NCIS 6x03 Capitol Offense
I haven't updated in forever, and given my life at the moment, I'm unlikely to update again anytime soon. However, I went to respond to a friend's post about the latest NCIS episode and found that I had so much to say that I way overdid the character limit, so I'm sticking it here.
Everyone can feel free to ignore, as I know I don't have that many NCIS people on my f-list and I have been MIA for so long.
As a spoiler-phobe, I'm going to give yet another warning to stay away if you haven't seen the episode "Capitol Offense" and do not want to be spoiled...
Okay. I absolutely hated the episode. I usually can be lenient about the case in NCIS, as I watch more for the character interaction than the plot, but this writing was so ludicrous and so filled with holes that I just couldn't ignore it. (It didn't help that the major character subplot annoyed me as well.)
Random thoughts mostly responding to the general chronological order in nakeisha's post here...
I'm okay with the Director in this one, more so than last week. I do think that he probably should be doing other things rather than focusing on Gibbs and his team all of the time, though! (And, seriously, if one of the best things I can say about an episode is that I thought the Director had more of a place in it than he did shoehorned into the previous ep, you know I have a major problem with it. Such lazy, lazy writing this week!)
I liked the "DiNosey" nickname and was okay with Tony being inordinately curious about it all. I wasn't so happy with the return to Ziva screwing up the language so much again. Maybe they can justify it with her having been in Israel for an extended period of time, but I disliked it from the start and find it even more annoying this long into her stay in the US. (I mean, seriously? Someone as smart and multilingual as Ziva wouldn't pick up on idioms after this long? I have friends who are nowhere near as fluent who don't screw up as much. And why wouldn't she compensate by not attempting them? *sigh* I'm going to try to stick with the fanwank that she does it on purpose to get a reaction from Tony. /rant (Sorry - and consider this a blanket apology for the upcoming rants as well!))
I know my medical knowledge consists solely of "Anatomy" and "Physiology" in college plus what I've picked up on TV/reading crime novels, but how on earth would Ducky know she bled out on a hard surface? I mean, lividity would be fixed (maybe, assuming she wasn't transported immediately, which is nowhere near a given), but how would he know a hard surface vs a mattress or other softer surface? Especially given that she bled out on a carpeted floor?)
And I don't get why the impending storm was so important. I know I don't pay 100% attention, but wasn't she dumped in a fairly substantial body of water? Hence, wouldn't the body have moved from the original dump site such that the ground wouldn't yield anything of interest? I mean, it's not like the body was weighted down or anything. (Which, another point here... if you are a Senator who does not want a body to be found, why the hell wouldn't you weigh the body down somehow to make some more time pass before the body was discovered? Or freaking dump it in the Potomac or the Atlantic or somewhere that would A) offer less of a chance of immediate discovery and B) allow predators a chance to work on the body to potentially make it unrecognizable? This is (supposedly) a smart man who is versed in the ways of death, so I'd expect more out of him than a random guy who might panic. Hell, I'd have to say that I'd at least strip the body, chop off the hands, and dump the body, hands, and clothes in different locations that were likely to have predator activity and were isolated enough to be unlikely to be discovered soon. (Not that I've ever contemplated body disposal at all. Really.)
And while I'm into "why the hell were the criminals so stupid", why the hell would the Senator (or his wife, as we know it wasn't the chief of staff and we know they were the only ones involved) call anonymously leaving a tip about where to find the gun? I could see if it were a throwaway piece that was untraceable, because then it could be used to possibly throw credence behind the "being framed" plot, but a one of a kind weapon that is easily traced back to a locked cabinet in his house? The icon says it all. I'm so astounded that someone so stupid was portrayed as a good soldier/good Senator.
I (obviously) saw that the Admiral was fidgeting, but as someone who constantly plays with the cross on her neck whenever she has to sit still for long periods of time (forget being nervous!), I ascribed no sinister meaning to the gesture. I do see how it worked in their attempts to create a possible person for Tony to check out and think it might have worked better if we didn't already know who she was having an affair with. I figured that is why Gibbs was not suspicious and Tony was, because Gibbs was also in possession of this information as well.
