Episode Review: 7x01 - Truth and Consequences
There are many things I should be doing right now, including writing up my learning journal from last week's uni class, and also general work, seeing as how I am in the office and all.
But, NCIS is on in America tonight, and I really should put down some thoughts about the premiere of a week ago because otherwise I'll get all wrapped up in the ( Read more... )
But, NCIS is on in America tonight, and I really should put down some thoughts about the premiere of a week ago because otherwise I'll get all wrapped up in the ( Read more... )
I didn’t mind the peacock comparison because, well, Tony does have peacock-y tendencies. I loved that he took it in stride and actually said, “Stroke my plumage!” I approve of anything that leads to that wavy hand gesture used in conjunction with the word plumage and/or references to stroking. What I thought was worse in that episode was McGee handing some pictures or something at the crime scene to Gibbs instead of Tony even though Tony was standing right there. Because as you said, they are all about actions and not words, and that was a pretty blatant snub that seemed to bother Tony in a way that the peacock thing didn’t (or I could be projecting, heh).
But I don’t hold it against him because I can understand why McGee was conflicted about Tony being in charge. It adds a little depth to his character without setting up a super duper angst fest. I like to go on about how Gibbs running off to Mexico affected Tony but McGee was also screwed in that whole situation. He was senior field agent before he was ready and then suddenly, probably right after he got used to it, he wasn’t anymore, followed by Tony spending an entire season lying to him. I also wonder if, deep down, he didn't sort of blame Tony for what happened to the Director. Later, he got sent to Cyber Crimes where he actually had his own team - his own nerdy, geeky team, but they were his - and then suddenly he was back at the bottom of the totem pole within the team hierarchy. That had to be jarring and just plain old hard. And he doesn’t seem to have the affection (not exactly the word I want to use here, but it’s close enough) for Gibbs that Tony does that would make something like that go down a little easier.
Not that he doesn’t like or respect Gibbs - but he’s pretty much the only one for whom the team isn’t a surrogate family. I don’t spend as much time staring at McGee’s hair as I do Tony’s so my understanding of his character might be a little off, but, of the three, I’d say McGee is the one who is least loyal to Gibbs and the most loyal to the organization. In fact, I’ll go out on a limb and say that right now he’s just as loyal to Tony as he is to Gibbs and if it came down to it, he might pick Tony. I don’t think he regrets at all his choice to come back to the team, but I could see how it would have been difficult for him last season. And just as Tony went through a rough patch and became more leader-like, McGee seemed to be finding his way into a senior agent-like state last season with the quips and the snarkiness and the more polished outer edge. He overshot sometimes, but this season he seems to have found the happy medium. I thought it was interesting to contrast McGee and Palmer in the episode that starred Jimmy. Tony and Ziva mock McGee for being geeky, but when you compare him to a Palmer, or even to earlier-seasons McGee, it’s amazing to see how far he’s come.
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But I do remember that Renny, despite being extremely hot, was a bit of a smarmy git. And he did get convicted by not just Tony, but a ton of other people, so clearly his shit did not entirely smell of roses - also, framing the cop who convicted you on evidence he had that nobody else failed to see the flaws in is not exactly the act of a sane, saintly man. I'm not a fan of over-thinking episode plotlines, because it hurts my brain and at heart, it's all about the little moments and the hair, but Bounce stood out as being particularly weak plot-wise, I think, which is a shame because the concept was pretty awesome - Gibbs letting Tony take charge was fantastic. The entire campfire scene could probably make me forgive everything else I disliked about the episode, for the sheer emotive powers behind Gibbs' incredulous eyebrows. But the way he stands back and trusts Tony to do his thing, and just watches him - and the shock on Ziva and McGee's faces when he strings together two whole sentences, wow. LOLed so much.
