It's a bit of a worry when a television programme - any television programme - starts to recycle its plots. Programmes like Doctor Who and Star Trek can almost get away with it because they are recycling plots that are forty years old, and so when they come around the second time (particularly with fresher dialogue and effects) they don't quite seem like the same story from forty years ago. NCIS is only five years old, but - and let's be honest here - they've done the "kid is the center of the investigation and bonds fantastically well with Gibbs" story before. Sure, this time the kid is a mini-Tony, but it's still the same old story.
This story mirrors the original version in a very similar way: boy is convinced that his father is not a killer; father is best suspect in the murder investigation; Gibbs believes boy and sets out to prove that the father is innocent. The fact that the real killer is a former colleague of Tony's seems to be just an excuse to do something a little different.
One thing that the episode does have in its favour was the pretitle sequence which was nicely done, showing us not only McGee's bizarre scout-like organisation that he is involved in, but gives Abby the opportunity to deal with a slightly snotty kid. When that kid then turns out to have his fingerprints in the AFIS (sic) database, we are given a cliffhanger that is a little more interesting than the usual ones we have had over the past few weeks. Sadly the episode becomes very derivative from that point.
The episode in of itself isn't bad, it just feels a little too much like "been there, done that". And let's face it, there's too much potential in NCIS to be slack and not put in the effort to give us something new.
"B-"
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