A Year of NCIS: Day 41: Bikini Wax (Episode 2.18)

Episode: 2.18, Bikini Wax

Air Date: March 29, 2005.

The Victim: Petty Officer Tiffany Jordan.

Emotionally Traumatized, But Ultimately Irrelevant, Witness Who Finds the Body: Technically, nobody finds the body in the opening.  The body is found off-camera by an elderly woman that we, at best, only see in an establishing shot. 

We open at a bikini contest at Virginia Beach.  With all that implies.  Loud DJ, drunk co-eds, a real Panama City Beach scene, but in Virginia.  Our DJ invites Tiffany, a Navy girl, to appear on the stage.  She does not appear, and the DJ supposes Tiffany had some place better to be.  “Better” is a stretch, but she is someplace else.  In a stall in a public restroom, drowned in a toilet. 

Plot Summary: At HQ, Tony and Kate fight over Tony continually disclosing how much he pays for clothes.  Gibbs arrives to announce the case and the team heads to Virginia Beach.  In the elevator, Tony asks if Gibbs has signed off on a missing persons report.  I note this in case it’s important later in the episode, or later in the season.

At the scene, Tony notices a bikini contest about five seconds after Kate says, “Give it five seconds.”  The team examines the body, still draped over the toilet.  Tony sensitively likens it to a swirly, and he and McGee discuss various hazing rituals until Gibbs tells them to get to work or he will introduce them to Marine hazing.  There’s no sign of a struggle and the footprints don’t have smudges to indicate fleeing.  Tony hypothesizes that maybe the victim was already in the toilet vomiting when the attack occurred. 

An ID found in a nearby beach bag demonstrates that the victim is Petty Officer Tiffany Jordan., Kate speaks by phone to the victim’s CO and determines that Petty Offficer Jordan just finished a cruise on the USS Monroe. 

Tony and McGee hand over the scene to Ducky and Palmer.  Ducky is impressed that, in all his years, he has never seen a corpse with its head in the toilet. 

Gibbs and Kate investigate Petty Officer Jordan’s residence.  Kate finds a bunch of weight loss books, and Gibbs finds workout videos.  Kate wonders about a weight loss disorder.  Kate also finds fresh flowers and a note from “John.”  It looks like they were hand-delivered to Petty Officer Jordan.  There appears to be mail missing given how long Petty Officer Jordan was at sea, but Gibbs figures she had the mail held before leaving port.

Tony and McGee head to the USS Monroe to interview Petty Officer Jordan’s rackmate, Petty Officer Egan.  McGee gets queasy on ships, even when they’re in port, which seems inconvenient for an NCIS agent.  Tony has to handle the interview with Petty Officer Egan while McGee exhales into a bag.  Petty Officer Egan appears upset and has no knowledge of Petty Officer Jordan having any enemies.  However, when Tony mentions his theory about Petty Officer Jordan being murdered while vomiting, Petty Officer Egan says that Petty Officer Jordan told her a potentially career-ending secret….

…which we don’t get to hear because the episode spirits us away to autopsy, where Gibbs has questions and Ducky has answers.  Petty Officer Jordan definitely drowned, and her throat showed signs of vomiting.  But Ducky doesn’t think she was bulimic. Rather, she’d experienced a dramatic rise in her estrogen level.  Which means morning sickness.  Which means pregnancy.

The agents are investigating.  Well, Kate and McGee are.  Tony is planning a fraternity brother reunion in Panama City for spring break.  Gibbs shows up angry at the lack of progress.  When Abby can’t find prints, the pressure is on the B-team.  Tony reports that Petty Officer Egan told him that Petty Officer Jordan knew she was pregnant and tried to call the father on a pay phone during a brief stopover.  The father’s cell was turned off, so she left a voicemail.  Kate says she can’t obtain Petty Officer Jordan’s mail from the Post Office for a few days, so Gibbs gives her four hours to accomplish the task.  McGee looked at the phone records for Petty Officer Jordan’s land line and found one call to a yoga instructor two hours before her death. 

Palmer finds something odd in the victim’s head.  It looks like paraffin wax.  Ducky thinks it might have been on the killer’s hands.

