A Year of NCIS, Day 40: An Eye for an Eye (Episode 2.17)

Episode: 2.17, An Eye for an Eye

Air Date: March 22, 2005.

The Victim: See below.

Emotionally Traumatized, But Ultimately Irrelevant, Witness Who Finds the Body: It’s mail time.  Our witness comes to get hers while talking on the phone about dating.  It’s the kind of conversation that makes me happy I’m married.  He doesn’t respect her time, his friends are all single, she’s sad.  But now she’s happy, because somebody sent her a package.  A cold package.  Ohmigod it’s a pair of eyes in a box!  The actress does a great job of being horrified and dropping the package.

Plot Summary: We open on Ducky, staring into a pan containing the eyes.  Gibbs arrives to ask questions, but Ducky’s only just now getting started.  Gibbs apprises us that the eyes were in a package delivered to a petty officer, but the neighbor, our witness, got them by mistake.  Ducky says that the eyes are in great shape and well-preserved, so Ducky thinks they were intended for a transplant.

Tony is sleeping.  Maybe.  His eyes are open.  Kate is certainly impressed.  But Tony claims he’s mediating. Gibbs arrives and wants answers.  Kate is checking organ banks but hasn’t heard back.  McGee is tracking the package.  Tony reports that the package was addressed to Petty Officer Second Class Benjamin Horlacher, stationed at Dam Neck, currently on 72-hour leave.  He’s a student at the Navy Marine Corps Intelligence Training Center.  Military records are clean.  McGee says the package was shipped from Ciudad, Paraguay, a section of the country near the border of two other countries, and where black markets flourish. 

Gibbs, Kate, and Tony head to conduct interviews at the apartment complex where the eyes were delivered.  The property manager, Mrs. Robinson says the mailman routinely puts things in the wrong box.  Regarding PSC Horlacher, she says he’s quiet and has a girlfriend.  Mrs. Robinson thinks she has a key, and she comes and goes as she pleases.  She allows the agents to examine PSC Horlacher’s apartment.  She also notes the absence of a wedding ring on Gibbs’s finger and asks if he’d like to come over when he’s done.  Gibbs smiles politely and gets to work, but Tony whispers, “He IS single” as he walks by a smiling Mrs. Robinson.  Although, Kate lets her know that Gibbs has been married three times.

Gibbs looks at the magazines and the knick-knacks in PSC Horlacher’s apartment and notes that the girlfriend has taken over.  Kate finds a woman’s clothes and make-up, but then snarks about her taste in clothing.  Et tu, Caitlin?  PSC Horlacher comes home in the midst of the search.  He claims he has been visiting his family in New Jersey.  The agents tell him what’s going on, but PSC Horlacher pleads ignorance about the eyes, although he admits that his intelligence specialty is Central and South America.  Gibbs suggests that perhaps PSC Horlacher’s girlfriend knows what’s going on, but PSC Horlacher doesn’t have a girlfriend.  They broke up a month ago, and she hasn’t come back to pick up her stuff.  Gibbs tells PSC Horlacher to keep himself available, and the agents leave.

Outside, Kate notes that the make-up in the bathroom was used recently.  PSC Horlacher is definitely hiding something, so Gibbs leaves Tony and Kate to stake out the apartment complex.  Then he takes a call from Abby and Ducky.  Abby reports that they haven’t ID’d the owner of the eyes yet, but the eyes are female.  Ducky says the eyes were given up unwillingly.  Based on trace elements in the eye matter, Ducky thinks the victim was poisoned and suffered a cardiac arrest.

Night has fallen and Tony and Kate are freezing in the stakeout car.  The smoke from the tailpipe will give away their position, so Tony can’t turn up the heat.  He offers to snuggle but Kate isn’t biting.  She imagines a tropical vacation instead.  Kate observes that PSC Horlacher’s light has turned off, and, just as she and Tony are musing over whether Gibbs will make them stay all night, they hear a gunshot.  Tony and Kate storm the apartment and find PSC Horlacher dead on his bed and dressed like a woman.

