A Year of NCIS, Day 55: Frame-Up (Episode 3.9)

Episode: 3.9, Frame-Up.

Air Date: November 22, 2005.

The Victim: Once again, NCIS Special Agent Anthony DiNozzo.

Emotionally Traumatized, But Ultimately Irrelevant, Witness Who Finds the Body:  Now this is the formula.  We’ve got teens making out, and a camp fire.  And we’ve got Marines telling the kids they can’t set fires on military property and to get lost.  The Marines try to pull one seemingly naked teen out from the bushes, but it’s not a naked teen.  It’s two female severed legs.

Credits.  New credits.  Welcome to non-guest star status, Lauren “Director Shepard” Holly.

Plot Summary: Ziva is reading up on American slang.  Tony is looking at judgemytush.com.  Ziva gives McGee’s ass a 4/5, which he gratefully accepts.  Tony shows her his ass and asks for a rating.  She gives him a 2 and McGee exults.

Gibbs arrives and says the team is going to Quantico.  Tony confronts Ziva and learns she deducted 3 points for excessive hair.  That’s a 5/5 if Tony shaves his ass, so now he’s happy. 

Palmer is having a root canal.  The rest of the team is in the woods near Quantico.  Ducky, ever the gentleman, pulls back a large branch for Ziva to pass.  She thanks him, as does McGee when Ducky releases the branch and whacks him in the face.  Ducky tries to help Ziva across a creek, but she declines and cites her badass credentials of scaling cliffs and swimming the Red Sea.  Then she slips on a rock and takes them both into the creek.  They think it’s funny.  Gibbs does not kill them. 

Sergeant Brooks leads the team to the legs.  Gibbs asks Tony and Ziva to bag and tag, and McGee to take samples.  Ducky isn’t going to have much luck with TOD without vital organs to test.  Ducky thinks the decomposition is strange.  The skin indicates advanced decomp, but the absence of insect activity indicates a cessation of decomp.  The rigidity says death set in at least 48 hours ago, but the legs are in pristine condition, like they’ve been stored somewhere. 

Ziva is collecting trash just in case it’s evidence, but Tony poo-poos it.  Ziva finds the finger of a rubber glove.  Gibbs tells them to pick up every piece of matter within a ten-foot radius of the legs.  Tony winces and Ziva chuckles.

Back at autopsy, Palmer jokes that Tony probably made a perverted remark about the legs.  Ducky shames him a bit for being gruesome, but I think Ducky’s just screwing with Palmer, because he then compares the legs to Betty Grable’s.  Ducky says the Jane Doe was between 19-21.  But Ducky can’t ID her.  There’s blood on the leg, and it’s on its way to Abby.  The legs were severed with a surgical saw.  There’s a patch of skin removed as well, as if the perp bit the leg but then tried to remove evidence of the bite mark since bite marks are traceable.  But Ducky thinks he might be able to get a teeth impression from the underlying damaged tissue.

Palmer is bringing evidence to Abby and he and Chip have the socially awkward person’s version of a measuring contest.  Palmer, I guess because of his weird crush, wants to see Abby.  Chip wants to play gatekeeper.  I think Chip technically wins (although points to Palmer for calling him “Chip,” which he hates, since his name is Charles).  But everybody likes Palmer better anyway, so no points.

Abby walks up and tasks Chip with analyzing a sticky substance found on the victim’s ankles, while she works blood and fingerprints.

McGee and Ziva are calculating the victim’s height and weight and using some tables and equations or whatever.  Tony ballparks it (which we’ve seen him do before with Paula Cassidy in Mind Games, Episode 3.3).  5’8”, 125-126 pounds.  They run the equations, convert from metric, and Tony nailed it.

In Abby’s lab, Chip seems confused/frustrated, as he goes over a piece of bagged evidence.  Abby lectures him on evidence being fun.  Gibbs shows up, and Abby tells him the blood on the victim is not the victim’s, and she found a partial print on the tip of the glove finger.  Blood and prints are running now.  The partial fingerprint turns up a surprise, however.  It comes back belonging to…Tony. 

