A Year of NCIS, Day 57: Model Behavior (Episode 3.11)

Episode: 3.11, Model Behavior

Air Date: December 13, 2005

The Victim: Taylor Shane, a super model playing Marine on reality television.

Emotionally Traumatized, But Ultimately Irrelevant, Witness Who Finds the Body: A couple of of provocatively dressed ladies are sleeping in what appears to be military barracks.  Two camera techs are watching them on closed circuit TV and notice a third, empty bed.  The two techs set off a reveille alarm over a loudspeaker.  Two of the girls jump up and one seems to be about to lose it.  Then a fully militarily dressed drill sergeant walks in and starts tearing into them while a camera crew follows and films.  He loudly says to one of them, “You call yourself a supermodel?!” which tells those of us who lived through this time period that this is intended to be some hokey reality show that combines the military and supermodels. 

One of the girls looks out the window and becomes upset.  The rest gather, and, from the scenery outside the window, it appears we’re on a military base.  A third girl is hanging upside down on a security fence.  She is very dead. 

Ah, reality TV.   

Plot Summary: We start our episode proper to applause at NCIS HQ, where what appears to be an award ceremony is taking place.  I mean, I assume the NCIS employees are not applauding Director Shepard’s new haircut.

The Director and her bad haircut announce that Gibbs has received an award and everyone applauds.  But the Director and her bad haircut seem confused because Gibbs doesn’t appear.  Ziva is also curious, but Tony and Ducky make clear that Gibbs never appears for award ceremonies, especially if he’s an award recipient.  McGee, the other newbie, has to pay Abby $20.00 after losing a bet over Gibbs’s appearance.  It’s clear everybody knows this drill except for Shepard and her bad haircut, Ziva, and McGee. Tony walks up to accept the award on Gibbs’s behalf and gives Shepard and her bad haircut an excuse she doesn’t buy about Gibbs working a case.  Tony even has a prepared speech but attendees begin leaving almost as soon as he starts speaking.  Abby gives Tony a hug.  She should give the Director one too because Shepard and her bad haircut are pissed.

In her office, Shepard and her bad haircut are trying to call Gibbs on his cell and he walks into her office behind her while taking her call.  She hates when he does that.  Shepard and her bad haircut tell Gibbs that Tony has his award, and Gibbs says Tony can keep it.  Shepard and her bad haircut acknowledge that some things never change, but that she expects Gibbs to appear for award ceremonies in the future.  Gibbs asks if Tony told her he was working a case, and then he describes the scene we saw in the intro: a supermodel named Taylor Shane was found dead on a security fence at Quantico.  Shepard and her bad haircut want to know why he’s not at the scene, and Gibbs says he just got the call five minutes ago.  Of course, the award ceremony started 30 minutes ago, but Gibbs says he likes to get out ahead of a case.  Shepard and her bad haircut sigh and say this case will be high profile, so Gibbs should go easy on the press.  Gibbs figures she’s telling him how to do his job, but she simply says, “I know you.”

At the scene, we get a bit of a download from Tony.  The reality TV show being filmed at Quantico is called “Boot Camp Babes” and involves hot, rich women learning the important things in life, like how to fire a machine gun while wearing a bikini.  Ziva is curious as to whether they actually serve, but McGee says it’s just a stunt. 

In keeping with stunts, the crime scene is a press circus.  Gibbs parts most of the press members like the Red Sea but seems intent on general politeness, mostly affably saying, “I just got here.”  Then they crush up against him and spill his coffee.  I love the way the music always goes ominous when Gibbs’s coffee spills.  Gibbs concludes the interview.  A redheaded reporter apologizes, and you would think her red hair would give her the necessary street cred, but Gibbs says, “I don’t care” and walks under the police tape. 

Ducky says TOD was about five hours ago.  The lacerations are significant but don’t appear to be fatal.  Palmer echoes the usual “We’ll know more when we get her back,” and then flees when the older men stare at him.  Gibbs wants to know who moved the body, and Staff Sergeant McMannis says he didn’t think it was right for reporters to take pictures of Taylor hanging on the fence.  He has public relation experience and is the Marine liaison to the reality show and didn’t think images like that were good for the deceased or the Marines.  SSGt. McMannis has no idea how Ms. Shane died on the fence, but says she wasn’t trying to escape.  If she wanted off the show, she could just ask.  The Marines are currently trying to inform the show’s producer, Tom Crawley, of the tragedy.

