A Year of NCIS, Day 46: Twilight (Episode 2.23 Season Finale)

Episode: 2.23, Twilight

Air Date: May 24, 2005.

The Victim: Lt. Curtis Janssen, USN, and Lt. Dean Westfall, USN.  Also…well, now, that would be a spoiler.

Emotionally Traumatized, But Ultimately Irrelevant, Witness Who Finds the Body: No witness this time.  Two handsome sailors are speeding along a country road in a convertible toward a vacation and sexy ladies, when a police officer pulls them over.  The officer, wearing mirror shades and a creepy smile, walks up to the car. The driver begins an apology, and the officer shoots both vehicle occupants multiple times.

Plot Summary: Kate is sketching a pic of Tony, leaned back in his desk chair, wearing sunglasses, talking on the telephone.  McGee inquires, and Kate snappily asks if there’s a reason he’s been haunting her desk all week. McGee is checking on how she’s feeling after Tony almost died last episode (SWAK, Episode 2.22), but she just accuses him of taking over Tony’s role of annoying her. 

McGee is needing some cuddling himself, as he is feeling guilty about handing Tony the plague-filled envelope that nearly killed him.  Kate tells McGee it’s not his fault and then reminds him of all the bullshit Tony pulls on them, or the fact that Tony almost died owing them all money.  Of course, then Tony’s phone rings at an empty desk and they both admit how much they miss him.  Kate calls Tony an “X-rated Peter Pan,” and then reveals that Tony told all the girls in the office that McGee is gay to cut down on the competition.  McGee says, “That bastard,” and Kate tells him to hold on to the feeling and he’ll be just fine.  Then McGee tells Kate that Tony said she tried to sleep with him when they were in Paraguay (An Eye for an Eye, Episode 2.17).  Kate vows to kill Tony.

It’s easy to look at Kate as being a bit shrewish here.  But I can say from experience, that sometimes when your close friends get hurt or killed, anger (at the victim and others) is part of the process for certain personalities.  Given Tony’s usual antics, I can see why anger would be a go-to coping mechanism here.

We shift to the elevator, where the man of the hour is riding up with Gibbs. Gibbs asks Tony, who has been out on leave for two weeks, if he’s sure he’s up for a return to work.  Tony says he feels better, Gibbs says he looks like crap, and that he should take his last week of sick leave.  Tony has been going stir-crazy and says Gibbs needs him.  When Gibbs doesn’t respond, he backs off that and mentions how Kate and McGee would be lost without him.  Gibbs mentions that they’re productivity has increased dramatically since he’s been gone. 

Tony appears in the squad room expecting a ticker tape parade.  Kate is taking a call about our dead sailors, and McGee ignores him.  The team mobilizes and Tony suggests that maybe he did die.  Gibbs slaps him in the head and notes that if he felt it, he’s still alive.  “Welcome back, DiNozzo.”

So say we all.  Except Kate and McGee.

At the crime scene, Kate observes that, based on shot placement, the shooter knew what he was doing.  Gibbs examines the passenger, Lt. Janssen, and determines that credit cards and money are intact.  However, the killer cut off Lt. Westfall’s hands at the wrist. 

Tony appears and says the convertible is a rental car.  Then he trips and falls down the hill.  Gibbs tells him he should have taken the extra week, and Kate snaps a pic of a prone Tony but declines to help him up.  Ducky and Palmer arrive just as Gibbs is being sighted through binoculars by a person unknown.

Ducky and Palmer are squabbling about who got them lost.  Tony surmises that the killing was a professional hit with the hands taken to confirm death.  Kate confronts Tony about what he told McGee.  Tony laughs it off and says that he knew McGee wouldn’t believe him because anyone can see Kate’s breasts are real.  Kate, who was talking about Paraguay, is now extra pissed. 

Fortunately for Tony, Kate’s rant is interrupted by a big snake crawling around her feet.  Tony tells her he thinks it’s poisonous, so she’s afraid to make any sudden moves and starts steadily freaking out as it coils around her leg.  Tony is using the Discovery Channel as his muse and kneels down to gingerly approach the snake.  Kate pulls her gun, but Tony correctly tells her that this would be a tremendously stupid move.  Kate is not thrilled that her life is in Tony’s hands, but Tony comes through and removes the snake.  He asks Kate if they’re friends again and she is very relieved and grateful.  And she stays that way for eight whole seconds until McGee comes over, admires the snake, declares it non-poisonous, doesn’t take any of Tony’s hints, and references a time that Tony caught a snake just like this one and let it hang around his neck when they were in Shenandoah State Park (presumably off-screen during the events of Caught on Tape, Episode 2.15).  That’s the fastest I’ve ever seen anyone exit a doghouse and then fly back into it.  Tony is still kneeling, so Kate kicks him over onto his back. 

