NCIS “In The Zone”
Original Air Date: April 29th, 2008
Angelique – TwoCents Reviewer
This episode “In the zone” was good, but I had expected more. More action specifically, and I know that I am not the only one who expected more. A mortar attack in a free zone in Baghdad kills a Marine, his wife transfers his body to NCIS and wants them to investigate what happened to her husband. She believes that her husband was killed.
Even in war death can be deceptive.
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ReplyDelete“In The Zone”
Original Air Date: April 29th, 2008
Angelique – TwoCents Reviewer
This episode “In the zone” was good, but I had expected more. More action specifically, and I know that I am not the only one who expected more. A mortar attack in a free zone in Baghdad kills a Marine, his wife transfers his body to NCIS and wants them to investigate what happened to her husband. She believes that her husband was killed.
Even in war death can be deceptive.
Ziva kissed McGee, I am sure that even though it was just a regular kiss on the cheek, I am sure that a lot of McGiva fan girls where loosing it at that particular moment. It was a cute moment, one of those moments where Ziva shows that she isn’t emotionless and that she values her friends and colleagues.
The comments implying that McGee had a wallpaper in which he was being kissed by a girl where so cute, especially because Tony wanted to see it. And for continuity purposes I think that it is good that they showed the image of Jethro (the German Shepard that was cleared of Murder by Abby, and who now lives with McGee since Abby forced him to take the dog home – 5x13 Dog Tags) and McGee. The references to the dog as McGee’s girlfriend where too funny, especially because Ziva and McGee where teasing Tony. The references about McGee’s sexuality once again pointed towards being gay, when McGee said that the dogs name is Jethro.
There was an opportunity for two team members to go to Iraq, Baghdad to investigate the murder. Poor Timmy McGee, why in cases like this does he always do the opposite of what he is supposed to do just because Tony teases him about it. The conversation between him and Abby was a conversation that only those two can have without loosing their train of thought. And they end it with the blank stares at each other.
It was obvious that both Tony and Ziva where not going to back down from an opportunity like this, both had been in Baghdad before and know what they would deal with. Tony, to me seemed to be the obvious choice because he has been there before and because he is after all the senior agent on Gibbs’ team and therefor it would be weird if they would not send him.
Ziva thought that she already had a seat saved on that plane because of her knowledge of the country and the language that she speaks fluently. It was so Ziva-like the way that she tried to scare Nikki away and stop her from applying for the ‘Baghdad mission’. Ziva in the end wasn’t chosen because she is an Israeli and it seemed to be a logical reason to not send her to Iraq because of that.
There was a lot of screen time this episode for NCIS Intel Analyst Nikki Jardine. We haven’t seen an awful lot of her before, she just showed up in a couple of times in previous episodes. But what we have seen showed a woman who was afraid of germs, bacteria and touching people in general because of germs they might carry. We have so far seen some uncomfortable scenes between the other people on the team and jokes about Nikki Jardine. But this episode she stepped up for herself and grew from a regularly recurring guest star into a person of flesh and blood, so to say. And in the process she might have cured some of her OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder). Quite impressive for someone who is afraid of germs and bacteria to cut into a death body to get a liver temp to establish the time of death, even if you wear gloves.
I was very surprised when she said that the Middle East was her area of expertise … wasn’t that Ziva’s area of expertise? And all of the sudden she seemed to speak Arabic and Kurdish. What struck me even more as odd was the fact that she wanted to go so badly, like Ziva said Baghdad is dirty and sanitation isn’t like it is in America. Of course her back story explained why she wanted to go there, but still she got over some of her OCD obsession pretty easily, in my humble opinion.
The writers made a back story for Nikki, of course that explains why she wanted to go to Baghdad. But it was deceptive towards Tony, she could have even though it wasn’t intentionally put him in danger and he didn’t know why she made certain choices.
All in all from what I have seen on different websites and sources people where disappointed by this episode, as was I, most of them had expected more action. Especially because it was an storyline which played in a war zone. There was an explosion; but it wasn’t terrifying you knew that it was coming.
The moment that Nikki jumped out of the car was the same, you could hear some sounds from a war zone but again nothing really happened. Those minor moments in this episode could have been played out differently and made sure that there was more action in the episode over all. But at same time those reviewers also say that they liked the character development in this particular episode and because of that it was a good episode. I guess that it is sometimes better to just watch and assume nothing.
What did you guys think? Share your TwoCents in the comments below!