A Year of NCIS, Day 128: Deliverance (Episode 6.15)

Episode: 6.15, Deliverance.

Air Date: February 10, 2009.

The Victim: PFC Emilo Salazar, USMC

Emotionally Traumatized, But Ultimately Irrelevant, Witness Who Finds the Body: Hood #1 is selling weapons to Hood #2.  They’re testing the merchandise under a bridge somewhere.  The buyer is a clod and actually shoots one of the pistols with a sideways grip.  Then the seller pulls out an automatic machine gun, and the buyer amateurishly tests that until his damage to the infrastructure of wherever the hell they are adds up and the body of a servicemember comes falling out of the ceiling, chained and hanging upside down.

Sure.

Plot Recap:  We gather in the squad room where McGee has taken a message for Tony and taken it poorly.  Accordingly, even Tony doesn’t know who “Melinda” is and what she seeks to postpone.  With his habits, that’s unsurprising.

Gibbs arrives.  Turns out locals heard shots fired and reported it.  When Metro showed up, they found the body of a Marine.

We head to the scene, where the team IDs the victim as PFC Emilio Salazar, who joined the Marines four months prior and was scheduled for deployment in a week.  The forensics demonstrate that lots of guns have been fired at the location.  Which we knew.  There are also quite a lot of footprints.  The show doesn’t do this too too often, but there’s an NCIS plot formula where the audience, having watched the opening, possesses information that would streamline the investigation if the team also had it.  And then we have to watch them get caught up to speed.  I don’t love this narrative technique, but I will usually get over it if the team gets caught up quickly. 

Our victim has had a tattoo removed by laser, but it’s similar to nearby graffiti.  So, the team is thinking it’s a gang marker and McGee opts to check with Metro PD’s gang unit for more information.

The team finds dried blood and handcuffs.  Ziva is confused by the dryness of the blood because the shots fired call came in less than an hour previous.  Also, the blood spells out a message: it’s a number.  Once again this season, Gibbs knows things his agents don’t (See Caged, Episode 4.12).  The number spelled out in blood is his Marine service number.

Back in the squad room, Vance is looking for Gibbs.  Tony will give Gibbs the message and vows to do it better than McGee.  Tony even gets a call at Gibbs’s desk about a flight arriving at 2:30 and takes that message in showboat fashion for McGee’s benefit.  Gibbs appears and is not forthcoming about who is on the flight or where it originated from.

The team backgrounds PFC Salazar.  He was 18, completed basic training two months ago, and was stationed at Quantico awaiting deployment.  PFC Salazar had a criminal record for gang related juvenile offenses.  And gang connections seem to have gotten him killed since he died in the neighborhood where he grew up.

The team speculates as to which gangs might be involved.  PFC Salazar appears to have been a member of a gang called the PCs, but there’s no clear answer as to whether he was killed by a rival gang or by his own gang for trying to leave them for the Marines.  And nothing explains Gibbs’s ID number at the scene, although he tells the team to focus away from that and look for the shooter.  Or, as Ziva notes, the other person being held at the scene, since it looks like the handcuffs weren’t for PFC Salazar.

At Quantico, Marines are practicing on the range.  Tony wins friends and influences people by talking on the range until the Staff Sergeant, Sgt. Medina gives up and calls a halt to exercises.  They apprise Sgt. Medina of PFC Salazar’s death and that someone shot him several times.  Sgt. Medina knew about PFC Salazar’s gang history, but nothing specific.  Tony hands the sergeant a card and tells him not to be a stranger.  Sgt. Medina notes Ziva’s interest in a Beretta and bemusedly lets her try it out.  Tony groans.  Ziva shoots once and declares her preference for a Sig.  Sgt. Medina patronizes her, and she tells him the Beretta’s sight is off.  He doesn’t believe her until Tony hands him a target with a perfect head shot.  

In autopsy, Ducky reports that PFC Salazar was not held captive very long and was killed soon after being bound by handcuffs.  Moreover, he was dead before he was strafed by machine gun fire (which the audience already knew) and had been dead about six hours.  The COD was a .9mm to the chest, but in such a way that he died slowly.

