Random comments on 07.02 - Reunion
Exactly what it says in the subject.
Warning, I am not Ziva and/or TIVA friendly and any of my reviews will probably reflect that feeling. If you still want to read them, then click NCIS - 0702 - Reunion
So, what did I know going in to this episode?
Well, from the Video clips posted, I knew that Ziva still hadn’t learned to respect people’s boundaries (the men’s room scene), and that Tony and Tim seemed to be back on the big brother/little brother phase of their relationship - tormenting each other, while presenting a solid front to outsiders. Not sure about the newbie. More to the point, how long she’d been there and therefore, how long was supposed to have passed between last ep and this one.
I’d also seen the promo clip (Abby ranting at Ziva, Tony grabbing Ziva by the arms) and the still shots. None of which were exactly illuminating. But sometimes that’s the best way to be!
So, on with the show.
Teaser - stripper shows up, but the parties already over. While the big swinging terrorist arcs can be fun, sometimes what a show really needs is just a good old-fashioned murder mystery! (Although I firmly believe that NCIS is one of those character driven shows where the body of the week exists solely to show us what the team are about…and that’s one of the things I love about the show)
Yay, Jimmy’s in this ep! (Love BD and Jimmy’s interactions with the team. We need more of him!)
Heh, poor newbie! But I loved the Tony & Tim interactions.
Re Ziva “She’s coming back?” Tony doesn’t seem overly certain. Mind you, he doesn’t seem overly pushed one way or the other. I get the impression that he’s satisfied to know that she’s alive and safe, and if she chose to move on somewhere else, well that’d be her choice and he’d be good with that.
‘childish, juvenile, annoying’, heh, I love Tony, but yeah, that pretty much describes him on a regular basis!
And it’s the basement.
“Your door was open” Seriously Gibbs, you really need to think about locking it, what with all the terrorists, exes, sec-nav’s and general riff-raff that show up on your doorstep.
“…I felt betrayed…” Well if you didn’t want to be left behind, you shouldn’t have given Gibbs an ultimatum like that. Regardless of which of the team was Gibbs’s favourite, I don’t think he’s the type of guy who appreciates being put on the spot like that, and even if he’d had doubts about Tony (which he didn’t), I think he’d have told Ziva to take a hike anyway.
“We were a team” To me the ‘we’ seems to be referring solely to Ziva and Gibbs and not the others. I’ve always felt that the whole ‘I killed my brother for you’ was used as a way for Ziva to usurp Tony’s place as the one Gibbs could trust most and a part of me always resented her for that.
Ziva’s facial expression when Gibbs says she has to talk to the Director. Seems to me like she thought she could just walk back in and everything would be back to normal, and now things aren’t going according to plan. To my eyes, she’s less upset by the prospect of not being allowed ‘home’ than by the prospect that her current plan to get inside isn’t working. It feels more like she’s on a mission than a life-path.
“And [Vance] is not the only one you have to talk to” Damn straight. Ziva burned a hell of a lot of bridges and can’t possibly expect that it will be just Gibbs that she has to make amends to.
Heh, Gibbs doesn’t seem all that upset or surprised that Fillmore is gone! Loved his little smile there.
Somewhat surprised that Tony didn’t insist on interviewing the stripper, or that we didn’t see Gibbs shoot him down.
“Everybody knows that side-kicks are shorter” Um, but Gibbs is actually shorter than McGee. I remember being surprised by that when I saw a re-run of Sub-Rosa and realized that Sean Murray was definitely a few inches taller than Mark Harmon.
“Actually I find McGee to be the more handsome” Well, she did rate his butt higher than Tony’s a few seasons back.
“Have you discussed this with your father?”
“I am not sure how his opinion is relevant.”
How about the fact that he’s actually your boss and you were presumably on Mossad’s payroll when you went on the mission to Somalia.
“You were the Mossad Liaison Officer, which by definition requires you to have a relationship with Mossad”
It’s funny, because it’s like the writers have been listening to some of the fan complaints over the summer and are addressing them.
(I would argue the point though about Ziva having been an asset to the agency. While I’m sure she did prove useful in helping solve the cases, most of the time her place could have effectively been taken by any competent investigator.)
Again, Ziva is acting like this is all part of a mission. Perhaps in her eyes it is. She wants to get back into NCIS, so she’s made her plan and is following it with as much focus as she’d put into a mission for Mossad.