Ducky and Palmer arrive, and Ducky immediately starts paying the show’s penance for Dead Man Talking, Episode 1.9 last season.  Gibbs asks what he’s got, and Ducky says, “Well, it’s a sad situation, Jethro.  Even in today’s enlightened age, transsexualism is terribly misunderstood.”  Palmer interrupts to say that Gibbs wanted the forensic analysis, and Ducky and Gibbs then debate the merits and effectiveness of head-slapping. 

Ducky feels comfortable calling this a suicide, and penance continues.  McGee says he thought most suicides shot themselves in the head.  Gibbs says that’s men, not women.  McGee concludes, “I guess he didn’t think of himself as a man,” and Kate says, “Well, she must have known that her secret was going to come out.”  Tony gives what he thinks to be a correction regarding Kate’s use of pronouns- “Don’t you mean ‘he must have known that his secret was going to come out?’”  Kate explains to the audience Tony that PSC Horlacher thought of herself as a woman trapped in a man’s body, and when she killed herself, she set herself free (hence the suicide note, which says,“I’m free”). 

All of that said, the show is not exactly hanging its heads in shame while it walks walks and talks talks.  McGee references Dead Man Talking and says this crime scene reminds him of Agent Pacci’s suspect.  Kate laughs and reminisces about “the beautiful pre-op transsexual that seduced Tony!”  Tony objects, saying he wasn’t seduced, but was undercover, and “someone had to keep her occupied.”  McGee says, “don’t you mean ‘him’?” and point made, although Tony isn’t happy about it. 

You know all of this dialogue has purpose because Gibbs hasn’t interrupted the seeming tangent by hitting his agents in the head or threatening to shoot or fire them.  He has kind of disappeared, in fact.  We find him really quick, however; and the episode shifts out of audience education mode in the most jarring manner possible when McGee kicks over Gibbs’s coffee.  A large bass drum note from the soundtrack lets us know we’re moving on, and even Ducky and Palmer turn in horror.  McGee stammers and runs away to get a replacement. 

Gibbs asks Kate if she saw anyone else enter or leave the apartment, and she says, “No, she was here alone.”  Tony is checking into phone records.  Kate opines that PSC Horlacher was living a double life and there was no girlfriend (yes Kate, the audience has grasped this very obvious plot point).  Tony observes that the situation adds a different dynamic to “don’t ask, don’t tell.”  Gibbs doesn’t care and wants to know about the connection to the eyes.  And, proving that consistency of character is more important in a drama than political correctness, Gibbs never wavers on using masculine pronoun to refer to PSC Horlacher, and exits while ordering, “Get he/she’s laptop to Abby.”

Still, that’s enough penance, right?

Abby checks out the laptop.  It’s loaded to the gills with high-level security protocols.  But she and McGee broke through most of them and found PSC Horlacher’s blog.  The blog was mostly about differences between the sexes.  Gibbs tells Abby and McGee to find out everything they can about both of PSC Horlacher’s lives.

Kate tells Gibbs that PSC Horlacher lied about visiting his family, and they haven’t heard from him in over a year.  Tony still can’t find a connection to Paraguay.  Kate wants to know how a transgender person made it into intelligence school without anyone tumbling to his secret.  Tony suggests calling PSC Horlacher’s faculty advisor, Guyman Purcell, to whom phone records show PSC Horlacher placed his last call before his death.

Gibbs, Tony, and Kate attend one of Purcell’s lectures.  He’s lecturing on double agents.  After the lecture, he chats with the agents and describes PSC Horlacher as a “decent student,” but says that’s all he knows about him.  Gibbs asks if the class covers Ciudad, Paraguay and the tri-border area, and they describe the details of the eye package.  Gibbs wants to know why PSC Horlacher called Purcell, and Purcell says PSC Horlacher asked for an extension on a paper.  Gibbs says he’ll need it and tells Purcell about the petty officer’s suicide right after their phone call.  Purcell says he was hard on PSC Horlacher because it wasn’t his first extension, and he told him he’d drop him from the course and put a black mark on his career if he didn’t shape up.  Perhaps this explains the suicide.

Back at HQ, Kate and Tony report that Purcell is a retired Lt. Commander and has his own security consulting firm.  Purcell has traveled back and forth to Paraguay numerous times.  Tony and Kate think he’s either a spook or working for spooks because a lot of the projects with which Purcell is involved are way above Kate’s clearance.  Gibbs reminds us that he hates spooks. 

