A Year of NCIS, Day 198: Housekeeping (Episode 9.12)

Episode: Housekeeping, Episode 9.12.

Air Date: January 3, 2012.  A new year.  We’re slowly inching toward the present.  I became a dad for the first time this year.

The Victim: Commander James Barnsway, USN.

Emotionally Traumatized, But Ultimately Irrelevant, Witness Who Finds the Body: We’re headed back to the beginning of the season (and the end of last season).  We open with a recap of Nature of the Beast, Episode 9.1 which involved former Special Agent EJ Barrett and her effort to keep a special database access microchip out of the hands of unscrupulous members of an old special ops team, including Bailey from Party of Five.  Last we saw Barrett she had been shot in an alley by Casey Stratton (the aforementioned Bailey).  Stratton also killed Barrett’s traitorous old partner Cade, and wounded Tony, who then lost his memory.  As of the start of this episode, Barrett is in the wind.

Which brings us to a cul-de-sac in a residential neighborhood and two kids, a bike, and a soccer goal.  The kids are complaining about their parents’ New Years’ resolutions, that have curtailed junk food in their homes.  Then the kids hear a crash and a car alarm.  They rush to the sound and find a servicemember collapsed in his crashed car over an airbag.  One kid pushes the servicemember back while asking if he’s OK, and finds a bullet wound in his neck.

Plot Recap: McGee arrives at the office more cheerful than his co-workers.  He thinks his co-workers have the post-holiday blues.  Tony and Ziva turn on each other.  Tony asks if she has seen C.I.Ray Cruz, her CIA ex from last season (See generally, Two-Faced, Episode 8.20), and Ziva reciprocates by asking if Tony has talked to his ex-fiancee Wendy recently (See Baltimore, Episode 8.22, and Newborn King, Episode 9.11).

Gibbs arrives to stop what looks like joint New Years’ resolutions to date better.  It’s time to make the donuts.

At the scene, we learn the victim is Navy Commander James Barnsway.  Ducky says the shot came from the victim’s immediate right.  But not so immediate as to have been from the passenger seat.  The car’s door was open when the boys from the opening encountered the car, but they didn’t see anyone else in the vehicle.  The passenger window was open, though.  Tony points out that the victim’s vehicle shows no skid marks, but the kids heard tires squealing.  There are additional skid marks on the street, so his thought is that the shots were fired from a second vehicle.  Gibbs finds a shell casing.  Based on the angle, the shooter was riding high and, per Gibbs, a hell of a shot.  And with a silencer, since the boys didn’t hear a gun. 

Gibbs spies a neighbor peeking at him out a window and sends Tony and Ziva to interview her.  The woman heard the crash and saw the other car speed off.  She describes it as a blue SUV. Maybe a green SUV.  Or a gold SUV.  She did not hear any gunshots and can’t imagine that the “Girl would have gotten out of Jimmy’s truck if there were gunshots.”  She describes the girl as a pretty blond.  She ran into the woods.  The neighbor knows the commander as a neighbor and describes him as a war hero.  She never saw the girl, but she wasn’t Mrs. Jimmy.  The neighbor, who is a fusty old gossip is all about dropping the bad news on a now-widow, but Tony and Ziva hold her off by appealing to her inner gossip.  You see, they’d like to know what kind of SUV Mrs. Jimmy drives and how good a shot she is first.

At HQ, said widow is talking to Ziva and McGee in the conference room.   McGee delicately checks Mrs. Barnsway’s alibi.  She is irate.  But she does drive an SUV.  However, when Ziva mentions the woman, Mrs. Barnsway makes a connection.  The woman called before breakfast, and she was an old overseas Navy friend of the commander’s.  She needed his help, and, per his wife, Commander Barnsway would do anything for a friend.

The team backgrounds Commander Barnsway.  He was assigned as a training officer at Patuxent Naval Air Station.  He had previous deployments all over the globe.  Tony zones in on Naples, Italy as one of those deployments, but doesn’t add anything.  The call to Commander Barnsway came from a burn phone, and Tony is looking for where it was purchased.  The team is not presently aware that the victim had any enemies, but the commander was a hard-nosed officer, so Gibbs tells McGee to dig deeper.  Then Gibbs gets a call and heads to the lab.  Leaving Ziva and McGee to harass Tony about his strange reaction to Naples.  Tony plays it off, but they don’t believe him.

