S20.E08: Turkey Trot

[thewhiteowl]

After an unknown shooter causes chaos at an annual Thanksgiving 5K, time is of the essence for the NCIS team to find the culprit. Also, Kasie joins Knight for Thanksgiving lunch at Knight’s sister’s house.

[Grizzly]

Guess Knight's sister isn't getting her security deposit back. Torres didn't need to go through the slider door. It was a pretty good episode, I felt the tension. Can't believe McGee goes to Vance's for Thanksgiving. Wish Jess had introduced Jimmy to Robin at the end. The callbacks to Jimmy's inlaws and the React team was appreciated.

[Poohpoohpooh]

If anything, the unsung hero is the apartment's super for being there on TG day to meet NCIS and give them the keys to enter.

Parker went to Vance's for TG too, he mentioned at the end. Aww, the two senior agents. Definitely a throwaway line to explain Parker away since it wasn't a Parker-episode.

Imo, a little unreasonable for bad guy to be angry at Knight for failing to keep brother from killing himself? I would understand the outrage more if dead brother was innocent and unfairly killed by a different crazy gunman (I know, extra layer of story complexity, but they wasted so much screentime in the apartment).

Curious, which characters' personal drama and stories are you all interested in?

- For me, interested: Parker! McGee. Kasie(?).

- Average: Jimmy, Vance, maybe Kasie here.

- Not interested: Torres's angst, knight.

Edited November 22, 2022 by Poohpoohpooh
Typo

[Daff]

19 hours ago, Poohpoohpooh said:

Imo, a little unreasonable

Only a little? Episode says a lot about genetic resilience in the face of adversity. Or, was the brother just determined to emulate his actions? 
As far as I know, McGee has never been invited to dinner at Vance’s. Conveniently, he and Parker were invited this year. Understandable, given the strange season it has been. 

[HurricaneVal]

That....didn't exactly go the way I was anticipating.  I didn't think they'd make the connection the way they did.  I figured Kasie would send a photo of empty wine bottles with an "OMG, the dynamic here is cray-zeee!  Need.  More.   Wine."  jokey text to McGee or Jimmy and they'd finally notice the bad guy in the background.   Bonus points if they ratchet up the tension by having McGee show it at different times, to different people in turn before the penny dropped.

I'd like to have spent some time chez Vance to see dinner there, but perhaps they didn't want to pay for the set or actor's appearances to include the Vance house and kids.  Old School NCIS usually had a Thanksgiving episode with everyone converged at Ducky's house. 

Is Knight's sister independently wealthy from somewhere?  How exactly can she afford that apartment on a newly certified chakra-reader's salary?

[Daff]

12 hours ago, HurricaneVal said:

That....didn't exactly go the way I was anticipating.  I didn't think they'd make the connection the way they did.  I figured Kasie would send a photo of empty wine bottles with an "OMG, the dynamic here is cray-zeee!  Need.  More.   Wine."  jokey text to McGee or Jimmy and they'd finally notice the bad guy in the background.   Bonus points if they ratchet up the tension by having McGee show it at different times, to different people in turn before the penny dropped.

I'd like to have spent some time chez Vance to see dinner there, but perhaps they didn't want to pay for the set or actor's appearances to include the Vance house and kids.  Old School NCIS usually had a Thanksgiving episode with everyone converged at Ducky's house. 

Is Knight's sister independently wealthy from somewhere?  How exactly can she afford that apartment on a newly certified chakra-reader's salary?

The way I understood it, she rented it for a couple days to visit her sister for Thanksgiving (maybe an air B&B kind of thing?). It couldn’t have been too much $, as none of the appliances worked. In that area, I imagine a hotel would have been cost prohibitive. 
I, too, miss Ducky’s Thanksgiving dinners!

Edited November 23, 2022 by Daff

[CheshireCat]

I don't like this kind of episode. Too much time spent with the hostages which more often than not does not move the story anywhere (just like it didn't in that case) and too few time spent on the investigating agents which is usually the part that moves the story somewhere. I also was not interested in the hostage taker's story at all. And why was Jess crying? Just because it's Thanksgiving doesn't mean half the actors need to spend half the episode crying. None of that episode made me feel Thankgiving-ish, if that was what they were going for. Rather the opposite, it made me feel annoyed.

I thought the episode started out promising but it took a bad turn when the hostage-taker pulled the gun.

I honestly thought that the hostage-taker would turn out to be a good guy or at least not guilty of the shooting because Kasie was there and I was sure they wouldn't put the poor girl through yet another hostage situation/a situation where she would end up in danger. I'm glad they acknowledged it, though.

