Review - NCIS Season 7 Episode 10 Faith

NCIS is a show about crimes and crime solving, but last night's episode barely even touched on the them.  The criminal was caught 5 minutes before the end, and there were only 4 suspects the whole episode and most we easily ruled out.

The main part of the episode was Gibbs's and his father Jackson. Their relationship is not the best and throughout the episode, we see a tension between them that is uneasy. Gibbs notices that this time, his father is acting different than usual. Eventually we learn that his father had killed a robber and realized that his son did the same all the time.

There were two subplots that were fairly weak and not developed enough. McGee helped a girl talk to her mother in MTAC after a push from Abby and her midget friend. Tony was having trouble finding a Secret Santa gift for a woman that is mean to everyone, and found a present by looking through her personnel file. I thought the story could have been better if Tony was Ziva's Secret Santa and teased her for the entire episode.

I don't watch NCIS: LA anymore, but apparently that show also featured a dead Muslim who was a paragon of the military. In light of the Fort Hood shooting and the Americans trying to join terrorist camps in Pakistan, I can understand that the episodes may have been trying to ease tensions (I know it's a fictional TV show), but there is a point when pandering becomes stupid. JAG pushed its stupid neocon message all the time, and NCIS has definitely eased off of that, but I think the pendulum is shifting too far in the other direction.

My favorite scenes were Ducky and Jackson chatting it up, and Ziva and Tony's bar brawl preceded by Ziva calling rednecks redthroats. This was another solid episode that I thought had potential to be a lot more. Anyways, I'm not disappointed and am looking forward to January 5.

Score: 9.1/10