A Year of NCIS, Day 38: Caught on Tape (Episode 2.15)

Episode: 2.15, Caught on Tape

Air Date: February 22, 2005

The Victim:  Sgt. William Moore, USMC.

Emotionally Traumatized, But Ultimately Irrelevant, Witness Who Finds the Body: Everybody in this one is pretty relevant.

Plot Summary: In Shenandoah River State Park, a Marine is filming the scenery, and we view it all through the perspective of his video camera.  Our Marine makes a noise, the screen flips as the camera tumbles over and over, and we see our Marine’s dead body come to rest in front of the camera.  It’s a get in/get out sort of opening.

And credits.  I always watch the credits, even though Netflix lets you skip them.  The theme music puts me in the right mood.

Kate is on the phone with a gal pal talking about something “kinky.”  Tony is lurking at her desk trying to listen.  This is how you know you’re watching the beginning of an episode of NCIS.  This one goes on for a bit because Tony wants to know what Kate considers kinky. His guess of “sex with a root vegetable” made me laugh.  He does have a point that Kate would be disgusted if he were on the phone talking about kinks in the office.  Then the subject turns to porn, and some porn star named Spike Steel.  Tony thinks Kate has a dirty side and feels vindicated when she accidentally cops to knowing what Spike Steel looks like. She claims she saw him on the news after he was arrested, but Tony immediately plugs into some national crime database and confirms no arrest record.

All in all, this is the type of conversation that gives employment defense lawyers nightmares, so it’s a relief when Gibbs comes charging in and tells Tony to gas the truck.

The victim is Sgt. William Moore.  He and his wife were camping with his buddy Sgt. Roger Caine.  The ranger says that Sgt. Moore went out early on a hiking trail to film the sunrise and slipped and fell and died.  So NCIS gets a day off and we spend the next 39 minutes listening to Tony and Kate discuss their favorite kinks.

Just kidding.  Gibbs belittles the ranger’s conclusory speculation and lack of investigatory acumen, and we get on with the real investigation. 

Tony and Kate make McGee carry most of the bags while they discuss whether he’s in good enough shape to hack it in the wild.  They continue to talk about Spike Steel as well.

At the site of the body, Ducky asks Palmer for his conclusions.  Palmer rattles off the basic injuries you’d expect with a fall death, although the body, particularly the face, looks to be in much worse condition than in the opening.  We’ll see if that’s true or if it matters.  Ah, never mind- Ducky thinks a coyote got the body, so that’s why it looks worse.  Ducky doesn’t make any definitive conclusions and simply defers further analysis to his autopsy table.

The ranger previously noted that while his wife said Sgt. Moore was out filming, they have not found a camcorder.  McGee, however, finds the camcorder.      

Sgt. Moore’s wife blames the camcorder for his death, and she’s irritated that her husband spent eight months in Iraq only to die like this.  Sgt. Caine starts telling NCIS about a loud, rowdy drunk camping nearby and how the drunk took a swing at Sgt. Caine and Sgt. Moore when they asked him to quiet down.  Sgt. Moore put the man in a headlock until he calmed down and then he took off.  Sgt. Caine didn’t get a license number because he claims the guy was harmless.   

Ducky is in autopsy till talking about predators, but I think he means scavengers.  He finds something in Sgt. Moore’s head that he directs Palmer to take to Abby.  Ducky discourses some about his mother’s habit of processing meat in a Cuisinart, and then invites Palmer to dinner.  Palmer seems excited and then put out by the thought of eating sushi slurry. 

Abby does scienc-y stuff with machines, and determines that the fragment in Sgt. Moore’s scalp is a kind of wood that isn’t indigenous to the area.  Also, it’s kiln-dry wood with a lacquer coating.  Gibbs suggests a baseball bat, and Abby agrees.  Yup, we got a murder.  Take that, park ranger.

