NCIS – Who’s Abby without the Sciuto?

After a poor start to the season thus far, NCIS scored a solid “not bad” with last night’s episode. I don’t know that I can point to why I found this week’s case more intriguing than the past few weeks’, but at least I’m able to say that I did, which is a start in the right direction.

I know we’ve met Detective Danny Sportelli (Jack Conley) before, but to be honest his prior appearance does not stand out for me. After this appearance, however, I don’t imagine that I’ll be forgetting him anytime soon. His back-and-forth with Tony was awesome … I hope we haven’t seen the last of their crossover cases.

I was actually curious enough about the mystery surrounding George Kaplan and his accountant Drew Turner (Melissa Ponzio) that I was waiting for the resolution. It didn’t live up to all its early promise, but what can you do. And Navy Lieutenant Commander Geoffrey Brett (Brett Tucker) made his side of the story interesting enough that I didn’t feel the plot sagging in the middle.

What was kind of annoying — and annoyingly cliched — was how convinced Brett was that he couldn’t have been in danger, leading him to push back against the protection that NCIS was offering him. There’s something about TV characters and the threat of danger … everyone thinks they can fend for themselves, and everyone refuses the free professional security that gets offered to them. Why?

Meanwhile, while I understand that a dead hit man isn’t going to stop a determined individual’s agenda, I did wonder why The Cooler’s unfortunate — yet morbidly humorous — demise didn’t convince Gibbs and company that Brett might have at least been temporarily safe from another assassin … it must take time to line the good ones up! It seemed so unlike Gibbs to have not thought that one through, instead rushing ahead with the protection detail.

The other major story of the week was Abby’s. Called upon to donate a kidney — who else thought she’d be donating to The Cooler? — she discovered that she had a brother that she never knew about. Forgetting for a moment that we didn’t know her original brother (it might have been a smart move to establish her family as she knew it before introducing a mystery character to the game board), I kind of wasn’t so interested in her tale. But I know that many of you are … therefore I bring it up.

So because I’m not so curious, I’ll put it to you: what did you think about the personal reveal? Is there, or will there be, a significance to what we’ve learned beyond the fact that the revelation made Abby feel lost? Is she about to embark on an arc that will involve her reaching out to her birth family, trying to reevaluate who she is and what she’s all about? Or was the point really just to reaffirm how much Gibbs cares for her, like so many scenes with so many other members of the team in the past? With McGee’s grandmother already popping up, is this going to be a season with a lot of personal exposition? Personally I’d love that, particularly as it relates to people’s families.

What do you think is ahead? And how are you finding the ninth season so far?

Clacked by Aryeh S.
on Oct 12, 2011 @ 14:07 EST5EDT