Friday, May 16, 2008

"NCIS" Recap & Review - "About Face"

NCIS
"About Face"

Original Air Date: May 13th, 2008

Angelique - TwoCents Reviewer
angelique@thetwocentscorp.com

A navy building is being retrofitted, two construction workers stumble upon a death body on top of an elevator. The NCIS team is called to the scene. While Palmer is alone with the death body he finds a passport. At that moment Ducky calls him over to the railing, when Pursues them, then chases him. The man turns and aims a gun at Palmer, he hits the deck. Ducky, hearing shots, comes to Palmer's aid.

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  1. NCIS
    "About Face"

    Original Air Date: May 13th, 2008

    Angelique - TwoCents Reviewer
    angelique@thetwocentscorp.com

    A navy building is being retrofitted, two construction workers stumble upon a death body on top of an elevator. The NCIS team is called to the scene. While Palmer is alone with the death body he finds a passport. At that moment Ducky calls him over to the railing, when Pursues them, then chases him. The man turns and aims a gun at Palmer, he hits the deck. Ducky, hearing shots, comes to Palmer's aid.

    Ziva and McGee, what a pair, playing Scrabble at work and calling it a language exercise. Yes, that is one way to look at it. The comment about being challenged made me smile. Especially when Gibbs replied with "you're all challenged."

    McGee: That was a language exercise, Boss. We weren't actually playing.

    Tony: So McGee didn't actually lose.

    Gibbs: So you're not actually humiliated?

    Since "qi" (Noun, qi “The circulating life energy that in Chinese philosophy is thought to be inherent in all things; in traditional Chinese medicine the balance of negative and positive forms in the body is believed to be essential for good health. ) is actually in the dictionary, Ziva won hands down. Though I have to admit that I never saw the word written that way, only as "chi".

    A storyline completely resting on the somewhat frail shoulders of Jimmy Palmer, I never thought it would be this good. But it really was. Jimmy Palmer showed a complete new side of him when he surpassed his fear and went after the person who stole the passport not caring about his own safety until he spotted the gun of course.

    After the scene where McGee and Jimmy where looking over the passport covers I wonder about one thing, is McGee color blind? Seriously though he said the pictures represented the 72 different dark blue passports from all over the world. I saw a lot of dark reds and green between them.

    McGee and Palmer, the two of them talking was so "brotherly". I really liked how McGee tried to comfort Palmer and reasure him that it was not something that he did wrong but that he did the only smart thing he could have done, duck. It was good to see that he helped him and that Palmer represented the McGee that we know from season 1. While McGee on his turn kind of represented DiNozzo, especially when he said that he was trained as a field officer and that shooting being held under gun point was different for him then for Palmer. That is such a Tony-thing to say!

    Abby trying to get the information they need from Palmer while he is under hypnosis and all she really gets out of it is that Palmer has a shoe fetish. Makes me wonder though why Abby immediately knew that it was Ziva's booth that he was seeing. You just had to love the references that McGee gave to this new found information about Palmer. Who the shoe fits and these shoes are made for walking.

    Finally they get a break through in the case and Jimmy wanted to tag along with the team when they geared up to apprehend the suspect so that he can confirm wether or not it is the right guy. Gibbs tells him to stay and that he can identify the suspect when they bring him back to the NCIS headquarters.

    While his team was going through the mans belongings at the trailer park. Jimmy arrives at the scene, right before the suspect returns. Gibbs is being Gibbs, mad at Palmer for going after the suspect when he tried to flee yet again after Gibbs specifically told him to stay in the car. He rips the door open and Palmer says; "I did not get out of the car." Gibbs reacts exactly the way I expected him to react. At first he reacted the way a boss should react when one of his team members doesn't listen, then he reacts in a caring way when he says that Palmer now has something to write home about. You just gotta love that scene, especially the smirk on Gibbs' face when he gets back up.

    Why we don't see more of Palmer I will never understand, he is a very likeable character. He belongs in the team, Abby cares for him, Tony teases him and Ziva and McGee both in their own way try to help him. While both Gibbs and Ducky have the caring "father-like" role.

    Earlier in the episode Palmer asked Gibbs how he could block out fear, Gibbs answered; "You don't. It's what you do with it." And Palmer followed his advice, it was a brave thing to do use his car to run down the suspect. Knowing that he might get hurt, killed even. We saw some amazing character development in this particular episode on Palmers part. He became more of a person, not just someone who is around frequently. This episode show him as a guy who doubts himself, but at the same time can overcome that doubt. Throughout the episode he had his depressing/self doubting moments followed by moments where he asked for help to overcome his fears and funny moments. And let's not forget the brave moments where in a split second he decided to go after the man who grabbed the passport and even when he knew that the man was dangerous he was still the one who stopped him from escaping. And Gibbs can be mad at him for doing it, but ultimately he was the only one in the position to stop the guy before he would leave the country and disappear into thin air.

    Every reason and more to watch and love this show was provided in this episode in more then one way. There was one thing though that annoyed me to no end and that was Tony. I don't know what was up with the guy but his jokes where lame, especially the one about "Twister" and "Jason Bourne". He just wasn't on the top of his game, maybe it was the script on his part that did not work maybe it was him. I don't know his jokes just annoyed me.

    For someone like me who loves character development these last couple of episodes have been a true blessing. We have seen a lot of scenes that heavily leaned on one particular person.

    There is only one episode left, the two hour season finale. Are you looking forward to it or dreading the ending of this season? Let me know your two cents about the episode.

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