The NCIS Season 22 finale provokes a reaction in fans — but not the one it should have. Season 22, Episode 20, “Nexus” is the culmination of everything the CBS show has been building toward, and yet the payoff is decidedly underwhelming. With obvious plot twists and some awkward attempts at comic relief, the finale feels less like a conclusion and more like the series just moving on to its next major storyline.
“Nexus” is named after the Nexus cartel, whom the NCIS team have been pursuing for some time. They learn early on that they’ll have to trust some of their enemies to catch the real bad guys, and that’s where the problems start. It’s not until the very last scene of the episode that there is a genuine shock, and not involving any of the characters whom audiences would expect.
The NCIS Season 22 Finale Puts Its Focus in the Wrong Places
Big Moments Don’t Make It Onto the Screen
The NCIS Season 22 finale often has its priorities in the wrong places. It wants to move at a fast pace to create drama, but in doing so, it pushes moments that are more rewarding or more useful off to the side. A major example of this is Timothy McGee finding out what’s really happening with his nemesis, Deputy Director Gabriel Laroche. Season 22, Episode 19, “Irreconcilable Differences” ended with Laroche telling McGee and the team that they needed to know “the truth.” It was fairly clear then that Laroche was going to be a double agent, but the writers don’t pay that off by allowing the audience to see McGee’s reaction or him potentially questioning Laroche’s explanation. That’s a huge scene for both McGee and Laroche in terms of their relationship.
Instead, the audience gets a pretty dry flashback — with what looks like terrible CGI backgrounds — of Laroche getting his uncover assignment from Secretary Mathison. Mathison tells Laroche all the details, and then McGee, Jessica Knight, and Nick Torres tell Jimmy Palmer the rest of what happened in the church. This is “show, don’t tell” in full action. Sure, the explainers move the plot along, but they don’t have any emotional weight, and they take away what could have been great scenes for the actors. This happens again when Laroche and McGee say their goodbyes at NCIS headquarters. This could be a great conversation, charged with emotion one way or the other, and even used to tease the future (after all, NCIS needs another Deputy Director again). But the two awkwardly make up, with no idea of where Laroche might be going or what this means for McGee.
Gabriel Laroche (to McGee): Anyone had to come after me, I’m glad it was you.
There’s plenty of bullets flying and double-crosses and plot twists, all of which are easy to figure out. Of course Alden Parker’s nemesis Carla Marino is the one who’s been pulling the strings all along, because NCIS has constantly reminded fans how bad she is. In Galaxy Quest style, the FBI agent who doesn’t even get a first name is obviously one of her accomplices. Torres flying through the air to shoot a bad guy looks cool, but it’s still over the top. Audiences hoping for any further resolution to Parker’s storyline don’t get it. The only scene that has any real lasting impact is the final one, in which Parker returns home to find out that Carla has personally murdered his father, Roman. Audiences’ hearts will break for Roman, but there were so many other, bigger things NCIS Season 22 could have done to end its story.
NCIS Season 22, Episode 20 Struggles With Its Comic Relief
Attempts to Liven up the Plot Fall Short Again
A weakness throughout Season 22 has been NCIS’ usage of comic relief to balance out its dramatic storylines, and “Nexus” is also a fairly big example of that problem. The major joke through the episode is everyone else speculating that there was an intimate relationship between Parker and Carla, with the team commenting on the “weird sexual tension” between the two. Other episodes like Season 22, Episode 16, “Ladies’ Night” have had awkward and/or obvious jokes, but given the circumstances, there’s nothing funny about guessing if Parker has slept with the woman their entire case seemingly hinges on. In fact, it comes off as unprofessional and distracting — if the stakes are supposed to be this high, there shouldn’t be time for office gossip.
The attempt to focus on Parker and Carla’s relationship — whatever it may be — also means that some of the other characters are relegated to the sidelines. The Hand That Rocks the Cradle star Rebecca de Mornay does her best to carry the episode through Carla’s cold stares and a few menacing lines, but McGee is very little of a factor once Laroche goes on his way. Jimmy and Kasie Hines exist simply to impart details and make a few corny jokes about a fictional word game app. Torres and Knight get some good action sequences, but this episode is mostly a two-hander. There’s nothing necessarily wrong with that, but the best finales on ensemble shows are the ones where the entire group feels like a team, and everyone has a significant part to play.
The NCIS Finale Is Just Paving the Way to Season 23
Audiences Will Have to Wait for Any Substantive Resolution
Ultimately, the NCIS Season 22 finale doesn’t feel like a finale at all — it feels like a placeholder to tease fans about Season 23. Yes, the NCIS squad stops the immediate threat of Carla’s “dirty bomb.” But Carla herself escapes, obviously to torment Parker again at some point in the next season (even though she’s not a villain with that kind of staying power). And the big development at the end of the episode doesn’t involve any of the plot points set up across this arc; it’s that Carla returned to Parker’s home to murder his father, in an act of revenge because she blames him for the death of her son Jason. Actor Gary Cole is positively heartbreaking in that scene, as Parker finds Roman’s body; it’s another example of how good he is in this role.
But everything is playing toward the future. Parker avenging Roman’s death and chasing Carla is obviously the next ongoing NCIS plotline. A new mystery is introduced about the death of his mother — which one assumes is related to the Lily issue, which is still frustratingly unresolved for a whole season now. No hints are given out about if McGee has another shot at making Deputy Director now that Laroche is out of the picture. As for everyone else, they don’t have enough character development in this episode to get any kind of closure or accomplishment. “Nexus” will get viewers coming back next season, but only to get answers to the questions it didn’t need to leave dangling.