NCIS Season 21 Finale Review: Knight Gets a Big Potential Goodbye

08/05/2024

The following contains major spoilers from NCIS Season 21, Episode 10, “Reef Madness,” which debuted Monday, May 6 on CBS.

The NCIS Season 21 finale feels more like a character finale for Jessica Knight. Season 21, Episode 10, “Reef Madness” delivers the very high stakes that fans of the CBS show expect in a season ender, but most of the action and the character development orbits around Knight. Fans of Katrina Law’s character will find a lot to love — and have a lot to think about until Season 22 premieres in the fall.

“Reef Madness” begins with the discovery of three bodies inside a soon-to-be-sunken Naval vessel. However, figuring out three murders that seem to be completely unrelated takes a back seat to what’s going on in Knight’s world. Her career with NCIS, Knight’s relationship with Jimmy Palmer, and her very survival are all plot points in a tense hour that does its job, but also could have done more.

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ncis season 21 finale review: knight gets a big potential goodbye

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Audiences’ enjoyment of NCIS Season 21, Episode 10, “Reef Madness” may depend on how much they like the character of Jessica Knight, as she is unequivocally the main player across the hour. One of the opening scenes involves Knight being approached by Director Leon Vance to become the Chief REACT Training Officer — which naturally means leaving her current team, as well as transferring all the way to California and Camp Pendleton. The possibility of this happening then causes massive tension between Knight and Palmer, which the other characters get to comment on throughout the episode. And the meat of the story involves Knight and Alden Parker being trapped onboard the ship, where Knight has to do most of the work because Parker is immobilized.

Katrina Law does just about everything in this episode, from chase scenes to relationship drama to more quiet moments between Parker and Knight. Yet on the flip side of that, her character has had some pretty substantial episodes already in Season 21, including the previous hour “Prime Cut,” which focused on Knight and Nick Torres. For a finale, one could argue that this should be more of a group effort — beyond the climax in which everyone arrives to rescue their trapped comrades. The case of the week comes off feeling like a catalyst just to put Knight in a dramatic position, because it resolves itself quickly — and comedically. The wife of one of the victims killed all three people: her husband, his mistress and an unhoused person she accidentally hit with her car. It’s all a big series of random events, spelled out by the killer’s uncle slash accomplice. Although the suspect trying to say that one victim ran into her knife is pretty funny, the entire sequence seems as if NCIS is trying to just get the plot out of the way. It’s certainly not the kind of heightened murder mystery that audiences would expect in a finale.

Compare this to CSI: Vegas Season 3, Episode 4, “Health and Wellness,” which had a similar plot trapping the character of Allie Rajan in a hospital basement. Even though Allie was on her own for most of the hour, that storyline felt much more team-oriented, including the use of a cell phone to keep Allie and Josh Folsom connected. As Parker points out on NCIS, cell phones don’t work through steel hulls, but the script by Scott Williams would have benefited from finding other ways to bring the team together earlier than the end.

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Gary Cole Does a Lot in a Relatively Limited Role

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Timothy McGee: Only every time we’re on one.

While “Reef Madness” is Katrina Law’s showcase, the other NCIS cast members do well with what they’re given — most notably Gary Cole, who has to spend a large chunk of the episode acting while flat on his back. It’s interesting that after struggling with humor in stories like Season 21, Episode 8, “Heartless,” the show finally gets its funny right in an episode that is meant to be gravely serious (except for that rushed ending to the triple murder). Jokes about Parker’s hatred of being on ships have an organic context because the team is actually on one, and those quips also serve as foreshadowing for a near-death dive into Parker’s childhood.

“Reef Madness” does a great job of making NCIS fans think it might kill off Alden Parker. Knight’s brief brush with death is tense to watch but less worrisome, since it would make the entire career dilemma in front of her pointless. Parker has no such caveat, and Cole’s decades of acting experience shine through her as he slow-rolls Parker’s deterioration after he’s trapped under a fallen submarine part that causes him to lose copious amounts of blood. Viewers can see him get a little slower, a little quieter as the plot goes on, without the script having to constantly reiterate that he could die. Even though he can barely move, Cole is still able to convey Parker’s attempts at playing the situation off and how he’s still leading by motivating Knight to get angry.

Then there are the flashback slash hallucination moments, in which Parker begins to see a young girl in a yellow sweater named Lily. The scene shows a young Parker, and when he warns Lily about being near the railing of the vessel, NCIS implies a tragic explanation for why Parker hates being on ships. However, “Reef Madness” stops short of explicitly confirming it, as Parker later tells Knight that he doesn’t remember any of this. Regardless, it’s the end result of using humor to further the actual story, which is something that earlier Season 21 episodes weren’t able to do. If there’s still any doubt that Parker has gotten out from under Gibbs’ long shadow, “Reef Madness” is an example of what Gary Cole brings to NCIS.

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The NCIS Season 21 finale makes viewers think that Katrina Law is leaving, as Knight emphatically accepts the REACT job. But as of the air date, there is no official statement from CBS about Law exiting the show. It’s a character-centric cliffhanger, rather than a plot-based cliffhanger, and the impact of that on the audience again depends on how much they care about Knight individually. The script does have a nice fake-out when Knight looks back and forth between Jimmy and a hospitalized Parker, no doubt remembering Parker’s advice about having “one shot to make a difference, or make mistakes. No sense in being afraid of making either one.” Seeing her look at Jimmy, some fans may assume that she’s going to turn the job down in favor of staying with her team and the man she loves — but she doesn’t.

Aside from the lack of official confirmation, it’s worth noting that Knight’s on-screen acceptance doesn’t mean that she’s actually gone, either. TV shows have done these kind of storylines before, where characters leave for another job or another city and then end up returning, or NCIS can invent some reason in the Season 22 premiere for Knight to have changed her mind. This plot point truly could go either way. Katrina Law has been on the show for four seasons, three as a series regular, after previously starring on two other CBS crime dramas: the final season of the Hawaii Five-0 reboot and the short-lived Training Day. Three full seasons is still two more than Jennifer Esposito’s short-lived NCIS tenure — but maybe after so many years in the crime drama space, she’s ready for her next challenge.

If “Reef Madness” does turn out to be Katrina Law’s final NCIS episode, she certainly goes out on top. As a season finale, it’s too focused in on the Knight character to have the completeness that audiences expect from a finale. But the tease about Parker’s fate and some strong work in support by Gary Cole make the episode more entertaining than other Season 21 entries, even if it’s not everything that it could have been.

NCIS Season 21 is now streaming on Paramount+.

NCIS TV Show Poster

NCIS Season 21, Episode 10

7/10

Parker and Knight discover three bodies on an old Navy ship that’s about to be sunk and turned into an artificial reef, when they’re suddenly locked inside by a mysterious figure. Also, Vance offers Knight a unique opportunity.

Release DateSeptember 23, 2003Creator(s)Don McGill, Donald P. BellisarioCastRocky Carroll, Joe Spano, Brian Dietzen, Katrina Law, sean murray, Wilmer Valderrama, Mark Harmon, Gary Cole, david mccallumMain GenreCrimeRatingTV-14Seasons22NetworkCBSFranchise(s)NCIS Pros