A Year of NCIS, Day 25: The Good Wives Club (Episode 2.2)

Episode: 2.2, The Good Wives Club

Air Date: October 5, 2004

The Victim: Petty Officer Third Class Carolyn Figgis. And two other ladies the show never bothers to identify.

Emotionally Traumatized, But Ultimately Irrelevant, Witness Who Finds the Body: We’ve got heavy machinery.  A bulldozer creates a mini-sinkhole at a residence, and some workers look into an underground bunker and find a mummified body.  Classic opening.

Plot Summary: The team, including McGee now, meetsLt. Commander Willis, Norfolk base security, at the scene.  So, this is base housing.  Abandoned base housing, scheduled for demolition, it turns out.  Gibbs asks if the underground opening is an old bunker, but Commander Willis doesn’t know.  They scope the tunnel, which leads to the house.  The team examines the inside, and Tony finds a trap door.  Gibbs, Kate, and McGee head down into a sub-level.  They find the mummified corpse on a bed in a room with a toilet and a vanity/make-up table.  They take pictures, and the mummified body appears to be a woman, dressed in a frilly white wedding dress.  She is chained to the wall.  The nails attaching the chain plate to the wall may have been hammered in by a left-handed perp.    

Ducky arrives and he and Palmer and Tony venture below.  Kate finds a book called The Good Wives Guide: Ten Steps to Pleasing Your Husband.  It’s dated 1955.  Gibbs wants to know how long the body has been here.  Not more than two years, Ducky says. 

Back at the office, Kate looks into the last tenant; and McGee determines that all materials used in the construction of the bunker could have been bought at Lowe’s.  The furniture is all out of date and could only have been purchased at antique stores or received from family members. 

In autopsy, Ducky identifies the woman as 20-25, and lists the COD as non-specific asphyxiation.  She has no obvious signs of sexual trauma, but the mummification makes it difficult to be sure.  The wedding ring she wore appears to have bee removed violently. 

Abby examines the dress.  It was made in 1952, and the bride had been wearing it months before she died.  Abby has prints from our mummy, and those are the only prints in the room.  She’s still waiting on a DNA test.

Based on the fingerprints, Kate reports that the victim is Carolyn Figgis, Petty Officer Third Class, Age 22.  She went missing eighteen months ago. She left for work one morning, and she was gone.  Ducky estimates she’s been dead about a year which means she was in the bunker about six months before she died.  Kate profiles the kidnapper- abused child, trying to create the perfect relationship, and this one didn’t live up to expectations.  So, he cut off her air supply, left her to die in an airtight chamber, and moved on.  Per Kate, this guy isn’t going to stop, and Gibbs surmises that there’s another victim being held captive as they speak.

Which is a segue way to another woman- laying on a similar bed in similar garb- as she opens her eyes.

Kate has re-created the bunker in the evidence garage.  Gibbs seems to have mellowed since shooting Ari in Reveille (Episode 1.23) because he takes time to playfully mess with her for not putting the table lamp in the center of the table.  This is also impressive because Gibbs caught the error from his memory of the scene.  Kate and Gibbs argue over whether the 50s motif in the room makes our perp a young guy or an old guy.  Kate thinks it’s a young guy using non-authentic materials to create the mood of a time when relations between the sexes were simpler and carried more subordination, versus an old guy wallowing in remembrance.  Gibbs wonders whether the kidnapper had to leave his abducted bride behind, because he got transferred by the Navy.

Tony and McGee are off to interview the victim’s parents.  They have tension.  It’s hard to tell over what.  Although, having Tony spar with McGee is a good creative choice because his constant sparring with Kate went to some questionable places. 

Gibbs and Kate re-enact the bride being chained in the room.  Kate chains herself and tests her mobility- she can make it to the toilet, but not to the threshold of the tunnel.  Kate then tries to get inside the victim’s head.  Gibbs notice that a worn spot in the rug demonstrates that the victim was continually kneeling by the bed.  Or praying.

Abby is looking at beetle parts found in the bunker.  The beetle is only indigenous to extreme SE Georgia and NE Florida.  Abby thinks somebody stepped on it and tracked it into the bunker.  The agents examine a map on the main floor.  There are three Naval bases where a sailor could have obtained the beetle.  It doesn’t demonstrate that that person actually picked the beetle up at a base versus being on vacation; BUT, McGee finds that a female sailor who fits the profile has gone missing in Jacksonville.  NCIS Agent Jane Melankovic forwarded a missing persons report on Petty Officer Second Class Barbara Swain.  She has been missing from the base in Jacksonville for almost four months, and it’s a similar type of disappearance.