If she were trying to camouflage her calls, a "burn" phone would make so much more sense than calling the switchboard. Especially because A) who the heck who is involved with politics would even think about leaving a trail when there are other options? and B) the Senator was obviously aware of the option, as he had a "burn" phone purchased from over a year ago. I'd be okay with a few calls to the switchboard, as those could be explained away, but 36? And the team so could have found a "burn" phone and traced it anyway, if the writers felt it was necessary for the plot (which I do not, as the identity of the married man was never going to come from their investigation, but rather from Gibbs.)
(Can you tell I wasn't impressed with the writing/plotting in this episode? Sigh. I did warn/apologize about the ranting, right?)
That shot of Tony/Ziva/McGee staring after Gibbs and other similar moments is pretty much what saved this episode for me. I loved that little bit and rewound it and watched it again. It was so perfect with their characters and their thought processes!
Again, why would they be told where the gun was? What purpose could that possibly serve? I was okay with it at first because I thought it was the Chief of Staff having cold feet about his part in it, but as they ruled him out as the caller...
I also did not care for the fall, although I do think that it was probably accidental. But, really, the odds of McGee falling a second time precisely on where the gun was hidden? I was okay when I thought the gun was wrapped in the black cloth that DiNozzo had spotted, because at least they had a visual indication of where it might be, but when it was in a slightly different location, discovered not by equipment or by sight, but rather by McGee's ass randomly landing on it?
Considering how many times McGee has run afoul of nature (and car washes and other sundry things), plus the amount of times I'm sure they have pulled all-nighters working on cases, why on earth wouldn't he have a change of clothes at the office? For crying out loud, I'd expect all of them to have an overnight bag packed in their cars or at the office for sudden trips away. I mean, we know he has gym clothes there, based on his sparring with Kate early in the series, so why wouldn't he have a change of clothes in his locker? I know that then we wouldn't have gotten the "go home and change" scene, but it still bothers me. There had better be some kind of ulterior motive to that scene, but I don't have faith in it.
As far as the Abby sub-plot goes, I didn't mind the crime scene tape and fingerprinting, as I thought it was rather cute. When it extended further than that, into DNA testing (seriously? First of all, she could always hack into the database if she were that determined. Second of all, it takes weeks to sequence DNA. Third of all, what was she comparing it to? Fourth of all, if she had some kind of sample to compare it to, she would already know if it were male or female (as that is the easiest part) and thus would not need Ziva's sample. Ad nauseum.) and impinging on her ability to do her job (in the middle of the first day(s) of a murder investigation when time is the most critical! The cupcake investigation couldn't wait a bit?), I got very annoyed with it. I, however, just lumped it in with my general annoyance overall with the writing this episode and didn't single out Abby for especial attention. (I almost consider her a victim. *grin*)
Dear God, the "barber" thing annoyed me even more than the idiom thing. Mossad is known, as far as I can tell with my limited knowledge, to take advantage of all sources, including the "invisible" people, and, in fact, is known (again given my limited knowledge) to be quite ruthless in their information gathering techniques. You mean to tell me that Ziva, raised to be a spy her whole life, and who seems to be at least fairly successful at it, wouldn't know this? Again, see icon.
I actually suspected the wife from the moment the senator said that he was married and having an affair with the dead woman. I didn't, however, predict all of the asinine stuff surrounding the wife killing her, though.
I also don't get why the wife would go to Gibbs? Did they already have the plan to kill the chief of staff and set him up? He wouldn't be my first choice as a scapegoat at that moment (later, when everything is closing in, maybe, but not then), and it just seems like a stupid thing to do. The risk is much greater than the potential rewards, as far as I can figure it.
So who was the fourth fingerprint from? A minor point considering all of the others, and I see the need to set it up to potentially be an outsider framing the senator, but I dislike loose ends (in fiction; obviously they are unavoidable in real life).