Which ends up being a good thing.  Because, while prone, Tony sees a bomb underneath the convertible.  It’s looks triggered to the trunk, and McGee, who was in the process of opening the trunk, says he’s turned the key most of the way.  Tony says not to let it snap back and moves in to grab on to the key and get McGee out of the way.  Tony tells Kate and McGee to run.  They hesitate to leave him, but Tony says he’s the fastest and pulls rank.  They run.  Tony tells himself, “Anthony, you should have taken that extra week.” 

Gibbs is on the phone up the hill when Kate and McGee appear screaming.  The bomb goes off  and hunks of metal and a flaming tire rain down, narrowly missing the prone agents.  Gibbs angrily pushes the flaming tire away, and Kate is the first to run after Tony.  Tony crawls up the hill and says, “Boss?  Remember when I said I never felt better?  I lied.”  And then he collapses.

Ducky examines Tony.  His blood pressure is high, but he plays that off to almost exploding and having to hang out with Kate.  Ducky isn’t sure Tony should go back to work, and Tony’s tough guy act exasperates Kate, who says, “Dammit, Tony.  I should just take you home and get you in bed.”  Tony and Ducky both look at her, and she starts excusing the slip as Gibbs appears.  Gibbs moves to business, but Tony asks Kate if she wants to buy him dinner first (and receives the now standard elbow).    

Ducky has confirmed the IDs of the victims.  Gibbs tells Kate to pull their service records and to have McGee trace the 911 call that notified police about the bodies.  He tells Tony to go lie down. 

Tony lies down on the floor behind his desk and he and McGee chat.  McGee tells him that Kate has been worried about him.  McGee suggests that maybe they should be a thing.  Tony says Kate is too smart for that.  McGee shushes him as Kate walks up.  She asks where Tony is and McGee says he’s laying down somewhere.  McGee asks Kate, “You care a lot about him don’t you Kate?” but then motions with his finger to alert her to Tony’s presence.  On questioning, Kate tells McGee, as if confessing, that Tony is charming and brave and hot and, if they didn’t work together, she could see them married.”  Tony is laughing/gloating silently under the desk when Kate leans over and pours her water bottle on his head.  He jumps up angry and says, “very funny,” when Gibbs, as is his wont, arrives to kill the buzz.  Gibbs sends Tony to lie down somewhere else.  Kate waves jauntily.

Abby is doing science!  Tony comes to visit and does a John Wayne impression.  Abby hugs him too hard, and lets him take a load off on her floor. She even gives him her farting stuffed hippo as a pillow.  Tony asks what he missed, and Abby tells him Gibbs has been super-cranky, maybe because of his knee, and Kate broke up with some lawyer she was dating because he had bad personal hygiene.  Tony meant about the case.  He thinks the bomb was professional.  Abby gets down on the floor next to him and agrees.  She describes the contents of the bomb, but then disagrees with Tony’s idea of tracing the materials.  Weapons grade material is usually tagged for identification, but this isn’t.  Gibbs arrives and asks if Abby is sure.  She is, and the detonator is similarly clean.  Gibbs summons Tony, says they’re all being targeted, and they leave.  Abby hugs Bert the hippo.

McGee reports that the 911 call was anonymous and untraceable.  Kate tells Gibbs that the dead lieutenants are both pilots.  Lt. Westfall has been at a base in Aberdeen, Maryland where they test new tech.  Tony thinks maybe the killers cut off Lt. Westfall’s hands to get his fingerprints and access the base, but nothing at Aberdeen relies on finger/palm scanners.  Lt. Westfall’s work was classified. 

Gibbs puts together that the car lacked military decal, being a rental, and the victims were in civvies.  McGee realizes that the 911 caller reported two dead sailors anyway.  Gibbs thinks someone wanted NCIS to investigate the scene.  Kate asks why, but it’s obvious.  Someone wants to kill the NCIS team.

Gibbs goes to MTAC, and holy shit!  Either one hell of a bender just ended, or the greens are being resurfaced at the country club, because NCIS Director Morrow came to work for the first time this season! 

I joke.  Director Morrow has probably only just now finished cleaning up the political mess from Gibbs’s premeditated, point-blank shooting of “valuable intelligence asset” Ari Haswari’s shoulder at the end of Season 1 (Reveille, Episode 1.23).  Gibbs reports to the Director his theory about his team being targeted.  Gibbs’s biggest concern is that the bomb was military grade and tough to get “outside of certain circles.”  When Director Morrow asks if Gibbs is suggesting another agency, Gibbs notes, correctly, that he has pissed off a lot of people.  Then Director Morrow gets, how shall we say, inopportunely cagey.  With the lives of the entire team at risk, the Director tells Gibbs to keep his suspicions to himself because there are other factors in play.  Then he refuses to say anything else.  What the hell?  Then he tells Gibbs he’s dismissed.  “You have a good evening, sir,” Gibbs grunts in that way that all smart mouths know how to get in the last word while seeming just innocent enough to cruise under the insubordination radar.  After Gibbs leaves, Director Morrow tells the MTAC crew to connect him to the Director of the FBI.