I watched the "stroke my plumage" bit on repeat - really, too funny. I like that part of Tony, the ridiculous, attention-seeking part! I totally subscribe to the fanon that Tony is very much hiding millions of layers under his shallot exterior, but that fun, playful exterior is actually a part of him too, and sometimes I don't think it's covering anything. Sometimes, Tony's just twelve and wants Ziva and McGee to listen, and bow to his awesomeness.
I'm fairly guilty of not thinking overly much about the way McGee feels, but when you put it like that, the way he's kind of been pushed and tugged around for the past six years, it's got to have been a tough ride for him. He really wanted to be on Gibbs' team, in the beginning, and seems like someone who likes to have a place in life and at work, so being shunted around and having responsibilities shoved on him then yanked away again must have been difficult. Lashing out at Tony because of that makes perfect sense, because Tony's been annoying him for years. I think Tony's teasing is typically, very funny, and not in any way malicious, but if I was McGee and Tony was like that 96% of the time, I might go just a little bit crazy.
I would definitely agree about McGee's first priority not being to Gibbs. I would say Tony's priorities go: Gibbs, the team, NCIS; while McGee's order is NCIS, the team, Tony (especially as things are going in S7), then Gibbs. He obviously respects Gibbs, and wanted to be on the team, but I wonder how much of that was to do with having heard Gibbs' reputation and wanting to experience field work with someone who would look great on his career record. I don't think McGee's as cold as that makes him sound, but he strikes me as being quite career-driven as well as wanting to prove himself as a field agent (that's something I think is very important to him). I don't know if I could see McGee taking over as lead agent of a major crimes team, but I think if Tony ever did take his own team (IMO, not going to happen, but I could be jinxing things by saying that!) McGee would stay with him, rather than Gibbs. I don't think the Tony-McGee relationship is in any way a mirror of the Gibbs-Tony relationship, but there's a loyalty, trust and care there that I haven't really seen between McGee and any other character (it's different with Abby). I have a lot of love for fics involving Director!McGee, and a lot of love for Palmer in general. I think he's so ridiculously nice it hurts.
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Your description makes McGee sound normal, not cold. He’s very much an agent in the way that Vance is an agent - NCIS and the team are important and he knows the value of his job, but it’s still just a job and not his whole entire life. And there's nothing wrong with advancing in the workplace! One day, he’ll marry a nice girl and live in a nice house and have 2.4 nice children, and they will be the most important thing in his life. In short, McGee is normal. The team is not his family. They’re very good friends who would die for each other, but McGee doesn’t look at Gibbs as his father-substitute and Ziva as his sister. He already has a father and a sister, and if he had to pick between his real family and his team, he’d pick his real family every time (which is the way it should be if your family is not completely screwy and/or you’re not at least a little damaged).
McGee might only now be starting to get the fucked up relationships that Tony and Ziva and Gibbs have. It’s one of the reasons Vance likes McGee so much - he’s not totally messed up in the head like the others. When Vance assigned Tony to the carrier, he probably did it with the intention of restoring normal operating procedure. Despite Gibbs' protestations and the fact that Vance didn't really care for Tony, it was a promotion, and it was kind of overdue. He probably thought that Gibbs’ attempts to get Tony back were some sort of power play - he seemed very surprised at the extent to which Gibbs and Tony freaked out.
I could see McGee leading his own team someday. Not the McGee of today, but when I look at how different he is now than when he first started, I think he has the potential to evolve enough to have a field team one day. He’s slowly becoming a badass. Like, when he was in the sandwich shop with Tony in 7x02, they didn’t look like field agent and probie - they looked like two field agents. This season is the first time I’ve found McGee genuinely hot because it seems like he finally has confidence to back up his arrogance. Or maybe he’s absorbing hottie vibes from Tony because they spend so much time standing next to each other. Either way works.