Ducky “I could tell you stories that would make your hair curl”
Jimmy “Oh go on!” I love his enthusiasm!
Gibbs “No, it’s better he doesn’t.”
Ducky “Aw Jethro, can’t I tell him about the time…” Heh, I wonder how many of Gibbs’s bachelor parties Ducky has been to!
Is it just me or does the entire team seem so much more relaxed around each other.
McGee, playing with his new toy, and obviously having learned from Tony how to sense Gibbs’s immediate presence without turning around. Now they both just need to learn to hear him coming!
Re the fiancée being already re-engaged.
“How long are you going to continue making that joke?” I feel like I’m missing something there, like there’s a break-up/quickie engagement story that Gibbs and Tony know but I don’t.
Wait a minute, Abby knows about Ziva’s ‘not trusting Tony’ comments? So presumably she knows about the ultimatum? But does everybody know or did Gibbs just tell Abby - possibly because he didn’t want her giving him or Vance a hard time over ‘leaving Ziva behind’.
I’m glad though that somebody is calling Ziva on her attitude towards Tony, but ‘he risked his life to save you’? Um, no, I hope that that is just the way Abby sees it because that was the eventual outcome, but no, no, no, I do not believe that ‘saving Ziva’ was the only motivation Tony and the others had last week.
Vance “I think she’s viable” Why do I think that there’s more to this than meets the eye. And Gibbs’s comment “I already told you, we need Ziva”
It just feels like there’s a hell of a lot more going on than just simply bringing a teammate back into the fold.
Shelly “Wait, are you Tony DiNozzo?”
Tony “Only if I don’t owe you money”
Shelly “You don’t. Just glad to have you at my back, Sir.” I guess that whatever reason made Tony leave that police force, it wasn’t under a cloud. Not if he’s still remembered what, 8+ years later?
Ah crap… Typical. Somebody shows appreciation of Tony, and they’re a bad guy, grrrr.
Ziva is definitely not back to her full self. Pre-captivity Ziva would never have let McGee creep up on her like that. I’m wondering if there’ll be any fallout from her rusty skills once she’s back in the field.
That’s twice we’ve heard the Psych lady mentioned. Wonder if she’ll be a recurring feature of Ziva’s recovery? And I wonder if McGee is wondering whether he was asked out to provide background information on Ziva to help with the psych eval.
“…these past three months…” Okay, so this is September. Ziva left in May. A few weeks have to have passed since ‘Truth or Consequences’. Bloody timelines.
Damn, Sean has pretty eyes in that Ziva & McGee scene.
Tony wanting to hit the head, and McGee is deliberately drinking from his coffee where Tony can see it. Nice one, ‘sidekick’, heehee! But I’m sure he learned from the master!
Pausing the recording to say.
WHAT THE FUCK IS UP WITH ZIVA AND MEN’S ROOMS?
Somebody posted to say that it’s a deliberate thing, so that she can catch the guys off balance. Well fuck that. If Tony had followed Kate or Abby into the ladies to get in their faces, he’d be berated both by the characters on screen and the viewers off screen, for being a sex pervert or worse.
“You were sure it had to be said in the men’s room”
“I was sure it had to be said”
And she couldn’t possibly have waited until Tony was finished?
“I was wrong to question your motives”
“So why did you” Well, I guess that’s about as much of an apology as Tony’s ever going to get from Ziva.
Heh, well I had made a few predictions as to the reason for Tony grabbing Ziva like that in the promo (personally I was thinking he was going to say something like “OMG, what have you done with your hair? Can I get the name of your shampoo!”
But I’m glad to see that it was because he was focused on the case and not Ziva.
As for his reaction to the kiss? Well that didn’t seem like the reaction of a guy who was thinking “Oh noes, I wanted her to kiss me on the lips and have lots of hearts and flowers and love and romance” He looked more bemused than anything else. Again, if there is any UST in this pairing, I see it as coming all from Ziva’s side. But then, it’s canon that she sees sex as a tool to be used when appropriate on a mission. So if she felt that getting Tony’s attention sexually was her only way back on the team, well, enough said.
“Harness those leading man powers” And this is why Tony makes a good team leader. He knows his peoples strengths, but more importantly, he knows how to encourage and motivate them. Gibbs in that situation would have been all stony face glaring at McGee until he’d have come up with a random idea.
“Come alone” Yeah, like Gibbs was going to go for that!