In the lab, Abby has nothing on the ballistics, which means their killer is very meticulous.  But Abby has looked at Commander Barnsway’s nav system.  And has found an address for a nearby motor lodge. 

Gibbs, Tony, and Ziva approach the front desk of the motel, having already searched the room.  Tony notes that the occupant left in a hurry.  The manager says the woman paid cash, and he didn’t ask for ID because she was so terribly pleasant, “Like one of those Star Wars Jedi people.”  He then does a Jedi mind trick bit and laughs at himself and it is quite charming.  But then he explains that it was late, and he was tired.  Still, the woman signed in as Belva Lockwood.  Tony (somehow?) knows that this is the first woman to run for President in 1884 and that also strikes a chord.  But Tony again plays it off.  Gibbs asks the manager for footage.

Back home, the security footage is beyond blurry and there’s not much Abby and McGee can do about that at the moment.  But Abby tells the agents over the phone that she might have some software that can help.  The agents see the woman get into Commander Barnsway’s truck, so now they want to see her return.  They show her walking through the parking lot within the prior half hour.  Then she leaves, again on foot, five minutes later.  There’s a truck stop nearby, so Tony suggests heading there.

At the lab, Abby is processing the surveillance.  McGee looks on.

Tony comes out of the truck stop and says the woman they’re pursuing got a ride on a tanker truck.  Gibbs sees one leaving.  All three agents stop it with their guns drawn.  The driver gets out and begs them not to shoot as he just met the lady.  Gibbs screams at the passenger to exit the truck.

We switch back to Abby, continuing to process the surveillance video.  She’s clearly not happy with what she finds.  She thinks maybe McGee should all Gibbs.  McGee is equally shocked.

Back at the truck stop, the truck door opens, and EJ Barrett hops out.  “Hi guys.” 

“You’re alive,” says Tony.  And we fade to black and white.

In the conference room, Tony is not happy that Barrett left him for dead in that alleyway.  She thought he was dead, and she has been on the run from town to town ever since.  They shout at each other until Gibbs stops it.  Gibbs doesn’t understand why Barrett didn’t come to NCIS.  Barrett claims she didn’t want to put them in danger.  She also likely knows their track record with security details, so running was definitely the higher percentage play. 

But I digress…

Barrett was looking for the person who killed Cade.  Tony angrily accuses her of only being concerned with herself until Gibbs, exasperated, tells him to back off.  Barrett had a vest the night of the alley attack and when Commander Barnsway was shot.  Lucky for her, and she fingers a bullet hole in her jacket.  She called Commander Barnsway because she needed a friend when “they” got onto her again.  Gibbs wants to know who “they” are.  He slides her a picture of Casey Stratton, but she doesn’t know him.  So, Gibbs fills her in.  But Stratton is not the person who shot at Barrett when she was with Commander Barnsway. 

Barrett visits Abby to do a sketch.  And Abby runs it through facial rec.  Tony is still testy.  Barrett is testy back.  Abby doesn’t like their vibe and bails into her office.  Tony reveals that Barrett raving about an assignment in Naples caused him to notice when he learned about Commander Barnsway’s posting.  But Belva Lockwood really tugged on his gut after Barrett spent an evening gushing over her.  Tony says he spent a lot of time looking for Barrett, and he’s angry she vanished the way she did.  Perhaps understandably angry.  Barrett says she was scared and doesn’t even know why she’s being targeted. 

They get a beep on the facial rec at that moment…

…but we move back the squad room.  Where Ziva is also testy about Barrett.  Although her motives are probably a little less pure.  You know, green-eyed monster and all that.  McGee thinks the whole thing is fishy too.  Tony says they’re preaching to the choir.  But neither wants to see him get hurt again.

Gibbs and Barrett arrive and want work talk.  McGee backgrounds the shooter as former Navy Captain Marcellus Dane.  He’s an Ex-SEAL with a dishonorable discharge for accepting bribes from private contractors.  Who then hired him as a weapons specialist.   Swampy.  Dane is an expert in handguns, including the Barretta M9 that the team thinks was used to kill Commander Barnsway.  Ziva suggests, given the history of the two men, that Dane was shooting at Commander Barnsway.  Gibbs is listening.  Barrett is pissy because she claims the man was shooting at her, not Commander Barnsway and Ziva should take her word for that.  “Why?” Ziva asks. 

