Episode: 3.10, Probie
Air Date: November 29, 2005.
The Victim: Lt. John Benedict, Metro DC Police Department.
Emotionally Traumatized, But Ultimately Irrelevant, Witness Who Finds the Body: Not in play.
Plot Summary: Tony and Ziva are discussing the time Tony sold his sperm to a sperm bank. You didn’t miss an (unbelievably gross and disturbing) episode. It happened when he was a freshman at Ohio State, and now he’s nervous because the sperm bank sent him a certified letter asking him to contact them.
Tony and Ziva also appear to be securing some fancy gala while they have this conversation. Gibbs radios them and appears, wearing a suit and leading some Navy brass. McGee is securing the garage, where a car is waiting. McGee looks into the exit alleyway where two guys are arguing. He calls it in to Gibbs and approaches. Then gunshots go off and Gibbs loudly sends the brass in the car out the front entrance and sprints to back-up his agent. Gibbs appears and finds McGee kneeling over a body and looking shocked.
Hmmmm. Is this McGee’s first kill?
The team works the scene. Ducky asks if Gibbs found a weapon and Gibbs says no. Then, Ducky gives us some exposition and asks if the dead guy, Andrew Ryan, was connected to the death threat on the Chief of Naval Operations by a lefty radical group (hence the security). Ducky finds it counter-intuitive that a civil rights group protesting treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba would threaten the life of a Navy officer. Gibbs says it’s no different than right-to-lifers threatening to blow up an abortion clinic, establishing that this show is at least consistent on how it views fringe lunatics on both sides of the aisle. Ducky laughs and says we live in interesting times.
Tony rolls up to prematurely award an MVP trophy and praises McGee, “Way to go, Probie! Three shots, three hits!” I guess this is McGee’s first kill because he seems upset about it and flashes back to Ryan turning and pulling a gun on him. Gibbs checks on the CNO and Ziva and Tony secured him at home and doubled the security detail. McGee wants to know if Gibbs found the weapon Ryan pulled on him. Gibbs did not. McGee says he identified himself and took fire, returned fire, and the SUV the guy was talking to drove off. The weapon should be there. McGee saw a Virginia plate and two numbers, and says the SUV is black or dark blue. Gibbs tells Ziva to put out a BOLO on this likely extremely broad class of vehicles. He also tells her to find out everything on Ryan.
They re-enact the scene. Which seems odd given all the bystanders. Tony uses the line to determine where a slug might have hit. He tells McGee not to worry.
Back at autopsy, Ducky tells Abby that Ryan had a two pack a day habit, clogged arteries, and an abused liver. Ducky pulled one slug from the thigh, and one from the shoulder that ultimately found a resting spot in the lungs. These were non-lethal. Bachelor number three finished the drill and Ryan’s life.
There’s an interlude where Abby asks to assist in the autopsy for grins. Palmer teasingly objects, but Ducky points out that she doesn’t need a medical degree. Ducky then takes Abby through the process of the third bullet. Ducky calls it “definitely the kill shot.” As McGee wanders in. Whoops. He’s still despondent and Abby gives him a hug. Ducky goes for a pep talk and confirms that this was McGee’s first kill. Even though McGee says he was trained for this, Ducky assures him that putting holes in cardboard cut-outs isn’t the same thing. McGee asks Abby to run Ryan’s prints since the ID is fake.
In the squad room, Tony has a list of three radical groups that could have been after the CNO, but the BOLO came back with thousands of SUVs. Tony suggests checking them against radical groups more to keep Ziva from fighting with Gibbs than because he thinks it’s a good idea. He tells Ziva to “zip it.” Gibbs inquires and Tony walks back to his desk with, “f%^& this, I tried” body language. Ziva makes the point that while McGee says he was shot at, the team has found no gun and no slugs, ergo…
Gibbs gets a phone call to the principal’s office. As he walks by Ziva, he tells her, “McGee isn’t your father. And he isn’t Ari. He doesn’t know how to lie.” Which is a pretty vicious shot given that Ziva is asking a fairly routine question under the circumstances. But it also makes clear that Gibbs prizes loyalty and he’s not OK with Ziva turning on her own this quickly. As Gibbs walks off, Tony asks what he said, and Ziva quietly responds, “To go back to work.” Tony knows she took one up the shorts and feels bad for her.
