A Navy vessel discovers the bullet-riddled bodies of two mercenaries aboard one of Gibbs’s sailboats floating into San Diego harbor. Gibbs says the boat was a gift to his goddaughter, the American-Iraqi granddaughter of retired NCIS Special Agent Mike Franks (Muse Watson). Franks, his daughter-in-law, and his granddaughter show up at Gibbs’s house, and it appears the mercenaries he saw as enemies were hired by his daughter-in-law’s Iraqi family to find her. Gibbs must sort out the truth while balancing his loyalties to Franks and Vance.
“Outlaws and In-Laws” was another episode of NCIS drawing on its rich stable of memorable supporting characters. At the end of Season 3, after recovering from a coma, Gibbs retired to Franks’s beachhouse in Mexico. Late in Season 4, Franks hunted his son’s killer in the U.S., defying NCIS to get revenge. At the end of Season 5, Franks helped Director Shepard fend off an enemy from Gibbs and her past. Fitting Watson’s Western background, Franks represents old-fashioned frontier justice, and though Gibbs isn’t up on the more high-tech tools of law enforcement, he clearly doesn’t approve of Franks’s fast and loose methods since leaving the service.
At the heart of this episode, Franks’s promise to protect the remaining members of his family was pitted against an Iraqi mother’s sudden desire to reconcile with the daughter she disowned. Franks’s protective instinct led him to cover up the true details of the mercenaries’ deaths.
After Franks reached an agreement to let his daughter-in-law and granddaughter stay with him, it was almost too late to stop more mercenaries from carrying out a contract to “rescue” them. Luckily, one of the mercenaries on the rescue effort was ex-Corporal Damon Worth (Paul Telfer), a decorated Marine NCIS helped out of trouble in Season 5′s “Corporal Punishment.” Worth listens to NCIS’s explanation of events and all is resolved.
A final familiar face in the episode was Robert Patrick as head of the mercenary outfit. Though he hadn’t appeared on NCIS before, his history of tough guy roles gave his character authenticity and presence another actor wouldn’t have.
In conclusion, one might say this episode relied too much on recurring characters. If the suspect weren’t Franks, I might not have been as invested in the plot. If Worth hadn’t been part of the rescue team, things might not have ended well. I can’t deny, though, that NCIS has fleshed out Franks and Worth enough in the past to have the luxury of dropping them into a plot now.
Paul Telfer is smoooookkkin!!!!! More Cpl Damon Werth please.