Yay for hero Tony, dragging the old guy out of danger.
Awww, dead officer Shelly. And I liked Tony’s insistence on reminding McGee of the guy’s name. Gibbs would have done the same had it been a marine on the table.
An antique pistol…and where have we seen antiques around this episode? Ah-ha!
“You had orders to kill your brother to earn my trust”
So Vance and/or Director David *weren’t* jerking Gibbs around with that story. Unless of course Ziva was made privy to it.
“How could you even think [Ziva was following orders when she shot Ari]” Well maybe because you’ve been lying to Gibbs and NCIS all along. Nothing Ziva says can be taken at face value.
“The closest thing I have to a father is accusing me…” Payback’s a bitch Ziva. Bet Tony felt just as bad when you were accusing *him* of murder.
I just can’t help feeling that Ziva is looking just a little too smug at being back in the office. Just because she told Vance that she hadn’t spoken to her father, doesn’t make it true. As she said to Gibbs, Ari was her brother and Gibbs was nothing, so of course she would have lied for him. Eli is her father and Vance is ‘nothing’, so she’d have no problem lying there either.
Again, I’ve finished watching and I just have this feeling that there’s more going on than we’re being told. Vance and Gibbs are I think up to something with regard to Ziva. Maybe an upcoming mission, maybe Vance wants leverage with Eli. Maybe Vance just wants Eli to think that he’s got his girl back in NCIS for whatever purpose. The question is whether Ziva is aware of manipulations and machinations going on around her or can we take desire to return to NCIS at face value.
A better episode than last week I think (although I loved the premiere). I’m glad we got to see the team work a proper case without Ziva. Something which I wish we’d seen between SWAK and Twilight, or during the time when Gibbs was in Mexico.
Personally I would have much preferred it if Ziva hadn’t come back, but I hope that her captivity and return is not going to be glossed over in future episodes. She may have passed the psych eval (or at least not failed it), but physically as well, she should be suffering the effects of her captivity. Three or four months out of the game and her skills are bound to be rusty.
So apart from the Ziva angle, we got competent Tony, Tony/Tim brotherly fun. Ducky and Jimmy (although not enough of either, and I would have liked to see Tony/Jimmy interaction).
Looking forward to next week!
Warning, I am not Ziva and/or TIVA friendly and any of my reviews will probably reflect that feeling. If you still want to read them, then click NCIS - 0702 - Reunion
So, what did I know going in to this episode?
Well, from the Video clips posted, I knew that Ziva still hadn’t learned to respect people’s boundaries (the men’s room scene), and that Tony and Tim seemed to be back on the big brother/little brother phase of their relationship - tormenting each other, while presenting a solid front to outsiders. Not sure about the newbie. More to the point, how long she’d been there and therefore, how long was supposed to have passed between last ep and this one.
I’d also seen the promo clip (Abby ranting at Ziva, Tony grabbing Ziva by the arms) and the still shots. None of which were exactly illuminating. But sometimes that’s the best way to be!
So, on with the show.
Teaser - stripper shows up, but the parties already over. While the big swinging terrorist arcs can be fun, sometimes what a show really needs is just a good old-fashioned murder mystery! (Although I firmly believe that NCIS is one of those character driven shows where the body of the week exists solely to show us what the team are about…and that’s one of the things I love about the show)
Yay, Jimmy’s in this ep! (Love BD and Jimmy’s interactions with the team. We need more of him!)
Heh, poor newbie! But I loved the Tony & Tim interactions.
Re Ziva “She’s coming back?” Tony doesn’t seem overly certain. Mind you, he doesn’t seem overly pushed one way or the other. I get the impression that he’s satisfied to know that she’s alive and safe, and if she chose to move on somewhere else, well that’d be her choice and he’d be good with that.
‘childish, juvenile, annoying’, heh, I love Tony, but yeah, that pretty much describes him on a regular basis!
And it’s the basement.
“Your door was open” Seriously Gibbs, you really need to think about locking it, what with all the terrorists, exes, sec-nav’s and general riff-raff that show up on your doorstep.
“…I felt betrayed…” Well if you didn’t want to be left behind, you shouldn’t have given Gibbs an ultimatum like that. Regardless of which of the team was Gibbs’s favourite, I don’t think he’s the type of guy who appreciates being put on the spot like that, and even if he’d had doubts about Tony (which he didn’t), I think he’d have told Ziva to take a hike anyway.
