A Year of NCIS, Day 54: Under Covers (Episode 3.8)

Episode: 3.8, Under Covers.

Air Date: November 8, 2005.

The Victim: Some contract killers.  But we don’t care. 

Emotionally Traumatized, But Ultimately Irrelevant, Witness Who Finds the Body: Not in play.

Plot Summary: Tony is tipping a valet in a fancy hotel and Ziva comes in from the patio of their palatial room wearing an elegant dress.  Has Tony closed the deal this quickly?  Did his dad die and leave him all the money?  Either way, Tony wonders over to the TV to decide which of the 200 channels he wants to watch.  But Ziva wordlessly shuts the cabinet and leads Tony over to the bed.  She says there’s only one thing she’s interested in right now, and they start making out.  Hard.  We see Ziva’s dress drop to the floor, and…

Stupid credits.  

Tony and Ziva are in bed and making the requisite sounds.  Ziva turns on the stereo, and then asks Tony in a whisper whether “they” bought it.  Tony says he bought it, and Ziva notes that she can tell.  But that’s his knee.  They are undercover (figuratively and literally) and they aren’t even sure if they are under surveillance, so they argue over how much longer to continue pretending to have sex, with Tony suggesting 40 minutes (what is he, a professional track star?)  Ziva says she would have to be on top for that to be realistic and rolls them over.  Then she hits him because that was definitely not Tony’s knee.  But then she kisses him and maybe they do have sex? 

Back at autopsy, Ducky unzips a body bag and we find Sophie Ranier, a very beautiful and very dead contract assassin with over 25 kills to her name.  Her husband Jean-Paul is also a dead assassin.  They were killed in a car accident.  Ducky expresses uncommon distress at having to work when he should be seeing Giselle.  Gibbs expresses uncommon remorse over making Ducky miss a date with his girlfriend.  Director Shepard expresses all too common condescension in telling Gibbs that Giselle is not a girl, but a ballet and that he should leave his basement more.  Gibbs flashes back to hooking up with Shepard and you gotta figure that’s a secret he enjoys holding on to when she bosses him around or snarks at him.

Shepard says they need all the info they can get on the Raniers.  Marine CID found two fake passports and hotel reservations in the Ranier’s belongings.  They’re staying at the Barclay hotel through November 10, the birthday of the Marine Corps.  The Barclay is the site of the birthday gala hosted by the Commandant of the Marine Corps.  There will be a lot of VIPs there, including Shephard, so it’s a target rich environment.  Tony and Ziva are pretending to be the Raniers to sniff out their job, but Tony and Ziva have no info and they’re counting on Ducky to find out what he can about the Raniers.  Ducky seems less confident than usual that anything he’ll find will help Tony and Ziva.

In the hotel room, Tony and Ziva are either having afterglow or faking it and we’ll honestly never know for sure.  Tony is pushing his luck and asks for a back massage.  He pushes it further by saying, “And to think my mother thought I was too good for you,” and gets a nerve pinch for his trouble.  

Across the way, another couple is performing surveillance on Tony and Ziva.  But they’ve bought into them being the Raniers.

Room service arrives, and it’s McGee, sweeping the room for bugs and handing off earwigs so Gibbs can communicate with his agents.  McGee finds the bug the spies across the way are using and puts a tray over it. 

The spies express disapproval, and the man tells the woman that she’ll have to dress up like a maid and go rescue the mic/bug. 

McGee says if they whisper it should be OK.  Gibbs makes contact from MTAC.  Tony doesn’t realize there’s visual feed to MTAC from one of the items McGee brought in, and he’s letting his schlong hang out of his robe.  Until Shepard lets him know.  Gibbs tells Tony to stop acting like he’s at the Playboy Mansion.

The phone rings and Ziva answers.  The man on the other end tells her about a cell phone in the bible next to her bed.  He tells her to keep it with her at all times, and that she and Tony have dinner reservations at the hotel at 9:00.  She hangs up and informs Tony, still in character.

