NCIS 7×01: Truth or Consequences and 7×02: Reunion (minor spoilers)

I missed a bunch of last year, but I guess Ziva kinda liked a guy and Tony killed him, hopefully because he was a threat of some kind and not because he just didn’t like the guy. I liked his nod to Kate, even in the midst of nearly killing himself to save Ziva. The Ziva who came back isn’t the same as the Ziva who left, though. You can see it in her eyes. She’s a little bit broken. I’m not sure from the preview of the next episode that they’re going to keep that vulnerability, though. I hope they do. It would be fitting, and grow the character a lot.

Episode two – Ziva’s back! Yay. Kind of. They really need to keep this emotional edge she’s got right now, though, and not hide that or make it go away. The scene with her and Gibbs – wow, I wanted him to grab her and hug her so badly, but that would’ve been wrong. They did it right. That’s one of the reasons I keep going back to this show – they don’t manufacture dramatic scenes with big emotional climaxes. They let the relationships play out over weeks and years. I missed the whole part of the story that informed that conversation, but they played it just right. Ziva’s coming back isn’t a return to business as usual – there are still wounds there that are only now beginning to be healed. If they speed up that recovery and everything’s back like nothing ever happened in a few weeks, I’ll be disappointed.

NCIS: Los Angeles 1×01: Identity and 1×02: The Only Easy Day

Not sure after the first episode if I’ll be keeping up with this one or not. No characters really jumping out at me. I like LL Cool J’s character, but Chris O’Donnell is kind of annoying me. I did like the crime of the week, though, decently enough. I tend to find with NCIS that I never keep track of each episode’s case very well – I’m in it for the long-term characters. We’ll see how Los Angeles does. (And how much LA itself plays into the show – that may make a bigger difference than you might think.) Oh, and also, apparently Edna Mode works for NCIS now. That’s…a little distracting.

The second episode picked up pretty well. Liked it more than the first one. And Edna Mode didn’t distract me quite so much. The rookie and the female agent brought some added dimension to it – they could be the interesting secondary characters that keep me at it. The crime of the week was intriguing, too; held my interest at any rate