Directed by Terrence O'Hara
Written by Scott Williams
The holiday mood is ruined when the team is called up by the Naval Medical Research Center and CDC to investigate a potential bioterrorist threat after several children from Navy and Marine families are hospitalized in the ICU with similar symptoms from an unknown illness. Meanwhile, Jimmy finds out that the adoption agency has a birth mother lined up for him and Breena but the current case is making him wonder if having a kid is worth it, and Vance finds himself struggling with forgiveness when he receives a visit from his estranged father-in-law, who he bears a grudge against for abandoning Jackie when she was young.
Tropes:
- Call-Back: Tony’s brush with the pneumonic plague back in Season 2 is mentioned since this episode is about infectious diseases.
- Flipping the Bird: Invoked but averted.Tony: What's wrong with McGee?
Abby: I don't know. Something's up. He gave me the finger when I walked in.
[Tony and Bishop look shocked.]
Abby: [hurriedly holds up her index finger] The-the "one minute" finger, not the bad one. - Forgiveness: Vance struggles with this when his estranged father-in-law, Lamar, shows up because he heard that Jackie had died and wanted to meet her family because he never got a chance to see Jackie again after abandoning her when she was little. Vance initially doesn’t want to give him a chance but he has a change of heart after overhearing Abby and Carol’s pep talk to Jimmy and allows Lamar to join him and the kids for Christmas.
- Improbable Infant Survival: The only victim to die from the illness is the elderly laundromat guy who cleaned the Patient Zero’s Santa suit, who already had diabetes as a preexisting condition that made him extremely vulnerable.
- No Antagonist: It turns out that the virus is not a deliberate attack: a returning serviceman from the Congo, who was dressed up as Santa at several Christmas parties, accidentally acted as a carrier for an easily treatable disease that only shows up in African countries, explaining why nobody knew what it was as first.
- Patient Zero: The unknowing carrier was a serviceman who had recently returned from the Congo. Once he's quarantined and they discover what he has, the kids get the meds they need and everything returns back to normal.
- The Plague: The children of several military families suddenly get sick from what might be a bioterrorism plot. Thankfully, none of the kids die and it turns out that it wasn't a terrorist attack, but it was still scary for the parents to see their kids suffer from a virus that none of the medical professionals could identify at first.
- Typhoid Mary: Patient Zero had no symptoms of the virus, explaining why he unknowingly spread it until he got quarantined.
