How Do You Think Bishop & Torres’ Talk on ‘NCIS’ Ended? (POLL)
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[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for NCIS Season 18 Episode 14 “Unseen Improvements.”]
Everyone knows that Special Agents Ellie Bishop (Emily Wickersham) and Nick Torres (Wilmer Valderrama) need to have The Talk on NCIS — including them. And the frustration as they talk about just that in the May 11 episode builds and builds and builds until…there’s zero resolution for fans.
It begins as medical examiner Dr. Jimmy Palmer (Brian Dietzen) watching them flirt as Torres sort of invites himself on a trip Bishop is planning. (Anyone else reminded of NCIS: LA‘s Kensi and Deeks making vacation plans just before they got together? Without the mystery of just what’s going on with Bishop, however.) “It really is just delightful,” Palmer says as if he’s watching his favorite TV or movie couple banter.
And he’s the one to try to talk to Torres about it after because “it’s pretty obvious” there’s something there. “Do you remember when I asked you about dating advice?” the agent counters, notably using the word “dating.”
When Bishop confronts Palmer about that conversation later, it’s the definition of “the lady doth protest too much…”
“There’s nothing to talk about. Nick and I don’t really need to have an official Talk because we’re just friends. And not like Gibbs [Mark Harmon] and Sloane [Maria Bello] were friends. Do people think we’re like Gibbs and Sloane?” she rambles. “Like, are they, did they, will they, won’t they? What exactly do people think is going on between me and Nick? Because people are talking about us behind our back, Jimmy, that’s not cool.”
Bishop and Torres do eventually agree they need to have The Talk, at some point, which does end up being as they’re leaving work at the end of the day. But fans don’t get to see or hear anything beyond her “ever since we were in that jail cell together” because the elevator doors close. (In Episode 6, “1mm,” the two were trapped in neighboring jail cells and admitted that neither wanted the other to get blown up. It was yet another conversation where they just left things hanging).
Sonja Flemming/CBS
“We’re going to see [what may be between them addressed this season],” Valderrama previously told TV Insider. “This is the season where we understand where it all will fall. The writers have done a beautiful love letter to the fans that have been wanting to know and understand more about [them].”
That has to mean that we will see what comes next after that conversation, if not the exact Talk, right? It wouldn’t be a “love letter” to fans if it’s all left off-screen.
But there’s more than just her relationship with Torres, whatever it may be, that needs to be addressed about Bishop in the remaining two episodes of Season 18. In “Unseen Improvements,” both Palmer and forensic scientist Kasie Hines (Diona Reasonover) remark that she’s been acting different (and when Torres catches her looking at a map at Romania, Albania, and Bulgaria, she is not likely planning a vacation). As Palmer recalls, Bishop asked him if he knew it only takes five pounds to crush a human trachea and 10 to rip a trachea out with a person’s bare hands. That has to be tied to her training with ex-CIA handler Odette (Elayn J. Taylor) that began last year, right?
How might that affect Bishop and Torres’ relationship? We have a feeling it has some influence in whatever she says during that Talk we didn’t see. Will they have made any major steps when we see them in the next episode? Or might they have just acknowledged that there could be something between them and table it for the time being? With NCIS renewed for a 19th season, we have a feeling it will be the latter. But what do you think? Vote in our poll below.
NCIS, Tuesdays, 8/7c, CBS
