Episode: 5.9, Lost & Found
Air Date: November 20, 2007.
The Victim: A guy named Ronald Keenan.
Emotionally Traumatized, But Ultimately Irrelevant, Witness Who Finds the Body: Abby is in her lab explaining Major Mass Spec to a group of boy scouts (or non-trademark protected NCIS-universe boy scout analogues). The scouts are more interested in her tats. McGee enters wearing a scout uniform, and he is either their scoutmaster or he went to a lot of trouble to make fun of their clothes.
Abby then shows the scouts AFIS. McGee talks about how “We” use AFIS to catch perps, but Abby scoffs at “We.” As a demo, Abby uses a digital scanner to put Carson, the kid asking about her tats, into the database. This is in complete violation of his Constitutional rights and at least a few parental consent laws. With any luck, Gibbs will then send Ziva and Tony to search Carson’s house without a warrant to truly hammer home the horrors of the police state.
Hahaha. I totally didn’t see that coming. Carson is in the AFIS database. An alarm goes off and identifies him as an abducted child. In front of his scout friends and everything.
Yeah, I think Gibbs will be able to get that warrant after all.
Plot Recap: Carson is in a conference room. McGee and Abby are looking in on him while waiting for Gibbs. Carson wants to know who Gibbs is. And whether he is in trouble. McGee assures Carson he is not in trouble. Abby, having no idea what to say, flees. Carson asks where the other kids are, and McGee says the tour ended early. He promises he’ll figure out how to get Carson home.
Carson’s no dummy. He knows what “abducted” means and figures NCIS screwed up. Gibbs enters and says it wouldn’t be the first time. As always, Gibbs instantly bonds with children. That’s a lot less out-of-nowhere now that we know he had a kid. Carson is a little too precocious. We’ll see if that gets old. But as of right now, he’s very casually dominating the conversation in a way that children in the 9-10 range typically do not. He says he can’t be abducted because his being abducted would be cool and he’s from a town called Franklin and nothing cool ever happens in Franklin. And he lives near the woods where his dad always goes to teach people how to live like survivalists. Hmmmmm.
Anyway, Carson really admires his dad and says he has learned a lot from him. Then Carson’s brain catches up with his mouth and he wonders when he can go home. Gibbs does not have an answer.
In the squad room, Gibbs immediately pulls Tony away from the obvious angle of mocking McGee’s scout outfit. Tony focuses and background’s Carson’s father, Brian Matthews. Brian married Lisa, Carson was born two months later. Six weeks after that, Lisa drowned. Brian didn’t handle grief well and spiraled. Lisa’s mother sued for custody of Carson and Brian took him and ran. The grandmother has since died. Brian Matthews became Brian Taylor and he and Carson started a new life. Brian married Lt. Elaine Taylor, USN who works anti-fraud for Naval procurement. Gibbs figures on bringing her in for a chat.
The agents wonder where Carson is. McGee says Abby has him. Tony wonders if that’s such a good idea, and we shift to Abby’s lab and see Carson observing while Abby tests a gun in her ballistics range.
Lt. Taylor answers the door when the entire team arrives. Seems like overkill for one lady, but I guess they’re also there to arrest the husband for kidnapping. Which raises all kinds of jurisdictional questions, but maybe a Navy lieutenant potentially being an accessory to kidnapping confers a loose kind of jurisdiction that, with grandma dead, no other agency is going to fight over anyway.
Lt. Taylor invites the agents in and says that Brian won’t be back from teaching a survivalist class until Tuesday. If the agents want him before then, they’ll have to go find him in the woods.
The team processes the home. Ziva photogrsaphs Carson’s room and Tony joins. He’s impressed with the Zero Hour movie poster and even finds a stack of GSM (the NCIS-universe’s answer to Maxim) swimsuit magazines under the boy’s mattress. Which is pretty bush-league magazine play even for a kid Carson’s age. Also, Carson sleeps in a car. His bed is a red Ferrari, just like the one Magnum used to borrow from that rich guy.
This makes Tony very happy. It vaguely horrifies Ziva, and she says, not subtly, that the room reminds her of someone. The only question is whether it reminds her of Tony’s bedroom because she has spent time there and slept with him in his racecar.
