A Year of NCIS, Day 104: Corporal Punishment (Episode 5.10)

Episode: 5.10, Corporal Punishment

Air Date: November 27, 2007.

The Victim: Uhhh…tough to say.

Emotionally Traumatized, But Ultimately Irrelevant, Witness Who Finds the Body: It’s night at  Bethesda Naval Medical Center.  A service member gets into his car.  Suddenly, a very angry, screaming, shirtless man punches out the driver’s side window, enters the car, shoves our service member over and carjacks the whole damn thing.  It is almost comical for its abruptness. 

The car leaves and the camera follows a trail of overturned trash cans and chairs back to a broken window at the facility.  An alarm is blaring and the room inside the window is trashed too, leading us to believe that our angry ape man is an escapee of some sort.  Yeah, this is quite the path of destruction, back to the secure patient wing and into what looks like a padded room where an orderly is alive, but semi-conscious.

I like it.  Good intro. 

Plot Recap: McGee is reading an Iron Fist comic.  Tony karate chops it out of his hands because martial arts.  McGee identifies it as a key issue (see below), and Tony pops the comic again, daring “Iron Fist” McGee to hit him.  Tony has been working on his abs and wants someone to try him.  Ziva enters and this seems like it’s headed in a bad direction.  Ziva agrees to punch Tony’s stomach and Tony agrees that this is a good idea.  McGee somehow manages not to rub his hands together with glee, Dr. Evil-style.  Tony stalls and Gibbs shows up to announce an escaped mental patient.  McGee is thinking the same thing, but Gibbs means a real one.  So, the team heads out.  Or actually, Tony the moron says he doesn’t need rescuing and tells Ziva to go to town on him.  She rears back and lets fly but stops just short of his stomach while he screams like a baby anyway.  She laughs, pats his abs, tells him Gibbs’s are better, and scampers off. 

At Bethesda, the orderly tells the team that the escaped patient has been in the secure inpatient wing for two weeks, being treated for PTSD experienced in Iraq.  The patient doesn’t talk much.  The patient has been on meds- anti-psychotics, sedatives, but either way, he busted a straitjacket with his bare hands.  Even Ziva is impressed. 

The escapee is Corporal Damon Werth, USMC.  He transferred out of Iraq 15 days ago.  The orderly says Cpl. Werth stole a car, but, when Gibbs loudly demands to know where the driver is, the orderly has to admit he doesn’t know.  McGee saves the orderly from being eaten whole by offering to pull up exterior security footage.

Tony is channeling The Fugitive in the parking lot and it goes over Ziva’s head.  McGee wants to know why Tony does this every time the team has a fugitive (See UnSEALed, Episode 1.18).  Gibbs just wants it stopped.  He and McGee reveal that Cpl. Werth took a hostage- Dr. Adrian De La Casa.  There’s a BOLO on the doctor’s car.  Dr. De La Casa is one of the attending psychiatrists, which Ziva thinks may help the doctor’s changes if Cpl. Werth is familiar with him.  Dr. De La Casa’s notes say Cpl. Werth is paranoid, delusional and has a tendency toward violent outbursts.

A slick, annoying man with an entry-level 2007 bluetooth arrives.  His name is Ray Vincent and he is some sort of PR flack for U.S. Senator Hawkins.  Vincent tells Gibbs to work fast before we have a PR disaster.  Gibbs is prepared to not give a shit, but Vincent points out that Cpl. Werth is set to receive the Silver Star in two days.  “You’re missing Marine’s a hero.”

Well then.

In the squad room, Tony is free-associating and getting ribbed for it.  McGee backgrounds Cpl. Werth more and demonstrates that the corporal has had rapid advancement in strength, speed, and intelligence, and has only been away from his unit once, to train with British special forces.  He aced the training. 

Vincent appears with Gibbs and asks for updates every half hour.  Then he wanders off to chat on his Bluetooth.  Gibbs tells the team that Cpl. Werth’s unit was captured in Iraq.  Cpl. Werth was being tortured when he broke loose, killed his captors and got his three fellow Marines to safety.  Cpl. Werth’s nickname from his fellow Marines is “Corporal Punishment,” which is awesome.  It’s not “Archangel” (See Blowback, Episode 4.14), but it’s awesome.

