fourth-act twist where the real perpetrator is someone who was presented as completely innocent at the beginning. Ashley is revealed to have been cheating on Lt. Winslow with a seemingly hapless lawyer named Cliff, who happened to represent an expert hacker and used the hacker’s technology to set up the attack. The whole incident was staged to allow Ashley to get out of her marriage and its corresponding prenuputual agreement, and then the two of them orchestrated other events to make everything seem like the work of a crime ring. Remove the technology, and this is a boilerplate domestic drama.
Ashley Winslow: Nobody was supposed to get hurt.
Jessica Knight: Funny, that’s what Cliff said.
The predictability isn’t helped by the fact that all of the guest characters are significantly undeveloped. Audiences only get one scene between Lt. Winslow and Ashley before the opening credits, so the sum total of their marital strife is one fight over a dishwasher. His body is found roughly a mile from the crime scene off-camera later on (close enough that one wonders why the surrounding area wasn’t searched earlier). Ashley is in the hospital the whole hour, so all she does is cry and seem clueless until the scene in which NCIS agents explain to her — and the audience — what her master plan was. As for her co-conspirator Cliff, his one scene before being implicated casts him as a complete idiot. Obviously, the NCIS writers are trying not to tip their hand, but there’s a line between maintaining mystery and making the character seem totally uninteresting. And that’s the fundamental problem: even when the truth comes out, none of these people are interesting.
Season 22, Episode 8 Rests on Gary Cole’s Performance
The Emphasis on Parker Means Other Characters Are Limited
Another unintentional weakness in NCIS Season 22, Episode 8 is that the focus on Parker means that the other main characters don’t have any truly memorable scenes. While there’s usually one or two characters who take center stage in any given episode, such as the many Ziva David and Tony DiNozzo-focused hours, the show has been able to balance itself a little better than it does here. Knight has second billing, because she gets to worry about Parker, given that she was the one with him during “Reef Madness.” The funniest line in the episode happens when she once again stops the elevator to ask after him, and Parker points out how much of a cliche the elevator scenes have become.
Alden Parker: Someday those buttons are going to break and someone is going to be in a world of hurt.
But everyone else just exists to keep the proverbial ball rolling, which may turn off viewers whose favorite character isn’t Alden Parker. There is another guest appearance by Laura San Giacomo as Dr. Grace Confalone, who tries to get Parker to figure out who Lily is and prods him about why his mother also appeared in his visions. San Giacomo also has a fair amount of screen time, but it’s all going through the expected motions of Grace wanting Parker to talk and Parker not wanting to open up. The scene in which Grace visits Parker at home and asks him about Lily is particularly awkward; the dialogue is so leading that it’s as if the writers were trying to stretch the scene by having Grace have to prompt Parker over and over again.
“Out of Control” is entertaining enough with its rogue cars and the corny jokes about NCIS getting their vehicle stolen, and Cole turns in another dependable performance as Alden Parker. Yet the episode isn’t one of the show’s better outings plot-wise, and it limits the other cast members, either by not giving them enough to do or giving them scenes that fall flat (such as Jimmy and Kasie’s aforementioned playful talk about Grace as a way to convince Parker to go back and finish talking to her). NCIS has done better, but it’s enough to keep viewers watching for another week in a very long network TV season.