I have this ridiculous urge to read a Tony-and-Palmer-in-prison fic. I have no idea how it would even work - maybe they’re investigating in a small town when the team splits up and Tony, Palmer, and Ducky are grouped together while the others are elsewhere, perhaps in DC. And then the evil sheriff, in an effort to stop Palmer’s inquisitiveness from uncovering the key to his misdeeds, conspires with the judge to lock him up in the local prison on trumped-up charges. Tony then makes sure that he’s arrested as well because he knows Palmer will never make it in prison on his own. While they’re in prison, Tony constantly fights to protect Palmer’s virtue from other prisoners and the guards. Ducky’s still on the outside so he calls Gibbs, and then Gibbs and Ziva and McGee have to come rescue them! After they're free, Tony and Gibbs go home and have hot just-got-out-of-prison sex! … Hmmm, I’ve spent too much time thinking about this. The show is making me insane, I think.
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McGee is good at his job in a different way, and yes! He's normal! I'm sure things about his backstory could be read to create some horror in his life having happened, but for me it'd be a tough sell. He seems loyal to his real family, although some of his comments maybe suggest that he has a need to prove himself in his chosen field, which is different to his father's. One comment he did make which I never really understood is the way he says his dad is just like The Great Santini, which I swear, in the book that would mean McGee got the shit beaten out of him. Which, what? There is no other evidence for that. McGee did go to a therapist as a kid, but he just seems more inexperienced in life and loss, sometimes, and like you said, only just becoming aware of how very fucked up Ziva, Tony and Gibbs are, with their crappy families and need/desire for a substitute. His lack of hang-ups like that do separate him from the group, although I know they'd die for him and vice versa and there's ultimate trust and loyalty, and mean that I can very much imagine him moving away from the group for promotion and his own team, and possibly eventually for a position like Vance's.
The extent to which Gibbs and Tony freaked out.
I love this, because they really did. I know we've talked about the two of them, and how they've become dependent on one another in different ways, but realistically, to an outsider's POV, they are grown men who can presumably survive without having their mentor/mentee with them. But there's something so very wrong when they're torn apart - Gibbs in particular arguably became numb and detached the moment Tony went away and has been fucked up ever since. Obviously that can be read as not just due to Tony, but it's still an overreaction. Tony coped because that's what Tony does, but he was still screwed up over it and there was never a question of him being content to stay there, or even being content to be assigned to another team in DC.
Clearly, McGee is not stealing the hottie vibes, because Tony has lost none, so I am all for them standing together if McGee's new hotness is a result. I think McGee is happier now, and therefore more comfortably confident rather than defensively so. Presumably, something happened over those four months to precipitate this change - possibly, with Gibbs being detached and Tony being a detached but more leaderly member of the team, McGee sneaked back up the hierachy ladder like he did during those four months after Hiatus. Maybe he just realised he is valued, despite the hazing, and sucked it up and lost the 'tude. It suits him, whatever happened!
Your insanity must be catching, I would so, so love to read this fic! Palmer! In prison! Being ridiculously literal with the other criminals and getting into trouble! Throw in a bruise to Tony's cheekbone, and some prison!hair, and get cooking, because that's a hot mix.
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South by Southwest was probably okay, but pretty much the only thing I liked about it was the sniper shot of Gibbs facing down the helicopter. From my Tony-fangirl perspective, the entire episode was basically people being mean to Tony. The sheriff was very mean to Tony, the dead uncle’s will was mean to Tony, even the horse was mean to Tony! Almost nothing else happened, with the exception of one or two fraught campfire conversations (real campfires, not Tony!campfires) in the last ten minutes. I really don’t mind when people manage to outdo him, but there was nothing at which he could be outdone - no teasing, no game, no pranks. It was just one thing after another piling up with Tony as the punching bag. I think some people liked the city-slicker-meets-the-outdoors thing, but on the heels of everything else, I found it very over-the-top and uncomfortable. I have a huge embarrassment squick, though, especially when it comes to characters I love, so take that with a grain of salt.
