"JAG" 8.20-21: "Ice Queen" and "Meltdown"
("Navy NCIS: The Beginning")

by Sammie

"JAG" Review, beautifully run by Rosepetal (no relation to this site - this site was named after Kate's Secret Service codename), has "JAG" recaps for the backdoor pilot episodes. Read Ice Queen and Meltdown. Linked with permission.

The team's driving to a crime scene.

GIBBS. Kid puts an arrow in a corpse. That's a new one.
TONY. Just a variation. I remember we found this old guy - died watching TV. We found him sitting in the Lazy Boy, stiff as a board, with a Bud in his hand.
VIVIENNE. Oh, please, not another Baltimore Homicide story.
TONY. Looks like a natural death, but we gotta wait for the ME to confirm it, right? So it's dinnertime, my partner and I are starving, so we tell the beat rookie to keep an eye on the stiff. Rookie's never been alone with a body. Well, suddenly, body goes out of rigor, slumps, the air trapped in the lungs is forced through the voice box and the corpse moans.
VIVIENNE. [LAUGHING] Stop it!
TONY. Rookie freaks, enters his service revolver into the body.
GIBBS. Y'know what I think, Dinozzo?
TONY. Don't say it's an urban myth, man, 'cause I was there.
GIBBS. I think you were the rookie.
TONY. That's funny, Gibbs. Funny. Wrong. But funny.

The body is a female naval officer, but no face - crows ate it. (EW.) The poor little boy who shot the arrow, who was getting made fun of by his scout friends in the teaser, is tougher than his leader...his leader threw up. Viv Blackadder has no sympathy for him: "OK. You might wanna suck it up. For the boys." Haha. You tell 'em.

The little boy is just distraught, and Gibbs goes to talk to him. We find out he saw something bad when he was just a child, and then gives him a business card, telling him to come visit him at NCIS. Some people find it annoying, but I like it - it shows Gibbs has a human side.

Ducky hits on Blackadder...hm. Ducky and the doc in "Heartbreak" I didn't have a problem with, but this Ducky is acting like...like Tony. Viv and Tony are tracking in the woods when Tony calls Viv "Pocahontas" and she goes quiet. Her brother Rex used to call her that.

TONY. I'd rather you didn't think of me as your brother, Viv.
VIVIENNE. Oh, I could never do that, Tony. Rex was...much better looking.
TONY. Ha. What are you, taking comedy lessons from Gibbs.

Back at NCIS, Morrow calls up Gibbs to MTAC, where they watch two of their NCIS colleagues capture a terrorist, Ahmad Bin Atwa, in front of some hotel in France. Viv wants to go, because Bin Atwa fed Hassan Mohammed resources - and Mohammed organized the Cole attack. Gibbs is pissed.

GIBBS. [GETTING INTO HER FACE] You're not here to use NCIS as your personal instrument of revenge. You get your head around this murder case or you pull your tailored suit out of mothballs and you march your butt right back to the J. Edgar Hoover building. Am I clear, Agent Blackadder? Am. I. Clear?

Gibbs has Agent Clarence Dobbs scanning the river for the dead woman's purse. She was frozen in the Potomac for months after she died in January, then just washed up with the spring thaw.

The deceased is a Lieutenant Lauren Singer, a little witch determined to sabotage any female who could become the first female JAG. Viv and Gibbs go to JAG, where Commander Harmon Rabb has a conniption over the lawyer's death and cuts Gibbs off rather snidely. His CO, Admiral A.J. (Jethro, same as Gibbs' middle name) Chegwidden, calls him into his office to talk to him...then realizes what Gibbs is doing.

CHEGWIDDEN. ... D-mn, he's good. ... Special Agent Gibbs. He's got me questioning you. Hearsay rules don't apply in interrogation, I'm duty-bound to repeat anything you tell me if he asks.
RABB. You really think he's that devious?
CHEGWIDDEN. Reminds me a lot of you.

Tony's got evidence for Abby.

