A Year of NCIS, Day 131: Knockout (Episode 6.18)

Episode: 6.18, Knockout

Air Date: March 17, 2009.

The Victim: Tyler Owens, USMC (?)

Emotionally Traumatized, But Ultimately Irrelevant, Witness Who Finds the Body: We start in Chicago.  A very attractive woman with a large bodyguard, leaves her bodyguard in the hall and enters a hotel room.  She seems like an escort.  We hear a shower and she asks if it’s for her before entering the bathroom.  Out on the balcony, there’s a man staring into the distance who looks an awful lot like NCIS Director Leon Vance.  Look…if Shepard can drink bourbon in her office to unwind…

Oh, it’s an op.

Someone in the room, be it Vance or otherwise, slips a note under the door and between the bodyguard’s legs.  It says something like, “Bend down and read this,” which he does, just in time for the door to open and someone to shoot him in the ass with a sedative.  Simultaneously, a door across the hall opens up and the unconscious bodyguard is hauled inside.  By McGee and Ziva.

Vance confronts the now-disrobed attractive woman in the bathroom.  She recognizes him, but calls him a strange name: “Teek?  Is that you?”  He calls her Tara and tells her she can walk out or be carried out.

Director Vance is probably a real buzzkill at parties.  Let’s watch some credits while we think about that.

Plot Recap: We start, unusually, in autopsy, where Ducky is examining the body of Tyler Keith Owens, and updating Gibbs.  Owens was a black male with multiple gunshot wounds, sent to NCIS by Chicago PD after they fished him out of the drink.  Vance asked Ducky to perform the exam.  Owens’s effects are with Abby, also at Vance’s request.

Now we’re in the squad room, where Tony is missing both his wallet and his co-workers.  Regarding the latter, he recalls they are in Chicago with Vance and tries to rationalize that he was not invited because he recently went to Arizona (South by Southwest, Episode 6.17) not because Vance thinks (knows?) Tony has an awkward history with security detail.  Judgment Day (Part One) Episode 3.18. 

(In fairness, so does Ziva, but if Vance was looking for subtlety, Tony isn’t his guy).

Tony stands in his chair and openly displays his disdain for the NCIS co-workers not on his team by calling them to attention with made-up nicknames.  And Tony doesn’t seem like the type to be good-natured about nicknames.  It’s entirely reasonable to assume everyone in the office hates him.  And, unsurprisingly, none of them care that he lost his wallet and all grunt, ignore him, and sit back down when they learn the deal.

Gibbs especially doesn’t care that Tony lost his wallet as he arrives to watch Tony’s antics.  He muses aloud about Tony losing his job as well, but, fortunately, McGee calls to set up a meeting in MTAC between Vance and Tony. 

In MTAC, Vance and McGee are on-screen, and Vance has an assignment.  He wants Tony to guard a key witness related to the murder of a Marine.  If it’s the attractive escort from the opening, boy did Vance pick the wrong guy.  Then Vance spies Gibbs lurking in MTAC and wonders, not with much concern, if Gibbs thinks his toes are being stepped on because Vance co-opted his team.  Gibbs isn’t taking it personally, but the two begin to measure until finally Vance tells McGee to let him have the room.  “Both rooms” he confirms, ejecting everyone who isn’t Gibbs from MTAC, including a dejected Tony. 

Vance tells Gibbs that Tyler Owens was a friend and a former Marine.  Gibbs wonders at jurisdiction since NCIS can’t typically investigate civilian murders of former servicepeople.  Vance blows this off and wants Gibbs sitting it out.  Gibbs grimly agrees to let Vance run his case.

Back in Chicago, Ziva and McGee give Vance (and the audience) background on Tyler Owens and his work with a boxing gym in Chicago.  Tony keeps calling to snoop and Vance approves Ziva’s efforts to keep Tony in the dark.  Vance tells the agents that he feels like going to the gym.

