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Wednesday, September 29, 2010

NCIS 8.2: Interns!

Maybe "I'm changing," Gibbs says on NCIS 8.2 last night, in reply to a question about why he's welcomed a cadre of interns to his NCIS operations, when previously he had expressed Gibbsonian dislike for the intern.   It's a good change.  The interns brought a lot to last night's episode, including an important discovery by Abby's intern, whom she first had disdained, a good dose of humor to Ducky's work, and an opportunity for McGee to put someone lower on the totem pole through his paces.

The story was also good - the team is investigating the kidnapping of a daughter of a Navy couple - Rebecca Mason's in a local school, where everyone in her classroom is knocked out by some strange gas, and her parents are overseas.   Her grandfather - Nicolas Mason played by William Devane - is thus the first family member Gibbs interviews.

A kidnapping of a child is a rarity on NCIS - in fact, I can't recall the last time this happened on the series - and soon something also unlikely happens:  Gibbs is fooled in his interview of Mason, who turns out to be head of a former top-secret government team, that goes back to Reagan.   Why didn't Gibbs see Nicolas was something more than just a civilian at first?   My guess is the kidnapping of a daughter stirred Gibbs' own deep emotions - we also see this in Gibbs' earlier response to DiNozzo - and slightly clouded his usually perceptive assessments of interviewees.   In any case, it made for good story development.

Lots of nice twists in this episode, including the ending, where the bad guy is revealed as the teacher in Rebecca's class (played by Sam Anderson - Bernard from Lost), and he's captured after Gibbs' engineers a feigned shooting of Nicolas by Ziva.   DiNozzo also has a fine, defining response to Conrad, an intern, who says DiNozzo and Ziva could make a fortune in the private sector.  DiNozzo snaps back, "then who would catch the bad guys?"

So will the interns continue?   Mr. Palmer understandably thinks it's getting too "crowded," but Gibbs has at least Conrad fill out an application for what may be a season-long position on the team.   The times on NCIS are definitely a changing...


5-min podcast review of NCIS

See also NCIS Back in Season 8 Action

And see ee also NCIS  ... NCIS 7.16: Gibbs' Mother-in-Law Dilemma ... NCIS 7.17: Ducky's Ties ... NCIS 7.18: Bogus Treasure and Real Locker ... NCIS 7.21: NCIS Meets Laura ... NCIS Season 7 Finale: Retribution






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1 comment:

Malcolm R. Campbell said...

William Devane had a nice part. The interns were an interesting development. Good show.

Malcolm

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