There may be spoilers, but does anyone really care at this point?
Can someone refresh my memory about exactly Jenny Shepard was killed? I’ve seen so many episodes out of order that I’ve lost track.
Hated the Jamie Lee Curtis character and also Col. Mann. In fact, I hate any whisper of romance involving Gibbs. He is not a romantic guy.
Bring back FBI agent Fornell. Love him and Gibbs together.
I thought Rene Benoit (Armand Assante) was very sexy. But thought his daughter was quite unattractive.
I like the flirtatious-but-just-friends vibe between Tony and Ziva. Hope they can keep that going and not succumb to crossing the line into a sexual relationship. That usually means the death of a series.
Here’s der Wiki on Jenny:
In several episodes during season five, before her death in the episode “Judgment Day (Part 1)”, Jenny’s failing health becomes a plot issue (for example, in “Stakeout”, when Ducky is shown ordering a test on a blood sample and tells Abby it is from a John Doe. However, when Abby talks to Jimmy Palmer, he says they have no John Does. Gibbs deduces, correctly, that the only person Ducky would act this way for would be the Director. In the next episode, “Dog Tags”, Gibbs questions Jenny about her illness and she lies to him, saying she is fine. Her exact illness is never revealed; however, in the “Stakeout” episode, Abby tells Ducky there is an elevated level of creatinine in the blood sample she ran, which is symptomatic of kidney disease.
Mike Franks also discovers her illness by going through her purse and finding her medication. In the episode “Judgment Day (Part 1)”, Franks and Jenny are talking in an abandoned diner in the California desert when she indicates that she is dying and reveals that she regrets her decision to leave Gibbs in Paris and that she is still in love with him. It is revealed that she botched an operation ten years prior, when she and Gibbs had been ordered to assassinate Russian lovers who were crime lords. Gibbs shot the man, but Jenny faced the woman, Natasha (AKA Svetlana), down and let her live. As a result, Natasha sends assassins who kill Jenny in the diner but only after Jenny manages to kill all of them. Franks, who had been outside at the time of the shooting, returns to Jenny’s house where Natasha is trying to kill Gibbs and Franks shoots her. Gibbs and Franks decide to cover Jenny’s mistake and death by burning down her Georgetown mansion and her cause of death is reported as “death in home fire”. Her death rattles the crew and makes them all depressed. Abby regrets that she never told Jenny she was a snappy dresser, and says that would have made her smile.
I like Fornell. I hope he survives the cliffhanger (and I expect he will). The Tony-Ziva romance is enjoyed by the fans too much for it ever to be consummated or to go away, unless they know it’s going to be the final season.
Thanks. I’ve seen that episode in the diner a zillion times, but for some reason, I never made the connection to Natasha. I even remember the Natasha character. I guess I’ve conflated the whole Benoit Arms Dealer plot thread with the Was Jenny’s Father’s Death a Murder or a Suicide thread and* Jenny Getting Killed* thread. There is a link between Benoit and Jenny’s father… but, oh, I don’t know. I never liked her anyway. I was embarrassed for her the way she kept throwing their past relationship up in Gibbs’ face when he clearly wasn’t interested.
I used to like him but his terse, monosyllabic style of communication has gotten really old. Besides, he is rude and disrespectful to his team.
OTOH, watching some episodes from 2003 over the weekend brought home how much Tony’s character has grown and matured. He started out as a typical urban cop type, then he was a goofball frat boy for a while, but now he’s the most likable, well-rounded guy of the group.
O.K., I love Gibbs in a romance, particularly the one with Jamie Lee Curtis. Can anyone explain to me what happened there? I thought I had seen every episode, but somehow she was suddenly gone. I was expecting her to return this season, and would love a quick rundown on why/how she disappeared.
Didn’t she take off when it became clear that a terrorist was stalking her and her child because of (a) her government work and (b) her association with Gibbs?
Dr. Samantha Ryan (Jamie Lee Curtis) helped the team with a case regarding Harper Dearing, a businessman/terrorist who sought revenge against the Navy for the death of his son.
Unfortunately, after Dearing arranged for the release of her ex-husband from jail, Ryan and her young son, Parker were forced to flee. As such, she also permanently ended her relationship with Gibbs much to his dismay.
Is Jamie Lee Curtis still around this season? I don’t like her character at all, she toys with Gibbs but never tells him everything she knows. I have like all 17 episodes from this season on my Tivo that I haven’t watched.
I haven’t like the show for several seasons now, and I only really like the pilot and some select episodes anyway. My wife likes it so I watch with her, and it’s not the worst thing on television either. The problem I have is that NCIS has become a military agency with the function of tracking down people trying to kill NCIS members and their families. They also don’t give a rat’s ass about the law and go around executing people and committing treason for their own personal purposes. Ok, so it’s just typical TV plots, it’s not surprising. The real problem I see is the writing isn’t very good lately. The characters have become caricatures, and the dialogue is just there to fill time. The element of humor has always been in the show, but it’s rare to see it now, and rarer to see it well done. The actors are either handcuffed in their roles, or they just don’t care since they’re collecting a paycheck they can retire on. I hate to see the potential wasted.
3 or 4 seasons ago, there was an episode where Tony and Ziva were returning from an assignment in France. The dialogue on the plane certainly indicated that something intimate had happened in their hotel that they didn’t want to share with their coworkers. They were getting their stories straight about who slept on the couch and who had the bed.
Thanks for the updates on Jamie Lee Curtis. I kind of thought she had to flee, but don’t remember any specific scene – especially not a goodbye scene with Gibbs. I guess it’s for the best, since apparently I was the only person rooting for this romance.
I like that we don’t know for sure. “Did they or didn’t they?” has kept many a series going for years.
Re Gibbs and romance: the one I’d like to see him with is Miranda Pennebaker.
He was there when she was cleaning out her office, eager to get out of town fast. She pretty much broke off all contact until the situation resolved itself, if it ever would.
One thing I’ve liked over the last several seasons has been the growth of the Jimmy character- he’s matured and gotten better at what he does, but his goofy tendency to say the wrong thing remains.
On the other hand, the habit of Zeva’s to misquote English idioms is a dead horse they should have buried long ago.
Agree that the plots have become increasingly contrived - but, honestly, how many ways can you kill a marine or seaman?
The stories have lost the intensity and urgency of the earlier seasons, and the show as a whole has strayed too far into soap opera territory. The writers have been screwing over McGee and Abby, making them less dimensional than before. The stories dedicated to backstory for those characters were embarrassingly bad (Tim’s grandmother, father, Abby’s first case) and hurt, rather than helped, the cause of those characters.
Even with these flaws, I still like the show and will probably continue to watch it.
I still like the show, but I’m tired of the constant sexual tension and innuendo between Tony and Ziva. Either do it or don’t. I don’t necessarily buy the premise that putting two major characters together will kill a show, but this constant back-and-forth is becoming death by a thousand paper cuts.
Abby has annoyed me for years and is the only character I wouldn’t give a damn about if she left the show; I tolerate her because I like the others. I do wish they’d give her and McGee more depth, and stop making Tony play the fool all the time. What gives me pause is that I think Michael Weatherly could do so much more if the writers would just give it to him, but I’m not sure Sean Murray could.