In her lab, Abby tells Gibbs that Vance has instructed her not to discuss the case with Gibbs.  She then goes through a series of comedic indirect expositions, including sign language, to tell an increasingly bemused Gibbs what she thinks he needs to know without violating the letter of Vance’s directive.  We learn that Ducky pulled five slugs from Owens’s body and that the body was weighed down with a 15 and a 20-pound dumbbell before being tossed in the lake. 

Why is Vance working so hard to keep Gibbs off this case?

At the gym in Chicago, Vance is in the ring, suited up with gloves and head gear, and beats the piss out of some young stud who wanted a piece of grandpa. 

McGee is holding a heavy bag, barely, while some other guy pounds it and McGee struggles to conduct an interview.  Long story short, everyone loved Owens, and thought he was a mentor.  They considered him to be “the black Miyagi,” which both made me laugh and puzzled me.  Was The Karate Kid (1984) really the cinematic sensation and cultural touchstone in the black community that it was in white strip mall-infested suburbia?

Ziva is walking around, watching Vance fight and notices some dumbbells missing from the rack.

After Vance crushes his opponent and then taunts him, he gives the kid holding the spit bucket, aptly nicknamed Spit, a pep talk.  Vance says he started holding the bucket too and that you have to work your way up from somewhere.  Spit leaves to run some errand and Vance notes that he doesn’t have a coat and offers his.  Isaac, the gym owner(?), says someone probably stole Spit’s jacket and that the kid isn’t exactly great at standing up for himself.

Vance gets out over his skis and invites Ziva in to the ring for a go.  Ziva figures that killing Vance would be at odds with her primary mission to protect Vance.  They agree to table Vance’s challenge until another time.  Acting as if he has some say in things, Isaac notes that this is not a co-ed gym.

Back in DC, we’re again left to wonder why Vance left Tony in charge of a sexy lady.  He has picked up Tara at the airport and is driving her to NCIS.  We learn Tara is Owens’s sister and presumably knew Vance as a kid.  She flirtingly calls Tony her Saint Anthony and Tony awkwardly notes that St. Nicholas was the patron saint of hookers and, oh goodness.

We flee that terribleness to return to the gym in Chicago where Vance and Isaac are talking it out and offering a little expository dialogue on Vance’s history.  Vance and Owens grew up somewhere else- probably rural- and it was Owens’s idea for them to come to Chicago and learn to fight.  It was also Owens’s idea for Vance to try to make something better of himself and join the military.  Vance and Isaac both think that a man named Joe Banks should be the prime suspect in Owens’s murder.  Banks appears to be something of a local crime boss.  He is described as being very cautious (no cell phone or electronic communications) and as a fight fixer and the type of guy who poaches the local talent.  Maybe Owens got tired of it and a disagreement with Banks turned ugly.  Vance and Isaac employ a lot of boxing metaphors, but it becomes clear that Vance has taken Tara back to DC because she works for Banks and he expects Banks to follow.  Vance tells Isaac to spread the word as to Tara’s whereabouts.

Gibbs gets more sign language and a file from Abby and then heads back to autopsy.  Palmer reports a 4-10 day window for TOD, but says they’ll know more when [technobabble] comes back.  Ducky, seeing the file and rolling his eyes at Abby’s line-stepping, evicts Palmer so the grown-ups can talk.  The file in Gibbs’s hand says that Owens had a journeyman fight record of 19-14 and has stayed in Chicago since his career ended.  Importantly, there’s no reference in the file to any military service by Owens.  So, it looks like Vance is pursuing a personal vendetta, and using the agency to do it.

In the conference room, Tony explores Tara’s work for Joe Banks.  She says she does the same thing Tony probably does for his boss: “Anything he asks.”  Tony notes that Gibbs doesn’t really ask, and that the agents are supposed to figure it out before he gets angry.  And when he gets angry, he slaps them on the back of the head.  But then Tony notes head-slaps haven’t happened for a while and wonders if they’re all getting better at their jobs.  This is a prescient meta-comment, and I had to research the last occurrence of a head-slap (see below). 