Kate gives some background on Sgt. Moore.  He was an instructor at Quantico in something acronym-y that Tony tries to explain before being interrupted by McGee.  They bicker some before Kate gets them back on task.  The last people to see Sgt. Moore alive were his wife and best friend, both of whom we’ve already met.  Tony and McGee both think it’s odd that a single guy would hang out with a married couple and not bring a date (I used to do it all the time).  They think Kate is weird for doing it too, and she tries to explain that a lot of her friends are men from Secret Service and they often invite her to hang out along with their wives.  Tony wants to know about the friend Kate was talking to on the phone at the beginning of the episode.  She is also married to a Secret Service guy, and now Tony and McGee are cracking up because they think this means that these dudes all want to sleep with Kate.  Then it turns into a When Harry Met Sally conversation as to whether men and women can be friends.  Tony can’t even opine through his laughter, and McGee only says, “technically.”  When Kate asks him to elaborate, Tony says, “She’d have to be pretty ugly,” and they both crack up.  This is all incredibly juvenile (Kate calls them 4-year olds), but Kate is clearly a participant, and I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t chuckling.

The team heads down to the lab, where Abby has made herself a fun paper hat with a skull on it.  The boys are still bickering and shoving each other, and this episode is going off the rails, but not necessarily in a bad way.  The actors are clearly having a good time, and you have to wonder how much of this is improv’d.  There were clearly a couple of takes because Weatherly breaks character a little bit and grins at Murray, but when the scene breaks slightly, he’s back to frowning and it’s not seamless at all.  Sasha Alexander seems like she’s about to crack up too.

Abby has the tape mostly recovered, so they watch the two sergeants talk about shutting down the drunk guy in the trailer while the wife tries to talk them out of it.  Sgt. Moore films the encounter, and it mostly plays out the way Sgt. Caine described it.  Abby got a license plate from the video, and the trailer is registered to David Runion. 

Abby made Kate a hat too.  But with pictures of colorful flowers instead of a skull.  Kate seems reticent but puts it on to be a good sport.  McGee, having not learned his lesson from Black Water, Episode 2.11 about betting on the silly things one can trick Kate into doing, has to hand Abby $20. He bet Abby she couldn’t get Kate to wear the hat.  This time, however, after McGee leaves, Abby hands Kate $10 and says, “Your cut.”

Gibbs sends McGee and Tony back to the park to figure out where the Sergeant was killed before he was tossed off the cliff.  They find a blood trail into the woods.  Tony is about to caution McGee, but McGee cuts him off and asks why Tony always treats him like he’s an idiot.  Tony says he’s just trying to impart a little wisdom, but McGee graduated top of his class at FLETC (Federal Law Enforcement Training Center) and doesn’t need Tony’s advice on how to search a wooded area.  McGee searches through the underbrush for a while and finally finds the murder weapon.  Tony compliments him and McGee apologizes for blowing up.  Tony lets the slow burn simmer and tells McGee he did a brave thing.  McGee questions this, and Tony points out that McGee has been rooting around in poison ivy.  Tony tried to warn him.

Kate has found Runion.  He has a record for assault and battery for nearly beating a man to death with a pool cue.  So, she and Gibbs go to visit.  Runion has a mean, yappy little dog and Gibbs makes friends with it. Runion doesn’t answer his door, and there’s no probable cause, so the agents head back to HQ, but stop at a drive-thru to eat on the way.

Just kidding.  They totally go inside, guns drawn.  Probable cause is for losers.  They find a lovely urine smell and a big ole’ bag of marijuana that will absolutely be suppressed by a judge if Runion bothers to hire a lawyer.  But, per Kate, they can bring him in and hold him for a while (can they?  Possession by a civilian isn’t a Navy crime).  Just in time, Runion wanders back with some firewood to witness the immolation of his Fourth Amendment rights.  Too bad he runs.  His defense is a lot better if he cooperates.  He hides and calls Kate an idiot under his breath when she runs by. But Gibbs magically appears behind him and puts a gun to his head. 

Runion sweats in the interrogation room.  He also threatens to piss himself if NCIS doesn’t let him go to the bathroom.  Tony thinks he’s bluffing.  Kate has seen/smelled the inside of his camper and isn’t so sure.  Gibbs arrives and cuts right to the chase: “Why’d you murder Sergeant William Moore?”  Runion has no clue who he is, even when he sees a picture.  So, Gibbs plays the video of their encounter, but Runion still denies it.  He ran from Gibbs and Kate because of the marijuana in his truck.  Which makes sense, and his alibi of “sleeping” at a rest stop at the time of death certainly fits with his inebriation level.  He can’t exactly corroborate it, though, so Kate finds two potential locations and goes to see if they have surveillance.  Gibbs shows Runion a photo of the murder weapon, but Runion doesn’t appear to recognize it and denies ownership.

