NCIS – Philly

By starrymag | October 21, 2016

By: Danielle Cox

 

In Philadelphia, a US Navy Petty Officer leaves a bar looking for his Uber. He gets into a car he assumes is his ride only to find guys in masks, obviously in the process of committing a crime. He tries to talk his way out, but they shoot him.

 

In the bullpen at NCIS, Quinn (Jennifer Esposito) has a rather awkward encounter with Special Agent Francis. It turns out they had a thing at one point, but she hasn’t been able to shake him since. This leads into Torres (Wilmer Valderrama) digging himself a hole by saying to Quinn and Bishop (Emily Wickersham) that women are always looking for a partner, even if they say they aren’t. He asks McGee (Sean Murray) to back him up but, smartly, he refuses. He leaves Torres trying to backtrack, but Gibbs (Mark Harmon) interrupts and tells Torres not to say anything else and to thank him for that later.

 

In MTAC, Gibbs, Torres, Quinn and Bishop are talking to MI6 Officer Clayton Reeves who is in Philadelphia. He’s there looking for MI6 Officer Finley who went missing chasing down intel on a smuggling operation. Finley’s last GPS signal came from an alley where Reeves finds the body of the Navy Petty Officer in a dumpster and he wants Gibbs’ team to investigate. Torres offers to go with Bishop, but Gibbs decides to send Quinn along with Bishop and she is not happy about it. Quinn thinks Gibbs is messing with her and argues about going before he orders her to go.

 

In Philadelphia, Quinn and Bishop meet with Reeves at the hotel they’ll all be staying at. Reeves says he has shipped the body to Ducky at NCIS. In Finley’s room, there are no signs of a struggle and Reeves tells them Finley was investigating the smuggling of Russian rocket launchers into the US via the UK. Gibbs calls with an update; the victim was Petty Officer Gary Falco. After the call, Torres angers Gibbs when he questions sending Quinn to Philadelphia when she obviously didn’t want to go and he offered.

 

Back in Philadelphia, Bishop and Quinn are talking to Falco’s mom, who says he was out with friends and that she spoke to him just after midnight. Falco said he had an app on his phone that could get him a ride. They get his cell number so they can trace the account and the names of the friends he was with. Before leaving, Quinn asks Falco’s mom if she knows the Shaw family, but she replies she doesn’t.

 

Torres is having printer problems, meaning he broke it, and asks to use McGee’s but is told only McGee is allowed to use that printer. Gibbs wants an update and we find out that Falco’s CO said he was a model sailor. They tracked the Uber driver who was supposed to pick Falco up and she said he sounded lost and that he spotted her car but never showed up. Gibbs wants to know what all this has to do with a missing MI6 Officer and smuggled weapons. Torres says he knows a guy that he could squeeze for information and Gibbs send McGee with him to “hold the leash.”

 

Reeves receives a text from an unknown number “S-O-S-0-0-9” and knows it’s from Finley because he calls Reeves 009 in reference to Bond. There’s also something in the text that could be an address so they all head there. Reeves, Bishop and Quinn get to the warehouse and find Finley beaten and tied up. As Quinn goes to untie him, she has a flashback of herself trying to save a woman’s life. While they’re working the scene, Finley tells them he was surveying a car when some guy turns up and gets in. He thought the man was part of the gang until they drew weapons and killed him before he could do anything. He says he would be dead too if he hadn’t identified himself. The gang cut out his GPS in the alley then brought him to the warehouse to find out what he knew. He only managed to get that text sent because one of the guys dropped his burner phone, but he didn’t see any faces because they all wore masks. Bishop sends the photos and evidence to Abby.

 

Torres and McGee enter a club looking for Ivan and Torres gives McGee his gun. Ivan starts off saying he doesn’t know anything, but when McGee draws two guns on him in a very “Ziva way,” he gives up some names; Nestor Carbone, Thompson Daly (Glenn Keogh) and James Daly. Finley says the Daly brothers were his first targets, but they only smuggle exotic birds now. That leaves Carbone. McGee sends the address to the team in Philadelphia. Abby (Pauley Perrette) gets the results from the bullets that killed Falco and reveal they were 9mm hollow points; they’re dealing with pros.

 

Finley wants to go with them to find Carbone, but Quinn thinks he isn’t ready and should hang back. He ends up joining them anyway. At the auto shop, Carbone tries to run and Finley shoots him in the leg. Carbone doesn’t know Finley or anything about smuggling. Gibbs calls for an update and is told Carbone isn’t their guy. He asks for Quinn, but Bishop tries to cover for her and says she had somewhere to be. Gibbs knows something is up so he heads for Philadelphia.

 

In Abby’s lab, Torres breaks her printer too and she says he has serious TAI – Technology Anger Issues – but he says he has “office issues.” He looks through the scene photos from the warehouse Finley was tied up in and asks “If he was tied up for days, where’s the bathroom?”

 

At the hotel bar, Gibbs joins Quinn and confronts her about sending subpar agents to him in the hopes she could join the team and confront her past. He tells her to stop avoiding it and face it head on.

At NCIS, Abby brings up the “no bathroom” problem to McGee. She found floor plans for the warehouse where Finley was supposedly tied up and there was no working bathroom. The only public bathroom in a 3-mile radius was in a coffee shop and security footage shows Finley leaving said coffee shop with the Daly brothers and he wasn’t a captive. Finley was in on it the whole time. By the time Reeves and Bishop get to the hotel, Finley has gone.

 

Ivan is in interrogation because McGee and Torres thinks he knows more than he’s saying. McGee gets offended by Ivan thinking he’s the “good cop” and grabs his arm, yanking him into a hold, almost breaking his arm. Ivan shouts for help, but Torres won’t help saying McGee is actually scaring him. Ivan gives up a place the Daly brothers could be at and Torres jokes that “Next time, I’ll hold YOUR leash”.

 

Gibbs has Quinn walk through that night in Philadelphia that has her so conflicted. She was on a stakeout with her partner, Shaw. It seems Shaw stepped out of the car to take a call and got shot. Quinn couldn’t get to her in time to save her and blames herself because Shaw only got out of the car to give her privacy on her own phone call. This is when Quinn decided to become a training officer. Gibbs gets a call from McGee telling him Bishop and Reeves are on their way to one location so Gibbs and Quinn head to the other.

 

Bishop and Reeves find Finley and he says he did it for the money. Finley tries to talk them into leaving, but Reeves replies by punching him in the face. At the other location, the Daly brothers notice a rocket launcher is missing just as Quinn and Gibbs confront them. Gibbs is holding said rocket launcher that he has aimed right at them and it’s loaded.

 

At NCIS, Torres has replaced Abby’s printer with one that is just like McGee’s in apology for breaking hers. Up in the bullpen, McGee tries to print something only to find his printer is missing!

 

Quinn walks into Gibbs’ basement and is surprised to learn he actually does have a boat down there. She reveals that she talked to Shaw’s husband and thanks Gibbs for sending her to Philadelphia, allowing her to finally resolve her past. She then asks one of the most important and burning questions from NCIS history; “How the hell are you gonna get this boat outta here?” Of course, Gibbs doesn’t tell her.