Plus, they split up the team, and while I’m usually okay with that, it didn’t really work for me here. Not enough shooting, maybe? Definitely not enough warehouses. Did I mention that I really hated the sheriff? Because I really, really did. And then I got mad at the show for making me hate Lance Henriksen. Shut up, Show. Oh, and the money subplot was awful! Piling mean on top of mean is bad enough, but at least make it less predictable next time! The second they mentioned an inheritance at the beginning, I knew what was going to happen, and it sucked. I spent most of the episode waiting for the other, sucky, inheritance-related shoe to drop, and it helped ruin the rest of it for me. Also (but this is really minor, and is mostly me piling on because I hated the rest of it), I live in the Southwest, and I do not watch NCIS so that I can see what I would see if I looked out my window - take it back to DC!
I’m probably being too harsh. If there are good things, you should report back! Maybe it will become the Bounce of 2009 and will worm its way into my heart.
Gibbs did seem numb when the team was split up, but it was interesting that we didn’t really see him start to go crazy with Vance until he got Ziva and McGee back and then was told that he couldn’t have Tony. Like almost-but-not-quite-right was worse for him than completely wrong. I think Vance didn’t take him seriously until he saw how far Gibbs was willing to take it and how unhappy Tony was, too, with his bitching on speakerphone about how he was going to be agent afloat-ing into his old age. It’s so easy for me to forget how traumatic that must have been for Gibbs, right on the heels of Jenny’s death, but the splitting up of the team was significant enough to Gibbs that he threw it back at Vance at the end of the season as a reason why he didn’t trust him.
If we’re to assume that McGee would be a Director in the Vance-mold, does that mean that Tony would be a Director in the Jenny-mold? I’ve always thought that Jenny and Tony were more similar than different, and I loved their screwed up interactions and how she always seemed to have a soft spot for him. Or if not have a soft spot, she got him in a way that other people in charge don’t. Yet another way that McGee seems to be following Tony while doing things in a completely different way.
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Do not like Ziva thinking he was making up the dead uncle's funeral, although I wouldn't mind if it was a sly dig because he covered up so much with Jeanne. Kind of holding a grudge if it is, though.
Tony saying "Cheerio" on the phone!
Gibbs is unusually tolerant of Tony this entire episode.
Tony checking out McGee's ass and then saying "You are looking good!" in a very slashtastic fashion! The whole scene with McGee and Tony on the carrier is okay, I think - McGee's being kind of an asshole but he has got other stuff going on - and it's another moment where Tony proves that he's good at multi-tasking and does his job even when he talks about anything but doing his job, and also remains ridiculously mid-mannered in the face of McGee being a brat. Although he gets a little beyond bratty in the next scene, with the painting - again, vaguely understandable given that Tony's talking about Clive and his riches, but it's also taking things a little too far and he's being awfully sensitive when Tony is just doing what he always does - chatter. As for Tony getting hit in the face - I'm laying that one on McGee, too, because he looked away while Tony was searching him. Though he did look hot slamming him against those very-obviously-empty crates.
Tony's impression of the sherriff = awesome!
So, I didn't get that first time round, the sherriff is Lance Henriksen! I love him, Millenium was ace!
Okay, yeah, you're right, the sherriff is a dick. Especially in the face of Tony's overwhelming niceness and adorability - I mean, he's so cute here, all "How are you?" and then ignoring all the jibes sent his way. This is why I get so mad sometimes when people don't like Tony - obviously because I am a huge fangirl and I love him so much, but also because hello? He's so nice! Yeah, he can be irritating and teasing, but he's nothing but sweet and polite and tolerant here.
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But then again, my embarrassment squick, like yours whenever my favourite and awesome character gets treated meanly, is going a little crazy on this campfire scene. At least Tony calls the sherriff on his asshattery this time, albeit in the msot mild-mannered way possible. And I don;t know what to make of Gibbs' retirement comment. Obviously, I'm going to read it as concern he might lose his agent. But it also makes me wonder if Gibbs is concerned about Tony getting close to burnout - I always thought anyone in that line of work would be constantly close to it, just trying not to get that far, and what with Tony's reactions to agents dying in the line of duty (which I really think is a sore spot for him) maybe he's worrying. See, I just twist. People who don't like Tony, though, they can twist this episode so far the other way, I suppose, to see him as deserving of all the meanness that gets thrown his way, and that's why I probably won't put this episode on my list of ones that I'll often re-watch in full, maybe just for certain moments. But I generally hate plotlines where people who don't get how awesome Tony is can turn and just call him an idiot for.