“We were a team” To me the ‘we’ seems to be referring solely to Ziva and Gibbs and not the others. I’ve always felt that the whole ‘I killed my brother for you’ was used as a way for Ziva to usurp Tony’s place as the one Gibbs could trust most and a part of me always resented her for that.
Ziva’s facial expression when Gibbs says she has to talk to the Director. Seems to me like she thought she could just walk back in and everything would be back to normal, and now things aren’t going according to plan. To my eyes, she’s less upset by the prospect of not being allowed ‘home’ than by the prospect that her current plan to get inside isn’t working. It feels more like she’s on a mission than a life-path.
“And [Vance] is not the only one you have to talk to” Damn straight. Ziva burned a hell of a lot of bridges and can’t possibly expect that it will be just Gibbs that she has to make amends to.
Heh, Gibbs doesn’t seem all that upset or surprised that Fillmore is gone! Loved his little smile there.
Somewhat surprised that Tony didn’t insist on interviewing the stripper, or that we didn’t see Gibbs shoot him down.
“Everybody knows that side-kicks are shorter” Um, but Gibbs is actually shorter than McGee. I remember being surprised by that when I saw a re-run of Sub-Rosa and realized that Sean Murray was definitely a few inches taller than Mark Harmon.
“Actually I find McGee to be the more handsome” Well, she did rate his butt higher than Tony’s a few seasons back.
“Have you discussed this with your father?”
“I am not sure how his opinion is relevant.”
How about the fact that he’s actually your boss and you were presumably on Mossad’s payroll when you went on the mission to Somalia.
“You were the Mossad Liaison Officer, which by definition requires you to have a relationship with Mossad”
It’s funny, because it’s like the writers have been listening to some of the fan complaints over the summer and are addressing them.
(I would argue the point though about Ziva having been an asset to the agency. While I’m sure she did prove useful in helping solve the cases, most of the time her place could have effectively been taken by any competent investigator.)
Again, Ziva is acting like this is all part of a mission. Perhaps in her eyes it is. She wants to get back into NCIS, so she’s made her plan and is following it with as much focus as she’d put into a mission for Mossad.
Ducky “I could tell you stories that would make your hair curl”
Jimmy “Oh go on!” I love his enthusiasm!
Gibbs “No, it’s better he doesn’t.”
Ducky “Aw Jethro, can’t I tell him about the time…” Heh, I wonder how many of Gibbs’s bachelor parties Ducky has been to!
Is it just me or does the entire team seem so much more relaxed around each other.
McGee, playing with his new toy, and obviously having learned from Tony how to sense Gibbs’s immediate presence without turning around. Now they both just need to learn to hear him coming!
Re the fiancée being already re-engaged.
“How long are you going to continue making that joke?” I feel like I’m missing something there, like there’s a break-up/quickie engagement story that Gibbs and Tony know but I don’t.
Wait a minute, Abby knows about Ziva’s ‘not trusting Tony’ comments? So presumably she knows about the ultimatum? But does everybody know or did Gibbs just tell Abby - possibly because he didn’t want her giving him or Vance a hard time over ‘leaving Ziva behind’.
I’m glad though that somebody is calling Ziva on her attitude towards Tony, but ‘he risked his life to save you’? Um, no, I hope that that is just the way Abby sees it because that was the eventual outcome, but no, no, no, I do not believe that ‘saving Ziva’ was the only motivation Tony and the others had last week.
Vance “I think she’s viable” Why do I think that there’s more to this than meets the eye. And Gibbs’s comment “I already told you, we need Ziva”
It just feels like there’s a hell of a lot more going on than just simply bringing a teammate back into the fold.
Shelly “Wait, are you Tony DiNozzo?”
Tony “Only if I don’t owe you money”
Shelly “You don’t. Just glad to have you at my back, Sir.” I guess that whatever reason made Tony leave that police force, it wasn’t under a cloud. Not if he’s still remembered what, 8+ years later?
Ah crap… Typical. Somebody shows appreciation of Tony, and they’re a bad guy, grrrr.
Ziva is definitely not back to her full self. Pre-captivity Ziva would never have let McGee creep up on her like that. I’m wondering if there’ll be any fallout from her rusty skills once she’s back in the field.
That’s twice we’ve heard the Psych lady mentioned. Wonder if she’ll be a recurring feature of Ziva’s recovery? And I wonder if McGee is wondering whether he was asked out to provide background information on Ziva to help with the psych eval.
