A Year of NCIS, Day 28: The Bone Yard (Episode 2.5)

Episode: 2.5, The Bone Yard

Air Date: October 26, 2004

The Victim: Victor Gera.

Emotionally Traumatized, But Ultimately Irrelevant, Witness Who Finds the Body: No formula today, but this is one of our better openings.  A man wakes up in a field of abandoned, broken down cars.  It looks like a junkyard, but something’s off.  There aren’t enough vehicles and they’re all painted camouflage.  Our victim seems to know where he is.  He sees a burned-up corpse next to him and looks around and begins panicking.  He starts trying to kick his way out of the car, and we see some folks in military gear with walkie-talkies calling in a strike.  A fighter jet approaches overhead, and it becomes clear the man is tied up in a car on a Marine practice bombing range. 

The opening raises the tension by depicting the man getting free of the car, untying himself, and running.  The military personnel see him and call in to abort the strike.  But it’s too late.  A bomb falls, the victim runs.  Another bomb falls, the victim runs.  Then another.  He’s getting to the perimeter and he just might make iBOOOM! 

No.  No, he doesn’t.  It would have been a quick episode if he had escaped.

Roll credits. 

Plot Summary:  We begin the episode proper on Kate’s ass.  Seriously.  She’s doing yoga stretches on a mat.  She’s in what I assume to be an NCIS gym since Tony and McGee subsequently enter and McGee takes notice of Kate’s, erm, flexibility.  Tony warns McGee to be subtle if he wants to look, but McGee doesn’t own anything subtle and gets caught. 

Oh-ho-ho.  And it’s personal combat training, taught by Gibbs.  2:30 in and this episode already has Palmers to lose.  And Agent Fornell hasn’t even shown up.  Gibbs, because he has a mutant super-power for searching out and exploiting tension between his agents, pairs McGee with Kate.  Tony and Gibbs head to the ring.  There’s only one way the script is gonna let either of these fights go.

We start with Kate and McGee.  Kate’s head game is vicious as she pre-games with a heavy bag and lets McGee know what he’s in for.  Kate tells McGee they’ll be grappling today, and McGee dismissively informs Kate that he did some wrestling in high school.  He seems to have already forgotten being hauled around by his ears in See No Evil (Episode 2.1).  And cue an 80s training montage (sans music) of Kate tossing McGee all over the mat.  It ends with her foot on his throat.

Over to Tony and Gibbs, in the ring.  Tony likes to dance, but eventually they get to it.  Tony has been taking boxing classes and, in a fair fight, might have an advantage given the age and weight differential.  But Gibbs doesn’t fight fair. He puts Tony in an armlock and kicks his legs out from under him, and that’s the end of it.  The Marine Corps doesn’t teach boxing, Gibbs says.  The Marine Corps teaches fighting. 

Gibbs has to answer the inevitable “Dead Guy!” signal on his flip phone, so Tony grinningly walks over to watch Kate continue to toss McGee like a salad.  She asks if she has mentioned that she was handpicked to protect the President, and McGee groans, “Five times” as she pins his arms behind him and steps on his spine.  He finally gets pissed, kicks her off him, and pins her.  But she laughs and wants to know why he’s holding back.  McGee has never wrestled a girl.  Kate asks Tony if she looks like a girl.  Tony lies and says all he sees are two NCIS special agents.  And then Kate kicks McGee in the balls.  Which is just petulant.  And I’m not over-identifying with other balls-havers.  I genuinely wouldn’t have cared if she had done that to Tony.  It feels gratuitous with McGee, though.  Moreover, it undermines Kate’s earlier display of competence for a cheap laugh.

Gibbs breaks it up and says they’re headed to Quantico where a guy tried to outrun a 500 pound bomb.  “And?” asks Kate.  “He lost,” Gibbs concludes as he exits.

