NCIS: New Orleans Season 1 Episode 20 Review: Rock-a-Bye-Baby
Kathleen Wiedel
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It must be the worst nightmare of any parent, to lose a child. Those of us who aren't parents can't really appreciate that devastation.
On NCIS: New Orleans Season 1 Episode 20, one couple was confronted with that situation as baby Lou-Lou was kidnapped from right in front of their home. To make the story even more tragic, it turned out that she had been stolen as a replacement for a baby that died from SIDS.
You would have to have a heart of stone not to feel something for Phil and Anne, who were still clearly struggling with their grief. Anne suffered from an understandable depression, but it seemed that Phil might have been worse off than she was.
Think about how the two of them handled things: Anne was taking antidepressants. Phil kidnapped another couple's baby and killed a friend.
Phil deluded himself into believing that a new baby was the key to healing the pain that he and Anne felt. I think that he probably could have used the antidepressants more than Anne did.
LaSalle: Ever consider kids?
Brody: Consider? Yeah. But living life as an agent, all you ever see is things gone bad. Makes it hard to think about bringing home a bundle of...
LaSalle: ...potential things to go bad.
Bringing a child into the world is never without risk or pain. As a parent, you have to accept that, yes, there are things out of your control and you can't protect your children from everything out there. That doesn't stop parents from trying, though.
What Phil did to alleviate his pain and guilt over his baby's death was totally twisted; in stealing Lou-Lou away, he inflicted the agony of parental loss on Marlon and Josh. Even worse was that Phil didn't even pause to consider that he was stabbing them with the same knife that was stuck in his own heart.
To be honest, I pegged Phil as the kidnapper the moment he appeared towards the beginning. Call it cheating or whatever, but I'm always suspicious when they introduce a seemingly unrelated character and then give that character a line of spoken dialogue.
After he appeared, I then spent the rest of the episode waiting for the team to wind their way back to him. Obviously, my patience was rewarded, if you can call such predictability a reward. Oh, well.
The strangest part of this story, though, was definitely the Chinese spy tangent.
Seriously, Chen Han was a terrible spy. She gave up the goods after about five seconds in the interrogation room! I guess Chinese intelligence training isn't what it used to be?
I know they needed to move the story along, but the whole thing felt like it was from a different episode altogether; I was on Ghost Rider, then halfway through realized it was actually Bigfoot Rapids before finally discovering it was the Calico Mine Ride after all.
To make the whole thing even stranger, the team apparently just repatriated Chen Han after finding clear proof that she committed espionage on the United States! I know the story was about a kidnapped baby, but the way they just forgot about the foreign spy was just plain weird.
Diane Neal made a welcome return appearance as Abigail Borin. I found it a bit silly that the writers apparently aren't really trying anymore to come up with good excuses to involve her in the story, practically daring us to call them on it. That said, I enjoy her character and the ease with which she interacts with the rest of the team, even Sebastian.
Speaking of Sebastian, he was on computer duties this week, which made Patton Plame's absence (in Aruba, apparently) all the more blatant. Can we please add Daryl Mitchell to the main cast already? Anyway, Sebastian did have a pretty funny quote in regards to Loretta:
Has anyone ever told you that you bear a striking resemblance to Gandalf?
Sebastian
I think of Loretta as more like Yoda than Gandalf, to be honest, but I won't scorn a Lord of the Rings reference!
So, what do you think, NOLA fans? Did the story of the stolen child have you on the edge of your seat, or were you yawning? Would you like to see the LaSalle basketball team? Get the conversation going and let us know what you thought by writing in the comments section below!
NCIS: New Orleans takes a break next week; tune in on Tuesday, April 28, at 9/8c on CBS for NCIS: New Orleans Season 1 Episode 21, "You'll Do." In the meantime, you can catch up on previous episodes right here at TVFanatic when you watch NCIS: New Orleans online!
