'NCIS' Season 18 Premiere 'Sturgeon Season': What will happen on Gibbs and Fornell's trip into the past?
Rejoice because on 'NCIS', we are time-skipping back to pre-COVID-19 days on the show. In 'Sturgeon Season', the first episode of the brand new season 18, Gibbs (Mark Harmon) and Fornell (Joe Spano) team up and attempt to track down the leader of a drug ring who supplied drugs to Fornell's daughter. This episode will finally get into Gibbs' secret mission in Season 17 Episode 8 'Musical Chairs' after he received a text, presumably from Fornell, who is looking a lot like George Carlin in the trailer for the season premiere.
The episode title of the season's premiere 'Sturgeon Season', is a call back to Gibbs' excuse to Jack Sloane back then when she tries to interrogate him about where he is rushing off to. When that excuse doesn't cut it, he is forced to tell her that Fornell had reached out for help after Emily left rehab. What is more, Gibbs returned at the end of that episode with a bruise on his eyebrow. The teaser trailer shows that this injury might be because Fornell accidentally injures him with his elbow when Gibbs is trying to restrain him.
But what could make Fornell lose his cool -- will Emily be in some kind of danger in this episode? Both Gibbs and Fornell start off on the investigation into the drug ring on the same page but the investigation will obviously get messy. "If we do this, we do it the right way," Gibbs tells Fornell, who is itching for some payback for what was done to her.
The good thing is this long-running story arc will most probably be resolved in this episode because, in the trailer, we see Mark Harmon's Gibbs tell someone he is "going away for a long time" -- presumably the drug ring's leader. Gibbs will not be the only one getting hurt in this episode. Advance pictures from the episode also show NCIS medical examiner Dr Jimmy Palmer with an ice pack on his head as he winces while Gibbs looks on sympathetically.
But that's not all. The season premiere deals with the emotional storyline of NCIS Special Agent Veronica Tyler whose case revolves around her missing child. She calls on the NCIS team for help and they all band together when they realize that someone might be targetting federal agents.
This case includes trying to revive a homeless guy because he has information about Tyler's daughter. Anxious, she loses it and starts screaming at the man who has passed out, "Where is my daughter", she yells while Nick Torres tries to revive the homeless guy with chest compressions. According to the official synopsis, there is also the case of a missing cadaver wrapped in all the mayhem of the first episode. Whether this is connected to the missing child or the agents being targeted is unclear from the teaser released. However, here is what we do know -- Gibbs, to Dr Palmer's utter disbelief has no idea who Waldo from 'Where's Waldo?' is. The man has had no childhood!
'NCIS' Season 18 Episode 1 premieres on Tuesday, November 17, at 8/7c on CBS.