NCIS Recap 03/16/21: Season 18 Episode 10 “Watchdog”

NCIS Recap 03/16/21: Season 18 Episode 10 "Watchdog"

Tonight on CBS NCIS returns with an all-new Tuesday, March 16, 2021, season 18 episode 10 called, “Watchdog” and we have your weekly NCIS recap below. On tonight’s NCIS season 18 episode 10, “Watchdog,” as per the CBS synopsis, “The team uncovers a secret dogfighting ring, which leads to an unexpected move by one of the team members.”

So make sure to bookmark this spot and come back between 8:00 PM – 9:00 PM ET for our NCIS recap. While you wait for the recap make sure to check out all our NCIS recaps, spoilers, news & more, right here!

Tonight’s NCIS Recap begins now – Refresh Page often to get the most current updates!

There was an incident with a convoy. A group of military personnel was transporting weapons to a second location when they got into a fender bender and they only had an accident because of a stray dog. The dog had run out into the street right in front of the vehicle. The driver of one of the vans was forced to pull the vehicle to a sharp stop and it was so abrupt that one of the weapons came loose in the back. The Navy missile fell out of the vehicle.

It was damaged and it was considered armed. The convoy ended up having to call it in. NCIS was called because of the Navy missile and Gibbs spoke to the driver. He asked him what happened to the dog. Gibbs hasn’t been himself since his goddaughter died and he almost lost his temper when the driver appeared to dismiss the dog entirely.

The driver hadn’t cared about the dog. He said that with everything that’s happened he should have just run over the dog and so Gibbs took him to task. Gibbs cared about the animal. He and his team went looking for it and they eventually found him wounded in the woods. The dog wasn’t wounded by the car.

The vet later told the team that the dog had been shot and this wasn’t the first dog she’s seen with a bullet wound. Two other dogs have come into her practice. The vet said they had all been abused and they were all shot. The dog Gibbs found was the only one that was still alive. It seems Gibbs’s new friend was a part of an illegal dogfighting ring and so Gibbs personally investigated it.

He went out alone. He traced where the dog was coming from and it led back to a woman.

This woman owns five dogs. She said it’s cheaper than having a man and she also said that her neighbor tends to cross over onto her property. The neighbor, Luke, also has dogs. He was apparently a fisherman and so Gibbs checked out the pond he’s been fishing in. He looked into the pond. He found a cage from a kennel and inside the cage had been a dead dog. It had appeared that Luke drowned his dog.

This enraged Gibbs. He went up to Luke’s RV and he started punching him. Gibbs didn’t try to arrest him or identify himself. He went straight to punching him and his team had to pull him off. Torres, McGee, and Bishop had wanted to check up on Gibbs because they knew he was being overly attached to this dog case.

Gibbs usually puts some distance between himself and what he’s investigating. Only this time it seems like he couldn’t distance himself. He took all of his anger about what happened to the dogs and what happened to Emily Fornell out on Luke. His team being there was the only reason Gibbs hadn’t killed Luke Stanna.

Gibbs even got in trouble for what he did because Luke pressed charges and so Gibbs was later arrested for aggravated assault. Gibbs was taken away by investigators. He told his team before he left that they should tell the truth and that meant he didn’t want them lying for him. He crossed a line. He knows he crossed a line and he doesn’t want the team to sink themselves because of him. He just wants them to do their job.

The team cares for Gibbs. They continued the investigation he started and they found evidence of dogfighting. It turns out Luke was a gambling addict. He’s missed several meetings because he wanted to put money on the ponies and he went from ponies to dogs. He even had the steroids he used on the dogs still in his trailer. Plus, there was eight grand hidden under his mattress.

The team later questioned Luke and he claimed the steroids were his. He said he was looking to get back into shape. He also said he won that eight grand in a card game and so he wasn’t admitting to anything he didn’t have to. The team knew he was guilty but proving it was going to be hard and it didn’t help that the team had to take time away from the investigation to answer questions.

They were all questioned about Gibb’s behavior. They were asked if they saw Gibbs attack Luke and they all responded with a story about how Luke was trying to flee when he tripped and fell. Bishop, McGee, and Torres were all risking their careers because they wanted to protect Gibbs. They were protected in spite of what he asked of them. He told them to tell the truth and instead, they told lies. It wasn’t even a believable lie.

There was no way Luke could have tripped and fallen on his face several times. It was implausible. The team was lying and everyone knew it. Vance had watched the team be questioned. He saw when they all lied for Gibbs and he later reported it to Gibbs. He also hired Gibbs a lawyer. Gibbs hadn’t liked the news or having a lawyer.

Gibbs also didn’t get a say in either. His lawyer was there to represent him and it was too late for the team to take back the lie. The team chose to focus on clearing Gibb’s name. They wanted to prove that Luke was murdering dogs once he was done using them for fights and so they went looking for evidence. They tried to connect the steroids to the dogs. The dogs were tested and none of them had steroids in their system.

There were no new leads. Luke’s neighbor doesn’t even want to testify against him because she was afraid of what he might. She was a little old lady that lived alone on a large plot of land with dogs and so she didn’t want to take the risk. And without her, the team had nothing and so they tried arresting Luke for possession of steroids and the IG stopped them.

The Inspector-General called what NCIS was doing to Luke a “witch hunt”. They couldn’t find any evidence against him and they were now trying to harass him any way they could. This wasn’t legal. Luke already had a lawsuit prepared for what happened to him and so stunts like trying to arrest him for the littlest of things were just going to further irritate him. The team couldn’t touch Luke. He was now off-limits and they also had other problems to deal with.

McGee had been wearing a body camera the day he pulled Gibbs off of Luke. The video from it could prove that Gibbs assaulted Luke and that the team covered for him. They lied to a federal agent for him. They were all guilty of a federal crime and so the three of them considered going one step further.

Both Bishop and Torres thought they should erase the footage from the body cam. They tried to talk McGee into doing so and he was firm in telling them no. He took the footage to Vance. They both watched it together and McGee noticed something he didn’t spot before. He noticed that Luke already had blood on him before he was attacked.

The team ran a DNA test on the blood and it came back to be their dog. The dog was now named Lucy. The team could finally connect Luke to dog abuse and so they went to go arrest him. Luke hadn’t been at his house. He went on the run and so they found him by using the GPS in his personal poodle’s collar. Luke was later arrested. They also found his other dogs and rescued them.

The IG adopted two of the dogs. He also didn’t press charges against either Gibbs or his team. So, the whole team should have been off the hook but they weren’t. Vance still punished. He suspended him. He got back his badge and gun and the only bright spot in this whole thing is that now Gibbs is the owner of Lucy.

THE END!