For any person who ever has wondered, “Is this the same person I fell in love with?” be glad. At least your significant other probably is not a spy. We hope. The same cannot be said by Navy Lieutenant Max Landry (guest star Michael Ocampo). When searching through his girlfriend’s calendar to find the right time to propose, the Lieutenant is surprised to find that she has been accessing top secret information without clearance.

Could the perfect woman be less-than-perfect because she is a spy? Landry asks the NCIS: NEW ORLEANS team to check into it before he pops the question and/or gets implicated in an espionage situation. Yet, Landry is not even the most-stressed man in the Big Easy. Lasalle faces another devastating dead end as he searches for his brother’s last known whereabouts.

SPOLER ALERT: If you did not see last week’s episode, stop reading and go watch it now.

Last week’s trip to Mobile ended with Chris (Lucas Black) and Sebastian (Rob Kerkovich) locating what seemed to be Cade Lasalle’s remains. Upon transporting the body to the Jefferson Parish morgue, Loretta (CCH Pounder) appeared to confirm that the body was indeed Lasalle’s brother (with a slight chance that the way the episode ended could have left a tiny bit of doubt for the overly optimistic).

Last week’s episode dealt with the dynamic between the mentally ill and their family members with compassion, and tonight’s installment should give a more revealing look into the traumatic ups-and-downs suffered by loved ones in addition to those who are afflicted. Lucas Black’s stoic manner as he portrays Christopher is nuanced, and the quiet fear in his eyes is heartbreaking.

Guest stars in tonight’s episode, “Secrets and Lies,” include Wyatt Walter, Kendall Johnson, Nneka Okafor, Rebecca Luker, Stephen Louis Grush, Gralen Bryant Banks, Faron Salisbury, Harper Whittington, Prince Hammond, Trenise Gray, Kevin Pozzo and Steven Waldren. “Spies and Lies” was written by Brooke Roberts and directed by LeVar Burton.

NCIS: NEW ORLEANS airs tonight (October 22) at 10:00 p.m. ET/PT on CBS in the U.S. and at 7pm on Global TV in Canada.

To quote Rod Serling, “There is a fifth dimension beyond that which is known to man. It is a dimension as vast as space and as timeless as infinity. It is the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition, and it lies between the pit of man’s fears and the summit of his knowledge. This is the dimension of imagination. It is an area which we call the Twilight Zone.” Why quote Serling (creator of THE TWILIGHT ZONE and one of television’s most prolific talents) when previewing tonight’s NCIS: NEW ORLEANS episode, “The Terminator Conundrum”? Possibly because Dwayne Pride must feel like he may be trapped there.

Not only did he trade his cushy SAC office to return to NCIS: NEW ORLEANS headquarters to save Khoury’s (Necar Zedegan) job, Pride still suffers from hallucinations, insomnia and nightmares from the traumatic events of last season. Dwayne faces “the pit of man’s fears and the summit of his knowledge” as the effects of the high-tech Apollyon project continue to plague him like locusts (pun intended. The mythical Apollyon was a destroyer, the name given to the king of the hosts represented by the locusts.) If those events, the murder of his father and his mother’s dementia were not enough to make Pride worry about his sanity, throw aliens into the mix. Aliens?

Yes, aliens. When NCIS: NEW ORLEANS investigates a private plane crash in which a Navy pilot says she saw an unidentified object prior to the crash, Sebastian (Rob Kerkovich) finds an unusual clear metal in the wreckage. Positing that it could be from a UFO, one almost expects William Shatner to break in with an order to describe a starship’s cloaking device. Does this conundrum inhabit the line of the middle ground between light and shadow? Possibly. According to NOAA, the line that separates day and night is called the “terminator” or the “twilight zone.”

(NOAA is the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. NOAA scientists study the skies and the oceans.)

Tonight’s episode, “The Terminator Conundrum” was written by Jan Nash and directed by Ed Ornelas. Guest cast on “The Terminator Conundrum are Alex Beh, Elizabeth Faith Ludlow, Kristin Carey, Lindsay Pulsipher, Wyatt Walter, Caroline Cole, Jeff Robins, Leslie Nipkow, Trazi Lashawn and Cory Hart in a nice hat-tip to SUPERNATURAL as “Agent Winchester.”

Somewhere from the distance, those musical notes from THE TWILIGHT ZONE waft by…

NCIS: NEW ORLEANS airs tonight (October 1) at 10:00 p.m. ET/PT on CBS in the U.S. and at 7:00 p.m. ET/PT on Global TV in Canada.

The season finale of NCIS: NEW ORLEANS continues its allegorical trip down “The River Styx,” also the name of tonight’s Part II episode. At the end of last week’s Part I, Pride (Scott Bakula) was on his knees living through the nightmare that has plagued him all season…his own death. In Greek mythology, the Styx is the river between Earth and the underworld, Hades. The underworld is guarded by Cerberus, a three-headed dog that prevents the dead from escaping Hades. The metaphor has not been lost on Dwayne. Since the surfacing of Walker and Apollyon, Pride has been barraged by dreams, visions and hallucinations of his own death, as if Cerberus, himself, is preventing Dwayne from escaping his spiral toward self-destruction.

