Meredith "Merri" Brody is a former NCIS Special Agent who worked for two years as a member of the NCIS New Orleans Office led by NCIS Special Agent Dwayne Cassius Pride before her resignation from both the team and NCIS in September 2016.
Biography
Pre-Series
Born in an unknown State in the U.S., Brody was the daughter of an unnamed professor who had served in the military and a journalist, Olivia Brody with Brody also having a twin sister, Emily Brody.
Not much was revealed about Brody's early life but it's presumed that she went to a local high school and also attended Michigan State University which she graduated from.
Brody had a very distant, almost cold relationship with her parents as Olivia and her husband often shipped their daughters off to boarding school with Brody herself even regarding them as "the Stepfords" while even mentioning the two engaged in screaming matches with one another during Thanksgiving although they would later offer tearful apologizes to one another at half time.
However, Brody suffered a tragedy when Emily was killed in an apparent car accident, an event that would haunt Brody for many years and led her to search for answers while leaving her unable to sleep as she would stay up all night, stewing over her twin sister's death.
At one point, she joined NCIS and participated in a mission with NCIS Special Agent Leroy Jethro Gibbs with the mission itself remaining classified to this day.
She was then assigned to the U.S.S. Moultrie, becoming its Agent Afloat.
In 2010, Navy Petty Officer Third Class Jerry Hooper wielded a suicide vest with Brody confronting him.
However, she hesitated and Hooper then committed suicide by detonating the vest which not only killed him but left five people dead and caused the ship to suffer extensive damage from Hooper's attack with Brody having been unwilling to fire a shot due to the fact that his blue eyes reminded her on her twin sister who had died in the accident days before.
In the aftermath of the bombing, Brody was later reassigned to the NCIS Midwest Office, becoming the youngest Special Agent in the region's history.
She presumably worked there for some time before requesting the assignment to New Orleans.
NCIS Season 11
Brody in the NCIS Season 11/NCIS: New Orleans backdoor pilot episode, "Crescent City Part 1".
Brody made her debut appearance in the NCIS Season 11/NCIS: New Orleans backdoor pilot episode, "Crescent City Part 1".
NCIS: New Orleans Season 1
NCIS Season 13
NCIS: New Orleans Season 2
NCIS Season 14
NCIS: New Orleans Season 3
In the NCIS: New Orleans Season 3 premiere episode, Aftershocks (episode), Pride received a phone call from Brody with Pride later telling LaSalle and Sonja that Brody wasn't coming back which suggested that she had abruptly quit the team with the news leaving both LaSalle and Sonja stunned.
Pride also informed them although Brody was sad about leaving her colleagues, she wasn't sad about leaving the job and that she seemed pretty clear about her decision with Pride even saying that he'd tried to talk her out of it.
LaSalle believed that there had been more to it and that the whole mess with Russo couldn't have been the only reason Brody had quit with Pride stating that Brody had claimed it wasn't and that according to her, she'd been thinking about it for a long time now.
Later in the morgue, Loretta confided in Pride that she had known about Brody's departure given that she had been Brody's landlord, suggesting that the two had probably spoken about it in advance and it's presumed that Brody was probably experiencing a feeling of burnout from the stress of her job or maybe that since she had finally solved the murder of her twin sister, she had no reason to stay on the team or even in New Orleans anymore.
Personality
Physical Appearance
Brody was a tall, thin woman in her late thirties, early forties with short brown hair and brown eyes.
In the backdoor pilot for NCIS: New Orleans and also NCIS: New Orleans Season 1, Brody had short hair that reached to the back of her neck with a slight fringe covering her forehead.
In NCIS: New Orleans Season 2, Brody's hair grew long to the point that it completely covered both her ears while the fringe covered the right side of her forehead.
Brody also wore various jackets, shirts and trousers along with high heeled boots while wearing her NCIS badge on the right side of her hip.
While processing a crime scene, Brody donned an NCIS windbreaker and cap while maintaining her high-heeled boots.
While pursing a criminal in the field, Brody wore the NCIS cap and also donned the traditional NCIS bulletproof vest as well as high-heeled boots although she later exchanged those for low-heeled boots.
In NCIS: New Orleans Season 2, she was seen wearing high-heeled boots once again.
She also wore a hand-held headset that was a small blue or black earwig that she put into her left or right ear, enabling her to communicate with her teammates.
Like Pride and LaSelle, she also had the holster containing her Glock placed at her back so that she could freely grab it in the event of danger.
In the backdoor pilot episodes, Crescent City (Part 1) (episode) and Crescent City (Part 2) (episode), as a visiting agent, Brody originally carried a SIG-Sauer P228 but upon officially transferring to New Orleans and subsequently joining the NCIS: New Orleans team, she exchanged her SIG-Sauer P228 for a Glock 26 which she carried up until her resignation.
Similarly to NCIS Special Agent Timothy McGee of the NCIS Major Case Response Team in Washington D.C., Brody is left-handed.
Like NCIS Probationary Agent Eleanor Bishop, Brody wore her watch on her right hand although she later stopped wearing a watch altogether.