‘FBI: Most Wanted’ Stars Talk Nina & Scola’s ‘Healthy Repair & Emotional Intimacy’

[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for FBI: Most Wanted Season 5 Episode 8 “Supply Chain.”]

FBI: Most Wanted goes home with Nina (Shantel VanSanten) in the latest episode, and that means a mini-crossover with FBI, with John Boyd appearing as Stuart Scola. To say there’s tension would be an understatement.

The episode begins with the two arguing about parenting styles—specifically, he thinks she’s going overboard with all the stuff she has for Dougie since he can’t find his shoes in the morning, while she thinks she’s just prepared. “You’re like obsessed with being some kind of perfect mother,” he says.

Nina confides in Barnes (Roxy Sternberg) and admits she knows that since she didn’t have a mom growing up, she’s just doing the best she can without an example to follow. Barnes points out that she and Scola are lucky to have each other and recommends not taking that for granted. So Nina waits up for Scola to get home, at which point he sees that she’s made space in their closet and gotten rid of the excess stuff for Dougie. She apologizes for overcompensating, but she just wants to be the best mom and feels like she sucks at it. He assures her she’s a wonderful mother and apologizes, too.

We don’t often get scenes like that in a procedural drama, so VanSanten is grateful to have them: “We always search to really ground the scenes in reality,” she tells TV Insider. “Two people often butt heads and disagree and fight, and it isn’t always about the toothpaste around the sink or where the shoes are or the dishes. It’s really about something deeper, and two working parents may not have the time to really realize what it’s about. And having the resolution at the end of the episode was a really special moment to be vulnerable and to see a side of them that we don’t always have time for when you’re solving a case and there’s a crime that takes priority, but I’m really glad that we get to see a couple repair and what that looks like to be open and emotional with one another.”

Boyd agrees, recalling talking to his onscreen partner about it. “Shantel said that this is a couple that gets to show conflict and healthy repair and emotional intimacy,” he says. “And that’s something that’s really an honor to get to do on these shows and to have something that seems to be compelling and honest or truthful on screen and the trap is to not want to show our audience and our fans what’s unlikeable about ourselves. We [focus] so much on the cases, so the times that we do get to see the inside of behind the curtain into our lives, there’s this part of you that’s like, ‘Well, I want it to be all good.'”

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But he’s glad that’s not what happened in this episode. “We need to invest in the ugliness and the fight and the conflict in order to see the repair,” he explains. “And that’s what was really fun to navigate as co-stars, was just what’s this little movie that we get to make inside of it.”

VanSanten agrees with his description of their scenes in this episode as a movie since they filmed them back t0 back on the same day—and she’s glad they did. “Thank goodness because actually fighting gives me anxiety,” she says. “But to be able to have a fight and have the two people butt heads and then, like he said, find this beautiful repair and emotional intimacy was a real gift that we don’t always get on these shows, so we take it when you can.”

What did you think of Nina and Scola’s argument and the resolution? What are you hoping to see with them going forward? Let us know in the comments section below.

FBI: Most Wanted, Tuesdays, 10/9c, CBS