NCIS: New Orleans season 4 episode 2 review: Pride meets Martha Roberts

On NCIS: New Orleans season 4 episode 2, we had a chance to witness a Dwayne Pride case like no other. Not only that, but we’re also got a chance to see a very different sort of character in Martha Roberts.

At the start of the episode we were introduced to Martha Roberts, a woman who claimed to known Dwayne Pride due to an experience that the two had a decade and a half ago. She claimed she needed his help investigating a serial killer in Mr. Lonesome and wanted him and him alone to help. He refused, but that didn’t stop her from finding another way to get to him: Tasering him he was out preparing for some quality time with his daughter Laurel.

When Pride eventually woke up he found himself in what was very strange place: Locked up in Martha’s compound while she explained to him the case of Lindsay Kirk. Martha claimed that nobody cared over her disappearance and she was desperate to find her — so much so that she wanted to use Pride’s mind in order to make it happen.

When you don’t think about the crazy nature of Pride’s capture, and this one is pretty much right down the middle when it comes to what you expect from a crime procedural like this: The case of a missing girl that turns out to be something very much different from what the team anticipated in advance. It looked like someone had kidnapped her, and Martha may have been right about some of her claims.

The discovery of a body

Great news for the team … but also bad news when they realized that the body that they found wasn’t Lindsay. Instead, it was another woman who disappeared months ago, which offered up Martha some additional validation for some of the machinations in her mind. Pride figured out that she was mentally unstable, and it was at that point he started to wear her down. At first she fought against it, but as he started to free himself from the ropes that bound him, he started to find a use for her still: He knew that she knew more about this victim than anyone, and with that could be useful if contained the right way.

Bringing Martha into the fold

Pride eventually was able to talk her down and understand her — at least to a certain extent. He recognized that she was willing to hurt him in order to get his attention, so she cared about this case. Therefore, the entire team was able to figure out where Mr. Lonesome was finding some of his victims: He was Ryan Davis, a supervisor who worked at a local call center.

This, in turn, led to the confrontation with Ryan, a man who was incredibly disturbed and had his own perceived view of some of the women he was trying to “help.” It was hard to get through to him in order to understand the truth, mostly because we’re not altogether sure he knew what the truth was.

Pride had to reason with Ryan through appealing to his own delusions; with that, the team was eventually able to find Lindsay just in time and before something more happened to her. Roberts did help in the end and Pride recognized that; however, he also couldn’t just ignore the fact that Martha kidnapped him and forced him to hear out the case in the first place. She’ll be forced to get help, but maybe the punishment won’t be too severe otherwise.

CarterMatt Verdict

This was not your ordinary episode of NCIS: New Orleans, and we admire the creativity of it. It’s not often that we have a “villain” who isn’t exactly operating with nefarious motives. Martha wasn’t necessarily a terrible person but rather someone obsessed and off her medication, desperate to find validation after she was previously one of the forgotten herself.

Anyway, the message of the episode was a sweet one, which was certainly surprising giving how intense it got at times: Everyone deserves a chance to be heard. Kudos to Scott Bakula and Dendrie Taylor, who played Martha, for some great performances this time around.

What did you think about NCIS: New Orleans season 4 episode 2?

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