To the scene.  Tony jams on the brakes to send McGee flying in the back of the van.  Gibbs is not happy.  He doesn’t care about McGee, but is livid at the amount of activity on his crime scene.  Gunnery Sergeant DiLuca, Army CID (the NCIS equivalent) greets Gibbs, so Gibbs blames him for the circus.  Sgt. DiLuca has summarily determined that this is an accidental death scene, not a crime scene, so why dot i’s and cross t’s?  He declares the victim a scrap metal scavenger, and a stupid one at that, but graciously allows NCIS to handle the paperwork, as he puts it.  Then he spits what looks like a dip loogie at Gibbs’s feet.  Gibbs tells Tony to secure the scene and remove everyone except EOD (Explosive Ordinance) personnel.  But Sergeant DiLuca can stay so maybe he’ll actually spit on Gibbs’s boot.  Kate figures that will be a good excuse for Gibbs to whack Sergeant DiLuca upside the head, but Gibbs makes clear that he’d just as soon shoot him. 

Hijinks continue as Kate sets up Tony to describe what happened the last time he worked a scene like this one.  Tony tells the story of EOD not marking off the area correctly, which led to the unfortunate death of a probationary field agent.  We cut to probationary field agent McGee nervously walking the approved line with Tony and Kate lagging far behind him and waving encouragement. 

Ducky thinks the victim was running when the bomb hit, and Gibbs asks about bruising on the wrist and face.  Tony notes the expensive Italian shoes, which rules him out as a scavenger.  Gibbs follows the victim’s foot path and finds the ties that were binding his hands.  Gibbs is outside the EOD clearance area, which creates a weird contrast between his methodical side and what one could oxymoronically call calculated recklessness.  Sergeant DiLuca is not impressed and, to his credit, also walks into danger to get Gibbs to see sense.  The find the second body in the car and Gibbs asks if the Gunny still thinks this is an accident.

Gibbs arrives in autopsy.  Ducky confirms that the facial injuries on our primary victim preceded death and that our victim was beaten before he ended up on the bomb range.  The other victim wasn’t burned by the bombs.  The body has been deceased at least six months.  Gibbs says there are more bodies out there and that NCIS has stumbled into a bone yard- a serial killer’s dumping ground.

Back at the scene.  Sgt. DiLuca and a subordinate find a piece of another body- a finger bone.  They also find unexploded ordinance and narrowly escape being turned into ash.  Sgt. DiLuca manages to grab the bone.  He’s a jerk and maybe a little sloppy, but you can’t fault his dedication and bravery. 

Abby identifies the body as a fellow with a criminal record.  And then she gets hacked.  Viciously hacked.  She and McGee type super fast on the same keyboard (this makes zero sense) to try and stop the hack, but they can’t.  Fortunately, Gibbs and Tony, sandwich in hand, arrive.  Gibbs stops the hack by unplugging Abby’s machine.  In the age of cloud storage that wouldn’t work at all, and, while I’m more Gibbs than McGee in terms of computer proficiency, I’m not sure it should work here. But nobody looks at Gibbs and says, “Well, that was pointless,” so declare it a victory for Luddites everywhere and move on.

The team puzzles over who could have the computer power to effectuate such a hack, and conclude that whoever our victim is, he has friends in high places.  Meanwhile, McGee makes a power play of his own and takes a giant bite out of Tony’s sandwich.

So, who is our victim?  He’s Victor T. Gera, AKA Guido Valentino, career criminal on the make.  McGee assumes Mafia but Tony reminds him that not all Italianos are mobbed up.  Gibbs sends McGee scampering to find the connection between Gera and our super-hackers. 

Gibbs gets a call from Sgt. DiLuca that pisses him off, so he leaves and meets Sgt. DiLuca in the evidence garage.  Because of the explosion, EOD has declared the entire crime scene off limits.  Sgt. DiLuca thinks for three weeks. 

Abby and McGee plan to catch the hacker if he comes after her PC again.  There’s some technobabble about back tracing the hack, and McGee plugs the computer back in.  It works, at first.  Then something happens that shocks Abby and McGee.  She declares that Gibbs is gonna kill McGee because, whatever it is, Abby sure isn’t telling Gibbs about it.

