A Year of NCIS, Day 108: Internal Affairs (Episode 5.14)

Episode: 5.14, Internal Affairs

Air Date: April 22, 2008

The Victim: Le Grenouille, last season’s bête noire.

Emotionally Traumatized, But Ultimately Irrelevant, Witness Who Finds the Body: Hard to say.

Plot Recap: Tony arrives at work, drinking coffee and laughing at something on his phone.  Ziva beats a hole puncher and startles him.  McGee is backing up case files, a very sensitive operation that requires Tony to keep his distance with the hot liquids.  Tony comes over near the delicate equipment and pretends to juggle his coffee.  But the cup is filled with paper from Ziva’s hole puncher and McGee freaks out over nothing, getting showered with little paper circles for his efforts.  As office pranks go, that’s solid.

Gibbs arrives to harsh the mellow.  But this time somebody beats him to it. The phones are down.  And then something shuts down the internal internet right in the middle of McGee’s back up effort.  He begins spazzing as Fornell emerges from the elevator with a team of agents.

Fornell tells the team that a body was pulled out of the bay and has since been identified as Rene Benoit, or Le Grenouille, Director Shepard’s arms dealer obsession from all of last season.  See generally, Bury Your Dead, Episode 5.1 (but really, you should watch (or read) the whole season).  Shepard arrives and Fornell breaks the news that Le Grenouille was murdered.  Fornell then declares the entire NCIS unit under investigation.

The team has been confined to their own evidence locker where Abby declares them prisoners and gets in the face poor FBI schmuck assigned to monitor them.  The rest of the team is pretty casual about the whole thing and trusts Gibbs, who they decided not to try and constrain.

Upstairs Gibbs chats with Fornell.  Who then leads him to his own interrogation room.  Per Fornell, the evidence for Le Grenouille’s murder led to NCIS HQ.  Gibbs sits in the wrong chair, likely intentionally, and Fornell tells him to go to the other side of the table.  Gibbs smiles at Fornell and then at the observation room.  A pair of eyes watches.  An FBI lackey brings coffee to the observation room, but the man inside says he doesn’t drink coffee.  We see he has a mustache and a toothpick.

In interrogation, Gibbs sees photos of Le Grenouille’s corpse but isn’t surprised.  He knew this wasn’t over.  Fornell talks about the team’s earlier and significant contact with Le Grenouille and Gibbs flashes back to the the morning Tony’s car exploded while it was being driven by one of Le Grenouille’s goons.  Bury Your Dead, Episode 5.1.  Gibbs tells Fornell that Le Grenouille wasn’t the target.  Rather, his daughter, Dr. Jeanne Benoit, who was dating Tony at the time, was the target.  Of course, by dating Tony, we mean Tony was undercover and dating her to get to her father.  Things got…out of hand with their relationship.

Fornell then talks about the team raiding Le Grenouille’s yacht at the end of the same episode and maybe a day after the car explosion.  We saw the raid, so we the audience know Gibbs, McGee, and Ziva didn’t kill Le Grenouille.  As Gibbs says, they just missed him.  Still, according to Fornell, the time of Le Grenouille’s death roughly coincides with the agents’ visit.  Gibbs says the team was at the office all night securing the warrant.  If Fornell wants his alibi, Gibbs was at Shepard’s house before that.  Of course, Le Grenouille was present for part of that visit, and Gibbs briefly flashes back.  Gibbs recalls the conversation between Shepard and Le Grenouille where they fought over whether her father, Col. Jasper Shepard, took a bribe from Le Grenouille in the 90s and killed himself when he couldn’t live with the guilt. 

Gibbs says Le Grenouille left Shepard’s house, and so did Gibbs.  Gibbs tells Fornell that Le Grenouille wanted protection and Shepard refused to provide it.  Fornell wants to know if Gibbs is protecting anyone and Gibbs realizes it’s not his alibi Fornell is after.  Instead, Fornell wants to know if Gibbs can account for the Director’s whereabouts that night.  Gibbs flashes back to Shepard pulling a gun on Le Grenouille that, thanks to the arm’s dealer’s foresight, happened not to be loaded.  But he doesn’t tell Fornell anything about that.  Instead, he simply warns Fornell that if the FBI is going to accuse the Director of NCIS of murder, that evidence better be good.  Fornell says he has the goods, or he wouldn’t be there.  Gibbs says that when this is done and Shepard is cleared, he wants to see Fornell’s file.  Fornell says he’s probably OK with that.  If Shepard is cleared.  Gibbs chuckles.  And then stares at the glass.  The person on the other side exits the observation room.  He’s nobody we’ve seen in previous episodes.

