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RSS'NCIS': When the lights go down in the city
Tonight, "NCIS" went dark. Not in a no-episode way, not even in a covert black-ops way. They went dark in a lack of electricity kind of way. Good episode.
Starting the episode with an adult nerd in his mother's basement complaining about his Internet going down was pretty good. Following that up with turning out all the lights in D.C. via a cascade failure was better. Forcing the team to do the entire mission without modern conveniences (except for when McGee cheated) was great.
I'm not someone who thinks we take all this technology we have for granted, but it is interesting to see how the world, including law enforcement, functions without it. There wasn't really a doubt tonight that Gibbs would be able to shepherd his team through the lack of power, but it was nice to watch him do it.
Gibbs and the gang got called in this week because one of the bad guys was a naval officer, Emma Paxton, whose own evil comrades shot her rather than leave her behind to talk. I always appreciate that sort of thoroughness. I'm not for murder or anything, but tying up loose ends -- and prisoners are loose ends -- is always a good thing. They may have tried to free her first, but ended up having to end her loose end-ness in a different way. Gibbs was going to get them anyway, but I gave them an "A" for effort (until we learned that's not what happened at all).
There was a fleeting moment of concern for me tonight when McGee turned on the backup generator in the storage container. I would have been hugely disappointed in the show if they'd allowed McGee that out. Instead, they gave him an equally bad one, allowing him to work with power back at the communications room.
It was Abby who really ran the show tonight (plus she saved things story-wise after McGee got power to watch videos). She did a ton of work to identify the tire treads by hand, made non-alcoholic whiskey, powered her CD player with lemons and matched fingerprints by having DiNozzo, Ziva and McGee sort through a ton of them with her. Watching her do all that hard work after McGee was able to just watch a couple of videos taken by a PI following Paxton really put the show back on course. I'm still left wondering why they didn't have McGee just use a handheld video camera borrowed from the PI to work their way around his needing to watch on the big screen. Surely that could have worked. Anyways, it was Abby who got the gun for hire, which might have ended things if only he -- and the other gunman -- hadn't both been dead when Gibbs and team showed.
I was okay with the final set of reveals: Paxton was really doing covert stuff with Resnik and had been held hostage by the security guard so he could steal a whole lot of data, but it did seem to break on us awfully quickly. I know that tends to be the show's M.O., but I would still like to see one or two fewer twists in the last 10 or so minutes of an episode.
Odds and ends:
- "Plundered my elderberry fields," that was almost as nerdy as McGee referencing the TARDIS. I love McGee. I love the TARDIS. I love The Doctor.
- How is it possible that it took more than nine hours to get McGee and Ziva out of the elevator and all that had to be done to make it happen was tying the backup generators to the elevator? That I didn't buy.
- Gibbs' magic bag of goodies - how impressive was that?
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I really enjoyed this episode. I was willing to forgive them regarding how long McGee and Ziva were in the elevator because they had some really good lines come out of it such as when they asked about Gibbs and Tony replied that hand tools and bourbon didn't require electricity and McGee called back "he's standing right behind you isn't he" and the camera pans back from Tony to show Gibbs standing there. That never gets old.
Absolutely one of the best episodes in season 7 and my personal favorite. Great episode, and so funny. Did you notice the huge number of TV shows' references ? At least half dozen, probably more, and even one from Gibbs !
Yes, "Book 'em, Dan-o-zzo." Perfection!
I like how Gibbs engaged "Smug-Mode" at the end. Classic.
I agree that the episode was well-done, but it also should serve as a cautionary tale: when society becomes a slave to the machine, the slaves tend to starve when the machine breaks down. At least it was handled with humor on NCIS, which I expected. There are a few who still know how to run the old-fashioned stuff, so folks would probably adapt fairly quickly to a major power outage (as has been proven historically, as when New York City went dark a few years back).
I'll bet Polaroid is regretting their decision to discontinue the production of their instant-picture cameras, given how well they were used in this episode. They might want to rethink completely dismantling those factories.
Those complaining about the elevator scene at the beginning need to understand a few things about electricity--unless you know what you're doing, and unless you know exactly where the power connects to the various components, messing around with things is not a good idea. Good way to get juiced, really.
Decent episode, and I'm glad they didn't take easy outs with it, the way some shows would have ("Oh, look, a never-before-seen extra back-up generator just for use by the show's agents, goodie!"). Nicely done.
Oh, and nice reference to the Journey song in the headline, btw.
Great Ep - loved seeing those old polorod cameras. LOL
And it wasn't a cheat for McGee to use Mtach - it would have been way lamer if the writers, having mentioned that Mtach was still up - didn't use it at all.
Oh, yeah - "Book him Danno-zo" was inspired! Brilliant really. Loved the episode.
Great episode as usual! Loved how Gibbs had a bag prepared for such an occasion and even included a can of sardines! And the storing of food/etc in the body drawer! lol
Although some of the power outage things were a bit off... A lot of modern elevators have enough power to at least get to the next floor to open the doors(or are connected to a generator like in my condo building) so you would think NCIS would be prepared for such an outing. An Aaron is right about the elevator that if it wasn't already wired into the generator, it would be a lot of work to isolate it and wire it up, without ending up wiring the entire building to the generator and overloading it. But at least it not having power is semi believable, however an ISP not having a big UPS/backup generator for its server room is not! Give me a break! Oh and can someone explain to me how the traffic lights had enough power to blink amber? haha!
But Aaron, we can't live forever holding on to things of the past that could run without electricity. If society held onto everything from the past, things would barely ever change. And well even Polaroids need batteries and electricity to make the blanks. A large problem with the power is that so much of the grid has been haphazardly bandaged over the years to handle the ever growing capacity and a lot of the equipment is so old as the good old greedy folks at the company try to squeeze as much money out as possible out of outdated equipment. Not to mention then wining to the gov't that its too expensive to upgrade and they need tax $$$ to do it as the portion of profits they should be retaining for upgrades has been put into their pocketbooks...
Funny episode, can't help but think about the writer's pitch for it...
"Imagine an episode where the team has no power and no technology to solve the case!!"
Gibbs' bag of old tech was not bad :D