Tag Archives: NCIS

Season premiere: NCIS 2016/17

The PolyBlog
September 20 2016

Last year, Season 13 of NCIS ended with Tony DiNozzo exiting stage right to look after his and Ziva’s daughter, with the life of a single dad not fitting with his NCIS lifestyle. Back when Ziva’s character exited, the producers spent a whack of time over a bunch of episodes playing “agent, agent, who wants to try out as an agent?”. Lots of old characters rotated in and out for an episode, and eventually they added Ellie Bishop. Not all the fans out there love Bishop, I don’t mind her, but I was hoping they wouldn’t do another round of rotating characters. I thought the producers said that one or two of the characters from the last couple of Eps of Season 13 would become recurring characters if not full season regulars, so imagine my surprise with both of the two other agents gone, and not a lot of explanation other than they returned to their agencies.

Season 14 kicked off with a lot of backstory for a Latino agent who has been undercover in various operations for eight years, and recently had his cover blown in Argentina. He’s been off the grid for awhile, NCIS wasn’t even sure if he was alive or dead. But he was alive, still working, and when his cover was blown, the family he was after decided to take out his family back in the U.S. too. Lots of sub-plots around revenge, heart-break, infiltrations, blah blah blah.

But the real story is that the former undercover agent, Nick Torres, is now a new agent with the team. Played by Wilmer Valderrama, it’s nice to see last year’s Minority Report secondary actors getting work. I confess both last year and this year that I recognized him, but couldn’t place from where. Double-checking his bio writing this, I was shocked to realize it’s Fez from That 70s Show. I never would have come up with that.

NCIS likes to add a twist though, and they did it this time too. They added TWO agents, not just one. Jennifer Esposito plays Alexandra Quinn, a NCIS trainer that Gibbs pulls out of the academy to join the team. I’m hoping she’s not on the team just to give them a red shirt to eliminate in the future. I loved Esposito as Jackie on Blue Bloods, even if she didn’t have enough to do in the series. I even liked her on Taxi Brooklyn for the short time it was on. Happy to see her getting some work, and she has great presence. Not sure the dynamic with Gibbs since she’s not the spring chickens like the other three.

Finally, while the overall plot for the Ep was so-so, there is a great cameo by good old Bud Roberts. Now a Captain, and still at JAG, he starts to tell a story about Mac and Harm and what they’re up to, and then he gets interrupted and there’s no story. Oh, so close. Cute little scene. But baby faced Bud? He looks OLD now 🙂

Season premiere: NCIS

The PolyBlog
September 26 2015

It’s hard to believe NCIS is into its 13th season. When we left off last season, we were dealing with a terror cell called the Calling that recruited young children into their web. Gibbs tries to help one of them and in the cliffhanger, he gets shot for his effort. Fast forward to the new season, Gibbs undergoes serious surgery, and the rest of the team keeps hunting the Calling’s leader.

The episode was decent but wrapped up the Calling a little too neatly for my tastes. I don’t know if it is truly “dead”, but considering the investment in it last season, it all ended in one episode. Gibbs is restricted to desk duty, so it’s more of a DiNozzo and team show, but that was okay for the episode. Apparently, the trauma of the shooting is going to “change Gibbs” and he is going to have to deal with those changes this season, whatever that means. It’s not like in 13 years you have seen any character growth in Gibbs, other than he gets quieter and quieter each year.

The only real bright spot in the episode was Jon Cryer, jokingly referred to by Abby as Gibbs’ own Ducky (since he was called Ducky back in his John Hughes pics), as the surgeon who saves Gibbs’ life. I love when there’s a cameo and you see a character played so well by the actor that the character walks in fully formed, almost like they have lives off screen that are rich, complicated, exciting, boring, and everything in between. Some refer to it as gravitas, others just as presence, but Cryer has it in spades as the doctor, and supposedly he will show up for a few episodes to keep an eye on Gibbs’ health. A welcome edition, even if the EP wasn’t a hit out of the park.

Watching NCIS – "Shabbat Shalom" (S10E11)

The PolyBlog
January 10 2013

This was a huge episode in my view, and this season does really feel like they are planning for it to be the last. Before Christmas, you saw Fornell and Gibbs kind of close some elements related to their ex-wife, Ducky has resolved issues of whether he wants to stay or go, and Tony resolved issues with his father. This episode has two stories running concurrently — the first is about a dead journalist, dressed as a petty officer, who was working on a story about drug use in the military. It’s a pretty stupid story though as the four main suspects all confess to “protect the military image”. Uh-huh, let’s see if I have this straight — they confess to murder which is a murder IN the military, not a civilian murder, so they’ll serve their time in Leavenworth, even though it’s obvious they didn’t do it. To hide drug use. Yawn.

The second story though is about Ziva’s father Eli being in town covertly, a potential assassination attempt on his evil Iranian counterpart, and more importantly, to spend time with his estranged father. What is more significant though is the ending — GIANT spoiler alert — as there is a shootout at Vance’s house, killing both Ziva’s father and Vance’s wife. Wow! Killing off two big characters? Sounds definitely like the final season to me. I’m betting good ole Ziva is going to wind up high up in Mossad at the end of the season (maybe with Tony as a liaison officer???) and Vance gone as director. Gibbs might even retire (with Tony as lead agent???). Either way, I expect some shake ups to come in the team as they deal with aftermath.