'NCIS' recap- 'A Many Splendored Thing'

The last episode of NCIS focused on the investigation into Kai Chen and Ellie’s own mission to avenge her boyfriend’s death. We also found out some things about their relationship that was previously unknown.

When the episode started, we saw a woman named Renee Turner coming home from a run. She is stunned to see a weapon on the table and a video of her daughter begins playing on the television. A distorted voice commands her to kill herself for not doing what she was told to do or her daughter would be killed.

Back at NCIS, Nick has been teaching the team about the art of pick pocketing, which he does by stealing Tim’s wallet. Ellie is not very successful at it while Alex is able to take Nick’s badge. Ellie is distracted from the lesson when Clayton indicates for her to join him. He has a lead on a courier of Chen’s and is on his way to go investigate. Ellie wants to come too but he reminds her she is supposed to be off the case.

The team is called onto the case of Turner’s suicide, but off the bat things seem weird. The television won’t turn off for a weird reason and they don’t see a suicide note or any indications that Turner was planning on killing herself. When Ellie gets a text from Clayton, she claims she has a water leak and leaves. Clayton is outside the scene with Chen’s courier, Dabney.

In the bullpen, the team discovers Turner worked for the Defense Logistics Agency and she had made several big orders for the company before cancelling them. They work on figuring out the case but do not have Ellie back to help out, believing she is dealing with a water issue.

However, Ellie is actually with Clayton and the courier. He claims to have no knowledge of what Chen is planning but they eventually get him to reveal he did hear them talking about an attack on the electrical grid. They had gotten evidence of a code Chen had that he used to look like song lyrics. Clayton is worried about how she is handling everything and Ellie has a flashback to a date she had with Qasim.

In autopsy, Ducky tells Gibbs the victim had a spike in a hormone that was connection to feelings of affection right before she died. Tim then comes in to tell them Abby was able to find that the television was hacked and he plays the video of the threat made to Turner’s little girl. Abby comes on screen moments later to tell them the IP address used to send the video is online at an old radio tower. They go only to find Clayton and Ellie are there.

Vance gives both Ellie and Clayton a stern talking to for being secretly involved in the case. He orders Clayton to come with him to the car so they can talk while Gibbs asks Ellie why she got involved. He tells her that getting Chen will not bring Qasim back but Ellie just counters that he was not just her boyfriend, but she does not elaborate. We see in a flashback that Qasim had proposed to her.

The team interrogates the buyer of the radio tower, who it turned out was business partners with Chen. He had only seen the man once but informs them Chen is coming back into town. Vance works in MTAC to put eyes on the airports to arrest him. However, Congresswoman Jenna Fleming informs them she is now part of the counterterrorism unit overseeing Chen and that she is ordering them to only watch him since they do not have enough to arrest him.

Ellie angrily goes to Gibbs about this new information, but he tells her that they aren’t just waiting. She realizes he has a plan but before they can continue talking, they hear someone enter Gibbs’ house. Realizing she came alone, they go upstairs with their guns drawn to find Chen in Gibbs’ house.

After checking him for weapons, Chen claims that he is not a threat and on their side. It turns out he is working for the CIA and Jenna knew about this. She tells Vance and Gibbs that he had information about a Syrian war lord they were trying to capture.

At her apartment, Ellie tells Clayton she knows about the war lord in question from NSA and she doesn’t feel that he should be their focus. She is determined to stop Chen from what he is planning. When she has another memory of Qasim and an argument they had about binary codes, she realizes the code Chen has is in binary.

Taking the information to Abby, the team determines the code is a computer virus that would exploit vulnerability in older diesel generators. They prepare to get to work and Ellie slips away.

The team realizes Chen had blackmailed Turner into purchasing affected computers but she couldn’t go through with helping him. Jenna comes to the team knowing that she had been wrong about Chen and she wants Ellie to brief others on the case in MTAC. However, she is nowhere to be found even though Jenna just bumped into her outside. It turns out Ellie had switched their cell phones and is now on the highway ignoring their calls.

Ellie goes to the radio tower where Chen has arrived thinking he is meeting with Jenna. She holds him at gunpoint, already having made her decision on how this meeting will end. Meanwhile, Gibbs is on his way with Alex and Clayton, hoping they will catch her.

As Chen brings up Qasim making his own choices, Ellie has a memory of turning Qasim down since she wasn’t ready for marriage yet. She has Chen handcuff himself to a generator and she inserts a floppy disk before calmly walking out of the tower. As Gibbs arrives, the tower blows up and Ellie is stoic.

Jenna and Gibbs have a discussion about him possibly moving up in position, implying their could be a vacancy in the director’s position. Ellie comes downstairs and has a talk with Gibbs about her choices. He reminds her that when she goes rogue, there’s a price for it. Ellie pulls out a card she has been holding onto and had the night Qasim died. When Gibbs opens the card, he sees a drawing of a figure proposing and behind some photographs of Ellie and Qasim is the word, “Yes.”

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