'NCIS' recap- 'Pandora's Box, Part I'

The last episode of NCIS opened with an unknown figure walking into an arena with balloons and flowers before beginning to put the balloons in boxes leading to air vents. When the police stop the person in front of three bomb timers, we see the person is Abby and all she does is say the phrase “Aristotle Banana Split.”

After the credits, we see Abby two days earlier being approached by Earl Goddard with Homeland Security. He has been trying to recruit her for a think tank operation, in which experts work on potential terror scenarios to know how to prepare for them. However, Abby is not interested in thinking like a bad guy.

When Ellie sees Abby with Earl, she mentions to the team she has always wanted to do a think tank operation. Abby tells them why she does not want to do it and then finds out Vance has already said she can since Homeland practically begged to have her on board. Abby is stunned to find it is an order.

Two days later, we find that Metro police has no idea about the operation, even though Earl was supposed to warn them about what was happening. Gibbs verifies she is one of theirs and she tries to tell them the bomb isn’t even real. However, one of the smoke bombs turns out to actually have Sarin inside, much to her dismay.

Vance comes to take Abby into his custody since he was the one who approved her for the mission. Abby is sure they have been double crossed but no one can get a hold of Earl.

She takes some of the team to the hotel where the base for the operation was located. The team she worked with including a film maker, John James Axiom, a logistics guy named Phil Kurjack and Greta Festernacht. They all had different personalities but Abby told them they had to work together. She finds the team in the hotel, but Earl is nowhere to be found and they have no idea what happened.

Alex gets a phone call that Earl has been found. However, he is dead in his car and there are signs of Sarin poisoning around his mouth.

Knox Ellicott with Homeland Security meets with Gibbs and Vance at the crime scene. They all want to know who killed Earl and put Abby in danger.

Alex interviews Phil, who gave the team supplies for the operation. He tells her that Earl was like a father to him since losing his parents in Bosnia. He also states Earl’s job was to make the bomb look real. Abby had come up with jobs for all of them to do.

Tim talks to JJ, who tells him that his job was to get the bomb into the arena, which he did by hiding them in a case of Caf-Pow. He met Greta inside, whose job it was to plant the bombs.

Gibbs talks to Abby, who is feeling horrible about her role in things even though she couldn’t have known the situation would turn real. She feels like there was something she missed.

Down in autopsy, Clayton and Ducky discuss their connection to Britan before getting ot the case. Ducky tells Clayton that the exposure to Sarin on Earl was mainly through his mouth and he had bruises around his neck. They still don’t know if he was involved or not, but it’s clear he was murdered.

Ellie tells Gibbs that Tim is going through Earl’s laptop but there is evidence she has for him. There is still Sarin missing and it is likely someone is planning to use it.

Clayton notices Ellie has a search for Chen up on her laptop and she quickly hides it before they do an update on the case. JJ arrives at NCIS and tells the team that Homeland Security does not have a record of him as a recruit. Alex then goes down to the lab to tell Abby that Earl’s pass was used to steal Sarin. However, Abby refuses to believe Earl was involved.

Clayton tells Gibbs the reason Homeland Security didn’t have a record of JJ was because there was a security wipe of all the harddrives. Knox Ellicott had ordered the wipe. Gibbs interviews him and finds out that he was hacked while using his personal computer for work. He had ordered the wipe to prevent the hack from reaching more servers.

As Tim works on the computer and Alex is distracted, Gibbs finds out that the hacker stole the entire Terror playbook, meaning someone could use it to determine offense strategies for terror attacks. The IP address for the person responsible is in New Orleans.

Nick wants to go undercover since he thinks an old contact might be involved in stealing the playbook. However, Vance is unsure of the idea.

Ellie tells Gibbs that after talking to NSA, she discovered there has been no chatter involving terrorists using Sarin in an attack. Someone tricked Earl with a fake intelligence report.

After looking into where the sarin bomb led to, Abby discovered the people in the particular seating venue were private body guards for a man under an assumed name. The person was a man named Jovan Dezic, a Bosnian Foreign Affairs Minister who was suspected of being involved in attacks that killed civilians, including Phil Kurjack’s parents.

At first, Phil denies his involvement but then admits he wanted to see Jovan dead. But it appears he still is going to make an attempt, especially when the team discovers Jovan is in the hospital recovering from surgery he had come to the United States for.

In the hospital, Jovan’s son opens a care package for his father before he notices the bubble wrapping. He begins to pop it until Gibbs and Abby rush in to stop him. Abby inspects the wrapping and sees a drop of Sarin in one of the ones he had not popped.

Tim gives Abby concert tickets, a gift from everyone although she already had some thanks to Vance, who wanted to make up for all she had gone through. He then tells Abby that before Earl’s death, he had set off a silent alarm when he realized Phil was releasing real Sarin. He had done this to stop Abby from unknowingly committing an actual attack.

In MTAC, Torres tells the team Pisco is en route to New Orleans and since he only goes for something big, he feels it is the playbook. He is given permission to go and Tim is sent to New Orleans as well to keep an eye on him.