The man in the observation room enters Shepard’s office.  Shpard calls him Leon and says he’s a long way from San Diego.  SecNav figured it was worth a plane ticket, says the man.  He is NCIS Assistant Director Leon Vance, and Shepard understands that Vacne will be overseeing the investigation.  Shepard asks if Vance will request her gun and badge.  And then she drops them on her desk.  Vance relieves her of duty and suspends her.

Gibbs and Vance meet in the hall.  They know each other and greet each other by name, but it’s not cordial.  Vance smirkingly hands Gibbs $2.48 for a cheese Danish from what Gibbs estimates as eight years ago.  Apparently it was a to-do, because Vance says, “nine.”  Gibbs wants to know if Vance is responsible for the “fishing expedition.”  Vance says the FBI is doing the fishing- he’s just driving the boat.  Gibbs says to keep it off the rocks.

Gibbs walks by McGee.  McGee wants to know what he’s supposed to say.  Gibbs says to tell the truth, because he hasn’t done anything wrong.  But McGee flashes back to Angel of Death, Episode 4.24, where McGee, under the authority of Gibbs, who was himself acting NCIS Director during Shepard’s absence, illegally hacked into CIA to dope out their connection to Le Grenouille.  McGee is naturally nervous that this might be uncovered in an interrogation. 

In the interrogation room, Fornell notes that McGee looks nervous.  He also knows McGee hacked the CIA, but he doesn’t care.  Vance is still watching from the observation room.  Fornell asks about Col. Jasper Shepard and says McGee didn’t come up with the idea to investigate the Colonel’s suicide on his own.  McGee says it was Gibbs.  Since Shepard was so aggressive in search of Le Grenouille, Gibbs was curious as to her motives.  Fornell correctly notes that Gibbs does not get curious.  He gets suspicious.  What did he suspect?  McGee admits that Gibbs thought Shepard believed Le Grenouille to be responsible for her father’s death. 

Fornell wants to know if that’s why Shepard put Tony undercover, but McGee says he can’t speak to the nature of Tony’s assignment.  Fornell wonders at that since McGee and Tony must have a professional relationship.  This forces McGee to flash back to a number of nicknames and abuses from Tony, and two physical (albeit playful) fights (Leap of Faith, Episode 5.5, and Stakeout, Episode 5.12).  McGee responds “Yes, very professional,” all the same.  Fornell says this is not the time to cover for one’s friends and wants to know about Tony’s assignment.  McGee says he wasn’t privy to Tony’s activities, which is true.  But Fornell doesn’t believe McGee because he knows that McGee was involved in the Le Grenouille portion of the investigation, including the efforts in Canada to apprehend the arms dealer (Blowback, Episode 4.14).  McGee flashes back to his time in the surveillance van during that op. 

Now we shift to Ziva’s interrogation.  Fornell is still on the op in Canada and wants to know the purpose.  Ziva is silent.  Fornell says he knows what Ziva is and what she can do and repeats the question.  Ziva says they received intelligence that Le Grenouille would be in the area.  Fornell asks if this was an effort to apprehend, and Ziva flashes back the mission and her awesome codename, “Archangel.”  On that mission, she was scoping Le Grenouille with her rifle, and not in a way that suggested an effort to arrest.  Particularly given her continual requests to Shepard for authority to fire a kill shot.  Ziva tells Fornell that she was there to insure mission safety.  But Fornell knows she is an assassin, and also knows that she was called off at the last moment when CIA undercover agent Trent Kort made NCIS on the scene and had his handlers call Shepard and order her to abort.  And that’s the only reason Le Grenouille didn’t die in Canada.  So, it’s not much of a leap for Fornell to wonder if Shepard took her opportunity to kill Le Grenouille later.  He shows Ziva the picture of the arms dealer’s recovered corpse. 

