You may well find yourself spelling NCIS O-M-G after watching the action-packed Season 22 trailer that TVLine exclusively obtained from CBS Monday. With a turncoat on the loose among the agents, time is of the essence to root out the loose cannon before they, ahem, fire.
Or, as Gary Cole’s Parker puts it, “We’ve gotta stop that mole without starting a war.”
No mean feat, huh? Elsewhere in the tense teaser, Wilmer Valderrama’s Torres is called upon to do the unthinkable. “If you want me to kill one of my own,” he says, “I need a good reason.”
The clip isn’t just a sneak peek of what’s to come, though. It also contains not one but two Easter eggs for NCIS fans. The song “Stand Up” that plays in the background opens with the melody of the show’s theme song. That’s the obvious Easter egg.
The far trickier-to-find one can be heard in the pre-chorus, which references the late, great David “Ducky” McCallum’s 1968 jazz song “The Edge.” (Decades later, the number was turned into “The Next Episode” hit by Dr. Dre and incoming Voice coach Snoop Dogg.)
When the powers that be began working on the Season 22 trailer, they retained to compose “Stand Up” America’s Got Talent vets Black Gryph0n, who leaned heavily on the idea of the NCIS team as family in writing the lyrics. The Navy-veteran brothers who make up the act also intended there to be a double meaning to the lines “no time to react” and “the night’s returning” — since Katrina Law’s Knight is leaving to accept her position as Chief REACT Training Officer at Camp Pendleton and, as CBS explains, “Jessica Knight’s returning to NCIS DC.”