Stream It Or Skip It: ‘NCIS’ Season 21 On CBS, Which Begins With Nick Torres Being Accused Of Murder

It’s happened somewhat gradually over the past five or so seasons, but NCIS finds itself in Season 21 almost with a cast that’s almost completely turned over from the show’s first season. But shows like this can get away with such cast turnover because it’s more about the cases and the mysteries than about the characters. But Season 21 kicks off with a story that dives a little deeper into the psyche of one of its main characters.

NCIS SEASON 21: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: A boy walks into his mother’s bedroom to see her crying.

The Gist: NCIS‘s 21st season starts with a flashback to a childhood incident where Nick Torres (Wilmer Valderrama) almost kills Maurice Riva (Al Sapienza), the man who took his family in when they came to the U.S. but has been abusing them since, but is talked out of it by his older sister Lucia.

In the present, Nick is sitting at a bar, about to take his first drink in months, his recovery chip falling out of the wad of money he gives to the bartender. The next morning, Nick comes into the NCIS office hungover; Lead Agent Alden Parker (Gary Cole) is about to find out what’s going on when Director Leon Vance (Rocky Carroll) calls Parker into his office to tell him that the head of the Cyber division quit, and since his talk with Parker is what tipped him over the edge, it’s now Parker’s job to find a new Cyber lead.

For now, Agent Timothy McGee (Sean Murray) is in charge of Cyber, running into the office with his partner, Agent Jessica Knight (Katrina Law) when one of the “tech goons,” Curtis Hubley (J. Claude Deering) can’t get into his email. They get notified that the FBI is in the building and run upstairs just in time to see Nick hauled away in cuffs. The warrant says he’s being arrested for murdering Maurice Riva.

As the team tries to figure out what information the FBI has on Nick, Director Vance tells them that they can’t officially investigate due to conflict of interest, but he’s cleared their cases for them to “process” the arrest (i.e. investigate in the background). As they investigate, Nick’s sister, retired Colonel Lucia Campbell (Pilar Holland), comes in; she’s retired from JAG and is acting as her brother’s attorney. She’s had no contact with Nick since Riva was killed, but she obviously knows the family’s history with him.

Everyone is surprised, however, when Nick requests a closed arraignment and pleads guilty. One of the conditions is that he gets sent to the prison where he recently was undercover, in order to talk to Reymundo de Leon (Michael Garza), who is in prison for fraud; de Leon’s family was with Riva at the time of his death, and Nick is convinced Reymundo took the fall for Riva’s actions.

In the meantime, FBI Special Agent Rose (Kim Matula) is looking to see if the NCIS crew were accessories, based on a video Nick left saying that he was going to kill Riva.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? NCIS, seasons 1-20 and all of the various spin-offs of the venerable series.

Our Take: With David McCallum’s death last fall (he’s still in the opening credits, but we bet his death will be addressed in one of the season’s early episodes), Murray is the only one left from the original cast of NCIS when it premiered in 2003. Given the procedural nature of the show, cast turnover was inevitable as it ran longer and longer; even Mark Harmon ended up leaving in 2021 (though he’s still an executive producer and will narrate NCIS: Origins).

But what showrunner Steven D. Binder has been able to do is bring in new blood over the years and give them just enough backstory to make them into more than just pale imitations of the originals. That’s what we get with this first episode, where we see some of the source of Nick Torres’s intensity.

We loved seeing Valderrama get a little character scenery to chew on, even if it wasn’t all that much different than the brooding agent he usually plays. When he flashes anger in a particularly pivotal scene, it’s visceral and deep, because of what we learn about how he and Lucia grew up.

Of course, this being NCIS, the story is still structured like a case-of-the-week, and there’s still a lot of quips as the agents, along with medical examiner Jimmy Palmer (Brian Dietzen) and forensic scientist Kasie Hines (Diona Reasonover), make as they solve the case. Despite the episode being a rare character moment for one of the regulars, the show can’t completely get away from its DNA. Is that a issue? Nah. The show’s fans wouldn’t have it any other way. Does this group have the same chemistry as the show’s core group from its glory years? No, but this group is fine. After 21 years, the show still provides a solid hour of entertainment, with occasional forays into character studies of its regulars.

Sex and Skin: None.

Parting Shot: Parker gets a call that sounds like bad news, and the team asks him what’s going on.

Sleeper Star: We suspect we’ll be seeing more of Kim Matula as Agent Rose, as the show pulled some “TV magic” to make the FBI agent available to be hired as NCIS’s head of the cyber division.

Most Pilot-y Line: Knight and Palmer get kind of hot and bothered with each other as they bring in Riva’s body; they were “role playing” as undertakers in order to get his body from the morgue and take a detour to NCIS for some further examination. Seems weirdly inappropriate given that their colleague was locked up for that guy’s murder.

Our Call: STREAM IT. NCIS isn’t quite the show it was at its peak, especially given that it has a mostly new cast. But it still accomplishes what it sets out to do each and every week, and every time they throw in something about one of its man characters, like the first episode of Season 21 does, it’s really appreciated.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.