The team is eating Chinese.  Except Tony.  He is waxing dramatic about his plague experience.  Gibbs tells Kate he wants to know what Lt. Westfall was doing at Aberdeen by the time he returns from an errand he won’t identify.  Gibbs tells McGee to come up with other reasons to chop off the lieutenant’s hands, and he tells Tony to eat something and gives Tony McGee’s Chinese. 

Gibbs is walking down the sidewalk.  A motorcyclist on a sporty ride, fully helmeted, rides up near him and revs the engine.  Gibbs doesn’t react, but we’ve seen that play before.  See Reveille, Episode 1.23.

Back in the squad room, the team is working through why Lt. Westfall lost his hands when McGee announces, “Trouble.”  And he means FBI trouble, as Special Agent Fornell stalks into the darkened squad room.  Fornell wants Gibbs.  But Gibbs ain’t there.  So, Fornell tells the team: “Ari Haswari is back.”  See Bete Noire, Episode 1.16 and Reveille, Epsiode 1.23. 

Kate is horrified that the US government would “let that psycho back in the states without telling us!”  Fornell says Ari was supposed to be helping the FBI uncover an al Qaeda cell in the DC area.  Tony gloms on to “supposed to” and asks what the hell that means.  Fornell thinks Ari is here for more personal reasons.  He’s here to kill Gibbs.

Gibbs walks out on to an outdoor patio of a restaurant with his coffee and finds Ari, motorcycle helmet on the table, reading a newspaper and waiting for him.  While it’s not exactly clear how Gibbs managed to arrange this meeting (or whether it was arranged for him), he accuses Ari of trying to kill his team.  Ari is insulted.  If it were him, they’d already be dead.  Gibbs says he’s taking Ari to NCIS for an interrogation.  Ari disagrees and says he has taken the precaution of planting an explosive under one of the patio tables, and may even tell Gibbs where if he’s cooperative.  Gibbs asks what Ari is doing in the States, and Ari says that he’s tracking an al Qaeda cell in DC.  Ari doesn’t know anything about the target, but says al Qaeda sent him to the US on his own mission: a test.  If he passes, he’ll be allowed into the Washington cell.  Al Qaeda wants Ari to kill Gibbs.  Gibbs isn’t shocked because the contract means he’s doing his job.  Ari asks what Gibbs would do in his position and Gibbs tells him he should kill himself.  Ari laughs, and says the prohibition on suicide is the one tenet of his religion to which he subscribes.  Gibbs says he can help out with that.  Ari calls it a kind offer, and makes one in return: Gibbs has 24 hours to find and eliminate the al Qaeda cell.  If he fails, Ari will be looking to make his bones…by making Gibbs bones.

Yeah?  Yeah?

Ari asks how Kate is, and says he has thought of her often.  Gibbs says, “Come near her, and I don’t care what government agency is watching your back.  I will kill you this time.”  Ari says he wouldn’t have it any other way, exits the patio, and climbs on his motorcycle.  Gibbs asks where the device is.  Ari claims he lied about it. 

But Gibbs doesn’t believe that and finds a bomb under his own table.  It’s ticking down from 30.  Gibbs doesn’t cause a panic but runs into an alley and throws the bomb into a dumpster.  For the second time in a day, the force of the blast knocks Gibbs down, but he is unharmed.

I’d guess Ari stuck him with the bill too.

Tony has left 20 messages for Gibbs, but Gibbs returns right before the agents leave to look for him.  Gibbs already knows everything they want to tell him about Ari and nonchalantly says he and Ari had coffee and Ari tried to kill him.  Gibbs asks about Lt. Westfall.  McGee would like Gibbs to elaborate a bit on the effort to kill him, and Gibbs says, “I’m alive, now tell me about Westfall.”  Lt. Westfall was only attached to Aberdeen, and was working with Danborn Avionics, a civilian contractor on some kind of module testing.  The FBI is investigating the place now. Gibbs asks where Fornell is and the boys direct him to MTAC.  McGee then asks Tony why Gibbs is taking the attempt on his life so well, and Tony responds that Gibbs is looking forward to finding and killing Ari.

