NCIS put the spotlight on Agents Parker (Gary Cole) and McGee (Sean Murray) back in Season 22 as they tackled their own individual storylines that led to major outcomes for the series. Even though these two took up the bulk of the runtime and, subsequently, our attention, they weren’t necessarilyresponsible for the most memorable moments on the show. In this case, that distinction actually belongs to Agents Torres (Wilmer Valderrama) and Knight (Katrina Law). At this point, these two have bounced off each other’s energy for a couple of seasons, creating a heartwarming friendship that is always a pleasure to watch. But it was in Season 22 that the duo proved that they’re the best pairing on the flagship show,not only because of their endless capacity for wry comedic relief, but also due to how solid their bond has become. Although that relationship might evolve into something more romantic, at its core, this duo has always been the best even when they were purely platonic.
Torres and Knight Have Always Had the Strongest Chemistry in ‘NCIS’
Torres and Knight have always effortlessly had banter, and that is what sets them apart. The characters’ dynamic is aided by the on-screen chemistry between Valderrama and Law, which translates perfectly to the relationship Torres and Knight share. But what’s most compelling about their humor in regular episodes of NCIS is how casually they are littered into the script because these two never miss a chance to verbally elbow one another in the ribs, often accompanied by a withering stare as a response. This makes their jokes unexpected and that much more enjoyable.
Collider Exclusive · TV Medicine Quiz Which Fictional Hospital Would You Work Best In? The Pitt · ER · Grey’s Anatomy · House · Scrubs
Five hospitals. Five completely different ways medicine goes sideways on television — brutal, chaotic, romantic, brilliant, and ridiculous. Only one of them is the ward your instincts were built for. Eight questions will figure out exactly where you belong.
🚨The Pitt
🏥ER
💉Grey’s
🔬House
🩺Scrubs
01
A critical patient comes through the door. What’s your first instinct? Medicine under pressure reveals who you actually are.
02
Why did you go into medicine in the first place? The honest answer says more about you than the one you’d give in an interview.
03
What do you actually want from the people you work with? Who you want beside you under pressure is who you are.
04
You lose a patient you fought hard to save. How do you carry it? Every doctor who’s worked a long shift has had to answer this question.
05
How would your colleagues describe the way you work? Your reputation on the floor is usually more accurate than your self-image.
06
How do you feel about hospital protocol and procedure? Every institution has rules. What you do with them is a choice.
07
What does this job cost you personally? Nobody works in medicine without paying a price. What’s yours?
08
At the end of a long shift, what keeps you coming back? The answer to this question is the most honest thing about you.
Your Assignment Has Been Made You Belong In…
Your answers have pointed to one fictional hospital above all others. This is the ward your instincts, your temperament, and your particular brand of dysfunction were built for.
Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center
The Pitt
You are built for the most unsparing version of emergency medicine television has ever shown — one that puts you inside a single fifteen-hour shift and doesn’t let you look away.
You need your work to be real, not romanticised — meaning over drama, honesty over aesthetics.
You find purpose inside the work itself, not in the chaos surrounding it.
You’ve made peace with the fact that this job takes from you constantly, and gives back in ways that are harder to name.
Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center demands exactly that kind of person — and you would not want to be anywhere else.
County General Hospital, Chicago
ER
You are the person who keeps the whole floor running — not the most brilliant in the room, but possibly the most essential.
You show up, do the work, absorb the losses, and come back the next day without needing the job to be anything other than what it is.
You care about patients as individual human beings, not as cases to solve or dramas to live through.
You believe in the system even when it fails you — and you understand that emergency medicine is about holding the line just long enough.
ER is television about endurance. You have it.
Grey Sloan Memorial Hospital, Seattle
Grey’s Anatomy
You came to medicine with your whole self — your ambition, your emotions, your relationships, your history — and you have never quite managed to leave any of it at the door.
You feel things fully and form deep attachments to the people you work with.
Your personal and professional lives are permanently, chaotically entangled — and that entanglement drives both your greatest disasters and your most remarkable saves.
You understand that extraordinary medicine often happens at the intersection of clinical skill and profound human connection.
It’s messy at Grey Sloan. You would not have it any other way.
Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital, NJ
House
You are drawn to the problem above everything else — the symptom that doesn’t fit, the diagnosis hiding underneath the obvious one.
You’re not primarily motivated by the patient as a person — though you are capable of caring, even if you’d deny it.
You work best when the stakes are highest and the standard answer is wrong.
Princeton-Plainsboro exists to house one extraordinary, impossible mind — and everyone around that mind is there because they’re smart enough to keep up.
