First thing's first: it's a Dorneget episode! Yay for Dorney!
He's having an implant tooth pulled at the dentist because he got some popcorn stuck in there. But what should be a routine visit ends in DRAMA when the dentist finds a microchip thing implanted in the tooth. EWWWWWWW! Someone's been bugging him through his teeth! That's unbelievably gross.
Meanwhile in the bullpen, McGee's using one of those super fun air spraying canister thingies to clean his desk phone, and Tony's giving him shit about being anal. As it were. Cool it, slashficcers, there's nothing to see here.
My TV boyfriend Jimmy Palmer turns up to get anxious about his impending bachelor party that Abby's planning. (I'm not jealous that my TV boyfriend is getting married, but thanks for asking. I'm fine. We have an understanding.)
Jimmy anxious face:
Neither Tony nor McGee want to talk to him right now because they know he'll only drill them for information (in a non-slashfic way) and they both pretend to be talking on the phone. Except McGee's is in pieces.
Oh, all right. Heh. That was kind of funny. Anyway, somehow Jimmy sees through their brilliant plan, and so McGee and Tony decide to screw around with him (seriously, this isn't a slashfic). They tell him not to worry about the party, but then McGee says, "Just make sure you're up on your hepatitis vaccination." Bing! McGee's getting all the funnies. Then Tony adds, "And get a good pair of kneepads." Maybe this is slashfic. "And a good helmet," McGee finishes. Um...he has the helmet God gave him, man.
So Jimmy laughs nervously because he can't work out if they're tugging his leg.
Oh, Jimmy!
But wait! After Jimmy leaves, McGee and Tony discuss that they don't have a clue what Abby has planned, and wonder if Ziva knows. Enter Ziva:
WANT! BLAZER! NOW!
She enters with Dorney, because when the chip was found in his tooth he called Gibbs (because he has a hero crush on the man), and Gibbs sent Ziva to deal with it. Dorney's worried that he's going to be in trouble. Dude, hardly your fault.
Abby and Ducky and Gibbs have a chit-chat in the lab about the chip. Ducky reckons it was implanted no more than a few months ago and OH MY GOD! Check the back of his neck for a scar like Dana Scully has! Wow, you know who I want kidnapped by aliens and tortured even less than my TV boyfriend Jimmy Palmer? My second TV boyfriend (as of now) Dorney. Don't hurt him! I...I...I *love* him! Anyway, Abby works out some science stuff to do with the chip and they find it's got some patented technology and that leads them to find out that Richard Schiff's behind it all.
Exposition McGee suggests that Dorney was given the implant because he's a probie, a floater (not like that, sickos) and a big talker. Presumably he sees important things when he does data entry and talks about, like, Top Secret navy intel to the mail boy. Whatevs.
Enter Sam Ryan! The DoD flagged Abby's search on Richard Schiff's patented tooth technology (you keeping up with this?) and she thought she'd swing by and lend a hand by providing intel on his venture capital firm (I don't know what that is).
See? She's carrying a report. She's completely necessary for the episode. Meanwhile, Ziva catches Tony checking out Sam's 'report' (report on the state of sexy, that is!):
Rrrowww! Yeah, JLC's still got it goin' in. Even if her character here is kind of creepy.
Gibbs sends the Gibblets scattering to do actual work. Tony and McGee are particularly interested in the Gibbs/Sam interaction as they leave, and in one of my favourite moments of the episode, Ziva reaches out to literally turn Tony's face away from watching them.
Cute.
The Dynamic Due end up at Richard Schiff's venture capital firm (seriously, what is that?) and blah blah blah he sent his partner an email about one time they went surfing (which never happened), and business partner dude posits that Schiff is going crazy. Ziva says, "I think that boat has already sailed." In another favourite moment for me, Tony almost lets her have it, and then corrects her. "Ship, but yeah." That exchange deserves a GIF.
You almost got there, honey.
Back at the yard, Gibbs and Sam are human lie detecting the shit out of Dorney's regular dentist who did the chip implant. Dentist reckons he doesn't know anything, and says he's never seen Richard Schiff. Sam's all "LIAR!" And she might be right, but my God, lady, must you look so smug?
Dial it down a little. You're not winning friends on this side of the TV screen.