Gibbs confronts Fornell about Ari.  Fornell said the FBI has known Ari was in the country for about a week, but only just learned his cover mission.  Gibbs says he’s taking him down, but Fornell disagrees and says the FBI can handle it.  Gibbs says that the civilians at the coffee shop that Ari tried to kill might disagree but Fornell says NCIS is sitting this one out.  Gibbs smirks and says, “You can try to stop me,” and Fornell says it won’t be him and looks at the MTAC door.  Gibbs walks in. 

Director Morrow is STILL at work, setting some kind of record.  He tells Gibbs that Ari is off limits and that Gibbs will be in protective custody.  For his own safety.  Gibbs notes that this is for Ari’s safety, not his.  Director Morrow shrugs and says it’s an order and Gibbs had damn well better follow it to the letter.  Gibbs is not about to take this shit from Director Sabbatical after running his own show for 22+ episodes, and resigns. But the Director says he’s not going to accept the resignation until after the current case has been solved.  The Director wants to know if Gibbs has found any information connecting Ari to the two murdered lieutenants.  Gibbs has not. 

But then Director Morrow does Gibbs a solid.  It turns out that Gibbs’s protective detail is Kate.  He says that Gibbs should be flattered because Kate used to protect the President (drink!)  Gibbs is told that he will follow Kate’s orders as if they came from the Director.  Which is hysterical because anyone who has watched 12 minutes of this show knows Kate is no match for Gibbs on any playing field.  But maybe that’s part of Director Morrow’s plan to let Gibbs roam like an angry, rabid antelope while maintaining plausible deniability. 

Kate takes charge and directs Tony and McGee in the security concerns.  Gibbs tells them to go home because he’s staying at HQ.  He doesn’t need an army of agents watching him build his boat.  He says he’ll call Kate if he leaves the building and shoos them all out. 

Gibbs goes over the case file for a while and then walks around the squad room to observe his sleeping agents, exactly none of whom left.  Even the recovering Tony.  Gibbs is quietly proud of them.  Kate is sleeping under her desk, and Gibbs pulls her blanket back up.  Then he wanders over to the window and drinks his coffee.

Kate wakes up and sees Tony and McGee sleeping.  Then she looks over to Gibbs’s desk and sees Gibbs’s corpse, throat slashed and blood everywhere.  Ari taps her on the shoulder and she turns in horror to him saying, “Did you miss me?”

Yeah, I’m not messing with you. That happens. Of course, then Kate wakes up for real.  Man, dude gives everybody nightmares (Reveille, Episode 1.23).  Tony and McGee tease Kate about saying Gibbs’s name when she wakes up.  “She dreams about Gibbs.” 

Kate gives Gibbs a bulletproof vest, and they go to check out Danborn Avionics, the defense contractor that Lt. Westfall was working with on a modular UAV project- drones, basically.  Rex Eberlee, the contact, says the company removed Lt. Westfall from the security system the previous evening.  Tony asks if there’s any chance that one of the UAVs is missing, but Eberlee says they only have one.  Kate asks if any of the security or development relies on fingerprint or palm ID. Eberlee hesitates and asks why.  Tony says that the killer took Lt. Westfall’s hands and Eberlee says the FBI didn’t mention that.  Eberlee says that the radio flight controls use biometrics, and Lt. Westfall was in the system.  Meanwhile, Gibbs pulls up a nearby tarp and asks what’s underneath.  Eberlee says they’re obsolete, non-operational target drones.  Gibbs says it looks like one is missing.  Eberlee becomes confused and talks about how it would take a team of engineers to get one of the old drones to work and a radio controller.  Gibbs surmises that the bad guys probably have Lt. Westfall’s controller. 

We cut to a terrorist cell working diligently on those very items.  Ari appears, looks into the innards of the drone, and smiles.

In Abby’s lab, Abby briefs Gibbs on the drone.  It’s radio-controlled by a transmitter.  While the transmitter the terrorists stole is for more updated designs, Abby thinks it can be retrofitted.  The range is 40 miles, but way less if it’s loaded with explosives.  Abby thinks you could only put 25 pounds of explosives on the drone and still get it off the ground, but Gibbs and Kate know that 25 pounds is plenty if you’re going after soft targets.  The drone is a crude weapon, though, and Abby thinks she could disable it with another controller even after it launched.  The catch is that you’d have to be in a 40-mile range to jam it. 

Abby tells Kate that she had a weird dream about Tony having blood all over his face, and she woke up crying.  Abby says she never cries, “never, ever, ever.”  Kate reassures Abby that it was just “bête noire” and leaves.  Abby doesn’t seem too reassured.

Tony and McGee are watching the drone thieves on Danborn’s security footage from two nights previous.  Tony thinks one of them looks familiar and zooms in on a terrorist clutching his shoulder.  Gibbs flashes back to shooting Ari in the shoulder and identifies him.  Tony notes that this is not a guy looking for an al Qaeda cell.  “Hell no,” affirms Gibbs.  “He’s running it!”  Gibbs tells Tony to get Fornell before he makes the “Second biggest mistake of his life.” 