And we shift to Ducky’s interrogation.  Ducky admits he rather liked Le Grenouille, based on their encounter in Canada when Ducky was undercover as a retired engineer selling a weapons system.  Ducky asks if the Maryland ME performed Le Grenouille’s autopsy, since they hauled him out of the harbor in that state.  Ducky says she’s very god, and he’d liked to see the body.  Fornell is not on board with that.  He wants to know if Ducky profiled Le Grenouille (he did in Brothers in Arms, Episode 4.21).  Ducky flashes back to the Director wondering if Ducky’s judgment was clouded because he felt Le Grenouille wasn’t the type to resolve disputes with violence.  And to him asking the Director in retort whether her own judgment was clouded.  Fornell wants to know Ducky’s opinion of the Director and his encounter with her over the Le Grenouille profile.  Ducky hesitates and flashes back to telling Gibbs his concerns about the Director, but then admits to Fornell that Shepard manifested obsessive behavior. 

Later, Ducky tells Gibbs that Fornell is trying to paint a picture of Shepard wanting retribution.  Gibbs thinks Fornell is just confirming what he knows.  Ducky wonders if Gibbs thinks Shepard killed Le Grenouille, and Gibbs flashes back to Shepard’s insistence on getting Le Grenouille at the end of Blowback, Episode 4.14.  He doesn’t respond.

We see that Gibbs is now in the evidence locker with the rest of the team.  He decides to leave, and the FBI guard blocks his way.  Gibbs straightens the agent’s suit jacket and informs him, “You know what?  You’re gonna have to stop me.”  Vance arrives and asks if there’s a problem.  Gibbs says only if Vance wants one.  Vance isn’t cowed by Gibbs.  They bicker over “rules” and when Gibbs asks why his team is confined, Vance says he has never been comfortable with Gibbs’s and Shepard’s relationship.  He thinks intimacy between management and staff is a bad idea.  Gibbs agrees, letting Vance know that, gossip aside, nobody at NCIS is loading their clip into a company gun.  Nobody in management, anyway.  Vance accepts this and says anyone who has been interviewed can leave.  He warns them against investigating the case. 

Vance leaves.  Gibbs says to come on, they have work to do.  McGee wants to know what that means since they can’t investigate the FBI’s case.  Gibbs figures they’ll investigate the FBI.

In Gibbs’s basement, the team reconvenes.  Gibbs wants McGee to hack Fornell’s computer.  He blows off some dust and hands McGee some piece of shit computer from the early 90s to hack with.  And a screwdriver to, I guess, build a wireless connection? 

Gibbs asks Ducky about his friend in the Maryland ME office.  Meaning, Dr. Jordan Hampton, whom we met in Identity Crisis, Episode 5.4.  Gibbs wants the autopsy report and tells Ducky get it.  And to go out the back in case of surveillance. 

McGee thinks he can use his phone to do what Gibbs wants, but he’ll need an FBI ID to access…Gibbs pulls the ID of the agent guarding the evidence locker, which he lifted when they were measuring.  He asks if McGee has any questions, and McGee wonders how Gibbs gets his boat out of the basement.  Gibbs says, “Break the bottle.”

In the evidence locker, our FBI agent realizes his ID is gone.  Abby is rooting through old evidence in an unrelated matter.  Tony is restless.  And hungry.  Abby tosses him a Klowny Kake from the evidence box.  She pulls some tarot cards to pass the time.  But not much time.  Fornell comes for Abby.  Tony whispers that Gibbs gave her a mission and to just do what she does best: talk.

And Tony is all alone.  He flips over the tarot card and it’s the hanged man.  He grimaces.

