SPOILER ALERT: The following contains spoilers for NCIS: Sydney Season 3, Episode 2. It also contains discussion of attempted suicide.

Viewers of NCIS: Sydney knew that Bluebird Gleeson was going to return to the CBS show, but there’s no way they predicted exactly how it would unfold. “True Blue” reveals all of Blue’s backstory, and it’s heartbreaking but also adds a whole new layer to the character, as well as the entire series. This may be a self-contained plot, but it leaves plenty to play with.

Season 3, Episode 2 is a breath of fresh air for the genre in general. The “tech expert” characters like Blue are almost always the comic relief characters, meant to be quirky and funny, because the assumption is that being so interested in science or technology means they’re geeky. This is a tired stereotype that holds little weight in reality—Sergeant Nathan Schilling from Tulsa Homicide on The First 48 is the computer expert and incredibly badass. So in “True Blue,” audiences get to see a far more serious side to Blue and see more of actor Mavournee Hazel. But they probably didn’t have “creepy suicide cult” on their backstory bingo card, even with the hint at the end of Season 2.

Flashbacks reveal that Bluebird Gleeson is a fictional identity. Her real name is Faith Mullens, and she and her brother Eli have been raised among the Bilpin Collective. Their father Robert tried to take them away from the place after their mother’s death, but he died doing so—with the siblings being told that he abandoned them. It’s the same kind of cultish environment that has been depicted on other TV shows before, but NCIS: Sydney takes the idea to another level. Blue and her brother are the group’s spiritual figureheads, and now that Blue has been lured back to the organization, the Collective can “ascend.”

Common sense says this won’t happen—especially when the episode takes pains to highlight that one of its members is a young child—but the episode pushes it just enough to make viewers worry. The task force doesn’t show up until after the “ascension” ceremony has started, and if Blue hadn’t stalled for time by giving a speech that turns into confronting group leader Aspira about her real intentions, they could have been too late. NCIS: Sydney weaves in a criminal case about how Aspira wants the group to die so that she can sell the land out from under them and profit, but that is almost an afterthought. “True Blue” is about what Blue has been through emotionally at the hands of this collective, and who she is or wants to be.

Over the hour, the script reveals pretty much everything audiences would want to know about Blue, and it’s not an easy watch. The scene in which the team reviews footage of teenage Faith, terrified while in police custody, is surprisingly emotional because the other actors have such genuine reactions that the camera lingers on. NCIS: Sydney has occasionally been guilty of being too funny, but there’s a minimum of that in this episode, and that humor largely dissipates by the halfway mark aside from Michelle Mackey’s movie references. The creative team knows the sensitivity of the story they’re telling and doesn’t force humor where it really shouldn’t be. They also ensure that this is Blue’s episode. The other characters are in service of that. Doc Roy gets some great moments, as he should given his closeness to Blue, but it’s Mavournee Hazel who drives the proceedings.

The sort of cliffhanger end to “True Blue” (sort of because Mackey and JD Dempsey don’t actually talk about the problem) raises the issue of what the NCIS: Sydney team will do with the knowledge that Blue is an ex-felon who got into the Australian Federal Police under a false identity. Obviously they’ll stick by her, but that’s the kind of plot point that can easily become a bigger problem later in Season 3, like the Rankin storyline that ended Season 1 and went into Season 2. That’s an excellent dramatic jumping-off point. So, too, is Blue meeting her grandmother for the first time; it would be wonderful to keep pulling that thread. Just because she’s had one episode of character development doesn’t mean that should stop. “True Blue” is exactly how supporting characters ought to be developed, and it’s a big if very emotional win for NCIS: Sydney.

NCIS: Sydney airs Tuesdays at 10:00 p.m. ET/PT on CBS. Photo Credit: Courtesy of CBS.

Article content is (c)2020-2025 Brittany Frederick and may not be excerpted or reproduced without express written permission by the author. Follow me on Twitter at @BFTVTwtr and on Instagram at @BFTVGram. For story pitches, contact me at tvbrittanyf@yahoo.com.