1.02: "Hung Out to Dry"

by Sammie

Is anyone else disturbed by this teaser? That this girl might have been raped by her boyfriend if a Marine didn't come parachuting through the roof of her SUV?

Tony has to go to Gibbs' house to find him because he can't reach him by phone - he ripped out his hard line and dunked his cell phone in paint thinner. Cell phones are EXPENSIVE! Why didn't he just turn it off?! Or turn off the ringer?!

The crime scene: Kate arrives at the crime scene in a suit and heels. Ah, proper, proper Kate. "Can't work a field in high heels," Gibbs tells her and gives her a pair of boots. How is she not creeped out by the fact that he knows her shoe size? I would be creeped out. I'd get paranoid. Meantime, Tony asks Ducky about the phones.

TONY. Ducky, why would Gibbs rip his hard line out and dunk his cell phone in a jar of paint thinner?
DUCKY. Oh dear! I should have realized the time of year. It's his anniversary.
TONY. Which marriage?
DUCKY. The last one, of course. Isn't it always?
TONY. Ducky, I'm not following.
DUCKY. Every year, ex-wife #3 gets drunk on their anniversary and calls him. Repeatedly.
TONY. Why doesn't he, uh, change his number?
DUCKY. I have no idea. In case you haven't noticed, Gibbs is a man of more questions than answers.

The deceased is a Larry Fuentes, who was jumping with a dinged collarbone. They've got a bunch of suspects but narrow it down to two riggers, one of whom Fuentes wrote up for sloppy work. No one will tell NCIS about the painkillers Fuentes was taking, though. "Semper Fry. You rat, you fry." I love Abby.

Kate and Abby bond over Kate's guns (she says she's carrying more than one) and Abby's tats as they work on forensics. In fact, they get along so blazingly Tony is a little miffed.

TONY. [TO ABBY] Why didn't you take to me this fast?
ABBY. You're like a piercing, Tony. It takes awhile for the the throbbing to stop and the skin grow back. [PATS HIM ON THE BACK] (Ew.)
TONY. [GRINNING] That's more than I wanted to know.

Two things here puzzle me. First, what's the point of finding chutes Ramsay packed before his suspension? If every rigger leaves behind skin samples, then any chute Ramsay packed would have the other skin samples on it. It would be pointless.

If the chutes and everything were cleaned, so that there were no more skin samples on the chutes after each jump and before each rigging, then there could maximum be four sets of prints on the inner strings of each chute - the skin sample of the jumper, and that would be easily eliminated (a different sample for each chute). That makes max three skin samples that would be on separate chutes - riggers Fuentes, Brinkman, and Dafelmair, since Ramsay was on suspension.

(Ramsay was only allowed to pass out chutes, not pack them. That means Ramsay's skin cells would be on the outside of the chutes, not the inside.)

I think we can rule out Fuentes. Doubt he'd try to kill himself. And with him dead, his DNA is readily available to test against the samples, rule them out.

So that would leave only Brinkman and Dafelmair as the two unknown samples. Now that we're down to two? Wouldn't need DNA to figure out who was the sabateur. Dafelmair said he only packed four chutes, and each chute has a little log book with the rigger's name on it. Take the chutes Brinkman and Dafelmair are on record as packing, and play process of elimination.

Like those awful "Joe sat next to Bob, who sat three seats away from Dan" math problems. Ugh.

They work over poor judge advocate Lt. Roberts to get search authorizations, and Tony reports that Ramsay was written up for frayed lines, bent cones, and so on. Ramsay took a swing at Fuentes when Fuentes, senior rigger, wrote him up. Oh, watch this. Gibbs' cell phone rings, and he flips it open.

GIBBS. [READING] 'Identity withheld.'
TONY. Probably the reason you married her.
KATE. [PAUSES IN HER WRITING, BROW FURROWS]
GIBBS. [LOOKS ANNOYED]
(Tony! Stop! I cringe to think.... No! Tony! Keep your trap shut!)
TONY. She probably hid her personality as most women do - (Look at Kate's face - haha - she's got a mix of "I can't believe I'm hearing this" and annoyance) and by that time it was too late because you'd already - [SEES GIBBS' EXPRESSION] I'm gonna shut up now.
GIBBS. Now? (Poor Tony!)
KATE. Did you really just say 'as most women do'?

