So, can we start the countdown to the season nine premiere yet?
So, Rebecca's actually had a pretty good week so far. Sunday was an Eat-Spaghetti-at-Grandma's day, which are all the more meaningful since there are a limited number of spaghetti dinners left at that house. Afterwards, I took Josh over to JC & Company's to swing on their swings. (And guys? He loved your swingset.) The swinging was fun while it lasted, but before long, it made so nauseous that I almost barfed up Grandma's spaghetti! Ugh. I must be getting old, because I used to swing for hours on end. I could practically hear my other Jewish grandfather saying, "Look at me, huh? Like a rock. We can go up, we can down, we can go side-to-side..." Just before I left, Eva wanted to find out if she could give me a piggyback ride. Guess what? She could. Can I get a WITNESS!
Look at us two crazy chicks (and notice all Maggie's rubber bands still on my wrist). I promise I wasn't choking Eva, although it might look like it here. It was a difficult photo to take because we were both laughing so hard.
On Monday, I met Jewish Grandfather #1 for coffee. We hadn't done that in a while. He is really the sweetest, funniest guy. He's a theater buff who's currently acting in a local production of "Kiss Me, Kate," and he showed me a song number he does about how quoting Shakespeare can impress girls. (The one who sets them all ravin' / Is the bard of Stratford-on-Avon!) Smack in the middle of us having coffee, I got a call about a potential job. It almost certainly won't pan out, but that might be a good thing, because the application I filled out asked the most disturbing questions ever. A sample:
Do you strongly agree, slightly agree, slightly disagree, or strongly disagree with the following:
~ If a customer is rude to you, it is acceptable to react violently.
~ If you have a disagreement with a coworker, you should physically threaten him/her.
~ It is okay to come to work under the influence of alcohol and/or illegal, non-prescription drugs.
Um, seriously, wtf?
On Tuesday, I went straight from work to a graduation reception for a young woman that my grandma used to babysit for. She is very nice - and she was almost equally upset to hear Grandma's moving - and so is her family, but the whole thing was very "Southern charm debutante gala," so I felt a little out-of-place. (There were women my mom's age politely wondering why I wasn't doing anything with my degree. Ugh.) But I do think I'm much better and mingling and making small talk than I used to be. Thank you, Jews.
After that, of course, was the Season 8 Finale of NCIS (Pyramid)! Honestly, I'm still making up my mind about it. I was surprised that both EJ and Ray lived to see the end of the season, and neither one of them is blatantly evil. (Although EJ is definitely up to something.) All in all, though, this wasn't the most well-planned finale arc. At all.
Notes for episode 8x24 Pyramid (Season 8 Finale)
Featuring EJ Barrett, Simon Cade, and Trent Kort, all last seen in Swan Song; Ray Cruz, Two-Faced; and SecNav Davenport, Semper Fidelis. First appearance of SecNav Jarvis.
Writer: Gary Glasberg ( A Man Walks Into a Bar).
- The opening scene with Gibbs and Tony finding dead Levin and injured Cade didn't impress me. It felt obvious that Levin was already dead, and the actor playing Cade didn't do injured that well.
+/- Gibbs finding EJ in the trunk was kinda dramatic and well-done, but it also felt stupid. Was Cobb trying to kill her by gagging her and stuffing her in there? But why not just kill her outright?
- Vance's flashbacks to Cobb's training in Operation Frankenstein were really cheesy.
- The scene between Tony and EJ in the bathroom, especially EJ saying that Cobb is doing this "because he has to" -- more nonsensical explanation of his motives, as if we didn't get enough of this in Swan Song last week. Did you get a whiff of an unpleasant odor during this scene? That, my friends, is the smell of a Glasberg episode.
+ Ooh, Cobb killed Levin with Mike Franks's gun. He just rubbed that salt into Gibbs's wounds.
- I'm sorry, I love Ducky, but his monologue to Gibbs and Palmer in autopsy made me roll my eyes. "This is no longer about method. What was once about profiling Cobb... all that has evolved." That's right, the writers have derailed this arc so much that they needed to have Ducky explain why.
+/- Ooh, EJ is definitely up to something (but at least the writers didn't make her outright evil). What was in that microchip she took out of Levin's arm? Some fans have claimed that she looked surprised when she found it and didn't know it was there, but that seems pretty unlikely to me. Who would notice something in their dead friend's arm, cut out a microchip, and not mention it to anyone? And did she really expect Ducky not to notice?
- I also wasn't crazy about the scene between Abby and McGee in her lab. You'd think McGee would realize that now is not the time to be telling Abby that it's okay with him if she's dating Cade. Cade is in critical condition and they didn't need your permission in the first place, McGee! Then there was the McAbby anvil at the end -- ugh! Glasberg seems to love anvils.
- Ziva trying to comfort EJ in the elevator. I guess she had good intentions, but geez, saying that Levin died "because it was his time"? Does she not hear herself? Do you not hear yourself, Glasberg? Why are all the other showrunners afraid to tell you how much your episodes suck? And what the hell, she goes to meet Ray (based on information that Kort gave them) without any backup? Ugh! Ziva, you walked right into that one.
