Episode: 4.5, Dead and Buried
Air Date: October 17, 2006.
The Victim: Lance Corporal James Finn.
Emotionally Traumatized, But Ultimately Irrelevant, Witness Who Finds the Body: A realtor is showing a family a home. It’s staged with rented furniture, but the realtor thinks the couple can get a deal if they like the furniture. Ah, but someone has also staged a desiccated corpse in a chair in the living room. Hope our friend the realtor wasn’t counting on that commission.
Plot Recap: The agents are already on the scene when we return from credits. McGee and Palmer run into each other trying to navigate the living room. Ducky tells them there’s no rush and reminds them that the victim isn’t going anywhere. But McGee is concerned because “the old Gibbs” is back. And sure enough, Gibbs, cleanly shorn of is retirement mustache and his retirement hair walks in and immediately orders McGee to get on the floor and look for footprints.
Tony enters and notes that Gibbs looks happy to see him. But it’s the coffee Gibbs is happy to see and it’s unclear whether Tony brought it for Gibbs, or Gibbs stole it. Tony announces that the military ID on the victim identifies him as Lance Corporal James Finn, stationed at Quantico. He went UA when his unit shipped to Iraq several months ago. It looks like he was buried and then dug up and repositioned in the staged living room. Ducky thinks the corpse was not moved far because bits would have started falling off if it were transported over too long a distance. Gibbs sends McGee on a hunt for the burial site.
Tony sketches the scene and he and Ducky discuss. Ducky notes that someone brushed some dirt off the corpse’s face. Tony leans in to look and a carrion beetle crawls out of the corpse’s nose, causing Tony (and at least a portion of the audience) to jump backwards. Tony crashes into Gibbs and spills Gibbs’s coffee. This has happened like seven times now and I’m starting to think the otherwise ninja-like Gibbs allows it to happen so he can glare at his agents.
Ducky catches the beetle as evidence. Since he almost never does that (this isn’t Bones), look for it to be important (ETA: it wasn’t). Gibbs, trying to tap into Ducky’s new forensic psychology experience, asks why someone would do something like this. Ducky admits he needs to do his research, but offers a highly clinical diagnosis that they’re dealing with a “complete loon.” Hopefully NCIS didn’t pay for that degree.
Ziva interviews the real estate agent, Jody Carvell. Mrs. Carvell says she was last in the home the previous day and there was no corpse present. The keys are in the lockbox, and a couple dozen real estate agents have access. Mrs. Carvell owns the home with Bob Whitehead, a local contractor. She’s a flipper. Ziva asks who put the body in the house, Mrs. Carvell or Bob, but Mrs. Carvell denies the accusation. Her husband arrives and Ziva has to stop him from coming on to the crime scene.
McGee found the burial site, but the rain has washed out a lot of the scene, meaning no footprints. Access was limited by a fence, but it is readily scalable. McGee opines that the perp dug the hole with an ordinary garden spade and the soil is loose enough that anybody, male or female, could have done it. The team finds a plastic wrap. Gibbs says get it to Abby with a soil sample and he wants ground penetrating radar. Ziva offers to stay with the hole if Gibbs wants Tony to check out the other real estate women. Gibbs does not, and leaves Tony with the hole. Tony is sad, and Ziva tells him he should not have licked his chops like a hungry wolf. The scene then shifts to a picture of the moon, and the show dubs in a wolf howl for the fun of it. Then the sun rises, demonstrating a new day because sometimes, when you’re filling run time, even seconds matter.
Tony is applying deodorant at his desk. Presumably this was another NCIS all-nighter. Oh wait, that’s not Tony’s desk. That’s Ziva’s desk. It’s also not Tony’s deodorant. And here’s Ziva to catch him. She objects to the Di-Nozzo-issue body hair on her deodorant. He objects to her objection because they’re “partners” and also because she straps electrodes to men’s testicles to get them to talk so why so squeamish? Tony says he and McGee had to wait until dawn for the ground radar guys and they watched the sun rise together. McGee even filmed the sunrise on his fancy new old flip phone.