Ziva returns to DC and the conference room, just in time to relieve Tony as things are getting weirdly steamy with Tara.  Tony’s and Ziva’s mutual jealousy of each other’s shenanigans with the other sex has been on the backburner of late, so it was nice to see Ziva vaguely annoyed at the personal-seeming contact between Tony and Tara.

Back to autopsy.  Vance is meeting with Ducky who describes the murder in detail.  Ducky states that Owens went down fighting.  He had powder burns from grabbing the gun, and a discharge hit his shoulder.  Then he had two abdomen rounds that probably took him to the ground and two kill shots to the chest.  Death would have been rapid and based on extensive heart damage.  Nevertheless, Ducky pronounces this a sloppy kill by an amateur.

Ducky inquires of Vance’s interest in the case, and Vance admits Owens was an old friend, but he hadn’t seen him in a while.  Vance asks if Gibbs has been around and Ducky admits that Gibbs has concerns over Owens’s lack of military service.

We take a quick interlude to Gibbs’s basement where Gibbs pulls from its hiding place the CIA file on Vance that he got from Trent Kort.  See Broken Bird, Episode 6.13.

Vance’s rounds carry him to the lab.  He asks about Gibbs stopping buy and Abby lets slip that maybe he did.  Palmer is there and tries to cover but he’s terrible at it.  Long story short, they say the vague smell of sawdust that marks Gibbs’s passing is in the lab because Abby is woodworking a coffin.  A project she will now have to undertake for real, thanks to Palmer.

Abby tells Vance that they’ve narrowed down TOD.  Owens was killed 11 days ago.  The striations on the slugs match the gun that was disposed of with the body.  It was stolen in a burglary in Chicago a year ago.  There are no prints off the weights or the gun.  Although, Abby found organic material on Owens’s hands: bird feathers.  They were in his belt buckle as well.  Palmer helpfully, and hilariously, concludes, “It’s not likely he was shot by a bird.”

In the conference room, Tara and Ziva are talking about men and Ziva is showing Tara a picture of her long-distance boyfriend in Israel.  Tara, who knows how to read a room, wonders why Ziva isn’t looking for something a little closer to home.  Something that rhymes with Pony BiYozzo.

Enter the Director.  Ziva leaves and Tara lets Vance have it.  She’s mad that she’s bait to get Banks to appear.  And she’s mad at Vance for leaving and cutting the Owens out of his life.  She wonders if she would have ever seen him again if Owens hadn’t been murdered (and it’s assumed that they have a romantic history- maybe?).  She thinks this situation is Vance’s worst fear come to life- this is vague, but presumably she means his worlds colliding.  Either way, she swears Banks didn’t commit this crime because she knows the man.  Vance snarkily remarks that if this were true, she’d have left him already.

Outside, Vance tells Ziva to take Tara to a safe house and work a security rotation with Tony and McGee.  He’s going home to his wife.

We head to Vance’s house.  There’s a nice Dodge Charger out front and Vance notes it on the way in.  We’ve encountered Vance’s family at the periphery (and they re-appear over the course of the show), but this is the first time we meet them.  His kids are happy to see him, but then immediately do what every kid does when their parent returns from a trip: ask “did you get us anything?”  Vance’s daughter, Kayla, gets some mints from Chicago.  His son, Jared, gets Vance’s old boxing gloves.  Which stink.  Because they smell like hard work.  Which stinks.