The team flies to Jacksonville and meets with Agent Melankovic.  Based on the kidnapper’s M.O., Agent Melankovic’s team been doing aerial thermal searches over base housing for a bunker-like area.  They get a hit, and head out to investigate.  But it’s a petty officer’s marijuana grow house.  An impressively well-stocked marijuana grow house.  Base security tells Gibbs that all of the houses have been analyzed.  No heat signatures other than the grow house have been recorded.  Gibbs is clearly frustrated, and we cut to the current victim, clad in her wedding dress, roaming sadly around her prison room.

Abby’s forensic analysis of the first bride’s room yields no findings of interest in terms of fibers or dirt.  She did find some purple silk but can’t place it.  Agent Melankovic brings over files for all the transfers from Norfolk within the last six months.  We get some pretty good banter from Agent Melankovic and Tony as she catches him snacking on a jar of nuts he found in her desk.  Agent Melankovic confirms that the last person to see Petty Officer Swain was her roommate, Petty Officer Deborah Marshall.  Gibbs and Kate go to interview Petty Officer Marshall and Gibbs pointedly does not invite Agent Melankovic, even though she did the initial interview.  I guess he didn’t like what he saw. 

Petty Officer Marshall works in the motor pool.  She reveals that Petty Officer Swain was preoccupied with meeting the one and getting married, but only dated losers, and thought there was something wrong with her.  Petty Officer Marshall never met any of the losers and can’t recall their names.  She doubts Petty Officer Swain could have either.

Agent Melankovic, McGee and Tony go through the personnel files for the Norfolk transferees.  Well, Agent Melankovic and McGee do.  Tony is reading The Good Wife’s Guide.  A digression ensues as to whether his reading, or his approval of the subject matter, is pertinent to the investigation.  It’s not particularly good character work, so I’m guessing the actors added in some improv to pad the run time.            

Gibbs and Kate learn that Petty Officer Swain didn’t see a base therapist, so they check in with the Chaplain.  The Chaplain, Brett Evans, did meet Petty Officer Swain, but only once.  This time, with a woman’s life hanging in the balance, they’re more successful at plowing through penitent-priest privilege than in A Weak Link (Episode 1.22).  Chaplain Evans says he did most of the talking.  Petty Officer Swain was attracted to men who fulfilled her physical needs, but not her spiritual needs, and she mostly met them in bars.  Chaplain Evans tried to convince her that she should be looking for partners who could meet both sets of needs. 

Back to personnel files.  Tony’s still reading his sexism guide when Gibbs calls to check on the personnel files.  Tony nervously bounds up to look at a file.  But Gibbs is no fool and tells him to put down The Good Wives Guide, and pay attention.  He wants the personnel file team to canvass the local bars and see if they can link Petty Officer Swain to anyone in the personnel files.  Gibbs tells Tony to copy the file photos himself, and that’s a good thing because something catches his eye as the files come off the printer.  He calls Gibbs, and it turns out Chaplain Evans is left-handed and transferred from Norfolk.  Chaplains also wear silk stoles, which, depending on the liturgical season, can be purple.  Gibbs angrily spins the car around and begins driving back the way he and Kate came.  It wasn’t Petty Officer Carolyn Figgis who wore a hole in the rug while praying.

Gibbs and Kate head back to the church, and the Chaplain knows he’s hosed, so he puts a gun in his mouth and blows his head off, thus depriving both Gibbs and Kate of the chance at an easy VIP. 

Ooo…that’s graphic for TV.  No brains, but graphic.  You can hear the blood dripping onto the chapel floor.

And now, there’s nobody to help find our petty officer.  A petty officer we get another look at before fading to commercials I’d have to watch if this wasn’t airing on Netflix.

We shift scenes to the Chaplain’s house, where McGee and Agent Melankovic are investigating while Tony watches The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet.  He and Agent Melankovic find the Chaplain’s dark room and I’m starting to think Tony is gonna sleep with Agent Melankovic.  It looked iffy for a while. 

Helicopter thermal searches continue.  The tension is heightened because we’re thinking the Chaplain has cut Petty Officer Swain’s oxygen supply.  The agents at the Chaplain’s house root through his love letters and other possessions.  McGee notes that, between the love of old TV and old music, Tony and our perp have a lot in common.  This prompts Tony to open up the Chaplain’s old school record player (where Tony used to hide items as a kid).  He finds a wedding album hidden in the bottom. Which is horrifying, because the first two pictures he sees are not of Petty Officer Figgis or Swain. 