Kate reports that, in the portion of the range that EOD has cleared, they’ve found three bodies.  Gibbs sends the Gunny to cordon off the area.  It is now clear that our Gunny recognizes who drives the boat around these parts.  McGee arrives to take his medicine, and lets Gibbs know that the hacker is…

…FBI Agent Fornell’s dramatic entrance.  “It’s me.”

Fornell wants to know why NCIS is interested in Vic Gera.  Gibbs lets them know the hard news: that NCIS has Gera in custody, but he’s in a non-breathing way.  It’s not the first time Gibbs has surprised Fornell with a corpse (Enigma, episode 1.15), and it’s not the first time that corpse turns out to be an FBI agent (See, Id.)  At least the murder suspect isn’t one of Gibbs’s former COs this time. 

The team gives the FBI the scoop on how their undercover agent died.  Fornell wants the killer.  Gibbs interprets it as an offer for a joint investigation.  Fornell says “I can’t.”  Gibbs asks Kate and Tony to give the FBI the bum rush.  Fornell calls for an elevator conversation.  They leave, and Tony and FBI Agent Charles have a measuring contest.  Admittedly, the FBI are depicted as a bunch of authoritarian pricks on this show and Tony has a chip on his shoulder anyway, but there’s a dead federal agent on the table.  There’s probably a better time and place for this.

In the stalled elevator, Fornell identifies Jimmy Napolitano, a mafioso in charge of operations in the tri-state area that Fornell has been trying to nail for years.  Three trials, three technicalities later, he has bupkis.  Gibbs is bringing up old stuff and has no sympathy for the man who let Ari Haswari walk free (Reveille, Episode 1.23).  Fornell labels Ari a “valuable intelligence asset” while Napolitano is cheap hood.  Gibbs recollects Ari shooting Gerald, kidnapping Kate, and shooting Gibbs and insists on comparing apples to, I dunno, Granny Smith apples?  Fornell declares an impasse there, and Gibbs turns on the elevator.  Fornell turns it off, calls Gibbs an insufferable bastard, and asks for his help.  Gibbs shrugs and mentions his offer of a joint investigation.  Fornell admits that he can’t talk in front of his agents because Napolitano keeps staying a step ahead of him, and Gibbs observes there must be a mole in the FBI.  Fornell says FBI internal affairs can’t help him, and says Gibbs is the closest thing he has to a friend. 

Gibbs, flattered (ish), asks if Fornell is dying.  When the answer is no, he asks if this is part of a 12-step program.  Fornell gets tired of the shit and cuts to the chase: “You gonna help me or not?”  Then the kicker.  The FBI believes the mole is Fornell.  And then, weirdly, Agent Charles and the other agents arrest Fornell as soon as he gets off the elevator (why’d they let him come with them, and talk to Gibbs alone, in the first place?)

We cut to MTAC where Gibbs, Tony, and Agent Charles are watching video of a bad Italian stereotype Napolitano’s son Little Ricky.  Which…I guess doesn’t constitute a joint investigation?  Little Ricky is with Sal Balducci, Napolitano’s muscle, and then Napolitano himself shows up.  Napolitano waves at the surveillance, and Agent Charles says Napolotano’s goons find the inside wiretaps as quickly as the FBI installs them.  Gibbs mentions the mole, and Agent Charles denies that a mole exists.  He thinks Napolitano set up Fornell (which explains a little better why Agent Charles allowed Fornell the latitude he had right before his arrest).  Agent Charles directs the surveillance team to shift over to a man with giant binoculars whom he identifies as the Mafia operative spying on the FBI spies.  Agent Charles says they’ve nicknamed the guy “Abe Vigoda.”  “Abe Vigoda” puts down his binoculars, and its actually a grinning Abe Vigoda with a stogie in his mouth.  I laughed out loud. Then Tony and Agent Charles do a Godfather riff (maybe?) until Gibbs gets annoyed. 