McGee gives background on Cpl. Werth’s training- Parris, Quantico, Le Jeune, the usual.  He’s from Michigan, Senator Hawkins’s home state.  Married, no kids, father is retired special forces, mother is a therapist.  No friends outside of the Corps. 

The hostage, Dr. De La Casa, lives in Reston, VA, but works at Bethesda, so Tony reasons he’d take the toll road to work and be in possession of a smart tag.  McGee tracks the tag into DC and then calls Dr. De La Casa’s cell phone.  Cpl. Werth answers and hangs up.  But McGee can track the call if Cpl. Werth leaves it on.

The team tracks the signal to a warehouse-looking location.  They find the car and, amidst beating sounds, open the trunk to find Dr. De La Casa inside, bound and gagged.  Opening the trunk trips a mechanism of sorts and flood lights illuminate the area.  Gibbs gets the doctor out of the trunk and the doctor reports that Cpl. Werth did something with his laptop and disappeared.  Tony wants to know why the lights, and McGee sees that the laptop has been set up to film the agents and transmit the images.  “Now he knows what we look like,” Tony observes as Gibbs reaches forward to disable the camera.

Back at NCIS, Dr. De La Casa is in a conference room.  The doctor says he tried to reason with Cpl. Werth, but the corporal seemed not to recognize the doctor.  He later accused the doctor of trying to manipulate the environment.  Then Cpl. Werth bound the doctor and asked about PFCs Whitney, Stone, and Heatherton.  Cpl. Werth wanted to know where they were keeping these Marines.  Dr. De La Casa says they’re not keeping them anywhere.

Tony arrives.  He reports that the video feed from the laptop was accessed from a nearby internet café.  The last files on the laptop that were accessed related to the aforementioned three Marines.  Gibbs works all of this out before Tony tells him.  Per Tony, PFCs Whitney and Heatherton were treated for combat injuries and released for redeployment.  PFC Stone was put into rehab at Walter Reed hospital, which is where Gibbs thinks Cpl. Werth is headed.  Ducky puts on his fornensic psychology feathers and points out that PTSD hasn’t reduced Cpl. Werth’s tactical abilities or left him so out of control that he harmed the doctor any more than he needed to.  Ducky thinks Cpl. Werth is continually replaying his rescue mission of his three Marine brothers in Iraq.  In which case, that orderly from the beginning is lucky he didn’t die when Cpl. Werth broke free.  Ducky thinks Cpl. Werth can be triggered and will be highly dangerous if that happens.  He tells Gibbs to be careful.

The team arrives at Walter Reed and they visit the rehab area.  PFC Stone is rehabbing with a prosthetic leg.  Gibbs and Tony tell PFC Stone about Cpl. Werth, and PFC Stone thinks the corporal never should have been committed at Bethesda anyway.  PFC Stone is glad his fellow Marine broke out.  He owes Cpl. Werth for saving his life and stands ready to return the favor.  Gibbs tries to impress upon PFC Stone that while Cpl. Werth may not hurt PFC Stone, he could hurt others if he thinks he’s rescuing PFC Stone.  PFC Stone asks what Gibbs wants. 

McGee and Ziva are checking out on-site security footage when they see evidence that Dr. De La Casa is visiting the facility.  Ziva realizes that Cpl. Werth has the doctor’s badge and has used it to infiltrate the hospital.  Ziva calls Gibbs and tells him Cpl. Werth is on-site.  The scene shifts as Gibbs, still on the phone, turns to face the business end of Cpl. Werth’s gun barrel and tells Ziva he knows.

Ziva and McGee sneak up on the corporal as he forces Gibbs and Tony to disarm.  But the corporal knows they’re there.  He orders PFC Stone to get up even though PFC Stone tries to cut through the haze.  Cpl. Werth is confused by PFC Stone’s prosthetic leg and PFC Stone and Gibbs both try to remind the corporal that he’s not in Iraq anymore.  PFC Stone tells Cpl. Werth that Gibbs is a Marine like them, and that helps.  Cpl. Werth lowers the weapon.  Gibbs takes it.