Tony thinks he must have ripped a glove at the crime scene.  Of course, protocol requires that all of the gloves from crime scenes be kept and none are ripped.  Tony suggests maybe he ripped a glove at the crime scene some time before yesterday.  The last time Tony was at Quantico working a scene was the Napolitano case (The Bone Yard, Episode 2.5).  Abby notes that the computer only found three points of match regarding the fingerprints and most prosecutors want eleven.  Chip kills that buzz by noting that the minimum matches to go to court is technically one.  Tony is not impressed with Chip’s team player attitude and says, “You set this up didn’t you?” but points past Chip to Ziva.  She smirks but denies it of course.  While perhaps a funny prank, it’snot the kind of prank you pull when you’re on Gibbs’s team. 

Gibbs tells Abby to rush the blood match, then rushes Tony down to autopsy so that Ducky can take dental impressions.  McGee and Abby and Chip run the dental match.  Ducky was able to get a bite impression from the victim’s internal tissue and Abby says the chances of even one tooth matching are 100,000 to one.

Credit to the show for creating a rotating digital display that shows each tooth coming up match one after the other.  It’s a very powerful image, and I hope real life prosecutors took note. 

And now Gibbs has a Director problem.  She knows Tony didn’t do this, but she also knows that NCIS can’t be seen investigating one of their own.  She talks a lot about politics and appearances, and while she’s right in a pragmatic sense, it’s still awkward.  She compromises, though, and she tells Gibbs she won’t stop him from doing what he has to do, but officially she’s turning the investigation over to the FBI.  Surprisingly, Gibbs doesn’t put up much of a fight and says he has one request.  Shepard says she will make sure Fornell handles the investigation and adds that she could always read Gibbs’s mind.  Gibbs flashes back to assassinating someone in Europe and says, “Not always, Jen.”

Hmmm.

Abby is still waiting on the DNA from the victim, McGee says there are no missing Marines or Marine dependents from Quantico. Ziva checked the missing persons lists from the area and found only a few similar descriptions.  Their DNA is en route.

Tony tells Gibbs he is being set up, which Gibbs thinks is obvious.  So, Tony is trying to list former arrestees who he thinks might hold a grudge.  McGee suggests people who just straight up hate Tony.  The list amounts to a mob boss Tony put away while working undercover for Baltimore PD; a sloppy forensic tech named George Stewart who Tony got fired, again while with BPD; Paula Cassidy (“Don’t go there,” says Tony); Lieutenant Pam Kim (from Forced Entry, Episode 2.9), who put Tony’s name up on a herpes alert website; a woman who hates Tony and threatened to cut off his dong for putting away her husband for the murder of his first wife; and the personnel in NCIS’s evidence garage because Tony never waits his turn and calls the women, “Baggie bunnies.”

It’s a lot of names, so Gibbs divvies them up between Ziva, McGee, and himself.  Tony says to Gibbs, “Wait a minute, you never do anything [head slap] because you’re such a good delegator.”  Clearly, this is a serious matter. 

Serious enough for Fornell and Agent Sacks to arrive to begin their investigation.  Gibbs and Fornell talk.  Fornell believes Gibbs about Tony being framed, and Gibbs wants to be kept in the loop because whoever set this up knows what they’re doing.  Fornell agrees to question Tony at NCIS rather than arrest him. 

The FBI requisitions the evidence in the investigation, so NCIS sets to copying everything so that they can use and review it too. 

In interrogation, Tony is not doing himself any favors with Agent Sacks.  He’s needlessly sarcastic and clownish and confrontational.  Agent Sacks figures Tony thinks he was framed and wants to know who would bother to do this.  He asks Tony if he understands how much trouble he’s in and, in a moment of honesty, Tony says he does.  But then he points out a piece of greenery in Agent Sacks’s teeth and starts discoursing on women and why men like them.  Agent Sacks decides Tony is wasting his time and leaves.  It’s actually quite difficult to understand why Tony wouldn’t fully cooperate here.  I suppose the show is trying to depict some pathological need on Tony’s part to show he’s not taking this attack on him seriously.  Or maybe a guy who almost died of Y. pestis (SWAK, Episode 2.22) and who watched his partner get shot in the head on his next assignment (Twilight, Episode 2.23) just ran out of f^%&s to give.  But, it’s poor decision-making on Tony’s part either way.

Outside interrogation, Fornell tries to calm Agent Sacks.  Agent Sacks wants to arrest Tony now on the strength of the bite marks and Tony’s non-serious demeanor.  He thinks Tony’s a risk to kill again.  Fornell just thinks Agents Sacks hasn’t worked with NCIS enough to know what a bunch of irreverent assholes they are.  Fornell says he’ll think about arresting Tony. 

