NCIS season 15 episode 14 review: Can we get a Fornell P.I. spin off please?
The awkward case of Gibbs and Fornell
Let’s start this off by saying how incredibly excited we are that Hicks is back in the mix! He is smart, sympathetic, and a first class liar and murderer. His lies are as smooth as cream and everyone eats them up… but after being fooled once, Gibbs and the team are not buying into what he’s selling anymore.
The case of the week introduces us to Fornell’s new job… he’s a private investigator! After what happened with Hicks and Fornell losing his job we were worried that we wouldn’t see him much more after that, but this is a great way to keep him working with Gibbs.
Gibbs tries to warn Vance before Fornell comes in and asks to work with them, but he has a lot of information to share since he’s been tracking the victim (from the case of the week) for days before the murder. Gibbs has been dodging Fornell since everything went down and with Fornell now part of the case, it’s difficult for Gibbs to keep the secret…. that Hicks really was guilty. Sloane agrees with Gibbs’ decision not to tell Fornell until they have enough to convict Hicks. Gibbs is worried that if Fornell knows he lost his job and he was right about Hicks that he might go rogue to get justice. Instead this creates a serious amount of awkward tension between Gibbs’ and Fornell was was incredibly entertaining.
Eventually Fornell corners Gibbs and pushes the truth out of him – that Hicks is guilty and that he and Sloane are working on putting him away and is going to make this right. Fornell took the news pretty well, with a fairly cool head despite what he was just told, but this secret has fractured his relationship with Gibbs’… their trust is broken. Later Gibbs brings everything he and Sloane have collected on Hicks asking him to work with them on catching him and it’s just the peace offering needed to mend this broken relationship.
McGee’s superpowers
We have heard from many parents over the years that once you become a mom or a dad your multitasking skills become a bit of a superpower as you balance the wants of your kids, the wants of your partner, the household, work and last but not least yourself. We were thrilled to see this mirrored on NCIS tonight as we finally got to really see what McGee’s life is like now that he has twins. Yes, we’ve seen him showing all his baby pictures (as many parents love to do), but we were really interested in seeing how his life shifted at home and how that would translate into his working environment. His multitasking superpower is in full swing at work as we’ve seen him take on a new case with Hicks and still have time to fix the company car and make a video anthology for his twins. So does he really have daddy superpowers or is something else at play? After some snooping (and lab testing), she figures out that he’s over caffeinated… all the time!
The Gabriel Hicks cliffhanger
Sloane had been talking to Jessica through out this episode (her friend and also Hicks’ lawyer) and after telling her that Hicks is a switch hitter Jessica decides to tell Hicks’ that he needs to find another lawyer. She reveals to Sloane that she’s learned something more about him, but can’t say because she was his lawyer. Turns out she won’t be saying much of anything now since her car blew up when she started it, and Sloane was so close to it that it blew her clear across the street. We would be shocked if the show killed her off, but she’s definitely banged up pretty badly.
Related – Check out a preview for episode 15!
CarterMatt Verdict
Fornell as a private investigator was so much fun, especially when we got to see just how tricked out his garage/home office was! The more we dove into Fornell the P.I. the more we wanted a spin off! The scenes between Gibbs and Fornell were outstanding since we rarely get to see Gibbs’ in a position where he’s really uncomfortable or squirming. Like Sloane, we understand why he was keeping the truth from Fornell, but it gave us a really great performance from Mark Harmon and an equally great performance from Joe Spano.
What did you think overall about NCIS season 15 episode 14? Sound off now in the comments!
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