Gibbs arrives for his per-episode lecture, and Director Shepard tells him she’s flashing back to Paris in 1999. Gibbs indulges his per-episode sexy-time flashback where he remembers hooking up with his Director before she was his Director. Which is an amazing tool to have when you’re getting in trouble with the boss. Shepard reads the smile on his face and tells him she is thinking of something different: a time Gibbs covered for another agent who messed up. Gibbs plays coy at first and then says, “Oh, the time you shot that guy…” Shepard interrupts by asking if McGee screwed up. Gibbs thinks probies make mistakes, but he also doesn’t think McGee screwed up and the team will get to the bottom of it. He keeps smirking at her, and when she asks what’s on his mind, he says, “Paris,” and yeah, that’s a strong play. Because while she tells him to get his mind out of the bedroom, it effectively ends the discussion.
Tony is on hold with the sperm bank. Ziva keeps teasing him with bad puns (as if there’s any such thing). Tony has been on hold fifteen minutes, and Ziva twiddles her fingers with delighted anticipation as someone picks up. Of course, Gibbs walks through right then and Tony pretends he’s on with another agent and hangs up. Gibbs gets the update on the vehicle search and it’s going to take a while.
Abby appears with McGee. She tells Gibbs that prints have identified the victim as Lt. John Benedict. He was a Metro DC detective working undercover. Tony’s jaw drops as McGee says he killed a cop.
McGee and Gibbs have to go visit the boss. She has two cops, Captain Karzin and Sergeant Archer with her. Sgt. Archer was Lt. Benedict’s partner. McGee attempts to apologize, but Captain Karzin is icy about it. Everybody sits. Sgt. Archer gives McGee the evil eye while Gibbs asks Sgt. Archer some questions. Sgt. Archer does not know why Lt. Benedict was behind the hotel. Lt. Benedict was off-duty. Sgt. Archer saw Lt. benedict around noon after both ended a 36-hour shift working undercover for the narcotics division.
Captain Karzin asks if McGee identified himself. McGee is clear that he did, and that Lt. Benedict turned and fired. Captain Karzin wants to know why there’s no bullet or weapon and Gibbs steps in to say they can’t answer that yet. Sgt. Archer says Lt. Benedict wasn’t carrying a weapon. Captain Karzin condescendingly asks McGee is he is sure of his story. McGee flashes back and confirms. Captain Karzin goes on a rant about what a pro cop Lt. Benedict was and how McGee’s story could never have happened. Gibbs backs his agent. Shepard steps in and politely asks McGee to leave. He apologizes again to Captain Karzin and leaves.
Captain Karzin thinks a nervous rookie panicked and is covering it up. Gibbs asks Sgt. Archer if he’s sure Lt. Benedict wasn’t carrying, and Sgt. Archer says it would have blown Lt. Benedict’s cover. Gibbs makes the good point that Lt. Benedict was off duty just as Sgt. Archer is now and he’s carrying. Sgt. Archer plays dumb, but, as we learned in Silver War, Episode 3.4, Gibbs knows who is carrying what weapons and when and he identifies the weapon holstered in the small of Sgt. Archer’s back. Then Gibbs mentions all the liver scarring and Lt. Benedict’s alcohol problem. Captain Karzin gets pissed, but Gibbs keeps his cool. Captain Karzin won’t stand for a cover-up and Shepard says she won’t either and testily reminds Captain Karzin that NCIS shared their report. Captain Karzin says he’ll conduct his own investigation, thank you very much and he wants to question Agent McGee. Gibbs manages not to sneer at that, but his position is clear. Shepard says she’ll allow it, but not today and shows our friends out. Sgt. Archer makes tough guy eyes at Gibbs but his babyface ass ain’t fooling nobody. Shepard shuts the door and angrily tells Gibbs before he comes at her, he’d better think about what he’d do if roles were reversed and McGee was picked off in an alley. Gibbs doesn’t say anything, but it’s clear he’s winning the measuring contest with his boss right now.
Ziva finds a possible match on the SUV. But McGee can’t confirm the size of the vehicle. Gibbs charges into the squad room and angrily tells Tony and Ziva to go back and look again for the bullet. When Ziva says they’re working the radical group angle, Gibbs says he doesn’t think that Lt. Benedict’s presence in the alley had anything to do with the threat against the CNO. He tells Tony to also see if any witnesses saw Lt. Benedict in the alley. McGee wants to go too, but Gibbs tells him that Metro PD is out to get him and his finding the bullet would compromise the evidence. He tells McGee to find the SUV.