Inside interrogation, Tony starts up a drum beat on the table which accompanies the various scenes of the FBI moving through the building gathering evidence as NCIS tries to preserve copies.  Then he fixes his hair in the two-way mirror.

Fornell tells Gibbs that the U.S. attorney is going to see this as a heinous crime.  Fornell has to detain Tony or it’s going to look like a cover-up.  But he won’t book him yet.  Gibbs agrees, and breaks the news to Tony, who looks shell-shocked.

Gibbs visits Abby and gives her a backrub.  She’s distressed and thinks she screwed up, and now she has all this forensic evidence- the thing that she loves- and it says Tony’s a murderer.  Abby is having a crisis of faith because either the forensics are wrong or it’s bad forensics or Tony is a killer.  Gibbs remains confident, but Abby is scared that this is an open and shut case in court and Tony will got to jail for life based on her work.

Gibbs slides a pizza through cell bars to Tony.  Tony tells Gibbs he’s a federal prosecutor’s dream.  He re-enacts a hypothetical cross-examination, and it’s a very self-aware piece of monologue.  Tony understands that his commitment and female objectification issues fit the profile of someone who would potentially commit gruesome crimes.  Fortunately, Gibbs is there to slap some sense into Tony.  Gibbs leaves and Tony sits down to eat some pizza.

The mobster Tony jailed is still in prison and his family members are happy about it and seem unlikely to seek revenge.  But McGee likes George Stewart, a forensic tech that Tony got fired from Baltimore PD, as a suspect.  Tony accused Stewart of contaminating blood samples in 2002, and Stewart lost everything- job, wife, house, kids.  Stewart fought the firing and won, but by then it was too late, and nobody would hire him.  Gibbs asks how Stewart won his appeal but McGee can’t say because the case was sealed (why?).  Gibbs tells McGee to “undisappear” Stewart. 

Ziva likes Lt. Pam Kim for the frame, as she’s a surgical nurse and more than capable of slicing off a leg or two.  And the case where she and Tony met (Forced Entry) took place at Quantico, where these legs were found.  McGee says Lt. Kim egged Tony’s car.  She has recently returned from a tour in Iraq and is at the Greenbriar on her honeymoon.  She married the guy she was engaged to when she met Tony.  Gibbs tells the agents to go find her. 

And find her they do.  Ziva arrested Lt. Kim while she was having sex with her husband and now, she’s in interrogation complaining about it to Gibbs and asking if he knows what coitus interruptus means (he doesn’t).  McGee is sort of horrified in the observation room but Ziva is still chuckling.  Gibbs doesn’t care.  He asks Lt. Kim if she married the same guy she dumped for Tony.  Lt. Kim had a fling with Tony and regrets it.  Gibbs asks about her putting Tony on the herpes website and Lt. Kim says she got a little emotional.  Gibbs allows that egging Tony’s car was emotional, but the herpes website was, “bitchy?  I know,” Lt. Kim finishes. 

Ziva doesn’t understand why a woman would egg a man’s car.  She tells McGee that they just shoot men who are untrue in Israel. 

Lt. Kim says she probably owes Tony since he didn’t turn her in when she was harassing him.  She says her last visit to Quantico occurred about ten days ago when she checked in with her former CO after her tour in Iraq ended.  But if somebody brown-bagged Tony’s car or torched his door, it wasn’t her.  And her husband knows about Tony.  She asks if Tony was murdered and Gibbs says no and lets her go.  She says she’ll be at the Greenbriar another week if he needs her.  “And next time, have your agent knock.” 

This actress was perfect for this role and she and Harmon hit this scene out of the park.

Gibbs emerges from interrogation and McGee asks if he really doesn’t know what coitus interruptus means.  Gibbs responds, “Better question.  Do you know what it means if you haven’t located Stewart?”  McGee runs.

Shepard pops in for an update.  Gibbs would rather floss his teeth with a porcupine and they have words.  Per usual, he’s tired of her director bullshit and tells her she can go kiss ass on Capitol Hill.  She threatens in so many words to cut off his balls and he says he wears a cup.  Then she gives him a piece of paper containing George Stewart’s contact information.  Which she notes she managed to find between kissing asses.  The show, being on a major television network, doesn’t depict Shepard shoving this piece of paper right up Gibbs’s ass, but I bet it felt to him like that’s where she put it.  “It just proves you should have stayed a field agent,” he petulantly yells at her back as she walks off, and then nods to himself like he rattled off a sick burn.