Love Tony being awesome with his own gun, coming very close and providing cover even though his own cover is rubbish. And Gibbs is truly awesome with his rifle, as is his cool little spin when he dismounts to take aim.
Yeah, the money plotine - it's one of NCIS's "funny" thigns they like to do, I guess, whcih isn;t that funny or special or whatever. I wish they didn't use those plotlines to be mean to Tony all the time, but I did like his "It's only money" thing at the end. That's right, teach McGee a lesson, I bet he doesn't mope over it!
So, I didn't hate it, but I think that's more a by-product of my weird ability to make Tony look like the good guy in any situation and plotline. Because he usually is. ;-) It's definietly not going in my top 10 or 20 or maybe even 100, but I didn't hate it. Although I did hate Tony's weird Arizona cardigan. His boots, though, were fabulous - that sherriff's a hater.
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I guess the two explanations are that (a) he was not acting like himself or (b) their expectations of him had become so skewed because of the events of S6 that everyone was even farther from seeing the real Tony than they normally would have been, which was wearing on him in its own way. Like he was trying to act the way he thought they saw him, but he was doing (or they were seeing) S1-Tony, when he’s really post-Kate/Paula/Jeanne/Lee-Tony.
He seemed kind of brittle when he was interrogating the suspect or with McGee on the ship, and even with the sheriff. I’m surprised he called the sheriff on his attitude when maybe normally he wouldn’t have. Throughout all of the episode, really, and into Knockout, there was something off about him.
I wouldn’t have minded the horse thing if it hadn’t felt like the horse was piling on. I think it was just all of it together, and my reaction to others’ reactions. At least the wandering horse and aftermath was realistic - I still remember how I felt the first time I got on (and off) a horse. I couldn’t walk right for a week, and I didn’t understand how muscles that were so far away from my butt could possibly be hurting days later. But I like the idea that Tony is really a good rider, but was hamming it up to bug the sheriff 'cuz the sheriff sucked. I really, really hated the money thing, though. It was so predictable and badly written.
I’m glad you suggested rewatching Knockout. I forgot how much I loved that episode. I didn’t even mind the overt Tiva-ness of some of it. Watching it right after SxSW, they did seem to be going for a Tony-is-not-dealing-well theme, not only with the discussion of his woman problems, but the reference to his inability to protect Dead Jenny at the beginning. It was weird that his mind went there, of all places, as a reason why he got left behind. It was interesting that the breakup with Jeanne had such a profound effect on him, but no one seemed to really notice (not that we saw, anyway). I like the Tara and the way she grokked him and then let him know that she knew without being mean about it. The patron saint scene was awesome - not only does Tony know his saints (the important ones, at least ;)), but it’s adorable when he sticks his foot in his mouth and then knows it. He called her a hooker! To her face! Heee. <3
The headslap scene was weirdly fraught with all sorts of overtones… or undertones… or something. I usually don’t see the subtext that people talk about, but I remember thinking right then that Gibbs was a big old meanie for not letting Tony back into his bed for the whole season. I’d describe Tony as brittle here, too, like he knew he should shut up but he just couldn’t help himself, or maybe like he was overcompensating by trying to act like how people thought he should act. He did it in the elevator, too, talking about himself to Tara when he sounded like he wanted to shut up but couldn’t.