TONY. Is that number two or three [Caff-Pow] today?
ABBY. If you must know, it's number four.
TONY. I brought you a little present.
ABBY. Ooh. And you wonder why you're still single.
(Um, Abbs, I REALLY don't think that's the reason why Tony's still single.) Tony's intrigued by all the pictures Abby has up - her lab art.
TONY. You need to get out more, Abby.
ABBY. Is that an invite?
TONY. [GRINS]

Gibbs interrogates Lieutenant Bud Roberts, who reappears in "Seadog", about who the father could be - someone at JAG?

BUD. No, that - nobody around here would be dumb enough to get involved with Lieutenant Singer. I mean, she's not an unattractive woman, but...you - you - you don't think it's me, do you? I did not have sex with that woman!
GIBBS. That's not the best choice of words there, Lieutenant.

There's a Moscow cell phone number on a bar napkin, and Viv traces it to a Sergei Zhukov, Rabb's half-brother, who was stateside when Singer got pregnant.

Tony finds Singer's car, with fingerprints large enough to be a man's in the passenger's side dashboard. He promises Abby dinner at Cafe Atlantico if she can run it fast.

The baby's a girl, and Ducky gives us why he talks to the body: "I have the utmost respect for the dead. ... If you were dead, wouldn't you rather be spoken to rather than about?"

The episode ends with Rabb in the NCIS interrogation room. (Read the transcript here - it's at the end.) He tries to intimidate Gibbs, but Gibbs isn't buying it. It's an awesome scene, and far better when seen acted out than in mere script. Gibbs then plays his trump card and points out Zhukov's involvement, and Rabb loses it insisting that his half-brother is not guilty. Gibbs chooses that moment to begin readhing Rabb his rights.

GIBBS. You have the right to remain silent and make no statement at all.
RABB. You think I killed Lieutenant Singer?
GIBBS. Any statement you do make could be used against you in a court of martial law.
RABB. I know my Article 31 rights and I waive them.
VIVIENNE. You have the right to consult a lawyer prior to any...
RABB. I said I waive them.
GIBBS. She used to be FBI. [Haha. That's pretty funny.]
VIVIENNE. This lawyer may be a civilian lawyer, retained by you at no cost to...
RABB. How long you been doing this, Gibbs?
GIBBS. Nineteen years.
RABB. Can you tell if someone's guilty, by looking in their eyes?
GIBBS. I can.
RABB. Yeah, well look in mine. Ask me. Ask me!
[BEAT]
GIBBS. Would you kill for your brother?

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Gibbs sends Viv back to the FBI to get all the information she can find on Bin Atwa.

Meantime, a cover is found by the river. Abby can't tell whose it is. The prosecutor, Maj. MacBurney, preps Abby...WOW! Abby's almost unrecognizable in a powder blue suit and glasses and her hair down as she testifies. Um...not sure I like this twitchy Abby. The confident bouncy Abby is so much more fun. Haha... She's testifying at Rabb's court martial on the evidence she tested from Singer. "She got whac - she went to Valhalla...uh...within two hours of ingesting [a bar mix]."

Gibbs and Rabb face off one more time - in jail. Rabb didn't make any calls to Sergei from his home or his office after Singer was found dead; he used a phone booth, Rabb tosses at him with a smirk. Gibbs is sure now that Rabb isn't the killer, and that the only reason why Rabb is in jail is because he's protecting his brother.

Gibbs turns the case over to Tony - he has to go interrogate Bin Atwa.

Abby is sure now that the cover was planted evidence - it is filled with river silt, but Singer's uniform isn't since she was frozen in the river for awhile. They check Singer's records - she had dinner for two for several months once a week, always different places but the same time. Gibbs tells them to look for someone with an axe to grind with Rabb.

Viv and Tony show up at JAG to talk to Rabb about his cover, found in the river. Gibbs was right - it was a fellow with an axe to grind with Rabb.