Abby keeps non-helping.  Chip shows up to non-help too.  He thinks he can place someone else at the crime scene.  The sticky substance he was tasked with examining earlier is something like duct tape, but Chip found a carpet fiber.  He traced it to a Mustang, which Abby says doesn’t help because Tony drives a Mustang.  But Chip knows what Tony drives and says Tony’s car is a ’66 and the carpet fiber is from a 2004.  Abby rushes off to get a fiber from Tony’s car before it gets towed and Chip tells her as she leaves that it’s nice to have her back.

George Stewart is cutting on a body when Gibbs and Ziva arrive to ruin his day.  His name is now George Petri- he changed it legally.  Gibbs shows Petri his ID and Petri says they don’t have any sailors.  Gibbs asks about Jane Does, and Petri says they always have a few of those.  Ziva wants to see them, but Petri insists he doesn’t have any sailors.  Raising the question, per Gibbs, of how Petri knows if they’re Jane Does.  Petri says they can either show him a warrant or leave, so Gibbs says Tony’s name.  Petri gets mad and wants to know what Tony said about him now.  He shakes his scalpel in Gibb’s face and says he was exonerated.  Then Gibbs exonerates the scalpel from Petri’s hand with a nasty looking wrist twist while Ziva starts messing around with his rib cutting clippers.  Bad cop, worse cop, but I can’t tell who’s who.  Gibbs asks how Petri was exonerated, and Petri says he didn’t mess up the blood test.  He sent it out to a lab: Pemberton Medical Analysis.  Petri again declines to let the agents take a look around without a warrant, so Ziva says they’ll be back once they have one.  I guess with Tony in danger, they don’t want to run the usual play of doing whatever they want, and fruit of the poisonous tree be damned.

Abby is looking at the carpet fiber.  She thinks a non-match will give a jury reasonable doubt as to a frame-up.  Chip asks about the other evidence, and she gives him the exercise of accounting for it.  Chip hypothesizes that someone could have gotten Tony’s dental records and made a mold.  And anyone could have pulled gloves from the NCIS trash.  But how would a frame artist know which gloves belonged to Tony, Chip wonders.  And that, per Abby, jinxes it, because the carpet fibers are a match.  Tony must have re-done his carpeting.

And when it rains, it pours, because Fornell tells Gibbs that the blood on the body is a DNA match for Tony. 

And Tony gets booked.

McGee finds Abby asleep at her work station.  She starts freaking out trying to match Jane Doe’s DNA everywhere.  McGee tries to calm her down, but “somebody is using forensics to frame Tony and I’m letting them get away with it.”  Abby needs a new perspective and bends over and looks at McGee like she’s upside down.  Then she tells him his butt has gotten bony.  McGee points out that Ziva rated him a 4/5, but Abby is thinking about bones and bone marrow databases and running a new search.  And then she wants to know why the hell Ziva is rating McGee’s ass and McGee blames it on Tony and Abby defends Tony and it is manic up in here.

Boom.  The blood matches a nurse named Carla Johnson.  Gibbs and Ziva meet up with her, and she has her legs.  She does donate blood but hasn’t donated bone marrow.  She did give blood to a motor-vehicle accident victim who died on the operating table a few weeks back, but she didn’t lose her legs.  Her chest was crushed.  The victim was a Jane Doe, so she’s either in the hospital morgue or at the state morgue.  Nurse Johnson looks it up and finds that George Petri signed for the body.

In Abby’s lab, Chip is amazed that Carla Johnson’s donated blood is what got tested, but he remains impressed with the perp and calls him a genius.  Abby is having a re-awakening.  Forensics was just testing her and now she has her faith and she is going to find the person who did this “And crucify him.”  Chip thinks she’s nuts.  Especially since now she’s going to test the carpet fiber for traces from whoever transported it to the severed legs.

Warrant in hand, Ziva shoves Petri up against a wall.  Gibbs tells Petri to open the body locker and Ziva says Petri had better comply and slaps him.  Gibbs smirks at her.  They search the freezer and Ziva realizes that the chilly conditions would explain the good condition of the severed legs.  Petri denies cutting off some Jane Doe’s legs. 

McGee shows up to Tony’s cell playing a harmonica.  A harmonica from Chip.  McGee recaps the case for Tony to give him hope.  But he’s burying too many ledes, so Tony pulls his head up against the bars and tells him “Prison changes a man.”