The couple across the way get ready for dinner as well (I guess since Ziva announced dinner loudly, they were able to hear it even with the bug interference).

Back at NCIS, Abby has been bowling and arrives at work in some kind of sock-hop-looking outfit.  Gibbs tasks her with performing forensics on the Ranier’s personal items and finding anything that will help Tony and Ziva play their roles.

Tony and Ziva are at the restaurant.  Gibbs has visual, presumably from a camera hidden in a place setting, in Abby’s lab.  Abby is loading all of the faces in the restaurant into a facial recognition program. 

Our spy couple, whoever they are, enter the restaurant and sit down. 

Ducky tells Tony that he’s supposed to be left-handed, so he switches his utensils (and uses them badly).  Ziva gets a call on the special cell.  She shows the number to the camera and Gibbs tells Abby to trace the number.  Ziva is impressive.  The person on the phone tells her that they are at dinner so they can see the target in person.  Not knowing the target, Ziva plays it off as being tired and the restaurant being too crowded.  Then she mentions all the Marines and asks the guy for more money.  He says they’ll discuss it. 

Abby traces the call to a pay phone inside the hotel.  Tony and McGee move, but the man hangs up and they get to the pay phone too late.  McGee ends up drawing a gun on Tony, who has his gloves on and is checking the phone for prints and other evidence. 

Abby tells Gibbs she has a photo of the man Tony and Ziva are going to assassinate.  Of course, she has 32 photos of men in the restaurant, and there’s no real way to narrow it down. 

Shepard asks if the target could be a woman, but Gibbs says the contact referred to the target as a “he.” Shepard is behind on the op and asks Gibbs to do things he already did and then excuses herself as being tired when he calls her on it.  Gibbs, as per his custom these days, makes inuendo-laden comments about her stamina while flashing back to the time he used to have sex with her.  Man, this show has gotten randy this season.  Instead of sending him to sensitivity training Shepard teases Gibbs about his stamina in Positano, Italy (a nice place to run an op) and Gibbs complains that they were in Positano a week after he took a bullet. 

Gibbs tells Shepard that Abby will run the pictures against restaurant reservations, and they’re reasonably confident that the target is not a random hotel guest because, when Ziva mentioned that the target would be surrounded by Marines, the contact didn’t act surprised. 

Gibbs tries to talk Shepard into sleeping and they try to out-tough each other.  Then she asks if she can bounce something off him.  Her director side says flood the hotel with security and risk losing the perps.  Her agent side says run the op, try to catch the bad guys.  Gibbs, not exactly free from a conflict of interest here, is relatively evenhanded about it and says give the agents another 24 hours.  Then call the FBI.  Shepard is pleasantly surprised and says, “You’d really do that?”  Gibbs says, no, and that’s why he’ll never be Director.

(Well except for all last season when his boss never came to work).

Tony snores.  The spies across the way discuss Tony and Ziva and the dude tries to vaguely come on to the girl, who is having none of it.  The spies seem to know who the target is. 

We cut to the hotel room.  Tony is wide awake, and it is Ziva who must have sleep apnea or something.  He wakes her with a loud voice, and she turns over and puts a gun that she pulled out of nowhere to his head.  Tony decides to leave it alone. 

Gibbs brings McGee the rare cup of coffee.  McGee got a package addressed to Ziva.  He wasn’t sure he should open it and that, Gibbs says, is why he’s her mule.  So, Gibbs opens it and it’s sunglasses.  He leaves it to McGee to dope out the mystery.

Tony is still asleep.  McGee tries to yell him awake, but only gets Ziva.  Who is awake because Tony snores.  McGee alerts Ziva as to her package and she asks if he can bring it up with breakfast.  McGee then tells Ziva to get Tony up too.  She pours water on his head and calls him her “little furry bear” and Tony jumps to his feet on the bed in a karate pose. 

