What I’m Watching: NCIS

NCIS: Season 7, Episode 8 “Power Down” (B+)

The faster-paced spinoff really is rubbing off on this show. It’s rare that there’s an action sequence to start off the episode, and even rarer that the opening sequence ends not in a murder but in a killing of an altogether different sort. The city-wide blackout provides a great launching pad for this episode to show how all of these characters respond to life without their beloved overnight recharges. It also makes quite the statement about how the technologically savvy and dependent world functions when the power goes down and life has to be scaled back to the days before electricity. McGee and Ziva getting stuck in the elevator overnight was fun, even if we only got to catch the tail end of their lengthy affair. Tony’s remark that they should find a dinosaur who knows how to operate the card catalog system was hilarious, especially considering the crafty Gibbs stepped in only moments later to flawlessly utilize the archaic machine. The fact that so many things, including McGee’s camera and Abby’s music player, died simply because they didn’t charge overnight was pretty funny, and it still didn’t prevent NCIS from solving and closing the case. Tony certainly had a great time announcing to the guilty conspirator that they had caught him, and it’s his flair for filmic dramatics that makes him such a terrific character. The best moment of the episode is when the power comes back in the final moments, and everyone hurriedly logs onto their computers to reconnect with the technological universe, but Gibbs just smiles and packs up his bag, painlessly unconnected to the electronic world.