In the "JAG" episode "Fortunate Son" (read the "JAG" Review recap of the episode here) which aired 18 March 2003 ("Ice Queen" aired 22 April 2003, and "Meltdown" 29 April 2003), a longtime rival of Rabb's appears. When he enters, he sets his cover next to Rabb's by the door to his office. They have a confrontation. When he leaves, he picks up Rabb's cover, not his own.

When Tony shows Rabb the photo, Rabb is a little stunned but angry, also.

No matter. Tony's got the chap in interrogation now...sucks to be him.

Gibbs' interrogation of Rabb was one of two men, too alike in their control-freak-ness, stuck in the same room. Gibbs knows which buttons to push - the protective big brother one - because he himself is the protective type. As dumb as it was to make Rabb the killer, Mark Harmon and David James Elliott are terrific in the interrogation scene.

Tony's interrogation of Lindsey is of two opposites. One of a NCIS agent who loves stories, is single, and grins his way endlessly through the interrogation while leaning way back on the back two legs of his chair. Lindsey is the straight-laced, nervous and twitchy little suspect.

Tony starts off with ANOTHER Baltimore Homicide cop story.... Haha, look at Viv. She's watching from the other side of the mirror, and she drops her head a little and covers her face with her hand. He starts off with a story about an old case about a gynecologist having an affair and getting the hooker whacked. Lindsey isn't impressed. Tony starts pulling out bank records.

LINDSEY. Is the joke over? Because it wasn't very funny.
TONY. Bear with me. It will be. So this gynecologist, he has the hooker whacked. Problem solved, right? [TURNS AND POINTS BACK AT LINDSEY] Wrong! Guy gets nervous, so he sets it up so that another doctor at his practice, a rival, looks like the killer. He plants evidence, and it's a good idea, in theory, but the finger comes pointing back to him. [PUSHES OVER THE BAGGED COVER WITH HIS INDEX FINGER RIGHT OVER TO LINDSEY]

Viv and Tony go out to the ship where Gibbs is, and they got Spain to catch Hassan Mohammed. Viv is carefully snapping pictures of the men on the fishing trawler and sending them back to be analyzed - she's got a few negative matches and then BINGO...the ship captain. She then botches it by looking at him too long.

(By the way, Gibbs' beret is UUUUUGLY.)

Gibbs goes running up to the pilothouse of the trawler, and Mohammed drops a grenade. Gibbs shoots him quickly, then is blown down the stairs by the grenade going off. When he emerges, Viv apologizes, but Gibbs is still pretty annoyed - he considers that she screwed up big time.
 

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Crazy Credits

• Some differences between the spinoff episodes and the series:
  • Gibbs speaks Spanish pretty well in this episode; by "The Immortals", he complains about a book in Spanish, and in "Marine Down", he has Tony read the Spanish newspaper scraps.

  • Gibbs uses a PDA quite easily during his interrogation room scene with Rabb. In "Bête Noire and "See No Evil", however, he's...less than technologically adept, and it's not until "The Truth is Out There" when he picks up a PDA and Kate signals him PDA-to-PDA like Viv does here.

  • Ducky's constant hitting on Viv is dropped, although we do see him attracted to some women, such as Charlie the sheriff and Dr. Janice Byers ("The Good Samaritan" and "Heartbreak").

    We hear almost no more stories about Tony's days with the Baltimore police department; Ducky really takes off on the storytelling.

  • Tony wears glasses in this episode. He never wears them otherwise. (I think he said he had better than 20/20 vision, but I can't remember where he said it.)

• When Gibbs interrogates Rabb, Rabb asks him if he can tell if someone's guilty just by looking in their eyes, and then tells Gibbs to look in his eyes and ask him - we (and Rabb) assume that Gibbs will ask whether he killed Lt. Singer. Gibbs instead asks, "Would you kill for your brother?"

  from Harriet:
  When I met Michael Weatherly on the set of "Ice Queen" in that wonderful park setting, he told me there was one line in the script that convinced him he had to be a part of it....and that was the line.