Ducky and Palmer are stitching the assassins back up and Gibbs asks what they’ve found.  Ducky is pissy that Palmer didn’t have his cell phone and thus didn’t pull an all-nighter with the rest of the team.  Ducky has determined that Jean Paul had his appendix removed and Sophie had her left wrist broken as a child.  Ducky also found small tattoos on their fingers- an infinity sign. 

In the room, Ziva is fiddling with her shades, and then asks Tony to turn on the stereo.  The shades allow her to see the laser surveillance from across the street and she reports to the team.  McGee is super-impressed.  Gibbs tells Tony to set up a diversion and he and McGee get moving.  As they leave, Abby starts snarking about how impressed McGee is with Ziva’s spyglasses.  But the speaker is still on and Ziva can hear her.  Oy.

Tony and Ziva pretend to have sex (or maybe have sex) again to distract the spies.  The dude is certainly enjoying it.  The girl asks for the binoculars, so maybe she is too.  In Tony’s and Ziva’s room, we see Tony is just doing push ups over Ziva’s body.  So, no actual sex.  This time. 

Gibbs tells Tony they’re into position and to “give it the big finish,” to Tony and Ziva ramp up the production value of their fake sex show to really draw the spies in.  Gibbs and McGee crash through the door and into a Mexican standoff as the spies are FBI agents and everyone has their guns drawn shouting “federal agents.”  Kind of a miracle nobody died. 

Back at the squad room, The FBI agents are telling McGee how impressed they are with NCIS.  McGee plays it off as luck and says the laser gave the FBI agents away.  But the FBI agents are talking about Tony and Ziva having sex.  The girl, Agent Maya, doesn’t think anyone at FBI would go all the way.  The dude, Agent Yussif, says he would.  McGee thinks Tony and Ziva were just acting.  Agent Yussif says he can tell the difference.  Agent Maya says that is true because she has met Agent Yussif’s wife (which makes his pseudo-come on from earlier awkward).  McGee is disturbed, but it’s unclear if it’s a weird crush on Ziva, a more platonic competition with Tony over her friendship, or just his general naivete coming through.

Director Shepard is annoyed that she is going to have to fight with the FBI over NCIS running an undercover op in their jurisdiction.  Gibbs tells her that the FBI didn’t share intel about a threat to the Marine Corps Ball, so they can take a flying leap.  Shepard was too exhausted to think of that.  Gibbs says to let him handle it.  She is anxious now because he handles things with physical violence.

And she should be anxious, because now Fornell is here and it’s time for he and Gibbs to have the measuring contest to end all measuring contests in the squad room.  They snarl at each other about jurisdiction and whose agency is better (Fornell tells Gibbs he just wants to play with the “big boys”) and who would have shot who in the hotel room and then they snarl their way into the elevator for their usual conference.  It’s a good show.  Gibbs stops the elevator, Fornell offers him gum.  Gibbs thinks “the big boys” was over-dramatic.  Having implemented their diversion, they discuss their primary mission: fix the screw-up without the respective directors getting into a pissing match.  Gibbs proposes a joint op with his team as lead since Tony and Ziva are already embedded.  FBI gets operational control and credit for the collar.  “Directors get to save face,” says Fornell, “and we…” “…Get the job done,” finishes Gibbs.

Chip, Abby’s assistant, has IDs on everyone in the restaurant who has tickets to the Ball.  He suggests checking the waitstaff and Abby likes the instinct and the initiative.  Chip then asks Abby the question on all our minds: “Why don’t you like Officer David?”  Abby asks what makes him think that, and he hold up a picture of Ziva that Abby has sharpied to look like a clown.  Chip says he understands.  He has the same problem with Tony.  But Abby defends Tony as a great guy.  Chip says, “Well you don’t know him like I do,” but Abby plays it off as Tony giving new people grief- something he learned from Gibbs. 

Back to work.  Abby shows Chip some bloodwork from Sophie Ranier and quizzes him on it.  He correctly intuits that Sophie Ranier was pregnant. 