Jackie, Vance’s wife, is wryly annoyed that Vance didn’t tell her he had a friend stopping by.  And that’s when Vance gets the confirmation that Gibbs is in his house.  Vance is not happy that work has followed him home and wants to know why Gibbs can’t mind his place.  This ends up being a great scene between the two that draws on a good bit of the show’s recent history.  While I had also wondered why the traditionally anti-authoritarian, protocol-breaking Gibbs would care about Vance cooking the books to work a case from his old neighborhood, Gibbs makes clear that he’s on guard after “Your predecessor” used the Director chair to pursue a personal family agenda.  Vance can’t argue with that, and it’s great writing because it’s the perfect explanation for why Gibbs would be so bothered by this.  Then Gibbs pulls the CIA file. Vance is of a mind that this escalated quickly, but Gibbs assures him that he received the file in an unsolicited manner and that he hasn’t read it.  “You did me the courtesy of asking,” Gibbs says, referencing their recent encounter over Gibbs’s Marine black ops file in Deliverance, Episode 6.15.  Vance puts a toothpick in his mouth, which he hasn’t done for a while.  And we see why because Jackie breezes in to defuse the tension and also to tell Vance that she continues to be disgusted by his toothpick habit.  As do we all.  She invites Gibbs to dinner.

After dinner, Gibbs probably just asked a polite, generic “How did you guys meet?” question.  Jackie turns it into a history lesson and a drug PSA in one and says that she was at U Maryland and Vance was at the Navy War College in Rhode Island.  He was a commissioned Marine which Gibbs finds shocking.  Vance has to ruefully admit he didn’t serve.  Per Jackie, Vance attended Annapolis, but had to resign his Marine commission because of a medical discharge when he got his retina detached in a boxing match.  This segues into a story about Vance coming down from Rhode Island to watch a Maryland game because Len Bias was playing.  Jackie makes sure to remind the children that Bias was Maryland’s greatest player (and scoffs at Jared invoking Carmelo Anthony) but he died from drugs after only using once.  The kids roll their eyes.  Gibbs laughs into his hand.  But Jackie says Bias scored 36 points that night and had a standing ovation and when everyone sat down, only Vance was still standing, staring at Jackie.  And that’s how they met.

At the safe house, Tony and McGee are preparing to drop off Tara.  Tara finds Tony’s wallet in the backseat of the car, where he usually sits.  She asks about the condom inside and when Tony is touchy about it, she wonders if it’s close to its expiration date.  McGee is clearly enjoying this. 

There’s a moment of tension as the team is moving Tara to the safe house when a town car drives by slowly.  Ziva gets Tara to cover, and nothing develops.

Back at Vance’s house, Vance and Gibbs walk out to Vance’s car.  They have an obviously metaphorical conversation about Vance’s kids getting a pit bull.  Vance expresses disdain for the idea of coming home to find a dog tearing up his furniture and dumping on his floor.  Gibbs makes the point that pit bulls are loyal and will protect you.  If you treat them right.  And don’t lie to them.  Vance tires of the figurative speech and says, “Who would lie to a dog?” and that may be one of the funniest, best-delivered lines in the show’s history.

Vance reasserts that, paper trail aside, Owens was a Marine.  Gibbs hands Vance the CIA file but Vance tells Gibs to keep it.  It will keep him honest.  Gibbs doesn’t figure he needs it anymore.  If he has any questions about Vance, he’ll just ask Jackie.

This entire sequence at Vance’s house is extraordinarily effective at showcasing the relationship and the mutual respect between these men.  I’d forgotten how good it is.

In the squad room, Tony and McGee are discussing Joe Banks when he arrives.  This leads to a Tony DiNozzo Cinematic Digression ™ when Tony realizes that Joe Banks is the name of Tom Hanks’s character in Joe Versus the Volcano (1990).  When this continues even after Gibbs’s arrival, Tony finally earns a headslap.  And then another headslap.  “Ge it together, DiNozzo,” says Gibbs.  And Tony has no response.   

Moving on, Banks takes exception to being in the interrogation room, and doesn’t remember Vance until Vance prods his memory.  Banks thinks that if Vance had kept fighting he could have made a name for himself.  Vance assures Banks he has made a name for himself.  Vance shows Banks a picture of Owens’s body and Banks pleads ignorant. 

In observation, Gibbs believes Banks.  He thinks, based on Bank’s body language and demeanor, Banks’s worst days are behind him.  

