A Year of NCIS, Day 80: Smoked (Episode 4.10)

Episode: 4.10, Smoked

Air Date: November 28, 2006.

The Victim: Charles Bright. And about 20 others.

Emotionally Traumatized, But Ultimately Irrelevant, Witness Who Finds the Body:  There’s construction being performed by workers.  They encounter a partial obstruction in a smokestack.  It’s not the dude from Mary Poppins or the girl’s dad from Gremlins, but it is what’s left of a dude.  Probably a serviceperson if history is any guide (and if we want the show to be about more than the team saying, “Oh, we don’t have jurisdiction over this one).

Plot Recap: Tony is still reading Deep Six, McGee’s novel (See Twisted Sister, Episode 4.9).  Ziva is still working on it too.  Tony particularly enjoys, and reads aloud, the part where Lisa, the Ziva analogue, dreams of making love to Tommy, the Tony analogue, on the beaches of her homeland.  I know I just write a blog about a TV show, but even by my standards, McGee’s prose is wretched.  Probably by design of the show’s writers.  Still, it’s easy to see why he’s a bestseller. 

Gibbs arrives just in time for McGee to also arrive and report a dead body at a high school in Quantico.  It’s not a student, so we must be talking about Smokestack Guy.  Gibbs says to grab the truck.  McGee looks over to see Tony and Ziva grimly holding his book and repeats again that the book is not about them.  Ziva declares she is driving. 

In the truck, Tony belts into the passenger seat.  Poor McGee is not strapped down in the back.  I’m guessing this is going to make his inertia experience with Tony’s driving, in The Bone Yard, Episode 2.5, look like a day at Comic-Con.  McGee again begs his partners to believe that the book is not about them, but they don’t.  Tony fastens his seatbelt and says, “Nice knowing you, Probie.”  Ziva accelerates and McGee is thrown to the floor yelling, “It just a book!”

Man, if the whole episode is going to be jokes about McGee’s book, my fingers are going to get tired.  Ziva takes a picture of Tony, and he talks about the photo album Agent Lisa has of Agent Tommy.  But she’s not photographing Tony- just the rat hanging out over his head.  He jumps.  Meanwhile, in the continuing adventures of special agents who do actual work, Gibbs interviews the construction foreman.  The foreman looks at the body and the writer just flat steals the bit from Gremlins about the girl’s father dressing up like Santa and dying in the chimney, and re-frames it as an urban legend involving a romantic couple about to get engaged.  Ducky has heard the story before (from Gremlins, like the rest of us) and asks about the moral.  Gibbs says, “Don’t get married,” but Ducky prefers “don’t judge events by appearances.” 

There’s no ID on the victim, but Tony thinks the mullet means he’s probably not military.  OK, so jurisdiction will turn on the fact that they found Smokestack Sam at Quantico.  My bad.

Gibbs asks Ducky for a TOD.  Ducky snarks at him and Gibbs heads to the roof to check out the smokestack.  As he leaves, he tells Tony to coordinate Ducky’s TOD with missing person reports.  Gibbs encounters McGee holding his neck.  McGee blames it on creative differences with co-workers.  Gibbs says there’s a lot of that going around.

After Gibbs leaves, Ziva asks Ducky if it’s time for him and Gibbs to bury the hatchet.  I’m guessing she’s worried that the entire team will eventually drown in passive aggression if drastic measures aren’t taken.  But Ducky continues the behavior by pretending not to know what she’s talking about.  Tony says it’s been going on since Gibbs’s retirement.  Which Ducky calls quitting.  Either way, as Tony notes, Gibbs is back and he and Ziva both think Ducky should give it a rest. Ducky ignores them and gets down to business.  He calls TOD 2-4 months ago. 

Tony leaves to coordinate with the MPs and tells McGee to bag and tag the ashes.  He says they’ll pick him up later for another fun ride back to HQ.  McGee quietly asks Palmer if he can catch a ride, but Palmer angrily tells McGee that he has never had sex with a corpse.  Per McGee that character was not based on Palmer.  Despite the character’s name being “Pimmy Jalmer.”  Yeah, I’m dying.  McGee says the character was French Polynesian, and the corpse sex only a dream. But he says it to Palmer’s receding back.