The only way forward here is to think harder than everyone else in the room. That is exactly what you do.
Sacred Heart Hospital, California
Scrubs
You understand that medicine is tragic and absurd in almost equal measure — and that the only sane response is to hold both of those things at the same time.
You are warm, self-aware, and funnier than most people in your field.
You use humour to get through terrible moments — and at Sacred Heart, that’s not a flaw, it’s a survival strategy.
You lean on the people around you and let them lean back. The laughter and the grief are genuinely inseparable here.
Scrubs is a show about learning to become someone worthy of the job. You are still very much in the middle of that process — which is exactly right.
Of course, the writing plays into their interactions, as their dry quips are always clever enough to be interesting but never facetious and always relatable. This makes them more than just comic relief, especially during Season 22, where their personal arcs weren’t as consequential as those of Parker and McGee. That’s not to say they didn’t successfully fulfill the role of comedic relief, as they became that levity that we need as a reprieve from Parker’s visions and McGee’s obsession. However, watching their relationship slowly grow showcases a different side to the show.
Torres Dates Knight’s Sister in ‘NCIS’ Season 22
In NCIS Season 22, one of the standout storylines for Torres and Knight is when Torres starts dating Knight’s sister, Robin (Lilan Bowden). The mystery of who Torres is dating unravels over NCIS‘s month-long break, as it is revealed that Torres is dating someone new during the Christmas episode “Humbug,” and then we see him texting an unknown person. But we don’t find out until the next episode, “Baker’s Man,” that it is Robin. This plot point becomes a source of awkwardness between Torres and Knight, which lends itself to its own kind of comedy, especially as the secret is passed through a chain of intermediaries, including Jimmy (Brian Dietzen) and Kasie (Diona Reasonover), as the two avoid each other.
The two already had their relationships under a microscope even before Torres began a relationship with Robin. We saw Knight navigating her break-up with Jimmy, while Torres decided he wanted to make good use of his new gym regimen by hopping on dating apps. The fact that Torres starts dating Knight’s sister a couple of episodes after she helped him build a dating profile has its own flavor of ironic humor, but it also makes the conversation they finally have at the end of “Baker’s Man” feel more significant.
Despite claiming it was “no big deal,” Torres was actually uneasy about impacting the team’s dynamics with his new relationship. Meanwhile, Knight was more worried about her sister’s erratic behavior and the impact that it would have on Torres. Granted, she was also concerned that Torres would just be another face in the string of “bad boys” Robin dated, but the fact that she reacts to this news by giving equal thought to both her sister and her friend demonstrates how close she is to Torres. What could have been a moment that caused unnecessary drama in a different show ends up being one of the sweetest moments of the season, bringing forth the underlying mutual respect they have for each other. The growth we see between these two in Season 22 laid the groundwork for their relationship to grow organically in Season 3, even as it teased that the relationship could venture beyond just friendship.
‘NCIS’ Season 22 Sees Torres and Knight Get Married
Wilmer Valderrama as Torres marrying Katrina Law as Knight in NCIS Season 22.Image via CBS
The second scene that proves Torres and Knight are the best duo in NCIS also involves their love lives, but in an unexpected way. Funnily enough, the episode right after the one where Knight learns of Torres’ relationship involves the pair having a fake wedding during an undercover operation. Even though they had a wedding ceremony with a painful-looking kiss to seal the deal — and in Parker’s beautiful house no less — the actual marriage license was fake… right? In the penultimate episode of that season, we find out that they were actually issued a license, making it a legally binding wedding — Torres and Knight were officially married.
Naturally, their immediate instinct was to recoil in disgust and quickly sort out an annulment, but they changed their tune once they discovered the bounty of perks NCIS offers to married couples. It takes a certain kind of friendship to be able to happily stay married out of convenience, even for a day, while dating your “wife’s” sister. It emphasizes how comfortable they are with each other in their personal lives, as well as out on the field. Their subsequent no-brainer to annul the marriage when they eventually find out a married couple cannot remain on the same team is also heartwarming, especially since Knight just came back from REACT at the start of the season.
Considering that Season 23 teased the potential of a romantic relationship between these two, with showrunner Steven D. Binder suggesting in an interview with TVLine that that potential might become a reality, it’s important to look back on the key moments that prove just how strong Torres and Knight are, even when romance wasn’t a key factor. And after that surprising twist for Torres in the Season 23 finale, it is guaranteed that there will be more moments to come from NCIS‘ best partnership.
All episodes of NCIS are available to stream on Paramount+ in the U.S.
