{"id":1327,"date":"2025-01-02T21:00:56","date_gmt":"2025-01-02T21:00:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ncisnews.com\/?p=1327"},"modified":"2025-01-02T21:01:24","modified_gmt":"2025-01-02T21:01:24","slug":"ncis-season-22-episode-7-review-the-team-gets-overshadowed-by-guest-stars-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ncisnews.com\/?p=1327","title":{"rendered":"Ncis Season 22, Episode 7 Review: The Team Gets Overshadowed By Guest Stars"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

NCIS Season 22, Episode 7, \u201cHardboiled\u201d is an episode that might divide fans. On one hand, it\u2019s a solidly entertaining installment of the CBS show, and one that avoids several very obvious pitfalls. On the other, it\u2019s an hour that doesn\u2019t make great use of the series\u2019 main cast, making them feel more like supporting players in the guest characters\u2019 story.<\/p>\n

\u201cHardboiled\u201d centers around one of Nick Torres\u2019 confidential informants, who becomes the lead suspect when her husband is found dead. But it doesn\u2019t dig too deeply into Torres, or any of the NCIS team. Instead, it\u2019s Sara Paxton\u2019s character Amber Carnahan who\u2019s front and center. While the script serves her well, it\u2019s also hard not to want more from the folks who have helped keep NCIS so popular.<\/p>\n

NCIS Season 22, Episode 7 Is Meant to Feature Nick Torres<\/strong><\/p>\n

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But Wilmer Valderrama\u2019s Character Is Underappreciated<\/p>\n

\u201cHardboiled\u201d is intended to focus on Nick Torres, because Amber is his confidential informant. However, there have been much better Torres-centric episodes in NCIS history. Even when Torres was put through the wringer in the NCIS Season 20 finale, he had more to do \u2014 and Wilmer Valderrama had more range to play \u2014 than he does here. The opening \u201chook\u201d of the episode is that the team worries Torres is involved in Dr. Roger Carnahan\u2019s death, but that\u2019s resolved quickly after the credits. From that point on, Nick\u2019s character arc is exceedingly predictable. He\u2019s determined to protect Amber at all costs. He\u2019s upset when he believes she\u2019s the killer. Another teammate has to convince him that he hasn\u2019t made some huge mistake.<\/p>\n

Leon Vance: Torres, was he out of bounds?<\/p>\n

Alden Parker: No. But it\u2019s still a mess.<\/p>\n

Wilmer Valderrama is still able to impress with what he\u2019s given. Years into his NCIS tenure, he\u2019s wearing the role of Nick Torres like a second skin. But the best character-centric episodes are extended dives into someone\u2019s life, or at least stories that push them in some new direction, and neither of those things happen in Episode 7. The one character beat that Nick has is less about him and more about Harold Lamb, the military veteran turned private investigator whom Roger had hired to surveil Sara. Understandably, the two characters start off butting heads, but the episode concludes with Nick returning Harold\u2019s medal to him, after the two have developed a mutual respect. Torres fans will still enjoy what Valderrama does in \u201cHardboiled,\u201d but it could\u2019ve been so much more.<\/p>\n

Season 22, Episode 7 Avoids Stereotyping With Sara Paxton<\/strong><\/p>\n

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The Good Girls Alum Gives NCIS\u2019 Best Performance<\/p>\n

What saves NCIS Season 22, Episode 7 is its willingness to almost completely avoid the tropes that exist in this kind of story. It would have been very easy \u2014 and boring \u2014 to say that Torres was actually romantically involved with Amber, or to make her into some kind of femme fatale mastermind who was the villain all along. Those would have been simpler storylines than revealing the connection between top-secret missile plans and a domestic vacuum. But audiences have seen those so many times before, plus there would\u2019ve been the risk of Torres being made to look clueless. By only teasing the possibility of Amber as an antagonist for just long enough to keep fans off-balance, \u201cHardboiled\u201d is a much better episode.<\/p>\n

