S16.E08: Friendly Fire

[thewhiteowl]

McGee and Bishop to go Afghanistan to investigate when a murder stateside is tied to a string of friendly fire incidents. 

[Bobbin]

Everyone knows, in typical crime shows, the witness will only reveal the killer's name while sitting in the window of a diner on Main Street, and only after telling his life story, giving the sniper time to line up his shot. Special Agent McGee, with your guy standing out in the open in the middle of the compound while you question him, why don't you hang a sign around his neck that says, "Hey, Mr. Sniper, I'm about to spill my guts! Take your best shot!"?

Kasie's chatter is getting annoying. It was also annoying when Abby did it. Cut to the chase. You know by now that Gibbs prefers brevity.

The Marine escort duty sub-plot was well-handled and very moving, including Gibbs' "Rest peacefully, Marine. We've got the watch." I'm still wiping away tears.

[Trey]

Those killings of soldiers in Afghanistan were not the result of "friendly fire". Don't the writers know what that is?

Otherwise okay episode.

[enoughcats]

At the very end, Mark Harmon was wearing a full length coat and this isn't his standard gear.  Then when he and the Marine were walking across the pavement, the scene shot from up in the air from some distance, I think I noticed that MH isn't the young man he used to be and that his gait was that of an old man.  (I'm old enough to recognize this gait in myself.)  It was still impressive, but I was further saddened by his aging.)

[laredhead]

I was on jury duty a couple of years ago, and the film "Taking Chance", was shown while we waiting to find out if we were selected.  There wasn't a dry eye in that waiting room.  It stars Kevin Bacon and is about military escort for deceased members of the military killed in action.  I thought this was a good episode over all, but I did miss the Thanksgiving theme they have had in past years.  My favorite one was when Ducky had everyone over to his house for an old fashioned Thanksgiving dinner.  Looks like Ducky will be seen less and less.   

[david gideon]

A few eps back the team ran into

  Reveal spoiler

A girl out fishing near the crime scene. In this ep it was a guy picking up trash. Guess who these apparently unimportant characters both turned out to be? And they used the same gimmick twice in the same season? Gibbs needs to have a rule about that.

[abbey]

I have a friend who was a marine and a body escort during the Korean war.  They wouldn't send him over to Korea because he had 2 brothers already in combat units over there.  He had some very moving stories to tell about the body escorts he handled and the very strict regulations there were for their conduct as escorts.  That part of the episode rang very true to what I had heard from him.

[Rambler]

Silly NCIS agents. Don't they know by now that it's always the civilian contractor who is the guilty party? At least the writers didn't identify him as a civilian contractor until the very last moment or that would have killed any suspense in the episode.

[GHScorpiosRule]

Whoever came up with the title for this episode  clearly has no idea what Friendly Fire means.

Ooh! Another JAG alumni! It’s JAG asshole Matoni playing General Braxton.

The one thing the show did that was...unpredictable, or rather, wasn’t a typical trope was having the Colonel not be in love with Captain Voight. His behavior seemed to indicate more than just that of concern for making sure he would deliver her to her family in time for her funeral. So, point for you.

But then demerits all around for AGAIN having Torres whinewhinewhine about doing his fucking job.

I did some fast forwarding with the Kasie and Torres scenes.

Ans I hated how they made Ducky look irrelevant! Making him look the fool about the cause of death for Moore. Even though McCallum is pretty much semi-retired, there should have been a better, more respectful way to show it.

[ForReal]

The exchange between Bishop and Torres was beyond irritating. "Men and women can be platonic friends." "Why?" Seriously? That merited a head slap for sure. There are numerous women in the agency and they function as friends and/or colleagues with the men -- did he think he was somehow being flirty? That kind of disrespect should not have been tolerated; hopefully Bishop will think better about ever getting involved with him.

Vance was such a frump, jumping to conclusions on who was the bad guy without hearing everyone out, both with the first victim and with the terrorist. It makes me question his judgment; I fear good times are not ahead for him.

I didn't like the Colonel at first, kept waiting for him to be one of the bad guys. By the end, though, I thought possibly he could be a contender for replacing Gibbs some day...

[laredhead]

3 (?) episodes ago, Vance was going to dinner with the woman he met at PT.  We were clued in that she was not what she seemed to be, and the CIA agent from a couple of episodes ago was also involved.  Wonder when we are going to see what's been happening in Vance's personal life since that episode? 

[GHScorpiosRule]

  On 11/24/2018 at 2:26 PM, laredhead said:

3 (?) episodes ago, Vance was going to dinner with the woman he met at PT.  We were clued in that she was not what she seemed to be, and the CIA agent from a couple of episodes ago was also involved.  Wonder when we are going to see what's been happening in Vance's personal life since that episode? 

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Not until the end of the season.

[JessDVD]

Not a ton to snark there but I do have two comments:

1) Does NCIS really have the budget, personnel, equipment, etc, to send to DC agents to Afghanistan on a moment's notice? I mean, I get that the case was a little more serious than dead Marine in Rock Creek Park (and I've never seen the Potomac, but I always imagined it as more "large river" than "akin to the creek in my city"), but aren't there agents stationed IN Kabul that could do that investigating and MTAC back to DC?

2) The way the colonel guarding the dead Marine's body refused to move more than 3 inches from her body at any moment made me sure that there was something of implicating nature on her person that someone would see if they investigated her body too closely (like a flash drive in the back of her throat or something), and he stayed that close so if anyone started opening her mouth, he could fake an injury to create a diversion. I was sort of glad it wasn't the case, but it still felt like a missed opportunity.

[Bobbin]

  On 11/27/2018 at 1:37 PM, JessDVD said:

Does NCIS really have the budget, personnel, equipment, etc, to send to DC agents to Afghanistan on a moment's notice?

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Apparently so. NCIS-LA sends its whole team to Eastern Europe and the Middle East every other episode, it seems. But note that they're traveling on military aircraft that were on scheduled runs.

[GHScorpiosRule]

  On 11/27/2018 at 1:37 PM, JessDVD said:

) Does NCIS really have the budget, personnel, equipment, etc, to send to DC agents to Afghanistan on a moment's notice? I mean, I get that the case was a little more serious than dead Marine in Rock Creek Park (and I've never seen the Potomac, but I always imagined it as more "large river" than "akin to the creek in my city"), but aren't there agents stationed IN Kabul that could do that investigating and MTAC back to DC?

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  On 11/27/2018 at 4:22 PM, Bobbin said:

Apparently so. NCIS-LA sends its whole team to Eastern Europe and the Middle East every other episode, it seems. But note that they're traveling on military aircraft that were on scheduled runs.

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And do they get to use the Concorde? Because they shouldn't be able to arrive within hours. They're going through two time zones, and LOSE time. I just rolled my eyes so HARD when Gibbs told Vance he had put McGee and Bishop on a plane "that morning" and that same afternoon, they had already arrived in Afghanistan. There must be some wormhole, like there is on General Hospital.

[Bobbin]

  On 11/27/2018 at 10:10 PM, GHScorpiosRule said:

And do they get to use the Concorde? Because they shouldn't be able to arrive within hours. They're going through two time zones, and LOSE time. I just rolled my eyes so HARD when Gibbs told Vance he had put McGee and Bishop on a plane "that morning" and that same afternoon, they had already arrived in Afghanistan.

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Elon Musk probably drilled a tunnel straight through the Earth connecting the Navy Yard to Frankfort with his supersonic bullet train. From Frankfort, all of the Middle East is a stone's throw on Gibbs's map. Besides, give them a break, they have to wrap up the case in less than an hour, no matter how far-reaching and convoluted the plot.