A Year of NCIS, Day 14: The Good Samaritan (Episode 1.14)

Episode: 1.14, The Good Samaritan

Air Date:  February 17, 2004

The Victim: High body-count this week.  What is this, NCIS: Los Angeles? We start with Lt. Commander Wayne Julius, a dentist at Naval Air Station Oceana.  Then we have a base contractor by the name of David Truly.  Then we have the real star of the show, Lieutenant James Seeger, a pilot at Oceana.

Emotionally Traumatized, But Ultimately Irrelevant, Witness Who Finds the Body: Not applicable.  This week, we start the party with a murder, and the people who would normally be traumatized and irrelevant are shadowy, female murderer in allegedly broken down car, and helpful, chivalrous victim.  Talk about taking liberties with the formula.

Plot Summary: The opening is part of the plot again, so we start on a lonely country road in the middle of the night.  A nice Lt. Commander stops to check on a lady in an abandoned car.  She wants him to call Triple A.  She’s nervous, but he assuages her concern by telling her he’s a dentist and that he does not carry a gun.  Famous last words, because she does.

We shift to HQ, where NCIS admin types want an emergency contact for Kate.  Somebody local.  So she and Tony have a discussion about whether he should be her contact.  For obvious reasons (if you’ve watched even a few of the last 13 episodes), Kate is reluctant.  Abby floats by and asks if either of them are Libras, because Libras “are so screwed this week.”  Abby’s zany, but usually not random, so this was an odd scripting choice.

Gibbs inspires fear by arriving to work with two cups of coffee.  He gets the call, and the team heads to Grayson County.  Local LEO Sheriff Charlie Dupray meets the team, makes fun of Gibbs’s first name, insists he call her Charlie, refers to him as “good looking,” and then decides she has no interest in conceding jurisdiction over a murder investigation in an election year.  She lays out her terms for how the investigation will go, with Gibbs and team handling forensics, Charlie in charge (get it?), all trials conducted in Grayson County, and Charlie getting all the credit.  As a viewer, you’re left dumbstruck by this force of nature.  Gibbs knows when he’s beat too, so he accepts Charlie’s terms.

The team examines the body, which has been moved to look like the Lt. Commander had a flat and got killed when he pulled over to change it.  Once again, we have knowledge the NCIS team doesn’t have, so they’ll just have to muddle along for a bit.  If they ever get to work- Ducky takes a few moments to hit on Charlie, but she blows a hole straight through him.  Chastened (but not really), Ducky lists the COD as a gunshot wound to the back, but there’s no exit wound, no spatter, and Charlie’s crew couldn’t find any shell casings.  Ducky also notes that the hands were bound after Commander Julius died.

Charlie chats up Kate to find out if Gibbs is available for sexy time, and Kate runs away.  Then she moves straight on to the target, showing off her perfume, and asking Gibbs for his number.  Tony, at least, is enjoying the show. 

We shift back to autopsy, where Ducky thinks Commander Julius was killed by a hollow point bullet.

Gibbs interviews Commander Margaret Green, Commander Julius’s CO, to get some personal background.  Commander Julius was good at his job, but kept to himself.  He liked to surf the web for collectibles and, when Tony and Kate investigate his place, they find that he really liked collecting lunchboxes.

Tony and Kate get back to HQ where Gibbs has a dozen messages from Charlie.  She wants to video-conference, so the team heads to MTAC.  Charlie tells them about a murder similar to Commander Julius’s.  The victim was David Truly, a civilian employee at Naval Air Station Oceana.  Based on the similar M.O.- bullet in the back, hands tied, naked- Charlie thinks we’re dealing with a serial killer. 

Ducky shows Gibbs the path of the bullet inside Commander Julius.  The GSR demonstrates that the shot was taken from 3-5 feet.  They also found residue indicating that the killer was wearing latex gloves. Not the work of an opportunity killer.

Abby agrees. She shows Gibbs the undamaged flat tire on Commander Julius’s car and demonstrates that the air was let out, presumably by the killer, to simulate a flat tire.  “The killer went to a lot of trouble to make the crime scene look like something else.”  Abby compares the tire tread of the second vehicle, but it’s a really common tire tread.  Abby founds some prints on the hood of the car, but can’t match them yet.  Either way, it’s clear that this was not a crime of opportunity, and someone put thought into it.

Charlie arrives in street clothes to light up the NCIS offices.  She comes bearing evidence from the Truly murder.  Then she asks Gibbs to take her out to dinner in return.  He takes her to the NCIS cafeteria.  And returns to a grinning team.  But he intimidates them out of making jokes, and they get back to work, explaining the evidence from the second murder.  Most of it is inconclusive, but the local LEOs dug up a patch of earth where the killer took a whizz while waiting for the victim to come along.  Gibbs wants Abby to test it for DNA, and cautions the team that, Charlie’s suspicions aside, two murders don’t make a serial killer.