Back in the freezer, Gibbs and Ziva find their matching legless Jane Doe body and Petri starts screaming that Tony set him up as Ziva cuffs him.

Fornell lets Tony out of his cell.  And then plays the harmonica after Tony and McGee leave.  It’s charming. 

At the lab, Chip announces a “welcome back” party upstairs for Tony.  But Abby refuses to believe that an alcoholic ME could beat her.  She found sweat on the carpet fiber and she’s also about to call Pemberton, the company that Petri fingered for screwing up the blood test because whoever did this might be after them.

Upstairs, the gang is socializing and crediting Abby for the save.  Shepard shows up with the sealed transcript of Petri’s exoneration hearing.  Gibbs thinks it’s a little late, but thanks her anyway.

In the lab, Abby is on the phone with Pemberton and they’re telling her that she’ll need to talk with the employee who…

And then the line goes dead.  Because Chip cut it.  With the big scary knife he’s holding.  Yup, turns out Chip got fired because Petri blamed him for what Tony blamed Petri for.  So, because he’s nuts, Chip blamed Tony (instead of Petri) and obtained the NCIS job with Abby purely to frame Tony.

Chip relives the frame.  He got the dental impression off the apple Tony ate in Abby’s lab in Honor Code, Episode 3.7.  He obtained the blood from the tissues Tony had in his nose at the end of Under Covers, Episode 3.8, and likely the car fiber from when he admitted to pulling Tony’s car around that same night.  The gloves came from Tony trashing a pair in The Voyeur’s Web, Episode 3.6 (I believe).  Chip was going to take it as a sign that nailing Petri was good enough, and he wishes Abby could have left well enough alone.  And then he lunges at her with the knife.

Upstairs, Gibbs is reading the transcript Shepard gave him and he drops it and runs off.  We see a pic of Chip on the stand testifying.  The agents follow and they burst into Abby’s lab, guns drawn.  The place is trashed, and Abby is sitting slumped over in a chair.  The agents hear a noise and see Chip laying on the floor, wrapped in duct tape, with a piece over his mouth, and muffle-screaming with rage.

Abby looks up, exhausted, and says, “Now can I work alone?”

Quotables:

(1) [Tony is talking to Gibbs from his cell].

“You know, I’ve been thinking.  I’m a federal prosecutor’s dream.  You do tend to date a lot, don’t you, Mr.  DiNozzo? Yeah.  I do tend to date a lot, but where does it say that dating, you know, a new girl every week is a crime?  No, it’s not.  But it does speak to your deep-seated psychological problems and commitment issues.  Really? So, you’re saying my intimacy issues stem from my mother, who dressed me as a sailor until I was 10 years old?  Maybe.  Well, I guess it might explain why you objectify women and treat them as sexual objects.  While you’re being so forthright and insightful, Mr. DiNozzo, why did you sink your teeth into the victim’s leg? Because I’m angry and I’m immature, and I like control.  You have no alibi.  Alibi? How can I have an alibi when the murder doesn’t even have a time or a date? That’s interesting.  What about means? Latex glove? Scalpel? You could have gotten these things from work.  No?  Right.  Of course.  Yes, I ripped a glove at the scene.  It seems a little sloppy for a federal agent who investigates crime scenes, but, you know, those are the breaks when you’re a homicidal maniac dumping butchered women’s remains out in the woods in the middle of the night.  Right? I’m not getting out of this one, am I, boss?

[Gibbs summons him closer to the bars and then reaches into the cell and slaps him in the back of the head].

Thank you, boss.”

(2) Director Shepard: I saw Lt. Kim leave.  She had an alibi?

Gibbs: No, she framed DiNozzo and I let her go.

Time Until Sexual Harassment: 2:20. These are fewer and further between now, but Tony showing Ziva his ass and slapping it seems to be something she’s less into than some of his other shenanigans.

Enh, never mind.  She doesn’t care.

Ducky Tales: Not a story, but Ducky uses the word “gams” for legs.  He tells a story about police catching Ted Bundy because they matched Bundy’s teeth to a bite mark on a victim.    

The Rest of the Story:

-We’ve seen a severed leg on this show before.  In My Other Left foot, Episode 1.12.

-Gibbs gets Ducky’s reference to Betty Grable.  Because it’s 60 years old.  Also, because Gibbs’s dad had her painted on the nose of his P-51.

-Interestingly, Gibbs’s haste to exonerate Tony only made things worse as he kept walking the team into the snares Chip laid.