Ducky tells McGee they’ll all get over it.  But maybe not Tony.  McGee should watch out for Tony.

At the squad room, Ziva says none of the missing persons reports match the John Doe’s description, and nobody on base has gone missing.  Tony is not listening.  He is still reading McGee’s book and nearing the end.  He starts mocking Ziva about a stakeout where Agent Lisa wants to get close to Agent Tommy.  Then he looks up and Ziva has disappeared from her desk, having used her ninja skills to appear behind him.  She pushes Tony’s chair, with him in it, into the desk, hard.  Then she whispers in his ears about how she has had urges with respect to Tony and keeps having to prevent herself from acting on them.  Tony starts trying to talk her into it.  Ziva says her father wouldn’t approve.  Tony asks if it’s because he’s not Jewish.  Ziva says her father doesn’t like it when she kills her co-workers.

Gibbs arrives and tells them to stop playing grab-ass.  He takes Tony’s copy of the book away and says he’s going to “deep six” the next person who mentions it.  He also throws it into a pile with several other confiscated copies. 

Gibbs isn’t happy to learn his body hasn’t been ID’d yet.  Ducky appears to explain that his TOD was not accurate and may be causing the inability to identify the victim.  The team proceeds to autopsy, and Ducky explains that the smokestack cooked the body like a piece of meat, preserving it.  The time of death is actually 4-6…years.

In Abby’s lab, McGee is getting a pep talk from Abby.  Although it’s not much of one since she chastises him for basing his characters on his teammates without their permission.  And for describing everything in her bedroom in the book.  They are interrupted when Abby gets a fingerprint match for the body, but the ID is restricted.  And then somebody deletes the file.  Abby surmises that, despite NCIS’ security clearance, some agency doesn’t want them figuring out who the dead guy is. 

Shepard is in MTAC watching a private plane land.  Shepard demands to see the feed from the camera of an agent on-site.  A man in official airport uniform approaches the plane to collect the bags and it’s Tony.  Shepard’s commentary makes clear that this plane is either Le Grenouille or associated with Le Grenouille.  Tony takes the bags from the plane personnel and tries to make small talk, but they aren’t interested.  He carries the bags to the trunk of a waiting car and then plants a bug on one of them.  An attractive woman comes out of the plane and Tony stares until a bald man appears behind him and hassles him about it.  The bald man approaches the woman, who is escorted by another bald man.  Shepard, via radio, asks Tony to look in the direction of the passengers and the camera feed from his glasses gives Shepard a look.  The woman greets the bald man who accosted Tony as “Kort.”  Kort walks back over to Tony and asks how long he has worked at the airport, and then offers Tony a cash tip if he promises to refrain from staring at the woman again.  Tony says he’s not going to be able to take that deal and Kort smirks, calls him an honest man, and puts the money in Tony’s uniform pocket.  Tony leaves and Shepard thanks him for his assistance.  Tony thinks Gibbs is going to kill him for being AWOL for two hours.

Back at the squad room, Gibbs asks how long Tony has been running errands for the Director.  Ziva responds that it has been going on since Gibbs retired and that the Director trusts Tony.  Abby and McGee arrive and tells Gibbs they back-traced the hacker who deleted the fingerprint record and Gibbs spoils their surprise and says it’s the FBI.  Because he sees Fornell coming off the elevator.  Fornell tells Gibbs that he has something that belongs to Fornell.  Turns out Fornell thinks our dead chimney ornament is a serial killer he has been tracking for 12 years.

In autopsy, Ducky has found a severed left toe in the victim’s stomach.  Fornell enters and announces that it’s his cannibal serial killer.  NCIS wants to know the killer’s name and when Fornell balks, Gibbs grins and says, “You don’t know.”  Fornell has fourteen kills, all women, drugged, strangled, and missing a toe from their left foot which the killer gnawed off.  Fornell obtained a strand of hair and two partial fingerprints and he restricted access to the fingerprints because he didn’t want local LEOs trying to bring the killer in on their own.  Fornell looks at Ducky and estimates TOD at roughly 66 months ago, and Ducky admits the guess is within the range.  Fornell has based his estimate on the killer’s last victim.