I actually liked the scene with Ziva and the lobbyist (yeah, I'm not bothering to remember/type names, if it weren't obvious by now), and it was another of the too few redeeming parts of the episode. In my opinion, people don't pay too much attention to people getting signatures. (Hell, given that it is election season, I've seen a few, and Western NY is hardly a hotbed of politics. This would especially be true, I would assume, in Washington D.C., what with all of the lobbying and such.) Ziva is a little old for the standard signature gatherer (usually college students from what I've seen/I know), but it worked for me. Plus, girls so outnumber guys in Washington D.C. that I would have to figure they would be even less suspicious of a girl hitting on them. I also liked the little nod to Ziva's competence, as it was lacking in this episode.
I'm not entirely sure why there wasn't more of a struggle with the chief of staff's death. I know he had drugs in his system, but A) how did they get him to ingest that amount of drugs without a struggle and B) how was it enough drugs to keep him from either ripping the bag off or having to have his wrists restrained/bruised without Ducky detecting it was an incapacitating amount? I just cannot see asphyxiation by bag over the head as being an easy suicide to fake and pull off with a halfway decent coroner. (And Ducky is definitely more than a halfway decent coroner.) If they were going to drug him, why not just go for the overdose? And where were the pills from? You would think that would leave a traceable trail as well.
What kind of stupid criminal only cleans a tiny section of carpet such that it looks dramatically different from the rest (and doesn't even half-assedly cover it up with furniture)? For crying out loud, how much extra work is it to clean the whole damn carpet? And, if you use bleach, you can potentially degrade the blood enough so it isn't recognizable as such and definitely enough so it couldn't be DNA-typed and could be claimed to be a cut hand from a broken glass or something like that.
I can understand them giving him (setting him up with) the burn phone and the program on his laptop, but was the message seriously up on the laptop screen? If so, way, way overkill, and again points to supremely stupid criminals. If not, what the heck were the agents doing typing the message in there? (I really think it was the former, but as I said before, I don't always catch everything. And there is no way on earth I am rewatching this episode.)
As far as the cupcake goes, I so can't buy McGee taking it. So he was hungry? There are no restaurants in the immediate vicinity? He would seriously have the time to figure out when Abby wasn't in the lab and risk her wrath to steal a cupcake but couldn't take the time to dart to anywhere else to grab a bite? Really? And Abby needed all of them to confront him, why? Such a silly, silly plotline and so unworthy of this show. (But not so much this episode. I'm actually glad it wasn't in a different episode, as I don't plan on ever revisiting this one anyway, so at least I don't have to decide on possibly skipping two episodes.)
Considering all of the problems that I, an untrained layperson, had with this damn episode, I am surprised that seasoned agents would be taken in by the story and thus not expect Gibbs to want to investigate more. And even if they don't suspect anything, shouldn't they know by now to trust Gibbs' gut?
And why the hell would the Senator and his wife confess? As far as I can see there was next to no proof that they had done anything and what little proof was present (the gun, the affair) was circumstantial. Theoretically, they could each claim the other did it independently, and in separate trials reasonable doubt could be expected given the paucity of evidence. And even if they chose not to go that route, the burn phone is untraceable, they could claim that someone stole the gun (a celebrity stalker or some other such person would be implausible, but not impossible), the gray fiber could have come from a number of cars, etc. And that is just for the original murder. Really, other than the motive assuming they pulled the first murder, what proof is there that connects them to the second murder? Even assuming that it became a case of everyone knows that they did it, I cannot think that anyone would ever be able to prove it in court. But, of course, I consider this a shoddily written episode, so why wouldn't they confess? How else could they possibly wrap it up? Ugh.
And, considering the confession, why would the senator even involve his chief of staff in the first place? The more people involved in a secret, the more likely it would be to come out. It would seem to be fairly easy to do the half-assed disposal job that they did on his own, so why bother to involve someone else? And, even after they involved the chief, why bother to kill him at that moment? As far as we could tell, he wasn't getting cold feet, the investigation was still on "frame-up" rather than the Senator being guilty, and there was NO proof to tie them to the killing at that moment. I mean, before the chief's death, no one even knew that the Senator had a key to the chief's place (which, again, why would he confess to? Idiot), so they would have no reason to search his place for blood/evidence (and absolutely no probable cause for a warrant). Plus, they'd gone to all of the trouble of trying to (stupidly) set up a "being framed" motive, and the chief really didn't fit all that well with that scenario. Killing the chief just made discovery more likely at that moment, not less.