Gibbs arrives and says Ducky has confirmed the body is Lance Corporal Finn. He notes McGee’s post-burial site slovenliness and asks how long it takes to put on a clean shirt. McGee stupidly answers before realizing aloud it was a rhetorical question. Ziva reports that Bob the Contractor has been out of town, so he’s clear. She also checked Lance Corporal Finn’s service record, and he was lousy at shooting and swimming so the Marines made him a supply clerk. He took a 3-day leave before vanishing right before deployment. Lance Corporal Finn’s CO is in Iraq so Tony will contact him through MTAC. McGee is checking bank records. Ground radar at least found the shovel used to dig the original grave, which Tony has sent to Abby. Having received all of these reports, Gibbs leaves s abruptly as he arrived and McGee confirms that the old Gibbs is indeed back.
Abby and Gibbs are looking at photos of the crime scene. Abby notes that Gibbs shaved his mustache. She tells him that she found Lance Corporal Finn’s blood, hair and fingerprints on the plastic found at the scene, so he was probably wrapped in it. She found no other prints on the plastic or on the shovel. The soil analysis demonstrated that it was processed/filtered, but the area had been landscaped so that’s not surprising. She then inventoried Lance Corporal Finn’s personal items. She found nothing with a date on it. He had some cash, and his clothes are nondescript.
Ducky and Gibbs discuss TOD. Accounting for all the variables, we’re looking at 92 days, and Ducky thinks the Lance Corporal deserted before he died. Ziva arrives to let Gibbs know that Lance Corporal Finn’s fiancée has arrived. Ziva gives background: he name is Siri Albert and she works as a physical therapist. But then Tony arrives and says that he put Lance Corporal Finn’s fiancée in a conference room. Ziva is pissed at Tony for trying to take credit, as usual. They argue, but when they get to physical descriptions, they realize they are talking about two different women. Gibbs opens the conference room door with a bemused look to discover two fiancees. At once, which even Gibbs never managed.
The next few scenes shift between Gibbs and Ziva interviewing Ms. Albert in the conference room and Tony and McGee interviewing the other fiancee, Rebecca Kemp, at Tony’s desk. Ms. Albert is swearing that Lance Corporal Finn, whom she calls James, is not dead and has been writing her letters from Iraq. Gibbs wants the letters. Meanwhile, Ms. Kemp has her own letters and is incensed that Ms. Albert is saying she’s engaged to “Jimmy” too. Tony and McGee are just trying to do damage control. Ms. Kemp says if Lance Corporal Finn had better be dead or she’ll kill him.
The scene shifts back to Ms. Albert who is much calmer and says she and “James” connected on a “deep spiritual level.” Ms. Albert didn’t see him too regularly because Lance Corporal Finn told her he was involved in Special Ops. Ziva bursts that bubble. But Ms. Albert says Lance Corporal Finn’s missions were top secret and he couldn’t tell her more because then she’d be in danger. Gibbs is trying not to laugh.
Shifting back to the squad room, Tony asks when Ms. Kemp last saw Lance Corporal Finn. She says six months ago, before he left for Iraq. They met in a bar two years ago. Lance Corporal Finn stopped her with some cheesy line and tales of having seen real combat. He came off favorably compared to guys who play war games online and Ms. Kemp was feeling patriotic, so she invited him home. “The sex was fantastic.”
Meanwhile, Ms. Albert says the two got engaged about a week before he left for Iraq when Lance Corporal Finn wanted to borrow $30,000.00 for gambling debts. If he didn’t pay, the creditors were going to hurt him.
In the squad room, Ms. Kemp is saying she “loaned” Lance Corporal Finn the money. But, without a legal document, that’s precarious. Now Ms. Kemp wants to know where the money is.
