NCIS: Season 8

The best quality of NCIS has always been its ability to retain a narrative specific to a season. Shane Brennan has retained Don Bellisario's quality of creating a storyline for the season, going away from the storyline, but going back and letting the storyline heat back up in the second part of the season. Such is the case with Season 8. In this case, the story doesn't focus on any particular member of the MTAC but rather the relationships NCIS carries with Intelligence organizations, both domestic and foreign; as well as the relationships with their extended family of revolving characters--the Gibbs/Fornell relationship, Jethro and Abagail Borin (The CGIS Investigator)--as well as new characters either needing reminding of the good they did or looking for resolution to dearly departed members of the MTAC. I won't rehash the performance of the regulars, simply because Mark, Michael, Cote, Pauley, Sean, Rocky, David, and Brian NEVER TAKE A SHOW OFF. There are never any phoned-in performances here. Because the regulars always bring their best, the recurring characters and the guest shots don't phone it in. Joe Spano's Tobias Fornell never seems less than stellar, and over the course of the series the banter between Fornell and Gibbs has become less agency-adversarial and much more family-like (After all, they do share an ex-wife...). Diane Neal's Borin--introduced in Season 7--continues to play out humorously as a "female Gibbs"--in short, there will be no romantic connection between Jethro and Abagail because they're too much alike. It's always good to see Ralph Waite as Gibbs' father, Jackson--though we only get him in the season opener--and Robert Wagner's Anthony DiNozzo the Elder is becoming a treasure when he shows. I'd like to talk about Muse Watson here...but he deserves his own paragraph. We know how Season 8 starts--the completion of the Hernandez/Reynosa/Rivera storyline from last season; Jethro's revenge murder of Paloma Reynosa's father--the starting point of Gibbs joining NCIS--and Reynosa's attempt to avenge her father's death along with her brother, the corrupt Mexican police official Alejandro Rivera. Loved Jacqueline Obradors and Marco Sanchez as the brother and sister, figuring that they were intimidating and outsmarting NCIS...all the way up to the climax of that episode. As always, the season opener left a clue as to the path of the season because the children of Pablo Hernandez thought they had Gibbs fooled and controlled...and much to their dismay, they found out they didn't. After the opener, the first part of the season starts the examination of how NCIS relates to other agencies with "Short Fuse" and "Royals And Loyals". Continuing a trend this series has shown the last few years, NCIS casts featured players from recently cancelled CBS series for guest slots--"Short Fuse" brings Abby Brammell from "The Unit" in as a tough Marine EOD expert having an affair with an FBI Director, and the complications that arise for Gibbs and Fornell in investigating a shooting at the EOD expert's house--with the FBI Director there. "Royals And Loyals" brings Daniel Gilles in as a British Royal Marine with a lot below the surface, an episode which begins the look at NCIS' work with the Intel sections. Wagner is brilliant in "Broken Arrow", flirting with Ziva (Making Tony uncomfortable in the process--Weatherly is every bit R.J.'s equal here), but also calling up a little bit of Alexander Mundy in the end of the episode. This brings us to the "Enemies Foreign/Enemies Domestic" two-parter. This is the crux of the season, the jumping-off point to the second-half; and two episodes which uniquely tie together many parts of the NCIS history. Michael Nouri returns as Ziva's father, the Mossad Director Eli David; Arnold Vosloo comes back as Amit Hadar, and T. J Ramini returns as Malachi Ben-Gedon, the Mossad agent who left Ziva out to dry in her "Aliyah". The core of this story--Eli's appearance in Washington, and the discussion of a botched mission in Amsterdam in the early 1990s; how this assignment brought Vance to the attention of NCIS, how Vance met Eli for the first time, and the direction NCIS took in time; plus that the Amsterdam failure led to Gibbs working with Jenny Sheppard and completing the mission--was unique, never felt forced. Michael O'Neill--another alumni from "The Unit"--has a key role as former NCIS agent. This two-parter was great in terms of story, and is also highly noted because of the makeup work--both Rocky Carroll and Michael Nouri were made to look twenty years younger in "Enemies