“…these past three months…” Okay, so this is September. Ziva left in May. A few weeks have to have passed since ‘Truth or Consequences’. Bloody timelines.
Damn, Sean has pretty eyes in that Ziva & McGee scene.
Tony wanting to hit the head, and McGee is deliberately drinking from his coffee where Tony can see it. Nice one, ‘sidekick’, heehee! But I’m sure he learned from the master!
Pausing the recording to say.
WHAT THE FUCK IS UP WITH ZIVA AND MEN’S ROOMS?
Somebody posted to say that it’s a deliberate thing, so that she can catch the guys off balance. Well fuck that. If Tony had followed Kate or Abby into the ladies to get in their faces, he’d be berated both by the characters on screen and the viewers off screen, for being a sex pervert or worse.
“You were sure it had to be said in the men’s room”
“I was sure it had to be said”
And she couldn’t possibly have waited until Tony was finished?
“I was wrong to question your motives”
“So why did you” Well, I guess that’s about as much of an apology as Tony’s ever going to get from Ziva.
Heh, well I had made a few predictions as to the reason for Tony grabbing Ziva like that in the promo (personally I was thinking he was going to say something like “OMG, what have you done with your hair? Can I get the name of your shampoo!”
But I’m glad to see that it was because he was focused on the case and not Ziva.
As for his reaction to the kiss? Well that didn’t seem like the reaction of a guy who was thinking “Oh noes, I wanted her to kiss me on the lips and have lots of hearts and flowers and love and romance” He looked more bemused than anything else. Again, if there is any UST in this pairing, I see it as coming all from Ziva’s side. But then, it’s canon that she sees sex as a tool to be used when appropriate on a mission. So if she felt that getting Tony’s attention sexually was her only way back on the team, well, enough said.
“Harness those leading man powers” And this is why Tony makes a good team leader. He knows his peoples strengths, but more importantly, he knows how to encourage and motivate them. Gibbs in that situation would have been all stony face glaring at McGee until he’d have come up with a random idea.
“Come alone” Yeah, like Gibbs was going to go for that!
Yay for hero Tony, dragging the old guy out of danger.
Awww, dead officer Shelly. And I liked Tony’s insistence on reminding McGee of the guy’s name. Gibbs would have done the same had it been a marine on the table.
An antique pistol…and where have we seen antiques around this episode? Ah-ha!
“You had orders to kill your brother to earn my trust”
So Vance and/or Director David *weren’t* jerking Gibbs around with that story. Unless of course Ziva was made privy to it.
“How could you even think [Ziva was following orders when she shot Ari]” Well maybe because you’ve been lying to Gibbs and NCIS all along. Nothing Ziva says can be taken at face value.
“The closest thing I have to a father is accusing me…” Payback’s a bitch Ziva. Bet Tony felt just as bad when you were accusing *him* of murder.
I just can’t help feeling that Ziva is looking just a little too smug at being back in the office. Just because she told Vance that she hadn’t spoken to her father, doesn’t make it true. As she said to Gibbs, Ari was her brother and Gibbs was nothing, so of course she would have lied for him. Eli is her father and Vance is ‘nothing’, so she’d have no problem lying there either.
Again, I’ve finished watching and I just have this feeling that there’s more going on than we’re being told. Vance and Gibbs are I think up to something with regard to Ziva. Maybe an upcoming mission, maybe Vance wants leverage with Eli. Maybe Vance just wants Eli to think that he’s got his girl back in NCIS for whatever purpose. The question is whether Ziva is aware of manipulations and machinations going on around her or can we take desire to return to NCIS at face value.
A better episode than last week I think (although I loved the premiere). I’m glad we got to see the team work a proper case without Ziva. Something which I wish we’d seen between SWAK and Twilight, or during the time when Gibbs was in Mexico.
Personally I would have much preferred it if Ziva hadn’t come back, but I hope that her captivity and return is not going to be glossed over in future episodes. She may have passed the psych eval (or at least not failed it), but physically as well, she should be suffering the effects of her captivity. Three or four months out of the game and her skills are bound to be rusty.
So apart from the Ziva angle, we got competent Tony, Tony/Tim brotherly fun. Ducky and Jimmy (although not enough of either, and I would have liked to see Tony/Jimmy interaction).
Looking forward to next week!