S6 really wasn’t a good season for Tony. The Director died at the end of S5, then the thing with Lee, then Bounce, and all that weird tension in between … Maybe Bounce was the straw that broke the camel’s back, or maybe the team had a very difficult case somewhere between Bounce and Knockout that made Tony kind of crazy and manic. SxSW and Knockout gave me a whole new appreciation for Tony’s between-seasons breakdown, though, since it seems as though they’d been building up to it for a while.
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The expectations people have of him becoming skewed is really interesting - do you think they were seeing him as more vulnerable than usual, and he baulked at that? That was kind of what I've been seeing, like he's just trying really hard to regain some control over his mask and remembers how easy it was in S1 and kind of reverted as a defense mechanism. And yeah, four women he's lost - I'd add post-Hiatus to that list, because while I don't think Gibbs leaving fucked him up, it changed how he had to act in front of them. So the brittleness underneath his act is that he's been exposed quite a bit, in the past year, and he has had a kind of in-between seasons breakdown, but he's trying as hard as he can to put people off the scent.
No, being mad at the horse makes sense - I think him being shown as not very good at riding upset me more than the money thing - mostly because I have a total thing for men who can ride horses, and I was annoyed that Tony couldn't - which is why I've decided he was downplaying as usual. I think my overwhelming belief in Tony's awesomeness mostly allowed me to ignore the fact that there were a lot of plotlines in this episode that had the intended effect of making Tony look like a dumbass, which is unfair when he's actually always got some point to make during an episode - I don't think his skill as an investigator could ever be doubted. So, although I didn't mind the episode, it does make my Tony defenses slam right up. Because he's awesome.
Okay, I watched Knockout again and yeah, I totally forgot why I was worried about it - I really liked it on second viewing! Vance and his family just make me so very happy, his kids are adorable. And I loved Tara and Tony's responses to her. I like that he acknowledges Dead Jenny and his guilt over it, but even though I think he's having difficulty coping with that, I think it came across like he's trying - not just burying and denying, a la Gibbs, or trying to do something. Tony always seems content to live with his mistakes and guilt, and to carry it with him. Which is both healthy and unhealthy.
Loved lots of moments, though: his knowledge of saints and homophones (grammar nazi!Tony!); Gibbs and Vances little chat about dogs - that's a total throwback to Tony being Gibbs' loyal St. Bernard; the subtext! And I don't usually pick up on the more suggestive subtext, usually, I don't know why but I just don't get it. But this was like, read between the lines heaven for Tony/Gibbs fans.
I actually do, now, like the idea of Tony being so very screwed up over Jeanne that he just can't shut up about her and his feelings, like some kind of floodgate has been opened and he just wants his problem, fixed, and he probably really does need to talk but doesn't know who to go to. Definitely trying to act how he thinks people expect him to act, because he's so on the edge of letting things slip he doesn't want to, and once he starts he can't stop. I actually found the Tiva quite easy to ignore - there was enough there that it could be expounded upon, but easy enough to write off, too. After all, Tony and Tara's conversation in the elevator continued off-screen!
But yeah, Tony was really struggling in S6, like he wasn't actually sure how to play his game anymore. So his defenses were all failing him, and he tried too hard to put them back up and looked a little crazy with it. He's such an angstfest.
Watched Dead Reckoning afterwards, on the same disk, and there's some lovely DiNozzo movement about half an hour in, when they're in the safe house and Ziva returns having spotted two stalkers - he does this great slink to the wall as he pulls out his gun. Yum.
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I don’t know that anyone was treating him gingerly (which he would hate and try to stop as soon as possible), but I really need to go back and watch those eps again. It seems to me that they were all out of sorts because of the separation and all the lies and secrets throughout the season. I think McGee’s deal was that he was comfortable enough with the others to be bitchy to them when he wouldn’t necessarily do that with other people who weren’t on the team. Ziva seemed to be having major judgment issues by the end of the season. And so that left no one to notice that Tony was not only not acting right, but was actually kind of screwed up after everything that happened. (Except I think Gibbs did notice, here and in SxSW; in the headslap scene was he saying he knew about Tony’s dry spell? Maybe? But he’s Gibbs, so he’s not going to do anything except look distraught that Tony might be thinking of leaving him.) So I guess that, to me, it’s not that they that noticed he was more vulnerable, but that they didn’t notice anything at all beyond the fact that he was acting weird. The rest of the team lacks Tony’s capacity for hanging on to bad things and accepting blame for them, so it might not occur to them that he’s doing that. They were so wrapped up in their own stuff that they didn’t look for deeper reasons and he wasn’t capable of dealing with it on his own beyond trying to act the way he thought others would expect him to act.