Gibbs tells McGee to take photos and Ziva to interview the models.  Naturally, Tony suggests he’d be a better fit for the interviews (and admits to watching the show).  Ziva hates models so she’s fine with it.  Gibbs hates people inserting their wants and needs into his investigation and sends McGee to help Ziva while sticking Tony with scene photos.  Gibbs says he wants to see all the footage of the show.  Ziva asks if Tony wants her to get him an autograph, but he laughs at her.  Then he takes McGee aside, pulls a magazine out of his pants and asks him to see if the models will sign it, “To the Big D.”  Classy.

Natalie Vance and Hannah Bresling, the other models, are discussing the case when the agents arrive.  Ziva disperses the camera crew.  The last time the models saw the victim was lights out.  Ms. Bresling thinks Ms. Shane was trying to escape to get a better story line and more camera time.  Ms. Vance is offended, but Ms. Bresling notes that the cameras are off and Ms. Vance doesn’t have to pretend to care about the victim.  McGee, who also watches the show, seems bummed since the women all seem like such good friends on TV.  Ms. Vance offers up some pointed meta-commentary about the cameras being on 24 hours/day but viewers only getting to see 23 minutes of that. 

Tony finishes photos and wants to go see the models.  Gibbs bodily stops him and tells him to escort the body back and to not let the reporters follow him. 

Inside, the models sign Tony’s copy of the Boot Camp Babes edition of Get Some Magazine, the NCIS universe’s Maxim, per his parameters.  They ask McGee if they can help him in any other way, like maybe some hair tips for Ziva (burn), but McGee just thanks them and gives them a business card.  Ziva suggests that one of the producers might be able to read the card to the models.  Ms. Breslin gives Ziva evil eyes as she leaves.

Back in autopsy, Ducky lists the COD as an overdose of PCP that sent the poor girl flailing into the fence.  Seizure > coma > death.  Ducky doesn’t think it was accidental because of the dosage, but it may have been a suicide.  NCIS doesn’t really investigate suicides, but they’ll treat it as a murder until something definite appears one way or the other.

Gibbs and Shepard and her bad haircut are watching local news reporting on Ms. Shane’s death.  Shepard and her bad haircut say they’ll fast forward to the good part and we get to see a selectively edited and dubbed video that makes it look like Gibbs ended the interview when asked a question about a  cover-up, and said “I don’t care,” when the reporter, Cindy Sanchez, supposedly said, “The people have a right to know.”  Gibbs makes that point, but Shepard and her bad haircut are unconvinced and say it’s Gibbs’s job to make sure he can’t be selectively edited.  The Marine Corps doesn’t need the bad press, which forces Gibbs to wonder aloud why the hell they agreed to Boot Camp Babes in the first place.  Gibbs notes that it’s Shepard and her bad haircut’s job to handle the PR and his job to catch dirtbags and he needs to get back to his investigation.  Shepard and her bad haircut stress that the NCIS budget is under review and she really doesn’t want to go back to the days of agents buying their own ammo for range training.  Gibbs says get the reporters number and he’ll take her to dinner. She is a redhead after all.

Tony is scanning the news coverage to see himself, but no luck.  McGee thinks the camera made him look fat.  Tony thinks he should blame his refrigerator.  Tony wonders if Gibbs saw the coverage and Ziva says the Director certainly did, which would explain why Gibbs has been imprisoned in her office for a half hour.  Tony beings speculating as to whether Gibbs and Shepard and her bad haircut were more than partners back in the day, when she had a good haircut.  Which is a good way to summon Gibbs for a head slap.  And that’s what happens.

Ziva reports that Ms. Shane checked into rehab for a drug problem.  McGee says Ms. Shane’s friends attribute her drug problem to her boyfriend, Noah Keller, who is the son of a Manhattan real estate mogul.  Gibbs sends McGee to interview him, and sends Tony and Ziva to interview the show’s producer.