Gibbs won’t give up the body until he knows who he is, how he died, and what he was doing on a Marine base.  Fornell asks if there’s anything else he can do while Gibbs is twisting the knife and Gibbs asks for the strand of hair, Fornell’s file, and two bottles of bourbon.  In exchange, Gibbs will show Fornell what our dead guy looked like.

In Abby’s lab, Abby and McGee have reconstructed the corpse’s face and the facial recognition software returns an 86% match on a missing man from West Virginia named Charles Bright.  His wife still lives at Bright’s last known address.  Gibbs writes down the address and hands it to Fornell.  Fornell disbelievingly asks if Gibbs is turning over the case and Gibbs says no, but he’s fine with Fornell getting the search warrant. 

Tony returns to HQ to see his old nemesis, FBI Special Agent Sacks, sitting at his desk and talking on the phone.  Agent Lee brings the warrant, which she has made sure NCIS has co-subpoenaed.  Tony hears “warrant” and “serial killer” and protests he was only gone two hours and what did he miss?  Gibbs comes in, whacks his head and says, “You snooze, you lose.”

The team visits Bright’s house.  Gibbs tells Fornell that they stick with “We found your husband,” and keep the serial killer suspicions to themselves.  A young girl, presumably a daughter answers the door.  The mom comes to the door and Fornell freezes.  Gibbs takes over and introduces he and Fornell to the family.  The woman knows immediately that they found her husband and she asks if it was an accident because he was a building inspector.  Gibbs says the COD is still undetermined, but the woman says that Bright would have never abandoned his family, which also consists of a younger son.

As they walk away, Fornell reveals that he froze because the wife is a dead ringer for the victims.  Gibbs and Fornell chat about how serial killers blend in to regular society.  Fornell says he was on the team that nailed Ted Bundy so he’s familiar with sick, charming bastards.  Gibbs thinks that’s why they get along so well.     

The team is searching the yard near the house.  Sacks finds bone fragments, but Tony finds a skull.  

At the squad room, McGee reveals that Bright was a building inspector for the DOD and was assigned to check structures at Quantico and Little Creek.  The high school where the workers found the body was on the list.  Gibbs still sees holes in the accidental death story: you can’t just walk onto a military base and if he died on the job, someone would have found a car, which McGee says disappeared with Bright.  Ziva pulls up photos of the serial killer victims and says he achieved 14 kills between 1993 and his death, presumably in early 2001.  Tony found number 15, and the FBI is digging for more, although Tony wants to know why NCIS is allowing it.  Gibbs is perfectly content to let the FBI do NCIS’ manual labor.

At the Bright house, Ducky is looking at a skeleton.  He pronounces it female but declines to opine on TOD given the lack of tissue.  And, well, the mistake from last time.  For some reason he (re)tells a story about a warrant being issued for his arrest after he shoved a French policeman off a cliff.  Granted there was a lake below.  Ducky and Gibbs had to elude the police as fugitives until they escaped across the English Channel in a sailboat and, ultimately, a “young upcoming NCIS agent” got the charges dropped.  “Jenny,” Tony smirks, and gets looks from the team for his familiarity.  Ducky says Shepard was the one who stole the sailboat. 

Inside the Bright house, Gibbs is interviewing Mrs. Bright.  She says Bright worked at all the military bases.  She tells Gibbs he has her husband confused with some monster.  The daughter is upset too.  Gibbs explains that they’re removing four bodies from her backyard.  She thinks they’re from an unmarked grave yard.  She says the last time she saw her husband was when he was headed to Little Creek.  He was supposed to call when he got there but didn’t.  That’s a long way from Quantico, though.  Mrs. Bright swears she will never believe her husband was a serial killer.

At autopsy, Ducky and Palmer discuss serial killers and how they come to be.  It’s fairly banal.  Ducky remembers mid-conversation that he left his bag in the van and asks Palmer to get it before he leaves for the night.  The scene shifts to Palmer exiting the elevator into the garage.  He opens the door of the van and then hears the elevator ding.  He turns around and Agent Lee is there unbuttoning her sweater.  He hauls her into the back of the van, we see one of her shoes and Ducky’s bag on the concrete.  And then a shot of the van shaking.  