Speaking of bats, Abby matches the piece of wood from Sgt. Moore’s head to the bat.  She tells McGee there are no prints, and then turns and spazzes at his poison ivy rash covered face.  Ugh, I don’t want to look at it either.

In an odd bit of micro-continuity Kate is on the phone with Sheriff Lester from Black Water.  He asks her to dinner but she declines on account of him having a wife and all.  Tony is lurking at her desk and says he’s practicing to being sneaky like Gibbs just as Gibbs sneaks up on him.  It’s a very well done and well filmed scene  with great physical comedy and facial expressions by all three leads. 

Gibbs asks about Runion’s alibi and Kate says the sheriff is pulling the surveillance tapes; and Tony has circulated a description of Runion’s trailer among the local LEOs.  Then, presumably because of the “old man” crack, Gibbs informs Kate that Runion pissed the interrogation room and sends Tony to clean it up.  He even calls janitorial to tell them Tony will handle.

In autopsy, McGee is seeking medical attention from Ducky.  Ducky informs McGee that the oil from the poison ivy plant spreads by hand contact.  McGee informs Ducky in network TV prose that he took a piss and passed poison ivy onto on his dick.  Ducky becomes the second person at NCIS to ask to see McGee’s dick.  Ducky’s a little horrified at the level of swelling.  McGee is a little horrified at the prospect of Tony finding out about this.  Palmer enters and is a little horrified that McGee’s McGee is hanging out in autopsy.  And Ducky isn’t so sure Palmer isn’t going to spill the beans to Tony.  Ah well.

Kate and Gibbs watch the rest stop video, which seems to exonerate Runion. Although the stop is only two miles from the murder scene, the trailer never moves.

In the lab, Abby tries to reassure McGee that Tony got poison ivied as a probie too.  It’s not much consolation, especially when the rest of the team shows up to see McGee looking like Harvey Dent. 

Even Gibbs says, “Can you still work, McGee?” and seems impressed when McGee doesn’t burn a sick day or twelve. 

Back to actual work, Abby isolated a little more of the videotape, around the time that Sgt. Moore and friends are setting up camp.  They catch a shot of Mrs. Moore and Sgt. Caine, and Mrs. Moore seems to be trying to stroke his head while not knowing they’re being filmed.  You know, by her husband. Then there’s a shot of the wife asking Sgt. Moore, “Honey, what’s wrong?”  Tony, ever mindful of decorum, takes this moment to ask Kate if she still thinks men and women can just be friends.

We cut to Abby trying to read Mrs. Moore’s lips, but not having much success.  Kate thinks the face touching between Mrs. Moore and Sgt. Caine indicates more than friendship.  Gibbs tells Tony to pick up Sgt. Caine and Kate to pick up Mrs. Moore.  Abby gets excited for “musical interrogation rooms.”

Tony and McGee pick up Sgt. Caine.  They tell him about the murder.  Then Tony asks about the affair in his usual direct style.  McGee shows the video.  Sgt. Caine says, “It’s not what you think.”  But they all say that, so he gets the cuffs.

Meanwhile, Mrs. Moore is trying to figure out why she’s at NCIS HQ.  She does seem to be disturbed that her husband’s camcorder still functions.  Then Gibbs and Kate ask if Sgt. Moore was the jealous type right as Tony and McGee walk by with a handcuffed Sgt. Caine.  He yells, “What did you tell them, Judy?!” and Tony shushes him.  Then Gibbs has Kate take her to the interrogation room.

Abby pulls up the last of the tape, which is where we came in at the beginning of the episode.  It shows Sgt. Moore slipping and falling.  But the impact of the camera did something [technical jargon] to the tape which preserved an image that was recorded over.  So the image of the camera falling is a re-record by the killer.  Abby thinks she can re-produce all of it given time.  Gibbs gives her twenty minutes and tells her to get McGee to help her. 

