There's nothing wrong with tying up a few hanging storylines before the holiday hiatus.

Foremost among these were the questions lingering from the Clearwater investigation on NCIS: New Orleans Season 4 Episode 10.

I obviously missed some crucial details, because I thought that investigation was all wrapped up.

But apparently not. The big mystery remaining was the identity of ex-Mayor Hamilton's partner.

Hamilton wasn't just the high-profile frontman for the proposed Naval shipyard, with faceless corporate backers providing funds for operational support, such as assassins. 

I was fine with it being left murky. Hamilton was gone, and New Orleans was better for it. Instead of yet another slimy white male in charge, now it's a fresh-faced black woman. I bet that has blackened some whitefish. 

No, instead the new mystery was "guess the identity of Hamilton's partner." Also of interest was who was killing all of Hamilton's co-conspirators who got released before they could testify.

It's always convenient when writers can pull an unexpected murderer out of nowhere. So we got Charles Fournier, an old acquaintance of Dwayne's and an investigator for the D.A. whose wife died in the Clearwater flooding.

It was pretty obvious that Fournier had a mad-on for anyone involved with Clearwater. So it was no surprise when the team quickly settled on him as Prime Suspect #1.

Pride hatched his latest hair-brained scheme, and he got it cleared by his immediate supervisor. He asked the supervisor to pretend to fire him, so he could ingratiate himself with Fournier and somehow convince him to give up the partner's name so that Hamilton would lose his leverage.

But Fournier got killed by a fake U.S. Attorney before he could give up the name, then she ditched her gun in front of two guards and blamed Pride for the shooting.

He's got such a bad rep that it was a very believable scenario.

So once again, Pride and Hamilton were on the lam together.  We got treated to several minutes of "Tell me," "I won't tell you." Scintillating stuff.

Pride took him back to the levee Hamilton tried to use to flood Clearwater; I guess hoping that Hamilton's guilt would overwhelm him. Yeah, right. Instead, the shameless Hamilton just screamed how his partner's name was the golden ticket that was going to get him out of prison. Hell, a disgraced Louisiana politician ought to be able to get a well-paying lobbyist position anyway.

That went on until Hamilton slipped into the water. It would have been poetic justice for him to die just like the sailor at the beginning. But no! Instead, Pride saved him so the character can recur whether we want him to or not.

Then, from the anticlimactic file, Pride's team showed up to tell him they had cracked the case, and that the mysterious partner's name had been recovered by Patton from the victim's cell phone. OK, so Pride risked life and limb, and all they needed to do was to recover the right device.

And the mastermind was a local judge? I cry foul. Has a judge deep enough pockets to fund this illegal operation? There's got to be more to it than that.

I wonder whether this storyline is dead, or if it's just going to keep rising from the grave. There's a rather generic hitwoman on the loose. Is there more to it than that?

It was also old-home week, which can be fun. Besides Hamilton, there was Rita, Isler, and even Cassius Pride.

Rita and Pride are great together, which only makes sense with a husband and wife playing them. I'd love to see more of Rita. Maybe  Pride should be sent to Washington for a conference so he can get caught up in a case of hers.

I like Isler better each time he appears, as he tends to be looser and looser. Did he get re-assigned to New Orleans, and I just missed it? He does seem to be in the neighborhood a lot.

Finally, there was Pride's meeting with Cassius. Pride told his father how he felt and had his Martin Luther King moment ("Free at last, free at last. Thank God Almighty, I'm free at last.").

Pride also got off probation. That storyline had run its course. The shrink added nothing, and the mid-level director was even more boring than the one on NCIS: New Orleans Season 3.

Did Pride learn anything? Maybe. But he's still likely to color outside the lines when circumstances dictate. It's part of his charm and also his curse.

To catch up during the holiday hiatus, watch NCIS: New Orleans online.

Which guest star did you enjoy seeing the most? Should Pride have let Hamilton drown? Has Pride changed? Comment below.

Dale McGarrigle is a staff writer for TV Fanatic. Follow him on X.