Abby calls and the agents head to her lab.  Abby and McGee found bookmarks on PSC Horlacher’s computer for on-line security classes taught by Purcell.  They also determined that PSC Horlacher accessed a .jpg file of a beautiful Central American girl 22 times over a recent period.  They think this is the girl who originally owned the eyes.  Abby has compared iris patterns and it’s an 80% match. 

Gibbs and Tony are in MTAC, speaking with Colonel Bushnell, who knows Gibbs from his Marine days and calls him “Gunny.”  Col. Bushnell talks about his grandkids and says he heard Gibbs got married again.  Gibbs laughs and explains it didn’t work out.  Col. Bushnell isn’t surprised.  Gibbs asks the Colonel about Purcell.  Col. Bushnell says Purcell is part of a tactical assessment team working the Paraguay area.  Gibbs lays out our players, and Col. Bushnell seems ignorant of what’s going on.  He notes that the TATs work with other agencies that aren’t always so forthcoming with information. 

Gibbs manages to sneak up on Abby with a Caf-Pow.  She shows him some emails from the tri-border area.  He shows them to Tony and McGee and it looks like PSC Horlacher is engaged in heated ransom negotiations with someone from Argentina over a girl.  They talk money and proof of life.  The kidnapper(?) eventually slips up and uses Purcell’s name, and angrily promises proof of life.  But Gibbs doesn’t buy the idea of using a pair of eyes as proof of life.  Tony thinks negotiations are over, and it was really proof of death. 

Kate went to collect Purcell, and, per one of his students, he has gone to Paraguay.  Kate checked the flights and Purcell landed twenty minutes ago.  Gibbs tells Tony to go to Paraguay and “take one of ‘em with you.”  Gibbs will run the op from MTAC.  McGee thinks he’s getting the nod from Tony. 

He doesn’t.

Tony and Kate are in Paraguay, enjoying the sights (if not the smells), and reveling over not having Gibbs looking over their shoulders.  Of course, then Gibbs calls, points out that the TAT building they want is fifty feet from them, per the GPS, and to stop screwing around.  Gibbs then links up with Col. Bushnell, who has hooked the team up with a traitor or redshirt local guide named Joe Tabarez, a former Marine.  According to Col. Bushnell, whatever Purcell is doing, he’s not working any op the Colonel knows about.  And if he’s working for someone else, they’re keeping their classified cards so close to their classified vest, that even Col. Bushnell is having trouble getting answers. 

Tony and Kate meet their guide, Tabarez.  He takes them inside the TAT building, and explains to them that the tri-border area is a place where everything is for sale and it’s also a front line for al Qaeda.  Tabarez is complimentary of Purcell’s skills.  But he thinks he’s a “creepy sonuvabitch.”  When Tony tells Tabarez that they suspect Purcell of having “shipped a pair of woman’s eyeballs to a transsexual sailor who then killed himself.”  Tabarez recognizes the girl in the photo with Purcell as his wife, Anna Real.

Tony and Kate report back to Gibbs that Anna Real is seventeen, and Purcell has been dating her for about three years.  Gibbs is not happy that Tabraez knew this and “looked the other way while Purcell was molesting a fourteen-year-old.” Gibbs figures Tabarez is probably out updating Purcell about Kate’s and Tony’s activities.  Gibbs tells McGee to get Col. Bushnell on the horn and tells Tony and Kate to find Purcell.

They hang up, and Tabarez has been listening.  Tabarez says he did not update Purcell, and that he reported his pedophiliac activities to Southern Command.  But, according to Tabrarez, Purcell is protected and Tabarez doesn’t know by whom. 

Col. Bushnell is a little annoyed that Gibbs would accuse him of looking the other way on Purcell.  He promises to look into it but tells Gibbs to watch his back.  Gibbs says McGee has his back, and he promises that he’s taking Purcell down.  They end the call and Gibbs hands McGee a cup of coffee.  McGee thanks him and takes a sip.  Gibbs asks what the hell he’s doing and tells him to go refill it.  And then laughs for McGee’s entire panicked canter out of MTAC.

