Tonight on CBS NCIS: New Orleans premieres with an all new Tuesday September 23, season 1 premiere called, “Musician Heal Thyself.” Tonight’s episode is an “NCIS” spin-off set in the Big Easy begins with the New Orleans field office investigating a murder case with ties to the military. The case gets personal for Pride when the victim is identified as a man he mentored as a young gang member who became an upstanding petty officer. Meanwhile, NCIS special agent Meredith Brody acclimates to life in the Crescent City.
For those of you who are not familiar with the new show, NCIS: NEW ORLEANS is a drama about the local field office that investigates criminal cases affecting military personnel in the Big Easy, a city known for its music, entertainment and decadence. Leading the team is Special Agent Dwayne, a.k.a. “King,” a native of New Orleans who is driven by his need to do what is right. Working with Pride is Special Agent Christopher LaSalle, who plays hard but works harder; and Special Agent Meredith “Merri” Brody, a charismatic and tough interrogator who transferred from the Great Lakes office in search of a fresh start. Supporting them is coroner Dr. Loretta Wade, who is as eccentric as she is smart. This colorful city that harbors a dark side is a magnet for service personnel on leave, and when overindulgence is followed by trouble, Pride’s team is at its best.
On tonight’s episode a case turns personal for Pride when the body of a Petty Officer is identified as a former gang member he once mentored. Meanwhile, Brody continues her search for the perfect place to call home in New Orleans.
This is definitely one series that you don’t want to miss. Don’t forget to stay tuned to Celeb Dirty Laundry where we will be live blogging every episode of NCIS: New Orleans’ premiere season.
Tonight’s episode begins now – Refresh Page for Updates
Some guys are unloading the catch off their boat. Jealous Macey tells one of the guys to keep his eyes off his girl Amy. He throws him against one of the shrimp cages and knocks it over. His buddy points and says “leg.” Sure enough, there’s a dismembered limb. Brody complains to her boss about her loud neighborhood. Chris calls her a lightweight and Dwayne agrees. Chris says the leg is likely Navy. Loretta says the DNA will take time and no identifying marks but the victim is likely African American. Dwayne cracks some jokes about whether it might be a mutant starfish.
Loretta says likely a single blade. Dwayne tells Chris to take Brody and get with the Coast Guard to find the rest of the guy. Captain Lee is waiting for Dwayne at the office. He tells him Calvin Parks, his mentee, is AWOL. He asks if he’s heard from him. Dwayne hasn’t but says he’s a good guy. The Captain says maybe he’s just found a nice girl and shacked up and asks him to give a call if hears from him. He takes off.
Dwayne video calls Loretta and Sebastian rambles on to him. Dwayne interrupts and asks if he could be 23, 6’3” about 220 pounds. Sebastian says that’s likely and Dwayne says he’ll send a name and photo. He sends over a photo of him and Calvin. Dwayne waits while a trumpeter finishes his set – it’s Calvin’s dad. He asks if he’s heard from his son and he says it’s been a couple of weeks. Dwayne tells him something bad may have happened to him but he’s not sure.
He gets called for another set. Papa says he loves two things – Calvin and jazz. He head back on stage but is noticeably sad. He plays a somber tune. Dwayne gets a text telling him the body is a positive ID for Calvin. Dwayne drinks his coffee when Brody and Chris come in. He offers them breakfast and sausage and tells them to fill him in on the investigation. They searched his rack and found his laptop but nothing else. Dwayne says he’ll check on forensics.
Chris asks for a moment and tells Dwayne he can take the morgue since Dwayne is personally involved. He refuses. Brody listens in. Dwayne says we face what we have to face and tells him to take Brody and go. Chris reminds him he promised breakfast but says they’ll take it to go. Thy go talk to a civilian contractor that oversaw Calvin at the pier. He yells at a couple of slackers then comes back to them and says he heard talk about Calvin hanging with some bangers.
