Happily, for NCIS fans, the job as Chief REACT Training Officer at Camp Pendleton in California proved not to be all that Jessica Knight (Katrina Law) thought it would be. Yes, it was a promotion and a step up the ladder giving her a chance to shine, but she missed the action of being in the field, so week 2 of Season 22 finds her back at her desk in DC.
"She loves the chase; she loves taking down the bad guys," Law tells Parade. "Ultimately, it came down to the team. Yes, she wants to be her own person but she's not ready to give up that love and support that she's curated over the past three years with these people. She's been through so much with them and I think she views them as the old friends that you don't have to speak to everyday but when you call them up, it's like nothing has changed. It's like going to California was some weird blip on the map, and she's like, 'We're back doing our thing, and this feels good.'"
Which isn't 100 percent true. Sure, it's business as usual with Parker (Gary Cole), Torres (Wilmer Valderrama), McGee (Sean Murray) and Kasie (Diona Reasonover), but when it comes to Jimmy Palmer (Brian Dietzen), well, it couldn't be more uncomfortable.
"It's going to be so awkward; it's going to be amazing," Law continues. "There's a lot of avoidance that's going to happen and a lot of not talking about things is going to happen. Until we get to about Episode 4 when the conversation goes down in true NCIS fashion and it's going to be beautiful."
Knight rejoins the team just in time for the "Foreign Bodies" episode, in which Director Vance (Rocky Carroll) prepares to host diplomatic talks with Venezuela, when the team is called in to investigate the dead body of one of his inside men.
"Getting back on a case after not being on one for a while, it's like a swift kick in the butt, and OK, this is the pace we're at, this is the adrenaline, here we go," Law says of being back in action. "We're off and we're running, whereas at Camp Pendleton, she was cruising. 'I'm going to go train a little bit, have some coffee, go to a farmers' market,' and now all of a sudden back in DC, it's like, 'Go get the bad guy now. Put the biscuit down and go.'"
Related: Katrina Law on Returning to NCIS for the Season 22 Premiere But Is She Staying?
The other thing that's different upon Knight's return to DC is her attitude. As we saw last season, her father, Special Agent in Charge Feng Zhao (Russell Wong), has a plan for his daughter to one day take over as director of NCIS. A plan, she gladly went along with. She is ambitious, but things have changed for Knight and she's more her own woman.
"I would love for Knight to truly explore who she is without the influence of decision making from her father and now that she's not bound to Jimmy, it'll be fun, it'll be interesting, I would love to see the mistakes that she makes on her own and how she gets out of them and just to kind of see her wild out a little bit," Law says of what she looks forward to for Knight this season.
Also during our Zoom chat, we discussed her relationships with her REACT team who died, her relationship with Palmer's daughter Victoria, and if her father or sister might return this season.
Was the NCIS DC team the first time that she worked somewhere where she had a close relationship with her fellow workers? Her REACT team died and that was really traumatic but was she as close to them as she is to this NCIS team?
I really think she was. I don't think that she would have been rocked off of her game as hard as she had been had that REACT team not felt the same as this current NCIS team, which is why years later, it still hurts her, because if they'd been anything less to her, she wouldn't have abandonment issues and fear of loss. She'd be, "OK, it's a terrible thing to lose coworkers." But it'd be like losing this team. That's what that was to her.
Victoria, Jimmy's daughter, was counting the days that Knight and Palmer were separated. Knight must have to see her when she comes back.
Yes. I think she may be avoiding that for the time being, because that would mean that she would have to have alone time with Palmer, but maybe the text messages have become more frequent. I think, eventually, she'll go back to going out to lunch with Victoria.
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You mentioned earlier that she is ambitious, so at some point she is going to want to move up the ladder if not the REACT job maybe in some other position?
I would think so. I think when she comes back to NCIS, I think she views any job as a temporary situation and, I think, that's why she thought she could make it work with Jimmy long distance because eventually she would be back in in DC. So, I don't think she has any plans to move on. She's not actively looking for a job, but I think in her head she knows that this isn't the forever or maybe it is, but I think she's just going, "I'm just not going to think about it for a while and just be OK with this."
Related: NCIS: Does Father Really Know Best?
Might her father pop back in this season or her sister? We remember that Thanksgiving episode with her sister.
I would love for both of them to pop up in the show again because they're glorious people and it was so much fun working with both of them, and they brought so much to the characters. I think there's so many unexplored storylines that could involve both of them that I think the potential for them coming back to the show is endless.