NCIS season 16 episode 16 video: Who is lying to Gibbs?

Mark Harmon

Within the world of NCISwe know that Mark Harmon’s Leroy Jethro Gibbs operates under a specific set of rules. Sure, some of them are made to be broken (just look at “She” for evidence of that!), but others are stringent, binding.

Then, there are some things that don’t need to be rules at all; they’re just certainties. They are the things you don’t need someone else to tell you; it’s basically NCIS common sense. Think along the lines lying to Gibbs in the middle of a case. You do that and, nine times out of ten, it leads to you taking the walk of shame straight out the door, cause he always knows!

If you want a greater discussion on the past big Ziva episode… you can get that in our video at the bottom of this article! For more updates, subscribe to CarterMatt on YouTube, and we also highly recommend you check out our NCIS playlist. It’s a great resource for news about the entire franchise!

If Jimmy Palmer was anyone else, there’s a reasonably good chance he has a pink slip on “Bears and Cubs,” the next episode airing on March 12. The synopsis (which you can read more about here) hints that he may be tampering with some evidence, which is a big no-no within the NCIS world … or really the world of any law-enforcement agency ever. “Don’t tamper with evidence” is right up on the list with “don’t lie to Gibbs.”

Yet, there are a couple of reasons why Jimmy may be let off easy … or may just be subject to a good old fashioned yelling and the hairy stink eye.

1. He’s doing it to protect his family – Namely, he’s doing it to help his father-in-law, who somehow becomes looped into the murder investigation. Gibbs understands how valuable family is; the guy may be stoic and overly harsh at times, but he’s got a big heart. He just doesn’t show it all that much for the sake of the job.

2. The tampering may not be that serious – If Palmer did something to cover up a murder, we don’t think that Gibbs would be anywhere near as forgiving as he’ll probably be here. There are degrees of offense and this may have been something light — take for example, the possibility that his father-in-law had something embarrassing that would’ve been revealed in the evidence. Maybe Jimmy just wanted to spare him some humiliation!

We don’t think NCIS is going to write off one of their longest-tenured actors in Brian Dietzen by making his character into a criminal; that’s probably the #1 thing to keep in mind entering this episode. Can you imagine Jimmy’s arc ending behind bars? That’s completely nuts … but to be fair, he did get arrested alongside Torres for that art-class brawl earlier this season. We’re as surprised as anyone that we’ve ever written about an art-class brawl at all.

One other thing to keep in mind is Robert Wagner’s return in this episode! He and Jimmy’s father-in-law are apparently buddies — how he factors into the larger case is still to be determined, but we’re never going to object to getting DiNozzo, Sr. back in the mix. We’ve already written extensively about the interesting timing of Wagner’s return, given what we just learned about Ziva and the relationship between Tony Sr. and Tony Jr.and we saw Bishop mention about “keeping secrets” in the episode all about Tim’s high school years. There’s no guarantee that Ziva will even be mentioned in this episode, but the timing of this is very interesting.

How much trouble do you think Jimmy is in?

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