SEASON FOUR EPISODE TWELVE

SUSPICION

This won't be as detailed as my normal episode review, as for most of the episode my feelings were pretty much of the 'fire bad; tree pretty' kind. Or to put into NCIS terms 'Major and Deputy bad; NCIS men pretty' :-)

However . . .

Why, oh, why, oh, why can they not employ a consistency person??? Is it really that difficult to keep things consistent? Especially within the same episode?

I give you:

Semi-naked man wrapped only in a towel outside Room No. 1, paddling in blood (pre-credits).

A few minutes later Sheriff talking about the body being found in Room No. 8.

When I first saw/heard it, I thought that maybe we were going to have a case where the body had been moved or something exiting like that. But no, just a simple mess up *sigh*

For the most part this struck me as a very run-of-the-mill, pretty unexciting, highly predictable (Season 3 style) episode. However, I shall wait until I have viewed it again with J before rating it, and hopefully I'll be able to expand on my review. But it'll be in the lower part of the ratings, around Shalom and Witch Hunt.

Another clear case of who was guilty - both baddies.

Some fun scenes, at least they are consistent with keeping the humour.

- Some good/interesting scenes/exchanges:
- Ducky and Abby in Autopsy talking about bullets.
- The beginning scene when the kids were talking about secrets, fun, even though it seemed somewhat forced on us.
- DiNozzo and McGee and their humming, fun. And wasn't Gibbs indulgent?
- Gibbs and Ziva in the car.
- DiNozzo and Jeanne with his dinner 'to go'.
- McGee and Ruby. McGee's advice to her was good and kind.
- Abby and DiNozzo in her lab talking about secrets.
- The whole when they first arrived and were talking to the Sheriff bits.
- I liked the way that it was Ducky who sat at the head of the table and note Gibbs sat next to him :-)
- A couple of nice bits of eye contact and a 'Duck' and 'Jethro' between Ducky and Jethro.
- Abby and Gibbs's phone call.
- Ziva and the Deputy and suspect in the hospital cubicle. Go Ziva! It was quite a touching scene with Ziva's comment about 'not in our life time'.
- Gibbs's suggestion that he could bring Officer David in to 'help' the Deputy remove his trousers.
- The fact that Gibbs takes his own coffee grind with him on overnights, that was a nice touch.
- Gibbs knows that DiNozzo is up to something; he knows he isn't ill. Whether he knows about Jeanne or the undercover case or what, I don't know. I doubt he knows about the undercover case, but maybe he suspects about a serious girl-friend.
- Intriguing bit at the end with someone taking photographs of DiNozzo and Jeanne in bed.

OVERALL:

- No Jenn (Good)
- No Jimmy (Bad)
- Far too little Ducky (Bad)
- No real Ducky and Gibbs scenes (Bad).
- Too little Abby (Bad)

All in all, I was not inspired - but that could indeed be me rather than the episode.

Even on second viewing I was still left uninspired by it. I felt the whole play on secrets thing, although fun in some ways was also OTT and 'forced' on us, rather like the 'oh, just in case you didn't get this the first, second, third and forth times, here's another go'.

I also, as mentioned above, found it so predictable, probably the most predictable episode thus far. It was clear the man was going to lock himself out; it was clear that Ruby had mentioned something of vital importance in her report that no one had read; it was clear who the baddies were; it was clear that the other two men were going to be building bombs; it was clear that the Deputy had set the suspect up. And the inconsistency within the episode really, really irked me and grated. I'd love to ask Harriet (one the NCIS_CBS Yahoo Group) why the show has so many inconsistencies, but I suspect that it wouldn't go down well - if indeed the post was even allowed.

Storyline: 6.00

Enjoyment: 6.00

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