Sunday, November 2, 2008

NCIS: Nine Lives (Season Six)


The torture and murder of a marine leads the team to trying to track down the man's sergeant while he was on duty - a man with a particularly violent history and who is on medication. Thanks to the medication he was taking, McGee is able to locate a specific address for the man, but to the surprise of Gibbs and DiNozzo when they burst in, they find their target in the protective custody of Fornell. Fornell tells them that his man is the key witness in a murder trial, and McGee does some more digging and uncovers the name of the person on trial - a big drug lord who has been a target of Fornell's ever since Fornell was a junior FBI agent. Fornell believes that he can alibi his witness regardless, but is embarrassed when McGee is able to pinpoint the witness at the home of another marine. When they get there, the marine is dead, and the witness is fleeing, though he vehemently denies the murder. Meanwhile, Abby is extremely puzzled by a similar mould on the ropes at both crime scenes.

You can't help but love an episode of NCIS where Fornell turns up. The anti-Gibbs in so many ways, it's great to see them working together, but it's just as interesting to see them working against each other. It's just a shame that Tony's FBI nemesis, Sacks, didn't turn up in this episode. Joe Spano seems to enjoy playing Fornell, and this episode gives us a little bit more to learn about the character; desperate as he is to catch a criminal that he once felt was not a true threat. Fornell is not perfect and just as he makes mistakes in the past, he makes another this time round.

Gibbs, on the other hand, does appear to be perfect and does what Fornell failed to achieve, although to be fair he does approach this case with a head that is a lot clearer than Fornell's. The idea of torturing victims is a particularly repellent one, and it is this more than anything else that seems to drive Gibbs in his investigation. If they'd just shot their targets in the head, Gibbs would probably never have bothered to push Fornell and his witness as far as he does, but such is what you learn when you cross NCIS.

This is the second week in a row where new Director Vance hasn't put in an appearance, and that's a little disappointing as Vance was turning into an interesting character. But this week was the gratuitious Forenll episode, so next week let's get back to the episodes that are forging this series into a new and interesting direction.

"B+"

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