Fornell appears in MTAC, and learns that his first biggest mistake was marrying the second ex-Mrs. Gibbs.  Kate and Tony settle into chairs and have looks on their faces that say, “Pass the popcorn.”  The audience too, I bet. Fornell says that Gibbs could have warned him, and Gibbs says, “I did.”  But Fornell thought Gibbs was exaggerating.   

Back to work.  Gibbs asks where Ari is; Fornell tells him to sit it out; Gibbs reveals the plot; Fornell jumps to conclusions that the only Danborn UAV is accounted for.  And once again, Gibbs knows things Fornell doesn’t.  Gibbs says that Ari is playing the FBI: he’s no double agent and he never has been.  Gibbs asks where Ari is, but all Fornell has is an encrypted phone number that Gibbs could never trace without dedicated NSA satellite time.  Gibbs gestures at an MTAC tech. she presses buttons and an NSA tech appears on-screen with two available satellites in range and calls Gibbs “Gunny.”  All the old guys owe Gibbs a favor.  Fornell asks if Gibbs is sure and Gibbs says as sure as he was when he warned Fornell that their mutual wife would clean out Fornell’s bank account when she left.  Fornell hands over the number.  The NSA tech asks Gibbs if anyone is going to answer.  Gibbs says, “Put my name on his caller ID.  He’ll answer.”

The phone rings at the terrorist HQ, and Ari answers.  He wonders how Gibbs got the number, and Gibbs says he pulled strings.  Ari knows it’s Fornell and asks if he’s there.  Gibbs says no and that he (Gibbs) has been thrown off the case.  Ari says he was really looking forward to killing Gibbs, and Gibbs responds that he has resigned from NCIS.  Gibbs tells Ari that the next time they meet, there won’t be anybody to stop him from killing Ari.  The NSA tech completes the trace, and Gibbs hangs up.  Ari is outside of Norfolk, and they’ve isolated him down to a two-block radius.  “What the hell is he doing in Norfolk?” Fornell wants to know, but the NCIS agents have already left MTAC.

En route, McGee is trying to figure out how to jam the drone, but he does not express confidence.  Gibbs reaches back to grab at McGee and there’s a funny bit where the car swerves and Tony reaches over to take the wheel with one hand.  The look Weatherly gives is perfect. McGee then expresses confidence.  Tony talks about NCIS Agent Paula Cassidy being back in town from her agent afloat assignment and how they’re hooking up this weekend.  Kate wants Tony to focus, but Tony is making the point that she’s back because the whole Marine Amphibious Strike Group returns from the Gulf today.  McGee doesn’t think this drone could do much damage to a Navy warship, but Gibbs and Tony know the pier will be packed with families.  They’re the target. 

We get some obvious stock footage of Navy ships returning (you’d think they’d be able to make that seamless by 2005), mixed in with some show-specific scenes, including Ari handing a teddy bear to a girl to give to her returning loved one.  The teddy bear has a locator beacon in it to summon the drone bomb because Ari is a right bastard. 

The team arrives in a warehouse district and McGee feels confident now.  Tony notes that it will take hours to search the warehouses, but Gibbs asks for the shotgun and begins shooting.  This causes a terrorist to immediately appear on rooftops and start returning fire.  Gibbs kills the terrorist with the shotgun.  MVP already?  Gibbs sends Tony to the fire escape, takes Kate with him, and tells McGee to start jamming. 

On the roof, our terrorist, the one who killed the lieutenants, starts to work with the controller.

Gibbs and Kate enter the warehouse and start taking automatic fire. 

The terrorist pulls a Lieutenant Westfall thumb out of an otherwise innocuous cooler filled with Cokes and uses the thumbprint to activate the guidance software.

Gibbs and Kate are still in their firefight, but it’s a pistol and a shotgun against a machine gun.

Outside, McGee is on all fours, shielded by the sedan, working with his controller.  He sees the drone take off from the roof and alerts Gibbs. 

The drone shoots out over the ocean.

Families welcome sailors home with kisses and flowers.  We see the girl with the locator bear in her Navy father’s arms, hugging him tight.             

The drone continues its flight path.  The terrorist is steering it from the roof.

Tony is winded, but he makes it to the top of the fire escape, cautiously peers over the roof and sees the terrorist Gibbs shot.  He tells Gibbs he doesn’t have a visual on anyone else.

Gibbs makes the roof through a doorway, but the terrorist from inside appears with the machine gun, and Gibbs just barely leaps behind the building structure to safety.  Kate fires to distract the guy as Tony comes over the roof, and all three agents fill him with lead, spreading the MVP award around. 