Ziva asks Ms. Albert about Lance Corporal Finn’s demeanor the last time they spoke, and she talks about them “making love.” Gibbs asks if he used a condom and she’s on birth control. Gibbs leaves. Ms. Albert swears to Ziva that they were engaged, as if justifying the act.
In the hall, Gibbs asks if DNA can be recovered from Lance Corporal Finn’s “skivvies.” Abby thinks it’s possible, so Gibbs says to go for it and then do a cheek swab on Ms. Albert. Ziva takes the sample and then says she is going to follow Ms. Albert home to pilfer through Lance Corporal Finn’s belongings. Ms. Albert refuses to believe Lance Corporal Finn is dead. She would feel it in her heart because they are soulmates. So, Ziva takes her to autopsy because throwing cold water in her face just makes a mess. There’s enough left of Lance Corporal Finn’s face to make a positive ID and Ms. Albert breaks down while Ziva is clearly thinking, “What a sucker.”
Agent Lee wanders by Tony’s desk and Tony asks for legal help since Ms. Kemp is refusing a cheek swab. Agent Lee figures she can file for a DNA search warrant and Tony says he’ll email her the info. Tony asks if she misses working with the field agents. Lee says legal is more her speed but wants to know if the team misses her. Tony says “Sure” and blows her off to go talk to Gibbs. Gibbs tells Tony to go with Ms. Kemp to get Lance Corporal Finn’s personal items, and says he doesn’t want to wait for a search warrant.
Man, even lawyers know not to put people with beef in the same room unescorted. So Ziva’s allowing Ms. Albert to stand at the elevator while Ms. Kemp is in the squad room is amateur hour. And, sure enough, a cat fight ensues. It’s a great day to be Tony. Although there’s a non-zero probability of Gibbs shooting both women. It’s not necessarily a high probability, but it’s non-zero. Tony yells, “Chick fight.” McGee starts videoing it on his new old phone. It’s not their best look. Gibbs breaks up te fight. He doesn’t shoot anyone, but he’s not gentle. He throws Ms. Albert into the elevator, where Ziva joins her, and then he picks up her phone and launches it after her.
Ahhh, and because you expect only the best from us here at A Year of NCIS, Ms. Kemp started the fight and had fire, but she wasn’t ready for things to get physical, and Ms. Albert had the advantage. Winner: Siri Albert, if any woman conned out of $30,000.00 can be said to be a winner.
Gibbs wants Ducky to give him a COD, but Ducky still doesn’t know. Ducky observes that shaving the mustache has brought back Gibbs’s impatience. Ducky has a speculative COD of blunt force trauma, maybe from a ball bat or a golf club. Ducky speculates a disgruntled fiancée, but Gibbs says stick to “how” and he’ll deal with “why.”
In MTAC, Shepard is dealing with the Le Grenouille case. When Gibbs arrives and asks, she tells him it’s “need to know” again (See last episode). She initiates a teleconference with Lance Corporal Finn’s CO in Iraq. Captain Stengel says Lance Corporal Finn was not one of his stronger Marines, but he was well-liked for being a bad poker player and bragging about sexing ladies. Gibbs wants to know how a dead Marine can be sending letters from Iraq. Captain Stengle introduces Lance Corporal “Soon-to-be Private” Hayes, who agreed to send letters on Lance Corporal Finn’s behalf from Iraq. Gibbs wants the letters. After the call ends, Shepard asks if two fiancees is a Marine thing. Gibbs tells her it’s “need to know.”
McGee and Abby are watching the cat fight video in Abby’s lab. “Meow!” says Abby, and wants to know which one is Ms. Albert, so that she can put a face with the DNA. McGee asks if Abby got a hit and Abby says yes, but it was a party in Lance Corporal Finn’s pants so there were two DNA samples. McGee thinks this might be why Ms. Kemp refused a cheek swab, since she says she hadn’t see Lance Corporal Finn in six months. They cue up the video again and this time Gibbs catches them watching just as Abby proclaims his breaking up the fight to be her favorite part.
