NCIS – Better start scrubbing out your septic tank

CGIS Special Agent Abigail Borin (Diane Neal) was working overtime to ruin it, but despite her return last night’s episode of NCIS was pretty darn enjoyable.

The case-of-the-week wasn’t really so much about trying to solve a murder — although there was that, too — as it was about the search for what put the Bawali family on a ship in Lebanon and sent them to the United States seeking asylum.

Is Shohreh Aghdashloo the only actress around who plays Muslim women? I feel like whenever one’s needed on TV, she appears. I’m not a fan, but I can’t decide if I slightly prefer her playing naive or sneakily sinister. Certainly she was annoying last night, caught like a deer in the headlights more than once … the climax, between her and her son as he stood over the bomb, was almost painful to watch. Why didn’t someone just shoot him?

But the back-and-forth of the case had plenty of moments, and I really got a kick of how over-cliched it was to watch the team jump whenever an interrogation revealed a new bit of information. I always find it amusing that even the best TV cops will listen to anything an unknown suspect will toss out at them, but there was something extra about the pinball-like investigation that had me laughing quite a few times. And the fact that, in the end, the finger got pointed back at the father? Hilarious!

Abby testing the ship’s septic tank was awesome, and I can’t believe how well it worked. Still, she made it seem as if it wouldn’t be possible to pinpoint suspects without delving much deeper into the data, so how did she manage to finger the entire family with such ease?

Of course the best part of the entire episode was the team’s hunt for a new wife for Gibbs. I loved how everyone got involved — where was Palmer? — and it was great to see that the writers successfully managed to weave it into the fabric of the entire episode. Nary a moment was wasted, in the minutes that Gibbs was nowhere to be found, in analyzing the puzzle that was finding the perfect match for a man like Gibbs.

And so perfect that Gibbs walked in right when they were discussing their final choice. I have to imagine that he knew what they were up to all along — this is Gibbs, don’t forget — but he gave them their brief moment in the sun … and then burst their bubble by revealing that he’d already dated their selection. “Too perfect?” Sounds unlikely. Can you imagine someone being too perfect for the man that Gibbs has evolved into after all these years? I can see his first wife having being perfect, but he found her back before life shaped him into the man he is today. Now? No way.

Still, it was the right way to end the great “Wife for Gibbs” hunt. And Gibbs’ laughter as he was telling them all to go home? That was priceless.

Clacked by Aryeh S.
on Oct 19, 2011 @ 17:32 EST5EDT