Ducky, perhaps feeling the need for a bit pf payback for Gibbs prying into his past during Broken Bird, Episode 6.13, wants to know why Gibbs left the scene before he even arrived to process the body.  Per Ducky, he has never done that before.  Ducky asks about the service number and Gibbs sighs and looks ready to spill, but then Vance appears and spoils the moment.  Vance has similar questions about Gibbs’s involvement in this case.  But Gibbs blows him off, says he’s working a case, and leaves.

So, we shift to Vance’s office, where he requests a black ops file on Gibbs.

We shift to Gibbs’s basement.  Gibbs comes down the stairs, and finds his old boss and mentor and lovable, grumpy retired agent Mike Franks.  Franks is pissed that Gibbs doesn’t have any scotch and wants to know why Gibbs has called him away from his granddaughter, who just turned two (See Iceman, Episode 4.18).  Then they start talking in the riddle-like fashion of two people who know more than the audience but are forbidden b the script from sharing. Gibbs says he’s looking for someone named Rose and Franks wants to know if Vance knows he’s in town.  If so, Franks figures he might need to borrow a tie.  Franks then notes, in response to Gibbs’s inquiry, that Colombia was a long time ago.  Gibbs flashes back and we see a jungle and men with guns from the perspective of, presumably, Gibbs, who is panting and clearly the subject of some sort of hunt.  Then we see a beautiful Colombian woman in a pretty dress lean down.

Gibbs says that only one person who knew about Rose was Franks, but it’s clear that Franks knows things about Rose that Gibbs doesn’t.  Because, per Gibbs, she’s in DC and he’s curious as to how she got there.  Franks tries to dissemble, but Gibbs tells him about his Marine service number and notes that he specifically put a ‘G’ on the end when he gave it to Rose.  Franks, still withholding, notes again that Colombia was a long time ago.  But he confirms that Rose is in DC, and that he brought her to DC seventeen years prior.  Gibbs is not happy and wants to know where she is, but Franks hasn’t seen her since the day he dropped her off in DC.  Gibbs figures they should start where Franks last saw her.

We transition to a very bad neighborhood.  Trash, broken down cars, loud music, all TV shorthand for a place with no hope.  Gibbs is not so impressed with Franks’s travel agent skills, but Franks swears the neighborhood wasn’t such a dump seventeen years previous when he dropped off Rose. 

Gibbs knocks on a door and asks for Rose Tamayo.  A woman comes out and speaks Spanish.  Franks does too, living in Mexico and all.  He confirms Rose died ten years ago and glibly notes that someone else must knows Gibbs’s service number. 

At NCIS HQ, Gibbs and Franks come off the elevator to find Vance, who never quite seems to be in control when Franks is around.  And Franks clearly likes this.  He asks Vance if Vance likes the tie Frank borrowed from Gibbs and vaguely threatens him with dirt that previous episodes have implied Franks has on Vance.  Specifically, Franks smirkingly thanks Vance for sorting out his pension and Vance feels compelled to say, loudly, that he didn’t do anything that he wouldn’t have done for any agent.  They agree, with all manner of subtext, that NCIS is all by the books now, and Franks lathers on the irony when he says he wouldn’t have it any other way.  It’s fun to see Vance off balance, and Muse Watson plays Franks with a broad grin and a subtle glee here that is absolutely a blast to watch.  Gibbs looks over impassively to see Vance grimace and disappear into the elevator, understanding that he has lost this round.  Franks wonders aloud if Vance noticed his tie.

Back to business.  The team updates Gibbs on the gang scenario, describing a turf war between the PCs, PFC Salazar’s former gang, and the Verde Psychos.  The gun that killed PFC Salazar is a match to an unregistered gun used in a recent robbery where the chief suspect is Victor Carmado, nicknamed “Popeye,” of the PCs.

