1.06: "High Seas"

by DC

opening scene: at a restaurant, they find a petty officer standing in a bar/restaurant combination fridge.

Stan Burley, one of Gibbs' old agents, calls for help. The man in the fridge - Wilkes, an arresting gear operator - had a fever of 106. Ducky and Abby gush about Burley and Tony looks a little envious. Tony tells Kate she will get lost on board the carrier; Gibbs begins the lessons on how to get around the ship. When they arrive, both Gibbs and Tony are concerned about how Kate will do getting around the ship, but Kate does all right. She interviews the shipmates, and they all say Wilkes would never do drugs and they do not either.

Tony talks to CPO (Chief Petty Officer) Reyes, the guy in charge. Teams like his prepare all the wires for landing planes to "trap". He pushes them hard. During one of the runs, another petty officer goes crazy and runs right into the flight path; the carrier waves off the plane as the petty officer collapses. He has the same symptoms as Wilkes. By now, Kate has a handle on how to get around the carrier, and makes it easily to urinalysis. She has a chat with the urinalysis center, getting the info on how they collect and test urine. In the interim, Gibbs talks to the second petty officer--and Wilkes dies.

Kate does not understand why Shrew, who won't even drink or smoke, and Wilkes, who has a rich Navy legacy, are doing drugs. After Gibbs praises Burley to Kate and Tony and Tony looks sad, Kate attempts to console him by telling him Gibbs and Burley and Gibbs and him (Tony) are different relationships entirely. Gibbs and Burley watch flight deck videos, and they all see how hard Reyes is on his men. Ducky and Gerald then show how Wilkes was killed - someone blew into his IV and the breath bubble got into his heart. Abby has news, too: all the urine samples are clean. That's 'cause they're all the *same* clean urine.

Tony, Kate, and Burley hit Reyes' rack after he hands over one of the capsules he's been giving his men. It's a caffeine capsule, but Gibbs suspects more is up, so the three are searching, but they find nothing. Gibbs manages to get the last petty officer on the crew to get Reyes to give him more capsules. Reyes has been putting meth inside his caffeine capsules. The others take down the urinalysis center manager--he was helping Reyes by replacing the meth-filled urine samples of Reyes' team with clean ones. As they leave, Gibbs and Kate board first, and Tony and Burley talk about Gibbs - and Burley encourages Tony by telling his own story--Gibbs called Burley the wrong name for several years.
 

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Crazy Credits

• BLOOPER: watch Kate as she and Tony compete to see who can get through the carrier to the records room. Her shirt changes color, and her hair goes from down to pulled up.

• Joel Gretsch (Stan Burley) is married to William Shatner's daughter, Melanie Shatner.

• according to IMDB's page for "NCIS":
  ...Stock footage is used to depict a stricken yachtsman being rescued by a Seahawk helicopter. While the exterior shots show a US Navy helicopter, the shots from inside the Seahawk are of a Royal Australian Navy crew winching a sailor to safety. This is actual footage of a real rescue the RAN performed in January 1997, when a British yachtsman, Tony Bullimore, capsized in heavy seas off the southern coast of Australia during the "Vendee Globe" around-the-world yacht race.

• article "T-shirt stars on TV show" by Jon Anderson:
  Harmon first wore a Hoover police T-shirt in an episode that aired Nov. 4 ["High Seas"]. His character, a special agent for the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, wore the shirt in a scene where he was working on a boat. The words, "Property of Hoover Police" and Hoover's special response team patch were visible. The connection with Harmon was made possible because a former Hoover cop, Rick Warmack, is serving as a technical adviser for the TV show. Harmon thanked Hoover police for the shirt and asked for a different type shirt to wear in another episode, York said. This time, Hoover police want to work the word "Alabama" into the shirt because there are three Hoover police departments in the United States, York said. The second shirt may feature Hoover's drug unit...."