The La Grenouille op was horrible. As bad as I felt for Tony, I felt even worse for Jeanne. Her character just got stomped on in that relationship. To fall in love with someone, and then find out that it was all because of an assignment? That’s awful. She has years of therapy in her future.
Tony’s way of dealing with things seems to be to just kind of accept it while not looking too closely at it, and move on. But the thing about his relationship with Jeanne is that he has been put in a position where he has to examine it because his two choices are to either sit at home and mope, or to keep trying unsuccessfully to date and hook up. Since neither of those two choices involve acting the way he did before Jeanne, no matter what he does, he’s going to be reminded of his colossal failure and so he can never move on. I like the idea that he’s not sitting at home and admitting defeat, he’s trying to make things better, but it’s not working because he doesn’t have anyone to really talk to and no new person is going to want to get to know him when all he does is (creepily, probably) go on about himself and his ex. Which is sad, because it sort of removes the only avenue Tony used to interact with people who weren’t coworkers. And he hasn’t been undercover since it happened, has he? I really miss Tony the Fabulous Undercover Operative.
I really really really really really really love grammar nazi!Tony. My favorite appearance is in the gangbanger episode where he’s interrogating the guy and then goes on this rant about double negatives and how they were used for emphasis in the past but now it’s just a colloquialism and the suspect is just sitting there with this “OMG SHUT UP” look on his face. It’s such a random bit of characterization and it makes me so happy when he breaks out in fits of smartness.
He slinks so well, it’s not even funny. It’s my favorite thing that he does! That’s another episode that I don’t love as much as I should I was a little bummed that Kort turned out to be not totally evil in that episode. And that Gibbs spent so much time consorting with him, and even looking like he was having fun! I wonder if Kort will one day end up as Tony’s Fornell (a role I was hoping would be filled by Agent Sacks, but he seems to have disappeared), or if Tony is going to antagonistic toward him forever.
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It's true - I think everyone was screwed up by the end of S5, and so they were all acting a little out of sorts. I like your explanation of McGee, I always thought he was kind of struggling against yet another semi-demotion - he was going back to his field work, which clearly he loves, but went back to being closer to the bottom of the Team Gibbs ladder rather than the top of the Cyber Crimes one. Ziva's issues were pretty strong, too, her uncertainty about where to put her loyalties, and Gibbs was having trouble with trusting his judgement and, I think, trusting himself to reconnect fully with his team in case they were yanked away again. Gibbs' issues with loss are pretty epic. And Tony, who was still screwed up over Jeanne, and dealing with his feelings of guilt, is much more practiced at dealing with self-recrimination and hiding it, so his issues may well have gone un-noticed (except by Gibbs, I really do think he started to notice, possibly before Bounce, even). I think maybe I like the idea that his kind of hyperactive moments were a semi-subconscious effort to protect himself from revealing the excessive vulnerability he was feeling, but the idea that nobody except Gibbs noticed is really good - and painful, too. Totally agree about Gibbs doing nothing but looking distraught too. Not-so-functional mutism. I don't really know what to do with the Gibbs dry spell thing - slashily-speaking, it's great. But also, it makes me want to make him do something about it.
As much as Tony was screwed up by that whole mess, Jeanne got the worst of it - so much so that I never felt angry with her for accusing Tony of murder - she was just that screwed up over it. And I thought she was sweet, and obviously innocent, beforehand.
