Warning: SPOILERS for the NCIS episode “Fun and Games” are ahead!
Diona Reasonover has been playing Kasie Hines on NCIS since Season 15, with the character taking over as the agency’s Forensic Specialist following the departure of Pauley Perrette’s Abby Sciuto. As such, Kasie’s gotten a decent amount of episodes revolving around her over the years, including last year’s “Lifeline,” which made a good case for her spending more time out in the field (stream it with your Paramount+ subscription. Now that time has come again, as “Fun and Games” just finished airing on the 2025 TV schedule. I’m here to talk out what went down this episode, as well as why it hilariously reminded me of a recurring joke from The Big Bang Theory.
What Happened In The NCIS Episode “Fun And Games”
The events of “Fun and Games” began when Victor Chan, a member of Kasie’s group of game night friends, choked to death outside his car after he and the others left Kasie place. He was poisoned by hemlock that had been mixed into fondue sent to the group by another friend, Craig, who was unable to attend the game. Since Victor was a notorious double dipper, none of the others ate the fondue, hence why they didn’t meet the same lethal fate. But making matters worse, Craig was found strangled to death in his apartment, leaving the NCIS team to deduce someone else poisoned the fondue and sent it.
At first, it seemed like only Victor himself was meant to be targeted because he was involved with a counterfeiting operation for a trading card game the group liked to play called Ferrets & Phalanxes (more on that soon). That proved not to be accurate though, and the real reason was rooted in how almost everyone in the group (Carol Wilson, who’s appeared in a handful of NCIS episodes stretching back to Season 7, being the exception) met at the same forensic science introductory course in college, which was taught by Professor Annabelle Davis.
The real culprit was Jesse Winston, a recently paroled convicted gang member whom Davis testified against when he was being tried for robbing a convenience store. Jesse remained adamant he didn’t commit that crime, but while he was in prison, he lost his brother and nephew to the street. So upon getting out, he decided to seek revenge against Davis by attempting to kill the people who mattered most to her, i.e. Kasie’s friend group.
Eventually Jesse decided to directly confront Professor Davis with a gun (he’d already been discreetly keeping an eye on her by pretending to be a student in one of her lectures). Parker and Torres arrived just in time and gunned down Jesse before he could kill Davis. However, in a sad twist, Kasie figured out that her former professor had falsified evidence in Jesse’s case to get him sent to prison because he’d already been arrested a dozen times before. Kasie was left with no choice but to turn in Davis, which means all of her other cases would have grounds for appeal.
Why “Fun And Games” Reminded Me Of The Big Bang Theory
Let’s circle back to Ferrets and Phalanxes. It’s clearly meant to be a play on Magic: The Gathering, and the similarly is even noted in the NCIS episode, and rightly so. While I was watching though, I couldn’t help thinking of Mystic Warlords of Ka’a, another Magic spoof that was from The Big Bang Theory. Introduced in the sitcom’s third season, Leonard, Sheldon, Howard and Raj were frequently seen playing Mystic Warlords of Ka’a, and Stuart the comic book store owner and Star Trek: The Next Generation’s Wil Wheaton also enjoyed the game.
But it wasn’t just that both these card games were channeling that Magic: The Gathering vibe that stood out to me. When Torres and Parker went to an “underground” Ferrets and Phalanxes meet-up, where they discovered that Victor’s boss was actually behind the card counterfeiting, they observed a game being played, and it basically functioned just like Mystic Warlords of Ka’a. In other words, going around in a circle, each player plays one card during their turn that’s placed in the center of the table that’s meant to overpower or neutralize the previous card. Here’s an example of that with Mystic Warlords of Ka’a:
I don’t expect Ferrets and Phalanxes to ever be mentioned on NCIS again, but I did get a kick out of how it reminded me of The Warlords of Ka’a. New episodes of the procedural air Mondays at 9 pm ET on CBS. If you now find yourself in the mood to stream The Big Bang Theory after reading this, you’ll need a Max subscription.