The team ransacks the Marines' lockers. The poor chap who did sloppy work (Ramsay) is the suspect, and he keeps insisting all this stuff they find in his locker (including sulfuric acid) are plants. I'd think he was lying, too, except there's still about fifteen minutes to go in the episode, so he can't be the killer.

We find out Tony's handwriting stinks. Can't write, can't type...boy, is he screwed.

Gibbs displays his general lack of patience in waiting for a DNA test. Kate's random comment sets him off, and they head down to look up all the chutes from the four men who jumped that night (right when Fuentes died). Dafelmair sabotaged several main chutes, but everyone else's reserve worked - except Fuentes'. Dafelmair soldered the zipper shut, ensuring that Fuentes had no working chute.

Gibbs forces a confession - he and Tony set up a ruse to switch Fuentes' futzed with reserve (which Tony carries and wants to exchange) with Dafelmair's. Gibbs then knifes the hook that's supposed to set off Dafelmair's main chute...and tells him to jump. In the ensuing scuffle, TONY gets knocked overboard - and as his chute opens, he's cheering all the way down.

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Crazy Credits

• I believe the episode was based on a true story of a disgruntled jumper who cut his fellow jumpers' lines, but don't quote me.

• Patrick Labyorteaux appears as his "JAG" character Lt. Bud Roberts. Labyorteaux is credited with Mark Harmon in "Summer School" and "Prince of Bel-Air". In the former, he plays a English-flunking football player Mark Harmon's character helps to keep fit for football.

• Tony says 4 is unlucky in China and 8 is lucky. "4" in Chinese sounds like the word for "die," and "8" (especially in the Cantonese dialect) sounds particularly like the word for "prosper"/"multiply" (such as in the Cantonese version of the traditional Chinese New Year greeting, "Gong hay fat choy").

• In this episode, Ducky says he has a nephew. He wears no wedding ring and nothing has been mentioned of his being married at any point, plus he still lives with his mother, and her only companions are her Corgis and a nurse ["Meat Puzzle" and "Untouchable"], which makes one assume he has a brother or sister who had children. His mother, however, insists she has no grandchildren ["Untouchable"]. It may be, perhaps, either (1) Ducky was left a childless widower, and the nephew is his late wife's (about whom nothing is ever mentioned) or (2) Mrs. Mallard's dementia does not allow her to remember.

• Abby and her mysterious disappearing assistants, Part I: There are some discrepancies between Abby's attitudes towards assistants in Seasons 1-2 and her vehement refusal of one (even before she knew Chip was insane) in Season 3.

  Gibbs offers Abby an assistant here, and before revealing an identity, she promptly agreees. (Kate later gets the job.) Later Abby says, "I need an assistant!" but Gibbs tells her there's no money for one in the budget ["Witness"]. (Thanks to ceindreadh)

• Julie Gonzalo (Sarah Schaeffer) is credited with Harmon in "Freaky Friday".
   

• from Kip:
  • I said Scott [Lawrence, "Cmdr. Sturgis Turner" on "JAG"] will be in a NCIS episode...NOT that he will be in repeated NCIS episodes. He was supposed to be in the second show, but that script wasn't accepted by DPB and is back to the drawing boards. Lawrence never appeared as Turner on "NCIS", presumably because Labyorteaux as Roberts did.

  • [The little boy who played Fuentes' son] was not N[icholas] B[ellisario] who is 11.

  • DPB is using crew member names as characters in many of the NCIS episodes. They all get a kick out of it.

    This episode's characters:
    Thom Schaefer: The name of the girl with the SUV in the teaser was Sarah Schaefer, and she was the daughter of Master Sgt. Thom Schaefer. In real life, Thom Schaefer is the construction coordinator.
    Paul Dafelmair: the killer in the episode and in real life, a costume supervisor.
    Larry Fuentes: the deceased in the episode and in real life, the special effects coordinator.
    Gregory Nutt: a MP in the episode and in real life, the transportation coordinator.

    Cute if your name ends up as the victim's. "Hey, honey, I got killed today when we were filming!"

  • In the episode, Kate asks Abby how she got into forensics. Abby's explanation is based in real life; Ms. Perrette herself has her degrees in forensics-related science. When Pauley told us that we incorporated it into a script.