McGee has traced Dane’s cell phone to an address nearby.  Tony thinks that’s careless.  Ziva thinks it’s a trap.  Barrett would like to go too.  Gibbs laughs that off and leaves her with Tony.  If Stratton is the perp, then Gibbs is not taking two targets into battle.

The team arrives to see a police crime scene on the street, complete with squad cars and yellow police tape.  The dead man on the ground is Dane.  Looks like someone stabbed him and threw him out an upstairs window.  And used his phone to invite NCIS to the scene.  Gibbs has a good idea who that is.  And so do we, as we see Casey Stratton in the back of the crowd, observing. 

Gibbs tracks down SecNav Clayton Jarvis at a nice restaurant and separates him from his military dinner companions.  They adjourn to the bar.  Gibbs would like SecNav to talk to Sean Latham, the head of the Watcher Fleet (See Nature of the Beast, Episode 9.1), about the lead on Stratton.  SecNav, referencing Stratton’s prior impersonation of an FBI agent, says they are handling it.  Gibbs shows SecNav his picture of Phantom 8, the clandestine unit associated with the Watcher Fleet.  I think Gibbs got this pic from the box of intel that Mike Franks gave him before he died in Swan Song, Episode 8.23, and that Franks had been carrying around since around the time former Director Jenny Shepard died.  Judgment Day, Part Two, Episode 5.19.  SecNav at least recognizes the photo.  He calls it “Classified.”  But Gibbs says the stakes have changed and tells SecNav that Barrett is alive and in a safe house with Tony.  SecNav is relieved, but Gibbs wants more.  SecNav brought Latham into this case and Latham saw the hospital surveillance of Stratton stalking Tony when Tony had amnesia.  Gibbs is highly suspicious about the fact that Latham did not volunteer that he knew Stratton.  SecNav makes excuses, but Gibbs isn’t buying it, and demands that Latham bring in Stratton.

Tony and Barrett arrive at the safehouse, which we later learn is in the mountains.  Barrett is unimpressed with the lack of cleanliness.  Tony and Gibbs are talking in sports code on the phone and Tony relays to Barrett that SecNav will play ball.  Barrett starts to manifest some guilt over all the people who have died on her watch, and now Commander Barnsway too.  Tony thinks she should cut herself some slack.  He starts to get all confessional about his own mistakes, but she’s already asleep. 

Sean Latham joins SecNav and Gibbs in the conference room.  Gibbs provides Latham with the Phantom 8 photo, and SecNav asks the big question.  Latham is indignant about Gibbs having classified material, and then plays coy.  Latham identifies Stratton as Captain Jonathan Cole, former Army Green Beret and says he has been misidentified.  Per Latham, it’s impossible that Cole would be involved in trying to assassinate NCIS agents.  SecNav says that if Latham knows Cole, he should bring him to SecNav for a discussion.  Latham is non-committal but seems to want to comply.  Of course, since we know from Nature of the Beast that Latham is dirty too and he and Stratton are working together, this is not inspiring.

Back to the safe house where Tony is asleep.  The door unlocks.  Tony pulls his gun, but it’s just Ziva.  She exposits that she would have called, but her cell does not work in the mountains.  She has coffee and breakfast.  Tony goes to shower.  Ziva tells Barrett about the meeting with Latham and says she might be in the safe house for a while.  Also, after Barrett went missing, Gibbs had Ziva access her work email for leaks.  She hands Barrett an email from her mother.  Barrett thanks her.  Barrett non-sequiturs into Ziva’s future plans.  Family, she wonders?  They toast coffee to “some day.”

Okay…

Stratton meets Latham in a tunnel on a jogging trail.  He even greets Latham’s dog.  Latham is annoyed that NCIS has connected them.  Latham calls him Cole, so that’s Stratton’s real name.  Latham tells Cole about the set-up and Cole thinks it might expedite matters.  Cole has nothing to lose.  That’s a problem for Latham.  Selling the microchips made everyone a lot of money but it’s behind them.  Cole claims he can’t abandon a mission until it’s complete.  Latham calls that “good soldier crap” and tells Cole he’s a wanted man and a traitor.  He tells him to forget about Barrett.  Cole can’t.  Latham says he’s not getting Barrett, but then subtly drops the location of the safe house on Old Rag Mountain.  Latham is giving Cole the heads up out of loyalty, and then he wants Cole to leave so neither of them ends up in Leavenworth.  I guess Cole views this as a betrayal, because then, not entirely unsurprisingly, he stabs Latham to death.  It’s more gruesome than usual too.  We hear the flesh tearing and we see Cole twist the knife.  Cole says he wishes he could quit, but he can’t leave loose ends.  Then he sits the dying Latham on a bench and steals his dog.

