“How much do you know about the family business?”
Well, for over 20 years, the family business over at CBS has been the NCIS franchise, and another decade longer if you consider it was a spin-off of JAG, which lasted 10 years on its own. It’s been a busy 20 years, I can tell you that. About seven years into the original show’s run, we got our first NCIS spin-off with NCIS: Los Angeles. That show focused more on action and a lot of explosions. The show just finished its final year after 14 seasons. Then there was NCIS: New Orleans that brought the focus to the unique culture and tastes of The Big Easy. It lasted seven years, and there’s an upcoming NCIS: Sydney which is about to take us down under to grab that shrimp on the barbie. Things continue to expand, and now we have NCIS: Hawai’i, which expands the franchise and solves a situation at CBS. For decades they have kept a Hawaiian studio on the islands. First it was a remake of Hawaii Five-O, and then a remake of Magnum P.I. recreated history just as it happened in the 1970’s. Now Magnum is gone once again, and so CBS slid a new NCIS show right into those production facilities. What we have is another unique location and another NCIS crew out there solving Navy crimes.
This is was a brand new team led by Jane Tennant, played by Vanessa Lachey. She’s a single mother of a son and daughter, and that family life plays into the her story arc on the show. This year her son, Alex (Talan) is on his final year of high school and starting to plan for his future. He was once a big baseball prospect, but an injury in Season 1 changed his trajectory. Jane has to contend with his growing independence when he brings home a girlfriend who is 21 and considers herself a “free spirit”. She is trying to convince him to postpone school and take a gap year traveling around Europe.
We also learn a bit about Jane. She is former CIA, and the last two episodes of the 2nd season take us on a trip into her past. We discover she was on an op that went bad. She made a mistake that now she’s trying to fix. It takes her to South America where a ghost from her past is haunting and hunting her. We get to see that past in several flashbacks, and it goes a long way to round out the history of the character.
Jesse Boone is played by Noah Mills. He’s the second in command here. He’s also a family man, but we really don’t see anywhere near as deeply into his family. He’s a former police officer and isn’t the most patient guy on the team. He’s often the go-get-it-done guy and the most serious in the group. He and Jane have a past working together, and there’s a history and a trust there that we haven’t explored too deeply yet.
Kai Holman is played by Alex Tarrant. Pay no attention to the coincidence in the actor’s name and the boss’s son’s name. He’s the cast’s “native” islander, which is ironic when you hear the actual actor talk and not the character. He’s from New Zealand and hides the accent for the character. He’s a former Marine, if anyone can ever be described as a “former” Marine. He carries a lot of baggage from his years of service. He feels guilt for leaving his father and sister and their restaurant business behind while he served, and he’s dealing with those memories of war that are all too common with combat veterans. He’s the muscle in the group and the toughest guy.
Lucy Tara is played by Yasmine Al-Bustami. She’s the youngest and greenest member of the team. She’s not quite confident on a lot of levels but is the team’s big cheerleader. She’s living in Hawaii and working for the Navy, but she doesn’t like water or boats. Has a kind of fear of them. She faces those fears by stepping out in a few episodes while the character serves aboard an aircraft carrier as the agent afloat. Lucy’s girlfriend is FBI agent and agency liaison Kate Whistler, played by Tori Anderson. Kate’s also got a bit of a self-confidence issue, and as the season progresses she becomes closer to the team and Jane when she is the only one Jane takes with her when she goes a little rogue at 2nd season’s end.
Ernie Malik is the requisite tech guy, and played by Jason Antoon. Ernie is the expected geek with a bit of an ego problem and also a bit of an arrogance issue. They tolerate him because he does have his naïve, charming aspects. He’s kind of still searching for things in his life but isn’t comfortable outside of his lab very often. last season he got a huge chance to do just that when he’s the only one the Space Force will allow inside a Mars mission simulation when one of the participants ends up dead. It appears going to Mars is a lifelong dream of his. He’s closest to Lucy and the team’s medical examiner Carla Chase, who is in fact Jason Antoon’s real life wife, Seana Kofoed. Chase is a bit New Age with healing crystals, yoga, and aura kind of vibes going on. Her empathy shows, and it’s kind of an important because before that I sort of just labeled her the team kook. Smart. But a kook.
Finally the season brings on LL Cool J’s Agent Sam Hanna. He’s on the island at first to get Tennant through her paces to return from last year’s trauma. But there’s a secret here and over the 10 episodes we discover he’s part of an NCIS team called NCIS: Elite. Expect to see that spin-off one say. The plot leads to a huge bio-terrorism plot and takes us through the final episodes of the series. There is a slight cliffhanger that just won’t be resolved because this season draws the curtain down on what became a very expensive NCIS show to do. This final season does find us with the 1001 episode for the franchise. And that number just keeps on growing.
Hanna’s arrival was good for the show but a little too little too late. I found this to be the weaker of all the NCIS shows I’ve watched. The team never really gelled for me and the stakes never quite got to the kind of episodes I expected. “There was a harrowing moment where it looked like they were out of oat milk.”