That was quick.  Fornell is in a jail cell and already wearing orange.  Gibbs brings him coffee.  Or Gibbs’s version of coffee.  Fornell isn’t impressed.  He tells Gibbs the FBI found a bunch of coke and cash in his freezer.  Gibbs wants to know why Napolitano would pull this now after all these years and Fornell says he was vulnerable.  Then he hits Gibbs with the guilt trip, as, per Fornell, he experienced some (perhaps expected) political fallout for arranging a meeting between Gibbs and a “valuable intelligence asset” that Gibbs then shot through the shoulder (Reveille, Episode 1.23).  Amazingly, none of the higher-ups were impressed with Gibbs’s defense of “I was just helping Ari maintain his cover with al Qaeda.”  Fornell wonders if he’s getting out of this mess, and Gibbs is confident he will.  “It just might not be the way you like.”

In autopsy, Ducky identifies the second victim as Frank Pinlatto (spelling?).  Agent Charles calls him “Frankie P,” so we’ll do that too.  He was a witness against Napolitano five years ago when he disappeared walking his dog.  Kate notes that Ducky said he’s only been dead six months or so.  Ducky shows the COD to be bullet wounds to the chest, but then tells the agents that the body, while likely killed years ago, has only recently been exposed to the elements.  Indeed, the killers drained the blood from the body after death and froze it.  Gibbs asks Agent Charles for the file on Fornell.  Agent Charles is shocked and states that he hasn’t even seen it and if he gets caught, he’s finished as an agent.  Ever helpful, Gibbs tells him not to get caught.

In the lab, Abby is examining blood and the finger bone.  She found some non-Gera blood on Gera’s face, so that could be helpful in identifying a killer.  Before she gets to the bone, Kate starts teasing Tony about losing the fight to Gibbs earlier, and Tony, with Gibbs now standing behind him makes a big show about how he took a dive to keep Gibbs from taking a loss out on everyone.  Sensing Gibbs is there, Tony braces for the head slap, but Gibbs tells him to turn around and re-assures Tony that he has a sense of humor and isn’t going to hit him.  Nobody (including Tony and including me) is reassured by this.

Regarding the finger, Abby gets creative.  You can’t normally date bone until it has been in the ground for centuries, but bone found on a practice bombing range can be swabbed for explosives.  And Abby found an explosive that the military phased out after 1986.  Which means the Mafia has been dumping bodies for at least eighteen years.  Gibbs tells McGee to see if he can get Little Ricky’s DNA, and then pops the hell out of Tony because, “It’s no fun if you know it’s coming.”

Then Tony smacks McGee.  For eating his sandwich.  Shit flows downstream.

McGee learns that Little Ricky beat a couple of paternity suits with DNA testing.  Those court records are big time sealed, but McGee and Kate figure that if they pose as a pregnant couple, they can get access to the clinic where the test took place and photograph Little Ricky’s records.  Tony horns in because he claims nobody will believe McGee slept with Kate.  In actuality, what nobody believes is that this warrantless donnybrook could ever turn up evidence that could be used against a very well-lawyered mafioso.  But we’ve only got 13 minutes of runtime left, and runtime is like kryptonite to warrants on this show. 

Agent Charles shows up with the Fornell file.  It’s bad because it shows pics of Fornell meeting with Napolitano.  The newspaper in Fornell’s hand in the photo lists the date as October 17: the day before Gera disappeared. 

We cut to Fornell using bed sheets to hang himself in his cell.          

Gibbs and Agent Charles and an ME team (presumably from the FBI) find Fornell’s body.  Agent Charles doesn’t think Fornell killed himself, but the prison guard says nobody else was in the cell to do it.  Gibbs requests that Ducky get a copy of the autopsy. 