  The pilot was a "JAG" episode (as described in that same article, "The hit show as launch pad") and, of course, utilized our same staff and crew, with one exception that I'm aware of: the casting director was Susan Bluestein. Melissa Skoff was busy casting "JAG" episodes to follow. (As you know, the last episodes of the season were split in two: half an episode was filmed early to include Catherine Bell before she left to have the baby, and the other half later down the line.) And second unit in Washington, D.C. was helmed by director Alan Levi.

• from article JAG Spinoff Secrets by Daniel R. Coleridge:
  ""Robin is a very good actress, very sweet girl," Bellisario says. "We were kind of unfair to her, because she did not even get cast until the day before we started shooting [last season's JAG episodes], so she did not have the advantage of coming in and knowing anything about this show. But she was a little soft for this kind of role.""

• from Kip:
  • Vivienne Blackadder:
    Vivienne is DPB's wife's name. And Blackadder is her mother's maiden name.

    Both DPB and CBS wanted to replace Robyn [Lively]. Robyn is a lovely person and a good actress, but casting is often more about matching the actress to the character. She didn't fit what DPB wanted for this role. DPB makes the casting decisions. He...recast for the series.

    Probably [her absence from the team] will be said that she didn't cut it and went back to the FBI, but don't hold me to that.

  • In the JAG episode "Answered Prayers", Lt. Singer met Cmdr. Lindsey.[DPB] intended that Singer have an affair with grave consequence. Guess he didn't realize how 'grave' until he created NCIS.

  • [The place where they found Singer's body] is not a park. It's Franklin reservoir which is off Mulholland road on the Hollywood side of the hills.

  • [Singer's body] was a special effects body created to the specs needed for the show. First intact and then when we were finished filming that, it was opened up an fake organs inserted for that part of the autopsy.

    Viewers saw very little of what was really there. A few brief flashed shots of the face, arms, legs. In the process of filming we shot it all and then edited out 99% of it. (David James Elliott said in an interview on "Jimmy Kimmel Live" that his wife did not play the dead body.)

  • DPB likes the idea that no one knows who the father of Singer's baby is. At some point it might come out. But nothing from the man so far.

  • We still do [the scenes from the body's point of view], only we don't go to the monochromatic blue of the victim's POV. Mainly because in the pilot it had a payoff where the body POV actually moved to watch a character exit. We gave that up.

  • I believe we had one of [the two new JAG lawyers, Cmdr. Coleman or Maj. MacBurney] coming from Hawaii or the West Coast and another from Europe. But I can't swear to it. (Cmdr. Coleman comes from San Diego.)

    DPB decided not to go in that direction [of having the two JAG lawyers show up regularly]. It has nothing to do with the talent of Michael or Alicia, he liked them very much. He doesn't want to do a JAG-like show.

  • DPB agrees [that] The bg music was too loud. Won't happen, again. It was a technical slip up that was caught too late. No excuse, but from the time we finished filming until the show was shipped to CBS for air was less than 9 days. Usually you want about three weeks. The loud music was one of the results of the rush.

• Harriet's visit to the set:
  The set was located in a magnificent park very close to where I live in the Valley. It was like finding Oz in your backyard, because I never knew it was there. (New Yorkers tend to cling to paved areas.) It was bright and sunshiny, and the winds of the previous day had dissipated. My friend, Angela, drove because I'm not good with winding trails, either.

  We arrived just as the lunch break ended, to be greeted warmly by the regular "JAG" crew, including Propmaster George Tuers, Stunt Coordinator Diamond Farnsworth, Hairstylist Carla Dean (I've got my eye on a wig similar to Karri Turner's -- well, why not, she's got my name, it's only fair), co-Exec. Producer Chas. Johnson in deep discussion with Don McGill, who co-wrote the pilot with DPB, and has the added title of "Producer" (well-deserved, and besides he's such a sweetie) and a bunch of familiar faces who yelled a friendly "Hello, Harriet."