Abby is sucking Caf-Pow through a straw in the interrogation room.  She begins taking over Fornell’s interrogation by talking at him.  Then she says that the big hole in Fornell’s theory is that a murder could never take place under Gibbs’s nose.  Because Gibbs is magic.  She talks about him continually materializing when she has news.  Fornell suggests Gibbs bugged her lab, but Abby says she checked.  Fornell asks if Gibbs ever gets angry, and Abby flashes back to a variety of head slaps that I couldn’t place if I tried, and the times Gibbs demonstrated Marine neck breaking techniques on Tony (Red Cell, Episode 2.20) and McGee (Witch Hunt, Episode 4.6).  she responds, “Never.”  Gibbs only “uses his powers for good.”  Then Abby starts telling stories…

…and we head back to Gibbs’s basement, where McGee is going to make that 90s Compaq-looking thing work for him.  Ziva is standing on a chair, holding a phone up to the ceiling to create a signal.  McGee is making a hack work because the old-school protocols on the antque are not the kind the FBI’s modern anti-hacking protocols defend against.  Gibbs arrives and McGee gets nostalgic for old school on-line fantasy games but changes the subject when he sees Gibbs eyeing the back of his head for the best place to come in for a head-slap landing.  

McGee finds a link to an eyewitness statement on the FBI’s system.  They can’t read it, but they get an address for the witness.  Gibbs jots it down.  He looks back at Ziva whose arms are getting tired.  He hands her something and says, “The FBI car out front.”  She pops the blade out of his knife, smiles, and says, “Got it.”  She walks off with a skip in her step, which prompts Gibbs to call after her and clarify that he means, “Their tires, not their throats.”  She smirks and bounds up the stairs. 

McGee asks if Gibbs has a printer so they can convert some of the crime scene sketches to dot matrix.  Gibbs hauls out one from roughly 1873 or so and plunks it on the workbench next to McGee.

Abby is trying to stare, pirate-like, through the one-way glass into observation.  Vance isn’t impressed.  Fornell says he has never been certain Abby is “all there.”  But Abby is being helpful here.  She announces that she remembers something and when Vance comes over the intercom, she describes the time Shepard asked Abby to perform forensic work on the scotch bottle and glass that someone left in Shepard’s study.  Angel of Death, Episode 4.24.  For viewer benefit, and in keeping with the show’s driving mechanism, she flashes back to the scene.  She rambles about finding a dead Col. Shepard’s fingerprints on the bottle, but it made it seem like someone was trying to mess with Shepard’s head.  Sounds like a CIA joint, so Abby thinks maybe they’re trying to frame her now.  Behind the glass, Vance notes that Abby is less of a space cadet that Fornell gives her credit for being.  Behind the TV screen, I wonder if planting this bug in Vance’s ear was Gibbs’s mission for Abby.

At a hotel, presumably the one referenced in the FBI files, Gibbs confronts his mystery witness.  Or rather, he enters the lobby and recognizes the person who must be his mystery witness.  She gets in a cab, and Gibbs shows his badge to the cabbie.  He looks in back and says, “Buy you a cup of coffee…Ms. Benoit.”

It’s Dr. Benoit, actually, Mr. Gibbs.  But either way, we see Jeanne in the back of the cab, and Gibbs’s smiling face fades to black and white.    

Ducky has photos of every inch of Le Grenouille’s body and has formed them into a virtual body on a work bench in Gibbs’s basement.  Ducky determines COD to be a contact wound at close range.  No defensive wounds.  So why would a man as cautious as Le Grenouille allow an armed assailant to get so close.  Ducky wonders if, as Dr. Hampton concluded, Le Grenouille killed himself.  If so, it was a left-handed suicide.  Man, even by Ducky’s standards, he’s talking a lot to this fake corpse.  He has neither Palmer nor Gibbs to exposit to, so this is how the audience learns.

Then, Ducky sees something on the photo of Le Grenouille’s left hand.

We see Gibbs and Jeanne getting coffee, and she asks if he wants to talk to her about Tony.  Gibbs shakes his head.  He’s more interested in Jeanne’s father.

