It was quite the drama last night on NCIS when Director Vance discovered that the main suspect in the murder of a petty officer was none other than his brother-in-law Michael (Jocko Sims). Apparently Leon’s been practically raising Michael since he was eight, and after all these years is still waiting to see him fly right and stand on his own two feet.
It’s always interesting when a case takes us on a journey like this one did. First of all, from removed from much of what we’ve been seeing recently, this was almost the most basic form of naval murder investigation that I’d imagine one could find: a sailor gets killed while on shore leave. That it happened in Baltimore and not somewhere overseas makes it a little more unfortunate — to think that you don’t even have to leave home to be in danger — but it’s a far cry from psy ops and all that other stuff we’ve been neck deep in lately. I enjoyed that.
The journey took us from Michael, to fellow sailor Brian Smith (Aaron Perilo), to a pizza shop owner, and back to Michael. Who would have thought … an illegal high stakes card game in the side room of a pizza shop. Unless they were working off of intel that we didn’t get to see, that was a pretty lucky guess by Gibbs as to which room the game was in. I imagine there’s more than one back door in that place, considering the fact that there must be a kitchen back there somewhere. But talk about how incongruous a scene that was — one room pizza, one room casino. That’s new to me.
I think the episode actually suggested a greater mystery behind Michael than we discovered. Jackie Vance’s (Paula Newsome) reaction to seeing him suggested more than her claim that she’d let him go, and yet she had warmed up to him by morning. I realize that it’s hard to know what’s underneath familial relationships, but I wonder if there hadn’t been more there originally that ended up on the editing room floor.
Regardless, I enjoyed that whole angle of the story. It’s interesting when a “non-stranger” is introduced into one of these plots, and certainly we’ve seen plenty of family members accused of murder on this show. Is this the first one who was actually guilty?
What I didn’t enjoy so much was Vance. I’m not a big fan in general, and watching him hover over Gibbs’ shoulder has always been annoying, so obviously I felt that even more so last night. Either stop talking about how Gibbs is your best agent, or let him do his job! The way Vance acts, you’d think he’d been a former Special Agent who got promoted. Now, maybe he was and maybe he wasn’t, but certainly we’ve never seen his investigative skills at work. So let the pros do the investigating, and be the director.
Doesn’t it annoy Gibbs? I’ll tell you what he should do: waive that Vance file over Leon’s head every time he gets annoying. Better yet, conduct the investigation you were going to years back; Vance is just as suspicious now as he was then, so why not?
It might get Vance off of Gibbs’ back….
Clacked by Aryeh S.
on Mar 28, 2012 @ 06:35 EST5EDT
Well, to be fair, Vance did process the crime scene in the episode where Jenny died, and did re-create the events very well, so he does have some investigative skills.
What I DON’T like, and what we’ve seen several times, is that Vance will jump to a conclusion based on how he wants the investigation to come out. Basically, “this person is guilty, now prove it”.
Anyway, I don’t think Gibbs still has the Vance CIA file. I remember SECNAV opening it in Gibbs basement and commenting on how part of it was fake. Of course, I didn’t trust that particular SECNAV either, so who knows? Putting Gibbs in a position of basically blackmailing Vance would not be a good move. He’s better as an uncomfortable ally.