Overall...
A dreadful episode with a couple of good moments.
A horrible, horrible case. Made worse by the fact that the basic premise could have had the potential to be interesting if it had been better written.
I did like a couple of the humorous moments, but felt that the majority of what was supposed to be humorous did not work. At all.
Relatively little believable stuff. (I'm not sure I could come up with anything that was completely believable off of the top of my head.)
Abby did annoy me, but actually less than the so-called "plot" did. That is not a good thing.
Not enough Ducky. Plus, not only was there no connection to the team, but he really served no purpose. He stated virtually nothing that was not obvious/easily figured out by the scene, and the one thing he did (the drugs) wasn't analyzed well or wasn't believable. So not what I expect from him.
I didn't care that much about the lack of Jimmy, and I thought Vance's presence was okay given the political nature of the case, but neither was a good thing.
Ziva's naivete and related comments/statements bothered me. I was actually mostly fine with Tony's, Gibbs', and McGee's characters this episode. Not like that is saying much. Talk about damning with faint praise!
I do like seeing hints of Gibbs' past (such as in Enigma), but this was so poorly done that I can't even list that as a positive.
I really disliked this episode (3.5/10, I'm thinking), but I'm hoping it doesn't mean that NCIS has had its day. I'm going to try to keep thinking about the really good premiere episode and remain optimistic for the future. Really I am. Valiantly.
*sigh*
On a completely unrelated note, as I'm posting anyway, does anyone have any ideas about what to do with a 15 year old? I'm going to be "babysitting" one all next weekend, as her parents are out of town. They have no television, her computer time is severely limited, and she has virtually no interests besides art (which she doesn't tend to do when I'm over). At that age I pretty much read when I wasn't out with friends, and the things I used to do when I regularly babysat her when she was younger (painting nails, dancing, discussing music and pop culture, etc.) won't even make a dent on the Friday evening to Monday evening time!
Everyone can feel free to ignore, as I know I don't have that many NCIS people on my f-list and I have been MIA for so long.
As a spoiler-phobe, I'm going to give yet another warning to stay away if you haven't seen the episode "Capitol Offense" and do not want to be spoiled...
Okay. I absolutely hated the episode. I usually can be lenient about the case in NCIS, as I watch more for the character interaction than the plot, but this writing was so ludicrous and so filled with holes that I just couldn't ignore it. (It didn't help that the major character subplot annoyed me as well.)
Random thoughts mostly responding to the general chronological order in nakeisha's post here...
I'm okay with the Director in this one, more so than last week. I do think that he probably should be doing other things rather than focusing on Gibbs and his team all of the time, though! (And, seriously, if one of the best things I can say about an episode is that I thought the Director had more of a place in it than he did shoehorned into the previous ep, you know I have a major problem with it. Such lazy, lazy writing this week!)
I liked the "DiNosey" nickname and was okay with Tony being inordinately curious about it all. I wasn't so happy with the return to Ziva screwing up the language so much again. Maybe they can justify it with her having been in Israel for an extended period of time, but I disliked it from the start and find it even more annoying this long into her stay in the US. (I mean, seriously? Someone as smart and multilingual as Ziva wouldn't pick up on idioms after this long? I have friends who are nowhere near as fluent who don't screw up as much. And why wouldn't she compensate by not attempting them? *sigh* I'm going to try to stick with the fanwank that she does it on purpose to get a reaction from Tony. /rant (Sorry - and consider this a blanket apology for the upcoming rants as well!))
I know my medical knowledge consists solely of "Anatomy" and "Physiology" in college plus what I've picked up on TV/reading crime novels, but how on earth would Ducky know she bled out on a hard surface? I mean, lividity would be fixed (maybe, assuming she wasn't transported immediately, which is nowhere near a given), but how would he know a hard surface vs a mattress or other softer surface? Especially given that she bled out on a carpeted floor?)
