4.11 - DrivenThis is a featured page

◄ Previous Episode Season #: 4 Episode #: 11 Air Date: December 12, 2006 Next Episode ►


Driven
Synopsis:
When a robotic vehicle named "Otto," a part of a high level project of the Department of Defense, causes a death of a Navy Lieutenant, and then later almost kills Abby, the NCIS team must find out who sabotaged the vehicle and murdered the Navy Lieutenant. Meanwhile, Ziva realizes that Tony keeps on visiting the hospital. What is he doing there?

Episode Recap:
The episode opens with Navy Lt. Roni Seabrook (Jennifer Lynne Wetzel) testing a robotic Hummer prototype named “Otto,” in preparation for a demonstration to the Department of Defense. The outcome of this demonstration will provide the developers of Otto with an exclusive contract guaranteeing the company the much needed capital to get fully off the ground. Lt. Seabrook vocally directs the vehicle through several test scenarios, recording her results and observations to the project laptop. While parking Otto, Lt. Seabrook attempts to disengage her seat belt, setting off a sequence of events where the seat belt tightens on her, the doors lock, the windows roll up and the car directs its exhaust to the vehicle’s interior. Unable to reach the kill switch, Lt. Seabrook perishes.

At NCIS, the team is attending a required sexual harassment seminar being presented by a humorless woman who color codes personal contact as green, yellow, and red. This sets up the comedic allusions for the rest of the episode. The instructor is not used to the likes of Abby, who is instructed to now ask before she hugs a team member; Tony, who wants to know if it is inappropriate to slap his co-workers on the back of the head Gibbs-style; and Palmer, who wants to know if touching naked dead bodies is a red light behavior. When describing the most inappropriate “red” behavior, Ziva licks the reclining Tony’s ear, prompting him to make a scene at the same time that the team is called into action for the death of a Navy officer at a DOD subcontractor candidate facility - Lt Seabrook.

The DOD subcontractor is populated with the requisite oddballs. Project Leader Dr. Russell Pike is from the Ken Lay school of benevolence, fatherly and clueless. There is the arrogantly teutonic Torsten Engler, associate and rival of Lt. Seabrook, a blond-haired, blue-eyed anvil German. And mechanic Jaime Jones, with whom Lt. Seabrook carried on a lively and violent tryst, captured on camera getting rough with the Lieutenant the night before her death. Initially, it seems obvious the mechanic must be the murderer, though the security tapes in the garage where Otto was kept have been wiped from an hour before the death. However, Jonesis found tied up in her bed by Ziva and Tony, (Tony has just returned from the hospital where he was seeing his sweetheart, Dr. Jeanne Benoit ). Ziva suspects that Tony is not telling her something, though she is on the major wrong track, believing that his connection with hospital and doctor means he is seriously ill, maybe with a recurrence of the plague he suffered at the end of season 2. Jones claims all the roughness was just role play. When interrogated by Gibbs, Jones is shocked to learn of his girlfriend's death.

McGee and Abby figure out that a small bit of assembly computer code was added to the BIOS of the AI system that runs Otto, instructing the vehicle to behave as it did when Lt. Seabrook tried to remove her seat belt. Tim listens to the MP3 files recorded by the lieutenant in the closing minutes of her life while Abby regenerates those same closing minutes almost losing her life because Tim has the headphones on. Fortunately Gibbs appears in the nick of time and breaks the window of the Hummer with a fire extinguisher. Then they find the chip (an SD card) used to insert the code.

Meanwhile, Dr. Pike wants the car back and it is discovered to have been driven off by remote control. The team tracks it down and finds the chip (a copy of the original that is in the NCIS safe) gone. Abby and team track the remote control to the DOD subcontractor candidate site and to the particular computer used to drive Otto out of NCIS. Just when it appears that uber-German Engler is the murderer, Gibbs pulls a fast one with yet another memory chip that he gives to Dr. Pike. Pike erases the disc and claims there was never anything on it. Gibbs points out that the original disc is back at headquarters and what Dr. Pike had erased were Gibbs’ pictures out of his digital camera. Pike killed Roni, though by mistake. Roni was supposed to have had the morning off. He had intended to kill Engler, because he did not want to share ownership of the company with such an obnoxious person. Case closed.

New Character Development / Insights:
  • On the character development front, the ever-removed Ziva is finally closing in on the fact that Tony has a love interest that is not her, though she is not quite there yet. Despite her always talking a good game, the viewer may now suspect her of being disingenuous about her feelings for Tony.
  • Jeanne is becoming more and more common in each episode.
  • McGee and Abby still seem to have some type of relationship. She almost gets gassed by Otto while Tim sits only a few feet away. Later on she hugs him just for comfort and they both seem to need the physical contact to be sure she really is OK.
  • It shows how close Abby and McGee are when she says she never has to ask for permission to hug Tim
Funny Moments:
  • After Gibbs grabs Abby out of "Otto" the killer car that nearly killed her she says "Permission to hug" referring to the sexual harassment class they had earlier.
  • Ziva licking Tony's ear.
  • Tony and Ziva's commentary at the start of the Sexual Harassment Seminar. The theme of harassment has many comic references in the episode.
  • Ziva getting stuck on top of McGee and Tony taking photos of it.
  • McGee coming up from under "Otto" with his hair all messed up
  • Tony's undercover song.
  • Tony getting a phone call from the hospital and when Ziva asks if the test results are in. He responds "I'm pregnant, McGee is going to be very proud."
  • Palmer's question in the sexual harassment seminar.
  • Abby's line: I'm hugging you all, in my mind!
  • In the harassment seminar.the woman asking Palmer "Why are you touching dead naked people!"
Trivia:
  • In the scene where Tony is undercover as a street singer he is wearing a stocking cap that has five buttons pinned to it. They read:
      • "Make Love, Not War"
      • "Sex is for the birds!"
      • "You're Telling Me!"
      • "I'm not deaf, I'm ignoring you!"
      • "Are you stoned or just stupid?"
  • This is the first time that Gibbs shows a basic understanding of computers. He gets the SD card from his camera (It is 512 mb, not bad for those days!). Also, this is the first time that Gibbs tries to pretend like he knows what Abby and McGee are talking about. He says things like "I figured that."
  • When looking closely at the program that Abby and McGee display to Gibbs, you can see a couple of commands such as "clinch seat belt".
Recurring Cast:
    Guest Starring:
        • David Dayan Fisher (Trent Kort)
        • Scottie Thompson (Jeanne Benoit)
        • Brian Dietzen (Jimmy Palmer)
        • Jennifer Lynne Wetzel (Navy Lt. Roni Seabrook)
        • Sandra Hess (Regine Smidt)
        • Ajay MEhta (Parviz Najar)
        • Corey Stoll (Martin Quinn)
        • Deidrie Henry (Tracy Taylor)
        • Kevin Alejandro (Jaime Jones)
        • Peter Giles (Torsten Engler)
        • Lawrence Pressman (Dr. Russell Pike)
        Written By: Directed By:
        • John C. Kelley
        • Nell Scovell
        • Ric Arthur
        • Dennis Smith





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