In the squad room, Ducky appears to replace Gibbs’s coffee just as Gibbs finishes the cup he has.  Ducky tells Gibbs that today brought back a lot of memories.  And he admits that, since Gibbs’s return, he has been acting like…“an ass?” Gibbs finishes.  “Something like that,” Ducky responds.  Gibbs wants to know what he did wrong.  Ducky says that the night Gibbs left NCIS (Hiatus (Part One), Episode 3.24), he asked Ducky to drive him home.  During that drive, he didn’t say one word or offer any explanation.  Gibbs says he was recovering from his coma, which is fair, but then Ducky can’t understand why, after all the adventures they’ve had and all they’ve shared, why Gibbs never mentioned Shannon and Kelly or that he “has” a family.  “Had,” Gibbs corrects.  And then says it again.  “Had.”  Ducky grimaces.  Gibbs gets up from his desk and stands in front of Ducky and says that while Ducky knows how Gibbs feels about apologies, they’re not a sign of weakness between friends.  And he apologizes and says he should have told Ducky about Shanon and Kelly.  And Ducky apologizes for not sooner saying, “Welcome home.”  They shake and hug it out.  And all is right in the NCIS world.

Jeanne Benoit is asleep on the couch at her apartment, and she does not hear Tony knocking at the door.  He mutters to himself that he’s been thinking a lot about her and really trying to find a way to not screw this up.  She opens the door as he’s leaving and invites him in.  They compare their respective days to movies.  Then they make out, and they really are a sweet couple.  A sweet couple that has decided to take it to the bedroom for the first time, despite Tony’s hesitance last episode (Twisted Sister, Episode 4.9).

The next day, Tony is whistling while he works, which is TV shorthand for getting laid the night before.  Ziva interrogates him and determines that he had sex.  But before she can pry anything out of him, Fornell arrives.  He asks where Gibbs is, and then sits in Gibbs’s chair, props his feet up on the desk and shows Tony the order from DOJ saying that the FBI will be taking over this case.  Fornell grins, “You sure he’s not around?”  Tony manages to not point out that Fornell is like Wile E. Coyote to Gibbs’s Road Runner and when he’s the surest of victory is when he’s about to tumble off the cliff.

In Shepard’s office, she’s impressed with the clarity of the DOJ orders and wants to know who Fornell had sex with to get them (look, everybody else in this episode is scoring). Fornell and Shepard have a measuring contest with him saying that 12 years on an investigation trumps the perp just happening to die inside one of the Navy’s smokestacks.  Shepard sweetly responds that her team made more progress in three days than the FBI made in that 12 years.  Which amounts to an argument that it’s better to be lucky than good, so I can see why Fornell is confident he’ll get over it.  Gibbs is uncharacteristically passive but simply says he wants to show Fornell something before handing the case over.  “Hey, come look at this thing you don’t know about,” has never gone well for Fornell on this show, although at least it’s probably not a dead FBI guy this time (See The Bone Yard, Episode 2.5, Enigma, Episode 1.15).  But, give Fornell credit.  Instead of pissing himself with the trauma of past whuppin’s, he jokes that Gibbs kept his now shaved mustache in a box and wants to display it.

This must be good because Shepard joins the agents in autopsy.  Ducky pulls Chimney Clog out of his freezer box.  Ducky has COD.  Fornell climbs up to look at the body with magnifying glass.  Ducky points out that the smoking of the body shrunk them down, but there are significant abdominal wounds on the body from either an icepick or a screwdriver.  In other words, somebody killed Fornell’s serial killer.  On a Marine base, Shepard concludes as she politely tears up his DOJ transfer orders and retains jurisdiction. 

Tony is looking at pictures of the dead victims and figuring whoever whacked their killer did the world a solid.  Ziva’s not even pumped about arresting this person, but McGee argues that crime is crime and we can’t take the law into our own hands.  “Unless it’s your little sister wanted for murder, right Probie?” Tony says, not unfairly (Twisted Sister, Episode 3.10).  McGee doesn’t take the bait.  Gibbs arrives and backs up McGee on crime being crime.  Then Gibbs assigns Tony and Ziva to work with Sacks to find out who wanted Bright dead.  Ziva thinks everyone in the room.  Except McGee, Tony adds, but Gibbs evicts McGee before they can have an argument and sends him to check on Abby. 

