‘NCIS: New Orleans’ should flesh out Eddie Barrett’s character arc by letting Lasalle’s alleged killer temporarily evade justice
In episode 9 of ‘NCIS: New Orleans’ Season 6, justice for special agent Christopher Lasalle (Lucas Black) remained elusive at best. Eddie Barrett (Eddie Cahill), the man suspected of killing him, managed to outsmart the team of federal agents at every step.
He found alibis. People crucial to the investigation died under mysterious circumstances. Even when the NCIS team finally confronted him, they were met with an army of loyal men and women, armed to the teeth, prepared to die for Barrett, for the man is a manipulative cult leader.
The episode ended on a cliffhanger. Will they be able to apprehend Barrett and bring him to justice in the next episode? It’s an interesting question to ponder. Going by the history of ‘NCIS: New Orleans’, complex villains who dominate the central story is not a design the show follows.
And to be fair to the genre of police procedurals, it is generally not a practice. Procedurals follow the trope of one-case-at-a-time and seldom dive into overarching narratives. And for the most part, it works. But every now and then, one does crave a more complicated story that, at least, runs parallel to the usual episodic hustle.
It doesn’t have to be as crucial to the story as, for example, ‘Dexter’, where each season the serial killer/forensic analyst dealt with a dark villain. But it can be like ‘The Mentalist’ where the protagonist, every now and then, had cryptic run-ins with the main antagonist.
Eddie Barrett, if not fleshed out well so far, has the potential to be a good villain. He’s smart, complicated and dangerous. And, the NCIS team harbors a personal grudge against him. It would be prudent to let him escape from the clutches of the law. That would allow the creators to build further and let the tragedy of Lasalle’s death fester.
One thing that provides hope for such a possibility is how the show took its time to explore the death of Lasalle’s brother Cade. For several episodes, we saw Lasalle struggle with his frustrations and the idea of vengeance even.
Over the course of this season, Lasalle as a character was thoroughly examined and it made for an interesting watch amid the usual humdrum of cop shows. Hopefully, the showrunners would employ a similar approach towards Barrett’s arch. If nothing, it is fodder for more episodes, isn't it?
'NCIS: New Orleans' Season 6 airs Tuesdays at 9 p.m. only on CBS.
