TV: NCIS: Heartland

Spoiler alert. Read no further unless you have finished watching season 5 of NCIS and at least the first four episodes of season 6.

NCIS is one of my favourite shows yet I tend to agree with many of the critics that the last episode of season 5 was a bit of a shambles and I’m not really sure anything happened. I want to say that it wasn’t explosive enough for a season finale but then again, we did lose one of the main characters! I can’t quite put my finger on it - it seems as if they needed a way to kill Director Shepard but ran out of time to do it. One of the effects of the Great Writers Strike of 2008 I guess - we are lucky the show in itself wasn’t one of the casualties!

The little plot twist at the end of season 5 and the first episode of season 6 was so absolutely unnecessary that it left question in my mind as to why they actually bothered. I’m talking about the whole team breaking apart thing. The whole Special Agent Lee bit could all have been explained away by one conversation and a bit of backtracking - I would not have built that story around an entirely tangential storyline.

Episodes two and three of season 6 were average and left me somewhat disillusioned in the current state of NCIS.

And then there was episode four, Heartland.

Heartland is everything a good NCIS episode should be. A classic whodunit with fabulous character development, this episode puts NCIS right back on the map for me. Stephen thinks the focus on Gibbs this season marks the end of NCIS but I doubt they would wind down the series now that they are stepping up their game.

The best thing about the episode? It stars Mark Harmon’s own son, Sean Harmon, as the Young Leroy Jethro Gibbs.

Wow. How gorgeous is he? And a really good actor too. His performance was excellent and I can’t believe this was his first television performance. Definitely one to watch in the future.
This episode had it all and it has become my favourite NCIS episode ever. In fact, it is right up there with the epic Logan and Veronica moment in Veronica Mars. They’ve set the mark though and I hope the magic continues through the rest of the season.