And I don't get why the impending storm was so important. I know I don't pay 100% attention, but wasn't she dumped in a fairly substantial body of water? Hence, wouldn't the body have moved from the original dump site such that the ground wouldn't yield anything of interest? I mean, it's not like the body was weighted down or anything. (Which, another point here... if you are a Senator who does not want a body to be found, why the hell wouldn't you weigh the body down somehow to make some more time pass before the body was discovered? Or freaking dump it in the Potomac or the Atlantic or somewhere that would A) offer less of a chance of immediate discovery and B) allow predators a chance to work on the body to potentially make it unrecognizable? This is (supposedly) a smart man who is versed in the ways of death, so I'd expect more out of him than a random guy who might panic. Hell, I'd have to say that I'd at least strip the body, chop off the hands, and dump the body, hands, and clothes in different locations that were likely to have predator activity and were isolated enough to be unlikely to be discovered soon. (Not that I've ever contemplated body disposal at all. Really.)
And while I'm into "why the hell were the criminals so stupid", why the hell would the Senator (or his wife, as we know it wasn't the chief of staff and we know they were the only ones involved) call anonymously leaving a tip about where to find the gun? I could see if it were a throwaway piece that was untraceable, because then it could be used to possibly throw credence behind the "being framed" plot, but a one of a kind weapon that is easily traced back to a locked cabinet in his house? The icon says it all. I'm so astounded that someone so stupid was portrayed as a good soldier/good Senator.
I (obviously) saw that the Admiral was fidgeting, but as someone who constantly plays with the cross on her neck whenever she has to sit still for long periods of time (forget being nervous!), I ascribed no sinister meaning to the gesture. I do see how it worked in their attempts to create a possible person for Tony to check out and think it might have worked better if we didn't already know who she was having an affair with. I figured that is why Gibbs was not suspicious and Tony was, because Gibbs was also in possession of this information as well.
If she were trying to camouflage her calls, a "burn" phone would make so much more sense than calling the switchboard. Especially because A) who the heck who is involved with politics would even think about leaving a trail when there are other options? and B) the Senator was obviously aware of the option, as he had a "burn" phone purchased from over a year ago. I'd be okay with a few calls to the switchboard, as those could be explained away, but 36? And the team so could have found a "burn" phone and traced it anyway, if the writers felt it was necessary for the plot (which I do not, as the identity of the married man was never going to come from their investigation, but rather from Gibbs.)
(Can you tell I wasn't impressed with the writing/plotting in this episode? Sigh. I did warn/apologize about the ranting, right?)
That shot of Tony/Ziva/McGee staring after Gibbs and other similar moments is pretty much what saved this episode for me. I loved that little bit and rewound it and watched it again. It was so perfect with their characters and their thought processes!
Again, why would they be told where the gun was? What purpose could that possibly serve? I was okay with it at first because I thought it was the Chief of Staff having cold feet about his part in it, but as they ruled him out as the caller...
I also did not care for the fall, although I do think that it was probably accidental. But, really, the odds of McGee falling a second time precisely on where the gun was hidden? I was okay when I thought the gun was wrapped in the black cloth that DiNozzo had spotted, because at least they had a visual indication of where it might be, but when it was in a slightly different location, discovered not by equipment or by sight, but rather by McGee's ass randomly landing on it?
Considering how many times McGee has run afoul of nature (and car washes and other sundry things), plus the amount of times I'm sure they have pulled all-nighters working on cases, why on earth wouldn't he have a change of clothes at the office? For crying out loud, I'd expect all of them to have an overnight bag packed in their cars or at the office for sudden trips away. I mean, we know he has gym clothes there, based on his sparring with Kate early in the series, so why wouldn't he have a change of clothes in his locker? I know that then we wouldn't have gotten the "go home and change" scene, but it still bothers me. There had better be some kind of ulterior motive to that scene, but I don't have faith in it.
