buckboard

Funny to see that Sam Elliott playing Grace's ex love interest. In the movie "Grandma," he played Lily Tomlin's ex and she just showed up at his house, unexpected, after many years of no contact.

Why wouldn't Brody ask for assistance from one of the DC agents and instead insist on working on her own? Every time Gibbs and his people are working a case in NOLA, they ask for help from the New Orleans agents. For that matter, whenever they are in any area that has an NCIS team, they contact the locals, who are likely to be more knowledgeable of local issues than agents dropped in to the situation.

This isn't East Podunk, Iowa. There are likely several students in the school whose parents are high government officials and the school would be understanding of the fact that the parents might be busy with one crisis or the other and that an alternative to the normal policy would be reasonable. Sorry, Chelsea. You can't go on the field trip to Williamsburg, because we didn't get your father's signature because he's busy with the conflict in Bosnia and your mother is in London. Rules are rules.

Even if the American people didn't know the extent of what was going on, they would have heard that there was rioting in Pakistan. Elizabeth's daughter might or might not have heard about the rioting, but she would have known that her mother hadn't been home all night and being a smart girl, should have been able to connect the dots. Rather than interrupt her mother in the middle of an international crisis, couldn't she have either gotten her sister to sign the consent form or gone to the principal right away and explain that her mother was saving the world, so could they wait another day for the signature?

It was nice to see staff in the Secretary of State's office actually playing a role in resolving the crisis. Haven't seen much of them this year, other than Blake playing nanny. Did anyone else notice the photos of soldiers on the wall? They looked like Confederate generals. I believe this was in a White House office, when Elizabeth was speaking with someone, perhaps the Russian ambassador?

Over the top po'd with the Murphy team going out and acting like operatives when their mission from the start was to provide speedier access to information and advice to the president and his top agency people, like the Secretary of State. There are no CIA agents or Delta Force types in Pakistan who are capable of doing the dirty work Henry and the other guy took it upon themselves to do? I don't know why Elizabeth has a staff anymore. They never have to do any work, because Henry and his pals are sucking up all the oxygen on this show.

I agree with previous posters that the lingering closeups in scenes with the burn victims and the results of other violence was unnecessarily gory. It was an interesting plot to chase after the escapees, but seeing a man's face burned to a crisp didn't enhance the story for me.

First off, I think Barbara Hall's premise is wrong. If the Secretary of State's husband was intended to have a job as important as hers, it should have been called something like Madame Secretary and His Honor the Chief Justice. And yes, many of us ARE frustrated because the show has changed from what we enjoyed, about the difficulties of maintaining a functional marriage between a high ranking woman in a powerful government office and her intelligent professor husband. Instead of his being a sounding board for ethical issues she is facing, he's recruiting spies and bopping off to foreign countries as if he is the one with CIA experience instead of his wife.

The Dannie plot was completely ridiculous. He puts a bus full of people at risk by following his stolen car, which now contains armed criminals who have just shot up a store they were robbing. So he proceeds to follow the robbers, with no gun, no phone contact and a bus loaded with civilians, including his own children He wants the driver to follow the car - at a distance. Surely a bus driving along rural roads wouldn't be noticed by a car ahead of it, even if the bus driver hadn't gone onto a dirt road, right? It was a miracle no one on the bus was shut by the robbers. I could go on and on about how stupid and dangerous his conduct was, but it wasn't really out of the ordinary for the way 5-0 operates.

Why, Henry, of course. He'll become the new Chief of staff.

I guess I missed the scene where Steph explained why she invited Gabe to work with a warehouse full of underage kids, despite the restriction of the sex offenders list. I'm surprised it took as long as it did for the police to get involved. Why would Steph think that it was a good idea for him to be anywhere near underage children until they got him off the list? And how is she going to explain her involvement to the police department in inviting him to be there?

Who needs the CIA, the Foreign Service, Defense Department, NSA or the State Department with all their combined expertise and experience in intelligence gathering? Instead, let's pull together a small, secretive group, introduce them to each other and then, within a matter of minutes, have them coordinate intelligence gathering. Then, have the President make a major policy decision based on their advice. What could possibly go wrong?

I didn't get a weird inappropriate vibe or that Monte did anything because of an interest in the student. As I saw it, Monte did what she did to get back at Lena's rejection of her by showing that she was still the boss. If Lena thought it was inappropriate to help a student with her project, Monte's opinion was the one that mattered; she was the principal and the one with power. She helped the student to show up Lena.