Gibbs, who Fornell can tell is enjoying himself, tells Fornell to come along to Ducky’s.  Ducky has been examining the bodies dug up in Bright’s backyard.  There wasn’t recoverable tissue, and that’s causing a problem for figuring out how long the bodies have been in the ground.  Or, technically, whether they were buried after Bright ended up in the smokestack.  But that’s not why Ducky called.  Ducky reviewed the FBI profile of the killer and Bright was very good and very methodical to avoid getting caught by the FBI.  Which means whoever killed knew him, both to appreciate that he was a killer and to get close enough to kill a killer.  Gibbs calls and tells Tony to focus the search on people who have a connection to both Bright and the high school where Bright was found. 

Abby and McGee are trying to figure out how to date the bones in Bright’s back yard.  McGee looks at flowers that Abby received, reads the card, and says, “Marty?”  This gets her thinking that Marty (Pearson, the guy she has been sort of seeing since Once a Hero, Episode 4.8) got his degree in forensic botany and might be able to identify the plants that grew up through the remains.  This might allow them to estimate a burial date.  But McGee really just wants to know who Marty is.  Because he gets jealous even though he and Abby have been dunzo for seasons.

Sacks and Tony are arguing at Tony’s computer.  Ziva reports to Gibbs and Fornell (arriving, drinking coffee, speaking, all in unison) that none of the teachers at the school admitted to knowing Bright.  Tony and Sacks are looking at substitutes.  Bright’s wife is a teacher, maiden name Burris, so they try for that, and determine that she subbed at the school in 2001. 

Abby arrives at Marty’s lab and is super-impressed with his tech.  They flirt.

Gibbs and Fornell interrogate Mrs. Bright about her history with the school.  Gibbs plays the good cop.  Sort of. I mean, insofar as the good cop lays out images of dead women who look vaguely like Mrs. Bright and that her husband is suspected of killing.  He’s at least pleasant and gentle about it, though.  Mrs. Bright continues to deny that her husband is a killer.  Gibbs shows pictures of dismembered toes.  Then he asks Mrs. Bright if she will show them her left foot.  It’s malformed with just a big toe and one other toe.  Mrs. Bright starts crying.  And then she says, “That thing was not my husband.”  “It” was not the man she married and had to be stopped.  She didn’t go to the police because she wanted to protect her children from the knowledge of what he did.  Makes sense.

And yet, we’re still investigating.  With nearly four minutes of run-time left, we head back to Marty’s lab.  He looks at the scene photos and botany-babbles.  The long and short is that the roots of a nearby shrub could not have grown into the remains unless the remains were buried less than six month ago. He’s still talking, but Abby heard what she needed to hear and bolts while his back is turned (although one wonders why she can’t just use her phone). 

In the observation room, Ziva is figuring she’d have killed her husband too.  Tony implicitly agrees and thinks Mrs. Bright is lucky she wasn’t her husband’s last victim.  In interrogation, Fornell is telling Mrs. Bright that there’s not a jury in the world that wouldn’t sympathize with her.  Gibbs’s cell phone rings.  He takes the call and becomes grim enough that Ziva notices the change in his demeanor.  He thanks Abby on the other end and hangs up.            

 “Get away from her, Tobias,” Gibbs says.  Mrs. Bright, who has been crying non-stop during this scene, stops on a dime and stares at the floor.  Gibbs reveals Marty’s finding that the bodies post-date Bright’s death.  Bright wasn’t the serial killer, Mrs. Bright is.  And, holy shit, the combination of the look Mrs. Bright gives as she lifts her head to stare angrily at Gibbs and the accompanying creepy music is genuinely frightening. 

Which is why I’m glad we don’t linger and instead shift to the squad room.  Fornell and Gibbs are drinking coffee and puzzling over the case outcome.  Fornell wonders if they ever would have caught Mrs. Bright if her husband’s body hadn’t gotten hung up in a smokestack.  Gibbs goes him one better and wonders why her husband had a toe in his stomach.

