NCIS Season 7 Episode 2: "Reunion" Recap & Review

You might think this episode of NCIS is about how Team Gibbs solves the grizzly murders of three men in a hotel room, including a naval staff sergeant and a Pentagon file clerk. They have been killed off in very horrible ways: one suffocated by a duffel bag, another forced into alcohol poisoning and the third drowned in a toilet.

However, this episode is really all about Ziva. Ziva David, ex-Mossad Liaison Officer for NCIS, who as of the beginning of the show still hasn't officially rejoined the team after being rescued in a daring mission by NCIS in Somalia.

Ziva is everywhere this episode. Ziva apologizing to Gibbs. Ziva given the verbal equivalent of a Gibbs Slap by Abby. Ziva and Director Vance debating if she can rejoin the team or not. comes Ziva going to get a psych evaluation. Ziva somehow getting coffee in the same place that McGee does. Ziva giving Tony the MacGuffin that helps to unlock the rest of the case. Ziva, Ziva Ziva!

Don't think I'm complaining though. Fans have been wanting some answers as to the future of our favorite Israeli "exchange student" and in this episode, we get...most of them. What her loyalties are, how she realizes she was wrong about the Tony / Rivkin face-off, what she has come to realize about who she can really trust. Unfortunately her real feelings for Tony...well, it looks like that still waits in the wings, the better to tease loyal "Tiva" supporters with.

The fun begins as a stripper in a cop costume enters a hotel room, discovering the bodies and giving her best horror movie scream. We come back from the title sequence with Agent Fillmore, Ziva's latest replacement handing in her resignation, claiming Tony is too much of a childish and juvenile attention-seeker and McGee the willing sidekick who sidekicks too much. This results in some fun interplay in the following acts when McGee tries to "man up" and take the leadership position, but well, he is just too McGee in these situations for his own good. I definitely like that try as they might, there is no one who can really fill Ziva's shoes as the third member of the team.

Ziva and Gibbs have their first conversation of the episode in Gibbs' basement (no boat there). She thanks Gibbs for the rescue and does a very long winded speech that is touching in her own Ziva-ish way. Ziva now realizes Gibbs was right to leave her in Israel after she issued the "Tony-or-me" ultimatum, and she wants to be part of the team again. Sad Panda Look Gibbs merely says "you need to talk to Vance", and Ziva is thrown off, expecting more of a blessing. "And he's not the only one you need to talk to." Later on Vance sniffs out that Gibbs is hesitant to bring Ziva back, but Gibbs does insist that "we need her".

Team Gibbs interviews the stripper and her multi-purpose "pimp" Hector Stuckey, who provides a nice and appropriate kind of slime to the role that when he becomes a suspect later on, viewers are all too willing to buy into it. Stuckey sprays McGee with horrible smelling cologne and McGee has an adverse reaction, which comes into play later. Duckman's initial examination of the body on the scene is that whoever killed them stuffed the guy in the toilet after he was dead.

No criminal records for the dead guys and apparently this was a "bachelor party" gone wrong. Later on, the team discovers the party was a cover up for something far more illicit. Seems like Stuckey really does his best work as a fence and that the three men actually agreed to fence an entire decommissioned plane. That would have been worth a cool several million, so it seems Stuckey has a bit of a motive...

Ziva and Director Vance's conversation doesn't fare too well at first given the first question is "have you spoken with your father?" It seems from Ziva's comments of omission that the answer is a solid "no". It's also the second time we really get the sense that Ziva is on her own. She's out in the weeds, unable (or doesn't want) to go back to her father. Meanwhile Director Vance doesn't know if she's ready to come back to NCIS, or if that's even possible considering she was never an official NCIS agent. He calls her "damaged goods", which is very harsh but perhaps not unjustified from his position given what she has been through. If she can pass the psych test, they'll talk, but "no promises."

Meanwhile, Shags and Scoobs interview an antiques auctioneer whose boss, Eric Jurel was the third body. He immediately rubs the boys the wrong way, but says no one would mourn Jurel. He directs them to Elana, a broker who may have, well no, not really she wanted to, but no she and Jurel weren't together. She defends Eric's character and states that he believed someone was following him.

We get a cute little moment where McGee pretends he can move the windows on his computer screen with his hand (a nice tip of the hat to his childlike "me-want-toys" reaction to the high-tech gizmos the NCIS:LA agents used in season six, episodes 22 and 23.). Gibbs is not amused, although I am. Later on, we also get our first physical GIBBS SLAP of the season on Tony when he does an amusing "Unsolved Mysteries" voice that well, Gibbs does not find amusing but I do. There's a lot of that in this episode.

We get a cute little "eyes fluttering" moment when Ziva finds herself in the building on the way to her evaluation. Ohh there's still something there between them I just know it! Ziva comes down to Abby 's lab, and is unprepared for ANGRY ABBY, who gets to tell off Ziva but ends up comically undoing her telling off in the process. She ends up hugging Ziva, admitting that she was extremely worried about her, then unleashes the welcome home sign complete with 21 cap gun pop salute.

The Ziva Heart-to-Heart Tour continues later on with McGee and again when Ziva interrupts Tony in the bathroom (a common occurrence in previous seasons). She finally apologizes to Tony: "you've had my back, you've always had my back and I am sorry." And we get...a kiss! Well, hold on "Tiva" fans, not "The kiss" but "a kiss." On the cheek. Still, it's a good start to mending fences and its clear their chemistry is still there despite all the changes that have happened to them in the last season.

Meanwhile, Batman and Robin use GPS tracking to find out who was following Jurel, pinpointing the burn phone used to a house, where Baltimore PD Officer Shelley is already there. In a brilliant plot move, Team Gibbs gets deeked out by Shelley, who pretends there are two suspects in the house, but really it was his house and he's the one who was chasing down Jurel. Seems he, Jurel and the rest of the dead guys have a sordid past. Shelley was a victim of their bullying, giving him motive to kill all three of them.

As it turns out, Shelley may have been the victim of a frame-up, confirmed when he is killed and his car sent careening down a street almost right into Tony. We get a series of deft reveals the rest of the episode which implicates each of the possible suspects-the pimp / fence (complete with VINTAGE Gibbs interrogation), the auctioneer manager (who had access to the murder weapon-a nineteenth century pistol) to the real killer-the auctioneer girl who had a thing but didn't with her boss. Seems like she knew about the plane deal and double crossed Shelley to keep the money was trying to recover. Score another one for Team Gibbs.

But never mind all of that. The final scenes are all about Ziva. Ziva and Gibbs have one more conversation in the basement where Gibbs finally reveals his doubts about whether he can trust her. In last season's finale, Vance told Gibbs that Ziva had orders from her father to earn Gibbs' trust by killing her half-brother Ari (Season 3 Episode 2 "Kill Ari"). Gibbs' trust of Ziva stems from that moment and you can see that he is wondering if all of that trust he had for Ziva was legitimate. Ziva does admit she had orders from her father to earn Gibbs' trust, but she always believed Ari was innocent. She would have lied to Gibbs about Ari (in one of the more shocking statements she says outright "He was my brother...and you were nothing."). However, when she killed Ari she was not "following orders" but because Gibbs had convinced her that Ari had gone rogue.

While this conversation could have opened up a new can of worms, Ziva's explanation and her admission that Gibbs is the closest thing she has to a father figure is enough for Gibbs, giving a simple "Okay". We end the episode with Ziva back at her desk, back on the team and beginning to get back to what qualifies as normal around the Naval Yard.

Well, except for Director Vance mysteriously getting onto the elevator with a "go bag", headed for...?