Vance is not so forgiving and goes through a list of crimes and the number of times Banks skated.  He tells him, “You’re everything Tyler hated.”  Vance figures all he has to do is get Tara to talk and it’s over.  Banks makes clear that Vance has no idea what he’s talking about and that Banks is perfectly protected from Tara under the law.  It doesn’t take a law degree (although I have one) to know what he’s referencing.

We switch to the conference room, and Vance is flabbergasted that Tara married Banks (and now it’s even more obvious they had something once).  Tara is completely dismissive of Vance, swears by Banks, and makes the solidly logical argument that Owens was Banks’s family via Tara and that any shot at Owens would be a shot at Banks.  She gives Vance a more detailed version of what Gibbs saw in observation: that Banks and Tara fell in love and Banks lost his hunger.  So, in a world where a soft boss always gets replaced by a hungry underling, who’s looking to take everything away from Banks?

In the squad room, the agents think Chicago PD located the spot of the murder- a bunch of dried blood near the gym and on the route between the gym and Owens’s residence.  We learn Vance has let Banks go, but he’s still holding Tara.

In autopsy, Gibbs is still working his side projects.  He tells Ducky that he and Vance had a breakthrough over dinner.  Ducky suggests that he and Gibbs haven’t had dinner in a long time (and they probably have their own fence-mending to do after Broken Bird, Episode 6.13).  Gibbs says he’ll buy if Ducky will re-examine Owens’s body for evidence of surgical procedures.

In Vance’s office, Vance and Gibbs discuss the case.  Vance did some digging with Chicago PD, and Banks has divested himself of his enterprise.  He has gone legit.  Vance is feeling hopeless about the case and notes that Owens taught him the difference between surviving and living and that Owens was his hero.  Gibbs wonders if Vance is giving up, and Vance swear he’s not.  They talk about the uptick of unsolved murders over the last several decades and note that it occurred because murder got less personal.  Gibbs thinks that’s the answer.  Sometimes the motives as simple as killing somebody for a coat.

That triggers something with Vance, so they head to the lab.  Vance says, “duck down” and Abby ducks (ba-dump-bump) and confesses to talking to Gibbs.  Then apologizes when she sees Gibbs.  But Vance doesn’t care anymore.  He wants to know if the feathers on Owens’s body were duck down.  Hungarian goose, says Abby.  Vance reaches way back to the beginning of the episode and says the kid’s jacket wasn’t stolen.  He got rid of it because it was covered with blood. 

Abby tells both men not to ever put her between them again.  Vance leaves and Gibbs looks at a pile of wood and offers to help with the project.  Abby notes that it’s not for building a boat. 

At the gym in Chicago, Isaac takes a call from Vance.  While on the phone, he finds Spit’s body, lying against a wall.

Vance and Gibbs discuss in Vance’s office and Vance tells Gibbs that Spit started bragging about killing Owens and some of the other gym members, who loved Owens, took it into their own hands to beat Spit half to death as revenge.  It’s too soon to tell if Spit will survive, but Vance sees an old story in this:  a kid who got tired of working for respect and of not being noticed and thought he could solve both problems with a gun.  Vance tells Gibbs he’s headed to Chicago for Owens’s memorial but asks if there’s anything Gibbs needs.  “Nothing that can’t wait,” Gibbs responds.

In the squad room, Tony is making preparations to hand Tara off to Banks for a long drive back to the Midwest.  In the elevator, Tony pulls a Gibbs and stops the elevator.  He admits to Tara that he has lost it since his relationship with Jeanne Benoit fizzled and he’s in a horrific dry spell.  He’s dating, but he talks about himself too much, talks about Jeanne too much, talks about his feelings too much.  Tara tells him that opening up is the first step and they lean towards each other.  Then she adds, “The last step is picking the right woman,” and flips the elevator switch back on.  The doors open and Ziva is standing there.

Vance stands in the midst of the boxing ring at Owens’s gym and gives a moving eulogy.  His words are voiced over a scene of Gibbs and Ducky in the squad room.  Ducky reports that his re-examination of Owens found evidence of a surgically repaired detached retina right as we hear Vance utter the words, “To be someone else.”   Gibbs continues to play with Vance’s CIA file.  But he doesn’t open it.

