Like a plastic jack-o-lantern filled with a Costco-sized candy mix, tonight NCIS was so packed that it was bursting with storylines.

First, the crime, which we’ll call the Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup of the episode, because it’s the main candy of the bunch.

Navy SEAL Bryce Prescott (Justin Bruening) returns home after a month-long deployment to discover a Halloween party in full swing at his house. The problem is that he doesn’t know any of the partygoers, and they all claim this is Hal’s house and not Bryce’s.

When the costumed partygoers refuse to leave, Bryce – who has just endured 19 hours of travel in the back of a Boeing C-17 – sighs and asks, “Do you have insurance?”

Let the noise begin! And if a SEAL asks about the quality of your medical care, you should already be on the run.

Now onto the evening’s Skittles storyline, which is sweet and has several flavors: the NCIS team must decide what to do with Ducky’s office, which has remained untouched since his death. Torres (Wilmer Valderrama) lobbies for a state-of-the-art gym.

This prompts McGee (Sean Murray) to ask Knight (Katrina Law) what Palmer (Brian Dietzen) would think. She awkwardly says she has no idea, but don’t worry. Things are going well between them! Simply good! (Jimmy and Jess are the Sour Patch Kids part of the episode. Their relationship was once saccharine, but has turned sour.)

The discussion about Ducky’s office is interrupted when they are called to Bryce’s Halloween brawl. While Knight happily hands out candy to the children still ringing the doorbell, the team investigates what appears to be a squatter situation.

Bryce explains that this is his grandmother’s house, which he inherited when his father died. But Hal’s girlfriend Mary (Chrissie Fit) swears that Hal lives here and will take care of things as soon as he arrives.

Ah, but Hal is already there, in the basement with a hammer in his skull. (Good luck sleeping tonight with the memory of that suppress (as Palmer removes it!) Not to criticize Mary’s choices, but having a real body at your Halloween party is taking your decorations a step too far.

In the midst of this discovery, Phil (Christopher M. Dukes), the Global Courier delivery man, arrives with all the packages Bryce held on to him while he was away. Phil watches all the action with interest, then grabs a large handful of candy from the bowl by the door and heads outside. I like his style!

Things get a little heated between Knight and Palmer in the basement, where they’ve discovered several large holes in the drywall. Then the mystery deepens when it is revealed that Hal is the alias of Felix Pitts, who Mary met a few weeks ago at the bar where she works.

Once the body of Hal, who has become Felix, is removed, Palmer cheerfully, almost maniacally, continues to insist that everything is fine. He’s okay with changing Ducky’s office, just as he’s okay with the change in his relationship with Jess. EVERYTHING IS OK, OK?

Mary points the team in the direction of Big Bark (Paul Zies), Hal’s former cellmate who started working with Hal at the bar last week.

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Big Bark tells the team that Hal owed him rent because he was cooped up in his apartment for so long that he had to be forcibly removed. But when BB – I’m sure he won’t mind if we call him BB – heard that Hal had rented a house through an app, he thought Mr. Get-Rich-Quick was working on a big case.

This brings the team to Bryce’s grandmother, Wanda Prescott. She is the widow of billionaire investment guru Gavin “Goldmine” Prescott, who was worth nearly $2 billion when he died in 2003, leaving behind two children and three grandchildren, including Bryce.

More importantly, Wanda is played by Donna Mills Knoop’s landing fame! She and her personal assistant, Leonard (Dominic Burgess, of “hey, it’s that guy!” fame) arrive at NCIS headquarters to find out how her house ended up on the Host Hopper app for $90 a night. (Wanda and Leonard are bright and delightful, making them the fun Butterfingers of the episode.)

Wanda is shocked by the murder and the short-term rental situation. Leonard is… less so. Naturally, the team will keep him for further questions.

Within moments, Leonard’s posh British accent disappears and he whines about being underpaid while Wanda’s spoiled grandchildren stand to inherit everything. Who can blame him for trying to make some money? In addition to renting out Bryce’s home, he also mentioned the family’s hunting lodge, which he labeled as “extremely haunted.”

The extremely haunted hunting lodge is clearly the storyline of the Payday candy bar, because it is absolutely crazy. But more about that later.

For now, the team is still debating the issue of Ducky’s office. Palmer has already stated that Ducky would want it to be a space that would help them do their jobs well. For Parker (Gary Cole), that’s a place to have lunch that isn’t his desk. For Kasie (Diona Reasonover) it is a place to meditate. In honor of the man who brought her to NCIS, Kasie is committed to finding the best use for her office.

When Knight and Parker go to Hal’s storage room to investigate, she asks about the ghost (or was it an angel?) he saw in the season 21 finale. Once again we flash back to Parker’s vision of a little girl, but he refuses to share the details with Knight.

