Tonight on CBS NCIS returns with an all-new Monday, March 7, 2022, season 19 episode 14 called, “First Steps” and we have your weekly NCIS recap below. On tonight’s NCIS season 19 episode 14, “First Steps” as per the CBS synopsis, “As NCIS investigates the cause of death of a reservist Navy Seal surgeon, they’re forced to bring Vance’s daughter, Kayla (Naomi Grace), who recently trained with NCIS, to help with a highly dangerous mission.”
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Tonight’s episode begins with NCIS Director Vance, who has a daughter. Her name is Kayla. She just finished training and she was joining NCIS as a Special Agent. But the first year on the job is boring. The new probies tend to get assigned cases and that especially went for Kayla with her father in charge. He wanted her to be safe. He didn’t want her to handle the big cases and so Vance nominated Torres to be her handler. He basically wanted Torres to babysit his daughter. It was up to Torres to make sure Kayla didn’t get hurt. It was also her job to ensure that she learns on the job. And so that’s why their first case was a simple case of a heart attack.
The team was assigned to Dr. Tom Masuda’s death. He was a military doctor who seemingly suffered from a heart attack during surgery and he had been the surgeon. The patient he was working on had thankfully survived. Butt Masuda did not. The other doctors and nurses had tried to revive him to no avail. He died. His death was handed over to NCIS and Vance personally assigned the case to Parker’s team because he thought it was clean cut. It wasn’t. The heart attack might have been a murder and so Kayla’s first case wasn’t boring. It was a murder investigation. The team learned that Masuda seemed to have been poisoned.
Masuda’s body was taken for autopsy. While the team waited for the results of that, they continued working on the case and recreated Masuda’s final hours. It turns out Masuda was a popular guy. he got along with everyone and they all seemed to like him. But someone did leave a threatening message on his cell phone. The message was linked back to Smitty Hastings. He was a loan shark and he later revealed that he loaned Masuda money because Masuda was obsessed with betting. As in he had a serious problem. Hastings who also went by the nickname of barracuda hadn’t killed Masuda.
Hastings wanted his money back. He wouldn’t have killed Masuda as long as he thought there was hope. He also had an alibi. He was British and he had just flown in from England because he had to leave the country for a funeral. Hastings, therefore, wasn’t their killer, but he did reveal that Masuda was dating someone and that she became a stalker more or less after Masuda tried to end things with her. Right after Hastings gave them this tip, Kayla tried to tell him to be on guard. It was silly and she was a newbie who wasn’t used to working with underworld types. Her father later chastised her for it as well as punished her for leaving the car after she was told not to. He told her she put her team at risk.
Vance also took her away from active duty. He assigned her to the lab to work with Kasie. As she was there, Kayla found what killed Masuda. Masuda was killed by a patch that injected poison into his skin and it had to have happened at least two hours before he was killed. This meant it happened during surgery. The team checked everyone who was in that OR and they identified Masuda’s ex-girlfriend. She’s Resident Sierra Krueger. She talked to the team about her and Masuda. She hadn’t wanted the breakup. She thought she could convince him to come around and that never happened. She instead hid the fact they were dating because she didn’t want her coworkers to know she slept with her boss.
It was the only reason she withheld it from NCIS when they first questioned her. Krueger also said that she didn’t kill Masuda and that if anyone should be a suspect it should be the patient. The patient was acting shifty. He demanded that the surgery happens on a Monday. Krueger tried to get a psych eval and Masuda overruled her. The resident also mentioned that the doctor speaks privately with the patient right before surgery. Meaning that the patient could have planted the poison on the doctor right before surgery. The team went to the hospital to speak with this patient and they were too late to speak with the patient because he had been killed.
The team spotted the man leaving his room. They chased after him and unfortunately the bad guy grabbed Kayla. He took her hostage. He got away with her and the Director wasn’t happy. He wanted his daughter back safely. He wanted her captor identified at least. The team checked the ID that Kayla grabbed and toss before she was kidnapped. Their facial recognition identified the man that took Kayla to be Pedro Rodriguez. He was a member of a Colombian cartel. The leader of this cartel was in an American prison and his crew was trying to break him out. It’s why they signed him up for a fake surgery. They blackmailed the guy in charge at the hospital with threats of telling the world about his cocaine addiction.
Only Masuda wasn’t going to sign off on the bogus surgery. He was getting in the way and that’s why he was killed. But now that they knew the truth, the team canceled the surgery. Rodriguez found out about the cancellation. He also figured out who Kayla was because he found her ID badge and put two and two together and so he called Vance. He threatened to kill Kayla if Vance didn’t agree to a prisoner swap. Vance knew the American government would never agree to that. He instead went through the motions of pretending he was going to agree to the swap but really he was tracking Rodriguez.
The team later found Kayla. They were able to kill Rodriguez and arrest most of his men. Kayla showed tremendous courage under pressure. She was also able to talk down a guy using just her voice and so Knight said that she should consider hostage negotiation in the future.
And Vance was going to be glad to get his daughter back that he stopped caring how dangerous her job is.
THE END
