Contains spoilers for “NCIS” Season 22, Episode 13 — “Bad Blood”

Stealth is definitely a tool NCIS agents often employ in the field, but it’s also one that was used to its fullest extent by the show’s set dressers during “Bad Blood” in a moment plenty of fans likely missed. 

The episode’s big subplot revolves around coffee — specifically the coffee Tim McGee’s (Sean Murray) twins are trying to sell. He wants to beat their room’s superdad by selling as much coffee as he can, which means that he’s roping colleagues near and far into his scheme. Kasie Hines (Diona Reasonover) gets really into the competition — at least in part because the coffee has her hyper-caffeinated — and begins offering the coffee to other offices. The big easter egg comes when we spy a white board in her lab filled with names of the other offices and other agents on them. Notable faces like Dwayne Pride (Scott Bakula) from “NCIS: New Orleans,” Kensi Blye and G. Callen (Daniela Ruah and Chris O’Donnell) from “NCIS: LA,” and Jane Tennant (Vanessa Lachey) from “NCIS: Hawai’i,” along with the amount of coffee ordered for each office, decorate the space. 

Both Kassie and Alden Parker (Gary Cole) are too distracted by the case to make much note of the list. And McGee, too, realizes he’s been too distracted by the thrill of the selling competition to realize what’s right. 

Throughout “Bad Blood,” McGee finds himself coping with the presence of very familiar villain Fletcher Voss (T.J. Thyne), an embattled tech billionaire last seen during Season 21’s “A Thousand Yards,” the show’s 1,000th episode. No one’s willing to extend an olive branch to Voss, because he’s the one who got Leon Vance (Rocky Carroll) shot the previous year out of fears that the government will stop using one of his apps, sending his already sinking finances down the tubes. But he’s sold Bandium, made a mint, and started again with a new DNA company — which is connected to the brutal death of a pregnant woman under Voss’s employ.

Voss is the father of her kid, but does turn out to be innocent this time — and even a victim of the actual perp. While giving Voss a transfusion of his own blood and lamenting the lost contest, the two men come to the same realization: It’s not the rat race of chasing perfection that makes a good dad, it’s actually being there for them, bags of coffee by your side or not. Since McGee’s own dad is a polarizing figure in both his life and to fans of “NCIS,” it’s a revelation that makes too much sense for him.