Why didn't Fornell recognize Gibbs in "Yankee White"?
The first episode of NCIS starts out with an incident aboard Air Force One, where a Navy officer guarding the "nuclear football" is poisoned. While the Secret Service and FBI are arguing jurisdiction, Gibbs, Ducky, and Dinozzo board the plane and basically steal the crime scene.
They pull this off by having Ducky pretend to be the local ME, and Gibbs and Dinozzo pretending to be his assistants. This fools the FBI long enough to get them off the plane. A major plot for the rest of the episode is the jockeying for control over the body between NCIS/FBI/SS.
Except -- the FBI lead on scene was Fornell, who has a long history with Gibbs (they share an ex-wife, for example) and NCIS in general. In the later seasons (the ones I've seen) the two behave as if they had been friends for decades. They certainly have no problem with joint investigations when their jurisdictions overlap.
Is it ever explained in a future episode why Fornell didn't immediately recognize Gibbs when he got on the plane?
Best Answer
No. It's a known continuity issue, along with his name in the first episode (Tom instead of Tobias). Never explained publicly. Even in later seasons though, Gibbs and Fornell outwardly portray the antagonistic inter-departamental grudge match, the typical jurisdictional fighting that competing government agencies are known for. Reverse Frenemies.
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Are Tobias and Gibbs still friends?
Tobias C. Fornell" is a former FBI Special Agent who occasionally works with the NCIS Major Case Response Team and who is also good friends with the team's leader, Leroy Jethro Gibbs. He is also the ex-husband of Diane Sterling and father of Emily Fornell.How do Fornell and Gibbs know each other?
Continuity. In "Yankee White" Special Agent Gibbs and FBI Agent Fornell are meeting for the first time. But later it is revealed that they knew each other before because Fornell married Gibbs's second ex-wife after Gibbs warned him not to, indicating that they knew each other before they met on Air Force One.Why Didn't You Stop Me?
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