Abby joins the hunt.  She looks at the photo negatives from the album and finds that they contain more detail because the photos were trimmed to fit the album.  Gibbs sees a riveted door in a photo of Petty Officer Swain and recognizes it as an ammo bunker.  A large-scale search commences.  It’s kind of a run-time search and goes on much longer than necessary.  Tony finds Petty Officer Swain, and she isn’t dead.  In a super-fucked up twist, however, she is completely eaten up with Stockholm Syndrome.  When Tony tells her that the Chaplain is dead, she waits until he turns his head to call Gibbs and brains him with a lamp.  Fortunately, Gibbs knows something is wrong, and Tony identified his position.  Gibbs and Kate converge on the location and Petty Officer Swain has Tony’s gun.  She asks if it’s true that the Chaplain is dead.  Then she says they were supposed to get married and that she doesn’t think she can go on without him and puts the gun to her head.  Kate steps in and uses tips from The Good Wife book to distract her while Gibbs grabs her. 

Back at HQ, Tony is mainlining aspirin.  Kates muses over Stockholm Syndrome.  And Gibbs calls the team to MTAC as the never-ending battle continues.

Quotables:

(1) “Even likable people have beefs…so I’m told.” -Gibbs(at least he knows).

(2) Tony: Let me guess, you never inhaled.

McGee: I inhaled.

Tony: Yeah?

McGee: Yeah.  Once.  A little bit.

Tony: How was it?

McGee: Didn’t like it.

Kate: You didn’t like it?

McGee: No.

Tony and Kate (look at each other): He didn’t inhale!

                                  -discussing McGee’s experimentation with marijuana.

Time Until Sexual Harassment: 26:00 or so.  Tony is reading The Good Wives Guide: Ten Steps to Pleasing Your Husband and endorses its contents in front of Agent Melankovic.  Like Kate, she’s unimpressed. 

Ducky Tales: as they head underground to examine the body, Ducky tells an awful story to the clearly claustrophobic Palmer about a classmate at Edinburgh Medical School who tried to cure his claustrophobia by putting himself in a body drawer in the morgue for 24 hours.  Palmer asks if it worked, and Ducky says they guy died of a heart attack brought on by terror.  Tony grins the whole time.

The Rest of the Story:

-Tony calls McGee “Probie,” which is short for Probationary Field Agent, for the first time.  Get used to it.

-Palmer is claustrophobic.

-McGee reads Redbook.

-It has been a while since our last mummy, in The Curse (Episode 1.5).

-When Petty Officer Figgis went missing, NCIS Agent Chris Pacci handled the case.  Agent Pacci died in the line of duty in Dead Man Talking (Episode 1.19).

-The team travels to Jacksonville.  They had a good run of afloat missions and travel in the first third of Season One, but they haven’t gone any further than West Virginia since Marine Down (Episode 1.9).

-McGee experimented with marijuana in his youth.  Not sure I would have guessed that. 

-Agent Melankovic joins a long list of NCIS agents stationed in other locations who do not impress Gibbs, including Paula Cassidy (Minimum Security, episode 1.8) and Richard Owens (The Curse, Episode 1.5).

-Tony’s and McGee’s banter needs work.  It’s petulant, like Season One Tony and Kate.  But it gets better.  I think it gets better.    

-Gibbs has never seen a therapist, but after his second divorce, he saw a chaplain.

–Tony is watching The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet.  Ozzie and Harriet Nelson’s son Ricky married one of Mark Harmon’s sisters.  This blog isn’t going to turn into IMDB.com or anything; I just happened to know that.

-Kate’s musing over Petty Officer Swain’s Stockholm Syndrome makes one wonder if she’s thinking about her own experience with Ari in Bête Noire (Episode 1.16).

-I wonder if they even tried to look for the other wives in that wedding album.

-How did one lone Navy Chaplain build a bunker under the front yard of base housing with nobody noticing?

Casting Call: Tara Buck, who plays Petty Officer Marshall, had a big role on True Blood.  But I don’t specifically remember her.  Betsy Brandt, who plays Petty Officer Swain has been in a lot of stuff, including Breaking Bad (which I’ve still never seen), Parenthood (the TV show), and Life in Pieces.

Man, This Show is Old: Tony makes a reference to McGee not inhaling when he tried marijuana as a kid.  This was an old joke then, but the reference is to Bill Clinton’s silly defense, during the 1992 Presidential election, to reports about his marijuana use as a young man.   

VIP: Tony saw the clue that put the team onto Chaplain Evans.

Rating: This episode was good, and nice and macabre.  But this is also the kind of plot that other shows do better (Criminal Minds and Bones come to mind).  The slow burn on revealing the perp kept things interesting, the M.O. was creepy, and the stakes were high.  But it was also a little paint-by-numbers, and the pacing makes clear that there wasn’t enough meat for a 42-minute steak.  Good, but not great.

Six Palmers.

Next Time: Get your banjos.  We’re headed to the country to watch a hillbilly feud.