The episode “Life Before His Eyes” marked the 200th episode of CBS’ juggernaut NCIS. The show has only gotten stronger as it ages; consistently rank in the top 5 watched shows every week. What makes this show such a powerhouse? For me it’s the characters. You care about what happens to them. The writers have given life to these characters over the years and now they are old friends.
Last night’s episode was a quasi “It’s A Wonderful Life”. It starts out with Gibbs (Mark Harmon) in a diner enjoying a cup of coffee when a hooded figure pulls a gun and you hear a shot. Suddenly Gibbs life passes before your eyes until he’s in the diner with Mike Franks (Muse Watson). The old agent gives Gibbs a few things to think about when he tells him he always had choices. We get to see several different scenarios. Kate (Sasha Alexander) didn’t die and is married to Dinozzo (Michael Weatherly). Gibbs doesn’t shoot Hernandez and becomes a bitter recluse pushing everyone away, even his old friend Ducky (David McCallum) and the married Tim (Sean Murray) and Abby (Pauley Perrette). Gibbs seems to accept all these scenarios except the one with Ziva (Cote De Pablo). With Kate not dead Ziva never joins the team and is being questioned by Tony. We finally get to meet Gibb’s wife who tells him it wasn’t his fault for what happened. Gibbs finally gets frustrated with Mike because he tells Gibbs that sometimes good men do something bad for a reason.
Woven into this trip down memory lane is the case Gibbs and his team is investigating. Two bodies were found on a naval ship in dry dock. As the team starts to dig they find out the ships computers were never wipe and reason that vital information was the reasons for the killings. Fingerprints were found leading them to a third suspect. This suspect leads them to the Chinese who were buying the information. When they capture him he explains to Gibbs he tried to back out of the deal but the others didn’t want to stop. He shot them to save the lives of hundreds of others that the information would have put in harm’s way. Ironically the suspect’s son is the one who tries to shoot Gibbs in the diner for not trying to help his father.
I really enjoyed this episode. We got to see old friends come and go in the diner. The fans got to see the “What if’s” that many crave. We always wonder what it would be like for certain characters to be married. The writers gave us all of that and a deeper look into what makes Gibbs tick. If the show keeps the momentum it has now I wouldn’t be surprised if we see them celebrating 300th episode.
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