While observing Sgt. Caine in the interrogation room, Kate concedes that Tony may have a point about men and women not having the capability to be friends.  Then Kate makes it awkward by asking Tony if he finds her attractive.  He says, “Sure” (although, what else is he gonna say? She has a gun). Kate asks, “Then how come you’ve…never…?”  And it’s an interesting point.  Tony definitely harasses Kate and routinely invades her privacy.  But he doesn’t really flirt with her.  And I’ve said in several other posts that they don’t have sexual tension or even a beleivable attraction.  For Tony, it’s all a power trip and an effort to obtain advantage, and to be outrageous, and because he thinks he’s funnier and more charming than he is. But he’s not hitting on Kate.  Kate asks why, and Tony says, “I know you.”  We’re left to wonder what that means.

Gibbs enters the room and asks if something is wrong with Sgt. Caine’s arm.  He says he picked up some poison ivy in the field.  Hmmmmm.  Gibbs asks about his friendship with Sgt. Moore, and they have been friends since boot camp in San Diego (Gibbs calls that a “Hollywood Marine”- I guess Paris Island is the real deal).  Then Gibbs follows Tony’s line of questioning by asking how long Sgt. Caine has been screwing his buddy’s wife. 

We shift in space and in time to the second interrogation room, where it’s still Gibbs, but now interrogating Mrs. Moore.  She wants to know why she’s in the interrogation room.  She claims Sgt. Caine would never have murdered her husband.  Sgt. Caine was with her that morning.  Gibbs asks if they were in the same sleeping bag. 

And we head back to Sgt. Caine.  Sgt. Caine thinks Mrs. Moore told Gibbs they were screwing and calls her insane.  Sgt. Caine says that after Sgt. Moore left, he went to the campground showers for about an hour (doing what?) and Mrs. Moore was making breakfast at the campground when he returned.  Gibbs interprets that as Sgt. Caine saying that one of them had an hour in which to kill Sgt. Moore.  So who did it? 

Back to Mrs. Moore.  She doesn’t believe Sgt. Caine would accuse her of murdering her husband.  So, Gibbs has Kate play back a portion of the interrogation but altered to make it sound like Sgt. Caine is calling Ms. Moore insane as part of a confession that she killed Sgt. Moore.  Gibbs watches her wilt and says, “Let me guess.  You thought he loved you.”  Mrs. Moore reveals that when Sgt. Moore was in Iraq, she and Sgt. Caine had an affair. 

Gibbs comes out into the hallways and tells Tony to put both suspects in the same room.  Then he goes to get more coffee.

Putting the suspects in the same room is interesting primarily because they’re both idiots.  At least Mrs. Moore knows that the interrogations CAN be recorded, but they speak frankly to each other anyway.  Sgt. Caine calls what they did fooling around, and Mrs. Moore says that Sgt. Caine told her he loved her.  Sgt. Caine makes clear that Sgt. Moore was his best friend and that it never should have happened.  Mrs. Moore says, “Why did you kill him if it wasn’t to be with me?” and Sgt. Caine makes clear he does know people are listening because he calls her an ugly name and loudly denies the murder to the observation window.  Mrs. Moore drops the hammer, telling Sgt. Caine she’s pregnant with his baby.  It’s all good entertainment for Tony, but, as Kate observes, we still don’t know who’s telling the truth. 

In Abby’s lab, Abby and Two Face keep working on the video.  Lo and behold, they hear Sgt. Moore say, “Is that you, Roger?”  Then they hear the sound of a struggle and see…Runion as he leans down to examine the camera. Well then.

McGee explains to Gibbs that while Runion’s trailer never left the rest stop, Abby was able to invert the surveillance photo to show Runion returning to the trailer around 9:00AM.  Since it was only a four-mile round trip, he went back to the camping area on foot, found and killed Sgt. Moore and returned to his trailer.  Kate finds out from Sheriff Lester that Runion just made bail for the pot charges.  Gibbs, Tony, and Kate head out after him. As they leave, McGee asks about Sgt. Caine and Mrs. Moore. Gibbs says to let them suffer because, “Sgt. Moore would appreciate that.”

