Cay Ryan Murray, Sean Murray’s daughter, appears onscreen in this week’s episode.
Timothy McGee is a wonderful father.
Sure, we suspected he’d be a long time before having children, and we’ve seen plenty of evidence to back it up over the years. However, this week’s episode of NCIS puts those paternal skills to the test as the team connects a series of teen house parties to a bombing d3ath. Cay Ryan Murray, Sean Murray’s daughter, plays a super-hacker teenager at the center of it all.
A flaw in Norfolk’s security system has allowed base kids to throw wild parties in empty homes while the occupants are away. They are discovered when Noah, a teenager, assaults a petty officer who unexpectedly returns home during a pre-party scouting mission.
Noah’s mother proves to be a more effective interrogator than anyone at NCIS, badgering her son into admitting that it was Teagan, the prickly blonde he’s crushing on, who hacked the base’s keyless entry protocols, not him.
Teagan is a terminally sarcastic eye-roller who barely looks up from her phone as she tells McGee that she exploited a flaw in the base’s system using C programming. Oh, and Noah isn’t her boyfriend; that honor goes to Jayden, a hunk she met on the app BratChat. (If you think Jayden is a real person for a second, I’ll sell you a bridge in Brooklyn.)
When a break-in occurs at Lt. Carl Tang’s house while the teenage party animals are all in NCIS custody, the investigation becomes complicated. A bomb wired to the TV remote expl0des as Knight and Parker approach the house in question, k1lling Tang.
As they interview members of Tang’s hobby club, including Claudia (Jennifer Rhodes, aka Grams Halliwell from Charmed), Parker mentions Gibbs’ rule about coincidences (Betsy Baker, aka Linda from The Evil D3ad). They’re both excited to meet Parker and his magnificent head of hair. (Reasonable!)
Another club member alerts them to Tang’s electronic butler, a WALL-E knockoff that has gone missing from Tang’s home, along with a safe, leaving the team on the hunt for a robber and a bomber.
Meanwhile, McGee is troubled by how similar Teagan is to his own adolescent hacker self, and he is also concerned about his four-year-old Morgan’s insistence on wearing a princess dress every day. Teagan yells angrily at McGee to simply listen to what his daughter wants, so he follows her advice and asks her why she hacked the Norfolk system in the first place.
Teagan reveals her first signs of vulnerability when she admits to being lonely until Jayden persuaded her to hang out with the other kids on the base. For the first time, she has friends. She is content.
But it was her BratChat invitation to Tang’s house party that tipped off the robber that Tang wasn’t home, resulting in the break-in. That means Teagan lied when she said she didn’t know Tang — the person who plans to redeploy Teagan’s mother to Latvia, which would require her to relocate her away from her new friends. Worse, Kasie learns that the bomb that k1lled Tang was made from French WWI ordnance… and Teagan’s mother is an ordnance expert.
This section of the investigation includes a surprise video call from Ernie at the Hawaii office, who is overjoyed to learn that Knight described him as the smartest guy she’d ever met. When Ernie suggests bringing Knight in to brainstorm, Palmer quickly dismisses the idea. When Ernie gets off the phone, Palmer suggests that they brainstorm with Knight, and friends, my brows could not be any higher in curiosity and excitement over this little development.
Now that the team has reason to believe Teagan planted the bomb to k1ll the man redeploying her mother, they discover she’s escaped from her bedroom. When they finally reach out to her mother, she informs them that Teagan has never met Jayden in person.
Jayden is, indeed, a catfish out to frame Teagan for murd3r. A little digging reveals that he’s a 40-year-old man who began talking to Teagan three months ago, when the break-ins began. “Jayden” talked her into hacking the base server and requesting the master key, and he’s now set up a meetup at a nearby shopping center.
McGee joins Teagan on the bench where she’s waiting for her boyfriend as the agents spread out. She’s devastated to learn that the one person who truly cares about her isn’t real, but McGee assures her that he does.
Teagan sobs as she realizes she’s been duped, then rushes to catch the imposter Jayden using the backdoor she installed on his phone along with the base security key code. She cranks up the volume on his phone and sends emoji after emoji until the agents find him.
“Jayden” is revealed to be a homeless Kenny G lookalike (Teagan’s words!) who served seven years in prison for a hit-and-run after Tang provided the eyewitness testimony that led to his incarceration.
It’s a complex revenge plot uncovered by a teenage girl who has a nice bonding moment with McGee before her mother arrives to take her home, leaving McGee vowing to enjoy his own daughter’s princess dress phase while it lasts.
Shots from afar
- It’s amazing to see two Murrays on screen together! It’s no surprise that McGee’s parental tenderness shone through in every scene with Teagan this week. Cay Ryan Murray’s first official line on her IMDb.com page, and I’m sure it won’t be the last.
- Parker is entirely correct: Gibbs Rule 62 was far ahead of its time.
- Choose your fighter on an evening when you have the opportunity to leave work early: Torres, on his way to his first concert in two years; Knight, snoozing by 9:30 p.m.; or McGee, on his way to a parent-teacher conference. I’d like to say I’m going to a concert, but bed by 9:30 is probably going to win.
Related News – Be sure to get some more news when it comes to NCIS.