Oh dear.  Tony and Kate are waayyyy too old to be undercover as Jersey Shore rejects fighting over who got Kate pregnant.  Of course, the objective is to make a scene, but their clothes (and accents) make them completely non-credible even as scene-makers.  Kate asks to be allowed to wait away from Tony and this gets her access to the innards of the clinic where she finds and photographs the correct records.  Again, there’s no way this evidence isn’t the target of an aggressive and successful suppression hearing.  Permission to roam in the exam room area is not permission to roam into a records room and take photos of files stored out of plain sight; and the confidentiality privilege related to the records belongs to the patient and not the clinic.  Even by network TV’s loose standards, this is a shit search.

Regardless, Abby matches Little Ricky’s DNA to the blood on Gera’s face. 

Napolitano and his kid and goon get pulled over by a LEO.  The NCIS agents are there too, and have a warrant for Little Ricky’s arrest (somehow).  They pull him out of the car.  Little Ricky condescends to Kate and she pulls some of her McGee moves on him and slams his head on the car hood before dragging him off.  Napolitano postures with Gibbs- the standard “we know enough about this to let you know we did it, but you’ll never connect us to it, and if you do, we can do the time standing on our heads” bit.  Gibbs explains that jail is a dangerous place.  That leads to Napolitano making fun of Fornell’s death- “doing the twist.”  This earns Napolitano a one-handed chokehold from Gibbs, while his muscle gets to stare at the business end of Gibbs’s outstretched firearm.  Gibbs tells Napolitano, “I get the government agent on your payroll by sun-up, dirtbag, or Little Ricky does the twist.”  Napolitano wants to know what’s in it for him.  Gibbs says he’ll deliver Little Ricky, the evidence will get lost, and none of them will see Gibbs again.  Napolitano can’t believe Gibbs would do all this just to clear Fornell’s name, but Gibbs says Fornell was his friend.

Agent Charles, speaking for all of us, explains to Gibbs that he can’t threaten to kill someone in custody.  Gibbs advises that it wasn’t a threat.  Napolitano calls Gibbs and tells him to come to the club but pull the surveillance.  Gibbs says he’s gone rogue so he can’t do that.  He tells Napolitano to pick the place and says it’s to show he’s not playing tricks.  Napolitano picks Coleman Park.  They agree to each bring one man, and to meet in an hour.

A fight ensues amongst the agents as to who gets to go with Gibbs.  Gibbs selects Agent Charles to the extreme annoyance of his agents.  But Gibbs needs someone who can ID the guy Napolitano turns over as either FBI or DOJ. 

We head to the meet.  Gibbs emerges from the woods as Little Ricky, handcuffed, in the backseat, is complaining to Agent Charles.  Napolitano shows up with Balducci.  Agent Charles gets Little Ricky out of the car.  Napolitano gets the purported mole.  Shit.  It’s Abe Vigoda.  Gibbs has been tricked.  Or has he?  Gibbs sets off an explosive in a tree, and then wraps another bomb around Little Ricky’s neck.  He claims the detonator has a dead man’s switch that will detonate if he lets go (say, if he’s shot).  Agent Charles and Balducci pull their guns on each other.  Gibbs says they can still deal, but he wants the mole’s name.  Napolitano looks over at Agent Charles, and Gibbs laughs and says, “Yeah, that’s what I thought.”  Agent Charles loses it, admits his culpability, and calls Napolitano a very ugly name.  While everybody else argues over whether Gibbs will really blow himself up to kill Little Ricky, Agent Charles decides that Gibbs can blow up everybody for all he cares and draws a bead on Napolitano.  Not his best move, because that prompts a sniper from Napolitano’s team to solve the Agent Charles problem with a head shot.  Which is really disappointing because Napolitano said he would only bring one guy to the meet.  If you can’t trust a mobster…

Napolitano breaks the stalemate by leaving Little Ricky with Gibbs.  Jail will do him good, says dad, and nobody wants any more of Gibbs’s crazy than has already been offered.  Little Ricky demands removal of the bomb, and Gibbs releases the dead man’s switch and tells Little Ricky to do it himself.  This being network TV, they don’t show the large brown stain in Little Ricky’s underwear, but Gibbs is going to have to drive back to HQ with the windows down.