Then stupid, stupid McGee slaps on the cuffs without warning.  Gibbs tells McGee to back off but it’s too late.  Cpl. Werth side-kicks Gibbs in the midsection and he goes flying as Tony ineffectively tries to catch him.  Cpl. Werth catches McGee is an armlock and body slams him.  Then Tony moves in and gets a headbutt to the face.  Ziva has a bead with her weapon, but knows this man isn’t in control so she hesitates.  Cpl. Werth kicks the gun out of her hand.  She moves in for hand-to-hand and scores more hits than she takes, including a brutal shot to the forehead.  She finally manages to knock Cpl. Werth down with a savage left, and the male agents pile on him and pin him with their weight.  The rehab participants and staff just sort of look on in horror as four federal agents finally subdue a superhuman Marine.

Back in the squad room, Abby arrives in a panic to look at Ziva’s head, where she has a massive bruise.  Tony has a broken nose.  McGee has a dislocated shoulder.  Gibbs probably doesn’t have ribs anymore, but I doubt he’d say anything.  Ziva gets Abby calmed down.  Sort of.  Abby is angry and isn’t displaying her usual open-mindedness and empathy.  She calls Cpl. Werth an animal and a killing machine and wants to know why he’s at NCIS where he can do more damage.  Ziva supplies the voice of reason that Cpl. Werth is a Marine who gave is all for his country and deserves respect.  Abby mocks this because, for her, principles only go so far when someone attacks your friends.  I get it, but it’s overly emotional and not a good look.  I’m with Ziva.  But, to her credit, Ziva stays calm and tries to get Abby back to reality (albeit, by squeezing the hell out of her face).  Then Abby asks why she can’t just let it out and hits Ziva in the heart again with the remarks about how not everyone can be a “totally emotionless perfect warrior.” 

I guess Abby can’t always be a ray of sunshine.

Gibbs enters Director Shepard’s office and meets Karen Sutherland, a research and development engineer with biotech Corporation.  She was on-site at Walter Reed during the big ole’ fight.  Ms. Sutherland is a prosthesis expert.  Her company also develops alternative therapies to treat the psychological wounds of war.  Shepard idly muses that competition among companies like Ms. Sutherland’s for DARPA funding must be intense.  Ms. Sutherland changes the subject and wants to know what will happen to Cpl. Werth now that he’s in custody.  Gibbs wonders why she wants to know.  Shepard reveals that a lot of people are interested, especially people in Senator Hawkins’s office. 

Gibbs isn’t in a great mood.  For all the talk of Silver Stars, Cpl. Werth abducted a Navy doctor and beat the dogshit out of four federal agents.  Ms. Sutherland doesn’t think Cpl. Werth should be charged, not being in his right mind at the time.  Shepard thinks Cpl. Werth, at the very least, should return to psychiatric care.  Gibbs scoffs at that in light of the good it did.  Shepard asks for an opinion.  Ms. Sutherland says it’s not her place.  Gibbs figures he’ll talk to the corporal, Marine to Marine.

In interrogation, Cpl. Werth strains at his cuffs.  Ziva watches from observation.  Ducky appears and thinks Ziva should go get her head looked at.  She blows him off.

Gibbs arrives and tosses the cuff key onto the table.  And goes all gunny.  He starts by casually asking what seems to be the problem.  And then screams it in the corporal’s ear: “WHAT SEEMS TO BE THE PROBLEM, MARINE?!”  “I want to kill someone, sir,” is the response.  He’s not particular as to who.  Gibbs wants to know if that feels right.  Cpl. Werth agrees it does not and admits he’s not right.  But he says it’s not his fault.  Cpl. Werth references the needles and pills that put a cloud in his mind.  But he doesn’t know who drugged him.  He asks Gibbs to help him and Gibbs promises he will.

Ducky says that the symptoms are not exclusive to PTSD.  Any of them could be the result of adverse reactions to certain drugs.  Moreover, many of the mental symptoms predated the corporal’s capture in Iraq. 

Abby is still annoyed.  She calls Cpl. Werth a liar and says his bloodwork is clean.  Ducky is waiting on the urinalysis.  Abby complains about not being able to work on Cpl. Werth’s case when she’s so angry at him.  Ducky tries to draw out her empathy and establishes that he may be a victim, not a villain.  That seems to do the trick.  They start looking for masking agents that might account for a clean tox screen.