Gibbs and Tony interview the yoga instructor, Lisa Kerr, at her hot lady yoga camp at a mansion on the water.  Tony is very distracted by all the hot lady butts in the air, and Gibbs doesn’t give two shits about interrupting the yoga class to speak to Ms. Kerr.  Such charmers. Ms. Kerr met Petty Officer Jordan when the petty officer signed up for her tantric yoga class, designed to increase pleasure during prolonged sex.  Tony’s really not in control of himself now.  Ms..Kerr says that Petty Officer Jordan didn’t have a boyfriend and was the only person attending the class purely for fitness.  She wanted to lose ten pounds for a “Naughty in the Navy” shoot for Get Some Magazine (really).  Per Tony, it’s like Playboy, but less risqué.  Because the photo spread was revealing, but not nude, Petty Officer Jordan got a slap on the wrist from the Navy, but nothing else.  Petty Officer Jordan called Ms. Kerr the previous night to say she was back from her assignment and wanted to meet up to “talk to me about something.”  Ms. Kerr doesn’t know what.

Ms. Kerr’s fiancée, Kevin Holt, arrives from surfing, complaining about the waves.  Ms. Kerr says he should have gone out earlier with her.  Holt asks if there are suspects and figures a girl getting murdered in public at a bikini contest would be pretty easy to solve.  That ends the interview, but Tony and Holt have a brief staring contest.

Abby explains bikini glue to McGee (and intimates, probably joking, that she used to be on the bikini contest circuit).  Still, bikini glue is not the substance in Petty Officer Jordan’s hair. Kate arrives with the petty officer’s mail.  They divvy it up and McGee abruptly hands Abby a stack, prompting a response of, “I love it when you’re rough, McGee.”

Tony determines that Ms. Kerr is the daughter of a wealthy owner of a cupcake company.  She’s in a lot of commercials, and Tony was having trouble remembering why he recognized her.  He thought she might have been an ex-hook-up.  Kate arrives and announces that the flowers in Petty Officer Jordan’s appointments were from Jonathan Redding.  Redding has written Petty Officer Jordan four letters in the last six weeks, and the letters are of the classic stalker variety- if he can’t have her no one can, that sort of thing.  Gibbs and Tony get excited and make ready to go collar the perp 21 minutes early so we can spend the rest of the episode watching Tony be the old guy on PCB spring break.  But Kate breaks the news that Redding is already in jail.  They’re sad.  Then McGee arrives to report that Redding was paroled 13 days ago.  They’re happy again. 

Redding has a record for assault and battery and similar crimes.  Two of his arrests involved ex-girlfriends.  After checking his address and with his parole officer, McGee hasn’t located Redding.  Tony says Redding’s former cellmate saw the murder on the news and is willing to give information for a deal.  Gibbs sends Tony and Kate to check it out.

In the pokey, Tony is playing the heavy on the cellmate.  Until Tony sees the cellmate’s fraternity tattoo and realizes they’re “brothers.”  Then they bond over spring break at PCB while Kate silently tries to will herself back into the Secret Service. 

McGee has found Redding, and he works at a car wash about two miles away from the murder.  Gibbs gives McGee a lecture on anticipating, because he thinks it took entirely too long to find Redding, and that he shouldn’t ever have to waste time deciding what to do next.  Good lesson. 

Kate calls and tells Gibbs that the cellmate said that Redding spent an inordinate amount of time staring at Petty Officer Jordan’s pictures in the GSM spread, and that’s when the letters started.  Redding planned to visit Petty Officer Jordan when he got out of jail.  Gibbs tells McGee to get the keys to the…and McGee, having anticipated, flips Gibbs the keys to the car.

We shift scenes to a party at a car wash in Virginia Beach.  Because why not?  The supervisor points out Redding, and Gibbs, the master of sneaking up on people, yells out Redding’s name from across the parking lot, giving him the opportunity to run.  While this seems like an uncharacteristic error, maybe Gibbs just wanted to send McGee through a car wash without a car.  Because that’s what happens.  And honestly, in the time it takes McGee to get through the car wash, Redding could ahve sprinted to Delaware. Fortunately, when McGee, covered in soap, exits the other side of the car wash, he finds Gibbs handcuffing a prone Redding.  Gibbs tells McGee to anticipate better. 