Chris explains that means gang members and Brody tells him duh. Loretta tells Dwayne they found the body wrapped in plastic in a shallow grave. She says the leg was taken while he was still alive. His knuckles show signs of defensive wounds and she says he got some good licks in. She runs a simulation Sebastian set up. She says he likely had some sort of ax that took the limb and caused him to bleed out. They found a tooth in his clothing – not Calvin’s – from the right side of the mouth. They’re waiting on DNA.
She shows him a fresh gang tat on Calvin’s arm – Delta crew. Chris says that he’s seen gangs make former members recommit then kill them. Chris explains the local gangs to Brody and she sasses him and plays dumb. Chris says he knows Delta Crew and Dwayne takes the 113. Brody tells Dwayne about an apartment she’s considering and he gives her the low-down on each neighborhood. He tells her where you live says everything.
He tells her Chris lives in the Quarter and he lives in the lower Garden. She says it looks like he’s living in the office. She asks where she can live and get a full night’s sleep. A Delta Crew guy tells Chris that he hasn’t seen Calvin since he joined the Navy. The guy says the 113s are the prime suspects and tells Chris to go. Chris says he’ll leave when he’s ready. The guy calls over the bartender and asks for a diet orange.
Dwayne and Brody ask the 113s why Calvin might be dead. The head guy tries to flirt with Brody then says Delta Crew has been known to kill their own. Dwayne asks to see his teeth and he smiles and shows that he has them all. Then an SUV rolls up for a drive by. It’s Naomi the bartender and the Delta Crew guy. He drives, she shoots and Dwayne and Brody barely make it behind a car and avoid being shot.
Dwayne and Chris watch a news story about the prior days’ drive-by gang shooting. Chris says each gang is blaming the other and Dwayne wonders who’s setting the other up. Councilman Hamilton shows up and says he heard he stirred the pot that caused the gang war to erupt. He asks if NCIS wants to join the task force. Dwayne says he’ll help any way he can. Hamilton asks for names but Dwayne says he has no proof yet they were involved in Calvin’s murder.
Hamilton says appearances matter and Dwayne says justice matter. He leaves. Dwayne tells Chris to never go into politics. Chris wonders about why he thinks gangs weren’t involved. Dwayne says if the 113 did it, they would have been expecting retaliation and weren’t and if the Deltas did it, wouldn’t have retaliated. Dwayne goes to the morgue and asks to see Calvin’s body. Loretta asks how he met Calvin. He says he met him when he tried to rob his house.
He says he saw something in him and helped him and it kills him now to think he went back to that world. Loretta says Calvin was trying to change. Loretta says she’ll leave him with Calvin and goes but tells him where his body is stored. Brody comes to see Chris and he tells her what’s on the laptop. He says there was nothing much on gang involvement but there was an email sent to himself with a bunch of numbers. Brody says she recognizes one of the numbers.
She can’t remember the number. Chris tells her she’s an odd bird. Sebastian comes down to see Loretta. He looks at a rainstorm she’s got playing on her screen and then she asks what can make a tattoo disappear. She says Calvin’s tattoo is disappearing. She says she remembers a case where a tattoo fading determined cause of death. She says Dr Mallard (Duckie) was the coroner. She calls him.
Dwayne gets a call and heads to see Papa. He says Walter told him he wasn’t going to play. He says he took his trumpet apart to clean but just couldn’t put it back together. He says it’s just in pieces. He asks if he’s found who killed Calvin. Dwayne says he will. Papa says if Calvin went back to the gang, it’s his fault. He tells him he just can’t play and says it doesn’t feel like he ever will without knowing what happened. Dwayne tells him to come take a walk with him. Papa says he has nothing more to say.
Dwayne calls his daughter and she tells him she’s in class. He says he just wanted to hear her voice. Chris asks Brody why she doesn’t just let him help her find a place. She says she likes to keep her work and personal life separate. He says that’s now how it works around here. He points out items on a menu. She says pineapple and then repeats the number. She says 3493 is the NIIN for a pineapple. She says Calvin worked at the wharf and it was pallets of pineapples. The big numbers must have been weights. That tells them what to start looking for. They order dessert.