Which is a good segue-way to victim number three being tossed into the grass, bullet wound in back, naked, hands tied behind his back.

NCIS arrives at the third scene, and while Tony admires this victim’s car, Kate notes that there’s no flat tire.  Charley gives the update, and identifies the victim as Lieutenant James Seeger, aviator, Oceana.  Unlike the other murders, though, this victim was killed the previous afternoon in a different location and dumped.  This makes Kate suggest a copycat.

Gibbs thinks they’re looking for a woman.  He bases this on the hands-off killing, the meticulous clean-up of the scene, and the notion that only a damsel in distress could convince a man to pull off on the side of the road in the middle of the night. 

Gibbs chats with Lt. Seeger’s navigator, Lt. Wallace, and we learn that Lt. Seeger fit a basic pilot stereotype- Harleys, ladies’ man, etc.  Lt. Wallace thinks Lt. Seeger’s wife killed him.  They were going through a nasty divorce and the wife even hired a Haitian priest to put a curse on Lt. Seeger.  Gibbs asks about the financial upside.  According to Lt. Wallace, Lt. Seeger’s grandfather was the original importer of Swiss Army knives, and Lt. Seeger was the beneficiary of the old man’s fortune, along with this brothers and sisters.

So, Gibbs and Kate head off to interview the widow.  She has an answer for everything- claims his death hit her hard, claims she made up the story about the Haitian priest.  She denies having an affair, and basically owns the fact that she’s a suspect.  She denies the murder, and presents an alibi- errands, including the bank.  She agrees to give a DNA sample.

Back to autopsy.  The autopsies of the murder victims are identical, but the bullet in Lt. Seeger is in better shape.  Ducky also swabbed his nose, and found sawdust.  Which demonstrates that Lt. Seeger may have been in his woodshop, and thus on his wife’s premises, more recently than she claimed.  Ducky also found a dog hair on the swab, which matches with Mrs. Seeger owning a couple of dogs.

Abby determines that the bullets that killed all of the victims are identical, demonstrating that there’s no copycat killer.  Kate surmises that Mrs. Seeger committed all of the murders in order to make it look like a serial killer was on the prowl, when all she really wanted to do was kill her husband. 

Charlie rejoins the team, and provides them with video of Mrs. Seeger’s alleged trip to the bank.  She also brought Sleepless in Seattle, in case she and Gibbs get bored.  No such luck- the alibi holds up.  Mrs. Seeger is in the bank during the time of death.  The team gets back to work.  Tony goes to track down the ammo; Charlie leaves to see if the bank camera was altered and to follow up on the rest of Mrs. Seeger’s errands; and Kate begins a full background check of Mrs. Seeger.

Gibbs re-visits Mrs. Seeger.  We’re not really pretending she didn’t do it at this point, and she acts pretty smug with Gibbs, as if daring him to catch her.  The only question is how she pulled it off.

Tony and Kate clean up the motive for the audience.  Lt. Seeger already has his inheritance, AND his wife signed a “lopsided” prenuptial agreement.  Meaning, if he dies before the divorce is finalized, the pre-nup isn’t in play.

Abby finishes with the DNA comparison, and the DNA from the urine at the Truly crime scene matches the sample provided by Mrs. Seeger.  But she has an ironclad alibi.    

Back to Mrs. Seeger’s house, but with a warrant this time.  Her alibi may work for her husband, but the pee at the scene of the Truly murder is sufficient to obtain a warrant based on that murder.  Of course, Mrs. Seeger has an answer for that too.  She has recently given urine samples to her doctor, and claims someone is using them to frame her.  She identifies her doctor as Commander Margaret Green. 

The plot gets a little unglued here because Gibbs goes back to Commander Green for a follow-up interview, and berates Commander Green for not telling him Lt. Seeger filed a complaint against her.  She says she didn’t think it was germane.  And it’s hard to argue with her since Lt. Seeger’s body hadn’t been discovered when Gibbs last talked to Commander Green.  He may not have even been dead.  Regardless, Lt. Seeger accused Commander Green of sexual harassment, and the hearing hasn’t been held (read: motive).  She has an alibi, though- she was at a conference in front of witnesses.

The team meets back at HQ to complain about how two great suspects have two great alibis.  Tony thinks Commander Green committed the murders, and, in a bit of seemingly self-aware comedy, opines “That whole sexual harassment thing?  That’s just wrong.”  Then Kate gets a phone call and claims to have solved the mystery. 

