NCIS Season 21 Episode 5 Review: The Plan

Jessica and McGee were undoubtedly in for surprises, weren’t they?

That’s because two family members were introduced on NCIS Season 21 Episode 5.

We found that Jess was actually an NCIS legacy agent, which just hadn’t come up before during her three seasons on the team.

Let’s face it. Jessica was long overdue for a spotlight episode.

The last time she was this prominent in an episode was NCIS Season 18 Episode 15 when she was the surviving member of an NCIS REACT team.

Since she joined the team during the following season, replacing sudden secret agent Ellie Bishop, she’s been a reliable if underexposed member of the squad.

In fact, much of her screen time has been as part of the obligatory team couple with medical examiner Jimmy Palmer. 

It must be said that after meeting her father, her attraction to the stalwart Palmer makes more sense. 

That’s not to rain on their relationship. It’s refreshing to have such a public couple instead of so much “will they or won’t they” as in the past.

Theirs is the first NCIS intraoffice romance involving a child and parental roles. So, that’s progress.

Still, the questions that needed to be asked were, “Who is Jessica, and what are her dreams?”

Boy, howdy, didn’t those queries get answered this time out?

It turns out Jess is the daughter of Feng Zhao, Far East Special Agent in Charge, or, as he’s known in legend, “The Jethro Gibbs of the Far East.”

That title could mean many things, most of them positive. But in Jessica’s case, it meant a lot for her to live up to, even if the only one putting pressure on her was herself.

When she joined NCIS, she adopted her mother’s maiden name, Knight, so she wouldn’t receive any favoritism from those who knew her father.

The only one ware of her heritage is Director Vance, who knows how to keep a secret.

It appeared that Jessica and her father keep in touch regularly, which was why it was so much of a surprise when Vance revealed Feng’s involvement in the team’s current case.

Feng being the missing handler to an undercover agent whose gun was the murder weapon in the death of a John Doe was more than a little odd.

But you knew that they wouldn’t introduce Jessica’s father only to have him turn up dead. Where’s the fun is that?

It was much more likely that the man fleeing from the cabin where the dead agent was found, the one whom Jess tackled, would have to be Feng. There’s nothing like a meet-cute at a murder scene.

That’s when we got to learn what the episode title meant. What was The Plan?

From her youth, it appears that Feng and his daughter had mapped out her career trajectory at NCIS, eventually having her take over as NCIS director. I wonder if Vance had ever heard about this?

Only Jessica got derailed from her career ascent. First was the explosion that wiped out her REACT team.

And now it’s Jimmy. That same Jimmy, who Jess had never gotten around to mentioning to her father the myth, as the M.E. painfully learned.

Despite that horrible first meeting, Feng put together that Jimmy was someone special to Jess and researched his back story in one short car ride.

He viewed Jimmy as a dalliance with normalcy, a speed bump on his daughter’s fast track to success.

Jessica found herself on the outs with both crucial men in her life. Fortunately, they both were her most ardent supporters. They agreed on being Team Jess.

She managed to do the right things for both men. She impressed Feng with her takedown of the Chinese agent. She proved herself to Jimmy by rejecting the plum position her father tried to set up for her.

Was Jimmy right? Is normalcy a short-term proposition for Jess? Only time will tell.

But at least she managed to get Feng to understand that he and Jimmy wanted the same thing: What’s best for Jessica.

While Jess was reuniting with a family member she’d known all her life, McGee was discovering one that he didn’t know existed.

It was Delilah’s fault, insisting that Tim look into his genealogy when he was perfectly content with his ordered life.

He checked his results after being nagged by Jessica and Nick and soon regretted it, not because he found out he was 22 percent Danish but because he found out that he had a half-sister.

Unwillingly to accept the science in front of his face, he had Kasie rerun the test with the same results.

The problem with what should have been good news was that it brought up McGee’s turbulent history with his late father, the admiral.

His mind leaped to his dad having had a love child during an affair. Although, remembering the admiral, when would he have had the time?

Kasie found a happier solution, with Tim’s father being a sperm donor that allowed a lesbian couple to have a daughter. It was a happy ending as he and his sister met their new half-sister, Lauren.

What was your reaction to Jessica’s dad?

Will this bump affect her and Jimmy’s relationship?

Do you feel that McGee overreacted to his new sibling?

Comment below.

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Dale McGarrigle is a staff writer for TV Fanatic. Follow him on X.