NCIS: Designated Target (Season 5)

I think I may have missed the point of this week's episode of NCIS, and I'm not quite sure why. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed this week's episode, not least because of the entertaining development of McGee having a girlfriend who steals his credit card and spends his money (ahh, but he obviously still has feelings for Abby because when she said "I love you and that's all that you should need" he becomes very thoughtful). McGee and Abby's on-off relationship has been a source of endless entertainment ever since the series started and McGee made his first appearance.

Another thing that made me chuckle this week was DiNozzo's pointed comments about the way that Ziva speaks (ie not using contractions or still failing to understand a lot of the lingo they use) which, after three years one would begin to get the hang of it.

The storyline itself was a bit wishy-washy (and certainly the reason NCIS were investigating was extremely tenuous - once Ducky determined that the Admiral wasn't the target of the assassination, surely it should have become a police matter, but we've already established that Gibbs isn't particularly keen on letting go of cases that he has started) with the actual villain turning up for no reason whatsoever at the beginning and then disappearing for the rest of the episode; but then, in all fairness, this is a common fault in NCIS storylines.

However, NCIS always tends to redeem itself in some way by the end of the episode, usually with the teams interaction, and although that was a high point this week, the redemption actually came in the form of a somewhat interesting dilemma at the end. Our illegal immigrant who left Africa to escape execution and was then informed that his wife had been murdered, then went ahead and married another woman and had children to this new wife. So when the original wife turns up, we are presented with an interesting dilemma, because really, no one in this situation acted maliciously. I really wouldn't know how this situation should pan out because neither woman has done anything wrong and certainly even the husband acted the way he did because he was certain his first wife had died. A real dilemma.

That said, I still think I may have missed the point somewhere. Ziva spent a lot of time accusing Tony of being a racist, but he argues against this pointing out that his own family were immigrants who built themselves up from nothing. At the end, when we finally found out the dilemma above, Tony gives Ziva a significant look and she looks down ashamed. Did I misinterpret this? And if I didn't then...what was the point of the look? What point was DiNozzo trying to make? I really missed something...

"B+"