Kate and Tony and Tabarez are looking for information from, Iggy, one of Tabarez’s street vendor contacts.  Iggy recognizes Anna Real, but thinks she’s dead.  He calls Purcell a good man.  Things get weird, and Tony probably breaks at least a dozen laws by using the high tech NCIS-issued satellite phone as a bargaining chip to get information out of Iggy.  Kate is not pleased.  But Tony did it on purpose to get the GPS chip onto Iggy’s person for when he visits Purcell.  Kate realizes Tony had a plan and asks if he wants her to apologize.  Although she’s annoyed that Tony didn’t give up his phone, which leads to a discussion as to who’s lead agent.  And, in fairness, it’s Tony.

Col. Bushnell has been given a direct order to protect Purcell as a valuable intelligence asset.  This is not the first time Gibbs has had to watch a “valuable intelligence asset” slide over criminal activity (Ari Haswari, in Reveille, Episode 1.23), so he’s not happy.  Col. Bushnell isn’t either.  He reminds Gibbs that Marines can either obey a direct order or resign, so Col. Bushnell is going to resign.  But McGee has an idea.  While Col. Bushnell doesn’t know the identity of his contact (the one protecting Purcell), and the guy always stands in the shadows when they talk, McGee thinks that if the Colonel gets his contact on the line, the Colonel’s encryptor can patch the contact to MTAC. 

Tony and Kate are tailing Iggy.  Iggy meets Purcell, and Gibbs tells them not to bring him in (since he’s protected).  They continue the tail, and Gibbs says don’t engage unless required.  Kate finds Iggy in the hotel and he runs away from her.  And into Tony.   Tony and Kate wants answers, and Kate is happy to point her gun at Iggy’s balls to get them.

We cut to Purcell, holding a gun with a silencer in one of the hotel rooms.  He has the gun pointed at Anna Real.  Turns out that Purcell/sHorlacher wasn’t negotiating a ransom.  They were negotiating a hit.  But the kidnapper/hitman fouled up and killed Anna’s sister.  So now Purcell has to finish the job, but he wouldn’t have done any of this if Anna hadn’t threatened to betray him.  He holds the gun on her and she tells him to go for it because death is preferable to being with Purcell.  He tells her to close her eyes, but before he can shoot, Tony and Kate kick in the door.  Purcell thinks about it, and Tony and Kate discuss sharing this episode’s MVP honors.  Observing both their confidence and their indifference to killing him, Purcell surrenders to Tony and Kate.

Back at MTAC, Gibbs gets in touch with the mysterious contact.  As Col. Bushnell described, the contact appears completely in shadow.  Gibbs tells his new friend that he either gives up Purcell, or Gibbs will personally compromise the identity of Ari Haswari.  The spooks can either choose a key al Qaeda mole or a child molester.  Then Gibbs cuts the transmission.

Tony and Kate are interviewing Purcell.  Tony says Anna Real told him that Purcell is not just getting intel from gangs in the tri-border area but is also running some of them.  Purcell says he’s good at his job.  Tony makes clear that once Anna Real talks about Purcell’s underage dalliances, Purcell will spend the rest of hi life in Leavenworth. But Purcell just laughs.  He says Anna wasn’t threatening to tell our government; she was threatening to tell hers.  Tony asks what difference that makes, and Purcell laughs just as Tabarez comes in with orders to release Purcell.  Purcell waves goodbye to a stunned Tony and Kate.

Back in MTAC, McGee announces another encrypted transmission.  Gibbs tells him to put it up on the screen.  We see Purcell walk out into the street outside the hotel and continue walking, smug smile on his face.  Then he takes a bullet to the head and tumbles over as the transmission ends.  Gibbs says, “Bring our people home,” and the episode ends with him leaving MTAC.

And hey, looks like I was wrong about Tabarez on both counts.                

Quotables:

(1) Tony: A dead transsexual sailor, his spook instructor and a pair of human eyes walk into a bar, what’s the punchline Kate?

Kate: Whatever it is, it involves this girl and Paraguay.

Tony: That’s true, but not very funny. Probie! Make me laugh!

McGee: Okay, the bartender doesn’t believe it, so he asks the spook instructor ‘what the hell is going on?’ And the guy says ‘what, guy can’t have a drink with his pupils?’

(2) [Tony and Kate burst into the hotel room, guns aimed at Purcell]

Tony: Well look at that, Kate.  He’s actually thinking about trying it.