The key to making that approach work is the performance by Return to Halloweentown alum Sara Paxton. It\u2019s on Paxton\u2019s shoulders to not only make Amber Carnahan someone fans are interested in, but to make sure her pleas of innocence don\u2019t fall on deaf ears. The scenes she\u2019s given could have come off insincere and histrionic in the hands of another performer \u2014 particularly when Torres and Jessica Knight find Sara tied up in the back of a van and she tries to convince them she\u2019s telling the truth. But Paxton doesn\u2019t overdo the desperation, and the slightly hesitant way she plays the character supports the show\u2019s explanation that Amber was too scared to go through official channels. In that sense, Paxton gives the whole NCIS episode credibility.<\/p>\n

Harold Lamb: I guess you\u2019ll get your criminology degree when you\u2019re in prison.<\/p>\n

Another standout is veteran character actor Sam McMurray, who portrays the cynical, world-weary Harold Lamb. McMurray is one of those folks who\u2019s been in dozens of shows, including a prior guest appearance in NCIS Season 9. He\u2019s more known for his sitcom work on series like The King of Queens, Mom and Cristela. McMurray has just enough edge as Lamb, stopping before the character becomes unpleasant. McMurray also has the best line of the episode once Harold realizes his intern is the actual murderer. These two guest roles are much better written than those in other recent cases, because the audience wants both Harold and Amber to be okay \u2014 but the same can\u2019t be said for the regular characters.<\/p>\n

NCIS Lets Episode 7 Run Away With Itself<\/strong><\/p>\n

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The Main Cast Are Just Left Waiting to Save the Day<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not just Nick Torres who gets the short end of the stick in NCIS Season 22, Episode 7; none of the main characters have a standout moment. Knight is there to provide support to Torres, but Alden Parker and Leon Vance are basically non-factors in the story, and Kasie Hines just does what she does in every other episode. The comedic subplot is given to Timothy McGee and Jimmy Palmer, and that\u2019s entertaining enough, but tying Palmer\u2019s side gig as a soccer referee back to the Season 18 death of his wife Breena comes off as a way to give the story emotional heft it doesn\u2019t need.<\/p>\n

Jessica Knight: Nick, you didn\u2019t do anything wrong. So get out of your head. We\u2019ve got a two-timing broad to catch.<\/p>\n

If anything, \u201cHardboiled\u201d shows that it isn\u2019t as easy to write procedurals as some TV viewers may think. Focus too much on the plot and then there are paper-thin characters no one cares about. Flesh out the guest characters and the audience cares more, but then there\u2019s a risk of not giving enough to the leads. It\u2019s a balancing act that this episode doesn\u2019t really manage to pull off. The motivation for the episode is less about Torres and more about Grace, and to an extent, Harold. The team\u2019s only stakes are just not letting the real killer get away. And when that killer is revealed, it\u2019s neither surprising (as there are no other real suspects left) nor impressive (he\u2019s the intern audiences have barely met).<\/p>\n

However, NCIS Season 22, Episode 7 is one of the stronger entries of the season because of that extra effort put into the guest characters, both by the writers and the actors who portray them. The fact that the added depth is so good it takes over the whole hour doesn\u2019t erase the other fact: that they keep viewers from having to sit through the same tired ideas. \u201cHardboiled\u201d could have been a much deeper look into Nick Torres and something exciting for the character.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

NCIS Season 22, Episode 7, \u201cHardboiled\u201d is an episode that might divide fans. On one hand, it\u2019s a solidly entertaining installment of the CBS show, and one… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1328,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1327","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ncisnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1327","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ncisnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ncisnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ncisnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ncisnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1327"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/ncisnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1327\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1330,"href":"https:\/\/ncisnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1327\/revisions\/1330"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ncisnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1328"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ncisnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1327"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ncisnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1327"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ncisnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1327"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}