The terrorist guiding the drone is still guiding it toward the peer.  Gibbs comes over the roof and ventilates him.  Gibbs and Tony get to the controller, but the drone is still on target, homing in on the little girl and her teddy bear.

McGee has to take out three frequencies, and he’s already on number two.  Then he takes fire from a window.  He has to duck behind the car, away from his controller.  McGee returns fire, but a bullet from takes out the transmitter. 

On the roof, Tony asks Gibbs if he knows how to fly the drone.  “No, but I know how to crash it,” says Gibbs and he puts three rounds into the controller. 

The drone hits the ocean. 

Gibbs asks McGee if he’s alright.  McGee identifies one terrorist inside.  McGee doesn’t know if he shot the terrorist, but the firing has stopped.  Gibbs tells McGee to hold his position and they’ll flush the terrorist. 

Gibbs and Kate are out of ammunition.  Gibbs stops to re-load from Tony and the last terrorist appears through the roof entrance, gun leveled at Gibbs.  Kate yells, “Shooter!” and dives, taking a bullet in the chest for Gibbs.  Gibbs and Tony empty their clips into the terrorist and he falls through the doorway, dead.  Gibbs and Tony make their way to Kate, prone on the roof… 

…but she’s wearing a vest.  It caught the bullet, and she’s just stunned.  Gibbs breathes a sigh of relief, and Tony smiles and asks Kate if she’s OK.  “Owwww,” Kate says.  “I just got shot at point blank range, DiNozzo.  What do you think?”  “You’re not going to be going to Pilates tomorrow?” Tony responds. 

Kate groans as the agents help her to her feet.  “Protection detail is over, Kate,” says Gibbs.  Tony smiles and says, “You did good.”  Gibbs nods, “For once, DiNozzo’s right.”

“Wow,” says Kate.  “I thought I’d die before I…”

And then a gunshot rings out and a bullet strikes Kate in the forehead, exiting through the back of her skull.  The blood spatter hits Tony in the face and Kate falls dead to the roof. 

Rooftops away, Ari, behind a mounted rifle, says, “Sorry, Caitlin.”

The camera lingers on Kate’s corpse, staring face up as the blood pools on the roof from the exit wound in the back of her head, while also trickling out of the entrance wound. 

Tony looks down, horrified, and then at the roof, hopelessly far away.

Gibbs, a look of almost panic on his face (although certainly not for himself), holds his gun in front of him, aiming at nothing.  He whispers, “Ari.”

And Season 2 comes to a close.    

Quotables:

Wow, right?

Lots of foreshadowing dialogue in this bad boy:

(1) “We’re NCIS agents, McGee.  There’s a chance one of us might die every time we walk through the door.” -Kate. 

(2) “My life in your hands.  I knew it was going to end this way.” -Kate to Tony, regarding the snake.

(3) “Let’s go DiNozzo.  We got problems.  Somebody’s trying to kill us again.”  -Gibbs.

(4) “It’s not every day you escape the clutches of the black death, Kate.” -Tony.

(5) “Look, if it were up to me, I’d put a round through his forehead.  But it’s not.”  -Fornell, regarding Ari.

Time Until Sexual Harassment: It’s not real time harassment, but within the first seven minutes of the episode, Kate learns that Tony falsely told McGee she had breast implants and that she tried to sleep with him in Paraguay. 

At about 11:00, Kate slips up and talks about “getting” the sick Tony in bed (instead of saying “putting”).  Tony asks her if she’s going to buy him dinner first.

I wouldn’t be me if I didn’t point out that NCIS and Tony dodged a bullet (too soon?) on Kate’s sexual harassment case. It would have netted her a big settlement, had she lived to file it.

Ducky Tales: There are no Ducky Tales to reflect on as we contemplate this very sad ending.

The Rest of the Story:

-Gibbs smacks Tony on the head.

-Although she’s joking with McGee and pranking Tony, Kate says, “In a different world, I can see myself marrying someone like [Tony].”  Many, many seasons from now, we get a brief glimpse at that different world during one of the show’s stranger, yet endearing episodes.

-Abby’s stuffed animal, Bert the farting hippo, makes his first appearance.

-Gibbs is in MTAC reporting his concerns about attacks on the team to the Director.  For a brief moment during their discussion as to who is behind these efforts, you hear the Middle Eastern-influenced theme music that accompanied Gibbs’s search for Ari last season.  This occurs a couple of scenes before Ari appears, so it’s a nice, subtle tell.

-Ari Haswari appeared in Bête Noire, Episode 1.16 and Reveille, Episode 1.23 last season.  He will appear next in Season 3 in Kill Ari (Part One) (Episode 3.1).