Oh well…now Fornell has to interview Tony.  As Tony notes, they’ve done this dance before.  When Tony was suspected of murder in Frame-Up, Episode 3.9.  And Tony is no more a pushover this time.  He even starts by calling Fornell “Toby.”  Fornell starts off complimentary.  Clearly Tony has grown if the Director would trust him with such a key undercover assignment as grooming Jeanne Benoit.  Tony is eating a bag of chips and calls Shepard a “matchmaker.”  Fornell wants to know how Tony got so close to Le Grenouille’s daughter.  Tony smarmily refuses to instruct Fornell on his “pick up tricks,” and offers him a potato chip.  Tony admits he reported back to the Director about the girl.  Fornell wants to know if the Director ordered Tony to sleep with her, and that flashes us back to Shepard’s worst action in the entire Le Grenouille caper: when she knowingly took Tony’s request for help on how to avoid his attraction to his mark and blew it off and told him to get back to work (See Twisted Sister, Episode 4.9).  Because we the audience weren’t supposed to know Tony was undercover, it was presented to us as generic relationship advice, but, presented in flashback here and in response to Fornell’s question, it’s much more sinister. 

Tony responds that he wouldn’t call sleeping with Jeanne an order.  He plays more indifferent than he is about his actions for Fornell’s benefit.  But Fornell knows better and says developing feelings wasn’t very professional and how did that happen?  Tony says, “Gradually,” and flashes back to his relationship with Jeanne.  Fornell asks if Shepard told Tony to break Jeanne’s heart, and what did it feel like?  Tony asks if he’s in a therapy session. 

Gibbs and Jeanne sit on a bench.  She says she volunteered for a fellowship in Africa.  Gibbs asks if it helped.  She says not her.  She can’t get what happened out of her head.  Gibbs says that whatever Jeanne told the FBI, they’re convinced her father was murdered.  Jeanne says he was.  Gibbs asks how she can be sure.  Jeanne says she thought Gibbs knew what he saw that night.  Now he’s confused. 

We cut back to Gibbs’s basement and his Salem Witch Trials printer.  Ziva is recreating the Le crime scene based on what the team found on the boat- or rather what they didn’t find.  No blood.  No shell casings.  McGee thinks it’s plausible Le Grenouille killed himself, tipped overboard, and all the evidence vanished into the water.  Ziva suggests that someone could have approached, but it would almost have to have been someone he knew since he neither flinched nor turned his head.  Ziva suggests the gun is concealed.  But even then, McGee wonders, when it comes out, why let the killer shoot.  Why not jump overboard. 

Back in interrogation, Fornell suggests Jeanne must be going through hell.  Tony says he didn’t mean to hurt her.  Fornell asks if Jeanne was in love with him.  Tony tries to dissemble, but Fornell isn’t buying it.  Tony gets frustrated and starts yelling into observation- “Are you getting all this?” 

Behind the glass, Vance is impassive. 

“Yeah, she was in love with me,” Tony concedes.  “We were in love.  What else do you want to know?”  Fornell asks the question on all of our minds when he wonders, “How was it supposed to end, Tony?”  It’s rhetorical, because Fornell moves on, noting that Jeanne was almost killed twice the day her father died: once by the drug pusher in the hospital autopsy (Angel of Death, Episode 4.24) and once when Tony’s car exploded and she was supposed to be in it (Bury Your Dead, Episode 5.1).  We get flashbacks to those scenes.  Tony pivots that to Le Grenouille maybe being killed by one of his many enemies.  Fornell pivots it back to say that the way to Le Grenouille was through Jeanne, something Fornell observes that Tony understood intimately. 

We shift back to Gibbs and Jeanne.  She says she has to go.  He wants to know what she told Fornell.  More importantly, he wants to know how she knows what happened the night her father was killed,

Back at Gibbs’s basement, Ducky shows Ziva a photo of a mark on Le Grenouille’s hand.  She decides to demonstrate on McGee instead of Ducky and immobilizes him with some sort of ninja hand-nerve pinch.  She says Mossad calls it a thumb-tap.

Back to Fornell.  He tells Tony that Ziva left Tony alone in Jeanne’s apartment and had no idea where he was after that.  Now we learn things.  Tony went for a drive.  In a company car since his got exploded.  He didn’t head in any particular direction.  Fornell posits that the woman Tony loved was in danger and running for her life.

To Gibbs.  He follows Jeanne and asks if she saw who killed her father.  She says yes.