In the lab, Abby warmly greets Franks.  Like the audience, she loves him and is always happy to see him.  She compares Gibbs’s mentor to R’as Al Ghul from Batman Begins.  Or Qui Gon Jinn from Star Wars and then realizes both are played by Liam Neeson.  But neither man knows what the hell she’s talking about and Gibbs would like to do real work now.  So, Abby transitions and informs the men that the blood at the scene with which Gibbs’s ID number was inscribed belongs not to PFC Salazar, but to another Marine: PFC Tomas Tamayo, who also lived in PFC Salazar’s neighborhood.  His mother, Rose, died ten years previous. 

We’ve heard most of this, except for the part about the son.  Although, Franks, among his other many secrets, knew that Rose had a son in the US, about a year old when Franks brought her into the country.  Gibbs did not, so Franks warns him to take things slow.  Abby is very interested in this but gives Gibbs an address for PFC Tamayo.  He lives in a home belonging to a woman named Maggie Scott.  

Tony and Ziva head back to the bad neighborhood Gibbs and Franks just left.  It is called Liberty Heights.  Carmado is sitting outside a home, flanked by two goons named Rico and Chuy.  Carmado engages in impressive tough talk and the actor has a great screen presence.  It’s really ominous and you think Tony and Ziva might be in for it, even though Tony displays his usual cockiness and Ziva radiates her usual menace.  And the latter obviously trumps because Carmado jumps up and flees.  Tony leaves Ziva to deal with the goons and effortlessly collars Carmago.  When we rejoin Ziva, she looks bored and the two goons are having trouble getting off the ground.

In the squad room, we return to the show’s innocuous subplot, and McGee is trying to track Tony’s lady caller.  Abby arrives to gossip, but not very well.  It’s clear that, based on the conversation in the lab, she thinks Gibbs had a thing with Rose, and maybe fathered her child.  But she sucks at articulating this.

We join Gibbs and Franks at an inner-city basketball court.  They meet Maggie Scott, who is a good Samaritan and legal guardian for many of the kids in the area, including PFCs Salazar and Tamayo.  She became PFC Tamayo’s guardian when Rose got cancer, and she thinks PFC Tamayo is at Cape Hatteras on leave.  He’s not, or at least he’s back, because he walks up.  Maggie Scott hugs him while Gibbs and Franks look on.

It doesn’t stay this friendly, though.  In interrogation, Gibbs and Franks work PFC Tamayo.  They can prove he wasn’t in Cape Hatteras, but PFC Tamayo continues to deny he was at the crime scene and swears the blood at the crime scene wasn’t his blood. 

The gossip about Gibbs has apparently worked its way around the office because, in the observation room, Tony and Ziva are also curious.  But Carmago is beating down the window in another interrogation room, so they need to attend to him.  They interrogate Carmago, but he’s no dummy and quickly determines that Tony and Ziva don’t have enough to implicate him in PFC Salazar’s death.  He declines to give them the confession they are trying to coax out of him.

Back in interrogation, Gibbs is threatening PFC Tamayo with prison.  Per Franks, PFC Tamayo was clearly at the scene of PFC Salazar’s murder.  Gibbs says if PFC Tamayo won’t give up PFC Salazar’s killer then NCIS is happy to pin it on him.

Back with Tony and Ziva, Carmago has had a change of heart.  He superficially cops to killing PFC Salazar, but gets the forensics all wrong, claiming he shot the PFC in the head.

Meanwhile, Gibbs, still interrogating PFC Tamayo, reminds the audience that the kill shot was to PFC Salazar’ chest.  Franks and Gibbs take a moment to remind PFC Tamayo of the grizzly details of how long it took his friend and fellow Marine to die.

The two interrogation teams congregate and Franks figures Carmago is admitting to the murder because he wants the street cred for popping a Marine.  Ziva doesn’t believe Carmago is man enough.  But, either way, PFC Tamayo and Carmago are both hiding something.  And Franks thinks all of this is out of character for gang bangers, who normally shoot their enemies in the streets.  He thinks someone smarter is calling the shots.