Pride and Lasalle (Lucas Black) left NCIS: NEW ORLEANS for South Ossetia (part of the former Soviet Union) last week on a covert mission. Their off-book objective is to rescue Gregorio’s ex-boss, the FBI’s Raymond Isler (recurring guest star, Derek Webster) who was captured during a task force operation. Back in New Orleans, the NCIS team supports Pride and Lasalle from a distance and it works to locate the mole who is feeding information to Apollyon. Part I ended with Isler dying or dead in a boat and Pride’s nightmare evolving into reality…Avery Walker’s (recurring guest star Tim Griffin) gun pointed at his head and Dwayne’s destruction brought about by Apollyon (recurring guest star Amy Rutberg). Will Apollyon, named after the angel of destruction in Greek mythology, drag NCIS: NEW ORLEANS into the abyss, starting with Pride? Or will the river, like the Styx and the Greek goddess for which the river is named, rush to the aid of Zeus (aka Pride) and deliver him from destruction.

If Pride survives, will his tendency to act as if he is invulnerable, push him toward more reckless behavior? Perhaps Pride will heed the story of Achilles, who had been dipped in the River Styx as a baby to make him invulnerable. Unfortunately for Achilles, his mother held on to him by his heel during the dip, leaving that one spot vulnerable and ended up being his undoing. During the Trojan War, his enemy shot him in the heel with a poisonous arrow, killing the almost-immortal Achilles. The Greek poet, Homer, expounded the anger and pride of Achilles in his epic works, THE ILIAD and THE ODESSY. How’s that for a season metaphor? A man named Pride and a team that is his Achilles’s heel.

“The River Styx, Part II” was written by Christopher Silber and directed by James Whitmore, Jr. The season finale of NCIS: NEW ORLEANS airs tonight (May 14) at 10:00 p.m. ET/PT on CBS in the U.S. and at 7:00 p.m. ET/PT on Global TV in Canada.

Relationships…often, the most generous explanation of a relationship is “complicated.” Sometimes, they are deadly. Relationships can be the thing that people desperately want to escape and hold to tightest…all within the same breath.

On tonight’s NCIS: NEW ORLEANS, relationships are put through their paces, suffering the rubber-band effect of push, pull and snap. In many relationships, the “snap” breaks the bond permanently. So, permanently, in fact, that a death, either figuratively or literally, occurs.

One of those snaps happens tonight on NCIS: NEW ORLEANS when a Navy doctor is killed in a hit-and-run accident. Gregorio (Vanessa Ferlito) is convinced that a con man is responsible, even though the evidence shows otherwise. Despite the lack of proof, Tammy is positive that her suspect is guilty and manipulating the circumstances to frame his wife. Sounds like the bond, if it ever existed, has snapped.

Another relationship teeters at the point of dissolution. Hannah’s husband, Ryan (Hal Ozsan) shows up at Pride’s (Scott Bakula) office with classified information that the professor has obtained from a contact from his former days in intelligence. Ryan keeps this new information a secret from Hannah (Necar Zadegan), complicating their marriage even further, possibly to a place of destruction. Ryan’s information is about Apollyon, which could drag Dwayne back to the fate he has been trying to escape.

I have been asked several times about the blonde “angel” who resurfaces in Dwayne’s life and what it has to do with the story, so here is a bit of background. “Apollyon” has several meanings. It is the Greek name for the Bible’s Abaddon, the “Angel of the Abyss.” SUPERNATURAL fans would describe her as a woman who works for the king of Hell, which is as good an explanation as any.

Apollyon is not only known as an angel, but also a bottomless pit and a force of destruction, which aptly describes the organization on which Ryan has information and is responsible for the death of Dwayne’s father. Wikipedia describes Apollyon in the Bible (aka “Abaddon” to SUPERNATURAL fans) as “both a place of destruction and an angel of the abyss.”

Dwayne’s apparition, whether real or perceived, has led him to the brink of death more than once. Whether her appearances are the cause or result of the murderous group that shares the name, remains to be seen. Will Ryan be caught in the web and pulled into the abyss as he gets closer to Apollyon? Will Tammy’s “gut,” get her man, or just get her into trouble? Will Dwayne’s “angel”/vision return to pull him back into the vortex? In a city like New Orleans where death is celebrated with a parade, anything is possible.

Tonight’s episode of NCIS: NEW ORLEANS, “Trust Me,” was written by Austin Badgett & Ron McGee and directed by Jen Derwingson.

NCIS: NEW ORLEANS airs tonight (April 23) at 10:00 p.m. on CBS in the U.S. and at 8pm on Global TV in Canada.

Photos: Sam Lothridge/CBS 

Childhood trauma often shapes a person’s goals for a lifetime. Such is the case of a chemical company’s executive tonight on NCIS: NEW ORLEANS. The head of Jax, Inc. has been obsessed with the strength of seawalls for most of her life. Having lost her entire family to a tsunami as a child, Ms. Jax has spent her adult life developing a chemical composition to shore up weakened seawalls to withstand any weather event. If Jax can keep her company from going underwater, she may be able to strengthen levees and save lives. But between her and her goal is sabotage. Someone is on a mission to stop her by any means possible…including murder.

NCIS: NEW ORLEANS becomes involved when a Navy officer disappears, as have three Jax, Inc. employees, one of whom is the officer’s brother. Their disappearance is only part of Jax, Inc.’s loss. The company is collapsing quickly with no payroll, constant threats and desertions by both employees and investors. The bad news gets worse when four dead bodies are found.

Jax, Inc. is not the only thing on a downward spiral…Hannah (Necar Zadegan) is being blackmailed with evidence from her previous mission in Oman, and she struggles with a solution.

Tonight’s episode, “Crab Mentality,” was written by Brooke Roberts and directed by Stacey K. Black.

NCIS: NEW ORLEANS airs tonight (February 26) at 10:00 p.m. ET/PT on CBS in the U.S. and on GlobalTV in Canada.