NCIS Season 8 Episode 14 A Man Walks Into A Bar… Recap
Last week, nearly 23 million viewers tuned in to watch NCIS,’ making it the top drama on the air. I didn’t think that was a particularly good episode.
Nevertheless, it attests to the popularity of the show. Hopefully, as many viewers were watching tonight, though, because this was an excellent NCIS episode.
When a show has been on the air for as long as ‘NCIS,’ there’s a mythology that’s been created about the characters and their situations.
In tonight’s episode, ‘NCIS’ mined its rich history with a show that hinted at the dysfunctional brilliance of Gibbs’ team, why they work and why they might someday implode.
It made for a fascinating program, even though the mystery murder of the week was relegated to practically an afterthought.
The premise of the ‘A’ story were psych evaluations for Vance, Ducky, Abby and Jethro’s team. Dr. Rachel Cranston had been sent to probe the NCIS principals and to not take no for an answer. Vance and Gibbs had been successfully ducking these interviews for months.
In a series of one-on-one scenes, Rachel observed and asked questions, pressing buttons and watching for reactions.
It was especially effective the way these interviews were filmed. Extreme closeups can be obtrusive, but seeing into Ziva and Abby’s eyes when they were asked questions about themselves was as revealing as the answers they gave.
Interspersed with the closeups were flashbacks from past episodes. Normally, that would suggest a clip show and I’d be ticked off. That was not the case with these clips.
For long time fans of ‘NCIS,’ the early years of the show are sacred. Before Kate was killed in action, Tony wasn’t the DiNozzo we see today, and McGee was a complete probie. Abby had a friend with whom she could share her life, and Ziva had not yet joined the crew. For each of these characters, Kate remains a haunting presence.
As usual, it’s Gibbs who knows more than the others. That smile on Mark Harmon’s face was like a Cheshire Cat grin when he finally allowed Rachel to interview him. Or was it the other way around?
Rachel, as it turned out, was Kate’s older sister. Yes, she was there to do psych evaluations, but she was also there on a mission of her own. Gibbs recognized that Rachel needed closure. She needed to know the people with whom Kate had spent her last days.
For Gibbs, scenes in the basement are inevitably the most poignant, and tonight was no different. It made sense that he would bring Rachel there, too. It was in that space that Ziva killed Kate’s killer. That was the ultimate closure he could give to Rachel, and she appreciated it. It was also completely Gibbsian, and Kate would have approved.
As for the ‘B’ story — the presumed murder of a commander on a ship — it really was a back burner feature. Once they figured out which gun had killed Reynolds and Abby discovered the tape residue on the corpse’s body, Gibbs and DiNozzo figured it out. The murder was a suicide.
Perhaps the one aspect of the show that lingered was Vance’s psych evaluation. Since the assassination attempt, Vance hadn’t been himself. Gibbs knows it and Rachel realized it as well. If there’s going to be a crack up in NCIS, it could be from the top down.
‘NCIS’ airs Tuesdays at 8PM ET on CBS.