To Ziva. She pantomimes holding a pistol and points it at McGee’s head while his eyes are closed.

Fornell: Jeanne would never be safe with her father around and she and Tony both knew it.

Gibbs: Who pulled the trigger?

Jeanne: Tony.

Ducky: Bang!

Fornell: You killed Le Grenouille!

Tony:  I did what?

Fade to black and white.

Back at Gibbs’s basement, the agents regroup and discuss.  Tony had motive and means and, per Ziva, no alibi.  But Ducky is perturbed because no two suicides are exactly alike and the marks on Le Grenouille’s body are identical to the marks on Col. Shepard’s body.  Gibbs says someone is missing from the party and makes a phone call. 

In the Director’s office, Vance is in the big chair.  Shepard enters with Fornell and complains about his agents tearing apart her house and not telling her what they’re looking for.  Since Le Grenouille was killed with a .9mm, they wonder where the gun registered to Shepard has wandered off to.  Shepard says she gave it to Le Grenouille.  And Gibbs was there.  Fornell is fine with it (and trusts Gibbs).  Shepard handed over the gun, Tony got it from Le Grenouille, and then killed the arms dealer with Shepard’s gun.  Shepard is shocked at the idea of Tony being the killer and is highly skeptical of any eyewitness ID, especially given that Vance and Fornell are trying to sell a witness who recognized the killer from the Marina and at night.  Fornell feels pretty good that their witness would recognize her boyfriend and, Shepard doesn’t quite scoff at the pretty obvious conflict of interests here, but she puts on her mad britches and demands to talk to Jeanne.  Fornell isn’t on board, but Vance is good with it.  And it’s Vance’s show.

Now this is a reckoning.  Shepard sits down in interrogation with Jeanne while Vance and Fornell watch from observation.  Shepard comes clean.  She introduces herself as the Director of NCIS  and says that she’s the one who ordered Tony to seduce Jeanne.  Shepard even apologizes for crossing a line.  And she reveals that Tony felt horrible for what happened.  We flash back to Tony telling Jeanne the truth (Bury Your Dead, Episode 5.1).  Jeanne says she thinks it’s a good sign you’re doing something wrong when you feel bad about telling the truth; and insists that Tony killed her father.  Shepard pretends to sympathize and tries to walk her through the day.  Shepard offers up what she knows- Jeanne packed a bag, left a note (which Tony ultimately burned in Family, Episode 5.2).  Shepard says Jeanne gets in a car and drives, trying to make sense of everything.  Jeanne says that she trusted Tony and Tony lied to her.  Even after all the deception, Shepard wants to know if she flies out of town or does she top and see “him” one last time.  Even Fornell doesn’t know which “him,” Tony or Le Grenouille.  Shepard says Jeanne went to the marina, pulled the car over, and saw her dad.  Jeanne says, “Yes,” after every clipped statement Shepard makes and Shepard is leading her masterfully.  And now Shepard drops the hammer noting the utter improbability of Jeanne arriving at the marina at the exact moment Tony pulled the trigger.  Shepard says Jeanne is lying and asks what really happened.  Jeanne pauses and then says it’s her fault.  She says, “I killed him.”  Shepard knows better than to take her literally and says it may feel that way, but it’s not true.  And you can choose whether to credit Shepard for a moment of empathy that’s far too little too late when she expresses to Jeanne that she knows what it feels like to be in her shoes. 

Jeanne explains what really happened that night.  She wanted to see her father.  He was waiting for her at the yacht.  But she couldn’t make herself go.  So, she kept driving.  She never went to the marina, figuring her dad would come and find her because he always did.  And when he didn’t, she knew.  Shepard understands the anger but doesn’t know if Jeanne could have made a difference.  She does know that Le Grenouille loved his daughter and says so.  Then, she stands up and turns to the observation window, and I don’t recall if the phrase “mic drop” had become common parlance in Spring of 2008, but that’s what this is.  Shepard’s face is something between a sneer of condescension and a proud look of defiance and give Lauren Holly a prize.

I wonder if Fornell is tired of getting jobbed by NCIS when he wanders over to investigate them. 

