NCIS Season 9, Episode 10 Recap: Sins of the Father

It’s a Tuesday night and you know what that means. Another night of your–ok, fine–my favorite TV show, NCIS. And boy, you are in for a good one.

This episode, Sins of the Father, is quite interesting as the main suspect is Tony’s father, Anthony DiNozzo, Sr.. The beginning of the episode starts off with a few police officers finding a car illegally parked on the side. Sitting at the wheel is DiNozzo, Sr., who is inebriated and doesn’t seem to know what’s going on around him. Meanwhile, the female officer notices a piece of clothing sticking out from the trunk and opens it to find the body of a Lieutenant Dean Massey stuffed inside.

Back at the office, Tony is delegating the role of computerizing old cold case files into the computer to Ziva, who balks at Tony pulling the “I’m a Senior Agent” card out on her. Gibbs beckons his team to go to a crime scene, which is the crime scene where DiNozzo, Sr. and Massey were found. When the team discovers that Tony’s father is the suspect, Gibbs benches Tony, effectively sitting him out of the case. This doesn’t bode well for both Tony and his father, as Tony would dearly love to help clear his father’s name up.

Things just get worse for DiNozzo, Sr. as he has no recollection of the night’s events, thanks to heavy drinking. It turns out that DiNozzo, Sr. and Massey were in a real estate development deal together, but Massey decided not to go through with the deal, which left DiNozzo, Sr. very upset and agitated. He even threatened to kill him, which obviously don’t bode well for him, now, does it? Ducky discovers that some glass shards were embedded in Massey’s hand, indicating that a glass object was used to kill Massey.

Meanwhile, Tony wants to talk to his father, but the Agent in charge of keeping an eye out on his father refuses to budge, but eventually backs down as Tony threatens to blackmail Dorneget with footage of the latter dressed up as Gibbs (you don’t want to do anything that imitates Gibbs - he ain’t gonna be too happy). We also find out that a JAG officer had been talking to Massey about another pilot, Lieutenant Dennis, who is suspected of killing his radio officer, but blames his officer’s death on electrical failure in the plane. This new series of events makes its way to Vance, and he gives the team 24 hours to find the killer before handing it off to the FBI. He also orders DiNozzo to stay away from the case.

McGee and Ziva go and have a nice little chat with Massey’s lawyer, Morgan Hunt, who shows them evidence of DiNozzo, Sr. threatening Massey for reneging on the deal. Later, at the team office, Gibbs tells Tony that his father will have to go to the Federal Detention Center to spend the night, a prospect that DiNozzo, Sr. balks at and has Tony giving Gibbs the “puppy eyes” look. Meanwhile, Dennis is being questioned about Massey’s death and refuses to speak anymore, asking for his lawyer.

McGee catches Abby having fun in the Rolls-Royce and joins her, but she quickly turns somber as she had discovered that Massey could have been murdered with a bottle of wine and a vintage one at that. Ziva goes back Massey’s employment where Hunt shows her the will that Massey left behind and finds out that Massey intended for his wealth to be split up amongst different Navy charities. Gibbs tells Tony that his father will be spending the night at his house and there, Gibbs and DiNozzo, Sr. have a little chit-chat where the latter says that he has always been good at holding his liquor. Gibbs thinks Tony’s father had been drugged and has Ducky run the entire bloodwork panel on Tony’s father in the morning. Tony is poking around and asking various people about the progress on the case, with very little luck at first (but always somehow manages to find himself more information). From McGee he sees that a BOLO had been put out on Massey’s Porsche and from Abby that there was indeed a wine bottle used as the murder weapon.

Tony then marches to where his dad is and presses him for answers to his questions: where did he leave the wine? What kind of wine was it? Where were the two supposed to go to dinner that fateful night? When DiNozzo, Sr. mentions the Addams House, Tony immediately leaves and we then switch over to a very serious Abby, who is showing both Gibbs and Vance the results. The evidence points to DiNozzo, Sr. as the killer and Vance tells them to arrest him. When the team finds out, they desperately try to let Tony know the turn of events, but unfortunately for them, Tony has his cell phone turned off. As the FBI is leading DiNozzo, Sr. away, Abby runs up from her lab and tells them that DiNozzo, Sr. didn’t kill anyone and proves that he had been roofied (hiya, date-rape drug!). Tony then calls McGee and tells him that a photo was emailed over, which shows Tony’s dad leaving with an unidentified woman (don’t you just love surveillance cameras). It seems that Tony has been doing his own detective work and talked to the bartender of a bar that his father normally frequents during his visits to town.

The woman happens to be the secretary, Linda, who works at Massey’s company and had been seeing Hunt. It turns out that Hunt was the one who killed Massey and had Linda set DiNozzo, Sr. up as the killer. Hunt was removed as the executor of Massey’s estate and fired as his lawyer, so naturally, he was unhappy with what happened. As Linda is walking with Ziva to get the erased footage of Hunt’s argument with Massey, Massey notices them and tries to leave undetected, but Gibbs and DiNozzo, Sr. are a step ahead of him.

We do get our happy little ending, where Tony is venting to Gibbs about how his father never contacted him about leaving, but despite his father driving him crazy, he still very much loves his father and regrets never having gotten the chance to tell him so. Or so he thought - looks like DiNozzo, Sr. is staying over at Gibbs’ house and overhead the conversation, much to Tony’s chagrin.

This episode was indeed a fun one. Of course, not being able to help your father out when he’s being accused of murder is excruciating, nonetheless. You just feel helpless that you aren’t able to help your father out, as much as you would love to. And Gibbs understood that perfectly. While he told Tony that he was sitting the case out, he still was trying to help Tony and his father and buy the two enough time to uncover the truth. And I love how both Gibbs and Vance let Tony slide on the disobeyed direct orders as he was the one who discovered the missing link.

I just knew that Tony’s father wasn’t the murderer, heh. You could just feel it right from the beginning, but of course, the writers kept us on our feet, with bated breath. It wasn’t until the last 10 minutes or so that we realized who the actual killer was. Though, as I was watching, my gut was telling me that the lawyer was somehow involved and that he was the killer - and I was so right. Somehow, lawyers are always involved. Just somehow.

Pity there is no NCIS episode next week. I don’t know when the new episode will come but hopefully soon! I need my weekly dosage of NCIS!