Tony’s nose is trashed.  He opens up his desk drawer and examines his reflection in a framed Purple Heart that I assume belongs to Gibbs.  Tony keeps all of Gibbs’s awards, as established in Model Behavior, Episode 3.11.  Otherwise Gibbs would just throw them out.  McGee struggles with opening a soda can with only one arm and manages to bust the tab.  Ziva opens it with a knife.  Tony is acting stranger than usual with average Jack Nicholson impressions and low-grade paranoia.  McGee explains to Ziva that Tony is riding the painkiller train. 

Vincent is back.  He tells Gibbs he’ll be receiving a commendation.  More items for Tony’s drawer.  Shepard is with Vincent and says Cpl. Werth is being transferred back to Bethesda.  He’ll be nice and cleaned up for his medal.  Gibbs tells Vincent that all he cares about is selling the war to the American public. Vincent asks if Gibbs supports the war.  Gibbs says he supports the men fighting it and walks off.

Ducky and Gibbs ride down the elevator together.  Ducky gives the tox screen report and explains that Cpl. Werth is filled to bursting with anabolic steroids.  And masking agents, so nobody ever picked up on it.  Ducky says the science is very advanced and the steroid administration has been going on for years.  Cpl. Werth’s behavior is steroid psychosis, and Ducky thinks someone has been using Cpl. Werth as a lab rat.  The elevator opens into the garage, and Gibbs watches EMTs load Cpl. Werth into an ambulance but says nothing.

Back in the squad room, the agents try to work out who is giving steroids to our Marine.  They go over his history as a 19-year-old kid in a hospital bed with a blood disease who suddenly has a miraculous recovery and becomes a super Marine.  If you think that sounds like Captain America, McGee makes sure to mention it so we won’t think the writers are cribbing without attribution.  Still, none of the agents can determine who would benefit from an experiment of this nature.  Tony suggests pharmaceutical companies.  Gibbs like that and takes Tony with him while assigning the others to investigate Ms. Sutherland and Biotech.   

Gibbs and Tony visit Ms. Sutherland at her lab.  She talks about various projects at the company.  She also denies human testing, even when Tony takes on the role of trying to provoke her.  Gibbs tells Ms. Sutherland about the steroids and she is impressed that NCIS has taken such an interest.  Although she has done her research and knows Gibbs has a Silver Star, and she notes this commonality with  Corporal Werth.  She again denies involvement, but it’s hard to tell if she’s telling the truth.

Ziva certainly doesn’t believe her.  McGee doesn’t either.  Abby is hugging his neck while he’s trying to work with one good arm.  She’s being very mother hen, and continues this behavior when Tony walks in.  Tony smells like garbage because he went through Ms. Sutherland’s trash.  Abby thinks that’s a lot of work for Cpl. Werth’s sake, but she tells Ziva she gets it now: it’s dishonorable for our warriors to be felled by invisible forces.  Ziva smiles and nods.  Abby also apologizes for calling Ziva cold and unfeeling.  Tony zones in on that and wants to know what Ziva was having feelings about.  Then he either gets possessive or is teasing her about thinking Cpl. Werth is hot.  It’s not always easy to tell with Tony.  Although when McGee gets in on the fun, it becomes less weird and more funny.

Gibbs returns.  McGee reports that Karen Sutherland is exactly as caring as she appears to be- lots of charity work in underdeveloped nations.  McGee suggests exploiting that, so they haul Ms. Sutherland in to the conference room for more questioning.  Gibbs and McGee let her know that they’ve found out she uses corporate technology on the sly to help children in need when she’s doing humanitarian work in third world countries.  And they essentially blackmail her with that.  She hands over a thumb drive with super-soldier project material on it and tells them that her career is over if it gets out that she shared it.  She looks at Gibbs and tells him he could have asked nicely.  “This is asking nicely!” Gibbs protests. 

Abby is looking at the tech on Ms. Sutherland’s thumb drive.  Ms. Sutherland is a good citizen and reviewed every human experiment that Biotech ran after meeting with Gibbs at her office because she was worried her company might be responsible.  They’re not.  Their hands aren’t clean, but Abby has cataloged the cocktail in Cpl. Werth’s blood and Biotech’s experiments don’t match up.  Cpl. Werth is not Biotech’s test subject.   

