This is the 345th episode of NCIS (2003). With this episode, the series surpassed Knots Landing (1979) as the second longest running primetime drama spin-off in American television history. Knots Landing (1979), a spin-off of Dallas (1978), ran for 344 episodes from 1979 to 1993. The longest running such series is Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (1999), a spin-off of Law & Order (1990), which has run for 20 seasons since 1999.
When French Stewart is being glib with Agent Reeves he mentions getting a postcard from his former cellmate from Zihuatanejo. That's the fishing village Andy Dufresne tells his cellmate Red to meet him at and he even sends a postcard from there in The Shawshank Redemption,
A close up of Fornell's Virginia driver's license shows his birth date to be 7/15/1956, about ten years' younger than Joe Spano's actual birth date.