Tony and Ziva are in the evidence garage going over items from Ms. Kemp’s house. Apparently, she fired a copy of Moby Dick at Tony’s head. Although making him read it would have been meaner. They go through Lance Corporal Finn’s clothes but only find a pre-paid calling card. Gibbs wants jewelry too, so Tony heads to get the engagement ring from Ms. Albert and sends a newly arrived, and thus ignorant, McGee to get hit in the head with classic works of literature.
Ziva takes a call from Ms. Carvell, the real estate agent, who wants to know why the crime scene is still active. Mrs. Carvell asks to speak to Ziva’s supervisor. Ziva gives the phone to Gibbs, who hangs it up.
McGee is at Ms. Kemp’s house. The door is open so he enters and finds her bloody from a bullet wound, but alive.
Ziva and Tony are trying to figure out motive for Lance Corporal Finn’s death. It’s not rage over spending Ms. Kemp’s money on Ms. Albert’s engagement ring, though. Ziva determines it’s fake. Gibbs enters and wants to know who shot Ms. Kemp. Ms. Albert has no witnesses for her alibi, but the GSR test came back negative. Still, Ziva doesn’t think Ms. Albert shot Lance Corporal Finn because of how distraught she was on seeing his body. So, maybe Ms. Albert shot Ms. Kemp because she thinks she killed Lance Corporal Finn, wonders Tony.
McGee reports that Ms. Kemp is in the hospital. She didn’t get a good look at the assailant, but she did hear a female voice at the door before being shot. McGee’s search of the house turned up a gun, though. McGee thinks Ms. Kemp maybe committed a failed suicide attempt after losing her fiancée and a big pile of money (and her respect, Ziva adds). Or maybe a bid for sympathy, thinks Tony. Or maybe a bid to escape discovery if she had sex with Lance Corporal Finn the day he died, says Ziva.
Gibbs asks McGee to take his shirt off. Ladies! It’s evidence now, having been covered with Ms. Kemp’s blood/DNA. Shirtless McGee asks Tony for a spare shirt. Tony gives him the shirt off his back, so now we have shirtless McGee and shirtless Tony and unimpressed Ziva.
Gibbs enters the Director’s office without knocking per usual and she name drops the Secretary General of the United Nations, because talking about the important people she knows is her jam. Gibbs wants to talk the case out, but he winds up walking into a chainsaw. Gibbs notes that the women barely knew Lance Corporal Finn, but they let him move in and loaned him money. Shepard says he duped them, and wonders how one would ever know if the person with whom one is involved is keeping secrets. Gibbs says you just know and Shepard pulls the ripcord and fires up the chain saw, telling Gibbs that he concealed his past form her when they were together. Gibbs doesn’t care for that and gets ready to walk. She apologizes for bringing up the past, and he ends up staying. He wonders if Paris would have gone any differently if he had told Shepard about his first wife. Shepard says they’ll never know, but Gibbs should have a little more sympathy for the women who didn’t know everything about their lover. This is a stretch at best. While Shepard is perhaps within her rights to be angry at Gibbs for keeping something so monumental from her, this is apples and carburetors: the difference between a con man and an intensely private man who wished to endure his grief alone. I’d have left in a huff too,
Gibbs is at home working on his boat when the phone rings. It’s Ducky. He trimmed Lance Corporal Finn’s nose hairs, and found fiberglass, most likely inhaled from insulation. Ducky and Gibbs hang up, and Ducky asks Palmer to clean up. It’s well after 9:30 based on Ducky ribbing Gibbs about going home early, so give Palmer credit for working late. Ducky runs into Agent Lee, also working late, in the elevator. She needs an autopsy report on another case and accidentally shredded the one he sent her. He tells her to be more careful and bids her good night. I guess he assumes she’ll get it from Palmer. Ooooo…she walks in autopsy and she gets it from Palmer alright. They start making out. And undressing. And yes, they do have sex on the floor of autopsy.