Shepard managed to get a list of every company competing for military funding for super-soldier projects and none of them match up to Cpl. Werth.  Someone is running an experiment, but the team can’t figure out who and Cpl. Werth is too fried to remember.  But, if he does remember, he’ll be in danger.  So, the team heads to Bethesda to talk to Cpl. Werth again and maybe run interference. 

Senate Staffer Ray Vincent is not happy to see the team at Bethesda.  He threatens to have them forcibly removed.  But they bump into him and knock his Bluetooth loose and Tony steps on it.  Whoops. 

Dr. De La Casa meets with the team and he’s annoyed with himself that he missed the steroid psychosis diagnosis.  He now has Cpl. Werth on a dedicated detox program that should have his system flushed in 3-5 days.  The agents are snarky about having to do all of the doctor’s work for him, but he tees up a message for the audience about the lack of resources and the inability to give this kind of individualized attention to every servicemember who presents with PTSD.  Ziva wants to see the patient.  Dr. De La Casa isn’t into it, but the agents are in full intimidation mode. So, Dr. De La Casa leads Gibbs and Ziva to see Cpl. Werth while Tony and McGee monitor from a security station. 

The corporal is mostly asleep and is having trouble answering questions.  Then he begins to crash.  Dr. De La Casa can’t explain it and grabs a shot of adrenaline.  As the doctor and Gibbs restrain Cpl. Werth, Ziva injects it into the intravenous tube.  Watching on a video monitor at a security station, Tony says Ziva’s performing a Pulp Fiction.  “On the Hulk,” McGee adds, and both men race to the hospital room, where, inside, Cpl. Werth surges up out of bed in a rage, tosses Gibbs aside like a rag doll, and pins Ziva to the wall.  She doesn’t fight back.  She just stares at him.  He stares back.  Then he calms down.  And collapses.  McGee and Tony arrive, guns drawn, and Dr. De La Casa examines the chart and determines that Cpl. Werth’s drug dosage was so high it was poisoning him.  Tony suspects the doctor, but Dr. De La Casa is mystified and says he wrote it up right.  Gibbs wants to know who is responsible for carrying out the order.

We shift to Jenkins, the orderly from the opening.  He’s wearing civvies and getting ready to leave work when he sees Tony and McGee headed his way.  He bolts for the elevator but finds Ziva.  Who beats the absolute shit out of him, and even prolongs the beating for fun.  Tony cuffs the downed Jenkins and notes that his wristwatch is probably a little too expensive for an orderly’s salary.

In interrogation, Jenkins denies forcing anyone to take steroids.  He’s just the salesman, and his clients do to themselves.  Jenkins has been stealing steroids from the pharmacy and peddling them for a while, including to Cpl. Werth.  When Cpl. Werth broke loose and then got recaptured, Jenkins thought he’d get busted, so he tried to kill Cpl. Werth with the intravenous overdose to cover up his crimes.  But he never injected Cpl. Werth, or any of his customers, with any anabolics. 

Gibbs and Ziva speak with Cpl. Werth in his hospital room as they prepare him for the medal ceremony.  They question him about who administered the steroids, but Cpl. Werth is still hazy.  And also reticent.  Gibbs tells the corporal that courage doesn’t come from medals.  You run toward the shooting instead of away from it.  Cpl. Werth confesses what the agents already knew.  Cpl. Werth was told he couldn’t be a Marine because of deficiencies in his blood.  While Jenkins was his most recent supplier, Cpl. Werth injected himself with steroids and masking agents to compensate for his disease.  He always has.  The only person experimenting on Cpl. Werth was Cpl. Werth.  Because Cpl. Werth didn’t have any idea what his life would be if he couldn’t be a Marine. 

Gibbs and Ziva leave the room and Vincent is on the phone.  Vincent tells the agents there will be no Silver Star ceremony because, regardless of Cpl. Werth’s valor in combat, Senator Hawkins can’t be on the stage with a drug addict.  Ziva asks about the medal and Vicnent says it’s up to the Marines, but he hopes they don’t give Cpl. Werth a medal.  Vincent says Cpl. Werth should be lucky to get only a discharge.  He goes back to his phone call.