21 hours ago, Daff said:

The way I understood it, she rented it for a couple days to visit her sister for Thanksgiving (maybe an air B&B kind of thing?). It couldn’t have been too much $, as none of the appliances worked. In that area, I imagine a hotel would have been cost prohibitive.

I thought she was in town for longer given that she had just started her new career and had a fiancé. But I think you're right that this was an Air B&B kind of thing she rented the place from. I guess, the non-functioning microwave and oven make for a cheaper rent?

[Poohpoohpooh]

7 hours ago, CheshireCat said:

I don't like this kind of episode. Too much time spent with the hostages which more often than not does not move the story anywhere (just like it didn't in that case) and too few time spent on the investigating agents which is usually the part that moves the story somewhere.

Agree. They wasted 75% of this episode in the apartment. Ncis feels obligated to give each of the main 6 their own soap operatic episode per season (Torres' eps are the snooziest, imo). Glad we are done with Knight's and (hopefully) Torres' for this season. Tries too hard. Probably gunning for a TVLine's "Performer of the week" mention.

I'm digging McGee and Parker's chill and easy chemistry. Like at the Turkey Trot 5K,

McGee: "With a little more notice, I might actually train for this."

Parker: "And I woulda sprung for a new knee."

Lol! I notice Gary Cole doesn't run on the show (not counting his first few episodes last season). It's good they are embracing his age and not pretending he's still a 45yo. Not sure if later Gibbs did a lot of physical stuff.

[LuvMyShows]

Got some problems with this episode.  It would seem very challenging for that dude to do the amount of research to uncover who Knight's sister was, and then even more challenging to have found where she was doing a short-term rental, and how coincidental that she came to where he lived (or maybe he also took a short-term rental when he found out where she was going).  Also, as a trained (and basically perpetually on call) federal agent, I would think Knight would never hand over her phone like that, likewise but to a lesser extent with Kacie.  And, the portrait they have been painting of Knight would not be so petty as to immediately having gone to a take-down/put-down/embarrassment about her sister almost immediately after feeling vulnerable. Finally, they all were whispering pretty loud for a pretty long time when he was over doing whatever he had been doing near the sliding glass door (?), and it seems like either he would have shut that down pretty quickly, or one of them would maybe have made a run for it.

6 hours ago, Poohpoohpooh said:

Not sure if later Gibbs did a lot of physical stuff.

Well, we definitely know that he at least did some physical stuff...like what started all the problems!

14 hours ago, CheshireCat said:

I thought she was in town for longer given that she had just started her new career and had a fiancé. 

I believe that at the beginning, Jimmy said it was a month-long rental.  

[HurricaneVal]

On 11/24/2022 at 10:16 AM, Poohpoohpooh said:

Not sure if later Gibbs did a lot of physical stuff.

Later Gibbs did a lot of standing and looming, or sitting.  They didn't show Mark Harmon breezily entering the scene or striding across the bullpen like they used to.  I suspect old football and stunt injuries caught up with him there towards the end of his run on NCIS and he might have been a little too creaky in the knees for that sort of stuff anymore.  Gary Cole and his Parker character entered the show at a different point in life, there's no viewer memory of him running faster than DiNozzo wearing his super sweat socks, so Parker can be a little more realistic about his physicality.  He doesn't have to pretend to be superhuman.

[love2lovebadtv]

On 11/21/2022 at 10:52 PM, Poohpoohpooh said:

Imo, a little unreasonable for bad guy to be angry at Knight for failing to keep brother from killing himself? I would understand the outrage more if dead brother was innocent and unfairly killed by a different crazy gunman (I know, extra layer of story complexity, but they wasted so much screentime in the apartment).

Curious, which characters' personal drama and stories are you all interested in?

- For me, interested: Parker! McGee. Kasie(?).

- Average: Jimmy, Vance, maybe Kasie here.

- Not interested: Torres's angst, knight.

I'm interested in a little bit of everyone's. I haven't watched NCIS in years so it was good to catch up!

On 11/22/2022 at 7:40 PM, HurricaneVal said:

Is Knight's sister independently wealthy from somewhere?  How exactly can she afford that apartment on a newly certified chakra-reader's salary?

I don't think the sister has a chakra-reader's salary. As a serial entrepreneur, she wouldn't be living paycheck to paycheck. Her revenue streams would not be the same as someone who has a salary from a job. Also, she is old enough to have accumulated savings on her own.

On 11/23/2022 at 8:13 AM, Daff said:

The way I understood it, she rented it for a couple days to visit her sister for Thanksgiving (maybe an air B&B kind of thing?). It couldn’t have been too much $, as none of the appliances worked. In that area, I imagine a hotel would have been cost prohibitive. 

Yes, that short-term rental didn't scream "wealthy" to me.