NCIS Season 22 Episode 12 Review: Fun and Games

It’s not very often we get a Kasie-centric NCIS episode, so this was a treat.

And I’m even on board with the fact that it’s connected to a silly “adults playing some version of Dungeons and Dragons” storyline.

That’s not a diss on adults who play such games; it’s a diss on how the media portrays them.

Anyone who is into role-playing games always becomes a joke in the entertainment world, but would the world really be worse off if more people got together to play games, whether Dungeons and Dragons, Ferrets and Pheasants, Yahtzee, or Monopoly?

It’s got to be a lot better than sitting around in a group with your faces buried in your phone, ignoring one another. Hell, bring on game night!

McGee is also in the hot seat on NCIS Season 22 Episode 12 because the next Tom E Gemcity book has leaked. Now, I realize that some of the punch would be lost if people seeking information were calling his cell phone, but would the masses really have a direct line to NCIS?

Those little things that fall into tropes do not matter during “Fun and Games” because the writers had so much fun with the dialogue. What began as giggles soon turned into tear-inducing laughter, and what could be better than that?

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The case of the week began simply enough, and everyone jumped on board with the gaming aspect. Seeing folks dressed in odd garb can do that to you.

Parker: I wonder if someone took things a little too seriously.

Torres: Judging by the outfit, I’d say the answer is yes.

Parker: I was talking about the killer.

Imagine the team’s surprise when, after they’ve been making fun of the guy with nicknames like Conan the Barbarian, Kasie shows up, admitting she threw the party where everyone had been playing the game.

They were all forensic scientists, too. Parker joked they weren’t the people you’d want to play Clue with, and he’s right.

Kasie wasn’t expecting more visitors and certainly didn’t want her house to be considered a crime scene. For her, it’s the worst-case scenario — her house is an absolute mess to the point you can’t just pass it off on last night’s festivities.

Honestly, I feel for the girl. At least she has friends. I have a house filled with fashion dolls and never have guests. But when I do… oy, it is a lot to try to explain. I will have to name one Ernesto because introducing something with a name was pretty cool.

All of her friends are on the hook for Victor’s death, and one, Max, even went so far as to send a flavorful email about exactly how he’d kill Victor if he could.

As they get dragged in one by one, the team can’t help but tease each other about it.

It’s like watching an episode of America’s Next Top Nerd.

— Torres

McGee’s book leak adds another level of goofiness to an already goofy episode. His problem is that he wrote something a little too realistic, and the Department of Defense is after him. I’ve read that story one too many times, but in this case, it’s believable.

How hard would it be to write something totally off the cuff when you actually do have access to inside information? Even the slightest reference could turn out to be too close to the truth.

In the end, he’s freed of any wrongdoing, but in the meantime, the team had more laughs with the surprisingly spicy material.

Whether Torres makes an off-the-cuff remark about reading McGee’s book and is immediately assigned a book report or Parker wants to know what happened with Agent Tibbs, it was silly at its best.

As the case continued, it was discovered that a missing mate named Craig had also been murdered by a gift of fondu. But not before they wondered: How do you even send fondu? I mean, who even mentions fondu these days? That’s a 1970s delicacy that rarely gets the spotlight anymore.

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Yet, it was fondu that hit my funny bone. I had to rewind and watch the segment with the following exchange a few times because it landed so perfectly.

Jimmy: Time of death was before the get together at Kasie’s that I wasn’t invited to.

Parker: Which makes Craig here our first victim. The killer must have strangled him and then sent the fondu. As one does.

People often argue over casting changes when a show has been on as long as NCIS. However, watching Jimmy and Parker riff about different topics that fit together beautifully proves that NCIS still has the magic we need for the show to survive.

It was hard saying goodbye to Mark Harmon and his stoic Gibbs, but Alden Parker isn’t a replacement for Gibbs, and Gary Cole took full advantage of that by making Parker so refreshingly funny.

His comedic timing has always been impeccable, and he makes dealing with murder more fun than it should be.

Kasie and her forensic friends all had the same professor in school, Shari Belafonte’s Annabelle David. When the team focused on photochemistry through the collodium process, Kasie knew she had to bring in Annabelle for her expertise.

After all, they were now under the impression that Craig wasn’t investigating a crime but committing one. (All hail McGee’s toxic gas detector using Danger Zone by Kenny Loggins as the warning signal.)

But just when it seemed that they were onto something, the case zig-zagged in another direction.

Craig was making printing plates, such as the kind you could use to make counterfeit money, but it’s not money he’s messing with.

Either I’m right or Craig is the luckiest guy alive. Aside from, you know, the fact that he’s dead.

— Jimmy

He was creating counterfeit Mecha Ferret cards that went for $10 grand a pop.

But just when we thought that was that, the story twisted, and Craig WAS investigating someone else, but in the process, had to learn how to make the counterfeits.

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He was caught when he entered a game looking like a Temu version of Neo from The Matrix.

But even that wasn’t the end of it. After all, there are no coincidences in casting.

A minor speaking part and walk-on role becomes much more when the character interacts the main stars. To that end, a kid named Winston had been sent to jail on evidence Annabelle had provided.

Shari Belafonte wasn’t going to come onto NCIS just so her character could hug Kasie and reminisce about the old days. They had to at least do her the honor of being a part of the case.

The look on her face when she fell to the ground in her classroom made me believe that she was the perpetrator. Annabelle thought she was smarter than the students she taught, which was the worst.

Except she wasn’t the bad guy they were looking for. She was just part of the bigger picture.

With Victor’s death, the team uncovered a counterfeit trading card crime, but the real crime was tied directly to Professor Davis, who put away Winston on bogus evidence.

What I didn’t understand at first was why game night was targeted.

Winston wasn’t the only one who had been let down by Professor Davis. Kasie and the others really looked up to her, and everything they believed about her would be undone with her crime.

But Kasie was right that they had something special with the professor, and Winston thought that since she took everything away from him, he could take those she cared about most away from her.

But how did Winston know how close they all were? She must have spent a lot of time talking about that group to new students if he had put together that they were the people Professor Davis cared about the most.

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Kasie was incredibly disappointed to have been called one of the good ones by someone who turned out to be bad. The team pulled together and pulled her out of her doldrums with more food than they could eat and a bonus maid service.

This was a great episode about team camaraderie and the power of humor on NCIS. When the episode began, I groaned. Another look at a quirky group of Dungeons and Dragons players? Haven’t we seen that enough?

And then NCIS reminded me about why it’s been on the air for 22 seasons. They can write a trope-filled story and make it totally enjoyable. Score another one for the NCIS team!

What did you think of “Fun and Games”? Did you get the giggles like I did?

Share your thoughts with me in a comment below.

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Source: TV Fanatic