Later, Gibbs is alone in the squad room getting ready to leave the office.  He walks over to Tony’s desk, opens the drawer, and pulls out his Silver Star.  He looks at it and chuckles. 

At the hospital, Cpl. Werth is sleeping.  Gibbs appears in the doorway of the room and places the Silver Star on the bedside table. 

Quotables:

Tony [telling Ziva to punch his abs]: Do it.

McGee: As hard as she can?

Tony: As hard as you can.

McGee: You know that’s how Houdini died.

Tony: Ziva, did you kill Houdini?

Ziva: It is possible. I do not remember all of their names.

Ziva-propisms: Ziva equates a six-pack with drinking, rather than abdominals.

Tony Awards: Tony does his impression of Tommy Lee Jones from The Fugitive (1993).  He also references The Greatest Show on Earth (1952).  McGee makes an allusion to The A-Team.  Tony likens his appearance post-broken nose, to Jack Nicholson’s appearance in Chinatown (1974).  There are additional references to Conan The Barbarian (1982), Red Sonja (1985), and Pulp Fiction (1994) and Tony does his Bond impression.  It was a busy episode for pop culture, particularly once you work in Iron fist and Captain America.

Abby Road: Abby wanders down a strange path when she puts aside her objectivity because her friends got roughed up.

McNicknames: McNerd.  McGiggle. 

Ducky Tales: Nothing of note.

The Rest of the Story:

-Whoa.  The comic that Tony swats out of McGee’s hands is Iron Fist #14, the first appearance of Wolverine/X-Men villain Sabretooth.  In mint condition, that one can go for four figures.  Or it can if your dumbass friend doesn’t karate chop it while you’re reading it.  I don’t think McGee could take Tony in a fight on most days, but today should really be that day.  Although, why McGee has a $1,200.00 comic out of the plastic at work is beyond me.

-Abby’s remarks about Ziva being emotionless clearly sting.  It’s a callback to Hiatus (Part One), Episode 3.23 and Hiatus (Part Two), Episode 3.24 where everyone gave Ziva a bunch of hell for compartmentalizing her feelings for the badly injured and comatose Gibbs.

-The show tends to be neutral on the politics of military engagement and the Iraq War.  But here, in late 2007, it’s starting to channel the broader societal conversation about what a toll the endless engagement is taking on our warriors.  Gibbs’s remark about supporting the men fighting the war, but declining to comment on the war itself threads this needle perfectly.

-Every now and then, we get an episode where we know everything won’t be OK for the guest characters after the episode ends.  Here, there’s virtually no way Cpl. Werth has a good outcome once his Marine identity is fully stripped from him.

-Do we think Dr. De La Casa makes…house calls?  Yeah?  Yeah?

Casting Call: Amy Carlson played Ms. Sutherland.  She is also Danny Reagan’s wife, Linda, on Blue Bloods.                                                  

Man, This Show Is Old: The talk of triggering is ahead of its time. 

Questions about cyclists doping during the Tour de France have been routine for decades, but the investigation into Lance Armstrong was still nearly 4-5 years away from Armstrong’s loss of his titles and banning from the sport.

MVP: Ziva.  Also, Ziva.  But let’s not forget Ziva.  She took down a super-Marine and then she beat all hell out of the perp.

Rating: This show is never shy about nonchalantly telling the audience where they cribbed the plot ideas.  Here, the references to Iron Fist (a hero who trains himself into the ultimate weapon) and a dark take on Captain America (a scrawny, weak kid who can’t enlist until chemicals turn him into a super-soldier) are unavoidable, but also referenced in the dialogue.  Also lurking in there is a Frank Miller Daredevil story line involving a Special Forces vet who was the subject of anabolic military experimentation and went crazy.  So, this one hit me where I live.  It’s also a good combination of action, suspense, and pathos.  

Eight Palmers.

Next Time: I hope you enjoyed this episode.  Because we are about to hit a streak of suck the likes of which the show has not experienced up to now.  Five out of the next six episodes are either dull or legitimately bad. Next up, a Muslim Marine dies, but is it connected to a larger terrorist plot?