I didn’t follow most of what went on in tonight’s episode. And didn’t care much, frankly.
Gibbs’ silent whooshing in and out of rooms while on his personal mission is starting to wear on me. Why didn’t he tell Paloma that her father killed his wife and child? Why does he answer every question with a stare or a monosyllable or sometimes a stare AND a monosyllable. How many episodes can they drag this out? One for every Gibbs’ loved one that Paloma visits?* [yawn]*
But I’m loyal, and so I will watch…
Thank goodness Jenny isn’t around any more. The melodrama meter would have gone through the roof. Leon is so much more level-headed than she was.
I gotta say I did like the references to Casablanca.
Why do you think he would have bothered explaining why he killed Paloma’s father? She’s a drug kingpin (queenpen? :D); she’s not going to care why he committed the murder. (And I don’t think Gibbs would deny that it was murder.)
I still miss Jenny my ownself, but I like the Gibbs-Vance interaction more; it’s more layered and subtle. And, of course, Jenny already knew about Gibbs murdering the killer of his family, from Ducky.
In this arc, I was most surprised by the fact that Abby was surprised that Gibbs did what he did. Has she never MET Gibbs?
I could have slapped the naivete from Abby myself (and that’s saying a lot because I love her) over this arc. She is now some wide eyed innocent? Whatever. As far as why Gibbs never said why he killed the man, I don’t know. The answer usually is “because it’s Gibbs” and that is enough for me. I did wonder, though.
And yes, writers, I get it: DiNozzo is Gibbs. Damn. Need a shovel, much? I got that years back. Can we at least let him get some teeth in and kill the guy himself?
As for Abby - she believes Gibbs always did the right thing - and taking the law into his own hands in that manner was certainly ‘not’ the right thing (in the eyes of the law) - she also knew now that she had the evidence, she had to turn it over.
As for not explaining it to Paloma, well, that wouldn’t have done him any good, as a) she likely already knew and didn’t care b) once she knew she wouldn’t care c) He all but did admit/tell her/them when he said he never lost a moment’s sleep over it.
Gibb’s has always been brooding and silent - he lets others figure things out and rides along until needed to headslap - and I certainly liked that Vance was ‘up to speed’ on the whole deal.
As for the setup at the end - no way Paloma actually kills Gibbs Sr early on - she’ll attempt to use him for leverage and it will resolve itself with both Gibbs alive - or atleast it better.
Dinozzo is not the same type of person Gibbs is - Dinozo a) still questions himself b) hasn’t been trained as a sniper - there’s a difference in killing in self defense (shoot out, etc) and walking up cold and doing it.
It wouldn’t have done any good, but it also wouldn’t have done any harm or really changed the situation at all. So why NOT tell her? Just to sit there and say nothing was so Gibb-ish that it really annoyed me.
I used to find this appealing about him, but now it just bugs me.
Why not tell her? Once he does (and assumingly sheds a tear, etc), he’s broken to her and is functionally useless - as she said, she wanted his ‘life’, and more or less wanted to turn him into something she could use - by not breaking, it gives him that much more control - considering how little he had in the situation.
Simster,* au contraire*, it seems to me that if he told her (and he would definitely NOT shed a tear), it’s his way of saying that he follows no rules and that no one could ever control him or make him do anything. It would be his way of saying to her, “Fuck you. You’re wasting your time with me. Do your worst and I won’t care.” But I’ll be the first to admit that the subtleties of their negotiation were lost on me.
To be clear - the tear I meant was for Shannon and Kelly - not the dead guy.
And I can see the argument both ways - Gibbs forces the other players to show thier hands - he has no reason - no reward - to show his in these situations. If he gives them what they want, he loses, if he doesn’t - well, atleast he’s still in control of his hand.
Tony was sent by Vance to follow ‘what his name’ -“observe and report” - I actually assume he was sent to kill him, but that was ambiguous at best - Mike intercepted Tony and told him that he would take it from there, flashed the gun and indicated that he was going to kill ‘whats his name’.
So, we finally get to meet Gibbs’ father (who turns out to be John Walton, but that’s beside the point), and the cliffhanger is that he’s in danger of being offed already.
I hope he won’t be; his presence helps to flesh out Gibbs as a "real’ person.
I’m guessing that he already knows who his latest customer is because Gibbs tipped him off, and that he’s got that shotgun loaded under the counter, ready for use.
