4.04 - Faking ItThis is a featured page

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 Episode #: 04 Air Date: October 10, 2006 Next Episode ►
Faking It
Synopsis:
After police pull over a driver and arrest him for a concealed weapon, a car crashes into their patrol car with a dead man behind the wheel. The arrested man turns out to be Russian and Homeland Security claim he was working for them. The Russian is linked to an old case that Mike Franks worked on. Mike comes out of retirement to put the Russian behind bars.

Episode Recap:
The episode opens in a high speed car with a Russian man driving while talking on the cellular phone. He is pulled over by the police, apparently for speeding. When he leans over to get his license and registration his gun is seen by one of the officers and he is ordered out of the car, where the officers handcuff him. Just as one of the officers asks him if he has just fired the gun, a car crashes into the police car with a man dead at the wheel. The man has a large bag of coins in his car which falls out when the officer opens the door of the vehicle. When the officer looks in the car, the letters N-C-I-S are written in blood on the passenger seat of the car.

Act one opens with Ziva and McGee exiting the elevator talking about lies. Tony becomes interested in their discussion and McGee tells Tony that Ziva thinks all men are liars. Tony begins challenging Ziva on his ability to lie. Tony tells Ziva three lies and Ziva calls him out on all of them. She gives him some indication as to how she did it, but Tony is dumbfounded. Just as their conversation is ending, Gibbs gets a call that the team needs to gear up.

In the next scene, Ducky is at the crash site and indicates the man lived longer than he should have. The man is identified as Chief Petty Officer Jack T. Vale by his military ID. The team processes the accident scene and is interested in the large bag of coins which they estimate to be $50 or $60. The police have put the Russian man into the back of a police cruiser. His identification says he is American, but there seems to be no doubt he is not originally American. There is discussion between Tony and Ziva about the man's American identification.

Gibbs asks Ziva to interrogate the man, and by asking him his name in various languages, gets an involuntary response in Russian (this is how we definitively know he is Russian); shortly after, Abby gets an ID from the Immigration database with a Russian name, and the fact he is wanted by Homeland Security. Vale's 911 call is played back- it says he has spotted a terrorist, but as a man who works in Supply, how could he have told? The case files are missing.

Gibbs rings Mike Franks in Mexico; the barman tells Franks there is a call from Washington, and Franks answers, saying that only one man, i.e. Gibbs, would know where he, Franks was at that time of day. Franks remembers the case - Operation Sunburst; Russian arms dealers, and says the people involved were very bad, especially, the protagonist Arkady Kobach (who is different from the suspect in custody, Nikolai Puchenko.)

In the autopsy room, Ducky can't find the bullet- no way yet of connecting the suspect and the shooting.

Franks comes into NCIS, but more or less as he does, Homeland Security arrives in the person of Roy Carver, known to Franks from the original case and asks for Puchenko to be transferred into their care, since he is an asset; Jenny orders Gibbs to give the man up. Franks says there is no hope of getting him back if they give him up, and he manages to persuade Jenny to hang on to him. Puchenko threatens Franks (in Russian) with death. Gibbs offers Franks di Nozzo as protection; at this point Ducky realises where the bullet must be - vomited up by Vale. Franks tells Gibbs he has the case files and they are mostly audiotape.

Ziva and McGee go off to look. As they walk around in the approximate right area, based on how long Vale would have had after making the 911 call, they hear the same background noise as was on the call; it's a coin counting machine consistent with the fact so many coins were in Vale's car. If Vale saw Puchenko and followed him, where did he go? Round the corner there is a parking lot with vomit on the ground.

Di Nozzo is baby sitting Franks at a safe house, but Franks easily evades him. Someone gives Tony a clout on the head, we are not sure what has happened here- Tony attributes it to a snatch team. Carver asks for the release of Puchenko again.

Ziva and McGee find some blood (and the bullet) underneath a dumpster. So now Gibbs can accuse Puchenko with murder. Meanwhile, we see Franks offering to sell the tapes of the original file (no doubt as bait.)

Gibbs offers Puchenko a deal in return for info on the whereabouts of Arkady.

Now we see Franks meeting Arkady in a bar. Gibbs arrives and kills a hidden gunman with Arkady, Franks then kills Arkady in cold blood and with no regrets; revels he is the one who hit Tony. Gibbs gets Franks to admit he set himself up as bait. Franksgives Gibbs the tape.

In the final scene, Gibbs puts the tape into a cassette player, and music plays- the tape was a fake, just a device to draw the bad guy out.

New Character Development / Insights:
  • The entire scene where Ziva identifies Tony's lies is interesting, because we see again her skills as an investigator and interrogator - something that has rarely been revealed - only hinted at during the show.
  • Tony calls Director Shepard "Jenny" by accident, the first indication that they've been working closely in Gibbs's absence. When Gibbs remarks on it, Tony quickly tries to play it off with some typical silliness.
    Funny Moments:
    • Tony and Ziva are in the observation room for interrogation and Tony indicates women want men to lie to them. Ziva says, "it's not true". Tony says, in somewhat feminine tone, "Honey, does my butt look big in these pants to you?" Switching to a masculine tone, he says, "Actually, yes sweetheart, your butt looks as big as Alabama. Didn't want to say anything, but you've got the 'bama butt going on." He continues, "See you want us to lie to you...Especially if your butt is as big as 'bama'". Realizing what he has said, Ziva turns to give him a glare and he realizes he may have offended her so begins to back-peddle a bit. When he does so, he says, "Not that your butt is as big as Bama - not that I've even looked." Ziva quickly calls him a LIAR.
      Trivia:
      • Ziva speaks French, German, Italian, Arabic and Russian. (And of course English and Hebrew.) And Turkish and Spanish, though that is shown in Hiatus and Iced and not this particular episode.
      • A Russian rouble is divided into 100 kopecks. The kopeck has come in denominations of 1, 2, 3, 5, 10, 15, 20, and 50. Today, only 1, 5, 10, and 50 coins are in circulation with the 1 and 5 rarely being used.
      Recurring Cast:
        Guest Starring:
            • Muse Watson (Mike Franks)
            • Armando Molina (Miguel Fernandez)
            • V.J. Foster (Arkady Kobach)
            • Nolan North (Officer Lou Giotti)
            • Albie Selznick (Marty Allen)
            • Ravil Isyanov (Nikolai Puchenko)
            • Geoff Pierson (Roy Carver)
            Written By: Directed By:
            • Shane Brennan
            • Thomas J. Wright





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