Nice guy.

In autopsy, Ducky identifies Latham as having been killed by the same knife and the same technique as Dane, the hitman.  It was a skilled kill that damaged the lungs so that Latham would not have been able to call for help while he bled out.  Ducky has withdrawn Latham’s arm microchip, but it’s no longer active.

Cole is moving through the woods with a bagged rifle.  Actually, it looks like a rocket launcher.  He’s in view of the safe house (although he’s kind of out in the open for a hit).  He targets the house.

Meanwhile, Tony and Barrett unload some heavier artillery. 

Cole loads his RPG.

Barrett is thinking Tony and Ziva should get together.  When he mentions wanting a woman who appreciates movies the way he does. Barrett suggests that Ziva does.  Tony mentions that Ziva thinks Pirates of the Caribbean (2003) is a “cinema classic.”

Cole aims his RPG.

Barrett is still on the Ziva train.  Tony is dismissive.  He says they are co-workers and teammates who have each other’s backs.  Barrett seems to think that’s the point.

Cole is still aiming.  He fires. 

Off in the woods, Ziva and McGee separately report a shot fired over their respective comms. 

The house is destroyed.

Gibbs is in the woods too.  He tells Ziva and McGee to move in. 

Cole stops to admire his mess.  But then sees Ziva moving in.  He does the smart thing and runs.  Ziva confirms visual and Gibbs tells her to take the shot if she has it.  She does.  She and Cole engage in what, for Ziva, is her second shoot out in two episodes.  Newborn King, Episode 9.11.  McGee gets off some shots too, but Cole is shielded behind a tree.  All three agents converge behind a rock.  Ziva thinks the gun is firing a .50 caliber round and questions the accuracy of a gun that would fire something that size.  Gibbs feels like Cole is pretty damned accurate.  The team unloads as one, training suppressive fire on that poor tree.  Gibbs slips away in the barrage and Cole fires back and then makes a run for it when Ziva and McGee duck.  They chase him.  Right into a FBI HRT.  Cole tries to turn and runs into Gibbs.  Gibbs tells him to go for it.  Cole wants to, for a second.  But then he drops to his knees and surrenders. 

Cole tells Gibbs he’s sorry for his loss.  But Gibbs calls Tony in front of Cole and drops the news that Tony was at a completely different safe house.  The dialogue makes sure to point out that SecNav lied to Latham rather than NCIS lying to SecNav, and Tony calls him one hell of a liar.  Gibbs is just glad he’s lying for them.  Cole has a resigned look of respect on his face.

Back at NCIS, Tony says he and Ziva are going out for a drink and asks Barrett to join.  She’s going to meet her mom, though.  They say goodbye at the elevator.

Gibbs has Cole in interrogation.  Cole defends his record as a Phantom 8 operative.  Gibbs emphasizes the past tense.  But he shows Cole kill photos of some very bad folks.  Cole thinks that’s worth some leniency.  But Gibbs doesn’t play that game.  He says Cole is no better than the people he killed.  Cole says they’re not that different.  Gibbs draws the distinction that he doesn’t kill innocent people for money.  “Then why do you kill innocent people?” Cole responds.  Then he leans in and sings a song about Mexico.  Signifying that he knows about Gibbs making a blood spatter collage out of Pedro Hernandez’s head (Hiatus, Part One, Episode 3.23).  Although since Hernandez was hardly innocent, one wonders what Cole’s point is.  Gibbs poker faces it, having faced down the threat of consequences for his “crime,” and we shift scenes.

To the squad room, where Ziva asks after Barrett.  Tony is optimistic.  Tony asks about Ray, but Ziva would rather not discuss it.  She does say she is losing her patience.  Tony agrees she should.  He suggests they have a lot in common in that respect.  He walks up to her and there’s a tense moment of silence.  But she is grateful to have someone in her life who is as romantically dysfunctional as she is.  Tony, playfully but meaningfully, asks if she considers him to be someone in her life.  But then her phone rings, breaking the spell.  And he can tell by her face that it’s Ray.  She asks what she should say.  He’s disappointed, but he tells her to say, “Hello” anyway.  He does stay in her way so that she has to get close to his face to slide past him.  Then he looks on grimly as we hear her greet Ray and say that she has time to talk. 

