NCIS – Sweet little Mary a killer?

I don’t know what I first liked about the idea so much, but a part of me has been passively (as in not really thinking about it again until tonight) hoping that Ducky was still dating McGee’s grandmother, Penelope Langston (Lily Tomlin). It was probably due to the potential for an increasingly uncomfortable McGee being taunted by the rest of the team (read: Tony) … which, you have to admit, is a pretty decent reason in and of itself.

So I was mildly disappointed when we learned that, while Ducky has been seeing a woman regularly, it wasn’t Penelope. But okay, since we were being given the opportunity to actually meet her and see the two of them together — and she even met Gibbs! — I was willing to let go of the Penelope thing. In the first place Ducky stories are great, and him with a lady friend is all the more awesome. Bring it on!

Which, I suppose, made me even more ill-prepared for the twist that was ultimately awaiting us: Ducky’s girlfriend Mary Courtney (Cheryl Ladd) turned out to be the killer! Why? Because weeks back Ducky had complained about how unlikely it would be for him to see something new at work. What’s a loving girlfriend to do? Why, bring your amore something he’s never seen before! In this case, that was a murder victim literally drowning in his own skin. Super!

Was it a fun twist? Not really, and for two reasons. One, could she really have hidden the super crazy not only from Ducky but also from all the people she worked with in and around the mental health profession? And two, did Ducky really land a girlfriend again after all this time only to have her go nuts and be institutionalized? Can’t the guy catch a break in love?

And I sort of felt as if the case was only partially worked through before Gibbs caught a whiff of Mary and the team went running. Had his instinct been wrong, they’d have been practically nowhere with the case. That was kind of unusual for an episode of NCIS. Weird.

Some of the fun stuff:

• Gibbs not wanting to see the brain that Ducky was weighing. I didn’t think we’d ever see something make Gibbs squeamish, but I think we have a winner: actual brains. Who’d have thunk it?
• Jimmy Palmer is consistently one of the best things about this show, and the criminally limited screen time he gets is rarely wasted. His fear of change thing was an exception to that rule, but he’d already struck successfully with the whole dating website ramble. Here’s hoping his wedding is an episode, and that it somehow gets tangled up in a weird case. And maybe Gibbs can be best man?
• The red herring that was gun shop owner Phillip Ekkerly (Eric Allan Kramer). Did that guy, who’s smuggling weapons and selling them to who knows who, really get brushed under the rug once the Mary thing happened? Where’s his prison sentence?
• Nobody confronts ineptitude quite like the team of Tony and McGee. Their encounter with the clueless but by-the-book security guard (played great by Lenny Jacobson) was awesome. I’m surprised Tony didn’t bang his head against the glass partition after sliding it shut.

Bad case, but solid character episode. The show’s often a mixed bag … so I’ll take it.

Clacked by Aryeh S.
on Oct 25, 2011 @ 23:30 EST5EDT