NCIS 15x01 "House Divided"

SPOILERS

“House Divided” was an episode that left me with mixed feelings. On one hand, it resolved the cliffhanger, got our friends home, and logically inserted a time jump to the story, leaving me satisfied for the season ahead. On the other, this episode really made me feel like the NCIS I started watching years ago is not around anymore.

After leaving us with the stinger of Torres pulling a gun on the helo pilot, the episode introduces us to the mandated hearings about the Paraguay incident headed by the DoD where they are putting Torres and Vance through the wringer, trying to discover what happened. Meanwhile, Team Gibbs, now Team Bishop, is working through a new case where a man has called them from a payphone but is shot before he could talk. I correctly predicted the man was connected to the trouble in Paraguay, as he was smuggling the RAC’s uranium into the country. While finding out more about him, they end up getting a number to a satellite phone, the same one belonging to the leader of the RAC whom Gibbs and McGee just incapacitated. Luckily the DoD was just playing to the cameras and are as much rule-breakers as NCIS, and they are able to get a chopper out to the agents and bring them home.

Gibbs and McGee in Paraguay.

Things I didn’t like about the episode: there wasn’t much of the trademark NCIS humor, and what little it had fell somewhat flat. I felt the story was too predictable, at least the first half. And the scene where Bishop was heading the team was really such a stark reminder that the NCIS I first grew to love, the strong middle seasons, was gone. The characters are either dead, thrown into a fan-fiction fueled lifestyle (*cough* Tony), not vitally important to the episode (Abby, Ducky, Palmer) or otherwise occupied in a prison cell. And…maybe I miss it a little.

Things I liked about the episode: everything in Paraguay. The whole idea of Gibbs refusing to talk under torture but McGee being able to logic his way to giving in was very in character. I was really thrown off by the whole fight, but it turns out was all staged and part of an off-screen convoluted plan worthy of Season 7 of Game of Thrones. More playing to the cameras to get a knife in Gibbs’ hands. The fact that the terrorists were people too and the one who was willing to turn on the leader once he had the chance was surprising.

Yeah, yeah, nice fluffy feels at the end. Everyone’s home and it’s great. All reset for the season ahead. I love McGee and Delilah and again I got the old NCIS feelings when it was Abby who first greeted McGee at the door. So it wasn’t an awful season opener. I’m just interested in how they’re going to move the season ahead and make it seem new and exciting. It’s season 15.

9/10