Agreed, Netfoot. The show apparently is no longer about Madame Secretary, so maybe they should change the title to The McCords: Mom's the Secretary of State, but Father Knows Best. Seriously, IMHO, if they want a show about the CIA or anti-terrorism, create that show, but don't change the focus of the existing show. Elisabeth, as SOS, should be the focus, with stories about how her husband supports her mission. I don't want a Marvel comics version of the NSA, with a cabinet level wife supporting her now more important hubby.

What I like most about Anthony and Erin working together is that they WORK well together. Their relationship isn't complicated by a potential love interest, like every other man Erin works with. Work relationships rarely result in romance in real life and when they do, they can really get messy when they end, like Erin and her bosses. How many posters complain constantly about Jaimie and his partner? Give me couples like Danny and Baez and Erin and Anthony, working partners.

That was my first thought, too, when I heard (or read) it. Except "lewd and liscivious" is not the same thing as "statutory rape" and that was the charge against Gabe. That is likely what the writers were going for, I thought at first. Maybe it wasn't because of drug use, though. Anna's parents might have pursued it as statutory rape because because she was under 18. He could have also been under 18 and Anna could have consented to the sex, but it is still "statutory" rape because you can't give consent under the law under age 18. Now, if Gabe actually molested a minor(Lewd & Liscivious), that's a whole ball of wax and a very unpleasant plot line. (Although I would expect it would be shown that he was framed.)

People had evacuated the room at the order of police. And yet security at the scene didn't prevent Henry, a civilian, from reentering the unsecured room? A crime scene so dangerous that men in hazmet suits arrived in a matter of minutes. But they let a civilian wander in? Where were the police? Where was the fire department?

I assume you are referring to Mary Pat Gleason when you wrote that "It's like the casting director said, "I need a battleaxe. Get me the ugliest woman you have and make sure she looks as unflattering as possible." She looked like a grown up Lil Orphan Annie after she consumed the entire body of Miss Hannigan." Pretty harsh language, blackwig. So the actress doesn't look like a Victoria Secret model, but she's hardly The Elephant Man. Besides, how she looked played no part in how well she acted in that role. She was playing an attorney, not a call girl.

I enjoyed the concept of the NCIS team trying to solve the crime while the victim and the three other divers were out of reach in the decompression chamber.

Maya Lin said she thought she might have Korean or Japanese blood, because she doesn't have entirely traditional Chinese features. Dr. Gates agreed that she wasn't traditionally Han, but they never said WHAT her DNA makeup was. Why didn't they tell us the DNA results?

I understand that this isn't a documentary, but when Elizabeth is away, her staff takes charge of the Department? There is no Deputy Secretary of State and under secretaries who carry on business in her absence?

Steph, the most suspicious cop/mother on TV, doesn't run a background check of the foster group woman before letting her give Callie $50,000 and giving her access as an administrator to Callie's web site? Lexi is living in Central America for over a year and then she comes back and immediately runs for class president? Will half of the kids even remember who she is?

I'd be really po'd if I were an Iowan from the portrayal of the state as nothing more than small town after small town, populated by hicks who vote based entirely on a candidate's eating habits and who switch candidates at the last second, inspired by a guy in costume singing a campaign song. Plus, for an experienced politician like the governor - from a neighboring state, much of it also rural - to find rural Iowa so foreign to his experience and the oddity (to him) of having to eat local food at all stops (and there are 3200 stops on the Full Grassley) is ridiculous. Hasn't he already spent months in the state? Also, Ruth is supposedly a successful, long-time campaign manager and she ran a piss poor campaign. It's the Full Grassley, not Full Greensleaves. He was a well known senator. http://www.msnbc.com/hardball/the-full-grassley-upon-us

I would hope that the U.S. would continue the sister's treatment, either in Sweden or the U.S. as a tribute to her brother's service to America. The purpose of the U.S. bringing her to the U.S. was so that the Russians couldn't use her as leverage while they held her brother. With him dead, I don't think Russia really cares about the sister anymore. Henry could have just told the sister that Dmitri was able to get her to Sweden to drug trials with the help of the U.S. government because Dmitri was in his class in the military college and he (Henry) was the husband of the Secretary of State and she had pull with the Swedes. Henry didn't have to tell the poor woman that not only was her brother dead, but he was spying for America on his own country inorder to get the sister healthcare.

I can understand Jamie's position that he wants to remain on the street rather than work to mop up as a detective after a crime has already been committed. Adam 12 vs. Dragnet. That doesn't explain to me, however, his reluctance to take exams that would advance his career out of the lower level police officer rank to sergeant or training officer or whatever, where he could remain on the street, but with more responsibility. And what ever became of the assignment his father the Police Commissioner offered him on a special police oversight commission? Seems like a waste of a Harvard Law School education.