And that’s how we end it. Brrrrrrr.

Quotables:

(1) Gibbs: You know how I feel about apologies.

Ducky: It’s a sign of weakness.

Gibbs: Not among friends. I’m sorry, Ducky. I should’ve told you about Shannon and Kelly.

Ducky: I should have told you something months ago. Welcome home, Jethro.

(2) Ziva: What would you do if you woke up one day and you discovered you were married to a monster.

Tony: Happened to my father all the time.  We just moved.

Ziva-propisms: Ziva thinks Ducky should cut Gibbs some “slacks.”

Tony Awards: Tony’s silence and lack of reference to Gremlins (1984) during the foreman’s urban legend story is cinephile malpractice.  In talking to Jeanne, he compares his day to the Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974)  She compares hers to a mash up of Planes, Trains, and Automobiles (1987) and The Muppets Take Manhattan (1984). I would watch that.

Abby Road: Abby stayed on task this episode.

McNicknames: Tony calls McGee McLawyer after he makes the case for why the team should aggressively pursue the killer of a serial killer.  He recycles McGeek.

Ducky Tales: Whoa.  Retread Ducky Tale.  The snake eats itself. The space-time continuum collapses. We must be at the nexus of the universe. Anyway, Ducky re-tells the story of shoving a French police officer off a cliff and into a lake.  He first told this story way on back in Sea Dog, Episode 1.3.

The Rest of the Story:

-Palmer has not had sex with a corpse.  But he has had sex in autopsy.  At least twice.  Lee and Palmer have been doing it since Dead and Buried, Episode 4.5. If only McGee had known. his character arc for Pimmy Jalmer would have been so much more powerful.

-Yay.  More oblique references to Abby and McGee’s former mutual sex life.

-Tony meets Trent Kort, my least favorite character in NCIS history.  Tony’s too when all is said and done. 

-I’m not sure why Abby and McGee didn’t suspect the FBI as soon as the files were deleted.  The FBI has certainly hacked NCIS before.   See The Bone Yard, Episode 2.5.

-My six-year old daughter was watching part of this one with me.  When Fornell entered the squad room, she asked, “Who’s the guy that looks like a monkey?”  Sorry Joe Spano.

-Special Agent Sacks tried to put Tony in jail in Frame Up, Episode 3.9 and Ziva in jail in Shalom, Episode 4.1.  He is not loved in the halls of NCIS.  Happily for them, but sadly for those of us who have grown fond of his and Tony’s dynamic, this is the last we see of him.

-Tony gets a head slap.

-Apologies are a sign of weakness.  But not between friends.

-Tony makes references to his father’s multiple marriages and divorces.

-Rule #22: Never bother Gibbs in interrogation.

-Once again, NCIS casually leaves a trail of unremarked devastation in their wake.  “Mom and/or Dad are both serial killers and Mom killed Dad and is going to the lethal injection gurney and no foster family is ever going to take us.”

Casting Call: Marty Pearson was played by Michael Gilden.  He has had other little people-centric roles and even played an Ewok in Return of the Jedi (1983).  Sadly, this was Michael’s last role.  He committed suicide by hanging just over a week after this episode’s air date.  Which sucks on a lot of levels, but no less because, as has been a tradition at NCIS, his maybe six total minutes of screen-time established him as a likable character that I would have enjoyed seeing more of.    

Man, This Show Is Old: Nothing too dated here.

MVP: Abby again.  With an assist from Marty Pearson.

Rating: This is a better episode than the last couple.  A serial killer episode is usually going to get an extra Palmer.  Fornell is worth a Palmer.  The twist only became obvious at the very end and the combination of the toe in Bright’s stomach and his prints at murder scenes gave off the scent of a serial killer couple.  Which is somehow worse than a serial killer.  And, if they were in it together, why kill him?  The lack of answers will haunt me as much as Mrs. Bright’s face when her mask cracked in twain and we saw the real person.

Seven Pimmy Jalmers.

Next Time: Self-driving cars.  In the ‘aughts?