Twisted Sister
McGee's sister Sara is the prime suspect in the murder of a Navy sailor on her university campus.Tropes
- The Bad Guys Are Cops: Played With. The would-be rapist that Madison recruits to assault Sara is Tate, a student security guard.
- Bait-and-Switch: The episode opens with Tim working on his novel when he's visited by his neighbor who's annoyed by the noise Tim's making from the constant use of his paper shredder. When Tim ends up shredding another paper and gets a knock on the door, he answers thinking it's the neighbor again. Instead it's Sara, covered in blood and disoriented.
- Big Brother Instinct: Tim takes the day off and tries his best to exonerate his sister on his own, and when the chips are down, is prepared to resign from NCIS rather than be part of sending her to jail.
- Bizarre Taste in Food: Sara's favorite pizza is a no-cheese jalapeno with peanut butter. This ends up saving her at the last minute after Abby finds the exact same ingredients mixed with the drug she was doped with after she puked it out on the taxi she was in.
- A Bloody Mess: When Tim answers the door a second time, he is shocked to see a disheveled Sara standing there, with her hands covered in blood.
- Call-Back: Sara appears for the first time since Season Two's "Red Cell"; Tony recalls seeing her photo on Tim's phone in Season Three's "Family Secret" and crows that he was right, she is much too hot to be Tim's girlfriend.
- Date Rape: What Madison set Sara up for.
- Her Code Name Was "Mary Sue": Despite Tim's fervent denials, the characters in his thriller novel Deep Six are an extremely obvious Expy of himself and the team: Special Agents "Tommy", "McGregor", "L.J. Tibbs", Mossad liaison officer "Lisa", and forensics expert "Amy Sutton."
- Lying to Protect Your Feelings: After the murderer has been caught, Sara tells his fiancee Carolyn that Jeff's last words to Sara was that he was dumping her to be with Carolyn. Tim knows that this is far from true, but Gibbs tells him to let it go, because "sometimes a little lie's good for the soul." Carolyn would much prefer to believe that her fiancee died faithful to her, than to know that he was, if not actually cheating on her, ambivalent about spending the rest of his life with her.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Shepherd and Gibbs both point out to Tim that by failing to bring Sara in immediately, he has allowed a lot of the evidence that might exonerate her to be destroyed or contaminated.
- Oh, Crap!: Tim, hearing Gibbs on the other end of the line:Tim: Boss? Why do you have my sister's cell phone?
Gibbs: I got a better question: what is your sister's cell phone doing on my dead body? - The Reveal: Earlier episodes in Season Four have hinted at McGee's new wealth, as he is buying designer clothes, hiring a personal trainer and driving a Porsche. In this episode the team discovers he has written a bestselling thriller based on his teammates.
- Slowly Slipping Into Evil: Madison set Sara up to be raped as revenge for her blog's choice words about the cheerleading squad. It spiraled into a murder and a cover-up.
- Tampering with Food and Drink: Madison slips a Date Rape drug into Sara's jar of peanut butter to set her up to be assaulted by her cohort.
- Turn in Your Badge: McGee, after Director Shepherd chews him out. Gibbs returns it to him a moment later.
- The Unreveal:
- It's never explained how Ducky was able to establish the time of death of the goldfish, since, being cold-blooded, the liver-probe method used with humans and other mammals would be useless.
- Madison and Tate each finger the other as the one who actually stabbed Jeff and planted Sara's cell phone on his body; it is never revealed which of them actually did it, but Gibbs doesn't care, since they were both in the plot up to their necks.
- Wham Line: Sara's late-night greeting to her brother: "I think I killed someone, Tim!"
- What the Hell, Hero?: Tim gets a huge chewing out from Gibbs about Sara.
