‘NCIS’: Rocky Carroll Talks Directing ‘Part Disaster Film’ Takedown

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[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for NCIS Season 22 Episode 10 “Baker’s Man.”]

“It’s so out of left field, but I think it works,” Rocky Carroll, who directed the NCIS midseason premiere, says of the explosive takedown in the episode.

What starts like any other normal day for Parker (Gary Cole) — he picks up pastries from his favorite bakery — ends in two of his agents caught up in an explosion and a possible connection with a new love interest, baker Eleni (Melina Kanakaredes). For a while, there’s a question of how much she might be involved in a drug business that involves baking cocaine into her products. But by the time she’s kidnapped and Torres (Wilmer Valderrama) and Knight (Katrina Law) find her, it’s clear that she’s very much not involved; she’s chained and being forced to make cocaine-laced baked goods.

It’s Eleni’s quick thinking that keeps Knight and Torres alive — and as her baking assistants. But together, they hatch a plan to escape (“not the greatest plan ever,” says Carroll), causing an explosion just as Parker and McGee (Sean Murray) arrive on scene to assist in the takedown. What Andrew Bartels wrote there created a “challenge” for Carroll directing and production.

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“There were so many elements that had to be created [for] that diversion,” Carroll tells us. “You had to create the setting of the warehouse and the illicit cookies that are being made, all the stuff that’s going on in production. We’ve got the vats, we’ve got our ovens, we’ve got this fully mounted industrial kitchen that we’ve built, and now we got to explode it. Creating the special effects that create chaos and the aftermath of all that, when Parker and McGee come in, there’s smoke, there’s soot in the air, there was an explosion, all this sort of chaos … That was quite a day. It’s like part disaster film, part NCIS.”

He admits that seeing all those elements on paper, “you’re thinking to yourself, ‘How are we going to make this work?’ But somehow we did and our special effects guys are so great [with] all those little things that you have to do [for scenes like this]. I think the audience is going to love it because it’s so out of left field, but I think it works. And nobody backed away from it. Nobody said, ‘Well, that’s really crazy.’ ‘Let’s see what happens. Let’s do it.’ And everybody was on board. But I think it plays well.”

Carroll shares that they shot the explosion, the aftermath, the takedown, and the scene of Parker and Eleni talking on the back of the ambulance all in the same “very full day.” He calls that moment for the agent and baker “full circle. He starts to learn more about her and what her true passions are. It’s a really good story.”

What did you think of the takedown? Do you want to see more of Eleni? Let us know in the comments section below.

NCIS, Mondays, 9/8c, CBS

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