Vance asks Fornell who he wants to talk to now.  Gibbs jauntily pops his head into observation and asks, “How’s the case?”  Fornell wants Gibbs gone and says his presence will just create more problems.  Gibbs says he’s here to help and Trent Kort enters the room.  We get a flashback sequence of Kort being menacing.  Fornell is bemused at Kort’s presence.  Kort says the investigation ends now.  Fornell figures the CIA would want to know who killed their asset. Kort said that Le Grenouille was killed by an associate who stepped up to run his show.  Fornell wonders idly if Kort just confessed to murder.  Kort, not believably, says that the CIA does not assassinate people.  Not on American soil, Gibbs corrects, clearly enjoying himself.  Vance wants to see Kort’s get out of jail free card and Kort produces an “eyes only” envelope.  Kort says it was sanctioned.  “Le Grenouille wanted to retire.  He’s retired.”  Fornell bristles but “get out of jail” is “get out of jail.”  Vance calls off the investigation and leaves.  Kort starts to leave too, but Gibbs knows the thumb-tap as well and immobilizes Kort.  He asks, “Just between us, who killed Jasper Shepard?”  “Jasper Shepard,” Kort replies.  Gibbs lets him go, but nobody believes that story. 

Fornell doesn’t.  As he and Gibbs walk out into the hall, Fornell wonders if there’s anything Kort wouldn’t say or do to keep an op running.  Then he changes the subject and asks about the meeting at Shepard’s house between Le Grenouille and Shepard.  Gibbs acknowledges that Shepard did give Le Grenouille the gun.  Fornell works the rest out and almost sighs, “You’re right, she’s cleared,” as the realization of being like 0-6 against NCIS settles on him.  “The file?” Gibbs asks, wanting their deal honored.  “Maybe,” says Fornell and walks off because he didn’t agree to any deals. 

This is another one of my favorite scenes in NCIS history.  Kort walks smugly around the corner into the squad room area and Tony f$%^ing levels him with a punch to the nose that slams him back into some file lockers.  “Hey Trent,” Tony says, getting right in his face.  “He wasn’t just an operative,” Tony whispers.  “He was somebody’s father.”  Kort angrily pushes Tony back and makes ready to throw down…

…until Ziva glides up next to Tony, full of menace.  Kort knows better and leaves.

Talk about bad timing.  The FBI schmuck that lost his ID to Gibbs escorts Jeanne into the squad room.  She sees Tony.  They both look away.  She keeps walking.  Oh hell, and Ziva says, “Be a man, Tony.”  Tony is still a little annoyed at being accused of murder (although you’d think the second time would carry less sting), but Ziva wonders aloud who the bad guy is.  “Be a man,” she reiterates.  “Go tell her what she needs to hear.”

Tony waives the FBI escort away at the elevator.  He tells Jeanne he’s sorry she got caught in the middle of all of this.  She interrupts to ask if any of it was real.  Tony stares at her for a long time.  She stares back, almost expectantly.  The elevator door dings open and Tony does the right thing for the second time since Jeanne left.  He says, “No.”  She looks at him with hate in her eyes.  She steps into the elevator.  And she says, “I wish I’d never met you.”  He doesn’t look at her.  The elevator door shuts.

Shepard bids Vance farewell in her office.  She’s going to take some time off, but says it was never her intent to burden Vance with this responsibility.  Vance doesn’t mind but his wife is less forgiving.  She swats one of his nasty used toothpicks off her desk, but they’re good-natured about it.  Gibbs walks in and Vance says he owes the FBI for the tires Ziva punctured.  Gibbs says to bill him. 

Gibbs and Shepard get into some metaphor about her being the queen and exiling the court jesters from her kingdom.  But she can’t knight Gibbs because she doesn’t have a sword.  Gibbs wonders if her sword is with her gun.  She says he’ll have to ask Le Grenouille.  We flash back to her giving it to him.  She looks at Gibbs and says, “That is how you remember it?”  Gibbs flashes back to Le Grenouille putting the gun back on Shepard’s desk.  But, if she has more to say, she’s not saying it.  We end on Gibbs saying, “Long live the Queen.”   

Quotables:

Nothing not discussed above.

