NCIS Season 22: Where Do Jimmy Palmer And Jessica Knight Stand After Episode 14?
Contains spoilers for "NCIS" Season 22, Episode 14 — "Close to Home"
To say things are a little weird between exes Jimmy Palmer (Brian Dietzen) and Jessica Knight (Katrina Law) is an understatement. They broke up so that Knight could pursue a job at Camp Pendleton back in the finale of Season 21 — a huge change for her – but she's already returned to Washington, leaving them both with the awkward prospect of having to move on romantically in full view of one another.
In "Close to Home," Jimmy's developed a crush on his neighbor, Wendy Hill (Erinn Hayes). That attraction becomes extremely knotty when the team begins to suspect that Wendy is a serial killer called the Saratoga Specter and the person who buried lots of money out in the woods. Jimmy throws a house party to collect DNA, and the team runs it through the lab. Just as things are getting steamy between Jimmy and Wendy, the team bursts in to arrest her. Even worse: Jessica's the one to slap the cuffs on. When Jimmy later approaches Jessica to thank her for looking out for him, she just says that this is what family does.
Where do they all go from here? Brian Dietzen shared some thoughts with TV Insider. "I think there might be some battles there between, do I want to try and move on to someone else, or is there ever a time when we would re-explore this thing as well?" he said about Knight and Jimmy's relationship, now complicated by Wendy. It looks like hope springs eternal — and that this three-way tangle isn't settled by any means.
Could Wendy and Jimmy have a future?
Brian Dietzen admitted to TV Insider that Jimmy's just trying to get used to the whole dating thing again. "I think he's trying to figure it out," he explained. "I think he's trying to — as he's trying to do it, it's not really working very well." Jimmy's quest for new love is complicated every single time he looks across the room and sees Jessica. Dietzen admitted that Jimmy knows he loves Jessica, but the problem will always be between choosing between the new and old.
Since the suspicions about Wendy all turn out to be a misunderstanding — the money came from her thief father, the actual Saratoga Specter, now long dead — Dietzen's also open to the notion of Jimmy seeing more of Wendy in the long run as well. "Maybe he can actually ask her on a second date where they don't have guns drawn on them. I don't know. We'll see," he remarked, adding that he's friends with the actress who plays the character, Erinn Hayes.
It looks like Jimmy's romantic horizons are wide open — even though, between Jessica and Wendy, he might feel like the walls are closing in. The show's producers did say that Jimmy and Jessica's relationship would be satisfying in Season 22. We'll have to wait and see who will be the happiest with the end result.