Leave it to McGee to find a common denominator.  After checking cell records, he has determined that Staff Sergeant Medina called almost every member of the PC gang.  And not just for recruiting purposes.  SSgt. Medina was also a member of the PCs.

We take an intermission in Vance’s office, where he presents Gibbs with his Marine file and expresses reluctance to read it.  Vance says he won’t if Gibbs comes clean with him.  Gibbs has nothing to hide.  Vance says everyone has something to hide, which causes Gibbs to smirk, perhaps because he has a CIA file on Vance in his basement (Broken Bird, Episode 6.13).  Regardless, even taking Gibbs at his word that he has nothing to hide, Vance is still technically threatening him and that can’t go unanswered.  So Gibbs tells Vance there’s “some good stuff in the last five pages.”

Back to interrogation, Staff Sergeant Medina denies killing anyone, and claims he was watching TV (alone) when PFC Salazar died.  Franks is running the interrogation, and SSgt. Medina insists that, despite his gang history and even his enjoyment of the life, he knew he was living on borrowed time if he didn’t get out.  So, he enlisted and now he goes back to the old neighborhood to give others the same chance.

As is now a theme on this show (where it used to be forbidden), the interrogation gets interrupted.  This time by Ziva, who notes that something called a “system-wide facial recognition search” put SSgt. Medina in Baltimore the previous evening.  That’s not watching TV like he claimed, but it’s also not killing a Marine.  SSgt. Medina explains the lie by admitting he has a kid with a lady in Baltimore that his wife doesn’t know about.

Franks, seemingly just to be an asshole, responds to that by saying to Gibbs, “Guess we all make mistakes, Probie.”  This episode is working hard to make us think PFC Tamayo belongs to Gibbs.

In the squad room, Franks recaps the case for the audience and the agents.  Franks thinks Gibbs is using too soft a touch and says he’s “done watching you shave with a butter knife.”  But Gibbs is not going to let PFC Tamayo be interrogated by Franks.  He’s more in favor of letting PFC Tamayo go and following him.  Gibbs sends the field agents to MTAC to run the GPS trace on PFC Tamayo’s phone, and then Gibbs and Franks adjourn for a heated elevator conversation.

We cut to the Director, who is reading Gibbs’s file.

Then we cut back to the elevator conference.  Gibbs is mad at Franks for not telling him about Rose coming to the US.  Franks excuses it by noting that, when he got Rose out of Colombia, Gibbs had re-married.  And even Rose knew Gibbs was still picking up his pieces after Shannon and Kelly and she didn’t want to complicate either of their lives.  She told Franks not to tell Gibbs she was in the US.

In MTAC, Tony, Ziva, and McGee are following PFC Tamayo’s GPS signal.  McGee tells Gibbs over the comm that PFC Tamayo went to Quantico.  Gibbs turns the car around and heads away from Quantico.  He figures PFC Tamayo is headed to Liberty Heights next. 

Back in MTAC, the field agents, mostly Tony, are indulging their favorite pastime of gossiping about Gibbs’s pre-NCIS existence.  Vance enters and shuts it all down by claiming that the eighteen-year-old mission in Colombia is classified.

Vance gets the usual amount of cooperation he gets from Tony, Ziva, and McGee when Gibbs is off the reservation.  This consists of Tony checking his fingernails when Vance asks if Franks is with Gibbs.  McGee does update Vance as to PFC Tamayo’s movements.  Vance learns that both PFC Tamayo and PFC Salazar were armory guards with access to vault codes at the Quantico armory.  Now Vance is concerned that military-grade weaponry is about to end up in the wrong hands.

We head back to Liberty Heights, and a shady meet-up spot in an abandoned building, reminiscent of the opening.  Gibbs and Franks are there and Franks wonders if his ex-protégé is going to shoot back if shots are fired.  Gibbs ignores him but gets a call from Vance informing him that four crates of M4 assault rifles are missing from Quantico. 

Gibbs hangs up the phone because he and Franks see PFC Tamayo pulling the crates up the stairs nearby.  PFC Tamayo gets a call and angrily tells someone on the other end if they want the weapons, they can come get them.  Gibbs calls McGee and tells him to access a nearby traffic camera and record the impending meet.

