A new episode of NCIS aired on Monday night that focused on introducing Agent Timothy McGee’s mother-in-law.
Even though this is the 19th season of the show, NCIS fans had not yet met the mother of McGee’s wife, Delilah Fielding, played by Margo Harshman.
Patricia Richardson joined the NCIS cast as Judy Price Fielding, and she helped bring a lot of humor to the new installment.
As a reminder, on the last episode of NCIS, former FBI agent Alden Parker officially took over as the leader of Gibbs’ former team. He was met with a lot of resistance from Agent Torres, but Torres appeared to be coming around by the end of that episode.
NCIS Season 19, Episode 7 recap
The new episode opened with Judy Price Fielding (Richardson) going to enjoy a spa on a cruise ship when she found the body of a Navy commander.
After the opening titles had run, Parker was shown explaining a new phone app that the team could use to stay in contact and bounce ideas off of each other in a virtual space. McGee loved the tech idea, while Torres was predictably against it. They then got the call to the cruise ship to investigate the death of the Naval officer, and that was when they discovered who the witness in the case turned out to be.
McGee was shocked to learn that his mother-in-law was on the ship, and he introduced her to a very surprised Torres as the show went to another commercial. That moment was supposed to serve as the dramatic reveal of the new NCIS cast member.
Tim has to tell Delilah about her mom
Upon interviewing his mother-in-law, we learned that McGee and Delilah didn’t know that she was even on a cruise. She had lied about where she was. Judy also claimed that she didn’t know the person who was killed and that she was on the cruise alone. Since McGee was the one who found out she was on the cruise, he had to tell his wife, and Delilah was really upset.
McGee and Delilah picked up Judy to take her home, but right about when they were going to go inside and Judy turned off her alarm, an improvised explosive device went off. The explosion destroyed the condo and sent the McGee’s all to the hospital. They would all be fine (minor injuries), but it was clear that someone was trying to kill Judy, and she might have more information than she was letting on.
It turned out that Judy had been involved in a relationship with the Navy man after they met on the cruise. She had lied about it so her daughter wouldn’t find out. It seemed that Judy felt Delilah was being overbearing and that Delilah thought she needed to take care of her mom after her dad had died.
Through more investigating, it turned out that the Navy man had a niece who had died three months earlier on the cruise ship. No real investigation had been done at the time, and it was simply ruled an accident. Anyone who has seen an episode of NCIS likely knew this was not going to turn out to be a coincidence.
NCIS solves the case with Judy’s help
Judy had to be placed under protective custody, and McGee led that part of it. It was rough going for him as Judy and Delilah argued about everything. A really hilarious moment came when Parker stopped by, though, and told McGee that “I come from a big family. Like Brady Bunch big.” The reason it is humorous is that Gary Cole, who plays Alden Parker, also played Mike Brady (the dad) in the Brady Bunch movies.
The NCIS team figured out that the cruise ship was being used to dispose of toxic waste in the ocean, but they were in a time crunch to figure out how it got on board, where it was, and who was doing it. Judy and Delilah helped with the research, and Judy figured out that the toxic waste was in containers proclaiming to be ginger ale. From there, the team pieced together that it was the captain who was behind the death of the Navy man who had figured it out, and his niece, who had seen the captain disposing of the waste into the ocean.
The episode ended with Judy heading off to a safari with her new fiance (she had been engaged right before going on that cruise and had taken a break). Her fiance, a man named Harold, is played by Tom Yi on the show.
During the final credits, NCIS paid tribute to Harriet Margulies with a heartfelt title card.
NCIS airs Mondays at 9/8c on CBS.
Whatever happened to the original Delilah Fielding? The girl on last night’s episode was definitely not the one that McGee married.