Abby is experimenting with…snack cakes?  Gibbs arrives and joyfully tells her that the Director said Abby’s new assistant could start on Monday.  After the last assistant (Frame-Up, Episode 3.9), Abby is horrified, but Gibbs is just screwing with her.  After chastising him, she informs him that nobody heard Ms. Shane’s screams because the TOD matches a period when a number of nearby by trains passed by.  Abby explains that she is experimenting with snack cakes because Ms. Shane did not inject or smoke the PCP, and the chemical binders that would signify pill intake are absent.  But Ms. Shane’s stomach contents contained PCP and the chemicals present in tasty, tasty snack cakes, so Abby is trying to figure out which tasty, tasty snack cakes she ate, and whether they were dosed. She settles on a Clowney Cake, and I had to pay my wife $20.00 because I had Zingers as the culprit.

SSGt. McMannis is grilling Ms. Breslin on what happened.  Ms. Breslin is not forthcoming.  He gets angry and dismisses her.  Tony and Ziva arrive to speak to Crawley, the producer.  They inform SSGt. McMannis that Ms. Shane was on drugs.  He has no idea how she got the drugs.  He says she was anti-drug on the show, despite her past, and wouldn’t even take an aspirin.

Crawley is lost in thought when Tony and Ziva arrive.  He tells the agents that he was Ms. Shane’s legal guardian and that she has been clean and sober for over two years now.  He doesn’t believe she OD’d.  The reality show was her idea and Crawley had never seen her happier. 

The surviving models are busy being terrible at pull-ups while SSGt. McMannis yells at them.  Crawley removes the cameras and begins aggressively questioning the models as to whether Noah Keller came around.  Ms. Breslin admits Keller was present on base, but SSGt. McMannis had no idea.  Tony dismisses Crawley and SSGT. McMannis so he and Ziva can ask questions.  Ms. Breslin would like Ziva’s fruit shake, so Tony gives it to her and tells her what a big fan of the show he is.  The models didn’t tell the agents about Keller earlier because Ms. Shane swore them to secrecy.  They deny that Ms. Shane used drugs on the premises, but Ms. Shane thought Keller was using again and that’s what they fought about.  The agents tell the models about the overdose, and they appear shocked.

Gibbs informs McGee that he has located Keller at a hotel near Quantico.  McGee wants to know how and Gibbs tells him he received a priority call from the President. But really, he just saw something on the fax machine that a contact was supposed to email to McGee. 

Gibbs can’t drive anywhere without squealing his tires.  They arrive at a dump of a motel and find Keller dead in his room.

Ducky is waxing tragic about the deaths of two young people in so short a period.  Gibbs doesn’t care because he figures Keller killed Ms. Shane.  McGee is disappointed that people who have everything throw it all away so readily.  Ducky calls TOD at over 24 hours.  He doesn’t think PCP, though, despite it occurring the same night as Ms. Shane’s death.  Ducky suggests heroin and Gibbs pulls a pack out from under the bed and agrees.  There’s also a syringe on the floor.  McGee finds a note.

Shepard and her bad haircut read the note aloud in her office.  It’s a “Dear John” letter from Ms. Shane to Keller, postmarked six days before their deaths.  Gibbs has confirmed the handwriting.  He figures the case is near to being closed and hypothesizes that the dejected Keller fed Ms. Shane a drugged clowney cake and then offed himself.  Gibbs and Shepard and her bad haircut have some barbed general discussion about Dear John letters that telegraphs that they’re talking about their own past.  Shepard and her bad haircut want Gibbs present to brief the General in charge of Quantico on the resolution of the case, but Gibbs still wants to dot i’s and cross t’s and confirm speculation.  Shepard and her bad haircut say they can’t call a General and tell him, “We have nothing.”  Gibbs suggests writing him a letter.  Ouch.

Tony visits Abby.  She gives him a bouquet of black roses.  They say, “Get well soon,” because the flower shop didn’t have a sign that said, “Sorry I almost sent you to prison.”  Tony quibbles with “almost,” because he did go to prison (Frame-Up, Episode 3.9).  Abby is concerned Tony hates her, but Tony could never hate Abby and questions whether anyone could.  This leads to a rambling discussion about Billy Bob trying to run over Abby with a Harley in his living room because he had intimacy issues and Abby giving him two black eyes.  She tells Tony not to forget to water his roses, “Or they’ll die,” and then gets back to the case. 

