NCIS was back with a new episode called 1mm on Tuesday night. This served as Season 18, Episode 6 of the show, and the team was still recovering from what happened on the last episode.
When we last saw the team in action, Gibbs shot McGee (three times), Torres thought he lost Bishop in a plane explosion, and Sloane was having a difficult time grappling with that Gibbs shooting as well.
Then there’s Palmer, who was dealing with his own emotional issues from it all, leading to him trying to rearrange his entire office while speaking about the fragility of life.
But it was time to get back to work.
NCIS recap: 1mm
The episode began with Torres and Bishop driving through the wilderness after getting a call to the NCIS tip line. They argued about directions until they came upon an abandoned former sherrif’s office. Only it wasn’t abandoned.
Upon entering and looking around, they received fire from two fugitives who were in possession of stolen Naval explosives. During the firefight, Bishop and Torres became locked inside jail cells as the fugitives (brothers) escaped.
Later, when it seemed like Bishop found a way out, she triggered a pressure point that was set to blow up the entire building and hide the evidence that the brothers had left behind. She quickly stepped on the button and kept the explosion from going off, but she was now trapped standing in one place.
Meanwhile, Torres was still locked in the other cell and could not help. This led to a lot of time and conversations between the partners, where they worked through some of the emotional baggage that they had been carrying around.
Bishop was still dealing with being held captive and nearly dying, while also feeling frustration from her perception that Torres was treating her differently. At the same time, Torres had been getting increasingly upset that Bishop wasn’t sharing anything with him and he admitted to the fear of losing his partner.
The pair had a good chat, got on the same page, and eventually got rescued by Gibbs, who arrested the suspect and brought in the bomb squad in to save his team.
There were also subtle hints that Bishop and Torres may have some very strong feelings for each other that are not just work-related.
Gibbs, McGee, and the NCIS team
Gibbs began the episode feeling a lot of guilt over shooting McGee and he was deflecting it at the office. McGee was at home recovering, also failing to deal with what had happened to him.
In regard to the episode title of 1mm, it was a description of how close one of the shots came to hitting McGee’s artery. It was something everyone knew about, with Gibbs struggling with how close he had come to killing McGee and McGee struggling with how close he was to dying.
Caught in the middle was Sloane, who was having a difficult time getting members of the team to open up about what had happened. This seems like heavy foreshadowing for plot points down the line.
Gibbs discovered that Torres and Bishop had left the office without telling anyone where they were going, so he had to investigate it mostly on his own. Eventually, he tore out all the computers from the desks of his team and took them to McGee to get some help. That’s where McGee was able to help track them down and a good chat was had between McGee and Gibbs.
At the end of the hour, Bishop and Torres had been saved, McGee was back at work, and Gibbs was about to lead the team into a new case. Everyone had worked through their issues and the core four looked as strong as they have been in several seasons.
Every storyline was closed off at that point, with Season 18, Episode 6 marking the emotional and physical end of several plot lines. Upcoming, though, someone is leaving the show, so more drama is waiting in the wings.
NCIS airs Tuesdays at 8/7c on CBS.