SPOILER ALERT: The following contains spoilers for NCIS Season 23, Episode 14.

NCIS Season 23, Episode 14, “Fleeting” tries its best to carry on after the sad death of Leon Vance. It makes a great effort to honor Vance’s memory. But it doesn’t feel like the episode that should follow something as emotional as that loss, and because of that, the CBS show doesn’t shake the feeling that Vance’s death was unnecessary.

This is clear from the opening scene all the way through the credits. Fans are still upset over Vance’s death, and thus expecting this episode to start with something somber or at least serious. That’s where viewers’ heads are at. Instead, “Fleeting” opens with a long series of jokes about drunk sailors home for Fleet Week. Of course, under all these jokes is the start of the case of the week, but viewers aren’t necessary in the mood to laugh. And going straight and so clearly to comedy unintentionally makes it feel like NCIS is being flippant about Vance’s passing.

This is accidentally reinforced by the fact that Vance’s funeral gets a one-line mention in all of this, as it’s noted that the funeral was “a week ago,” to give viewers a sense of continuity. This is a massive event for the characters and it only gets a brief reference. A few more details would have been appreciated, or NCIS could have opened this episode with Vance’s service. The audience saw glimpses of memorials for Alden Parker’s parents earlier in Season 23, which were both wonderfully done. But shouldn’t Leon Vance, a main character with years of tenure, get the same treatment?

Once the episode gets rolling, “Fleeting” does a pretty good job of moving past drunk jokes to reveal the actual plot. It’s a little bit of a head-scratcher involving allegedly poisoned tattoo ink, nanobots, the Russians and sorority girls. The case of the week is far more interesting than it first appears. And it almost hits a strong emotional note, when Parker asks the grieving sailor to tell him about his best friend. Unfortunately, rather than giving the seaman his moment, NCIS fades out the audio on his speech to focus in on Parker as a segue to the one scene that is the moment fans have been waiting for. Just because the seaman is a guest character doesn’t mean NCIS can’t give him an extra minute or two to finish his story; he could have had a great scene with Parker talking about grief.

That’s where NCIS Season 23, Episode 14 feels like a missed opportunity. The plot is entertaining, but it is a bit labyrinthine, and a fair part of it gets handwaved at the end—Parker explains what happened in chewing out a disgruntled Naval employee, and the real villain confesses off-screen. If the script had tightened up a little bit, would there be more screen time for the emotional beats that feel like they’re missing? The seaman and Parker getting to talk further might have been on the nose, but it would have been a perfect button. And NCIS could have spent more time on how all of the characters, as Nick Torres says, honor Vance in different ways.

Kasie Hines tells Torres that the lab software upgrade was the last thing Vance approved for her before his passing. Parker briefly blows up on the people he thinks are cleaning out Vance’s office. What if all of the characters had a scene like that, or each of them had something they learned from Vance that they used to help solve this case? That would have been a way to both do a procedural plot and recognize Vance’s impact simultaneously, and it still would’ve led right into the final scene of the group in Vance’s office. That farewell toast is everything viewers are looking for, and those smaller scenes are lovely, but there’s room for so much more.

NCIS didn’t have to save most of its emotion for a big scene at the end. It could have started there and it could’ve been as sentimental as it wanted, because that’s what fans are feeling, too. “Fleeting” instead feels like it’s trying, but it’s also already moving on. So any shock or drama that the series was going for in killing off Vance, never completely materializes in the end. At least not yet.

NCIS airs Tuesdays at 8:00 p.m. ET/PT on CBS. Photo Credit: Courtesy of CBS.

Article content is (c)2020-2026 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.