Agent Maya is bent over the bed in a maid’s outfit and asks Tony if he likes what he sees.  Because girls know when you’re looking.  She says the room is clean of bugs and they’re free to talk.  Tony laughs and wonders aloud what it was like to watch him and Ziva.  Agent Maya says when this is over, they should go out for drinks but it’s hard to tell if she’s messing with him.  Then Ziva enters the room and announces she’s pregnant. Or Sophie Ranier is, and Agent Maya scampers off.    

Ziva gets a call on the assassin phone.  He has blocked his number this time.  The man, walking down a street, says he has been told to negotiate a price commensurate with the risk.  He tells Tony to meet in the lobby in one hour and then hangs up and throws the phone in the garbage. 

McGee and the FBI are set up to tail Tony and Ziva wherever they end up going.  In the hotel room Ziva is cleaning her weapon.  Since it hasn’t been fired, Tony wonders why?  Ziva says it calms her mind and helps her focus.  They talk.  Tony is trying to picture Ziva pregnant, although he claims its part of getting into the act.  He wonders why the assassins would risk a baby, but Ziva thinks maybe they needed the money.  She cautions Tony that there’s a good chance this meet is a set up.  Tony asks if she’s scared.  Ziva says she’s excited.

In MTAC, Shepard has a bad feeling.  She likens it to the feeling she had before an op she and Gibbs ran in the Czech Republic, where she took a round in the thigh. 

Tony reports that they’re headed for the elevator.  Gibbs says don’t take any chances and to call off the op at the first sign of trouble.  Tony and Ziva get into the elevator with a room service waiter.

The limo pulls up. 

The elevator door shuts.

Chip sees something on the computer and calls for Abby.

McGee sees the limo deliver a couple and leave.  Fornell tells his men to hold their position. 

Chip has determined that the waiter, the one in the elevator, is named Henry Spivey, and he has a warrant out on him for murder.

In the elevator, Spivey pulls a gun with a silencer out from under his cart and aims it at Tony’s head.  Then the elevator dings and Spivey tells them they’re getting off on this floor.  They reach for their weapons, but the man who has been on the phone is standing there with another henchman and tells them it would not be wise to resist.  The bad guys disarm Tony and Ziva.  Ziva manages to toss off their location in an easy sentence, but the earwigs are being jammed by Spivey.  The bad guys seem to know that Tony and Ziva are being monitored, if not by who. 

In MTAC, Gibbs realizes something is wrong.  But Fornell knows from his people that Tony and Ziva didn’t leave the building, and McGee says they never made the lobby.  They’re not in the room.  So, McGee has eleven floors to play with.  Which means over 280 individual rooms.  Fornell moves to do a search, but Shepard counsels patience and to wait for Ziva to contact them.

The bad guys smash the earwigs.  The main guy, Marcos Siazon, informs Tony and Ziva of two things: that you never leave this business and you don’t threaten your employers.  So, they do think Tony and Ziva are the Raniers.  Tony and Ziva are tied back to back to chairs and Tony asks if he should be writing this down, earning a punch in the face from Cord, the other thug.  Siazon wants to know where the disc is.  Ziva pleads ignorance and Tony gets punched again.  She asks what makes Siazon think she has it.  He spotted her back up at the restaurant (nice job McGee!) and he says that, on some level, she must have known this abduction would happen.  Ziva asks how much Siazon wants for the disc, and Tony gets punched again.  Siazon asks what turning over the disc is worth to the “Raniers.”

In Abby’s lab, she has examined Tony’s body cam, and it caught a slight image of Siazon as he escaped into the Barclay restaurant kitchen after calling Ziva from the pay phone earlier.  Abby identifies Siazon as a contract assassin wanted in more than five countries.  She can’t dope out why a killer would hire other killers to do a professional hit for him. 