Gibbs asks Lt. Taylor about Brian. Lt. Taylor says she knows his first wife drowned, but that’s it. Brian is very private. They met when Lt. Taylor took his class. A class she hated. She got poison ivy, Brian took care of her, two months later, she moved in. She says she wants her son, but since she never legally adopted Carson, the agents can’t hand him over. Which is fascinating legally. But not to Lt. Taylor. She’s (understandably) pissed. Gibbs is fine with her seeing Carson. On his terms. Lt. Taylor asks if Gibbs has kids and the camera pans to McGee making a face like he’s about to shit his pants with terror. Gibbs just says, “No,” and Lt. Taylor says she didn’t think so. Ouch. Gibbs isn’t usually petty in these types of situations, but Lt. Taylor did not do herself any favors.
As the team leaves, Gibbs wants surveillance on the hose, including the phones. Ziva is annoyed that the team isn’t placing Carson with his mother. She’s alone in this and Gibbs says if she wants a family reunion, she can prove Lt. Taylor wasn’t involved in the kidnapping.
Abby and Carson are playing movie trivia back at her lab. Carson gets a new high score and beats Tony. McGee arrives with evidence for Abby to process and Carson recognizes his dad’s computer. Carson isn’t dumb, so he’s not buying McGee’s and Abby’s vagueness for why they have this evidence, but McGee also has a bag Carson’s mom packed for him. Including a very nice DVD player that Carson says his mom wouldn’t let him bring on the scout bus. Carson says they got in a huge fight and he didn’t even kiss her goodbye. Abby reassures Carson that the good thing about moms is that they always forgive.
Holy old subplots, Batman. We take a 90-degree turn into the Director’s office where she’s reading an article in a military newspaper about the retirement of Army CID investigator and Gibbs ex-girlfriend Lt. Col. Mann (See Ex-File, Episode 5.3). We see that Lt. Col. Mann has relocated to Hawaii, which is as far away as you can get from Gibbs without leaving the U.S. Gibbs enters and Shepard quickly closes the paper. Gibbs needs a signature so he can turn Carson over to social services. Shepard is also curious about the stepmother and Gibbs gives her the same spiel: not his legal guardian, too many unanswered questions. Shepard is also curious as to why Gibbs isn’t trying to get Shepard to sign off on Carson staying with an agent. Gibbs says they aren’t babysitters, which is probably consistent. In the past, he has defaulted to social services until a danger to the child required protective custody (See, e.g., Honor Code Episode 3.7). Shepard, the rule-follower, is surprisingly against this plan, however, and decides to let Carson stay with her since it’s late on Friday night. She signs the form and looks down and realizes it’s not a custody transfer form. It’s something generic. Gibbs figures he gave her the wrong form, and smirks at having played her again.
Carson, still living his best life, is playing a space invader game in the squad room. Abby appears and says she compared Brian Taylor’s fingerprints and got a hit to a Beretta used in an unsolved murder the same year Carson disappeared. Abby says Brian isn’t running because he kidnapped Carson. He’s running because he’s wanted for murder.
Tony announces that the woods where Brian is located are blocked off. Ziva says the cold case file from the murder where Brian is a suspect is en route. Via hand delivery. This annoys the hell out of Tony who says hand-delivery is Metro PD’s way of making sure they stay involved in the case. And yup…Here’s Detectives Collins and Hamilton and they look like they’re settling in for a joint investigation. Det. Collins and Tony worked a few cases together back when Tony was a Baltimore cop. Det. Collins asks Tony to rustle up some coffee. Ziva says this is not her fault, but Tony thinks Gibbs will have a different view.
Carson is running the siren on the NCIS truck. This may be the first tome I’ve ever seen it used. Abby makes him turn it off and he’s amused by her exasperation. Carson is still lobbying to see Abby’s beneath-the-clothing tattoos. Fortunately, he is lobbying unsuccessfully. Gibbs arrives and messes with Carson’s NCIS-cap, which all wards of the agency get. Carson wants to go home and wants his Mom. Gibbs lets Carson call her. They talk, but we can only hear Carson’s side.
Det. Hamilton shows the team a video of an armed robbery of a convenience store clerk by men in ski masks. One of them kills the clerk. Det. Collins wants to go into the woods and get Brian, but Tony thinks Brian’s survival students will become hostages if that happens. Tony provides some expository dialogue about Det. Collins being ambitious, impatient, and a bit of a hard-charger. So, he will be trouble.