So then McGee bursts in and he's all "Boss! [Richard Schiff] is totes on the Skypey thing for [dentist dude] in MTAC! Come quick!" But no! He's actually on the Skypey thing in MTAC for Gibbs! Because this is the part where the villain gets all villainy and quotes dead dudes to show he's smart, for reals. And then he says that it's all Gibbs' fault that he's blowing up navy boats anyway. Gibbs' reaction to that:
He appears to be thinking about having a nap. Sam seems shocked by this revelation, and Schiff doesn't give a reason why Gibbs is at fault, but...yeah. I'd buy that. Gibbs is a piece of work, you guys. He has little regard for the law when it doesn't suit his purposes, so I wouldn't be surprised if he screwed over Schiff's son somehow. Ooh! Maybe Schiff is related to that guy who Gibbs let go to jail (or at least trail) for killing that navy guy who was actually killed by his mother-in-law! Still waiting for that one to bite Gibbs in the ass.
Gibbs and Sam go back to question Dorney, who does indeed look like he's about to wet Tony's chair.
He thinks Sam's trying to psych him out with her mind games, and then he ends up psyching himself out, and seriously, I *really* want Dorney to be added to the cast next year. I adore him.
Gibbs and Sam have a 'tender' moment wherein she assures him that what Schiff is doing really isn't his fault. There's touching and everything.
Oh wow, she really cares.
In the B-plot, Jimmy approaches Abby about the bachelor party. In light of recent Schiffy-events, Jimmy wants to cancel. But Abby says that she's already put down a non-refundable deposit for 50 gallons of scented body lotion.
Jimmy's aghast face:
Abby insists that life must go on, and so should the party. Jimmy's freaking out so much that he actually raises his voice to her, but Abby just waves him off. Then she segues into explaining that she's running a software program to see where in the world Richard Schiff has been lately. And oh noes! He's on the Navy Yard grounds RIGHT NOW!
Cue Tony and McGee doing a walkie and talkie (wink wink, nudge nudge, West Wing HILARITY right there):
Schiff's long gone, but he's left behind a replica boat of one of the ones Gibbs has built in his basement, so I guess he's been in Gibbs' house or something.
I don't know why everyone's always going on about how hard it must be for Gibbs to get those boats out of his basement. He could carry it out in a backpack.
Tony hotness check interlude:
Everything seems to be in order here. Carry on.
Gibbs and Sam talk that night in his dining room. She exposits that Schiff's son died in an explosion on a navy ship in port. The early warning system that could have saved him failed, so she thinks he's trying to expose flaws in navy ships. Then she and Gibbs get into an argument about how Sam refuses to turn off her mind games when she gets home at the end of the day, and how Gibbs "marinates" in his work when he gets home. True dat. The argument is basically, "Let me in!" "No, you let *me* in!"
Gibbs is kind enough to mirror my response to this fight:
For real. End this relationship now. Sam's going to turn out to be in cahoots with Richard Schiff, Scott Wolf and all the other bad guys anyway.
Tony and Ziva, meanwhile, are tailing the guy who bribed Dorney's regular dentist to implant the chip in Dorney's tooth. And by 'tailing' I mean 'sitting in a parked car in a carpark waiting for the guy to come buy and gossiping about Gibbs and Sam'. Well, Tony wants to gossip, but Ziva thinks that it's unseemly to gossip now that Gibbs and Sam are in a relationship. Tony, true to his nature, can't believe that she isn't interested in other people's private lives.
"WHAT?" Honestly, if Ziva doesn't want to speculate about people's private lives, she and Tony will never make it. Because that's essentially all he does. Gibbs interrupts them before they can reach this moment of realisation, and then bribery dude comes back to his car. He sees Team Gibbs (where's McGee in all this, I wonder?) and cheeses it to his car. The team dash after him, leading to an Action!Tony shot:
Action!Tony'sStuntDouble, anyway. Bribery dude is freaked out when they catch up to him and offers to give up intel on Richard Schiff's plans, but before he can he takes two bullets in the chest. Bribery dude dead.
Back in the B-plot, Jimmy's pumping Ducky for intel on what Abby has planned for his party. Ducky's tight lipped, but does say that Abby's asked to borrow autopsy's rotary saw (the one with the 20ft cord, because the 15ft one is too short) for the occasion.