Quotables:

(1) Tony: Well, my boss doesn’t really ask for things. We’re supposed to figure it out on our own before he gets really angry.  He gets very… angry. 

Tara: What happens if you don’t figure it out?

Tony: We get a smack to the back of the head.  That hasn’t happened for a while, actually.  Maybe we’re getting better at our jobs.

(2) Tony: John Patrick Shanley, who wrote and directed Joe Versus the Volcano, won an Academy Award for Moonstruck.  He also wrote and directed the movie Doubt, which came out recently… it was pretty good… but in the middle there, clearly, there was a goofy phase.

[Gibbs slaps his head]

I forgot what that feels like. It’s been a while since…

Gibbs: I know.

Tony: Physical contact.

Gibbs: I know.

Tony: You know?  You know.  Any advice?

Gibbs: Snap out of it.

Tony: I have no response to that.

                        -Head slaps make their triumphant return.

(3) Banks: Well, you know who I am.  Am I supposed to know who you are?

Vance: Name’s Leon Vance.

Banks: Fancy footwork.  Wicked right cross.  I never forget a fighter.  You could have been big-time.

Vance: I am.

 (4) Ziva: You can’t make an omelet without breaking some legs.

Tony: You’re never making me breakfast.

Ziva: That is the truth.

Tony: It’s supposed to be “eggs.”

Ziva: Cook them yourself.

Time Until Sexual Harassment: 3:00.  Tony has mean nicknames for the rest of the employees working on his floor except for Natalie, the attractive one, whom he singles out for looking nice.

Ziva-propisms:  Ziva means, “Windy city.”  Ziva says, “Wind-y City,” long “i.”  she says, “You can’t make an omelet without breaking some legs,” and we all shudder along with Tony.

Tony Awards: Tony brings back his Connery accent and a reference to The Untouchables (1987).  And then he goes in the complete opposite direction and references Joe Versus the Volcano (1990).  We learn that same director also made Moonstruck (1987)and Doubt (2008).  Tony also nicknames two of his co-workers after characters on Laverne and Shirley.  The reference to Tyler Owens as the “black Miyagi” is a callback to The Karate Kid (1984).

Abby Road: Is having to build a coffin to cover a lie that nobody cares about a digression?

McNicknames: None today.

Ducky Tales: None today.

The Rest of the Story:

-Tony has a copy of FHM Magazine, the NCIS-verse’s Maxim analogue.  I think we first saw a copy in Bikini Wax, Episode 2.18.

-Tony mentions not being in Chicago because he got to go to Arizona.  That was last episode, South by Southwest, Episode 6.17.  He assures himself that it’s not his lack of prowess with protective detail that kept him off, well, protective detail.  That lack of prowess was most recently showcased, and showcased prominently for Vance, in Judgment Day (Part One), Episode 5.18, when former NCIS Director Jenny Shepard ditched Tony and Ziva and died in a firefight.  But, in fairness, NCIS routinely screws up protective detail.  It bears cataloguing again: Kate got captured by fugitive Jack Curtin in UnSEALed, Episode 1.18 (after being tricked by his kid).  Kate let a kidnapper take Ducky in The Meat Puzzle, Episode 2.13 (after getting tricked by a dog).  Tony got knocked out by Mike Franks, the guy he was supposed to protect in Faking It, Episode 4.4.  McGee shot a cop while on security detail in Probie, Episode 3.10.  Kate managed to protect Gibbs, but died herself in Twilight, Episode 2.23.  The whole team almost let Abby get killed several times in Bloodbath, Episode 3.21.  Tony and Kate almost lost their charge to a homemade bomb made by a housewife in Terminal Leave, Episode 2.6.  And while not technically security detail, McGee let a woman die in an apartment across the street from where he was securing the premises despite only being about two minutes away in Witness, Episode 2.14. 