At the crime scene, Gibbs has Bob the Contractor open up the floor in the living room to show him the insulation. They talk joists for a second and then Gibbs notices one of the joists is discolored. McGee comes in and tells Gibbs that they traced the pre-paid phone card and it only had one call on it: to a self-storage facility. McGee reached out and learned that Lance Corporal Finn had a unit that he paid cash for and only visited once. He’ll take Ziva and go check it out. Tony comes back with the materials to test the discoloration on the joist. It’s organic, and Gibbs and Tony theorize that Finn’s head hit the joist, which would have landed him face first in the insulation. Mrs. Carvell comes in to yell about the damage to the house. Tony tells her to calm down and she notes that she has a dead guy in her house, is losing money every day, and her father just died of leukemia, so she’s not calming down.
McGee and Ziva check out the storage unit. It’s empty. Ziva takes a flashlight and they close the door. She finds a bag attached to the ceiling. It is filled with gold coins.
Tony brings the joist to Abby to test for DNA. Abby says that Ms. Kemp’s DNA does not match the genetic material in Lance Corporal Finn’s shorts. So we have a third woman.
Tony and Ducky go to autopsy. Ducky wants to re-examine the body and put to rest a nagging feeling in his head. Tony just wants to see Lance Corporal Finn’s cock because if he was nailing three girls semi-simultaneously, Tony wants to know if there was anything special about him. Ducky is amused rather than disgusted, but informs Tony that, “Sadly, the first thing the maggots eat is the soft tissue.” But that makes Ducky think to re-examine the soft tissue.
Ziva says the bag of gold was worth about $78,000.00. McGee is tracing the gold purchases on-line. He gets interrupted when Ziva receives a call from Abby. Abby ran the second set of DNA from Lance Corporal Finn’s shorts against a bone marrow database. To the surprise of Ziva (but not the discerning audience), it’s Jody Carvell, the real estate agent. She was in the database because her father had leukemia and she likely donated at one point. Gibbs sends Ziva and Tony to pick her up.
Tony and Ziva argue over whether Ziva should have picked up on Mrs. Carvell having scrogged with our Lance Corporal when she interviewed her. Mrs. Carvell emerges from her garage and half-heartedly tries to run down the agents. Tony pulls her form the car at gunpoint and she claims she has a showing. The husband comes out and makes a scene but manages not to get crippled by Ziva or shot by Tony.
Gibbs has Mrs. Carvell in interrogation. She claims she didn’t tell NCIS about her relationship with Lance Corporal Finn because she didn’t want her husband to find out. She also claims she didn’t kill him, and that he fell and hit his head. She claims she loved him. And that she’s Catholic, so when she swears to God she didn’t kill him, she means it.
Ducky joins Tony and Ziva in observation.
Mrs. Carvell says she met Lance Corporal Finn in a bar and that she would tell her husband she had a late showing and meet Lance Corporal Finn at the house where they found the body for sexy time. Gibbs throws her Catholicism in her face here, but Mrs. Carvell says that she and Lance Corporal Finn had…”A deep spiritual connection,” Gibbs finishes, very familiar with Lance Corporal Finn’s playbook by now. Mrs. Carvell was going to leave her husband, but she had to wait for her dad to die so he wouldn’t disinherit her over the divorce (an inheritance that was worth $2 million, according to Ziva). Mrs. Carvell says she neither killed nor buried Lance Corporal Finn. She says they got in a fight because he wanted to borrow money. She refused, Lance Corporal Finn got angry, said they were through and tried to leave. She wanted him to stay and took his cigarettes and there was a struggle and he fell and hit his head on the open floor joist (the ole’ paper mache victim). She left and drove around and came back and Lance Corporal Finn was gone. She didn’t know he was dead until she found his body in the chair. She calls it the hand of God.