Back at HQ, McGee is trying to figure out how Gibbs knew Agent Charles was the mole.  Tony and Kate claim they knew, and they start telling McGee to think outside the box and expect the unexpected.  Gibbs says that’s good advice as he walks up with a healthy-seeming Agent Fornell to the amazement of all. 

“What?” Gibbs says in an irritated tone to hia wide-eyed agents.  And the credits roll, leaving the audience to fill in more blanks than usual.      

Quotables:

(1) Tony: You learn how to box in the Marines?

Gibbs: No.  The Corps doesn’t teach boxing.

Tony: That’s your loss.

[Gibbs smilingly dodges a punch, puts Tony in an arm lock, punches him in the back of the head, kicks his leg out from under him and pins him by the throat]

Gibbs: They teach fighting. 

(2) Ducky [to the body]: He means well.  But often I have an overwhelming urge to slap him.  Is that wrong?

Gibbs: I do it all the time.

Ducky: So I’ve notticed.  But only on the back of the head.

Gibbs: Slap the face would be humiliating.  Back of the head is a wake-up call.

                                                                        -At least he has standards.

(3) “Well at least I get to give Gibbs the finger.” -Gunnery Sergeant DiLuca, referencing the finger bone he almost died obtaining.

(4) “Realizing how sad this sounds, you’re the closest thing I have to a friend, Gibbs.” -Fornell, offers a bleakly self-aware assessment of his life.

(5) “Oh yeah it does sort of look like him.” -Tony, on Abe Vigoda playing “Abe Vigoda.”

(6) Napolitano: And Gibbs, you hurt my boy, I’ll kill you brothers, your uncles, your father, and after their funerals, I’ll kill you.

Gibbs: No brothers, no uncles, my father passed years ago.  I do have three ex-wives whose names and addresses I will gladly fax on to you.

Time Until Sexual Harassment: Right at the beginning, McGee gets caught rather obviously ogling Kate’s form as she stretches.  Abby catches him too but seems less pissed.  Tony was good, though. 

Time Until Abject Racism: 41:18.  Agent Charles angrily refers to Napolitano as, “You dumb wop.”

Ducky Tales: None today.

The Rest of the Story:

-Gibbs works out in an NIS sweatshirt.  NIS is the old name for NCIS.

-Ducky did a tour in Vietnam.

-Kate thought only Tony could piss Gibbs off the way Sgt. DiLuca does, but Tony reminds Kate she never met Gibbs’s second wife.

-Agent Charles got to accompany Fornell to his last agent body identification in the NCIS autopsy, in Engima, Episode 1.15.  I doubt Fornell bothered to look in on Agent Charles’s corpse.

-Gibbs and Fornell confer in the elevator.  At present, Fornell is the only person who rates an elevator conversation.

-All of the conversation between Gibbs and Fornell about Ari Haswari relates to episodes Bête Noire  (Episode 1.16) and Reveille (Episode 1.23) from last season.

-Still no real clue if Abby and McGee are still together, or if they’re apart and he’s pining, or what.  She catches him checking her out while she’s working the microscope but doesn’t seem to mind overly much.  But he also tries to conceal it, which he wouldn’t do if they were still in any way together.  It’s very strange, and I honestly can’t recall how long it goes on.  Although, if you think this “Are they/Aren’t they?” is frustrating, wait a bit.

-Tony gets a head slap.

-When Kate announces the agents as NCIS, Little Ricky laughingly asks if they’re meat inspectors.  That’s a pretty good variation on this theme.

-When Napolitano threatens Gibbs’s family if he crosses him, Gibbs says he has no brothers or uncles.  That appears to be true.  But he also says his father passed away years ago.  That may well be a strategic lie because he’s talking to an unrepentant killer, but it’s a lie regardless.  We meet Gibbs’s father a number of seasons down the road.

