When you ask me what I want this year...
Any guesses as to what Rebecca has in her kitchen cabinet right now? Eight cans of green beans, three cans of cream of mushroom soup, two jumbo-sized cans of French-fried onions, a small mountain of pecans waiting to be shelled, a make-your-own gingerbread house kit, and... a partridge in a pear tree. Sorry, I couldn't resist. I still crack up when the sarcastic college daughter says that line in Home Alone.
This week feels so packed already, and it's only Wednesday. On Sunday, I went swinging in the park with Josh and Eva. We had a little Thanksgiving dinner at work on Monday - my coworkers brought a lot of delicious stuff, including a ham, macaroni and cheese, rolls, and pecan pie - and there was a loaded episode of NCIS (Enemies Domestic - my notes are at the bottom of this entry) on Tuesday. Tonight I'm going to buckle down and make green bean casserole for dinner at Grandma's tomorrow. Grandma and I both bought enough for me to make two servings, hence the overstuffed cabinets. I guess it's a good thing I love green bean casserole, because I might be eating it for a while. If only I could stop eating all the French-fried onions raw!
All the commercials for Black Friday sales scare me, but none so much as Target's. It's as if that company sincerely wants their employees to be trampled to death by rapid customers at four in the morning. This year they've taken out a banner ad on YouTube that makes me want to run away and hide every time I visit that site. *shudders*
The work schedules for next week were printed today, and I was looking at a copy and said off-handedly, “Oh, good, I'll be able to go to the Hanukkah services.” Then I look up to find one of my coworkers staring at me like I had five heads. This is a girl who had never heard of Nancy Drew, Clark Gable, Gone With the Wind, or a number of other things that have been referenced at work, so I wasn't really surprised. Hanukkah probably sounded like a disease to her. In the course of trying to explain it (which I failed), she said, “But isn't Jewish, like, a race? Or is it like... Catholic?”
Homer: Come on, Apu, it's a Civil War reenactment! We need Indians to shoot!
Apu: I do not know which part of that sentence to correct first.
Notes for episode 8x09 Enemies Domestic.
Featuring Eli David, Malachi Ben-Gideon, and Riley McCallister, all last seen in Enemies Foreign.
Writer: Jesse Stern (Enemies Foreign).
- The scene of Vance waking up in the safe house after the explosion had me rolling my eyes. For an explosion that nearly killed him, he was impressively conscious and lucid and barely bruised or bloodied at all.
+ The flashback to Vance in 1991 impressed me, though. The makeup artists really did a good job of making Rocky Carroll look twenty years younger. I liked the interaction between Vance and Whitney, and the subtle hints that were dropped about his true identity, like his expression when Whitney said NIS knew everything about him. (Whitney's outfit, though -- ugh! It was SO unflattering.)
+/- I loved the expression on Ziva's face when she was photographing the safe house. It really showed what an amazing actress Cote de Pablo is. But then Ziva and Liat had to start snapping at each other again -- ugh! I thought they'd buried the hatchet last week, but apparently not.
+ "It is the only option where my father is still alive." I can understand how, as difficult as her relationship with Eli might be, Ziva still doesn't want to lose the last surviving member of her family.
- The doctors' dialogue when they were treating Vance. I get the impression Stern did no medical research here. I mean, I have absolutely NO medical training, and I could've written those lines.
+ Vance and Whitney's dialogue in the second flashback, especially when she said, "I work in marble, like Michelangelo." For a character we've never met before, I was really loving this woman.
- McGee talking to the group of past directors like they were kids he was baby-sitting. I guess Stern was trying for funny here, but it just felt stupid to me. I would've expected more of them to react to his pandering tone like McCallister did. Which brings us to...
+ "Permission to smack your boy with my cane, Gibbs!" "Denied." Poor McGee, but I laughed so hard at this line. Shades of Mike Franks and Cotton Hill here.
- McCallister trying to convince Gibbs that Eli was behind the explosion felt suspicious, even to me, and I'm always the last person to pick up on clues like this. Imagine how obvious it must've been to everyone else!
- The flashback to Vance and Eli in Amsterdam -- I really don't care much about either of those characters, so it didn't thrill me that this episode is turning out to be more about them than about Ziva. Her seeing her father again was hyped up a lot, only to barely be addressed.