Quotables:

(1) Tony: I don’t suppose you heard anything from C.I. Ray over the holidays, did you?

Ziva: What about you? Weren’t you supposed to visit your old flame in Baltimore?

Tony: Wendy. Yes.

Ziva: Something came up.

Tony: Yeah, like a U-turn.

(2) Ziva: Change, my dear, requires some action.

Tony: This coming from a woman who’s been waiting eight weeks for a single, solitary phone call from one lousy dude.

Ziva: Seven. And maybe I’m done waiting.  Maybe it’s finally time we both took some action.  Maybe…

Gibbs: No time for maybes. Got a dead Naval officer. There’s nothing maybe about that. Let’s go.

Tony: To be continued?

Ziva: Maybe.

Ziva-propisms: Ziva thinks Barrett was “living off the griddle.”  Barrett was, in fact, living off the grid.  She says “Easy, lion,” when she means, “tiger.”

Tony Awards: Tony refers to McGee as “Edith,” meaning Edith Bunker from All in the Family.  A witness makes the rare movie reference by talking about the Jedi mind trick from Star Wars (1977).  Tony paraphrases Connery from The Untouchables (1987).  Barrett mentions liking Sean Connery in Xanadu (1980).  Tony gives her a look because Sean Connery did not appear in Xanadu.  He appraises Ziva’s love of Pirates of the Caribbean (2003).  He quotes The Wizard of Oz (1939) while saying goodbye to Barrett.

Abby Road: Garlic bread. And spaghetti and meatballs.

McNicknames: McStaken.

Ducky Tales: Nothing of note.

The Rest of the Story:

-Kids finding a body is not new on this show.  See Hide & Seek, Episode 6.19and Judgment Day, Part One, Episode 5.18.

-I don’t care for the period after New Years’ either.

-This is two episodes in row of Navy officers getting shot to death over situations involving their attractive platonic female friends.  Newborn King, Episode 9.11.  No good deed…

-I guess the show felt like events previous were too confusing without a recap.  Because the team finding Barrett is a lot more fun and shocking without the recap telegraphing her identity.

-Tony and Barrett knocked boots for most of the latter half of last season.

-Ever wonder why covert black ops teams in TV and movies always allow themselves to be photographed in a group shot?  “Hey, guys, since we’re all here…!”

-The ole’ fake safe house gambit.  Last scene in Spider and the Fly, Episode 8.1.

-Jonathan Cole/Casey Stratton has one more appearance left in him.

-EJ Barrett, on the other hand, is all done.

Casting Call: Latham is Philip Casnoff.  Per IMDB, he’s a one-ep character actor on a bunch of shows but had his biggest role in something called Strong Medicine.  He also had a recurring role on Oz.  And he guested on one show that I haven’t thought about in 35 years: Crazy Like a Fox.

Man, This Show Is Old: Nothing stands out.

MVP: I feel like Gibbs provided all the forward momentum.

Rating: Not bad.  It tied ups some loose ends and gave Barrett a last appearance where she didn’t aggravate me.  Cole is a good adversary who I think the show used too sparingly.  Maybe Scott Wolf didn’t want to commit to a long form arc.  Although his motivation for not simply taking his money and ghosting is ham-handed, and his reasoning for killing Latham was sort of nutty (especially considering what we learn about Cole’s moral code in later appearances).  Specifically, he couldn’t have killed Latham for betraying him as Latham did him a solid and then simply asked him to go underground after he killed Barrett.  And he doesn’t seem to care about loose ends since he willingly walked into an obvious trap.  Maybe he just really wanted the guy’s dog.

The less said about Tony and Ziva playing with our emotions, the better.

Still, good enough for seven Palmers.

Next Time: So what’s the deal with this Ray guy anyway?  He drive a fast car or something?

Alex Barfield is an attorney in Atlanta, Georgia. When not practicing law or writing about NCIS, he chases his children around, volunteers at his church, and looks for other television shows to obsess over. He can be reached at albarfie@gmail.com or on Twitter at @AlexBarfield1.