And now we get to one of the more memorably awesome and over-the-top sequences in NCIS history.  Runion is loading items from his trailer into his truck.  His yappy little dog jumps out of the truck and runs back inside the trailer.  Runion walks after him, but then quickens his pace into the trailer when he sees NCIS pull up.  The agents exit the car, and Runion re-appears with a rifle he has somehow converted into an automatic machine gun.  He also has unlimited bullets per basic action drama physics.  The NCIS agents are badly outgunned as he pins them down behind their car and fires at them from a window in the trailer.  “I ain’t going back to prison, Gibbs, you hear me?!” Runion shouts.  Kate offers to circle around back, but that’s a dicey proposition, and Gibbs has a better idea.  He whistles, and the little dog comes running out of the trailer, leaping over the steps down to the ground.  You actually hear Runion yell in frustration as the dog abandons him.  The dog hops in the NCIS car, ready for a new home, and Gibbs says, “Might want to cover your ears.”  Then he puts three bullets into the propane tank on the back of the trailer and destroys the entire trailer in a flaming explosion.

“I think you got him, boss,” says Tony. 

And it looks like Kate gets the dog, which she names Tony.  Or Toni, since it’s a girl.

Back at HQ, Toni the dog hates Tony the dog.  But she wuvs her new pink bow.  And her new food bowl: Tony’s NCIS ball cap. Abby finally settles the debate: men and women can be friends.  They’ll still have sex occasionally, but they can be friends.     

The End.

Quotables:

Kate: Ugh.  My mother wonders why I’m not married.

Tony: So does mine.

Kate: Could you stop doing that?

Tony: I’m practicing, Kate.

Kate: What?  Annoying me?

Tony: No, the creepy way Gibbs used to sneak up on us.

Kate: What do you mean “used to.”

Tony: The old man’s been wearing Ben-Gay lately.  I can smell him coming a mile away.

[Kate’s lips thin and she looks away].

Gibbs [standing behind Tony]: Is that a fact, DiNozzo?

Tony: Knee feeling better, boss?

Gibbs: Much.

Tony [grimacing]: Great.

Time Until Sexual Harassment: Immediately, as a drooling Tony stalks and lurks at Kate’s desk while she talks on the phone to a friend about sex-related topics.  Kate is very obviously talking about sex in an open office space, which is not OK, but the arc of harassment history bends to point an accusatory arrow at Tony.

Ducky Tales: Ducky talks about how coyotes scavenge human bodies.  And tells an offbeat story about hooking up with a girl in a field of poison ivy.

The Rest of the Story:

-Weirdly, accoridng to IMDB.com, Sgt. Moore has appeared twice in this series. He was in Call of Silence, Episode 2.7 (maybe as part of Cmdr. Coleman’s security escort), and Split Decision, Episode 1.21.

-McGee doesn’t look any worse for wear after the events of the previous episode, Witness, Episode 2.14.

-Gibbs pulls another one of his ninja appearances when he arrests Runion.  He claims he used to do it for a living.

-Kate mentions that her mother wonders why she’s not married yet.  Tony overhears and says his wonders the same thing.  Episodes aren’t always aired in the order in which they’re filmed, so I guess this episode didn’t get the memo that Tony’s mom is dead.

-Tony gets hit in the head.  He asks Gibbs to stop.  Gibbs isn’t going to stop.

-I’d guess that, with the murderer found and the husband conveniently removed through no fault of their own, Sgt. Caine and Mrs. Moore will stay together and raise that baby. But I think Gibbs destroyed any magic they might have had or recaptured. I wonder how they’ll spin it to Sgt. Moore’s parents when the child they’ll quite naturally think is their grandson arrives.

Casting Call: Nobody I can place.

Man, This Show Is Old: For the second episode in a row, we get to see an industrial size 2005 camcorder.

In describing the assault on Sgt. Moore, Abby says, “Someone did a Barry Bonds on Sgt. Moore’s head.”  Bonds was still playing professional baseball at the time and still had three seasons before retirement (although 2005 was significantly abbreviated by injury).  Bonds was a known for hitting home runs, often with chemical assistance, but Abby is presumably not referring to the killer being juiced on steroids at the time of the murder.

MVP: Yeah, this one’s no contest. Gibbs saved the dog, and then killed the perp by blowing him up with a propane tank. And believe it or not, Gibbs has an even better take-down in a couple of seasons.

Rating: This was a very fun episode. It was offbeat and contained a lot of gags. The actors were having fun and maybe even ad-libbing a lot of the scenes. The approach to the adulterous suspects was knife-twistingly sadistic, but appropriate even if they didn’t ultimately have culpability for the murder. And the way Gibbs flambeed the perp is worth five Palmers on its own. Seven Palmers total.

Next Time: Did you hear the one about the bartender who woke up next to a dead sailor?