At that point, Camargo’s goons, Rico and Chuy arrive.  Tony recognizes them on the camera feed and Ziva laments not hitting them harder. 

Surprising everyone, Staff Sergeant Medina arrives with his gun, demanding everyone freeze.  What the hell? 

In MTAC, the team can tell something is wrong, but not what. 

A firefight ensues.  SSgt. Medina gets one of the perps but takes a bullet himself.  Franks fills the remaining perp with lead.  SSgt. Medina will live.  PFC Tamayo, having taken cover behind the crates of weapons (?) is unharmed. 

Vance calls Gibbs and Gibbs has had his fill.  He flips the phone to Franks.  Vance and Franks measure, with Vance, who only has a limited view via traffic cam of what is going on, angrily chastising Franks for shooting a man.  Franks claims it was “all by the book,” and suggests there’s a form he can fill out for retired agent-involved shooting.  Then he hangs up.

We learn that SSGt. Medina ordered PFC Tamayo to bring the weapons.  Gibbs wants to know PFC Tamayo’s role and we learn the PCs were trying to coerce PFC Tamayo into breaking into the armory and supplying them with weaponry.  They threatened everyone he loved and shot PFC Salazar in front of PFC Tamayo.  PFC Tamayo reported everything to his CO and SSgt. Medina wanted to handle the problem himself.  He ordered PFC Tamayo not to talk, which is why PFC Tamayo was so obstinate during his interrogations.

Gibbs looks at the two dead perps and declares them “the hired help.”  So, we’re not done yet.

In interrogation, we see, from a vantage point in observation, that PFC Tamayo is being arrested for weapons theft.  Maggie Scott, the social worker guardian is with Gibbs.  She is upset, but Gibbs assures her PFC Tamayo is going to prison…unless Maggie has something to say.  She says the PFC Tamayo is lying to cover for her.  Turns out she’s a crazy person and masterminded the whole scheme.  She wanted the neighborhood to have weapons, to act as deterrence against gang members and ordered Chuy and Rico to well, encourage, PFCs Tamayo and Salazar to get weapons.  She never figured PFC Salazar or anybody else would get hurt. 

So yeah, a militant social worker and some goons that went outside their brief.  That scans.  Gibbs rolls his eyes and cuffs her.  I feel the same.

Back in the squad room, the team decompresses, and McGee has determined that Melinda, the lady who called Tony, works for his dentist.  That was anticlimactic.  Equally so, Tony sees Franks at the elevator and chases him down.  He asks point-blank if Gibbs is PFC Tamayo’s father.  Franks just shrugs, hands Tony the tie he borrowed from Gibbs, and leaves.

In the conference room, PFC Tamayo gets the welcome(?) news that, in light of the extenuating circumstances of his weapons theft, he is going to Afghanistan instead of jail.  Bully for him.  PFC Tamayo tells Gibbs a tale Gibbs already knows as a way of summarizing events for the audience.  It’s a tale about a Marine who came to Colombia to help the people get out from under the thumb of a drug lord, and who shot the guy dead, but who was injured in the process.  And a woman who found him as he was being hunted by cartel troops, and who hid him and helped him.  PFC Tamayo says that Marine was Gibbs and that his mother gave him Gibbs’s Marine number with the same promise Gibbs gave Rosa: give that number to any Marine and he’ll come find her.  Gibbs is the reason PFC Tamayo became a Marine.

All of this seems like it’s leading up to the big reveal, and PFC Tamayo clearly has expectations. But Gibbs squashes them.  Rosa was already pregnant when Gibbs met her.  This is incredibly ambiguous, because there are all manner of reasons, some of them even benefitting PFC Tamayo, that Gibbs would lie about this.  But it’s not quite in character for Gibbs to have a child and not own it either.