I still don’t get it. Gibbs went to Mexico for some reason I can’t remember, but probably to check on Mike. The Lt. guy shows up and says the dead guy is Col. Bell, who he worked for but I guess turned on. Gibbs goes to the cartel chick and she gives him a box of cookies and threatens everyone he knows. Tony and Ziva fly down to get him and he’s already waiting for them. He goes back and gets into an argument with the director, but Tony already clued us in that he and Gibbs have a short hand. Gibbs tosses the cellphone onto Vance’s desk, and Vance apparently is playing along and palms something off the cellphone. A battery or something? Was the phone bugged?
The Mexican guy with a weird fascination with Abby is the cartel chick’s brother, so he’s a bad guy, except he’s not totally a bad guy because he wouldn’t kill Gibbs and his sister didn’t want him to anyway. Then there’s something about bodies being flown back to DC and the Mexican cop guy says something about the airspace around DC, blah, blah, then Gibbs and the Mexican cop guy (Alejandro?) are chatting on a park bench, he leaves, Vance shows up and was listening to their conversation and says Alejandro is “cagey” or something.
Gibbs already called his dad and told him to go stay someplace else, but I guess he didn’t and at the end cartel chick shows up allegedly to kill him like she said she would, except why did she give Gibbs a box of cookies? I thought cartel chick wasn’t really going to kill anyone? Or what?
Abby: STFU. You know Gibbs is a killer. Quit being such a baby about it.
Apart from his name, who is “what’s his name”? Col. Bell’s recent right-hand-person (the guy who had the gun pointed at Gibbs on the beach in the opening scene)?
I don’t really understand why Tony/Mike were supposed to observe and report. What’s the guts of the caper? What’s Vance’s objective?
ETA: Levdrakon, you summed up PERFECTLY all the stuff I don’t get about this episode. Thank you.
Well, actually, other than last night’s episode, he only appeared in two others:
Season 6 Episode 4 - “Heartland” (Orginal Air Date, October 14, 2008)
Season 7 Episode 10 - “Faith” (Original Air Date, December 15, 2009)
I had seen “Heartland”, where the whole team goes to Pennsylvania, but I think I probably saw a repeat of it, and not the original airing; seems to me that it might have even been late last summer, just prior to the beginning of Season 7, and that is why it seemed more recent to me than it was.
As for “Faith”, that was on just this past December.
Probably the time span between seeing “Heartland” and seeing “Faith” was (for me) less than three months and they all seemed to run together because of the way CBS runs re-runs up to the “new” season, so it seemed to me that he was introduced in the season that just ended. My mistake.
.
‘what his name’ == Alejandro - the guy that asked Abby to come down and is the brother of the woman talking to Gibbs.
We don’t know (for sure) what Tony’s mission was - only that we can assume he was sent by Vance and that he told Mike that he was to “observe and report” -
Mike’s mission, at the time - was to kill him.
The rest of the issues can be summed up thusly -
Bell’s right hand man turned on Bell, killed him and then captured Gibbs for the Cartel - originally Bell was working for the Cartel as well, and both Bell and the Cartel was working toward revenge against Gibbs. They tried to make Bells death appear to be at the hands of Gibbs - further setting up Gibbs.
(Bell’s right hand man also killed Lt. Macy - in an effort to get to the info she had on Gibbs)
Cartel lady wanted to break Gibbs - his test was to deliver the package - the contents of the package didn’t matter - failure to deliver the package meant death for everyone Gibbs cared about - Gibbs death meant death for everyone Gibbs cared about.
Gibbs showed up at the plane with the bodies due to the actions of alejandro - so that Gibbs could deliver the package to him in DC (the test). He also planned that NCIS would be there waiting for the first plane carrying “bells right hand man” - and that he would subsequently die.
Prior to the argument with Vance, there is a conversation between Vance and McGee where Vance requests one with “gps and audio” - When Gibbs comes in the office, they have thier confrontation - and Vance picked up on the fact that Gibbs was “under duress” - Vance mentions this at the conversation after the bench - when Gibbs gave Vance the phone, Vance switched the batteries for the bugged version - knowing that Gibbs would be headed to meet the next ‘player’ (Alejandro) - during the meeting on the bench, Alejandro was very careful with his words so as not to implicate himself (and get arrested).
