“Identity Crisis” first aired Tuesday, October 16, 2007.
Some things are more than we could ever hope for. NCIS’s fourth season had its share of women issuing ass kickings. If the first three episodes of season five are any indication, we can expect the same brutality about every other episode. In "Ex-File" NCIS Forensics Specialist Abby Sciuto (Pauley Perrette) pops her protagonist-antagonist one good one. In the current “Identity Crisis” another satisfying female-issued ass kicking occurs much to this writer’s delight.
“Identity Crisis” opens with NCIS Medical Examiner Dr. Donald "Ducky" Mallard (David McCallum) demonstrating an autopsy to enlisted students. After having opened the skull and removing the brain of a donated corpse, Ducky instructs NCIS Medical Examiner Assistant Jimmy Palmer (Brian Dietzen) to pass the brain around to students, the first of whom finds mercury dripping from the brainstem. Something is terribly amiss.
The introductory levity portion surrounds Special Agent Tim McGee (Sean Murray) looking online for a dog from an animal rescue site. Before long, Mossad Agent-on-Loan-to-NCIS Ziva David (Cote de Pablo) and Special Agent Tony DiNozzo (Michael Weatherly) chime in before Gibbs suggests McGee get an Australian Shepard because they are “workin’ dogs.”
Gibbs goes to Ducky’s lab to find the good doctor in a fury over the shoddy work of the original medical examiner who first examined this particular body before releasing it to cadaver autopsy. Ducky and Palmer have determined that the deceased is a middle-aged African-American man who had lived a violent life and been in prison (both divined by the presence of scars and tattoos).
Gibbs and Ducky decide to pay the previous medical examiner a visit where Ducky threatens to treat the other doctor to a piece of his mind. Entering an autopsy suite, Ducky inquires if a Dr. Jordan Hampton is present and is greeted by a harried but very attractive female party claiming that title. Ducky is obviously taken with Dr. Hampton and his threats of giving her what-for melt away as she smiles at him. Ducky and Gibbs inform her that they are looking into her former patient as a homicide, citing the mercury injection into his brain. Dr. Hampton grabs the John Doe’s file, elaborates that the police could not identify him. She claims a backed-up morgue with an uncooperative police staff that would rather just close cases for the lack of protocol afforded this particular John Doe. Ducky perfectly understands, prompting Gibbs as they are leaving to remark, “Yeah, I hope she recovers from that tongue lashing.”
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