McGee finds where Brian keeps a map of all his locations in the woods. His base camp is 7 miles from highway 9. Gibbs sends out his agents to pick up Brian, but affirmatively holds back the Metro cops.
Carson calls Gibbs from Shepard’s house. Why he’s not in bed, I can’t explain. How he got Gibbs’s phone number is left up to past shows and Gibbs always giving kids who end up at NCIS his card (See e.g., Honor Code, Episode 3.7). Carson wants to provide more information about his father. Instead of chatting on the phone, Gibbs agrees to come over.
Gibbs arrives at the Director’s house. Carson is listening to jazz and Gibbs notes that Ziva was correct: Carson is mini-Tony. Carson asks Gibbs if he gets mad easily, and then says he lied about having info on his dad. He just wanted Gibbs to come over. He asks why he can’t go home. Gibbs says they need time to do their job. Carson wants to know if Gibbs thinks his dad did something wrong and affirmatively defends his dad as never breaking the rules. Then he wanders into self-blame, and Gibbs stops him: “This is not your fault.” Carson wants to know what they’ll do when they find Brian. Carson says Brian will tell the truth because telling the truth is his number one rule. Carson wants to watch Letterman, but Gibbs says it’s bedtime. Like all good kids, Carson stalls for a few more minutes until her can drink his hot chocolate.
Shepard tells Gibbs off to the side that she forgot how good he was with kids. They turn around and Carson is out like a light. They walk down the stairs. Shepard decides to make it weird and says it has been a long time- them together outside of the office. I guess she forgot Gibbs dropped by unannounced in Kill Ari (Part Two), Episode 3.2, Angel of Death, Episode 4.24, and Bury Your Dead, Episode 5.1. I guess he did too, since he says, “Paris.” Frequent readers recall Season 3, where neither Gibbs nor Shepard could say “Paris” without prompting a steamy, Vaseline-lens flashback to hot naked sex. Fortunately, we’re past that.
But not the recriminations. Shepard says once upon a time she would have asked him to stay and she wouldn’t have taken no for an answer. Gibbs makes sure to say, “No,” now because making a passive aggressive pass is still making a pass. Shepard asks what happened. Gibbs says she made her choice. Shepard says she had to do what was best for her, and she he still does. Gibbs leaves because he can’t build a boat out of a lonely Director’s regrets over not having a child and they don’t serve any of his other purposes either.
The next morning, Tony and Ziva have driven all night. Tony didn’t sleep because when Ziva is driving, you want to make sure you’re staring death in the eyes (See Silver War, Episode 3.4). They squabble over the map. She’s a trained navigator. He wins paper-rock-scissors. This won’t go well.
In the lab, McGee has found a user account for Lt. Taylor on Brian’s hard drive. Abby is griping about the messy forensics in Metro’s evidence box. McGee has heard it all before, every time NCIS gets a cold case. McGee suddenly realizes that Lt. Taylor lied. But he leaves without giving Abby the details.
Whatever it was, it landed Lt. Taylor in interrogation. Gibbs and McGee arrive. They present the lieutenant with evidence of the background check she ran on her husband and the P.I. she hired to look into his past. So much for protecting his privacy. Lt. Tylor says she was trying to protect Brian. She knew something was up when they first met, and his answers were evasive. Being an anti-fraud specialist probably helped her connect some dots. She found a picture from his yearbook and knew he’d changed his name. She never confronted him with the info. She just figures he ran for a good reason. Gibbs and McGee supply it: muuuuurrrrder. Lt. Taylor is not buying it. Like all spouses of bad dudes, she talks about his civic engagement. It doesn’t mean he’s guilty, but it’s kind of fun to watch her try to make the argument that no man who kills people can have loved ones or positive hobbies. She swears that Brian always calls Carson to say good night no matter where he is.
Whoops…probably shouldn’t have told them that.
Shepard and Carson are in her office flipping cards into a trash can. Of all the personal activities she indulges in her office (sleeping, drinking), this is probably the most functional. Gibbs enters and wants Shepard’s phone. Looks like Brian may have called it with a sat phone the previous evening, to say good night to Carson. That will be expensive.
Tony and Ziva are working their way through the wilderness. Ziva is handling this better than Tony. Ziva hears voices. They surround Brian’s students, but he’s not there. Gibbs calls and tells Tony Brian got tipped off by Carson. Back in Shepard’s office, Carson asks Gibbs if this means Carson is going to jail.
