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NCIS recap: The cook, the engineer, his fiancée, and her bomber

This week's NCIS is packed: a mystery that'll keep you on your toes, a look at the aftermath of U.S. military actions, and not one but two compelling personal subplots. Let's recap!

Palmer (Brian Dietzen) is having daughter troubles. Victoria wants to go on her first group date, but he thinks she's way too interested in a kid named Austen for his comfort. Knight (Katrina Law) suggests he sits with it before making any decisions.

Then everyone's called to a murder scene where Marine Pvt. William Huxley has been stabbed to death with a paring knife in his garage.

The gunnery sergeant stayed behind after the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, committing himself to saving the U.S.-allied Afghans and their families who missed the airlift. He was declared a deserter and assigned to serve the rest of his tour as a Marine food service specialist — a.k.a. a cook. Parker (Gary Cole) takes one bite of Huxley's pistachio baklava and swears to avenge him.

Doorbell cam footage sends the team to a literal Karen who threatened Huxley for undercutting her neighborhood catering business. She's not the killer, but she points them to the Afghan community center where Huxley volunteered.

Wilmer Valderrama on 'NCIS'
Wilmer Valderrama on 'NCIS'

CBS Wilmer Valderrama on 'NCIS'

As a kindly volunteer explains to them, Promises Honored helps Afghan refugees integrate into U.S. society with housing assistance, job training, and a sense of community, including the traditional meals Huxley would cook for them.

Torres (Wilmer Valderrama), the son of an immigrant, is clearly moved by the work happening at the center, and the volunteer smiles warmly as she asks if he had a community like this. All signs point to no.

Then the center's pastor, Eddie, holds up a figurative "I'm guilty" sign by being a little too interested in what the agents are doing there. The center's paring knife is missing from the butcher block, and Pastor Eddie tells them that Huxley recently argued with Mateen (Samer Salem), whose parents were murdered by the Taliban in 2021 after Huxley arrived too late to escort them to the airport.

The team's next stop is the grocery store where Mateen, a mechanical engineer, is stocking shelves. (His academic and professional credentials aren't recognized in the U.S.)

He's on break, so McGee (Sean Murray) and Torres interview Veeda (Anisha Adusumilli), who explains that most of the store workers are refugees because Pastor Eddie knows the store's owner.

Torres and Veeda start throwing off enough sparks to set an endcap on fire, so McGee ambles away to pick up chocolate chips, leaving Torres to explain his own immigration story: moving from Panama to Columbia to the U.S. by the age of 11 and learning English from TV shows.

Veeda asks when life in a new country starts to feel normal, and Torres replies, "Some days it still doesn't. But this is our home." (He also channels the Fonz with his most excellent "ayyyy.")

When Mateen spots the agents, he makes a run for it, and Torres trips and knocks himself out during the chase. Veeda immediately takes control, barking orders because she's a surgeon who, yes, isn't allowed to practice in the U.S. for the same reason Mateen isn't working as an engineer.

Quick show of hands: Who else would like Torres and Veeda to tie the knot right now?

Back at NCIS HQ, Palmer is doing some light stalking of Austen's social media footprint at Parker's suggestion and is alarmed by the early serial killer tendencies he sees in Austen's foodie photos of rare steaks. I'm more alarmed by the professional-level foodie photos this preteen is posting.

Palmer ponders inviting Austen and his family for a friendly tour of NCIS, and when Knight and Kasie (Diona Reasonover) suggest he's going overboard, he shuts them down by telling them that they're not the fathers of daughters and therefore can't possibly understand.

They both take a step back, and Kasie reports that the stains on Mateen's jacket from his work locker are motor oil and explosives. Is he building a bomb to get revenge on the country that didn't protect his parents?

When Veeda shows up to check on Torres' forehead wound — so many sparks, y'all! — she also mentions that Mateen was doing vehicle repairs under the table. His call logs send Knight and Torres to an auto shop just in time for a van full of masked dudes with big guns to show and grab the bomb.

In questioning, Mateen insists he doesn't know who he was building the bomb for, and he only did it because they promised to get his fiancée out of the Turkish refugee camp where she's been stuck for months. However, he built in a failsafe to keep the bomb from exploding.

He says he went to Huxley for help finding out who wanted the bomb, and now he feels like he has Huxley's blood on his hands and he's got to rescue his fiancée before the bad guys realize the bomb's a dud.

When the team discovers that Pastor Eddie's office delayed the final approval of Mateen's fiancée's permanent refugee status, they head to the center to pick him up. But he's dead in his car with a bullet to the head.

This time, the careful killer slipped up and left a partial print on a shell casing. It belongs to Robert Whitlock, the head of a white nationalist militia. A host of agents swarm their compound, and in the ensuing standoff, the bomb explodes and kills Whitlock and his men. I think I speak for us all when I say buh-bye to the white nationalists.

Kasie pulls Mateen in to explain how his dud bomb ended up exploding. The wires he cut were reattached, but they'd still need a remote trigger to set it off. So who did it?

Since Whitlock's calls to Promises Honored started while Pastor Eddie was overseas, the real partner framed Eddie and killed the white nationalists to cover their tracks.

It turns out that the original volunteer who welcomed them to the shelter was Whitlock's girlfriend, sent undercover to Promises Honored. As she's arrested, she drops the façade and says people like Torres are destroying this once-great nation. No, he replies, "It's me and everyone here who help you make it great." Dang, she really talked a good game about wanting to help newcomers to the U.S. at the top of the episode. That's some stone-cold bigotry, lady.

Now for some feel-good wrap-up. Jess tells Jimmy that he's correct: She'll never be the father of a daughter. But the NCIS director is.

Vance (Rocky Carroll) tells Palmer that part of protecting his daughter is trusting that he's given her the tools she needs to make good choices as she grows up because being the overprotective dad is going to embarrass Palmer and his daughter both. Kudos to the show for modeling such a healthy attitude about dads and daughters and trust and autonomy!

And we close at Promises Honored, where Veeda has been named the new director and Mateen is working off probation hours. He's overwhelmed to hear that his fiancée is on her way to the U.S. and takes the team to get started on some volunteer work.

Torres stays behind to chat with Veeda about the pain of leaving people behind and how to build new lives to honor their sacrifices. She tells him he's always welcome in this home, and afterward, he pulls out his phone to look at a long-ago photo of him, his sister, and his mother.

Stray shots

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