The mystery surrounding the circumstances the death of Alden Parker’s mother has been lingering on NCIS since last season, although it arguably really began when the little girl known as Lily was brought into the picture in the Season 21 finale. Either way, earlier this month, we finally got a big break with this arc when Brian Dietzen’s Jimmy Palmer revealed to Gary Cole’s Parker his suspicion that his mother didn’t die in a car accident, but was murdered. I’m so invested in learning what really happened to her, and Dietzen opened up to me about why his character “won’t let go” when it comes to this particular case.
After discussing the events of “Stolen Memories,” the latest NCIS episode to air on the 2025 TV schedule (including his take on if Nick Torres and Jessica Knight are actually getting together), I asked Brian Dietzen about if Jimmy Palmer feels a sense of personal responsibility to uncover the truth regarding Parkers mother given that he’s the one who found the discrepancy in her death certificate. The actor confirmed as much, saying:
I think so, yeah. One of the things I feel I learned from watching David McCallum and his character Ducky for 18 years was that while you can't get deeply personally invested with everybody that comes across the table, when you sit and you spend time with the remains of a person, the importance of finding justice for that family and finding closure for that spirit is really important. It’s something that I think drives a lot of people that work in that industry, and thank God they work in the [industry]. I've sat in on many autopsies, there's no way on Earth I could do that job. It's a really intense one, but it's a really noble one I think as well.
I thought of this question for Brian Dietzen after reading the synopsis for next week’s episode, “Heaven and Nature,” a.k.a. the NCIS Season 23 midseason finale. It mentions that “the truth about Parker's mother is finally revealed,” so evidently Jimmy Palmer discovers something big that leads to said truth upon examining her exhumed body. Or maybe there’s a surprise twist that pulls back the curtain back on this mystery. Either way, I welcomed Dietzen providing this insight into Jimmy’s mindset that comes from years of the late Ducky Mallard mentoring him, as well as the actor’s own thoughts on the real-life medical examiners who conduct autopsies.
Whatever goes down in “Heaven and Nature,” it’ll be a while until we see the next chapter of this storyline. NCIS is going on a two-month break as the Winter Olympics air on CBS, but Brian Dietzen promises that the wait for Season 23 to resume on the 2026 TV schedule will be worth it:
So yeah, I think once Jimmy kind of gets that into his system of ‘We can find a way to get answers for this family,’ he’s kind of like a dog with a bone. He won't let go. So I'm happy that he can help Parker in some way, and the next episode, written by Scott Williams, is just terrific. Like you said, it's our fall finale, and it's gonna be a longer break than we normally have because the Olympics are coming up in end of January or something, so we won't come back till February, So it's really gonna leave our audience going, ‘Oh man, we cannot wait for NCIS to start back up again in February,’ because there's gonna be some major stuff happening there.
NCIS, like NCIS: Origins and NCIS: Sydney, will pick back up on Tuesday, February 24 on CBS. Keep checking back with us for more updates on what’s ahead for the flagship show, which will reach its 500th episode during this latter half.
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