Duckie and Loretta are on a video call reminiscing. Dwayne steps into the call and Loretta tells him about the tattoo that’s fading. Duckie says the tattoo was applied just a few hours prior to death and that’s why it’s not sticking. Duckie says in this case it was applied after death and it wouldn’t hold because the body was dead and the tattoo couldn’t take. Dwayne tells them good work.
Dwayne wakes and wanders into the office to find Brodyand Chris working. He asks if they worked all night and they tell him that he snores – loud. He says he doesn’t. They tell him to take a look. They tell him they think the murder had to do with his job. The numbers are all NIIN for items at the docks – coffee, pineapples and bananas. They all came from the same ship from Guatemala and the weight was different from when it hit the docks versus when it was loaded on the Navy ship.
They tell Dwayne he could have been killed because he found out about it or was in on it. There’s a news story on about Hamilton hosting a news conference about the gang violence and how he’s going to be a law and order candidate in the upcoming Mayoral race. Sebastian has something for them to see. Dwayne goes to see Hamilton and tells him to stop grandstanding. Hamilton asks why Dwayne and he can’t get along.
Dwayne says he has no issue arresting people for things they’ve actually done and no cameras. Hamilton asks why he cares about a loser gang banger. Dwayne gets angry. Sebastian tells Chris and Brody that tattoo inks aren’t regulated and there are unique mixes that almost operate like fingerprints. He says he narrowed it to a shop on Magazine Street. He asks them to take him along to get him out of the lab so he can see something alive.
They take him along and Sebastian wonders what future civilizations will think about our ink fetishes. Chris reveals he has an Alabama tattoo and Sebastian says he’d like a Lord of the Rings one. Brody refuses to share. Chris flashes his ID and then they ask the tattoo artist about Calvin. Sebastian says the ink belongs to him. The guy says a guy gave him $500 for a needle and a vial of ink.
He has no name and Chris says he needs them to give his description to a sketch artist. The guy says he went to the Rhode Island School of Design and offers a sketch. It matches Harold Werner – a guy from the wharfs. They head to Werner’s trailer and tell him to open up. They bust in and find blood leaking and him shoved in a compartment. He’s dead.
Chris says they know Harold was in on it and didn’t kill and stuff himself in the closet and he had a full set of teeth so he didn’t kill Calvin. They head back to the wharfs. They talk to the boss and he says that Harold had been flashing some cash in the last few months. They notice that the guy seems to be too quick to offer to head to the office to check files. He turns the corner and takes off and they all give chase. Dwayne catches him and punches him in his sore mouth.
Chris shows them the mother lode of heroin they found from the key in his office. They also found the murder weapon that killed Calvin. They take the guy to interrogation. Dwayne asks if his toothache is feeling better. He says they know he killed Calvin because he caught him smuggling and then put the gang tattoo on him to throw them off. Dwayne says he knows he’s only been in New Orleans for two years and couldn’t have known about Calvin’s gang past. They ask who told him.
He doesn’t answer and Brody draws a target on his hand in permanent marker. She says that will let the gang guys in prison know he was the one that caused the drive by shooting. He says if he tells what he knows, the gangs will be the least of his worries. Dwayne heads to see Hamilton and confronts him about having the ports in his district and knowing enough about Calvin to tell his guy to put a tattoo on him to cover it up then start a gang war. Hamilton asks if he can prove it and Dwayne says not yet.
Brody says she’s buying the first round because she found a great new guest house. She says Chris helped her find it – she doesn’t know her new landlord is Loretta. She says she won’t tell Brody until she has to raise the rent. Papa comes out and Dwayne goes over and tells him that he should be awfully proud of Calvin. He asks Dwayne to sit in on the first number. Dwayne plays piano as Papa trumpets for all he’s worth.
THE END!