Ducky and Palmer are looking at Keller.  Gibbs arrives while Palmer is telling Ducky what he knows about Keller’s reputation as a club king in New York.  Gibbs scares Palmer away.  Ducky tells Gibbs that he found physical injuries on Keller.  So, not only was he in a fight, but he couldn’t have injected the drugs with his left arm given the severity of his injuries.  Keller’s BAL was through the roof.  Most of the heroin never metabolized because his heart was pumping so slowly.  In short, Keller was passed out when injected.  So, murder.

Ziva is watching Boot Camp Babes and laughing.  Tony thinks she’ll be sucked in soon.  Ziva thinks not everyone becomes a couch potato and mentions McGee as someone who doesn’t watch TV a lot.  Tony chuckles and says that McGee pretends to be a fairy in on-line video games.  McGee corrects Tony and says, “Elf Lord” (because that’s better). 

Gibbs arrives and says Keller was murdered.  When the agents just look at him, he angrily tells Ziva and Tony to find out why.  McGee tells Gibbs he might have something.  Gibbs asks, “Are you waiting for me to guess, Elf Lord?” and Tony cracks up at his desk.  McGee says Keller got two calls from Ms. Breslin the night of his death.

Tony and McGee interview Ms. Breslin.  Ms. Breslin and Keller used to sneak into clubs together in high school.  She says they dated on and off, but lost touch.  She also says that Keller and Ms. Shane started using together despite the rumors that he got her started.  She claims she didn’t talk to Keller when he came to Quantico because he was drunk and upset.  But she called later that night to check on him.

Shepard and her bad haircut are sitting at Gibbs’s desk writing him a note.  Gibbs walks up and accuses her of playing agent, but she says she left him four messages.  Gibbs says he only got three of them.  Shepard and her bad haircut are annoyed that they had to learn of Keller’s murder from someone besides Gibbs and trusts they’ll be kept in the loop given how much attention this case is getting.  Gibbs notes that trust is a two-way street and when Shepard and her bad haircut ask if he’s saying he doesn’t trust them, Gibbs flashes back to being arrested somewhere in Europe while Shepard and her formerly good haircut watch from across the street and walk off.  “Of course I trust you,” he says evenly.

Ziva saunters in and tells Gibbs that reporter Cindy Sanchez was forced to issue an on-air retraction of her selectively edited news story and an on-air apology to Gibbs.  Thanks to Director Shepard and her bad haircut.  Then she leans into his personal space and suggests, “Our director has friends in high places, yes?”  Gibbs asks what the hell she wants and Ziva says Abby needs to see him.

Abby has looked through all the Boot Camp Babes footage from the night of Ms. Shane’s death, and there’s not much there.  Ms. Shane knew how to avoid cameras.  But not all of them.  A Quantico security camera captured her strolling around Quantico at 1:00 AM with SSgt. McMannis.

SSgt. McMannis wins a trip to interrogation.  In the observation room, Tony explains Gibbs’s technique to Ziva: leave the suspect in the room alone until he zones out and then burst in and ask questions.  Tony calls it “Rock the baby.”  Tony says, “In a few moments that door’s gonna fly open and this big bad Marine is gonna jump like a little girl.”  Then the observation room door flies open as Gibbs barges in and Tony jumps and squeals.  Gibbs hands off the interrogation to Ziva.  Ziva makes sure Gibbs knows she’s never interrogated anyone without torturing them, but he doesn’t withdraw the file.  So, we’ll see how she does when the cameras are rolling.

She pulls the chair as far away from the Staff Sergeant as she can.  Tony thinks that’s weird, but Gibbs says she doesn’t want to be tempted.  SSgt. McMannis asks if he can chew dip while they talk.  She allows it.  SSgt. McMannis says he promised Ms. Shane he’d quit, and that they were both addicted to nicotine.  She smoked.  SSgt. McMannis supplied her with nicotine and junk food.  They took the midnight walks because they were dating and didn’t want anybody to find out until after filming. 

