That was the wrong move, Dwayne.

Pride was offered a tantalizing new career path but decided against it on NCIS: New Orleans Season 5 Episode 17.

The fate of the top-secret terrorist group Apollyon, last seen on NCIS: New Orleans Season 5 Episode 11, was left hanging while the series pivoted to exploring Hannah's secret past.

What happened to Walker, and was he the brains behind that group? Well, the mystery of Apollyon resumed this episode, kind of.

A bigger mystery was why it took so long to kick Pride out of his Special Agent in Charge desk job. He hated bureaucracy and viewers never saw him do that job, so he really shouldn't have been surprised when someone had taken over for him one morning.

Yeah, it would have been nice if someone had let him know before Pride had driven the whole way to Belle Chasse.

But then he's got to remember to answer his damn phone.

Related: NCIS: New Orleans Season 5 Episode 16 Review: Survivor

So he just drifted in and out of the local NCIS office trying to reach someone to explain to him what he had done to get displaced while intermittently offering unsolicited orders to what was supposed to be Hannah's team.

In other words, business as usual.

Quelle surprise! It turned out that Pride had once again fallen into another promotion that he hadn't sought out. I guess if you piss off enough bureaucrats, an opportunity presents itself.

It was good to see Isler again.

He's rounded into a worthwhile recurring character, even if we haven't seen him since NCIS: New Orleans Season 4 Episode 15, when he ascended once again into the FBI bureaucracy in Washington after some time spent in the wilderness.

Related: Watch NCIS: New Orleans Online: Season 5 Episode 16

Isler was back in New Orleans to make Pride an offer: the chance to be part of an interagency task force seeking to dismantle Apollyon. That made sense since Pride was one with the most interaction with Apollyon.

I thought Pride joining this task force was a great idea.

He could serve as the moral compass for the group, keeping the black-ops members at bay somewhat, so they're not waterboarding American citizens.

This approach also offered some great storytelling possibilities.

Each of the season's remaining episodes would have Hannah's squad handling a case of the week and Pride, and the task force could have developments in the Appolyon story arc.

Pride gave the Apollyon task force a good go. He showed how empathy could extract more information than brute force. It also would have meant he could abandon his off-the-books investigation of Apollyon.

Related: CBS Cheat Sheet

It was kind of Hannah, who is still trying to reassemble her family, to offer some hard-won wisdom to Pride about the price of lying to those you love.

But in the end, family and friends won out. Pride is a social creature. How could a bar owner in New Orleans be any other way?

At least Pride remained the lifeline for this ultrasecret task force, even though it's hard to get too invested in the group if Pride isn't directly involved.

Still, I'd bet there will be an Apollyon-related cliffhanger to end this season.

Also, this means Pride is back where he belongs, in charge of New Orleans. It's almost like he never left.

Wait, he never did leave, or at least stay away.

The case of the week was fun as well. You can't go wrong with sending Gregorio out into the sticks and letting her snark about how creepy small towns are.

Also having the big-city folk trapped in a small town where things seem a little off is always an enjoyable narrative.

As LaSalle pondered, how did all those folks buy those shiny new trucks with their minimum-wage jobs at the dog-food factory?

Instead, the desperate citizens had turned to that burgeoning rural business of cooking meth. All you need is a trailer or a rundown house or an abandoned factory.

All that's even easier when you're backed by the Sinaloa cartel, who can supply the product and handle distribution.

So is Bovis and Police Chief Conroy what Mayberry and Andy Taylor would look like today?

Related: Get CBS All Access via Amazon Channels for Hit Shows, Exclusive Originals & Live TV!

There were no guards at the factory so that law enforcement in the form of LaSalle and Gregorio could sneak up and discover the operation?

That seemed unlikely. But when the local law is the foreman for a criminal enterprise, I guess you get complacent.

It was heartening in the end when a few of the townsfolk had a crisis of conscience and drew the line when it came to delivering federal agents to cartel hitmen.

I figured Pride would ride in to the rescue. But apparently, the cartel wanted no part of killing federal agents on American soil.

It made more sense economically just to cut their losses and leave. There's no shortage of struggling small towns.

So Pride is back in the Quarter. What can viewers expect?

You can probably expect what you've gotten for the past four seasons. Pride with his genial management style directing his team to solve cases, ruffling feathers along the way.

Why mess with what works?

To review Pride's journey back, watch NCIS: New Orleans online.

Are you glad to have Pride officially returned?

Should he have joined the Appolyon task force?

How long did it take you to figure out there was something wrong in Bovis?

Comment below.

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