-Tony also mentions getting a head-slap and realizes it hasn’t happened for a while.  According to my records, McGee was head-slapped by his fellow agents for stealing Abby’s cupcake in Capitol Offense, episode 6.3.  Tony head-slapped himself in Last Man Standing, Episode 6.1.  Abby head-slapped a cardboard cut-out of Tony in Judgment Day (Part One), Episode 3.18.  But Gibbs hasn’t delivered a head slap to Tony since About Face, Episode 5.17.  So, it has been over 10 months in air date time since the audience has seen one of the show’s most classic bits.  Perhaps Gibbs was so happy to get Tony back after Vance re-assigned him at the end of Judgment Day (Part Two), Episode 3.19 that he had a change of heart?

-Abby’s parents are deaf. She and Gibbs have been signing to each other since Season 1.

-Gibbs received a CIA file from Trent Kort purportedly relating to Vance in Broken Bird, Episode 6.13.  He immediately put it away and, as far as we know, he has not read it before this episode.

-Ziva shows Tara a picture of her boyfriend.  We first saw him in Last Man Standing, Episode 6.1, when she was back in Israel.  Like Ziva, the guy is also Mossad.  There have been other hints this season as to the nature of the relationship.  See e.g., Nine Lives, Episode 6.5.  He will become important in a few episodes.

-We last saw the Vance home and glimpses of the Vance family in Silent Night, Episode 6.11.

-This is the first physical appearance of Jackie Vance (she has been mentioned, and we have heard her on the phone).  She only appears in four episodes, but she is one of my favorite characters. 

-Ooooo!  There it is!  Headslap!  And then another!  So much for a change of heart.

-The print of Ali standing over Liston has been in Vance’s office since the beginning.  These other boxing related-photos, including the one of Vance, and the Marine photo (of Tyler Owens?), seem new.

-Wow.  Tony hasn’t had sex since Jeanne left him.  In air-time time, and accounting for the fact that Season 4 ended in Season 5, Tony hasn’t had intercourse since May 2007.  And it’s March 2009 in show time.  Wow. 

-Is the NCIS A-team really so amazingly good that Vance can’t use one of the other investigatory teams that we know work in the building (See e.g., Grace Period, Episode 4.19).  Even if you charitably assume he has no choice but to involve Abby and Ducky, he’s a lot less likely to get Gibb’s attention if he takes someone besides Ziva and McGee for a routine snatch & grab.

-The end is confusing.  Tyler Owens was a Marine, he got his retina detached in a boxing match.  Vance…what?  Ahhhhh…no kidding, this took me the better part of a day to figure out.  Tyler Owens was never a Marine.  Vance was.  Then Owens got severely injured in a boxing match.  And the only way Owens could get the surgery and medical care he needed was for Owens to pretend he was Vance.  After that, Vance got a medical deferment from the Marines for an injury he never had.  That’s a hell of a secret to be carrying around because, in the wrong hands, it could be spun to imply some level of cowardice on the part of Vance (fake medical deferment).  Of course, given Vance’s age, there’s not a whole lot he’d be seeking a deferment to avoid.  Vietnam was well over and Desert Storm was half a decade away when Lenny Bias was shooting buckets at Maryland.  I can’t recall if this ever comes up again, but it’s clearly what’s described in that file Gibbs has.  And it’s also clear that this sort of subterfuge in the service of loyalty is the kind of thing Gibbs will happily take to his grave on Vance’s behalf.

-Ah Vance.  He probably tore the medical deferment page out of his file in Judgment Day (Part Two), Episode 3.19 because any real-time medical examination would determine he’d never had a retina detached.  End of story.  Except then his wife goes and tells that story to the most perceptive agent on the NCIS team- the exact thing Vance was hoping to avoid when he was keeping Gibbs at arms-length from the Owens investigation. 