Tony and Ziva argue over what Ziva sees as Tony’s blind obedience to Gibbs. Then they argue over whether McGee misread and overreacted to a non-threat. Outside of McGee’s presence, Tony is fully ready to give due credit to McGee’s brain and it’s knowledge and speed. He thinks McGee wouldn’t have fouled up like this. Ziva is not convinced and says she’ll start flashing Lt. Benedict’s photo on the street. She leaves Tony to what she feels is a fool’s errand: looking for the bullet.
Abby and McGee talk in her lab. Lt. Benedict’s BAL came back clean despite the damage to his liver. But that’s not why Abby called McGee. She subjects him to an aromatherapy session. McGee does not believe in such things. But tough shit for him because Abby handcuffs him to the table.
Night has fallen in the squad room. We get a glimpse of how Gibbs always seems to know everything about his agents when he picks up a phone message for Tony. He sees it’s about the sperm bank and laughs out loud. Then he unlucks into an elevator encounter with Shepard. Some poor girl we’ve never seen before just stops the elevator door from closing and ends up having to ride down in an elevator with the two most frightening people in her office while they’re pissed at each other. The terror on her face says it all, and she escapes the elevator at just under light speed when it opens. And that’s when the fight starts because Shepard has been storing up her resentment all day at Gibbs countermanding her in front of the DC cops. It ends with Shepard telling Gibbs to get a dictionary because he keeps asking her what her $4 words mean.
McGee is at home typing on his goofy typewriter when Tony comes by and plays out a drum beat on his door. McGee doesn’t feel the need for Tony-time, but we’ve got 56 episodes worth of evidence that Tony doesn’t take no for an answer. Tony says they’re going clubbing and starts looking for McGee’s party clothes. McGee keeps protesting and warns Tony not to razz him tonight. Tony apologizes. McGee knows he’s just trying to help. McGee is worried he’s not like the rest of the team and thus not cut out to be a field agent. Tony tells the story of the first time he shot at someone. He wet his pants. And he tells McGee that if he ever tells anyone that, he’ll slap him silly. Then Tony reverts to form and raids McGee’s refrigerator while telling McGee this will all be just a memory in a week. This causes McGee to flash back, but what he sees now is a guy holding his gun up in surrender instead of shooting.
Ziva beats Gibs to the office. It’s easy when you wake up at 0400. When he arrives, she tells him that the background check on Lt. Benedict was unremarkable. Like someone else we know, he drank a little too much and had three ex-wives. Gibbs says that does not make him a bad person. The police service record is clean with several awards. Gibbs notes that Metro is going to make it look like “our probie killed their hero.” Ziva informs Gibbs that McGee is getting interrogated that afternoon and the Director has already approved it. Ziva knows this because she is a spy.
Time for another fight. Shepard tells Gibbs not to give her the stare because she’s not a junior field agent. He calls he a junior director and that probably wasn’t OK. She has to go to MTAC and he tells her she has to learn to say no. She says she already did, but I’m not sure what that means. Maybe to sleeping with him again, because if he wants that, he’s going about it the wrong way.
Abby arrives to work and finds McGee, who is still looking for the SUV. He says Tony came by the apartment and kept him up until three. Abby thinks that’s nice. McGee thinks that if Tony is being nice to him, he’s really in trouble. Anywho, technobabble establishes that McGee is running the SUV records against anyone Lt. Benedict talked to by phone in the last three months. He got no hits because he only had Lt. Benedict’s home and cell phones and Metro wouldn’t give him access to Lt. Benedict’s desk phone. But Abby has a hack-y workaround.
Tony is still figuring out his sperm bank problem. Ziva hovers nearby. Tony figures the sperm bank is running low on their “Favorite fossil fuel.” Since the person trying to contact Tony is titled director of critical issues, he has concerns. Maybe one of his offspring needs an organ transplant. Ziva dies laughing at the idea of Tony, who won’t even share a donut, sharing an organ. Tony tells her she is not a parent and thus wouldn’t understand.
Abby and McGee are surfing the program, and they get a hit. Edward Halligan, an Irish national. They report and Gibbs tells Tony to bring him in.
