Damned If You Do

"Damned If You Do" is the 24th episode of the tenth season of the American police procedural drama NCIS, and the 234th episode overall. It originally aired on CBS in the United States on May 14, 2013. The episode is written by Gary Glasberg and directed by Tony Wharmby, and was seen by 18.79 million viewers. Plot In the aftermath of Gibbs' arrest, the DoD Office of the Inspector General broadens their investigation into NCIS, placing the future of the entire agency in jeopardy. While the team believes that the investigating agent is looking to capitalize on Gibbs' arrest to make his career, they soon discover that NCIS' pursuit of Ilan Bodnar was used to cover up the CIA's involvement in the assassination of a foreign intelligence head; meanwhile, director Vance calls a lawyer for Gibbs, choosing former U.S. Navy JAG Rear Admiral A.J. Chegwidden (he retired years before, at the end of [[JAG (season 9)|JAG'''s ninth season]], about 2003 or 2004; since then, he began a career of attorney). Instead of letting Gibbs take all the blame for the charges, Tony, Ziva, and McGee take responsibility for what happened and resign. The episode ends with a cut to four months later, showing Gibbs aiming a sniper rifle at FBI agent Fornell. The scene fades to black, where the sound of a gunshot is then heard. Production Writing "Damned If You Do" was written by Gary Glasberg and directed by Tony Wharmby. The tenth-season finale had a "different" approach, which executive producer Gary Glasberg explained to be because "we did multiple [episodes] that could have been season-enders this season — the car crash, killing Ziva’s dad, the revenge factor of killing Bodnar. It was one thing after another and because of that, I wanted to do something different for the actual season finale." About the storyline in the episode, Glasberg said "One of the things we really started to think about was, 10 seasons into a show — 234 episodes — [there were] so many cases, so many opportunities and ways that Gibbs handled things but maybe crossed some lines in the way that he handled them. And someone had to have noticed that somewhere along the way. There are people who are paying attention and what if someone — an investigator who was out for his own reasons — decided that this was the opportunity and the moment to go after them and basically say, ‘You can’t keep doing this.’ Ziva going after Bodnar was just sort of the straw that broke the camel's back."