In the interrogation observation room, Tony and Kate discourse on fraternities and spring break.  Kate thinks it’s all juvenile and Tony asks if she has ever been.  Yes, she responds.  Kate went to Panama City Beach her junior year.  Which is sad, because Kate went to Southern Cal, and there are much closer better beaches with far less white trash in Southern California.  Why buy a plane ticket to gonorrhea?  In any event, Kate maintains that she and her girlfriends conducted themselves with complete dignity.

Gibbs enters the interrogation room.  Redding says he ran from Gibbs because he owes bad people a lot of money.  Gibbs shows Redding the love notes to Petty Officer Jordan.  Redding denies killing her, and claims he loves her.  He was at the contest waiting for her to come out, but she never did.  He came to the contest alone, showed up about a half hour before it started, and stood in front of the stage until it was over. 

In Abby’s lab, she plays back a video of the contest.  Which Tony took home and watched already.  Ew.  They watch Redding at the front of the stage, and he never moves.  He’s standing right there at the estimated time of death.

Tony comes into the office with his copy of the GSM that featured Petty Officer Jordan.  He shows Gibbs photos that Petty Officer Jordan submitted personally to the magazine as part of a profile.  So, there are professional pics, taken by a photographer named Jason Kaplan; and Petty Officer Jordan’s submitted her own pics, which the profile says were taken by her boyfriend.

Tony and Kate arrive to interview Kaplan.  Tony is excited about seeing a photoshoot.  Kate gripes about bikini pictures objectifying women, but then gets the last laugh on Tony when the photoshoot is pure dude beefcake.  Or the last lust, as she certainly seems to enjoy the shoot.  We finally get to the interview, and Kaplan doesn’t know who took the personal pictures of Petty Officer Jordan.  He says his job is to get the release for the pictures and send them to the magazine.  Kate asks if Kaplan has that release on file.  He does, and it was signed by Kevin Holt, Ms. Kerr’s fiancé. 

Abby is testing wax. After a significant amount of work, as demonstrated by a science montage, Abby matches the wax.  It’s used for surfboards.  Hey, Kevin Holt surfs. 

Gibbs and Tony go to visit Holt.  He tries to act cool and claims he barely knew Petty Officer Jordan.  Gibbs mentions the photos, and Holt tries to play it off.  They were just friends hanging out and he took some photos.  Photos his fiancé did not know about.  Holt claims that Ms. Kerr is insecure and has smelled his clothes for perfume and gone through his emails.  Tony says, “Look at that boss.  She’s suffocating him, and all he’s doing is taking lingerie shots of her girlfriends.”  Gibbs asks for a DNA test, and Holt looks nervous at first.  But then he shrugs and gives it up. 

The DNA is a match (for the embryo, I guess).  But the prints don’t match any lifted from the murder scene.  Tony says that just means Holt was more careful at the scene than he was in the bedroom.  Gibbs looks up, interested.

Tony visits Holt in the interrogation room.  And because NCIS is filled to bursting with dirty tricks, they bring Ms. Kerr into the observation room to watch Tony work her fiancée.  Tony tells Holt the bad news first: Tiffany was pregnant, and there’s a 99% chance he’s the dad.  Ms. Kerr’s jaw drops in the observation room.  Gibbs asks if she ever suspected, and Ms. Kerr says no, and that Petty Officer Jordan was her friend.  But she still doesn’t think Holt killed Petty Officer Jordan.  Gibbs asks McGee to get Ms. Kerr a glass of water. 

Tony then tells Holt the good news: a .02% chance that he’s walking out a free man.  Tony blames Holt for incriminating himself, claiming they’ve been trying to get in touch with him for two days and left numerous voicemails.  Ms. Kerr emphatically says that’s a lie and that there were no voicemails.  Whoopsie.  Gibbs asks how she’d know. 

