NCIS recap: Oldeneye

If the episode title wasn’t enough of a giveaway, it quickly becomes clear that we’ve got a Russian spy on our hands in this week’s NCIS — and this one’s been in the game for a long, long time.

We open with Danny Butler (Matthew Lawrence — yes, Joey’s brother and one of the kids from Mrs. Doubtfire and Boy Meets World) filling in his father’s doctor about dear old dad’s recent memory lapses. 

The doctor (Janora McDuffie) records a voice note saying “indication of early MCI” — mild cognitive impairment — which seems rude to do right in front of the patient. Then she asks him to recite a series of numbers she gave him at the start of the appointment.

Instead of the numbers, Captain Thomas Butler (John Getz) starts speaking another language, then hops off the exam table and takes the doctor hostage. Shouldn’t have made scary voice not in his earshot, doc! 

This surprising turn of events is a job for NCIS, naturally. The working theory is that the numbers in the cognitive test may have triggered something for Butler, Winter Soldier-style, which is why he started reciting a different series of numbers in Finnish.

When McGee (Sean Murray) searches the numbers on his phone, his phone glitches out. Then he hops onto a hospital computer, and the same search takes out the power to a whole city block. Geez, the NCIS team is really hell on electricity so far this season!

Although Butler’s service record is blocked, they can see that he’s a Vietnam and Desert Storm vet and a Bronze Star winner who spent a year in SecNav’s Pentagon office, which means he had access to classified information. So with the memory issues, Butler could be leaking this classified information all over the place. 

And this is when the CIA gets involved. You thought the FBI guys last week were bad? Wait ‘til you get a load of Officer Conrad (Tom Schanley), who accuses NCIS of cyberattacks against the CIA. Of course, the CIA bricking a U.S. military hospital over a Google search is also kinda bad. 

Conrad eventually shares that Butler was a Soviet spy, and the U.S government let Russia believe they were in the dark about this high-value mole in their operations. Butler never knew that the CIA was onto him, so when the USSR fell, he retired and started living his cover, including having a son. 

Parker’s (Gary Cole) astounded that they let a Russian spy into the E-Ring, then let him retire, but Conrad shrugs it off with, “Never know when a guy like that’s gonna come in handy.” 

Aaand that’s when the hospital calls to report that Butler killed an orderly in his escape from the hospital. Conrad blames NCIS for spooking Butler, but a bigger sign was probably the complete loss of power in the building, ya know?

That’s when the team realizes that the CIA didn’t actually know where Butler was at the time. So much for that whole “friends close, enemies closer" thing.

Conrad spills the rest of the story: the CIA’s known about Butler since the ‘70s, but they didn’t know his identity until McGee’s search with the numbers tipped them off. And faster than you can say “Phillip and Elizabeth Jennings,” Butler’s now in the wind and possibly all mixed up about his own identity.

Butler’s son, Danny, had no clue about his father’s secrets and directs the team to Butler's storage boxes. Torres (Wilmer Valderrama), who’s recently ventured into the online dating world, tries out being a sensitive guy by talking about his own daddy issues. 

Kasie (Diona Reasonover) gives him the age-old advice to just be himself and then casually breaks Butler’s code: fake fortune cookie fortunes pointing to pages in books. But the numbers from the hospital don’t sync up to Butler’s copy of War and Peace, so Casie's stuck.

Aaaand that’s when the team learns that Butler — you know, the addled man who gets lost on the way to the grocery store — waited for the shift change at the Navy Archives to break in and swipe some documents. (“I guess we can rule out scared and confused,” Parker says.)

Cue the return of Conrad, who says Butler swiped files on Project Laurel, which is classified but will cost lives and compromise national security if it gets out.

The team struggles to track Butler, who uses old-school tradecraft to dodge their surveillance. But they figure a spy with failing memory might head to a payphone like a crafty bee to espionage honey, and sure enough, they catch him on camera calling his son.

Danny says it’s the same message his dad always left him when he missed his baseball game years ago: he’s sorry, and he’ll take Danny out for ice cream.

And that’s a lead! They stake out Butler and Danny’s favorite ice cream parlor, where they catch Butler messing around with a nearby mailbox — dead drop, maybe? — and although we don’t get to see it, the wily old spy sucker punches Torres during the apprehension.

Conrad’s angry again, this time because the team didn’t confirm that Butler had the file before they nabbed him. As they been doing, the team ignores Conrad to conduct their own investigation.

Butler says the Laurel files are his insurance, and he’ll only talk to Sparrow, the code name for the dirty CIA agent he worked with back in the day. Unfortunately, Sparrow was killed in East Berlin in 1980.

So Butler's timeshifting, which happens to people with cognitive issues. Parker gently breaks it to him that it’s 2024. He shows him a photo he took of Butler on his cell phone, but Butler just scoffs. “I have done future-man a dozen times. I know the trick.” Ha! THIS is the NCIS spinoff I want. Seventies future-man spy!

Not even Danny’s pictures spark any recognition, and Conrad’s ready to ship Butler off for more, ahem, intense interrogations at Gitmo. But the team decides to go a different route: they glue fake sideburns on McGee, raid the nearby thrift stores, and stage a nearby park as something out of the 1970s to get Butler to talk to “Sparrow.”

A disco-fly McGee sits next to Butler on a park bench, with Conrad in his ear helping him provide the proper Sparrow code. Butler buys it and tells McGee about his “Russian friends,” one of whom killed the orderly in the hospital in their attempt to get to him.

Then Butler gets fidgety and shoots McGee. Our favorite former probie drops like a sack of potatoes as Butler runs and is intercepted by Conrad.

Aaaand that’s when Butler recognizes Conrad as the man from the hospital who tried to kill him. Conrad tries to shoot him, but his gun has no bullets. 

Yep, Parker succeeded in waking Butler up, and once he was lucid and in the present again, he handed over the Laurel files, which lists all of Conrad’s many crimes. And thus, a sting was born. Furthermore, Butler was actually a highly decorated double agent who fed the USSR misinformation the whole time.

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Danny, who’s been bonding with Torres over their absentee dads, is overwhelmed to learn that Butler was instrumental in ending the Cold War, which means all the childhood baseball games his father missed were for a good cause. Also, it was Danny’s photos that brought Butler back to the present to let them catch the real bad guy.

With that, our surprisingly heart-warning spy tale ends with father and son heading out for ice cream.

Stray shots

• I mentioned this briefly, but Torres goes through a whole online dating growth arc this week, from staging professional photos with what seems to be a hired dog to using an AI picture of himself as a centaur to deciding to meet people the old-fashioned way. I can’t wait to see the dating hijinks NCIS is going to throw at him next.
• It’s unfortunate that McGee’s stuck with those sideburns (the spirit gum was actually superglue!), but Knight (Katrina Law) really ought to consider adding some ‘70s fabulousness to her everyday look. She was pulling. it. off.
• Why yes, we have seen Barbara the accountant (she of the dirt-cheap spirit gum) before: Actress Victoria Kelleher also played her in last season’s “walk a mile-in-my-shoes” episode that had Torres hilariously shadowing her.
• Is it time for a rewatch of The Americans? I think it’s time for a rewatch of The Americans.