  As we waited for the van to take us further down, down, down to the actual set, I spotted Mark Harmon and introduced myself, credits and all. When I mentioned "Quantum Leap," he asked me to remember him to Scott Bakula.

  At the set, DPB was bustling around, getting the scene ready, stopping momentarily to greet us. The crew hustled to find us Director's chairs to be placed with a good view. Mark walked over and arranged to have a screen set up to protect us from the blinding sun. It was a thoughtful gesture, and reminded me I should have remembered that myself. (I never miss an occasion to quote from my sunscreen tube: There's no such thing as a healthy tan.)

  Mark was called to enter the scene, and as he walked by DPB, concentrating on the monitors in front of him, he called out, "I just met Harriet!" Don, whom I would describe as "unflappable," was startled. "What?" he asked. And Mark repeated it, twice as loud. Caught everyone, including me, off-guard actually. Talk about my fifteen, well, seconds of fame.

  I was reminded of Scott, who would stop whatever he was doing when I entered the QL set, and yell a greeting to me: Hi, Harriet! and everyone would turn around to say hello.

  It was deja vu all over again. Who said there are no "Second Acts" in America?

  As the scene was being rehearsed, Michael Weatherly sat down next to me and told about meeting DPB in Australia, where he was filming "The Natalie Wood Story," playing the part of Robert Wagner. (It's a forthcoming ABC Movie of the Week, directed by Peter Bogdanovich.)

  There was an instant rapport between the two, and Michael said he eagerly awaited the pilot script. "There was one line that decided me and I knew then I had to be part of it." And he was called away to the set. (Yes, of course, I know the line but that will have to wait until after the episode airs, when all...and much more...will be revealed.) See above for the line.

  As I moved closer to get a better view, a gentleman leaped up to offer me his seat. The chairback read: NCIS Liaison. "What a coincidence, I have that same title." I told him about the various fan lists and he was quite impressed, especially when I mentioned "JAG" fans were world-wide and I've heard from countries I never knew existed. He promised to email me "talking points" about the NCIS, and I, in turn, told him I'd share your feedback with him. "Lots of our viewers will be sure to point out any gaffes you didn't catch," I warned.

  I was waiting for David McCallum, who had a late call and wasn't due until the set moved once again, deeper into the tree-shrouded ravine, where I had decided not to go for reasons which will be revealed you know when. And suddenly, there he was, older than when I first knew him, when I answered the fan mail for "The Man From U.N.C.L.E." but then, so was I. But the face was the same, the voice the same, and I surprised him by showing the fan photos and picture articles of a time when we were both much younger. He described where the photos were taken, so many years ago, and then he had to leave for his scene. "I'll mail you all this," I promised, but he wouldn't let go. "My jacket has a lot of room," he answered, stuffing the material into a variety of pockets.

  I guess you'll have to consider this post a cliffhanger of a sort but I will fill in the blanks the next day after we all enjoy seeing this very special "JAG" episode together on Tuesday, April 22nd. Best, Harriet

  ______________________________________________________________

  First, I must say I never ventured down to the reservoir where the body was found because David Bellisario told me there were bullfrogs and besides I don't do well in places without sidewalks. Or all night drug stores. Which was a shame, because that was the scene with David McCallum and we barely had time to talk before he was called away.

  (Someone on the crew told me that Franklin Canyon was used under the opening credits of the old black and white "Mayberry" series.)

  ...

  Since I had read "Ice Queen," I was deliberately vague about the set and the script, but I hadn't read "Meltdown" (purposely) and was swept away by the compelling drama, the complex characters, the interconnecting storylines, the breathless pace, the driving music, the graphics (I used to review movies...can you tell?). It was quite an emotional ride from someone I've worked with over twenty years and never ceases to amaze me...filmwise, in this case. Don Bellisario, of course, who put it all together, as well as co-writing with Don McGill. (The episode was expertly directed by Scott Brazil.)