Then we have Ms. Kerr in interrogation, and she gets to deal with Gibbs.  He offers to let her call her lawyer, but she is far too dumb and arrogant to do that.  Ms. Kerr denies listening to Holt’s voicemail and claims she’d never invade his privacy.  Gibbs notes that she didn’t have a problem rooting through his emails, and she is surprised Holt revealed that.  Gibbs then produces the glass McGee handed Ms. Kerr in the observation room, all nice and bagged like good little evidence.  He says they took Ms. Kerr’s prints from the glass and compared them to prints in the bathroom stall.  Pay dirt.  I might have gotten her on record saying she has never been in that public bathroom first.  Because at this point, she does tearfully ask for her lawyer, and she’s rich enough that she’ll probably skate with a comfy plea deal.

Tony heads to PCB.  He’s in a bar funneling beer, wearing a shirt that looks like a Pizza Hut tablecloth and some girl’s straw hat.  He staggers to the head and sees the bar’s Spring Break Wet T-Shirt Contest Hall of Fame.  He appreciates it for what it is, and then something catches his eye.  The wet t-shirt champion for 1994 is clearly recognizable as one Caitlin Todd.  Tony’s maniacal laughter echoes through the credits.     

Quotables:

(1) Kate: All I’m trying to say is it’s not every professional.  Gibbs would never walk in here and tell us what he paid for his shirt.

Tony: That’s because the prices have been pretty consistent at Sears since the late 70s.

(2) “That is one hell of a swirly.” -Tony, expressing sympathy over the tragic death of our petty officer.

(3) “Probie, my stories alone could make you a man.” -Tony, talking to McGee about Spring Break.

(4) Kate: Don’t you ever get flowers?

Gibbs: Don’t like gifts that require attention.

(5) Abby: I compared [Holt’s fingerprints] to the prints that Tony and McGee got from the beach restroom.  They didn’t jive.

McGee: We must have lifted hundreds of prints.  You sure you ran ‘em all?

Abby: No McGee, about midway through I got tired, so I was like ‘screw it.’

Time Until Sexual Harassment: Despite the setting and subject matter of this episode, Tony never directs any active sexual harassment at Kate.  It’s all boorish behavior and anecdotes. But, his discovery at the end certainly represents the Ghost of Sexual Harassment Future.

Ducky Tales: Ducky talks about how he almost became a teacher.  He didn’t follow up on it because “I could never picture myself giving those long, rambling, esoteric lectures.”

He talks about his grandfather waxing his mustache for the handlebar look.    

The Rest of the Story:

-When Tony was at Ohio State, he and his buddies used to do Spring Break at Panama City Beach.  I grew up not too far from there, and that’s about right for Tony.

-McGee has seasickness issues.  From a writing standpoint, that seems like a short-sighted character trait, so we’ll see if it recurs.

-McGee tries to explain spinning rims to Gibbs.  So, I guess we’re back to the theme of Gibbs being utterly clueless about anything outside of his office or his basement.

Casting Call: Nobody I recognized. Although Lochlyn Munroe, who plays Kevin Holt, has an IMDB page with well over 200 credits.

Man, This Show Is Old: We hear about pay phones again.

Abby mentions that she doesn’t get paper mail anymore.  Which is an aggressive life decision in 2005.

Spinning rims on an Escalade are timeless, but this is the time period when they became a pop culture cliché.

Abby makes a joke about Tony forgetting to rewind a video tape.  This is a joke that would make a current high school kid stare blankly at you if you told it today.  But if you’re in your 40s, you remember video stores fining you for forgetting to rewind rented tapes.

MVP: Team effort this week.  Fingerprints, evidence of pregnancy, identity of photographer, DNA match, interrogations.  Everyone participated.

Rating: This one is lackluster.  The spring break theme is annoying; Tony is not his best self; the killer isn’t immediately obvious, but it becomes clear early that it’s one of two people.  There are a couple of good gags and some solid dialogue, but not much in the way of real character work.  And the bit at the end with Kate as a wet t-shirt champion really hasn’t aged well.  Tony’s reaction doesn’t make him look like a merry prankster.  He looks like a creep, and the show, while trying to poke some good-natured fun at Kate, is really just undermining the character further.

Three Palmers.

Next Time: Mental illness, adultery…and Fornell.