As far as the Abby sub-plot goes, I didn't mind the crime scene tape and fingerprinting, as I thought it was rather cute. When it extended further than that, into DNA testing (seriously? First of all, she could always hack into the database if she were that determined. Second of all, it takes weeks to sequence DNA. Third of all, what was she comparing it to? Fourth of all, if she had some kind of sample to compare it to, she would already know if it were male or female (as that is the easiest part) and thus would not need Ziva's sample. Ad nauseum.) and impinging on her ability to do her job (in the middle of the first day(s) of a murder investigation when time is the most critical! The cupcake investigation couldn't wait a bit?), I got very annoyed with it. I, however, just lumped it in with my general annoyance overall with the writing this episode and didn't single out Abby for especial attention. (I almost consider her a victim. *grin*)
Dear God, the "barber" thing annoyed me even more than the idiom thing. Mossad is known, as far as I can tell with my limited knowledge, to take advantage of all sources, including the "invisible" people, and, in fact, is known (again given my limited knowledge) to be quite ruthless in their information gathering techniques. You mean to tell me that Ziva, raised to be a spy her whole life, and who seems to be at least fairly successful at it, wouldn't know this? Again, see icon.
I actually suspected the wife from the moment the senator said that he was married and having an affair with the dead woman. I didn't, however, predict all of the asinine stuff surrounding the wife killing her, though.
I also don't get why the wife would go to Gibbs? Did they already have the plan to kill the chief of staff and set him up? He wouldn't be my first choice as a scapegoat at that moment (later, when everything is closing in, maybe, but not then), and it just seems like a stupid thing to do. The risk is much greater than the potential rewards, as far as I can figure it.
So who was the fourth fingerprint from? A minor point considering all of the others, and I see the need to set it up to potentially be an outsider framing the senator, but I dislike loose ends (in fiction; obviously they are unavoidable in real life).
I actually liked the scene with Ziva and the lobbyist (yeah, I'm not bothering to remember/type names, if it weren't obvious by now), and it was another of the too few redeeming parts of the episode. In my opinion, people don't pay too much attention to people getting signatures. (Hell, given that it is election season, I've seen a few, and Western NY is hardly a hotbed of politics. This would especially be true, I would assume, in Washington D.C., what with all of the lobbying and such.) Ziva is a little old for the standard signature gatherer (usually college students from what I've seen/I know), but it worked for me. Plus, girls so outnumber guys in Washington D.C. that I would have to figure they would be even less suspicious of a girl hitting on them. I also liked the little nod to Ziva's competence, as it was lacking in this episode.
I'm not entirely sure why there wasn't more of a struggle with the chief of staff's death. I know he had drugs in his system, but A) how did they get him to ingest that amount of drugs without a struggle and B) how was it enough drugs to keep him from either ripping the bag off or having to have his wrists restrained/bruised without Ducky detecting it was an incapacitating amount? I just cannot see asphyxiation by bag over the head as being an easy suicide to fake and pull off with a halfway decent coroner. (And Ducky is definitely more than a halfway decent coroner.) If they were going to drug him, why not just go for the overdose? And where were the pills from? You would think that would leave a traceable trail as well.
What kind of stupid criminal only cleans a tiny section of carpet such that it looks dramatically different from the rest (and doesn't even half-assedly cover it up with furniture)? For crying out loud, how much extra work is it to clean the whole damn carpet? And, if you use bleach, you can potentially degrade the blood enough so it isn't recognizable as such and definitely enough so it couldn't be DNA-typed and could be claimed to be a cut hand from a broken glass or something like that.
I can understand them giving him (setting him up with) the burn phone and the program on his laptop, but was the message seriously up on the laptop screen? If so, way, way overkill, and again points to supremely stupid criminals. If not, what the heck were the agents doing typing the message in there? (I really think it was the former, but as I said before, I don't always catch everything. And there is no way on earth I am rewatching this episode.)
As far as the cupcake goes, I so can't buy McGee taking it. So he was hungry? There are no restaurants in the immediate vicinity? He would seriously have the time to figure out when Abby wasn't in the lab and risk her wrath to steal a cupcake but couldn't take the time to dart to anywhere else to grab a bite? Really? And Abby needed all of them to confront him, why? Such a silly, silly plotline and so unworthy of this show. (But not so much this episode. I'm actually glad it wasn't in a different episode, as I don't plan on ever revisiting this one anyway, so at least I don't have to decide on possibly skipping two episodes.)