Ziva-propisms: Ziva says “once in a blue lagoon” instead of “once in a blue moon,” but it’s entirely possible she’s f$%^ing with Fornell.

Tony Awards: No movies that I caught, but, from a pop culture standpoint, Tony references Meadowlark Lemon and Curly Neal from the Harlem Globetrotters.

Abby Road: Pretty much her whole interrogation.

McNicknames: McZero, which is clever since McGee had just talked about binary code and Tony declared himself the “1” and McGee the “0.”  If you’re counting flashbacks, McGeek, McGoo, McGiggle, and McGoogle make an appearance.  I’m not even going to try to isolate the episodes depicted.

Ducky Tales: Ducky starts a Tale, but Gibbs stops him with a look.  They’re on the clock.

The Rest of the Story:

-If you’re familiar with later seasons of the show, you know the man in the observation room just by virtue of seeing his mustache and toothpick. For now, he’s Assistant NCIS director Leon Vance. As I said in this post, having blogged my way to Ziva, I was curious as to whether I could blog my way to Vance. I did not get here at the same pace, but I did get here. Welcome to the show Leon Vance.

-In fairness, if the team raided a yacht with a warrant, they wouldn’t kill the suspect and then throw him in the water for some unknown to find.  It would be completely believable to shoot him and pretend he resisted.

-Gibbs’s ex, Lt. Col. Mann, also wanted to know how the boat left the basement.  Sharif Returns, Episode 4.13.  We didn’t learn then either.

-Hilariously, a Klowny Kake was a key piece of evidence in the most recent Season 16 Episode of NCIS.

-Vance doesn’t entirely lose the toothpick, but he loses it enough that I’m annoyed by him constantly playing with it in this episode.  Gives me the willies.

-This is the second time Tony has been arrested for murder.  See Frame-Up, Episode 3.9.

-This episode borrows a little from The Usual Suspects (1995) as we work through the progression of Le Grenouille’s death. It even includes a “Just like that.”

-Ziva’s look as Tony walks off to talk to Jeanne is interesting because she’s the one who sent him, but she’s also the one who has the most to lose if they somehow worked it out. But she also understands that neither Tony nor Jeanne would not get closure if he just let Jeanne walk.  A calculated risk to talk him into that, but also the absolute right thing to do.

-Jeanne Benoit will return.  But it will be a while.

-He lost today, but in all the ways that matter, Kort gets the last word.  Years from now.  And maybe.  It’s still up in the air even on today’s episodes.

“Long live the queen,” eh?  ☹

Casting Call: The only character of note we haven’t seen before is Assistant Director Leon Vance, played by Rocky Carroll. As of this writing, it’s probably safe to say that Carroll is best known for playing Leon Vance. But before that, he had the solid multi-role career of most talented guest-stars on this show, where you’d recognize a substantial percentage of the movies and shows even if you don’t necessarily recall Carroll. His most enduring role before this appears to be a part on Roc.

Man, This Show Is Old: Nothing really dates this one.

MVP: Shepard with the self-help and saving Tony’s bacon.

Rating: This is a bit of a cop out in the sense that it has a clip show element.  But, at the same time, it ties a lot of loose ends together (although a subsequent episode later unties one of them). It also showcases great character work, including Tony’s guilt mixed with his refusal to let Fornell win; Gibbs’s determination not to let outsiders, including the Assistant Director, call his plays; Ziva’s defense of Tony against Kort and her understanding and encouragement of his need for closure with Jeanne; Jeanne’s bitterness and confusion at being swept up into something outside her control and through the fault and decisions of others; Abby’s weaponized randomness; and Shepard’s casual and scathing dismantling the case against her.  And it’s always fun to see the agents cut off from their usual resources and having to improvise as underdogs.  Oh, and we got the first appearance of Leon Vance.  Yes, Gibbs made another moral compromise he probably shouldn’t have made and let loyalty outstrip truth, and yes Kort will remain a problem.  But all in all, this was a good wrap-up and a fitting epilogue to last season that also managed to have real stakes.

Nine Palmers.

Next Time: The team heads to Baghdad to investigate a murder.  Aren’t there lots of those in Baghdad?