Back in the hotel room, Ziva bargains to give over the disc if they let Tony go.  Siazon pulls out a very frightening looking knife.  The assassin tells the two of them to take a few minutes to consider their options and he and his associates leave.  Tony tells Ziva his plan: she leads the men back to the hotel room where McGee will most likely be.  Ziva points out that as soon as she leaves, they’ll probably kill Tony.  He notes it’s not a perfect plan.

Ducky is looking at Sophie Ranier.  He finds a tiny, gold heart-shaped object in her eye. 

Abby determines that the heart is a microdot of sorts.  It’s a 500MG tiny hard drive that contains the Ranier’s bank accounts and other assets, and the address for a house with utilities scheduled to be turned on soon.  The team determines that Sophie Ranier and her husband were retiring from the business because of the pregnancy.  The other file is a client list.  Gibbs and Fornell thus come to the conclusion that Tony and Ziva are already living.  The Raniers didn’t come to DC for a hit.  The Raniers are the hit.

Siazon is posturing with the knife.  Tony tells him the disc is in the hotel room and that they’ll never find it without Ziva, even if she and Tony are dead.  Siazon calls Spivey and tells him to clear the room as he’s on his way up with Ziva.  Spivey unlocks the door and enters the room quietly, drawing his gun on McGee, who is standing at the window, his back to the door. 

Siazon tells Ziva her mistake was going for the last big payday.  She tells him she’s pregnant.  Siazon congratulates her.  It’s a weird conversation because he becomes a normal person for a second and talks about being surprised by the genders of his children and hating to see his wife experience morning sickness.  Which, you figure, is how these things go.  People like Siazon aren’t monsters 24-7.  Ziva asks if he’s going to kill them and Siazon points out that assassins can’t just retire whenever they feel like it.  He’d rather be at his daughter’s fifth birthday than here.  Siazon plays coy about whether he’ll kill Tony and Ziva once he has the disc, but I doubt anyone is buying it.  He tells Cord that if he’s not back in five minutes to kill Tony. 

After they leave, Cord tells Tony that the bit about maybe not killing them was for his wife’s cooperation- “little white lies.”  He picks up the knife with a smile. 

Ziva leads Siazon to the room.  Knowing that Ziva has back-up, it’s a little glib to take this trip without confirming an all-clear from Spivey.  Ziva opens the door and finds McGee lying on the floor.  She rushes over.  Siazon says, “I hope you weren’t counting on your back-up, Mrs. Ranier.”  Ziva smiles, “He’s not my back-up,” and Gibbs punches Siazon in the face.  Ziva gives Gibbs the room number where Tony is, and the team rushes to his aid.  Fornell comes out of the bathroom, where the waiter is tied up and takes charge of Siazon.  He radios for back-up to assist Tony. 

On the third floor, Tony is stalling for time.  He tells Cord that he was looking forward to having a kid.  “Big step for me, having a little DiNozzo running around.”  Cord asks about the name.  Then Tony gives his identity, and when Cord hesitates, Tony spins with the chair and knocks Cord to the ground.  When Gibbs and the team shoot out the lock and kick down the door, Tony, still tied up, has the chair sitting on Cord’s throat while he angrily kicks the unconscious man in the head over and over again- “How’s that feel, huh?  Huh, big guy?  Wanna punch me again?” He kicks him at least a dozen times until Ziva calls him off.  Tony, face covered in blood, looks at Gibbs and says, “I want a divorce,” and Gibbs laughs, relieved.  If Tony can joke, then Tony is OK.

Back at the squad room, Tony is leaned back in his chair, tissues in his nose to stop the bleeding.  He takes out the bloody tissues and throws them in the trash.  Ducky looks him over and opines that the ER patched up Tony well.  The entire team is there, including Chip.  Chip even brought Tony’s car around and Ziva is going to drive him home.  Tony looks in horror at McGee, who intervenes and says that’s not a good idea.  Ziva asks why and Abby, still with the attitude, says Tony probably wants to live.  Ducky prescribes aspirin and scotch.  Gibbs walks up and notices that Ducky is dressed nicely.  Turns out Ducky is escorting Shepard to the Marine Corps Birthday Ball.  She comes down the stairs like a debutante, looking all hot, and gives Gibbs some knowing glances. 