Tony and Ziva interview Taylor’s freezing cold students. Ziva says that they have been directed to hold their position while McGee tries to track Brian’s cell phone.
Carson and Gibbs eat in the NCIS lunchroom. Carson is impressed Gibbs would get him ice cream after he tipped off his father. Gibbs convinces Carson he did the right thing. Carson says Brian said he had to go away for a while. Then Carson tries to work Gibbs, telling Gibbs he told his dad Gibbs would be on their side, and Brian said he hoped to meet Gibbs someday.
Ducky makes a late appearance. He and Palmer are looking at photos of Brian and Carson hanging out. There are over 100 of these. Ducky is trying to profile Brian and teach Palmer profiling. Ducky notes that the photos all show Brian doing things with Carson where he isn’t likely to run into people- hunting, camping, etc. Gibbs arrives and he and Ducky agree that Brian has trust issues. Brian hangs out with his son, and that’s about it for social contact. His diary describes a man who has experienced pain, and people like that often release it in the form of rage.
A search party has arrived to aid Tony and Ziva. It is night. Shepard calls Tony and says they’ve located Brian’s cell phone. McGee says it’s moving right toward the search party. On a dirt road. The agents get a visual and Ziva stops a truck. I think you know where this is headed. Yup. Brian stuck his active phone in the back of the truck.
Carson is in Abby’s lab playing some form of jury-rigged Pictionary with Palmer. He guesses “the Playboy Mansion.” Palmer meant it to be a school and asks if Carson is sure he doesn’t know Tony.
Abby finds Gibbs and McGee as they’re about to enter her lab. She technobabbles until Gibbs shuts her down and then she tells them that she traced Brian’s cell phone and he made one phone call: to a guy named Ronald Keenan.
Gibbs and McGee track down Keenan. His door has been forced. They enter and find Keenan dead with a knife in his chest and a 911 operator trying to talk to him through a phone hanging off the hook, covered with bloody fingerprints.
Finally, something for Ducky to do besides profiles. Keenan has no defensive wounds, which means he knew his attacker. McGee says he spoke to 911 dispatch and Keenan didn’t say anything.
Det. Collins calls Gibbs and says they found a Taurus that Brian appears to have stolen from near the camp site. There’s blood on the door handle and the steering wheel.
The team does more background with Metro back at the squad room. Keenan and Brian were high school buddies. Det. Collins said Metro interviewed Keenan years ago, when Brian ran, and Keenan didn’t have any information. Detective Collins thinks Brian and Keenan were accomplices in the robbery.
Then Brian interrupts the pow-wow by calling and asking for Gibbs by name. McGee begins a trace. Brian asks after his son. And then says he wants his life back. He says he ran because he didn’t want to lose his son. He says he was naïve and made a lot of mistakes at 20. But Brian says he never killed anyone. Gibbs says to tell that to Keenan, but Brian doesn’t address it directly. Instead he says that Carson vouched for Gibbs. Gibbs tells Brian to come in. Brian says if he complies his life is over. Gibbs says, “Not if you’re innocent,” but Brian knows it’s not that simple. He tells Gibbs he has it all wrong and then hangs up. McGee traces the call to a payphone on the north end of Rock Creek Park. The team gears up to leave and Gibbs says to call Tony.
At the location, the agents and Metro PD spread out. Abby calls and says the bloody fingerprints on Keenan’s phone didn’t belong to Keenan. They were Brian’s. Which means Brian called 911. Abby has also been looking at the evidence from the convenience store robbery. A hair strand in the evidence box was coated in hair gel that didn’t hit the market until 2002, four years after the robbery/murder. The evidence was tampered with and only two police officers had access. Gibbs hangs up the phone.
Det. Collins sends Det. Hamilton in one direction and he goes in the other. Someone, presumably Brian, is watching Det. Collins through binoculars. Gibbs senses he’s being watched and looks right at the binoculars. He tells McGee that Brian wanted them there. Gibbs gets the pay phone number from McGee and calls it. It seems to forward to Brian’s cell phone, and he answers. Gibbs says, “Hey, you were framed.” Brian is pleased that Carson was right and says he coming to Gibbs and only Gibbs. Gibbs smiles grimly and begins taking off his bulletproof vest. McGee asks what he’s doing, and Gibbs responds, “My job.”