+ Nota Bene: The "scif" that SecNav asked Vance for is an acronymn for Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility.
- So, even if Cobb hadn't killed him, Mike was already dying? (From lung or throat cancer, I assume, based on his line about "too many years of lightin' up.") This felt really cliched and cheap, and the writers did the same thing back when Director Shepherd died. Ugh.
+ This is going to sound really bad, but I was very childishly satisfied when Ray told Gibbs, "I really don't know, sir." I was like, yeah, that's right, you call him sir! And when Gibbs told EJ, "This is not your responsibility." Because Ziva is his agent, and Gibbs doesn't let anybody else take responsibility for his team.
+ Okay, I have to admit, I felt a grudging like for Vance when he slapped Kort's feet off his conference table, insisted that the people who green-lighted Operation Frankenstein had to take responsibility for Cobb's actions (not Gibbs and EJ), and told Kort, "If he wasn't, I am."
- "It's different for some of us." I don't ship Tiva, but I did love this line. It felt more meaningful and honest than that entire anvil of episode Jetlag.
- Cobb turning himself in. I actually said to my TV, "What? What the hell is this?"
+ "Rule 16: If someone thinks they have the upper hand, break it." A new rule! This might've been the highlight of this episode for me.
+ "It's time to put Sampson down." Okay, even though Cote de Pablo has renewed her contract for next season, I got nervous when Cobb said this to Gibbs.
+ "You're an embarrassment to the CIA and a disappointment to your dad." You dig that knife in, Gibbs! Gibbs might be many things, but he's no disappointment to his dad!
- Did you notice that when Tony asked Ray about trying to find Ziva, he looked around and sighed before answering? Geez, this guy doesn't seem concerned at all that she's missing. I blame Glasberg, because it really doesn't fit with how Ray's been written so far. All in all, the "Ziva in peril" subplot/storyline really rubbed me the wrong way. It's been done before!
- So, EJ is SecNav's niece? And this is why Gibbs didn't trust her from the get-go?
+ I rewatched the scene with the guys finding Ziva in the barn a few times, and it looks like Gibbs and Ray reached her at the same time. It was a nice, but not quite redeeming, touch that Ray sounded so relieved when he said her name. It was also a nice touch how the rest of the guys kinda stood back while Gibbs checked out her injuries; I can't see Ziva letting anyone but Gibbs do that.
- "Davenport's got 24-hour security." "His niece, Special Agent Barrett, doesn't." Quick, Glasberg, the team has found Ziva, so now you have to put another woman in peril!
+ Palmer's reaction when Cobb and EJ got into the elevator with him made me chuckle. Poor guy. You know he was shitting his scrubs when Cobb got him around the neck, and for a second, I was seriously afraid that they might kill him off!
+ Palmer and Breena are engaged!
+/- I really liked Ziva defending EJ for not telling Tony that SecNav is her uncle. But wow, she got over her head wound awfully quick, didn't she? Oh well, this team has always had remarkable healing powers.
- Poor Palmer. I mean, I can understand Cobb torturing Kort and EJ, but what did Palmer ever do? He's just the autopsy gremlin!
- Ugh. This is how the writers end the arc with Cobb? He kidnaps EJ just to leave her in the trunk, and then he kidnaps EJ, Kort, and Palmer, just to waterboard and release them, and then he commits suicide by cop? What. The. Hell. Remember how good this storyline was when it first started? Remember that incredibly creepy scene when Cobb killed Balfour at the beginning of Two-Faced? These episodes should be shown in screenwriting classes called "How Not to Write a Finale Arc."
- Tony gets offered Rota again -- and again, he turns it down. Even though we all saw this coming, I still liked it.
- That last scene between Ziva and Ray. He gave her an empty ringbox? The hell? This relationship obviously isn't going to last, especially from what Ziva said in A Man Walks Into a Bar about wanting something permanent. But, as with EJ, I'm surprised the writers didn't make him outright evil.
+/- Well, now we have Mike's funeral scene. At least this seems well-done. Oh, look the stuff that Gibbs was working on in his basement in Dead Reflection turn out to be embellishments for Mike's coffin. That's a nice touch, if kinda morbid. Wait... where's Ziva? She's not standing in line with the rest of the team. That's right, Ziva didn't attend Mike's funeral. After the way she bonded with Leyla in Outlaws and In-Laws and fell apart over his death in Swan Song, she didn't attend his funeral. I can't wait to see how Glasberg is going to justify this one.
- Why isn't this episode over yet? Now we have to have another scene introducing the new SecNav. This whole episode was really out-of-line with previous finales, and not in a good way. Since when do the writers use the finale to wrap up one story arc and introduce a whole new one? And besides that, the "Tony has an assignment that he has to keep secret from his team" and "there's a mole at NCIS" storylines have both been done before! Ugh x 100!! Damn you, Glasberg!!!
FF: I wrote tags to this episode in Coping and Comfort (which wasn't my best story, but then, just look at the episode it was tagged to!) and Progress.
I have a number of fanfic ideas on the back burner, but I'm waiting until I get my prompts from ncis_ficathon before I publish anything. I hope I don't get anything too off-the-wall.
Sara elbowed me in the arm earlier, and now it's sore as a bitch.