What I’m Watching: NCIS

NCIS: Season 7, Episode 5 “Code of Conduct” (B+)

Tony is certainly having a ball now that Ziva has restarted from the bottom of the theoretical chain of command as a new NCIS agent who is no longer a Mossad liaison. His overly-expressed amusement at his superior rank over both Ziva and McGee was obviously headed for some kind of retaliation, in the form of blue teeth, it appears. The closing moments of this show are always good like that, equally powerful when it comes to serious, meaningful endings and witty, funny finales. This episode does a good job of incorporating the timely Halloween theme in a perfectly reasonable and logical way without making it seem forced at all. Opening it up with the trick-or-treaters running around wildly and thinking that the marine was “baked out of his mind” provided a good typical transition to the kickoff murder for the episode. The subject of the marine who pulled pranks ceaselessly upon returning from active duty was presented and framed very seriously, though it obviously had its share of funny moments. The line that entertained me most was the distinction between “a bunch of neighbors who made a phone call” and “one neighbor who made a bunch of phone calls.” For some reason, the scientific investigation part of the episode intrigued me more than usual in this episode, and Ducky and Palmer’s conclusion that the marine couldn’t possibly have committed suicide was an intriguing reveal.