A LETTER TO THE NEW PRODUCERS OF NCIS
(Written 23rd May 2007)
Dear NCIS New Producers,
Now that DPB has left you/will have left you soon, do you think it would be possible to employ a consistency person? Someone who can actually keep the time-line, the things we are told in episodes actually consistent - both within episodes and between episodes? Please? Pretty please?
Warning: Rant ahead
EMILY FORNELL AND DIANE
Emily is NOT the child of Diane, she can't be.
And Diane is NOT the wife Gibbs and Fornell shared. Really, she isn't.
How do I know this?
Season Two, Episode Twenty Three- Twilight
Gibbs: Tell him he's about to make the second biggest mistake of his life.
Fornell: My second biggest mistake, Jethro? That's very dramatic. What was the first?
Gibbs: When you married my second wife.
Fornell: You could have warned me.
Gibbs: I did.
A little later:
Gibbs: What's the number?
Fornell: Are you sure about this?
Gibbs: As sure as when I told you she would clean out your Bank Account when she left.
Note: SECOND wife. Okay, so strictly speaking due to canon we later discover, second wife means that means that Tobias married the first EX-Mrs. Gibbs. However, given that Fornell (and us) didn't know about Shannon, let's assume that Gibbs meant 'second EX-wife'.
Season Four, Episode Two - Escaped
When Fornell and Gibbs are in Emily's bedroom, Fornell comments again about being married to Gibbs's second wife (again we'll assume, even though now Fornell knows about Shannon) that he meant second ex-wife. He's saying that had he listed to Gibbs he'd now have a spare room for Gibbs, he wouldn't have to sleep in Emily's room.
That's SECOND ex-wife.
Diane, as we learn in Kill Ari following a conversation between Jenn and Gibbs, was Gibbs's THIRD ex-wife. Not his second.
Fornell married Gibbs's second ex-wife. It was said second ex-wife who emptied their Bank Accounts.
Now in Angel Of Death we 'meet' Diane who apparently is not only is Emily's mother, but she was the ex-wife who emptied their Bank Accounts.
Let's just assume, for a second or two, that you'd forgotten the above fact, and it's another of your much-loved inconsistencies; there is another issue concerning Emily's age.
Ducky's says to Gibbs in The Curse (aired October 2003) that is was four years ago since your third ex-wife hit you with the baseball bat (we later learn her name was Diane). So we assume that was the 'beginning of the end', so to speak; thus Gibbs and Diane divorced in early 2004. Even assuming that Fornell took up with Diane before the divorce was final (i.e. in late 2003), it takes nine months to have a baby; that takes us to mid-late 2004. Or, as is more likely, they were divorced before she became pregnant, we are getting into late 2004/early 2005, maybe . . . Er, Emily is more than three years old, she is about seven/eight. (The actress is nine and-a-half, which I know isn't anything to go on, but . . .)
The only other possibility to make Emily older than she can be going by the above, is that when Diane hit Gibbs she and Gibbs were already divorced. However, that still contradicts the second wife thing, and then we get into the muddy waters of Ducky and Gibbs apparently only having known one another for ten years
(Hiatus), now eleven, and that Ducky knew all three of the ex-Mrs. Gibbs, indeed he introduced Gibbs to Diane.
It does NOT add up.
Emily CANNOT be Diane's daughter.
And going by your previous canon Diane CANNOT be the ex-wife Fornell married.
Actually, going by Emily's age, she'd be hard pushed to be Gibbs's second ex-wife's daughter, but let's not get too complicated. That's more speculative and up in the air, the above isn't.
Unless . . . Unless . . . (she says being kind to you) this is Gibbs's secret. He doesn't have three ex-wives; he's been lying all this time. Oh, wait, that means that Ducky, Fornell and Jenny have all been lying too.
The other 'unless' is that not only did Gibbs keep marrying red-heads, but that he married women all called 'Diane'. Thus the Diane we saw in
Angel Of Death was actually ex-wife number two, or even ex-wife number one and she was called Diane as well.
Oh, yes. Now I really believe that.
The only way that 'Diane' could be Emily's mom and 'Diane' is the wife Gibbs and Fornell shared, is if the first ex-Mrs. Gibbs was also called Diane. Now that would fit with Emily's age and the comments about 'second wife'. Because the first ex-Mrs. Gibbs is Gibbs second wife. Okay, that works. The only thing it doesn't work with is the comment in
Twilight, as one would assume that Fornell would have picked up on 'second' and said 'don't you mean first'. Mind you, this is the same Fornell whom Gibbs didn't know in
Yankee White and who didn't know Gibbs!!!
But yes, that one tiny thing aside, that would fit with your own canon.
Emily Fornell is the daughter of Gibbs's first ex-wife, whom Fornell married, and she, like the third ex-Mrs. Gibbs, is also called 'Diane'.
But why do I not believe that's what you mean?
Let's be honest, you've just, yet again, been inconsistent!!!! *Sigh*
Please, Producers; we can keep your canon straight, why can't you?