Ziva wonders if Gibbs can arrest God. Tony likens that to the Thing trying to bring in the Hulk. Ducky thinks Mrs. Carvell is telling the truth. Then Ducky commits the cardinal sin (that each team member has committed at one time or other) and interrupts interrogation. Gibbs tries to brush him off, but Ducky is insistent. They debate in the hall, with Ducky thinking Mrs. Carvell is too remorseful to have buried the body; and Gibbs calling her a conniving, deceitful, adulteress (Gibbs might have a blindspot here). Gibbs figures they can discuss when he’s done with the interrogation.
Ducky approaches McGee and asks him to use his new old cellphone to tape a conversation between Ducky and Mr. Carvell, who is parked in the squad room. Ducky tells Mr. Carvell that committing a murder is standard, covering it up is standard, uncovering it is off is a bit off the beaten path.
In interrogation, Mrs. Carvell tells Gibbs that Lance Corporal Finn was too big for her to bury. Gibbs suggests she rolled him onto the plastic and dragged him out into the yard, but she says that would have ruined her nails, and she seems like the type to be genuinely concerned by that.
Ducky is still having a go at the husband. Ducky tells Mr. Carvell that he tried to tell Gibbs that Mrs. Carvell was telling the truth but Gibbs was immovable. Ducky wants to know why that pleases Mr. Carvell, and says he flashed a slight reflective smile when Ducky made the remark about Gibbs. He asks McGee for the replay and shows it to Mr. Carvell, and it’s compelling, but not exactly an evidentiary slam dunk. Ducky’s theory is solid, though. Mr. Carvell was watching the couple do the dirty from outside, and saw Lance Corporal Finn fall. He couldn’t have his wife implicated in murder until her dad died and she inherited the $2 million. Once that happened, he disinterred the body he hid to make her look like a murderer. She goes to jail, he gets the moeny.
Mr. Carvell says it’s a nice story, but proof? Abby walks in and Ducky asks if she has tested the sweat from the handle of the shovel that buried Lance Corporal Finn. Abby has no damn idea what he’s talking about and doesn’t even fake it well. But Mr. Carvell is a rank amateur and, when Ducky takes his water bottle and hands it to Abby to compare to the shovel “sample,” Mr. Carvell caves. But he says he didn’t kill Lance Corporal Finn, and gestures to his wife as Gibbs brings her through the squad room, “But that cheating bitch did.” Then they have the kind of argument best left to their respective attorneys, and Mr. Carvell says he’s always cleaning up her messes. Mrs. Carvell is horrified that her husband saw her cheating on him, but it’s more from the standpoint of the invasion of privacy than shame. Mr. Carvell says he saw his wife hit Lance Corporal Finn in the head and run (the evidence won’t bear that out). All Mr. Carvell did was bury him. And unbury him.
Except no. Ducky found evidence that Lance Corporal Finn asphyxiated. From plastic. Mr. Carvell buried him alive. Mr. Carvell swears he was dead, and Mrs. Carvell calls him a bastard and lunges at him. They scream at each other some more as Ziva escorts Mrs. Carvell out. Abby, sort of bemusedly flabbergasted throughout the entire drama says, “Wow. I gotta come up here more often.”
Ziva crashes into Gibbs in the elevator and spills his coffee (8!). Well, almost, per Gibbs. Anyway, Ziva is upset because she and Tony were so focused on picking up Mrs. Carvell she left Lance Corporal Finn’s bag of gold on her desk. Gibbs hands her the evidence inventory and says he checked it in. Minus, Ziva realizes, $60,000. That Gibbs repaid to Ms. Albert and Ms. Kemp. Gibbs figured he’d save the courts some paperwork. Ziva wonders if he’s getting soft, but no, he shaved his mustache, so that can’t be right.
