How ‘NCIS: LA’ Simply Set Up Kilbride’s Reunion With His Son

[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for NCIS: Los Angeles Season 14 Episode 13, “A Farewell to Arms.”]

When you’re trying ahead to Retired Admiral Hollace Kilbride (Gerald McRaney) reuniting together with his estranged son Alex (Christopher Gorham, visitor starring this season), the newest NCIS: Los Angeles episode exhibits that you must thank his ex-wife Elizabeth (Marilu Henner).

When she’s on the town — after the exes spend the night time collectively — the 2 reminisce about when Alex was born, and she or he remembers Kilbride preventing to remain awake whereas holding him. On the time, Elizabeth thought he’d at all times be there for his or her son. However now, “you let me down, Hollace, however extra importantly, you let Alex down, too,” she tells him. She waited to deliver it up till she knew he’d modified. “Alex is an grownup. He made selections — selections that left no room for me and I attempted to assist, many occasions, however he simply reduce me out of his life,” Kilbride argues.

However as Elizabeth sees it, now he has an opportunity to combat his approach again into his life. “The previous few years have been very laborious on Alex, however he’s clear now, and I fear each rattling day that that’s going to vary. I’m bored with worrying alone,” she admits. Alex is in an outpatient therapy program; she’s going to household teams and needs her ex-husband to point out up for his or her son. “He doesn’t need me there,” Kilbride says. “However he wants you there. Look, I’m not even saying it’s a must to soar on a airplane tonight. You don’t even have to offer me a solution now. Simply promise me you’ll give it some thought,” she urges … after which, to her shock, Kilbride agrees!

“He turns into very stoic at first when speaking about our son, after which you can see his options change as he and provides in to me, and I’m stunned by it, too, so I do know that I’ve actually touched a nerve,” Henner tells TV Insider of that scene. “We shot that first and I used to be actually glad they shot that first as a result of we might take extra time with it. We simply thought, ‘let’s actually get into the nitty-gritty of the necessary scene.’”

And sure, Elizabeth “completely” anticipated a combat from Kilbride there. “She thought, ‘man, the intercourse and the wine actually helped. And the flowers,’” Henner says. “And I feel it’s not simply her victory and, after all, Alex’s victory, it’s additionally Hollace’s victory as a result of she might inform that he’s modified, too, and that he’s extra open to having a relationship together with his son.”

That, in flip, makes it so much simpler for Elizabeth to have the ability to really feel like she has a accomplice in it together with her. “We made this youngster collectively, and we each must take duty for what’s happening now, and the one approach the entire household’s going to heal is that if all three of us are concerned,” Henner factors out.

However how concerned precisely may Kilbride and Elizabeth be going ahead? Spending the night time collectively whereas she’s on the town doesn’t essentially imply they’ll get again collectively. However may they’ve a future? “I don’t know,” Henner shares. “I’d prefer to assume that perhaps he’s a little bit extra open to seeing the place it goes, spending extra time as a household and with one another. Generally you meet up with folks that you simply knew at a special time in each of your lives, and it’s an entire completely different relationship, so there’s undoubtedly a chance.”

Earlier within the episode, we be taught extra about their historical past, together with when she stabbed him within the thigh with a king crab lab in Atlantic Metropolis. And so when he comes residence on the finish of the episode, she’s nonetheless there — and had groceries delivered — and has dinner ready for him: crab legs.

“How nice?” Henner laughs. “It’s humorous as a result of we have now that dialog [earlier] whereas I’m unpacking groceries, proper? And I assumed she ran out once more for crab legs as soon as he introduced that up. It was nice.”

She sees that as simply one other instance of their bond. “Whenever you belief someone, you have got a shorthand. You could possibly inform these two have an actual historical past. I beloved that they performed into that, and it was nice that you can see him, and he’s obtained that little smirk, and he nearly appears like he’s at work and feels a little bit nervous about it,” she shares. “And I beloved that he is available in and he can’t imagine that I’m nonetheless right here.”

If this episode proved something, it’s that we will’t wait to see extra with Kilbride’s household. However we all know the following reunion — together with his son — might be going to harm.

NCIS: Los Angeles, Sundays, 10/9c, CBS