Tony puts his foot in his mouth by scoffing at this defense and claiming a girl like Ms. Shane would never date a guy like SSgt. McMannis.  Gibbs the Marine takes quiet exception more, I think, to make Tony squirm.  Abby calls and saves Tony, and Gibbs leaves.

Inside the room, SSgt. McMannis is starting to sweat and fidget.  He says that he and Ms. Shane were going to get married.  He withheld the fact that he saw her hours before her death because he figured nobody would believe him.  Ziva tells SSgt. McMannis she’s gonna charge him with murder.  He fidgets and sweats more, and when she asks about Keller, he says he’s not feeling too well.

Abby and McGee are looking over Ms. Shane’s clothes and discussing the worst ways to die when Gibbs arrives.  Abby broke down the stains on the clothes and found traces of PCP mixed with formaldehyde and nicotine.  Tobacco, in other words.  The PCP wasn’t laced in the clowney cake, Abby says as she holds up a bagged container of dip.

We flash back to the interrogation, where SSgt. McMannis, now clearly dosed, is getting much worse.  He stands up to leave and Ziva tells him to sit.  He flips the table over and starts screaming.  Tony enters the room and tells SSgt. McMannis to sit.  SSgt. McMannis picks up the chair instead.  He throws it at Tony, who dodges.  At this point, Ziva casually gets up from her chair.  SSgt. McMannis runs into Tony and pastes him one in the solar plexus.  Tony goes down, and we see a shot of Ziva from SSgt. McMannis’s perspective, purposefully approaching the camera until it’s a close up. 

There are sounds of SSgt. McMannis screaming as Gibbs sprints down the hall to intervene.  He opens the door to find Ziva and Tony restraining SSgt. McMannis.  Gibbs sends Tony for a medical team.  Then he tells SSgt. McMannis he has been drugged and asks where he got the chew.  SSgt. McMannis says he got it from the show.  Ziva tells him he’ll be alright and rubs his head in sympathy.

Abby examines the dip.  It was laced with significantly more PCP than a normal dose.  Tony says he knew SSgt. McMannis couldn’t have taken him if he wasn’t juiced.  Ziva ignores him and asks about the Staff sergeant’s chances.  Abby isn’t optimistic.  McGee enters and reports that the Staff Sergeant is stable but critical at Bethesda.  Abby found a print on the dip can.  She can’t match it, but it’s the same as a print on Keller’s syringe.

The agents decide to fingerprint the models.  The models object and Ziva says they know it was one of them.  Ms. Breslin decides she doesn’t care and offers her fingerprints.  They already have her prints, though, from the time she got arrested for beating up her assistant with her cell phone.  Ms. Vance’s prints are on record too from the time she drove her SUV through the front of a night club.  Crazy models and their hi-jinks. They all turn to Crawley.  Yup.  He didn’t want his “daughter” to marry a Marine and quit modeling, so he tried to kill SSgt. McMannis.  But Ms. Shane was addicted to nicotine too and she took the tainted dip and died.  As Gibbs leads Crawley away, Ms. Breslin thanks him and starts chuckling.  Ziva leans in and asks what’s so funny.  Ms. Breslin says the rating on the show are going to be through the roof now.  Ziva sort of growls, but Tony pulls her back and leads her away before she does something to Ms. Breslin that would require the completion of paperwork and a public apology from Shepard and her bad haircut.

Back at the squad room, the agents are very foolishly and very loudly arguing over whether the Director and her bad haircut made a mistake with regard to the bad haircut. Tony asks Gibbs and Gibbs says he didn’t notice she got a haircut.  The agents leave, with both McGee and Ziva glaring at Tony.  As Gibbs walks by, Tony holds up the medal from the beginning of the episode and asks if he wants it.  Gibbs says no and tells Tony to go home.  Tony says he just needs to finish up some things.  After Gibbs leaves, Tony puts the medals in a lock box where he keeps all the other medals he holds on to for Gibbs.

Quotables:

McGee: How did you track him down?

Gibbs: Got an urgent call from the President.

[McGee looks confused]

Gibbs: His Am-Ex records were in the fax machine, McGee.

