NCIS – Life is just a heist movie

It wasn’t the Artful Dodger, but the young couple in love discovering the dead body last night on NCIS was more of the same creative work that landed fingers and teeth in a purse last week. I wonder what the process is for writing the reveal, because it’s rarely even remotely connected to the rest of the story. Maybe coming up with those is someone’s full-time job.

Anyway, I loved when Tony was questioning Jason (Jimmy ‘Jax’ Pinchak), who thought that the NCIS agent was asking about Jason’s personal experience prior to slipping in the dead guy’s blood. Great response when Tony asked about “the body!”

The shower theme was funny in the beginning, when a misinterpreted idiom turned into a group discussion about showering habits. I loved that Palmer showers 18-19 times per week, but does Brad Pitt really only shower three times a week to preserve his natural aroma? Because that’s kind of gross. That’s not something to emulate, Tony.

The dead man under the car, next to whom Palmer got himself stuck, was a former NCIS employee who’d apparently been stealing seized property. While it was a clue that led the team onto Leona Phelps’ (JoBeth Williams) plot, I’m still kind of wondering what he planned on doing with all of the stuff in his trunk. And why retain the tags that identified them all as NCIS property?

But ultimately it was a rather interesting story once you followed the threads. A bunch of criminals on their last score parked their ill-begotten gains with Phelps, who turned out to be running a scheme that resulted in the loss of all the stolen money. So Ruleo Medilla (Enrique Castillo) was compelled to return and find Phelps’ ledger and locate his missing cash. Nice.

What I wondered was how Ruleo got so unlucky as to invest his money with a manager who was actually fleecing her clients. That, and why would he invest in something as illiquid as a fund? He could always sell his holdings, but the process is so much slower than going back to a hole in the ground for another stack of twenties, or better yet visiting one of the many safe deposit boxes around the world where your money’s waiting for you.

I did not understand the randomness of NCIS Special Agent Erica Jane Barrett (Sarah Jane Morris) showing up, nor do I understand why Tony cared that she came from the office that he might have been sent to run. And their kiss was the first of three, one per show I review on Tuesday nights, that was awkward and painful to watch.

It’s great to imagine that Tony might be off the market and free from making some other horrible romantic mistake, but I didn’t feel that the episode had built up to that moment at all. Instead, the kiss combined with Tony creepily hanging around the women’s shower room to make he seem like a pervert or a predator … even more than he naturally can be. I hope EJ is not here to stay.

Clacked by Aryeh S.
on Mar 02, 2011 @ 13:16 EST5EDT