NCIS Season 22, Episode 7: Guest Stars Steal the Spotlight from the Team!
NCIS Season 22, Episode 7, “Hardboiled” is an episode that might divide fans. On one hand, it’s a solidly entertaining installment of the CBS show, and one that avoids several very obvious pitfalls. On the other, it’s an hour that doesn’t make great use of the series’ main cast, making them feel more like supporting players in the guest characters’ story.
“Hardboiled” centers around one of Nick Torres’ confidential informants, who becomes the lead suspect when her husband is found dead. But it doesn’t dig too deeply into Torres, or any of the NCIS team. Instead, it’s Sara Paxton’s character Amber Carnahan who’s front and center. While the script serves her well, it’s also hard not to want more from the folks who have helped keep NCIS so popular.
NCIS Season 22, Episode 7 Is Meant to Feature Nick Torres
But Wilmer Valderrama’s Character Is Underappreciated
“Hardboiled” 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 — and Wilmer Valderrama had more range to play — than he does here. The opening “hook” of the episode is that the team worries Torres is involved in Dr. Roger Carnahan’s death, but that’s resolved quickly after the credits. From that point on, Nick’s character arc is exceedingly predictable. He’s determined to protect Amber at all costs. He’s upset when he believes she’s the killer. Another teammate has to convince him that he hasn’t made some huge mistake.
Leon Vance: Torres, was he out of bounds?
Alden Parker: No. But it’s still a mess.
Wilmer Valderrama is still able to impress with what he’s given. Years into his NCIS tenure, he’s wearing the role of Nick Torres like a second skin. But the best character-centric episodes are extended dives into someone’s 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’s medal to him, after the two have developed a mutual respect. Torres fans will still enjoy what Valderrama does in “Hardboiled,” but it could’ve been so much more.
Season 22, Episode 7 Avoids Stereotyping With Sara Paxton
The Good Girls Alum Gives NCIS’ Best Performance
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 — and boring — 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’ve 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, “Hardboiled” is a much better episode.
The key to making that approach work is the performance by Return to Halloweentown alum Sara Paxton. It’s on Paxton’s shoulders to not only make Amber Carnahan someone fans are interested in, but to make sure her pleas of innocence don’t fall on deaf ears. The scenes she’s given could have come off insincere and histrionic in the hands of another performer — particularly when Torres and Jessica Knight find Sara tied up in the back of a van and she tries to convince them she’s telling the truth. But Paxton doesn’t overdo the desperation, and the slightly hesitant way she plays the character supports the show’s explanation that Amber was too scared to go through official channels. In that sense, Paxton gives the whole NCIS episode credibility.
Harold Lamb: I guess you’ll get your criminology degree when you’re in prison.
Another standout is veteran character actor Sam McMurray, who portrays the cynical, world-weary Harold Lamb. McMurray is one of those folks who’s been in dozens of shows, including a prior guest appearance in NCIS Season 9. He’s 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 — but the same can’t be said for the regular characters.
NCIS Lets Episode 7 Run Away With Itself
The Main Cast Are Just Left Waiting to Save the Day
It’s 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’s entertaining enough, but tying Palmer’s 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’t need.
Jessica Knight: Nick, you didn’t do anything wrong. So get out of your head. We’ve got a two-timing broad to catch.
If anything, “Hardboiled” shows that it isn’t 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’s a risk of not giving enough to the leads. It’s a balancing act that this episode doesn’t 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’s only stakes are just not letting the real killer get away. And when that killer is revealed, it’s neither surprising (as there are no other real suspects left) nor impressive (he’s the intern audiences have barely met).
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’t erase the other fact: that they keep viewers from having to sit through the same tired ideas. “Hardboiled” could have been a much deeper look into Nick Torres and something exciting for the character.