We cut to the team driving in the rain and tracking a vehicle- a vehicle stopped on a bridge.  A male figure walks up to the driver’s side…and it’s Gibbs.  He pulls his gun and arrests his very angry murderer, Mrs. Seeger, who, counter-intuitively, is trying to allay suspicion by creating more crime scenes at which NCIS can gather evidence staging another serial killing.  Charlie drives up up, and Gibbs puts Mrs. Seeger in the back of the sheriff’s car with…HER IDENTICAL TWIN SISTER!

What the hell?  That’s how she created her alibi? Was it intern week in the writer’s room?

The episode ends with the never appreciated NCIS team watching Charlie give a press conference where she makes ready to thank the unsung heroes of the case, the people who don’t get enough praise, the…citizens of Grayson County.  Without whose support she could have never solved a triple homicide.  “It’s an election year,” laughs Gibbs as he wanders off.

Quotables:

(1) “Well, Jethro, there are two kinds of people in this world.  The ones who go after what they want…and everybody else.  Where we goin’? -Charlie demands that Gibbs take her to dinner.

(2)  Kate: I just can’t imagine someone killing for their sister.  I would never kill for my sister.

Tony: Yeah, you barely return her calls.

(3) “Twins.  The Holy Grail of dating…Although twins that kill?  Not good.”  -Tony, being Tony.

Time Until Sexual Harassment: Hell, Gibbs gets sexually harassed the entire episode.  But Tony behaved.

Ducky Tales:  Ducky tells the story of the Good Samaritan from the Gospel of Luke, and relates the history of hollow point bullets.  He starts to tell us a story about finding jelly from a donut on a man’s face, and that sounds interesting, but Gibbs poops the party.

Not a “Tale”  per se, but Ducky tries his luck with Charlie.  She only has eyes for Gibbs and shoots him down.  Why settle for duck confit when you can have a rare steak?

The Rest of the Story:

-Kate mentions a sister.  It will be a long time before we meet her, but she appears in one of the best episodes of the entire series.

-Tony was a first-team varsity basketball player at Ohio State.

-Tony loves Magnum P.I.. He even had a Magnum lunchbox in elementary school.  The math on that works out, but only barely.

-In addition to enjoying driving fast, as we’ve witnessed in the last two episodes, Tony also knows quite a bit about cars.  I feel like the writers think they’re fleshing him out, but they’re sort of turning him into a cliché. 

-Gibbs does not know the song, Thin Line Between Love and Hate by the Persuaders.  Which is weird because it came out in 1971 when he was presumably still living outside of his basement.

-Tony has a cousin named Petey.  Not sure if he ever comes up again.

-Gibbs does not insinuate.  He did not insinuate in Eye Spy (Episode 1.11), and he does not insinuate here.

-I get that, giving NCIS’ wide geographic scope, having a local LEO re-appear strains credulity, and risks turning the show into a modern-day Misadventures of Sheriff Lobo.  But man, it would have been nice to see Charlie show up at Gibbs’s house with a pie every so often.  He wouldn’t have to date her (she doesn’t have red hair), but just be good-naturedly exasperated by her antics.

Casting Call: Charlie, the character find of 2004, is played by Stephanie Hodge, whose IMDB pic is from this episode. She has 29 credits of work, but is clearly very proud of this performance.  As she should be.

Man, This Show is Old: eBay is treated as if it’s a new thing, although even a Luddite like me had been comfortably using it since 1999 or so.  So, Kate’s only vague familiarity with it seems a little contrived.

Gibbs is using On-Star to track Mrs. Seeger’s vehicle.  Remember On-Star?

VIP: Make no mistake, it’s Charlie.  And the voters of Grayson County.

Rating: This episode is entertaining, but it’s also dumb.  “Twins” is the Holy Grail of hacky murder mystery tropes.  And, from a real-world perspective, how could anyone in the 21^st Century think that a major investigative agency would not find out about their twin as part of a routine background investigation.  Like Lt. Seeger’s pilot friends have never made jokes about him hooking up his wife’s twin?  Even assuming NCIS neglected to perform even the most basic background check, one of those guys is eventually going to say, even jokingly, “Alibi?  Maybe it was her twin.” 

Hell, given how much he disliked and suspected Mrs. Seeger, it’s a little implausible that Lt. Wallace didn’t mention the twin in his interview with Gibbs. I genuinely think the writers wrote themselves into a corner with this one and just threw up their hands and said, “Fuck it, let’s say she has a twin and hope everyone is too entranced by Charlie to notice we mailed it in.”

Four Palmers.