-Kate is sleeping under her desk.  Many seasons from now, the scene of Gibbs finding her and covering her will be re-visited in probably my favorite NCIS episode of all time.

-We learn for the first time that Fornell married Gibbs’s “second” wife.  Who then left Fornell and took all his money.  Which forces us to wonder when this happened.  When Gibbs and Fornell meet in Yankee White, Episode 1.1, they don’t seem to have any familiarity with each other, and subsequent episodes make it clear that what friendship they have evolved slowly and based on their work encounters since the beginning of the show.  Granted, they’ve become closer, so the marriage could have happened recently and off-screen.  And Fornell makes clear that Gibbs tried to warn him, so they clearly knew each other and were friendly whenever the marriage happened.  But that was a quick divorce.  And it’s still news out of nowhere. 

-It’s also awesome because Mrs. Fornell is a delight, and we will meet her soon enough. 

-Per Tony, Paula Cassidy, last seen in Heart Break, Episode 2.8, is back on shore from her agent afloat assignment.  She will return to the show early in Season 3.

-The scene of Kate with a round through her forehead mirrors the scene from Gibbs’s nightmare at the beginning of Reveille, Episode 1.23.  He finds her in autopsy with the exact head wound that killed her.

-I guess you could argue that, since Kate saved Gibbs, her third security detail since coming to NCIS was a success.  Cold comfort to Kate to go 1-2 (see missteps in UnSEALed, Episode 1.18 and The Meat Puzzle, Episode 2.13) and then die after her first win.

-I don’t do a lot of outside research for this blog.  I look at IMDB.com for each episode, and sometimes I’ll check out a fan site to obtain episode appearances for a character, like the mysterious redhead, where the information isn’t readily available.  I pull images from Google images, usually in less than a couple of minutes.  And I’ll do quick historical research to get dates for real world historical events that impact the show, like the tenure of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.”  But I don’t do a whole lot of behind the scenes research or read other NCIS blogs because I want the thoughts and observations on this blog to be authentically mine as I spend a year reliving this show.  I don’t think I’m seeing anything that other fans don’t, or that anything written here is staggeringly original, but I at least like to feel like I’m not plagiarizing.

All of that said, I did look into why Sasha Alexander left the show.   There are rumors of course, but the consensus seems to be that she left because the workload was a bit much for someone who had never been a lead on a weekly network series.  Which, I don’t know about you, but I don’t work 16-20 hours/day, so I’m not gonna judge.  In any event, since Alexander left on her own, you have to admire the show for taking lemons and making lemonade.  This is easily one of the best and most influential episodes in the show’s run.

-And what of Kate the character?  What is the legacy of Special Agent Caitlin Todd?  Honestly?  I’ve spent the last 46 days with Kate and it wouldn’t have shocked me if Alexander left because the character was treated pretty shabbily.  She got sexually harassed virtually every episode, and her efforts to fight back made her look shrewish.  Probably the best example of this happened in SWAK, Episode 1.22, when a minor character all but tells Kate to lighten up.  Tony doesn’t come off looking great in these encounters, but his humor is breezier and less reliant on mean-spirited (if justified) and often lame zingers. 

Kate rarely got to be the hero, rarely had a moment of kickass glory (I can identify her pulling that shotgun and shooting Curtin in UnSEALed, episode 1.18 precisely because it was such an outlier), and she often got to be the goat, or, worse, the captive (see, e.g. Left for Dead, Episode 1.10, The Meat Puzzle, UnSEALed, Bête Noire, Reveille, and even Vanished, Episode 2.3).  While it can be argued that Tony rarely gets glory either, he unequivocally gets more than Kate.  His role in Missing, Episode 1.20 alone, where he saves the kidnapped Marine despite getting duped and roofied by the bad girl, contrasts painfully with Kate not being able to stab Ari in Bête Noire or getting suckered by a child in UnSEALed and some dumbass with a dog in The Meat Puzzle.  Similarly, while McGee is not as imposing a presence as Tony or Kate, his technical expertise makes him the hero far more often than either, and especially Kate.  And neither Tony nor McGee let a crazy lady lead them by the nose while she blew up the lobby of a defense contractor, killing its CEO (Left for Dead).

Sasha Alexander was under contract for additional seasons when everybody mutually parted ways, so it’s possible that the first two seasons were simply a learning curve for an agent who went from a very specific detail (protecting the President) to investigating crime scenes.  If you give the show the benefit of the doubt that Season 3 would have been the Season of Kate if she’d lived, maybe there develops a nice, organic, multi-year evolution from neophyte to to competent badass.  But, as the character was written through the first two seasons, Sasha Alexander probably did Kate a favor by retiring her.