Gibbs is sitting with Sgt. Archer in a van watching a drug deal. Sgt. Archer isn’t going to blow his cover by making a bust. Gibbs doesn’t have jurisdiction. Sgt. Archer explains the stakeout he’s working, and Gibbs is surprised he agreed to meet. Sgt. Archer is just interested in the truth but would prefer Captain Karzin not find out they’ve been talking. Gibbs agrees and hands him the photo of Halligan. Sgt. Archer says he’s never met him, but Halligan’s the money behind some drug ring. Gibbs want to know why Lt. Benedict contacted him. Sgt. Archer says Lt. Benedict set up a trap for Halligan, but Halligan never showed. They think he was tipped. Gibbs says NCIS thinks it was Halligan in the alley with Lt. Benedict. Sgt. Archer thinks Lt. Benedict’s presence was legit, and they have a mini-argument over how well Sgt. Archer knew Lt. Benedict and whether Lt. Benedict could have been dirty. Sgt. Archer asks Gibbs rhetorically how long it takes to know whether your partner is dirty, and Gibbs’s non-response tells us that Sgt. Archer has a lot to learn.
McGee is anxious about the interrogation. Ziva tells him he has to be confident. If McGee doesn’t believe his story, how can Metro? But McGee keeps remembering things slightly differently. Ziva says McGee had better not tell Metro that.
Tony cannot find Halligan. He wasn’t at his palatial estate, and really, the estate is all Tony can talk about. To McGee’s chagrin. Ziva says her Interpol contacts say that Halligan is wanted in several countries and is presently on the run. According to records, Halligan took a plane from Dulles to Portugal, and hasa connection to Morocco, a country with no extradition treaty. Now McGee thinks he killed a cop while the cop was arresting a drug lord.
McGee is in interrogation with Captain Karzin. I would have taken a lawyer. Or Gibbs. Captain Karzin says, “Benny didn’t point a weapon at you did he?” And now McGee is remembering Lt. Benedict not even holding a weapon.
Gibbs shows up for maybe his fifth fight this episode with Shepard and tells her she does not want her office door closed. Whatever that means. She shuts it anyway. Gibbs announces that the U.S. attorney’s office is charging McGee with negligent homicide and Metro is booking him. Shepard says McGee admitted to making a tragic mistake. Gibbs says that Shepard doesn’t know how to protect her people. She accuses Gibbs of ignoring the facts. He tells her he doesn’t leave his people behind, being a Marine and all and says he’s going to Metro to get McGee. Shepard tells him no and when he questions that, she says his eyesight is weak, not his hearing and stands in front of the door. Gibbs firmly moves her out of the way, walks out, and that’s when she announces that she got McGee transferred to NCIS custody until arraignment. Then she shuts the door.
On the one hand, Gibbs should stop projecting his disdain for politicians onto Shepard and assuming the worst-case scenarios with respect to what she will and won’t do. On the other hand, she’s kind of a pain in the ass for letting him assume the worst about her until he makes a fool of himself and only then telling him about some solid she did for him. The relationship is hopelessly dysfunctional.
In the squad room, Tony and Ziva argue over who should have gone with McGee to Metro. Ziva sees that Interpol missed Halligan in Portugal and now he’s gone on to Morocco. McGee walks into the squad room. Gibbs walks up furiously behind him, hits him on the back, and when McGee turns, says, “I let you down.” McGee sees it the other way around. Gibbs says he should have gone with McGee. McGee says he panicked and shot a cop making a drug bust. Gibbs wants to know what cop makes a drug bust without a weapon. Abby arrives and says, “None.” She did gunshot residue on Lt. Benedict’s jacket, and one of the shots came from less than a foot away. So, one of McGee’s shots missed. Tony gloats. “I knew you weren’t that good, Probie. Three for three at twenty-five meters. I don’t think so.” A discussion then ensues about the SUV, where Tony’s smart mouth earns him a Gibbs slap that Gibbs allows Ziva to deliver. Regardless, Tony has traced Halligan’s SUV and it’s an imported Irish car. Which means that the driver and passenger sides are reversed. So, there were three men on the scene even accounting for Halligan and Lt. Benedict, and the SUV passenger shot Lt. Benedict. Regardless, if one of McGee’s shots missed, then it’s at the other end of the alley and Gibbs sends Tony and Ziva to go find it.
McGee still thinks he fired on an unarmed man, but Gibbs angrily makes clear that McGee saw a flash and heard a gunshot. Gibbs would have fired too. And maybe neither of McGee’s rounds were the fatal round. He tells McGee to try and figure out who Halligan was meeting with.