-Fornell mispronounces “DiNozzo” at the end.  Hard to tell if he’s mocking him, doesn’t care enough to learn his name, or if Joe Spano made a mistake.    

Casting Call: Robert Costanzo plays Jimmy Napolitano and is a go-to actor when you need a big, spunky, in-your-face Italian guy.  I recognized him initially as the waiter in Forget Paris, but he’s also Joey’s dad on Friends, the voice of Detective Harvey Bullock on Batman: The Animated Series and its DC Animated Universe progeny, and a host of mob guys here and there.  He doesn’t have crazy amounts of screen time in this episode (he’s probably expensive), but his performance is in the top echelon of what you see from guest-stars on this show.

Man, This Show Is Old: A hack today would likely not be so easily foiled by unplugging a machine.

VIP: Gibbs didn’t kill the perp, but he set up the situation that got the perp killed.  That’s sufficient.

Rating: Other than episode 1, this season has so far lacked for good character work.  It has either been non-existent, under-developed, or over-reliant on juvenile squabbling like Tony and Kate with their poor man’s Moonlighting banter, or Tony hazing McGee like they’re starring in a G-rated Animal House or a very special bullying episode of Saved by the Bell.  By contrast, today’s combat training montage looks shallow on first glance (and could have ended better) but it was a fun way to see the characters’ personalities on display.  Tony is talented, but cocky.  Gibbs plays to win.  Kate is hyper-competent but feels a need to show it off (understandable given some of the writing room’s choices for her character).  And McGee has a lot to learn.  We also saw some great dialogue between Gibbs and Fornell.

The main plot suffered for it, though.  Some of it is excusable.  I walked in under the yoke of knowing what comes next.  Fornell ain’t dead because he appears on dozens of subsequent episodes.  So, if they’re faking his death, they’re doing it to draw out the real mole.  And since Agent Charles is the only FBI agent with any screen-time, it becomes pretty clear who the mole is. 

The less excusable problem is Agent Charles is a mole with suddenly critical bad decision-making skills and a superiority complex.  He allows NCIS to join the investigation because he figures they’ll corroborate the frame on Fornell, but never actually believes they’ll uncover his scheme.  It’s a lack of self-awareness that feels plot driven when you consider that, as an FBI mole, Agent Charles has been operating without detection for years.  When catching the bad guys depends on the bad guys suddenly becoming dangerously stupid and sloppy, it sucks some of the fun out of the chase.

In fact, the only thing that make this plot work is the idea that the Mafia thinks maybe Gibbs suspects them of having whacked Fornell.  Thinking they have a loose cannon fed gunning for them might cause some missteps, but it’s all very convenient. 

Related is the idea, that the audience has to figure out what the endgame is.  Fornell didn’t get Napolitano.  Also, odds are, NCIS didn’t get Little Ricky.  No federal prosecutor is going to charge him on this evidence.  If the objective was to remove the mole, mission accomplished, but this sure seems like a convoluted way to do it (why did Fornell need to fake his death?)  While some episodes feel padded with runtime filler, this one feels like they had to leave important material on the cutting room floor.  Worse, per IMDB.com, Napolitano and Little Ricky are never seen again, so it’s not like the show revisits the hanging plot threads.  This probably should have been a two-parter.

Although, frankly, any plot on a show like this is going to suffer from having the Mafia as an adversary.  Beating up random servicepeople criminals with bad searches and circumstantial evidence is one thing.  Coming after a criminal organization with the best lawyers and even some politicians on speed dial with anything less than a perfect case is awkwardly implausible.  And this is way less than a perfect case.

Still, this was a fun episode in spite of itself.  The episode contained a lot of good character development that has been sorely missing, and some of the twists and turns were probably a lot more exciting during the original run when Fornell was more of an antagonist, hadn’t won the fans’ hearts, and could be seen as expendable.  I’ll give it six Palmers.

Next Time: Terrorists try to blow up a lady. Or do they?