This 200th episode of NCIS was meant to be a montage of Leroy Jethro Gibbs’ life, played brilliantly by Mark Harmon. Reminiscent of Jimmy Stewart’s role in “It’s a Wonderful Life,” Gibbs sees his past flow through his mind at the speed of light when a diner fires a shot at him. The bullet hangs in the air as Gibbs is transported to a would-be “Diner Heaven.”
Putting aside our questions about how it could be Heaven with unrepentant bad guys sashaying around with coffee, we were intrigued and kept watching. The real fun began when Mike Franks asked him how it all began. In the flashback we see Gibbs gathering his team to investigate a shooting on the USS Gentry. While there, they find another man who is almost dead, but still breathing.
The writers pose key questions many of us may have pondered in our lives, such as what if we had a second chance to push the reset button for life-changing decisions we’ve made. Gibbs finds out what would have happened if he wouldn’t have killed the drug-runner who killed Shannon and Kelly. We were startled when Shannon told Gibbs, “the loss would have fallen on us if you had stayed a Marine.”
We chuckled when Tony and Kate show up married. Tony finds out he is a new father, telling Kate in her hospital bed, “You look less big,” and “Good job, Kate.” Another fun part was during Tony’s questioning of Ziva (who of course is not a special agent because Kate is alive) and he calls her “Tiva,” an amusing play on their relationship, i.e., Tony + Ziva = Tiva. The laughs aside, what if Gibbs had never joined NCIS? Besides there being no hit show, Shannon tells him how much he has impacted the lives of his team. And if he’d never made the decision to take out the drug-runner, Gibbs would have been consumed with bitterness. He acted outside the law for good reasons. Is that ever justified? The show left us hanging about what happened to Michael Rose, who tried to take back his acts of treason, but we do know that after Gibbs takes a shot in the shoulder, he fails to shoot the man’s son. Redemption anyone?
In honor of the 200th episode, we promised a drawing of three winners for our latest release “The Joshua Covenant”. After watching the show, we decided to choose four winners and they are: Rose McCauley, Joy Avery Melville, Deb Ragno, and Allison Wilson. Watch for our emails ladies as we’ll need your snail mail address to send you the thriller.
Stay tuned for more NCIS and justice commentary from us in the coming weeks.
Blessings,
Diane and David