Like Gibbs would have wanted to go.

The team escorts Tony out of the building, Chip goes in the other direction, and Gibbs settles into his desk chair.  Abby wishes Gibbs a happy birthday, him being a Marine and all.  She leaves and he pulls out a nice silver flask.  I wondered briefly if it was the one Colonel Ryan got him (Enigma, Episode 1.15).  It’s got a stopped bullet embedded in it and says, “Jethro, for good luck.  Love, Shannon and Kelly.”  Gibbs says aloud to no one, “I miss you guys.”  Then he says “Semper Fi” and takes a drink as a piano plays a Marine tune (sounds like When the Saints Go Marching Home).  The scene fades to black and white and then to black, and a card appears that says, “Semper Fi, To Marines Everywhere.”  

Quotables:

(1) Fornell: People say we’re bastards?

Gibbs: Only because they know us.

(2) Ziva [regarding Agent Maya]: Oh she’s really not your type anyway.

Tony: Hot and in a maid’s outfit.  They don’t get any more my type.

Time Until Sexual Harassment: None.

Ducky Tales: None.  This episode was too busy.

The Rest of the Story:

-This team works really hard. They don’t have a case every day, but when they have a case, they pull all-nighters and work late into the evening a lot.

-Ziva mixes up the pot with the kettle.  And “job in my hand” with “job at hand.”  Tony is there to help.

-How nice of Ziva to tell Tony she’s pregnant.

-I realize sets are expensive, but it makes no sense for Gibbs and McGee to be running command on this op from NCIS.  Unless the Barclay is right down the street.  This is possible (likely by the end of the episode), but they should probably establish it in the script.  Or maybe I missed it.

-It’s rare to see Tony lose his cool.  It was both justified and a good look here.

-Ziva’s frightening driving was established in Silver War, Episode 3.4.  She and Abby have had beef since she showed up, but it looked like they were thawing at the end of Switch, Episode 3.5.  I guess not.

-Gibbs’s deceased wife is named Shannon.  His deceased daughter is named Kelly.  It’s nice to have it all out in the open. 

-Obviously, in real life, the show simply hadn’t come up with Gibbs’s back story for the first season and, likely, most of the second.  The only in-universe reason I can think of for why he’s dealing with it now is that Kate’s death and Ari’s psychological attack shook something loose with respect to what appears to have been a pretty deep denial (three ex-wives deep).  This will all come to a head at the end of this season.

-RE: Tony and Ziva.  So…did they, or didn’t they?  Remember when we couldn’t tell if McGee and Abby were hooking up or not?  Buckle up.

-It’s a little strange that NCIS and Marine CID could ID the Raniers, but the FBI (and the bad guys) had no idea that Tony and Ziva were fakes.

Casting Call: Several of the guest-stars have acted in shows I’ve watched, but I don’t independently recollect any of them.

Man, This Show Is Old: Other than a pay phone (and they may still have them in older hotels), this episode wasn’t particularly dated. 

While it is harder today to keep one’s face so extensively hidden that you can be readily impersonated, as the Raniers were here, I’d be willing to accept that professional assassins could pull it off.  Well…except that law enforcement knew who they were.  Ah well.  A small quibble.

MVP: Self-help is the best help.  And who didn’t enjoy watching Tony tell Cord he was a federal agent and then kick his head loose?

Rating: This was a great episode.  It showed off and took advantage of the great chemistry between Weatherly and de Pablo.  It was tense and gave us solid plot twists.  The agents were genuinely in danger.  And it was viscerally satisfying when Tony got his payback on Cord’s skull.  And we close on another piece of the Gibbs mystery, and a tribute to the U.S. Marine Corps. 

Eight Palmers.

Next Time: Is Tony secretly a crazed killer?