Season 8 is already halfway over! Noooo!

Feb 01, 2011 21:24

We kicked off February with a new episode of NCIS! Rebecca is staying cold and busy here, but she still found time to write a review for tonight's episode. It had its highs and lows.


Notes for episode 8x13 Freedom

Writer: Nicole Mirante-Matthews (Cracked)

+ I lol'ed at that very Lassie-esque opening. "Someone's in trouble? Lead the way, boy!"

+/- The bullpen scene had its ups and downs. I didn't like how mean and snippy Tony was to McGee, but I did like that Ziva didn't like it, either. The blow-up doll bit felt pretty... well, just stupid.

(Shallow insert: Didn't you just LOVE the way Ziva wore her hair in this episode? It was the same style she wore in the ending part of Recruited last week, and I wanted to drool every time she came onscreen!)

- Palmer's "black thumb" comments at the crime scene. The writers really overdo this with Palmer, and yet, it makes me lol every time.

- The scene with Tony and Ziva at the bar was way too Tiva for my taste -- how he brought up Ray again, she insisted that he was jealous again, and the bartender assumed that they were a couple. Ugh. I think we have a Shipper on Deck.

- The scene with McGee questioning Jancey felt like it was trying really hard to be dramatic, and it fell completely flat.

- For as smart and educated as Palmer is, he somehow didn't know that William Penn founded Pennsylvania? I learned this in middle school history. Get real, Mirante-Matthews.

+ Gibbs calling Wooten "gunny." I was impressed by how controlled and almost cold she acted when she found out her husband had been murdered. Finally, things started getting interesting.

+ "My firewall hasn't been penetrated." "Lubricant helps, but everybody hits dry spots." Tony lol'ing at McGee's pain was kinda funny. I especially loved when he started rattling off possible new McNames, and Ziva smirked at how annoyed McGee was. Haha!

- Ducky calling Wooten "weak" was very out-of-line (and even worse, out-of-character).

- I liked the parallels drawn between Ziva and Wooten, but I didn't like how Ducky thought Ziva might be able to get Wooten to open up. (Notice how we didn't see the conversation where Gibbs asked Ziva to talk to her? Yeah, can you imagine how that went?) We all know that Ziva has traumatic events in her past -- heck, there's plenty of fanfiction out there about it! (Including some of mine.) We also know that she hates discussing it, even with those closest to her. Maybe she does need to talk about certain things, but I don't think this was the right outlet for it. At all. More to the point, it didn't even help the case, something I predicted. Ugh. Poor Ziva.

- Jancey's interrogation scene felt very clunky and badly-written to me. That actress wasn't great, either.

+ That compassionate look Ziva gave Wooten when she asked them not to handcuff her. You could tell that she really understood this woman. It was very sad, in a way. You could see here what a great actress Cote de Pablo is.

+ That interrogation scene between Gibbs and Wooten -- wow. Intense, emotional, and great acting from them both. I also get the impression that Mirante-Matthews did research into domestic violence victims and how a woman like Wooten would really react in this situation. It reminded me a bit of the interrogation scene between Gibbs and Ziva back in Good Cop, Bad Cop, when he tried to get her to open up about what happened in Somalia. She didn't, not really, but it was still a good scene, still one of my favorite Gibbs/Ziva moments.

+ So, the killer turned out to be Feeny all along, in the billiards room, with the pool cue! I really thought it would turn out to be Wooten.

- So Feeny killed a wife-beating bastard. Did they really need to cuff him for that? Notice how Gibbs didn't answer when Feeny said, "Tell me you wouldn't have done the same thing" -- because we all know that Gibbs would have done the same thing if someone was hurting someone he cared about. I really expected the team to look the other way and let Feeny walk; they've certainly done it before (in Tribes and Mother's Day, just to name two). The episode could've ended on them letting Feeny go, instead of that rather ridiculous scene revealing who'd stolen McGee's identity. Which brings me to...

- Ugh, that ending scene! That bratty little punk needed a good smack to the head, and instead the guys rewarded him for being a little juvenile delinquent. It was enough to make me hope Tony and McGee never have kids.

ncis s8

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