Okay, it's genuinely like you're looking inside my brain, because the fic that is entirely confusing me right now is all about Tony moving on after Jeanne, and is based vaguely around his first undercover mission since then - because he hasn't been undecover since the Grenouille op, and it's kind of odd since before that Tony was all for undercover work. I love that he's still totally wrapped up in Jeanne, too, although the fic is slashy and takes a weird angle on that, but I love it even more that he knows he's compeltely screwed up over it and is making efforts not to be. That's the Tony I love - not a quitter.
Ahahaha! He is too funny when he goes off on one of those little grammar rants - and when he corrects Ziva no matter how urgent the situation they are in or the information they need to get across to Gibbs. It's like he really, really can't help himself! One of my favourite bits of random Tony characterisation! Now, if he could show off his language skills more I'd be even happier.
I miss Sacks, he was so cool, and they really played off one another well. I don't think I want Kort to fill that role, although Kort is an interesting wildcard. I got quite irritated by Gibbs' attitude towards him in that episode, especially in the face of Tony's quite forceful dislike of Kort. I kind of hope he stays antagonistic forever, if only because I like that with just one person, Tony really does allow his anger to become slightly more than passive or repressed. If I could vid, I'd just compile clips of slinky!Tony to watch whenever I desired! (24/7)
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*sneaks in the conversation* Unless you count Claire, the Level 5 Sorceress, which is a very low level of undercoveringish. :D *sneaks out*
*sneaks back in* And now I'm thinking about it, it was also a low level replay of Jeanne, creating a new personality with tastes adapted to the person he tried to seduce, even managed to seduce, except it was for no particular reason (except in my slashy mind) and not because McGee's father is an arms dealer. *sneaks out again*
*stay close to the window to prevent more drafts* Wait, seeing his and McGee's 'date' lasted the weekend and McGee left happy, does that mean it was it most successful and longest date since Jeanne? Think it bothered him it was in the same parameters (lying)?
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That's true, clearly he was missing undercover work enough to practice having an affair with McGee to get back into it. I think even if someone hated undercover work, if a sneaky McGee love affair occurred, they'd be daft not to go for it!
I was literally just trying to think of other reasons for pretending to be a Level 5 Sorceress and flirting with McGee that weren't entirely slashy, and came up with nada.
I think that whole incident could, in comparison with the Jeanne fuck-up and in those terms, be labelled as one of Tony's most successful relationships ever. I wonder just how long McGee kept him on tenterhooks - and Tony did seem to be feeling pretty guilty when he thought McGee might really get hurt by his boredom-fuelled (and horniness-induced too, I'm sure of it) prank.
Now I really want fic where McGee wasn't actually that mad (he didn't seem it), and he and Tony still chat with Tony playing Claire, while knowing the truth, and totally have weird, creepy cybersex while subtly communicating their feelings in a way that they can't at work. So, either you or catwalksalone have to write this, clearly. *g*
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There are excuses for it, Tony could have say he wanted to prank him, test his naivety, see if he could pass for a geek under the nose of the best, that's the best part! There was reasons, he didn't try to find one beyond "I was bored and I felt like seducing him. All weekend. And it was nice and flattering. But not in a kind of gay way *shifty eyes*".
I wonder if he was asked to play the line "Flattering in a creepy way" like he did, with this smile and like if the creepy way was an afterthought, or if it was supposed to be less slashy and Michael decided to play it like if Tony liked having McGee under his charm.
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He was bored, he'd just watched Weird Science ... LOL. Sometimes, Tony's brain is seriously crazy. I love him.
I don't know - I definitely wouldn't put it past MW to add as much of a slashy element as possible! But the creepy bit was definitely an afterthought! :-D
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Instead of taking it as a plothole, I'll imagine he didn't want to know the truth, because he felt something special with her and didn't want to lose it. And after Ziva told him, McGee convinced himself the something special was just his gut warning him and nothing more.
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