NCIS Season 9, Episode 17 Recap: Need to Know

This week on NCIS, it’s a need-to-know field day, so if you don’t have the top clearance to know facts, you’ll be left in the dark. Which is what happened to our fun NCIS team, who tried to work their way around this.

RECAP
Gibbs goes to meet Chief Petty Officer Wiley, who would like to give Gibbs information about international arms dealer, Agah Bayar, but suffers a heart attack and dies before yielding that information. Oh wait, that wasn’t just any old heart attack. That was a murder by remote control via a pacemaker that Wiley was wearing. Someone hacked into his pacemaker and amped up his heartbeat rate to around 400 beats per second right before Wiley died. Remind me to make sure there are protections on my pacemaker if I ever need one.

Because this is a Naval Officer and a international arms dealer, Gibbs wants to get to the bottom of things. DiNozzo and Ziva go to Wiley’s place and discover that Wiley has a wad of cash as well as a nice expensive watch, stuff that doesn’t go hand-in-hand with his payroll salary. DiNozzo does admire the watch, much to Ziva’s chagrin. Meanwhile, Agent Ne Dornaget is trying to become a field agent and get on Gibbs’ good side, so he gets coffee from the break room. Gibbs is not impressed and throws away the coffee, saying ‘it’s not coffee’ (it’s a running gag on the show). The team pieces the evidence together and surmise that Agah Bayar is the one behind Wiley’s death. Why? Because Wiley accessed top-secret stealth technology and put it on a flash drive and with this flash drive missing, the information could end up in the wrong hands. Ruh-roh.

Thanks to the numerous cameras set up in the city, Gibbs and his team are easily able to find Bayar and Gibbs decides to pay him a visit outside the Turkish Embassy. The two share a ‘friendly’ chat, with Gibbs telling Bayar that his team has set tabs on the guy and will take him down. Bayar laughs it off and drives off in his car, but without realizing that Gibbs has put a tracking device on Bayar’s car. How sly of you, Gibbs. Back at the office, the team finds out that the woman that Bayar was with is Ava Baranksy, who is staying at the same hotel as Bayar, so Tony and Ziva go pick her up. Unfortunately, she has fled and has just left her luggage, which the duo bring back. Tony has been smitten with Baransky and is a little miffed that he couldn’t meet her.

Gibbs tells Ziva and McGee to go pick up Baransky, who has been stopped at the airport in Philadelphia, but since Ziva has already agree to speak at an assembly, Gibbs tells Dornaget to go along with McGee. Dornaget is excited because this is his first field assignment. Meanwhile, Gibbs and Vance find themselves stonewalled with the DIA because NCIS wasn’t read into the operation and DIA won’t read them into the operation, preferring to keep NCIS away from their operation. Geez, DIA, you ain’t very nice to NCIS (who wants a little more respect for all the hard work that they do).

On the way to picking up Baransky, McGee does a little bit of a DiNozzo impersonation and tells Dornaget that because he is Senior Field Agent, Dornaget must listen to him at all times and be his back-up. Well, poor Dornaget has forgotten his gun, meaning that he will be somewhat useless. That’s a probie mistake that you don’t want to make. They pick up Baransky, who was told by Bayar to leave because of a business deal gone back, at the airport and go driving back, this time Dornaget at the wheel. He tries to ask her questions, but McGee tells him subtly to shut up and just drive.

Back in DC, Abby, along with the help of her 16-year-old genius friend, track the signal from the pacemaker to a phone registered to a Michael Reardon, formerly of the Army but was dishonorably discharged, fired from a private military company, and freelances to make money. Gibbs, DiNozzo, and Ziva go pay him a visit and Reardon bolts, which DiNozzo catches because he went around back while Gibbs and Ziva knock on the front door. Reardon leads them on a chase of all sorts and he’s one quick runner, leaving Ziva and DiNozzo gasping for breath, but not quick enough as Gibbs uses his car to stop Reardon. They take him to Autopsy, where Gibbs and DiNozzo have a bit of fun torturing the guy and trying to get him to cough up the name of the person who hired him to take out Wiley. They’re looking for Bayar, but instead, they get a little surprise: Baransky is the one who hired him.

McGee and Dornaget stop at a gas station and Baransky asks to use the ladies’ room and wants her purse. Now, even I know that this was a bad idea and McGee lets Dornaget accompany her (even worse idea). It turns out that Dornaget gets chained up in the bathroom while McGee gets a phone call from Gibbs letting him know that Baransky is the suspect. Too late, Baransky is gone and McGee berates Dornaget for letting her ’seduce’ him, only to have Dornaget retort that he is gay.

Expecting Gibbs to get mad at them, McGee is surprised when Gibbs tells them to let Baransky go. This was all part of the DIA’s sting to give the Russians false information that would cripple their own stealth systems and that Wiley was the perfect bait to do so. But you know, DIA, it would’ve been much easier to have NCIS read into the operation so things like this wouldn’t happen. And it’s a good thing, I suppose, that Dornaget didn’t have his gun.

At the end, Gibbs meets up with Bayar, who reveals that he works with whomever pays him the most. This time, both the Russians and the US paid him for his services and he was the perfect man for the job. Ah. Life.

THOUGHTS
Let me say this: Ned Dornaget really got on my nerves. I appreciate that he’s trying to be more pro-active in wanting to become a field agent and that he wants to get on Gibbs’ good side, but seriously. He’s a bumbling, clumsy person that gets ahead of himself. And how would you forget your gun? Seriously. As McGee points out, federal agents don’t step out of the building without their guns. Come on now. Please, NCIS writers, don’t add Dornaget to the team. Just make him a one-time thing, please. If I have to watch him more on the show and be a ‘part’ of the team, I will cry. Very much cry.

I must have not been that impressed with this episode, though there were quite a few reviews that praised this episode, because this was the lowest watched episode so far of this season. And really, I wasn’t all that impressed. Yes, I enjoyed the humor and the little banters between the team and even Gibbs’ and DiNozzo’s ‘interrogation’ with Michael Reardon. But for what, really? I mean, I suppose that the main point of this episode was to show that for all their hard work and whatnot, NCIS still doesn’t get the respect that they deserve amongst all the alphabet agencies. Because you know, if they did get that respect, the DIA could’ve simply read NCIS into the whole sting and voila! We would have no episode. But there was just something lacking in this episode that I haven’t been able to wrap my finger around on. It’s that feeling that you get when you know something, but just know it without really having a reason for it.

NEXT WEEK
Aww, shucks. No new episode next week. That makes me sad. Sadface. I don’t know when the next new episode will be but hey, you’ll know when I next pop up again.