Considering all of the problems that I, an untrained layperson, had with this damn episode, I am surprised that seasoned agents would be taken in by the story and thus not expect Gibbs to want to investigate more. And even if they don't suspect anything, shouldn't they know by now to trust Gibbs' gut?
And why the hell would the Senator and his wife confess? As far as I can see there was next to no proof that they had done anything and what little proof was present (the gun, the affair) was circumstantial. Theoretically, they could each claim the other did it independently, and in separate trials reasonable doubt could be expected given the paucity of evidence. And even if they chose not to go that route, the burn phone is untraceable, they could claim that someone stole the gun (a celebrity stalker or some other such person would be implausible, but not impossible), the gray fiber could have come from a number of cars, etc. And that is just for the original murder. Really, other than the motive assuming they pulled the first murder, what proof is there that connects them to the second murder? Even assuming that it became a case of everyone knows that they did it, I cannot think that anyone would ever be able to prove it in court. But, of course, I consider this a shoddily written episode, so why wouldn't they confess? How else could they possibly wrap it up? Ugh.
And, considering the confession, why would the senator even involve his chief of staff in the first place? The more people involved in a secret, the more likely it would be to come out. It would seem to be fairly easy to do the half-assed disposal job that they did on his own, so why bother to involve someone else? And, even after they involved the chief, why bother to kill him at that moment? As far as we could tell, he wasn't getting cold feet, the investigation was still on "frame-up" rather than the Senator being guilty, and there was NO proof to tie them to the killing at that moment. I mean, before the chief's death, no one even knew that the Senator had a key to the chief's place (which, again, why would he confess to? Idiot), so they would have no reason to search his place for blood/evidence (and absolutely no probable cause for a warrant). Plus, they'd gone to all of the trouble of trying to (stupidly) set up a "being framed" motive, and the chief really didn't fit all that well with that scenario. Killing the chief just made discovery more likely at that moment, not less.
Overall...
A dreadful episode with a couple of good moments.
A horrible, horrible case. Made worse by the fact that the basic premise could have had the potential to be interesting if it had been better written.
I did like a couple of the humorous moments, but felt that the majority of what was supposed to be humorous did not work. At all.
Relatively little believable stuff. (I'm not sure I could come up with anything that was completely believable off of the top of my head.)
Abby did annoy me, but actually less than the so-called "plot" did. That is not a good thing.
Not enough Ducky. Plus, not only was there no connection to the team, but he really served no purpose. He stated virtually nothing that was not obvious/easily figured out by the scene, and the one thing he did (the drugs) wasn't analyzed well or wasn't believable. So not what I expect from him.
I didn't care that much about the lack of Jimmy, and I thought Vance's presence was okay given the political nature of the case, but neither was a good thing.
Ziva's naivete and related comments/statements bothered me. I was actually mostly fine with Tony's, Gibbs', and McGee's characters this episode. Not like that is saying much. Talk about damning with faint praise!
I do like seeing hints of Gibbs' past (such as in Enigma), but this was so poorly done that I can't even list that as a positive.
I really disliked this episode (3.5/10, I'm thinking), but I'm hoping it doesn't mean that NCIS has had its day. I'm going to try to keep thinking about the really good premiere episode and remain optimistic for the future. Really I am. Valiantly.
*sigh*
On a completely unrelated note, as I'm posting anyway, does anyone have any ideas about what to do with a 15 year old? I'm going to be "babysitting" one all next weekend, as her parents are out of town. They have no television, her computer time is severely limited, and she has virtually no interests besides art (which she doesn't tend to do when I'm over). At that age I pretty much read when I wasn't out with friends, and the things I used to do when I regularly babysat her when she was younger (painting nails, dancing, discussing music and pop culture, etc.) won't even make a dent on the Friday evening to Monday evening time!