- Tony suggesting that when Eli wrote beit in the dirt, he was suggesting a House of Pies or Pancakes. I love it when the writers can make him funny in a witty way, but this just felt stupid, especially given the situation.
- It was nice to hear Ziva talk about her Jewish heritage, but did she really need to recount the entire Golem legend just to tell Tony that Liat had erased a word?
+++ Oh my goodness, the scene between Ducky and Whitney in autopsy! Priceless! I loved every second, especially Gibbs and Tony's faces when they barged in. Tony: "You could've hung a sock on the door." Ducky: "There's no knob." Again, priceless! God loves that duck!
+ Aww, such a cute scene between McGee and Abby in her lab.
- "They call him Magen David -- the Star of David." Incorrect. While Magen David is the Hebrew term for the Star of David, it translates to Shield of David.
+ So Eli's wife (Ziva's mother) left him for another man, shortly before this 1991 flashback to Amsterdam (so, when Ziva was about 11, according to the ridiculous, unbelievable 1982 birthdate that the writers chose for her). This is interesting and will be useful for future fanfiction. We know so little about Ziva's childhood.
- "You're not with us." Why not, because she's no longer Mossad? An Israeli citizen? Ziva is still Eli's daughter (whether she likes it or not). I can understand Ziva getting pissed off by this, but for Stern to use it as the cause for a cat-fight between her and Liat... I really cannot say how much this pissed me off!
First off, the animosity between them has felt forced and unnecessary from the very beginning.
Secondly, intelligent, mature adult women do not solve their differences by fighting. As much as I love seeing Ziva kick ass, I found it very insulting that Stern would have her do this.
And most of all, the fight took place in a synagogue! In front of the ark! Just plain disrespectful. This scene just about ruined the entire episode for me.
+ "What's the news, Hebrews?" Could I get away with saying that at my temple one day?
+ "You don't have to Gibbs-up the clicker there." Haha, just what I was thinking, McGee. I actually liked all four of them trying to see the interrogation feed together in the bullpen.
+ Gibbs saying that he knows that Vance never forgets. It was a nice throwback to Vance giving Gibbs money for his danish way back in Internal Affairs.
- Obviously Ziva didn't see the flashback to Eli talking about how his wife took their kids away so they wouldn't grow up to be like him. And since we didn't hear Eli's conversation with Gibbs recounting this part of the Amsterdam, we don't know exactly what he said that could've made Ziva feel sorry for him. This bothers me. It seems unlikely that Eli would share something so personal with Gibbs.
+ Abby's claymore mine question, especially when she raised her own hand! Lol!
- "You have to believe there was a leak in your own organization." I suppose I should cut Sarai Givaty some slack since she was acting in at least her second language, but I'm sorry, she just doesn't seem like a good actress to me. Not like my Cote.
+ Ducky interrupting everybody squabbling in the bullpen.
- The freeze-frame of Vance and his bugged-out eyes in the hospital bed. Very unflattering shot of Rocky Carroll.
- "Let's just say there were inconsistencies in his background." I really don't appreciate the writers dropping these hints that Vance isn't who he appears to be when I'm sure that they'll never properly solve/address this.
+ The brief flashback to Gibbs and Director Shepard killing Zukov in Amsterdam was a nice touch. Jenny has been kinda swept under the rug since she died.
+ McCallister trying to kill Vance in his hospital room was surprisingly intense, even though we all knew Vance wasn't really going to die.
- Gibbs in the 1999 flashback. Geez, after all the effort put into making Rocky Carroll look younger, they did virtually nothing with Mark Harmon? You can't just give him a tie and slightly less-gray hair and expect us to believe that he's +10 years younger!
- The final scene between Ziva and Eli -- ugh. Remember the last time Ziva saw her father, back in Aliyah? Remember how he yelled at her and tried to make her feel guilty? How it was revealed that he'd used Rivkin to manipulate her? And now he gives her a kiss and a mini Israeli flag and all's forgiven? Ugh! Much like the final scene between Tony and his father in Broken Arrow, this episode just tried to stick a big band-aid on their relationship rather than address what's really wrong with it.