-Shepard shares some story about how she stepped in something while undercover and Gibbs kept the heat off her until she could fix it.  We don’t get the story here, although the flashback of Gibbs assassinating a man may have something to so with it.  All in good time.

-There is a very strange interlude where Gibbs, while speaking with his team, speaks to an Agent named David Brant.  Agent Brant is retiring.  It seemed completely meaningless to the plot, so I looked it up, and, per IMDB, “Dave Brant is an actual retired career NCIS special agent and executive. He served NCIS from 1977-2005. He served as the agency director from 1997 until he retired in December 2005, the month after his guest appearance on NCIS: Frame Up (2005).”  Cool. 

-Tony gets slapped in the head.  Twice.

-Tony mentions Magnum, P.I. again, and describes the episode Home from the Sea, which aired on September 29, 1983, and was episode 4.1 of the series.  Oh, and I guess I should have realized before now that NCIS showrunner Donald Bellisario worked on Magnum, P.I., and wrote this episode, which Tony names as his all-time favorite.

-Tony’s mother dressed him as a sailor until he was ten years old? Later stories will establish that she died when he was eight.

-Agent Sacks will be seen twice more in 2006.

-If the case against Tony went to court, it’s hard to imagine it being quite such a slam dunk against him in the absence of an identity for the victim and a time or cause of death.  The only knock I have on this episode is the immediate assumption that no defense lawyer could beat this case.

-I think it’s safe to say the director has egg on her face for hiring Chip and forcing a viper into the nest. 

-Tony references Cool Hand Luke (1967)

-Ziva confuses “passed on” and “passed out.” McGee helps.

-Abby never had an assistant again.  Almost.

Casting Call: Lindsay Price, reprising the role of Lt. Kim is even better this time around.

Man, This Show Is Old: I’m not sure why Director Shepard compared NCIS investigating Tony to columnist Robert Novak and the CIA, but presumably, she is referring to the Valerie Plame Affair from 2003.

MVP: Abby.  Even the characters said as much.

Rating: I can only imagine watching this episode in real time.  I had the advantage of seeing the episode the first time knowing that Tony had numerous seasons and episodes in his future.  But I still remember wondering how the hell this caper would work itself out.  I’m trying to imagine someone who didn’t have that benefit watching each piece of evidence slowly condemn Tony in a gradual tightening of the noose that starts to make a frame-up theory more and more implausible.  By the time we get to the car fibers, we have DNA, finger prints, teeth marks and material from Tony’s car, and who could have access to all of those things so as to perpetrate a frame?  And then Tony has been played as a little bit of a creep up to this point, so maybe?  I don’t think 2005 network TV would have the guts to make Tony do a heel turn and be a killer, but fans had to be wondering if anyone was safe after the back of Kate’s head exploded on that rooftop. 

The perp is also simultaneously immediately believable, yet someone the audience would overlook.  Chip as the big bad is immediately believable because of course it was Chip- who else could it have been?  But it wasn’t necessarily obvious because the show made Chip look like way too big a tool to pull this off.  But, in retrospect, he was a tool because of his glaring lack of social skills.  In every instance where he had to do work, he was supremely competent, but, because the show highlighted his poor social skills, the audience conflated social competence with vocational competence and overlooked him.  Frankly, the way he manipulates Abby into building the frame is genius.  He bit off more than he could chew with Abby, but it was still a smart play.

The other impressive aspect is the slow burn on Chip’s plot.  I came into this viewing knowing Chip was the bad guy, so I looked for the opportunities he had to set up his frame.  They’re all hiding in plain sight, and he’s present in every scene where Tony provides the raw materials for the frame.  You can argue that the show concealed Chip’s motivation, but it telegraphed in Under Covers, Episode 3.7 that Tony and Chip had a history.  So, the show didn’t completely hide the ball.  Well, and there are a couple of heavy-handed moments in this episode (Tony pointing at Chip but really at Ziva and saying, “You set this up;” Chip calling the perp a “genius”). While Chip’s motivation makes little to no sense as Tony’s role in his firing was highly attenuated, it’s at least a believable motivation if you don’t squint too hard.

This was a strong episode on a variety of levels.  All of the above; Gibbs and Shepard; Gibbs trusting Fornell; Ziva playing the heavy; Abby losing and regaining her faith; Lt. Kim’s fun performance.

Nine Palmers.  

Next Time: McGee kills a cop.