McGee arrives and tells Gibbs that someone came in with information about the case. The episode ends as McGee introduces Gibbs to Jessica Coleman, Lance Corporal Finn’s fiancée.
Quotables: a certain lived in look
“Wow, it’s just like Chippendales. Without the bowties or muscles.” -Ziva is unimpressed by her shirtless co-agents.
“Do you have any idea how many murderers swear to God they didn’t do it?” -Gibbs tells Mrs. Carvell that he doesn’t believe her.
Time Until Sexual Harassment: 16:00 or so, if you count Tony yelling “Chick fight!” across a crowded squad room when the fiancées start going at it. Or McGee filming it for entertainment.
Ziva-propisms: Ziva means “rabbit,” as in flee. But she says, “rat” as in squeal.
Tony Awards: Tony says the he and McGee watching the sun rise together was “very Brokeback Mountain.” He also mentions a couple of 1990 flicks: Darkman (1990) and Pacific Heights (1990).
Ducky Tales: Ducky makes a Shakespeare allusion.
Abby Road: Abby digresses almost as much as Ducky, so why not track it. She talks about a friend who once displayed roadkill in his living room.
The Rest of the Story:
-There’s circumstantial evidence that Tony and Ziva sleep together from time to time, but that probably doesn’t excuse his using her deodorant. Although it makes a better case for why he’d feel entitled than their being on the same team.
-Tony makes note of McGee having some extra cash. It’s a plot point for later.
-Agent Lee is back. She now seems to operate more in an in-house counsel role. This is also the first time we realize that she’s bumping uglies with Palmer.
-Ducky and Gibbs have been tense with each other for a number of of episodes now. If I were Ducky I would be pissed about learning about Gibbs’s dead family the way he did (Hiatus (Part Two), Episode 3.24). But I can’t recall if they ever have any kind of reckoning about it.
-Gibbs knows well the dangers of blunt force trauma from sports paraphernalia. It was revealed that he has been hit with a golf club by one ex-wife (Eye Spy, Episode 1.11) and a baseball bat by another (The Curse, Episode 1.5).
-McGee never clears the room when there’s a female victim involved. See Witness, Episode 2.14. At least this time, nobody hit him over the head.
-As we learned in Hiatus (Part One), Ziva knows diamonds.
-Ah, the old bone marrow donor bank search. Haven’t seen that since Frame-Up, Episode 3.9.
-This is not NCIS’s first case where the victim was buried alive. The last one dug her way out, though. Dead and Buried, Episode 1.11.
Casting Call: Mrs. Carvell was played by Rebecca Wisocky, who looks incredibly familiar. I can’t place her to a specific role, but I’m assuming I know her from The Mentalist. I feel like she was a VIP in Simon’s agency, or something. She has also guest-starred on all three NCIS shows, which I feel like don’t see that often.
Man, This Show Is Old: McGee is very excited about his new flip phone that takes video.
Prepaid calling cards are another innovation soon to be replaced by burn phones.
I doubt a show writes a character named Siri anymore.
Kofi Anann was Secretary General of the United Nations from January 1997 through December 2006. So Shepard is emailing him toward the end of his tenure.
MVP: Ducky broke the perp.
Rating: This one was fun. We needed some whimsy after the intensity of the last many, many episodes. The victim had it coming, so the emotional stakes were low. The characters had a couple of solid personal interactions, and some that were fun. The mystery was both plausible and was only obvious because the structure of the show makes certain things obvious (police procedurals rarely introduce consequential guest-starts late in the episode, so the unknown lady DNA had to belong to the only other lady in the script). And then it was just a question of which Carvell did the deed. We had intrigue from Palmer and Lee; typically insensitive fan service in the form of a catfight and, more importantly, the varying team member reactions to it; Gibbs back to being Gibbs (including bending rules to help others); and Tony stealing Ziva’s deodorant. Nothing to complain about.
Eight Palmers.
Next Time: Halloween. And a literal kidnapping.
A Year of NCIS 