'NCIS: New Orleans' Season 6 Episode 7 shows the team struggling to cope with Lasalle's death as Hannah and Tammy risk their lives
The death of special agent Christopher Lasalle (Lucas Black) in ‘NCIS: New Orleans’ seems to have had a profound impact on the team. In episode 7 of season 6, ‘Boom-Boom-Boom-Boom’, we see the team dealing with a terrorist situation.
A dangerous job even on regular days, bomb blasts across the city is a step further. But the NCIS team has become more reckless and as the episode depicts, they seem to be having a hard time coping with the death of a loved one.
The episode begins with Sebastian Lund (Rob Kerkovich) and Tammy Gregorio (Vanessa Ferlito) going through Lasalle’s old notes, two weeks after the events of the previous episode. It is clear neither of them has had a good night’s sleep indicating they weren’t able to keep Lasalle’s death out of their minds.
They look at Lasalle’s empty desk and Tammy says, “It’s like missing a limb.” Dwayne Pride (Scott Bakula), who meets with Dr. Douglas, also talks about grief and coping. While Douglas, who had taken psych-evaluation tests of all NCIS employees, said most of them were coping as normally as one could, she mentioned there was one member who was having a harder time.
Dr. Loretta Wade (C. C. H. Pounder), apart from Pride himself, was the obvious answer. While Pride was Lasalle’s oldest friend in the department, Wade was one of his closest friends.
In the previous episode, we saw Dr. Wade and Lasalle would bond over their shared interest in religion. They would go to church together. Yet, she was the one who performed the autopsy on Lasalle -- a task that must have taken a toll on her.
She tells Pride she is okay, but both she and Pride know that’s a lie. But grief-coping can also transform into recklessness as we saw in episode 7. Hannah Khoury (Necar Zadegan) did not think twice before entering a building she knew was contaminated with flammable gas.
In fact, during the evacuation process, she almost did not make it out in time. Dr. Wade gave her an earful for her recklessness. Sebastian promised her they would be careful from here on, but both Hannah and he realized they never thought twice about putting their lives at risk before.
Further ahead in the episode, we also see Tammy and Patton (Daryl Mitchell) refuse to evacuate City Hall -- a building they know is about to explode. Tammy stays on the phone with the bomber even as he threatens to blow them up and Patton refuses to leave her side.
The episode makes it absolutely clear the team has not found closure in Lasalle's death and that it might be a while before they discover normalcy. But will their unwillingness or inability to cope with grief prove fatal? So far, they have had a few close calls but as they move further ahead, they might not be so lucky.
‘NCIS: New Orleans’ airs Tuesdays at 10 p.m. ET on CBS.