Jimmy's displeased face:
Gibbs interrupts and we find out that Duckman and the Gremlin found another one of those Watcher Fleet chip things in bribery dude's arm. You know like the one EJ pulled out of Levin's arm? Yeah. Badness. The team works out the chip has all these details about machines Richard Schiff's bought, and it makes it look like Schiff's stealing from his own company to buy it all. Gibbs and Sam go question Schiff's venture capital firm (?) business partner about it, and he says that for the amount of money they're talking, Schiff is either building a fuel pre-burner for the space shuttle or making naval artillery shells. Interesting that those two items are the only ones on the planet that cost the same amount of money that they're talking about. It's like The Price Is Right or something.
Exposition: artillery has to be to exact specifications for navy ship guns. If they're off by a little bit, they'll make the guns explode, and they'll take out a massive chunk of the ship, as illustrated by Abby's animation:
BOOM! So basically, they think Schiff's building defective artillery and sending it off to ships. The devious bastard!
In the lab, Dorney totally McGees an explanation to Gibbs about the artillery and...whatever. I'm distracted by how season one McGee-like Dorney is in this scene, minus the stuttering.
Aww, who's a mini-Tim?
Essentially he's found Schiff's cell phone number (one of them, I assume) and Gibbs gives him a ringy-ding-ding. Schiff villains some more while Abby tracks him, and they get his location (and the location of his bomb factory, she assumes) as he hangs up. She sends Gibbs and the team off to catch him.
Reality check interlude: Seriously? He was expecting the call, guys. You don't think he would have expected that you were tracking his location when you called and maybe baited you to a particular location? He's Richard fucking Schiff. He's not stupid.
Team Gibbs chases down the lead anyway and end up in a warehouse that's empty save for a security guard pushing around a briefcase full of money. Well. Someone's about to have a shitty evening.
The team assumes that Schiff's already shipped off the faulty artillery, so they get Vance (who's at a NATO security conference in Prague, FYI) to halt all planned war games. Here's a handy map of where all the US navy's ships are:
Looks like Australia's safe. That's all I care about.
The warehouse security guard is all "I'm innocent!" and says he was meant to deliver that briefcase of cash to someone in a limo on M Street that night. So it looks like Jimmy's bachelor party is cancelled, because they'll have to work. Which is a shame, because Abby's dressed like this for it:
I would expect nothing less.
But Gibbs is all, "No way! Party on, dude! We can use the party as a cover while we actually wait for that limo to arrive!" Genius!
And so, the bachelor party. Dorney and Tony are both wearing these hats.
Ugh. God, I hate seeing groups of men at bachelor parties out and about almost as much as I hate seeing hens parties out. I prefer to see bachelor parties though, because there's less of a chance that the participants will assault me in some way. Bridal parties are fucking insane. (Except yours, of course. I'm sure yours was/will be a lovely affair and that you didn't/won't harass anyone at all.)
So the group of Jimmy, Gibbs, McGee, Tony and Dorney are actually doing shots of apple juice (which Dorney says he watered down - perhaps he's diabetic?), so everyone has to act drunk. Cue the wall of drunk:
McGee's my favourite. Although I gotta say that I always forget that Mark Harmon's a bit of a silver fox until he smiles. He's not bad for an old guy.
Then the bad guy in the limo turns up and after the camera has stopped its slow pan up Cote de Pablo's legs, the bachelor party makes its move.
Ziva's hot dress interlude:
Wow.
So they all rush the limo (except Jimmy, who runs off in a drunken panic screaming "This is real! This is getting real!). It's not Schiff in there though, but his venture capital firm (!) business partner. He gets taken to interrogation where, amongst a bunch of exposition, we actually get another good look at Ziva's dress.
Holy fuckballs.
Business partner dude 'fesses up and says he was embezzling from the business and Schiff wasn't involved. So Schiff *hasn't* been making phoney baloney artillery! He set them up to go on a wild goose chase!
Gibbs goes to have it out with Sam, who was the one who came up with the phoney artillery theory to begin with. She just shrugs and says her theory was wrong. It was a mistake. Whoopsie! Gibbs doesn't say it outright but seems to believe that she led them there on purpose. Which leads to another fight where Gibbs goes crazy because he can never read her, and Sam throws back that Gibbs never talks. Oh yeah, this relationship is going to last.
And then - oh no! - Tony tells Gibbs that Vance never made it home from the airport when he flew in from Prague that night. He's disappeared and no one knows where he is.
TO BE CONTINUED....
Next week: Richard Schiff appears to try to blow up the NCIS building, and no one in the teaser says a single thing about Vance so I'm going to go ahead and assume that he's fine.
One episode to go. And I think that overall it's been a pretty good season.
No comments:
Post a Comment