Time Until Sexual Harassment: And we’re done with this category.  If supermodels can’t elicit it, nothing can. It’s not like Tony got better necessarily.  Even in this episode, he’s sex/hook-up obsessed. But without Kate to piss off, he isn’t bandying it about the workplace as much anymore and you can’t have legal sexual harassment without some sort of employment-related relationship.  And since Ziva doesn’t care, what’s left doesn’t count as harassment.

All in all, it’s a better look for the show.  Tony can still be a hound dog without being offensive.

Ducky Tales: Ducky correlates fame and drugs and references Edgar Allen Poe and Keith Moon.

The Rest of the Story:

-Ziva confuses elves with pixies for purposes of describing Shepard’s bad haircut.  Tony corrects her.  She also confuses Paris Hilton with the Paris Hilton hotel, leading to the inevitable lesbian hook-up jokes from the boys.  She says “large time,” instead of “big time,” and I have to admit I chuckled at that one.

-The team members routinely bet against each other regarding the behavior of their fellow agents. The last payoff was probably in Red Cell, Episode 2.20.

-The magazine GSM was last seen in Silver War, Episode 3.4 and first appeared in Bikini Wax, Episode 2.18.

-Tony refers to Palmer as the autopsy gremlin again.  Hometown Hero, Episode 2.21.

-Tony gets a head slap.

-Tony makes a reference to Cagney and Lacey, a crime/cop drama that ran from 1981-1988.

-According to Tony, his dad cut him off from the family wealth when he was 12.

-Gibbs doesn’t know Bill Nye, but he knows Mr. Wizard.  Abby doesn’t know Mr. Wizard.

-Gibbs seems to sympathize with Keller being dumped by postal express.  Although, as we learned in SWAK, Episode 2.22, Gibbs got a Dear John letter from an ex-wife. And maybe he got one from Shepard too, since there appears to be some passive aggressive subtext going on in that conversation.

-I believe this is the first mention that McGee is an “Elf Lord” in an on-line video game.  It’s a term that lingers.

-One wonders if the Director got Gibbs a retraction and an on-air apology herself because she didn’t want Gibbs taking yet another redhead out to dinner.

-If a TV star model and her Manhattan socialite boyfriend were both murdered in the real world, the Internet would explode.  If they were murdered by her father to prevent the model from marrying a Marine, we might never recover as a society.  It’s funny how we take plots for granted on crime shows that would absolutely be nuts if they happened in real life.

-It’s not entirely clear why Crawley murdered Keller.  I assume he got the murder drugs from Keller and then killed him to keep him quiet.  Or maybe he needed an easy suspect?  Or both?  And how did he beat him up that easily? There wasn’t a mark on Crawley and he’s 2-3 times Keller’s age.

Casting Call: Ms. Breslin is Mini Anden and had recurring roles in Chuck and My Boys.  Ms. Vance was played by Judith Shekoni, who had a role in the final Twilight movie.  John Pleshette played Crawley as well as Emil Hamilton, a small comics-original role on Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman.

Worth noting: This is the second appearance of Kent Shocknek, who plays Guy Ross, a TV reporter.  He first appeared in One Shot, One Kill, Episode 1.13 and has ten total appearances across the series.  That’s more appearances on the show than pretty much anyone except main cast, family of main cast, and a couple of recurring bad guys.

Man, This Show Is Old: The show The Simple Life gets a mention.  This show has referenced The Simple Life before, but it was a reality show where heiresses Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie had to live on a farm.

The fast-forward effect on the Director’s TV is straight out of the dark ages.

If you think Boot Camp Babes sound ridiculous, you didn’t watch TV in 2005. While fictional and invented for this episode, it was more than par for the course for this time period.

MVP: Ziva.  It happens off-screen, but it seems pretty clear she disabled SSgt. McMannis solo and Tony just jumped on top of the pile.

Rating: This one was a bit of a slog.  I can’t really define why.  Maybe the subject matter and having to think about reality TV’s hey-day in the mid-aughts annoyed me.  Or maybe the idea of the Marines participating in such ridiculousness was terminally off-putting.  It’s not a bad episode or a bad mystery, but it leaves me cold.  Five Palmers.

 Next Time: Tony and Ziva get some unsolicited alone time.