WARNING: The following contains spoilers for NCIS Season 19, Episode 5, “Face the Strange,” which aired Monday October 18th on CBS.
With Gibbs’ being written off of NCIS last week, Director Vance found himself with some major shoes to fill on his main NCIS team. This week, the NCIS director named the replacement for Gibbs’ job by offering the role to a qualified, experienced agent. However, it wasn’t McGee. It was former FBI Agent Alden Parker.
With Tony DiNozzo out of the picture, it has long been theorized that Timothy McGee would step into Gibbs’ role as team leader, but that didn’t happen. To clarify, McGee was Vance’s first choice for team leader, but he declined. So, in “Face the Strange,” Vance went with plan B and offered the position to Parker, at Gibbs’ suggestion. However, Parker wasn’t completely convinced about taking the job at the beginning of the episode and did something sneaky before accepting.
The episode started when Parker came in to tell everyone that he was going to decline the job of team leader. That was awkward, however, because he was early and Vance hadn’t even told he the team of that possibility yet. So, things got off to a bad start, especially considering everyone was dealing with Gibbs’ departure anyway. Seeing the writing on the wall, Parker decided to make himself scarce, since he had tickets for a Simon and Garfunkel concert later that day, but Vance convinced him to stick around for a little while when Jimmy arrived to announce that they had a zombified petty officer.
When the team arrived onsite, the petty officer was not zombified. He had only briefly awakened from a coma before dying. His death revolved around a plot by an Albanian mafia kingpin who needed a final witness killed off in a case against him. In a routine surgery -- and unbeknownst to the petty officer -- the mafia had installed a bomb inside of him as a trial run.
However, the bomb had leaked and killed the petty officer before they could blow him up. With the kinks worked out, the mafia installed another bomb inside of the stenographer who was going to take the witness’ testimony. Luckily, the team foiled the plan and saved the man’s life when Ducky and Palmer removed the bomb.
Along the way, Parker kept trying to leave for his concert, but for some reason, he always found an excuse to stay a little longer. Near the middle of the episode, he was placed in charge of the case by a general who authorized an emergency rapid response task force to combat the possibility of suicide combers in the military. Not everyone was happy with Parker being in charge, but he handled himself well.
By the end of the episode, Parker admitted what he was doing to Vance. There was no concert. He just wanted to see what a regular day was like at NCIS without everyone trying to get rid of him. Throughout the case, Parker kept saying that NCIS was a lot more exciting than his old FBI job, and by the end of the episode, he had all but signed his name as Gibbs’ replacement.
To see out how McGee and Torres handle Parker as their boss, watch CBS’ NCIS on Monday nights at 9 pm. ET.