At the alley, Tony makes clear that he will not tolerate a Gibbs slap from Ziva and will slap her back next time. She makes a joke about following orders that isn’t really that funny given she’s supposed to be Israeli. Tony gets his sperm bank call. He doesn’t want to talk about it, but Ziva said the phone calls were driving her nuts so she answered one earlier and talked to the sperm bank lady and already knows Tony’a secret. Tony’s head turns into a bright red sucker like on cartoons and he says, “She had no right to tell you that nobody wants my sperm.” Whoops. Ziva does a fist pump and a kick in celebration of working Tony, but then tries to commiserate a little with his issues.
Ziva finds the bullet. Back at the lab, Abby determines that the slug matches McGee’s gun and that McGee was wide left with one of the shots. Gibbs wants to know where Benedict’s weapon is, and Abby has a theory. And it’s a goofy theory, but there’s under four minutes left, so we all have to accept that, as Lt. Benedict fell, he dropped his gun into the SUV, which then sped off. At least Abby has prepared an animated computer model to make the medicine go down.
McGee shows up with phone records for Halligan. He has called Sgt. Archer several times, and one of the calls lasted eighteen minutes. Partners also share an extension, so the call the team discovered earlier also likely came from Sgt. Archer. This despite Sgt. Archer telling Gibbs that he and Halligan never met.
Gibbs and McGee make ready to confront Sgt. Archer. McGee’s gun has been confiscated as evidence, so Gibbs hands McGee his back-up. Gibbs thinks they’ll have to run a con on Sgt. Archer, so he tells McGee to grab an old warrant out of the file cabinet and hope that Sgt. Archer doesn’t know whether Halligan is in Morocco yet.
Gibbs and McGee confront Sgt. Archer in his driveway. He becomes belligerent and then McGee shows the warrant. They lay out the phone evidence and the ballistics evidence and then Gibbs supposes that Lt. Benedict knew that Sgt. Archer was on the take and went to confront him. Sgt. Archer refuses to let the agents pin Lt. Benedict’s death on him. Then the agents lie and say that Interpol captured Halligan and Halligan isn’t taking the fall for Sgt. Archer. Archer turns, and then turns back and slugs Gibbs in the face and knocks him to the driveway. Sgt. Archer pulls his gun and McGee has his gun drawn but hesitates. Gibbs fills Sgt. Archer with lead. Then he gets up, gets right in McGee’s face and angrily says, “If you ever hesitate because you second guessed yourself again, I’ll take your badge! We clear?” Then he leaves McGee with Sgt. Archer’s body.
Back at the lab, Abby is getting ready to leave when McGee arrives. They talk and she says the bullets were too damaged. She can’t tell whether McGee’s shot was the shot that killed Lt. Benedict. She asks if it matters, and he quietly says it does.
And that’s how we end it.
Quotables:
(1) “Can somebody tell me what the hell is going on here? First, Abby’s lab nerd frames DiNozzo for murder, and then McGee kills a cop? Did somebody break a mirror?” -Gibbs, showing some exasperation.
(2) Big D, little I, big N, little ozzo.” -Tony, describing how to spell his name.
(3) Abby: Rule #8 is gonna save you, McGee!
Tony: Never date a coworker?
Ziva: Never go anywhere without your knife.
Tony: I thought that was nine.
Gibbs: Never take anything for granted.
Time Until Sexual Harassment: None. But the next episode involves supermodels, so let’s trot out the category one more time.
Ducky Tales: None this episode.
The Rest of the Story:
-I don’t think selling your sperm is as easy for college students as Tony makes it sound. We looked into it to fund a road trip when I was 19 in the 90s and sperm banks were not impressed with the goofy man-children on the other end of their telephone. Although, since Tony was a Division 1 NCAA athlete, it’s possible he was more in demand than “teenage functional alcoholics.” In fact, the later revelation that nobody wanted genetic material from a 6 foot plus D-1 athlete at any point in the roughly fifteen years since he donated defies plausibility.
-Ducky makes a remark about Abby being afraid to come to autopsy. This time encompassed about one episode (Bête Noire, Episode 1.16) and was a bit of a plot contrivance.
-Ari is Ari Haswari, Ziva’s half brother whom she killed to prevent him from killing Gibbs in Kill Ari (Part Two), Episode 3.2. Her father is a Deputy Director of Mossad, and also a skilled liar and manipulator.