Parker’s Ghost Sister : The tough-as-nails Tootsie Roll from the episode. This memory has lingered in Alden’s psyche for a long time.

Hal’s storage unit contains treasure hunting supplies, house plans and a 1982 magazine with an article about Wanda and Gavin Prescott’s “priceless treasures.”

Back they go to Wanda, who insists that the treasure Gavin referred to was his family. Leonard also cleaned her up, and she rewarded him with a big, fat raise. “I only hired him to see how long he could keep up that awful accent,” she explains. WHAT A QUEEN! When we finally eat the rich, we eat her last. Plus, Burgess is British IRL, so props to him for faking a bad accent and then using an American accent for the rest of the episode.

Wanda explains that Gavin started thinking of the hunting lodge as a haunted house because of a mysterious fire that destroyed the porch and a few back rooms in 1987. Leonard adds that he has experienced creepy things, such as cold spots and strange noises.

Last season, aliens. This season, ghosts. I, for one, welcome the show’s slow transition to The NCIX files.

The reveal of the hunting lodge divides the team into those who love haunted houses and those who do Doing. not. rubbish. of. ghosts. McGee and Parker are in the former group; Knight and Torres form the final group.

I mention this split to explain why Parker and McGee practically skip away like little kids when they leave Knight and Torres on a stakeout when they learn that Hal’s Host Hopper account has made an offer to rent the extremely haunted hunting lodge.

NCIS’ two strongest agents are so nervous when the front door creaks open and they are greeted with, as Knight puts it, “a dead animal depot” full of stuffed hunting trophies.

Things get even worse when they realize that the next room is full of dolls, stuffed mannequin heads and occult books. “Why,” Knight breathes. “Just…why?” This is the most important question of the evening, and unfortunately it remains unanswered other than “sometimes the rich have horrible taste.”

In the middle of their possibly spooky environment, Jess tells Nick that he can stop being the supportive best friend to both her and Jimmy because they are actually doing well. But her explanation is undermined when a creepy talking doll shouts itself from the mantelpiece in her direction.

Well, girl. Get out of that house.

The officers are braver than I, and Torres slaps the doll back into place and then confesses that after almost being killed on his most recent undercover mission, he wants to train hard and get his mind right so he can go on the search go to love.

Iiiiinteresting. Let’s call this the box of Red Hots of the episode. (The reason for this, I hope, is self-explanatory.)

This ghost-averse heart-to-heart is interrupted by a clanking in the basement who turns out to be Mary, who broke in and discovered a small wooden chest that she believes is the Prescott treasure.

She is the one who rented the hunting lodge to continue Hal’s search, which she found out about after Global Courier delivered some metal detectors to Hal at Bryce’s house.

But wait! Didn’t Phil, the candy-packing delivery boy, say he hadn’t been home during Bryce’s absence?

Sure enough, when Phil made the delivery for Hal, he discovered what was going on and demanded a discount. He and Hal had an argument about it, so Phil took a hammer to Hal’s skull.

With the murder solved, Wanda and Bryce join the team to open the wooden box of the extremely haunted hunting lodge. In fact, its contents are priceless: decades-old photographs, an old perfume bottle, the music box Gavin bought Wanda in Coney Island in the 1950s, a locket with photos of long-gone relatives.

Wanda is overcome with emotion when she learns that the fire did not destroy these irreplaceable memories, and she presents Bryce with a photo of his father on his fifth birthday. “He would be so proud of you,” she tells her grandson.

Tearjerkers. That’s the candy for this part of the episode, but also for what’s to come. Because Ducky’s office is the Dr. Donald Mallard Memorial Multi-Purpose Room has become. Torres happily does curls in the corner as Kasie grabs her ohm on and Parker and Knight order their lunch at a table that is definitely not their desk.

Vance (Rocky Carroll) and Palmer are thrilled with the harmony the new space has brought to their work family, and in lieu of the room’s cumbersome name, Palmer suggests calling it simply “Ducky’s.”

The only person missing is McGee, who still feels angry about losing the deputy director’s job to that coin dealer Gabriel LaRoche. Naturally, he goes through LaRoche’s files before joining the Ducky’s team.

That’s right. We ended this week with the Peppermint Patty storyline: McGee’s suspicions are rich, complex, and a little icy.

Stray shots

• It’s unclear how Torres can get into even more tip-top shape, but I’m excited to see him try.
• Best callback of the episode: Knight tells Parker she finally watched The Poseidon Adventure and discovered that Shelley Winters does indeed die while saving Gene Hackman. Of course, our girl also confirms that she would have jumped into the icy water to save Parker even if she had known.
• Speaking of Knight, how much longer do we give this whole “Jimmy and Jess are okay with just being friends” situation? Because I’m almost ready to lock them in a room and sing, ‘Kiss! Kiss! Kiss!” a la New girl.
• Hey, friends. Meet me at Ducky’s!