As for me…despite all of the unfortunate creative choices for her character, I developed a new appreciation for Kate.  I came into the show with Ziva David firmly established as NCIS’ female lead, and I only encountered Kate in USA Marathons.  So, before this project, she was “The agent who got killed,” or “Oh.  A Kate episode.”  But watching the totality of Kate’s arc over 46 days while knowing how it ended was illuminating.  I found her more charming than I remembered, and certainly more sympathetic.  While I never looked at Kate and said, “That’s one hell of an agent,” her courage was always on full display, and she cared about her work.  I think Sasha Alexander did a great job with the character, and I certainly don’t think Kate held the show back.  Most shows hit their stride in season 3-4, so the fact that Ziva replaced Kate at that exact point isn’t an indicator that Kate was a bad character or a drag.  I think Kate was a character with unrealized potential, and, despite having seen this episode a few times, this time, I really felt the tragedy of Kate’s death. 

On to the mourning.     

-You have to wonder about the alternate universe where Gibbs listens to his superiors and lets Ari alone.  Where he doesn’t shoot him in the shoulder in Reveille and just takes the loss.  Does Ari still kill Kate in what appears to be a fit of pique?  Or does it all happen anyway because Ari is a psychopath?  Of course, if Gibbs had let it all lie, he wouldn’t be Gibbs. 

-There’s quite a bit of understated black humor in this episode.  According to an old TV.com article I found, fans knew that someone would die, but the show did a great job keeping the secret leading up to the episode air date.  Which is impressive, even in 2005.  Watching this episode knowing the ending allowed me to see all the foreshadowing in the dialogue, and in the various feints as to who would get killed.  Tony is walking wounded and thus vulnerable.  The whole team almost dies in a bomb blast, Gibbs twice.  Kate gets “attacked” by a snake.  Gibbs essentially has a price on his head.  Abby has bad dreams, as does Kate, and Kate’s dream graphically shows Gibbs’s corpse.  McGee is vulnerable as he sits on the street and tries to hack the drone.  Tony is exposed and out of breath on the fire escape.  A terrorist gets the drop on Gibbs, and Kate takes a bullet for Gibbs before she takes the bullet that kills her.  And, of course, there are Kate’s last words. It’s a lively journey to a sad place, but it’s clear the showrunners had a good time jerking the audience around. 

-But the episode is also a realistic depiction of how you spend your last day when you don’t know your number is up.  If you’re a federal agent in the line of fire, you probably do joke about death.  You probably do reassure your friends about their bad dreams.  And you probably do yell at your sexually harassing co-worker and play jokes on him because he’s a little much sometimes.  In the end, Kate died razzing Tony, which was a large part of how she has lived since she left the Secret Service at the end of Yankee White.    

-Give the musical score a lot of credit here.  You have minutes of intense dramatic music during the final firefight.  Then, after Kate survives the first gunshot, the music not only downshifts, but actively segues into the mischievous NCIS piano bars that accompany the team goofing on each other.  And then the team proceeds to goof on each other per the usual formula.  And then, when your guard is down, one of the leads takes a bullet through her skull, and the blood spatters another lead.  That is the kind of tonal shift that people remember and I can’t imagine what it must have been like to watch this episode in real time.  Especially in an era where the average network TV show really didn’t do shit like this. Great execution.

Casting Call: About the time you bring back Ari, stage a team-up with Fornell, and let Director Morrow sober up and return to work, you’ve used up the guest-star budget.  

Man, This Show Is Old: Danborn Avionics is working on military drones.  Drones are a key, and sometimes controversial, part of our military arsenal now.  But, in 2005, they existed in a much more developmental stage.

I wonder if any network television show could keep both Sasha Alexander’s departure and Kate’s death secret today.  Fan boards and leaks are not new, and they weren’t new in 2005.  But they seem more pervasive, and effective, now. 

MVP: It seems ghoulish to award an MVP, doesn’t it?   But you know what? While it might be cold comfort to them right now, the team as a whole saved a lot of lives.

Rating: This episode looms large.  And it’s packed.  From Tony’s return to Kate’s death, I felt like I watched three episodes.  Given the influence this episode has on many seasons to come, and given the meticulous way the showrunners put together action, great character work, and genuine stakes (a little girl with a teddy bear welcoming her Navy officer father home is the unknowing target of a Semtex filled rocket drone), this is truly a classic.

Ten Palmers.

And so ends Season Two. Altogether, it was not as strong as Season One, offered a greater number of average episodes, and popped out a couple of genuine clunkers. But Season Two was by no means bad and also gave us several excellent episodes. And it ended strong, leaving us wanting more as we head into Season 3.

Next Time:  Kate is dead.  Ari is in the wind.  And there’s only one thing the NCIS team cares about: revenge. It’s not 2005, so you don’t have to wait 3 months for the next chapter. Join tomorrow for Kill Ari (Part One).