Unfortunately, Det. Collins gets to Brian first. And…I gotta be honest…I’m not sure why Det. Collins is the bad guy or what his motivation is. But he admits to killing Keenan, and Brian’s only involvement was Keenan telling Det. Collins that Brian had a gun that Keenan could use to get prints and frame Brian. Why? To solve a cold case and be a rock star? To cover up a convenience store robbery Det. Collins committed? Seems like small-ball. To disguise a hit on the convenience store clerk? Maybe. Either way, Det. Collins asks if Brian is armed, and Brian takes out a small knife. Det. Collins is going to use it as an excuse to shoot Brian, until Gibbs appears. He and the rest of the team surround Det. Collins with their guns. Since Det. Collins has conveniently confessed, they open Brian’s jacket, and he’s wearing Gibbs’s vest with the addition of a recording device in the front pocket. Tony cuffs Det. Collins.
We head back to HQ, where hopefully we will get some answers. But maybe not. Tony is trying to win his high score back on movie trivia. But he spells “flux capacitor” wrong and loses. Carson shows up to gloat. But Carson and Tony are basically the same guy, so they laugh and do some weird white-guys-trying-to-be-black-guys-but-doing-it-badly handshake with like ten moves. Fortunately, Carson’s parents show up to hopefully not be arrested for the crime that Brian did commit and Lt. Taylor did abet. Carson’s happy to see them either way. And the agents are sad because Carson is alright, and they’re going to miss him. Even Shepard, looking down from her usual perch.
Quotables:
Tony: Well, looks like it’s just you and me, David. Nothing like a long, relaxing road trip.
[jingles keys in front of her]
Ziva: [snatches keys] I’m driving.
Tony: I’m dead.
Ziva-propisms: Ziva has not been in the country long enough to know what Lifetime is. I question whether she’d love it or hate it. Same with Ziva and Hallmark Channel movies.
Tony Awards: Carson mentions that his dad is tough like Russell Crowe in Gladiator (2000). References also get made to Back to the Future (1985), The Deep End of the Ocean (1999), Zero Hour (2004), Shrek (2001), and the Magnum P.I. television series.
Abby Road: Abby’s pet peeve is mishandled evidence. Also people who claim to be vegetarians but who eat chicken.
McNicknames: Probie
Ducky Tales: The body appeared to late for Ducky to play much of a role.
The Rest of the Story:
-Abby is back on Caf-Pow after trying to quit. See In the Dark, Episode 4.22, Family, Episode 5.2, and Designated Target, Episode 5.8.
-When Shepard takes temporary custody of Carson, she says Carson will be better than her last houseguest. Presumably she means Le Grenouille, the arms dealer NCIS chased all last season and who visited Shepard in Bury Your Dead, Episode 5.1 to plead for NCIS protection. She didn’t grant it and he died, but we’re not sure who knows what about that.
-Pro-tip: if you stole your kid, don’t let him take a field trip to a federal agency. Or be in a scout troop where a federal agent is the scout master.
-Ziva’s bad driving has been around almost as long as she has. Silver War, Episode 3.4.
-NCIS has a history of being outfoxed by children trying to help their dads. See UnSEALed, Episode 1.18.
Casting Call: Karis Campbell played Lt. Taylor. She had a long term role on The West Wing.
Man, This Show Is Old: Brian uses a pay phone.
MVP: Gibbs. Everybody else seemed like a guest star except maybe Abby. And she didn’t bring Brian in from the cold.
Rating: This one feels like a retread. The plot of the precocious child whose father is in trouble has been used at least four times on this show: UnSEALED, Episode 1.18, See No Evil, Episode 2.1, Honor Code, Episode 3.7 and here. UnSEALED even involved a frame-up. But all of those were better done episodes. Here, the motive for the frame-up never makes sense. And even the characterization is weak, with only Shepard and Gibbs moving much of a dial. Also, Brian is still in legal jeopardy, so this happy ending is another example of the NCIS team soldiering on while the lives of the people they met in the episode descend into chaos.
I would normally give it three Palmers, but I had fun doing the write-up, so I’ll give it four Palmers.
Next Time: The show steals a few pages from some comic books and pits NCIS against a Super Marine.
A Year of NCIS 