-OK, I did some internet research (something I don’t do much as part of this project), and there are theories that Tyler and Vance switched lives.  That explains some things in the episode (Tara calling Vance by names that seem more like derivations of Tyler than Leon; and the man who appears to be Tyler in the Marine uniform).  It explains Vance staying away (because Owens told him to after they switched).  And it explains Vance’s assurance to Gibbs that Owens was a Marine at some point (doesn’t seem like something he’d say with such conviction if Owens was just a “Marine” for a surgery).

But it does nothing to explain literally everything else.  Vance went home to his old neighborhood and took trained investigators with him to meet people who knew him way back when.  He also left them alone with Tara and with Banks, neither of whom have any incentive to cover for Vance in an identity switch caper (and may not have even known about the switch).  He keeps a photo of the man whose place he allegedly took in his office.  The police in Chicago seem to accept that Owens is Owens, and it would be harder for Owens to pretend to be Vance in their old stomping grounds than for Vance to pretend to be Owens out in the world.  Also, the US military is not filled with morons and they track the identities of their soldiers.  The idea that Vance could sneak Owens medical treatment on one occasion (sacrificing a part of his career to do it) is a lot more realistic than Owens being able to sub Vance in as himself into perpetuity and undiscovered by anyone.  And what would be Owens’s motive?  He hated the Marines and Vance needed the career?  And how is Vance such a ne’er-do-well that Owens needs to do him this favor, but then suddenly such a straight arrow that he can climb the ladder to NCIS Director?  And survive the vetting without any of this coming out?  I think my theory makes more sense.  The show admittedly seems to want us to think that Tyler Owens and Leon Vance are each other, but there are so many holes in that approach that it doesn’t surprise me that it never came up again.

Casting Call: Tara Kole is played by Rochelle Ates, who, in real world ages, is 14 years younger than Rocky Carroll, who plays Vance.  Thus making the implied relationship between Vance and Tara impossible within the show’s timeline.  But in the show’s world, maybe she’s meant to be a little older.  Vance can’t be younger because the Len Bias story largely tracks his age to Rocky Carroll’s actual age.

Ms. Aytes’s resume includes a lot of recurring TV roles on shows like Desperate Housewives, Hawaii- 5-0, and Criminal Minds.

Paula Newsome, who plays Jackie Vance, also has a comprehensive TV background with her most recent big roles being on Barry and Chicago Med.  I know her primarily from this show, but she has had guest roles on other shows I watched, like Friends and Heroes.

Man, This Show Is Old: Holy shit.  Jackie Vance gives her children the same Len Bias drug lecture my mom gave me.  Bias, a U Maryland basketball player, was the number two pick in the 1986 NBA draft by the Boston Celtics.  He used cocaine exactly once, two days after the draft, and OD’d and died.  Every parent in America in the late 1980s incorporated Bias into their drug lecture to their kids, so watching Jackie Vance do the same thing 20 years later is legitimately surreal.

Jackie mentions Bias scoring 36 points in the game where she and Vance met.  I’m no expert, but this appears to be in an OT win against UNC on February 20, 1986.  Although Bias scored 35 and the game was at UNC, so it doesn’t scan perfectly.  But NCIS takes place in a parallel universe from ours anyway, so differences are to be expected.

MVP: Vance and Gibbs make a hell of a duo, even if the episode is stronger on characterization than on the men doing much to solve the case.

Rating: If you didn’t like Vance before this episode, there’s no way you don’t like him afterward.  In fact, the episode is almost overly aggressive in working to make you like Vance.  From giving an origin story, to showing his loyalty to Owens, to fully introducing his cute family and his relentlessly charismatic wife, to showing him and Gibbs continuing to find their footing with each other, this is an intentional culmination of a season worth of effort to legitimize Vance as the Director.  I’ve written before that this re-watch of Seasons 3-5 made me realize that Vance is a better, more measured, and more responsible director than Shepard was, and this episode is key to his character development in that regard.

Eight Palmers.  Quite the run we’re on here.

Next Time: We get a bit of a downtick in quality, as the show trots out another child-centric episode.  These are not getting better with age.