“NCIS” recap: It’s a fondue ferret frenzy

When a curse of silence — okay, make that poisoned fondue — fells a member of Kasie’s (Diona Reasonover) live-action role playing group, our favorite forensic scientist finds herself investigating her friends, and even her mentor, with her own life on the line.

The victim is Victor Chan (Neal Honda), a Marine Corps reservist and data scientist at Quantico who’s been a member of Kasie’s forensic scientific gaming group since they all met in Intro to Evidence in college. Just don’t ask Palmer (Brian Dietzen) how he feels about not being invited to join when the adventure party expanded to include CDC toxicologist Carol Wilson (Meredith Eaton, last seen in season 19’s “The Helpers”).

Victor’s death is clearly foul play because he was found near a body of water with his car, which was last driven by someone a foot shorter than he is. McGee (Sean Murray) compliments the quality of his 20-sided die (can confirm — it’s a gorgeous set!), and when Kasie learns that her friend is the dead guy of the week, she utters a quiet, heartfelt “damn.”

It’s about to get worse for her, though, because her apartment turns out to be the crime scene based on the poisoning timeline. Palmer’s tickled that Knight (Katrina Law) recognizes the culprit as hemlock, which means she read the book on toxic plants of North America that he got her for her birthday. Nothing but true love would get a girl to plow through that.

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Before the team can head out to Kasie’s to gather evidence, two DOD reps roll up to chat with Thom E. Gemcity. The leaked copy of his newest manuscript, which was central to a case earlier this season, has caught the attention of the Pentagon, and McGee’s got some questions to answer about possible classified material.

Although he claims the manuscript needs a rewrite, he eagerly shares a copy for critique when Torres (Wilmer Valderrama) expresses the barest amount of interest, leaving Nick horrified that he’s been tasked with writing a book report.

McGee’s not sure what classified info the Pentagon is bumping on, but the possible topics include the robot dolphins, the moon base, the counterfeit Cialis, the flesh-eating virus, or the Icelandic archer. Presumably they’re less interested in the sexploits of the hot cryptologist Delana Fleming or Gemcity’s allegories on the nature of joy... but one never knows with the Pentagon.

All we can really say for sure is that if Parker (Gary Cole) wants to find out how McGee wrote out Agent Tibbs, he’ll have to read the advance copy himself.

Okay, back to Kasie’s place! It is, quite frankly, a bit untidy. She’s got a punching bag (??) named Ernesto (???) with a leering, painted-on face in the middle of her untidy bedroom, and she left the gaming party’s unwashed dishes in the sink. While that’s good for evidence purposes, “I’m judging a little,” Parker says.

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Torres finds a glass tube of hemlock in the living room, which means Kasie and her friends are hauled into interrogation to see what went down the night before.

“This room does not have a friendly vibe, by the way,” Kasie tells her colleagues. She swears that nobody in her group would’ve hurt Victor, although one of their members, Max (Charley Koontz), did send him an email threatening creative forms of death (To be fair, Victor used to correct their grammar on "less" versus "fewer").

Eileen the profiler (Della Saba) says they all had one reason or another to kill him and tries to get under Parker’s skin by observing that he’s uncomfortable when things in his life aren’t black and white. Carol, meanwhile, is offended to be a suspect since her work at the CDC gives her access to far more creative ways to kill Victor than simple hemlock.

A suspect emerges when the team learns that the poison was in the fondue sent by Craig, who had bowed out of game night but had been in the habit of asking them obscure questions about blood spatter and other topics that didn’t seem to be part of any cases.

Two problems here: first, Craig’s found dead in his apartment, so is unlikely to be the killer. And second, the hemlock in the fondue means the whole gaming group was marked for death. The rest of them only survived because Victor was a double-dipper and therefore had the fondue to himself.

Craig’s boss, Capt. Fletcher (Eugene Kim), says Craig was a good coworker and a friend. Although the cases he was working were all run of the mill, Fletcher suggests that Craig may have had a white whale case he was pursuing.

Knight, for some reason, doesn’t recognize this turn of phrase, so Parker explains that it’s the Moby Dick-style case that got away, he’s got at least 10 of his own, and someday she will, too. I’m sorry, but hasn’t Knight been in law enforcement for many, many years now? She’s not exactly a probie.

