What I’m Watching: NCIS

NCIS: Season 7, Episode 22 “Borderland” (B+)

In this episode, we have it all. An international field trip, the reopening of old wounds, Chat Roulette, and some wonderful interactions between all of the characters. Having Abby be invited to teach a forensics course was fun, and I enjoyed her panic trying to figure out why Vance wanted to see her. Bringing McGee along as her escort, especially after she detailed why she didn’t want him to come, was great. It’s been a long time before their not-quite-flirtation has been addressed, and watching McGee get jealous of her and her getting back at him by making him nervous about the health conditions was a whole lot of fun. Things did of course turn much more serious when Abby discovered who was involved in the shooting and pieced together the fact that it was Gibbs who killed the drug dealer. Fortunately, this show is one that is very adept at switching speedily between comedy and drama, and it handles the transition exceptionally well. That certainly worked well with Ziva and Tony making jokes about limbs after discovering the dismembered feet, and mostly, it was terrific in terms of solidifying the relationship between Gibbs and Abby. The fact that the two cases were connected was cool, and that final conversation between the two, along with Gibbs’ face when he realized Abby knew, was fantastic. A nice humorous side revelation at the end of the episode was McGee’s spontaneous confession to Tony that he had programmed his Chat Roulette (or whatever it was called here) to auto-next after ten seconds every time, and I thought that was simply terrific.