NCIS: Season 9 Premiere

NCIS (Naval Criminal Investigative Service) follows special agent Leroy Jethro Gibbs (Mark Harmon) and his team of investigators as they solve crimes involving Navy jurisdiction. There’s special agent Anthony DiNozzo (Michael Weatherly), who gets the job done while quoting movies and maintaining an overall jovial chauvinism. Then there’s special agent Timothy McGee (Sean Murray), a geeky computer whiz who has managed to acquire a decent set of cop skills despite his handicap of nerdism. Rounding out the team is Ziva David (Cote de Pablo), the bad-ass ex-Musad agent turned U.S. citizen and NCIS special agent. And all the forensic work is done either by the techno-loving, in-house, super-brain goth chick Abby Sciuto (Pauley Perrette), or the verbosely filibustering medical examiner Dr. Donald Mallard (David McCallum).

What’s special about this show is that it takes for granted that the characters are experts in their respective fields. There may be investigative challenges to overcome, but there is enough time to include fun moments of repartee between the characters, and illuminate a bit of their personal quirks during the daily grind. Dr. Mallard, or “Ducky,” will often mention how a severed appendage reminds him of some obscure bit of long-winded history that everyone feels free to ignore. DiNozzo will analogize current cases to the plots of various movies. And David, being ESL, is fond of American idioms even though she usually is a little off on the delivery—for example, “large time” as opposed to “big time” when responding in the affirmative; or “elf cut” as opposed to “pixie cut” when referring to the popular hairstyle.

Last season definitely had a gripping finale. A frenzied serial killer (Kerr Smith) bucked his CIA assassin programming and started gunning for Gibbs and his team. He kills Gibbs’ mentor and long time friend Mike Franks (Muse Watson), and ambushes special agent Barrett (Sarah Jane Morris) and her team with lethal precision. Mike Franks was a rich character, and I was sad to see him leave. Especially since I wasn’t really that invested in Barett and her team. Nonetheless, the season 8 finale was intense. Lives were nearly lost, a psycho serial killer came to a fitting end, and Franks was given a hero’s burial.

The season 9 premiere is not necessarily disappointing, but it is a bit off compared to the drama of earlier seasons. We find that DiNozzo has short term memory loss after a shooting gone wrong. All we know is that he was shot in the chest by an unknown assailant (thankfully his vest stopped the bullet), two rounds were fired from his weapon, and a bloody NCIS badge that wasn’t his was found at the scene. DiNozzo must work backwards with an NCIS therapist to help reconstruct the events that took place. This scenario is a bit “meh” as far as a premiere is concerned. I wanted a little bit more than a slow reconstruction of events that already took place (and thusly have no stakes attached to them).

Also, once the story starts coming back to DiNozzo, it is revealed that he was on a special secret mission of the highest priority, investigating… special agent Barett. Again, this is another “meh” moment because she’s only been on the show for about a third of a season and her character is a foot-stomping priss who’s used to getting what she wants because she’s the neice of the Secretary of the Navy (Jude Ciccolella). I could give a flying rat’s ass about this character—especially when told in the perspective of flashback. After this, it is revealed that there’s some sort of microchip associated with a BlackOps Naval mission that’s being stolen out of the wrists of Navy officers. And while this is actually a cool development, by this point, I can’t really bring myself to care.

Oh yeah, and it doesn’t help that Scott Wolf is guest starring as the mysterious bad guy in this episode. If you’re going to pull that kind of stunt with an instantly recognizable actor, at least avoid pretending like we’re not going to know who he is. Pull the band-aid off quickly and introduce him as the ominous figure from the get-go so that the big pay off that you thought was such a surprise doesn’t fizzle out upon the immediate recognition factor.

SPOILERS!

So, eventually, through effective gentle therapeutic discussion, agent DiNozzo remembers everything and we come to the climax that Cade (Matthew Willig), one of Barett’s team, was murdered by Scott Wolf’s mystery character. It’s a shame that Cade died because I felt like he could have really made an interesting addition to the show, but he wasn’t given enough time to really be fully enveloped into the NCIS family, and so I wasn’t given enough time to care that much when he turned up dead. Sadly, agent Barett survived the attack. And there you have it, Scott Wolf got away with the secret chips, Barett is on the lam, and DiNozzo is innocent of any wrongdoing.

It’s a slow, stake-less, mildly flawed start for this season, but it seems like intense action is on its way soon. Aside from agent Barret, I am willing to forgive on this one. After all, the show is going on its 9^th year. All they’ve got to do is get back to basics. Let’s cut the frills and stick with the core six (Gibb’s team, Abby Sciuto, and Dr. Mallard) being quirky and effective in eradicating crime, just like before.