Knight then accompanies Kasie to campus so they can check in with the group’s mentor, Prof. Annabel Davis (Shari Belafonte), whose class brought them together years ago (and who introduced Kasie to Ducky!).

A weedy student (Michael Varde) exiting the classroom shoots his shot with Knight — I mean hey, why not, right? — and then Kasie gets a returning champion’s welcome from Davis, who tells Knight that Kasie’s gang are her all-time favorites students and still come up as examples in her classes today.

She also shares that Craig was working on something involving lithography, a vintage photochemistry technique that uses a developer a lot like blood. This gives the team trackable orders of chemicals, which lead McGee and Torres to a storage unit, where they find a duffel bag with a gun, cash, and an ID with Craig’s face on it, as well as a laptop that shows the user hacked into the Baltimore police system to erase records.

Related: NCIS recap: Thom E. Gemcity rides again

With this new evidence, Kasie reluctantly acknowledges that Craig was likely setting up printer plates, and true to the theme of the episode, the counterfeit items turn out to be Ferrets and Phalanxes cards. As Kasie explains, it’s like Magic the Gathering but with fewer trademark issues — ha!

Kasie’s trying to see the best in her friend, but the rarest F&P card, the Mecha Ferret, is worth $10,000 each, and Craig’s storage unit has $100,000 worth of the counterfeit dupes.

Carol, Max, and Eileen are apparently spending their protective custody at Kasie’s place and take it over to run their messy and destructive crime-solving experiments. (Torres tried to stop them, but they threatened to pin the murder on him.)

Kasie suggests a far less invasive approach when she finds a mystery meeting for that night in Craig’s calendar. Parker and Torres arrive to find an intense group playing Ferrets and Phalanxes for cash, as well as Craig’s boss Fletcher on hand with a fortune in counterfeit cards for sale.

Fletcher admits that he’s got a gambling problem and was making cards to sell. Craig got suspicious and tried to replicate his process to make sure he had his facts straight before accusing him. But Fletcher was on a red-eye coming home from an Albuquerque gaming convention when the murders happened, so he’s in the clear.

The search for another suspect takes the team back to campus, where they learn that one of Davis’ students is actually a recently paroled gang member she helped convict through her work as head of forensics for the Maryland Police Department. And whaddya know, it’s the student who hit on Knight!

Jesse Winston hacked the campus system and “cancelled” all of Davis’ classes for the day so he can confront her in the classroom with a gun. He’s furious that Davis doesn’t remember him and says while he was in prison, he lost a brother and a nephew “to the street” because he wasn’t there to protect them. And as revenge, he tried to kill her favorite students to take something she loved away from her.

Parker and Torres arrive in time to draw their guns on Winston, and when he makes a move toward Davis, both open fire, killing him.

That should wrap the case, but there’s one bit of business left, and that involves Kasie taking Davis to her lab to help unravel why Winston would hold such a grudge against Davis.

And the answer is falsified evidence. Kasie’s mentor doctored the forensics to ensure that Winston would be convicted of a liquor store robbery he didn’t do. Davis argues that she was in the right because he’d robbed that liquor store before, and if Kasie goes public with this, every conviction she helped win will be up for appeal. But Kasie points out that the rules apply to everyone, and as she walks out of her lab, Parker steps in to make the arrest.

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Woof. After a work day like that, no wonder Kasie just wants to be alone. This team’s not gonna let that happen, though, and one by one, they show up with dinner — a few different dinners, actually — and offer to help Kasie clean up her apartment.

Oh, and Thom E. Gemcity’s not actually in trouble. SecNav’s just a big fan, and that message got garbled in a chain-of-command game of telephone. So look for the next Gemcity hit at a bookseller near you very soon!

Stray shots

• We agree that Kasie needs a new friend group, right? The existing one rather cheerfully trashed her place, and there's Palmer just begging to play Carcassonne with her.

• I did not know that in ancient Greece, “barbarian” simply meant someone who follows a set of rules different from the local customs.

• Hmmm, Parker being uncomfortable with things that aren’t black and white? I’m sure a mysterious ghost girl isn’t causing him any distress, then.

• Cute: Torres calling Robin “princesa” in a text. Cringe: Robin texting back that she misses Torres so much it hurts. Let’s see Thom E. Gemcity work that exchange into his next steamy thriller!

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