Three days before Ducky and Palmer get a shock by discovering one of their corpses delivered to a top secret Naval Base, Gibbs briefs his team about an attempt by them to infiltrate a top secret Naval Base and steal Domino - the very thing that Langer appeared to be attempting to steal when Vance disbanded Gibbs' team. Tony and Ziva do the main work and, with hints from Lee, they infiltrate the base, only to be immediately caught. Vance and the Secretary of the Navy are both called in, with Vance telling Davenport that it was all a setup to find the leak in NCIS that still exists. Both Vance and Gibbs know it is Lee and thanks to Abby they have sprung a trap. When Vance later apparently has Abby arrested, this gives Lee an excuse to leave the locked down NCIS HQ, but she is quickly arrested when she makes contact with the outside world. Lee tells Gibbs she has a daughter being held hostage, but Vance believes this to be a lie. Nonetheless DiNozzo, Ziva, McGee, Abby and Palmer are shocked to see Lee leave the building without anyone stopping her.
So it turns out that Gibbs was right, and Vance was completely wrong, and poor old Langer was a victim of a conspiracy of which Michelle Lee was part of. Not that that comes out in the first five minutes, but it was pretty obvious from the last few episodes. It's nice, though, that rather than wait til the end of the season to resolve this plot line, it's come as a mid-season two parter (which Australia's Channel TEN has decided the first part of which is the season finale...do they think we're stupid? Do they seriously think we can't count? A season finale after seven episodes? What, has the writer's strike started again???). What's perhaps rather nice about this story is that, rather than have it turn out that Lee has been a villain for the past few years, she was, in fact, being forced into this with the existance of a daughter no one has ever heard of. Strangely enough I actually don't have too much of a problem with that plotline, particularly when it transpires that she had the child when she was very young and her mother has been raising it. Fair enough, she wouldn't be the first.
The attempt to break into the top secret naval base is pretty entertaining as McGee is obsessed with using a fire drill which the other's all say is a bad idea, and sure enough when they are caught it is because someone sets off a fire drill (well, I say someone, obviously I mean Lee). Everyone's reactions to the situation are interesting - DiNozzo's anger at being manipulated not only by Lee, but also by Gibbs who he abuses through Ducky - and indeed Ducky himself is less than impressed with the way Gibbs had handled the situation. The scene between Gibbs, Ducky and DiNozzo is actually really well acted and it's interesting to see how each of them responds to the other - David MacCallum injects a considerable authority into Ducky that seems to put DiNozzo in his place as well sending a signal to Gibbs.
Meanwhile we get a little more confirmation about Ziva's feelings for Tony when she suggests they should follow orders and, after Tony points out that Ziva most certainly didn't follow orders when they were caught, she only attacked their captors because she was worried about Tony. And on top of that there is the slightly scary moment when, for just a bit, you think that Abby has betrayed the team as well (why did I even fall for that one??).
Cloak, of course, ends on a cliffhanger, as Lee discovers she is now being shadowed by Gibbs. Channel Ten has decided to just randomly stop showing the series now, so consequently I will happily stand up and say I'm pirating the next episode. Do I feel guilty? Nope. I wouldn't have paid for the episode anyway, and I'll be buying the DVD boxed set when it's released so I'll contributing properly. Screw you Channel Ten. Rock on, NCIS.
"A"
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