By Menachem Wecker
“The reason I missed Eye Street is because I was expecting to find Eye Street two blocks past K Street,” says medical assistant Jimmy Palmer (Brian Dietzen), explaining why he arrives late to a crime scene in the CBS series NCIS.
“It is a rare place in this world, Mr. Palmer, where reason is the best compass,” Donald “Ducky” Mallard (David McCallum), chief medical examiner, gruffly replies.
“H, I, J, K. That’s how the alphabet works, right?” Palmer asks. “Goes the same forwards as backwards.”
“Apart from the name of the food court at George Washington University, there is no J Street in the District,” Mallard says. “Perhaps that’s where you’ve been spending your time, Mr. Palmer, instead of going to class.”
A stabbing and war crimes investigation later, the episode concludes with the revelation that though some think J Street was omitted as a slight to former Chief Justice John Jay, it was really skipped so that pedestrians would not get confused by the similar-looking capital I and J. The city planners evidently hadn’t anticipated Palmer’s poor sense of direction.
“Broken Bird,” episode 13 of season six of NCIS, is just one of many cinematic and literary references to GW. Alan Jacobson, the father of an incoming freshman and of a rising senior, is scheduled to publish his book Velocity in September which has a scene set in Kogan Plaza and a lead character who is a GW alumnus.
When the GW Twitter handle @GWTweets recently asked followers how many television shows and movies they could come up with that mentioned GW, dozens of responses poured in.
Teddy Altman (Kim Raver), the surgeon on Grey’s Anatomy, did her residency at GW. Jonah Hill’s character Eugene Tenanbaum in Evan Almighty is a GW student intern.
There is also the memorable exchange from the movie Big:
Interviewer: Where did you go to school?
Josh Baskin (Tom Hanks): It was called George Washington.
Interviewer: Oh, GW. My brother-in-law got his doctorate there. Did you pledge?
Josh: Yes. Every morning.
Another episode of NCIS refers to “Monroe University Hospital,” which happens to be located near 22nd Street. In episode one of the second season of The West Wing, “In the Shadow of Two Gunmen, Part I,” there is an assassination attempt, and President Bartlet is sent to GW Hospital.
The Interpreter features a scene in which Silvia Broome (Nicole Kidman) walks through the courtyard near the Foggy Bottom Metro. In West Wing, Blair Spoonhour (Kiersten Warren) is a White House intern and GW law student. Other West Wing episodes refer to a scar from a surgery at GW Hospital, an anesthesiologist at GW, using the GW student body “as [an] intelligence gathering source” and finding a hall at GW to host a swearing-in ceremony.
In the last episode of season three of Greek, Casey Cartwright (Spencer Grammer) is accepted to GW Law School. GW Hospital and Ross Hall appear in a scene in the movie The Invasion, starring Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig. “The Girl in the Fridge,” an episode of Bones, includes a conversation between Temperance Brennan (Emily Deschanel) and Michael Stires (Josh Hopkins), in which GW has asked Stires to head its anthropology department.
A search for GW on Google Books yields thousands of references, including The Bourne Legacy (the fourth novel in Robert Ludlum’s Jason Bourne series), Consent to Kill and Separation of Power by Vince Flynn, Charon’s Landing by Jack B. Du Brul, Fallen by Kathleen George, The Third Cell by Anthony D’Egidio, Gone Tomorrow by Lee Child, Let Their Spirits Dance: A Novel by Stella Pope Duarte, Darkness Descending by Penny Mickelbury and Misdirection by Juliane Viskup.
At least one of the fictional GW degrees was bestowed on a real alumna. When Kerry Washington, B.A. ’98, a member of the GW Board of Trustees, played the role of Chelina Hall in Boston Legal, the producers made her degree from GW Law School.
“I called them about it, and they had no idea why I was so excited,” Ms. Washington said in an interview with GW Magazine. “They just thought it was funny because it was Washington and Washington.”