The show apparently didn’t want any ambiguity to linger.  So, we close in Vance’s office, where Vance compliments Gibbs on the Colombia mission, and the shot that killed drug lord/torturer/rapist Cesar Castillo from 1,200 yards.  The mission would have gone off without a hitch too if Gibbs hadn’t been shot in the escape.  Gibbs shrugs and makes to leave as Vance wonders if it was poignant to help out the son of the woman who saved Gibbs’s life.  The show ends on Vance’s question: “Did you tell the boy that the man you killed was his father?”

Oy. 

Quotables:

(1) Ziva: Pecados Capitales

Tony: “Capital Fish”.

Ziva: “Deadly sins”, you idiot.  Fish is pescado.

Tony: Don’t scoff at me.  Lots of gangs are named after deadly fish.  There’s the Sharks.  There’s the Barracudas, Rumble Fish…

(2) “This is so cool. Someone writes your service number on a roof and then you just show up!  It’s like it’s sending out the bat signal and having Batman just show up.  And his mentor Ra’s al Ghul.  Or like Princess Leia sending a hologram, ‘help me Obi-Wan.’ And then getting Obi-Wan with his mentor Qui-Gon Jinn.  You know it’s weird, ’cause Liam Neeson played both their mentors.”

                        -Abby wanders.

(3) Carmado: You oughta leave, man.

Tony: But we just got here!

Carmado: Yeah, but this is a very dangerous neighborhood.

Tony [indicates Ziva]: That’s why I brought her.

Carmado: La bonita es un federale.

Chuy: La federale es un buena.

Tony: La bonita will kick your ass.

Ziva-propisms: Finally.  After multiple episodes of perfect English, Ziva says “smurf war” when she means “turf war”

Tony Awards: In a rare crossover between Tony Awards and McNicknames, Tony references Superbad (2008) by referring to McGee as “McLovin.”  In a rare crossover with Abby Road, Abby references Batman Begins (2008) and makes general reference to the Star Wars prequels.  Tony also references Chewbacca and the Millennium Falcon from Star Wars (1977).  Tony has a few musical references to Ricky Martin and Coolio, makes the obvious spinach jokes about “Popeye” Carmago, and makes a reference to Snoopy from Peanuts. 

Abby Road: Abby has questions about Gibbs’s past, but it’s hard to style that as a digression since all of the agents do.  Her noting that Franks is either R’as Al ghul (Batman Begins (2008)) or Qui Gon Jinn (The Phantom Menace (1999)) and that both are played by Liam Neeson is genuinely funny.

McNicknames: McLovin.  McDetail.  McMotherboard.

Ducky Tales: Nothing from Ducky today.

The Rest of the Story:

-Tony refers to McGee by his pen name, Thom E. Gemcity. McGee writes bad fiction based on his job, a fact we learned in Twisted Sister, Episode 4.9.

-Franks’s baby granddaughter appeared for the first time in Iceman, Episode 4.18.

-So far, the specifics haven’t come out, but it seems clear from Judgment Day (Part Two), Episode 5.19, that Vance and Franks have some kind of history.  They clearly knew each other beyond the confines of that episode, and Franks appears to have collected some dirt on Vance that he keeps as an insurance policy of sorts.

-Whoof.  Lots of information about Gibbs’s past here, but, from a timeline standpoint, it breaks more than it builds and requires a lot of suspension of disbelief.  The characters repeatedly state that the Colombia mission involving Rosa took place 18 years before the show’s date of early February 2009.  So, we’re looking at early 1991 and, based on Gibbs’s remark about the last five pages of his file, this was his last mission as a Marine.  So, this mission post-dated his injuries in Desert Storm (Hiatus, Episode 3.23).  That and the fact that if this mission pre-dated Desert Storm, then Gibbs’s forming the described emotional attachment to Rosa (and, it is heavily implied he slept with her) would make him an adulterer while Shannon was still alive.  The show obviously didn’t go there.