Kate: You double tap the head, I’ll double tap the heart.

Tony: Deal.

Time Until Sexual Harassment: 10:05.  While freezing in the car during the stakeout, Tony suggests that he and Kate keep warm by cuddling naked. 

Ducky Tales: Ducky discourses on the etymology of the word “autopsy.”  He gives a mini-lesson on the history of corneal transplants.

The Rest of the Story:

-This is the second episode this season to feature disembodied eyeballs.  The first was Forced Entry, Episode 2.9.

-Sadly for Mrs. Robinson, after the events of Doppelgänger Episode 2.12, I can’t imagine Gibbs getting romantically involved with another witness, no matter how tangential, anytime soon.

-I don’t do a whole lot of outside research for this blog, but I did learn last month that the show took some hits from the transgender community over the portrayal of Commander Voss/Amanda Reed in Dead Man Talking.  In particular, the agents fouled up the pronoun usage, treated Voss’s/Reed’s status like a joke and turned Tony into a punchline for several episodes.  There’s some of that here too (and Gibbs isn’t playing along with any afterschool special efforts), but the episode clearly made an effort to explain transsexualism and treat it with respect.  Which, in 2005, is saying something.

-McGee is in good company in terms of spilling Gibbs’s coffee.  Both Tony and Kate spilled it last season, in Minimum Security, Episode 1.8, and Sub Rosa, Episode 1.7, respectively/

-Gibbs has never head about Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus.  It has actually been a while since they showcased Gibbs’s complete pop culture ignorance.  This bit was almost a staple last season.

-Tony references the movie Laura (1944).

-In hindsight, it’s a weird look for someone like Col. Bushnell, who clearly knew Gibbs in his Marine days, to be so cavalier about his marital history.

-Gibbs references being in Bosnia with Col. Bushnell.  That doesn’t entirely fit with what we later learn of Gibbs’s timeline if he was there as a Marine.  Maybe he was a reservist.

-What the hell did PSC Horlacher have to do with any of this?  It feels like the showrunners decided to clean up the Dead Man Talking mess, and this was the best episode to insert a transgender subplot.   

Casting Call: Cleo King plays Mrs. Robinson, the apartment manager who hits on Gibbs.  She was also Mike’s partner’s grandma on Mike and Molly.

Man, This Show Is Old: In this episode, the show is ahead of its time in terms of its open-minded approach to transgenderism.  This debate is front and center in 2019 and has been since at least 2016 or so.  Accordingly, it’s interesting to see characters in a 14-year old episode making a “What’s the big deal?” argument and expressing empathy for PSC Horlacher.

“Don’t ask, don’t tell,” was the military’s rule regarding homosexual (and, by extension, transgender) servicepeople from 1993 until 2011.

Abby and McGee have to explain to Gibbs what a blog is.  Amusingly, I am writing a blog about this show introducing the concept of a blog to a network TV audience.  Abby and McGee also define “LOL” and “ROTFLOL.”

Kate uses the word “transvestite.”  I don’t think that’s common usage anymore, and it may even be offensive. 

Hard to imagine the black market in Ciudad makes much money from DVD players today.  They probably do an OK laptop or iPad trade, though.  Of course, I wrote that, and Tony buys a bootleg iPod for $30.00 (well, he buys an empty box, and takes his cash back from the guy).  Remember when you had to carry a separate device on which to store your music?

MVP: Tony and Kate don’t get to share a kill shot, but they saved a life.

Rating: I don’t love it when the script plays fast and loose.  In every other scenario, our agents would have gotten PSC Horlacher’s girlfriend’s name immediately.  Here, they didn’t, and we get both inexplicably sloppy police work and extraordinarily negative unintended consequences purely to service the script.  Additionally, this is another one of those overstuffed episodes that would have been helped by better editing.  The plot doesn’t not make sense, but the audience really has to fill in some blanks.  And Petty Officer Horlacher seems completely superfluous other than as a vehicle to discuss transgender issues.  That’s a laudable goal, but tighter plotting could have allowed this episode to have its cake and eat it too.  The episode wasn’t unentertaining, and a very bad guy got his in the end.  But it feels incomplete.  Six Palmers.

Next Time:  Tony’s dreams comes true as the team investigates a bikini contest.