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The Worst Thing That Palmer Ever Did On NCIS

NCIS has been running for a long time, and over the years, Special Agent Leroy Jethro Gibbs (Mark Harmon) has commanded a truly astounding amount of professionals. Dr. Jimmy Palmer (Brian Dietzen) is by his very profession one of the strangest among these often peculiar figures. Before he took over as chief medical examiner for the NCIS major case response team, he worked as the right hand of his beloved predecessor, Ducky Mallard (David McCallum). The two men are both eccentrics, but the fatherly and wise Ducky tends to command a whole lot more respect than the nerdy, clumsy Palmer, whose goofy tendencies and odd sense of humor almost relegate him to the status of joke character on occasion. 

However, his peculiarities don't mean that Dr. Palmer isn't capable of great deeds — or the occasional underhanded one, for that matter. Let's take a look at the worst thing that Palmer ever did on NCIS.

Palmer's medical examiner test was far from a slam dunk

With his Ducky-like penchant of talking to the dead and his own copious eccentricities, Dr. Palmer might be extremely qualified to be a chief medical examiner in the NCIS universe — when it comes to his personality. However, when it comes to his actual professional ability, he's not exactly top of his class. 

Though Palmer is far from an evil character, Screen Rant notes that he's far from an angel in one respect at least: He chose not to divulge to his colleagues that he failed his medical examiner test no fewer than two times before he passed. The team only learns the truth completely by accident in the season 14 episode "Keep Going," when a nearby microphone captures Palmer admitting his multiple failures and how only Ducky's staunch support helped him wrap up his studies in the first place. Whoops!

Then again, it must be noted that Palmer was deliberately recounting his failures while standing on a ledge and trying to talk down a jumper — and he ultimately succeeds at the task. So, maybe let's not hold a couple of failures against the guy. Clearly, his heart is in the right place.