But, as we know, Gibbs lost his family and was severely injured on the ground in Desert Storm the ground war portion of which didn’t start until mid-February 1991.  Even assuming the characters are rounding up from late-1991 when they say “18 years,” there’s no way even a Marine with Gibbs’s injury history and traumatized psychological state gets sent on a dangerous covert mission in the same calendar year as both tragedies.  That’s why his transition to the NIS gig made so much sense- the Marines would have been incentivized to want to desk job Gibbs as quickly as possible.  They’re not sending a recent widower who emerged from a coma in the last ten months to assassinate a drug lord.  Gibbs was not the only Marine sniper in 1991.

And then, if this is during the period before Gibbs joined NIS, how did Franks get involved?  Did he hear Gibbs tells stories about Rosa and decide to get her out of Colombia on his own?  And if that happened a year after the mission and Franks didn’t tell Gibbs because he was “happily married,” how soon after Shannon’s and Kelly’s deaths did Gibbs re-marry?  18 months at most?  That simply doesn’t square with Gibbs’s general distaste for how quickly his own father moved on after his mother died (Heartland, Episode 6.4), where he actively kvetched about Jackson Gibbs bringing a date to the funeral.  Even assuming Gibbs was in bad emotional shape, making ill-advised decisions, and under the influence of a ne’er-do-well with the ladies like Franks, it’s difficult to square the Gibbs who still mourns his wife to a point of dysfunctionality 18 years later to a Gibbs who jumped into matrimony with another redhead that quickly.  Sleeping with Rosa under the circumstances they were under, yes.  Getting re-married on a Vegas-style timetable?  Not really. 

Long story short, this is a lot of fictional world-breaking just to tee-up a subplot where we all think Gibbs fathered a child with Rosa for most of the episode only to learn he didn’t at the end.  I get needing to place the events on a spot on the timeline where Tomas can be 17 (Marine enlistment age) and Gibbs didn’t cheat on Shannon.  But why bother?  Or why not hold this script for later seasons so the timeline isn’t so compressed?

-On this subject, why would Franks not tell Tony that Gibbs isn’t Tomas’s father when Tony asks point-blank?  It serves no purpose other than to fuck with him.  Or does he not know himself?  Actually, he must not.  That’s the only thing that explains his comment to Gibbs about mistakes when they’re interrogating SSGt. Medina.  Presumably, Franks believes that PFC Tamayo is Gibbs’s son.  And, presumably, Gibbs thinks that Franks (and his whole team) believing he has an illegitimate son is better than the drug family in Colombia knowing their dead cartel leader has an heir. 

It’s actually cool that the show forces us to figure out some of these plot points rather than having a character state them directly.  Especially where the characteristically taciturn and credit-avoiding Gibbs is involved.  

-The plot points regarding the Colombia mission seemed open for future exploration.  As of this writing, I have no independent recollection of that ever happening, and PFC Tamayo never appears again.

Casting Call:  Kari Coleman played Maggie Scott and also Gwen Stacy’s mom in the second round of Spider-Man movies.  I really liked Joseph Julian Soria, the actor who played Carmago, and he is well-credentialed.  But I don’t recognize him from anything.

Man, This Show Is Old: Tony still has a little black book.

SSgt. Medina makes reference to some recruits coming from environments more dangerous than “the desert we’re sending them to.”  It’s a good point on multiple levels, but, from a timeline standpoint, that desert was still Iraq, which we exited in late 2011.

MVP: It’s hard for Franks to not be the MVP in any episode, whether he’s trolling Vance, hazing Gibbs, or more generally thumbing his nose at rules and being a crazy old crank.  He did all that this episode, and he also indulged his seasonal hobby of killing a perp.  Take your trophy back to Mexico, sir.

Rating: This was a nice, subtle look at what enlistment can do for at-risk youth without beating anybody over the head about it.  Well done in that respect.  But the episode had other weaknesses.  The idea of a militant social worker operating on deterrent theories applicable to the Mutually Assured Destruction doctrine is not particularly plausible.  And while episodes with Mike Franks do well on this blog, this one overextended the boundaries of the show’s established continuity in service of messing with the audience.  That’s five Palmers at best.

Next Time:  A mistake from Tony’s time as head of the NCIS team comes back to haunt him.