-Gibbs gets snippy with Ziva for what he perceives as her disloyalty in questioning McGee. She ain’t seen nothing yet.
In the aromatherapy session, Abby tells McGee to make sure he inhales. Probably good advice since he didn’t inhale when he experimented with marijuana. As we learned in The Good Wives Club, Episode 2.2.
-Tony refers to McGee as “McGeek.” This is the first of perhaps millions of references where he puts “Mc” in front of some other word to refer to his fellow agent.
-At least Tony knocked this time. The last time he visited McGee’s place, Tony (and Kate) picked the lock. Red Cell, Episode 2.20.
-In comparing himself to his fellow agents, McGee mentions Kate. It’s cool that they’re not sweeping her under the rug even 10 episodes after her death. A lot of shows would never mention her again.
-Ziva can’t recall “on the lam” and says “on the goat” and “on the sheep.” McGee corrects her and Tony notes that “lam” doesn’t end with a “b.” She nails, “Goose is cooked,” though.
-Rule #8: Never take anything for granted.
-Gibbs asks Ziva to slap Tony.
-We’re aware of Ducky’s vintage Morgan automobile, because he drove it in Kill Ari (Part Two), Episode 3.2.
-Tony references The Third Man (1949).
-I think we probably want law enforcement officers to react to killing the way McGee does here, but it’s still uncomfortable. McGee has always been a little different from his fellow agents, and it’s hard to imagine Gibbs, Tony, or Ziva losing sleep over killing someone. I guess that’s why McGee is the POV character for this episode.
-Interesting that the show put two agents in legal jeopardy in two consecutive episodes. But the timing of a season sometimes dictates how a show positions its quality scripts.
-McGee has no trouble shooting people now. Likely thanks to that parting shot from Gibbs. In the most recent Season 16 episode of this show, he ventilated an intruder in his apartment. In a good comedy bit, it came out that this wasn’t even the first perp he killed in the apartment.
-I like the way the show quietly examines the unreliability of memory under traumatic circumstances. That feels a little ahead of its time for 2005.
Casting Call: Again, nobody sticks out. I think adding Lauren Holly to the cast strained the budget.
Man, This Show Is Old: Gitmo protesters aren’t really a big thing anymore and haven’t been in a long time. Barack Obama campaigned on closing the prison, then won the election and didn’t close the prison. That sent a message that he had seen the intel and agreed that the prison was a good thing. It sucked a lot of the air out of the issue.
Ducky said fourteen years ago that we live in interesting times because civil rights lefties and right-to-life righties want to do violence in the name of their causes. That hasn’t really gotten better, although that behavior is still fringe behavior.
MVP: Gibbs. With the Sig. For the win.
Rating: So promising until the end. This episode was a good mystery, and even the idea of Lt. Benedict’s gun falling into the SUV as he died is forgivable if it’s the only thing I’m asked to swallow, so to speak.
But think about the rest of the story here. Ballistics demonstrates four shots were fired, and Lt. Benedict had gun shot residue on his jacket that proves a close-range shot occurred. But NCIS recovered the extra bullet, NCIS found the GSR, and it’s an NCIS agent’s career on the line. I get that you can’t have Fornell’s FBI team run an investigation two episodes in a row, but you need something other than NCIS-derived evidence to clear McGee here. And the team had that, until they killed the bad guy, a cop. And killed him with no witnesses as to him attacking federal agents. You know, except a homicide suspect and the homicide suspect’s boss who also happens to have pulled the trigger on cop #2.
So now Shepard gets to explain to Captain Karzin that they’ve killed another one of his cops, and that guy, conveniently dead, was the real murderer of the first cop. Oh, and he was working with a master criminal who escaped to a country with no extradition treaty. Even finding Lt. Benedict’s gun in the SUV would hardly dispel the cloud of suspicion over this case. And, to top if all off, Abby ends the episode by telling McGee she can’t tell which shot killed Lt. Benedict. The only thing that even remotely works in McGee’s favor are some phone logs and if NCIS maintained chain of custody of McGee’s gun so the fourth shot can at least be demonstrated objectively. Either way, he’s not getting out of jail and Captain Karzin would probably be asking a federal prosecutor to charge Gibbs for Sgt. Archer’s murder. It’s a lot to roll to credits over.
Six Palmers.
Next Time: Supermodels. Please be better than Bikini Wax, Episode 2.18.
A Year of NCIS 