Domestic". Among the one-shots in the back end of the season is "Recruited", a parallel storyline of the investigation of the murder of a gay Navy recruiter with an introduction to Ducky Mallard's predecessor as NCIS Medical Examiner, Walter Magnus. Bob Newhart is brilliant as Magnus, who has become frustrated that Alzheimer's is taking away the memories of the good that he did. The other one-shot of note is the brilliant "A Man Walks Into A Bar..." Wendy Makkena is introduced as Dr. Rachel Cranston, tasked with doing a psychological evaluation of Gibbs' team--and also bringing up the memory of a lost friend to the team. This is a jewel of an episode that gives the viewer a character in Cranston that we won't mind having visit again. The core story of the second half of the season is the "Port-To-Port Killer" storyline--not just the mystery of why and who he is, but his specific connection to the CIA, the Secretary of The Navy...and to Leon Vance. Of course, the complication here is that Gibbs' team ISN'T the lead team investigating this case--bringing up the issue that started this season, many believing that Gibbs is out of the loop or can be overmatched; only to find out that Jethro has more on the ball than realized. Of course, anyone who has followed this series knows that once Trent Kort shows up, a situation is really much more complicated than believed since the slightly uncontrollable Company operative is involved. David Dayan Fisher returns, and brings the ominous nastiness of Kort back with him. Sarah Jane Morris' E.J. Barrett--the Special Agent in charge of the Rota, Spain NCIS Field Office (The position DiNozzo turned down in Season 4)--brings her team over in the hunt for "P2P"--including Alimi Ballard (Recently of "NUMB3RS", and following Dylan Bruno's guest shots from Season 7), and the MTAC is forced into a back-seat position...all the more complicated by E.J. starting a relationship with Tony. Plus, Ziva's current boyfriend is revealed to be Ray Cruz (Enrique Murciano from "Without A Trace"), a CIA operative who knows more about "P2P" than he's letting on...as well as knowing E.J. Special in this arc is "Baltimore"--an episode which could also be called "When Jethro Met Tony", since it details the first time Gibbs and DiNozzo met. Unique to this episode is a cameo from Tim Kelleher, reprising Special Agent Christopher Pacci; and speaking a line that chillingly portends Pacci's future. This is a brutal, punch-in-the-mouth storyline; maybe the series' most violent arc since the Ari Haswari episodes. Which brings us to Muse Watson. It was unusual--and somewhat telling--that we didn't get the two-to-three Mike Franks stories in this season. But there were clues--that Mike was beat to the draw in "The Spider And The Fly" (Mike NEVER got beat in a shootout situation previously), and his impatience in that episode is telling. "Swan Song" and "Pyramid" give us the sad end to a great character--of course, that we didn't realize that Watson had Mike in "ghost" mode until late in "Swan Song"...which gives us who were huge fans of that character hope that Mike might come back in Gibbs' mind at various points. If he doesn't...thank you, Muse. We will miss Mike's "Shoot First, Ask Questions, Then Shoot Again" nature. Obviously, "Pyramid" wraps up the "P2P" story...and opens up the story for Season 9. Kerr Smith's turn as Jonas Cobb, the Bourne-like operative (Created due to a white paper that Vance wrote while at the Naval War College...where NCIS recruited him in "Enemies Domestic") that the Company (Specifically, Kort) has lost control of and has a personal vendetta against Jude Ciccolella's Phillip Davenport--the SecNav--manifesting through Cobb's atacks against E.J. (Davenport's niece, as it turned out) and her team...leading to Davenport's resignation and replacement by Matt Craven's Clayton Jarvis--and Jarvis opening up with an assignment specifically requiring DiNozzo...gets the ball rolling to the next season. All in all--a telling storyline in the season; revealing Vance's personal ties to the Intelligence community, Ziva's latest boyfriend having "ties", McGee's continuing Abby issues...and how many who consider themselves superior to him continually underestimate Leroy Jethro Gibbs--at least until they need him. Highly recommended set.

One of my annual rites of summer each year is the purchase of another season of my favorite TV show on DVD: NCIS. I now have all eleven available seasons of this show on disc, and have just recently pre-ordered Season 12. "NCIS," of course, is the long-running, very popular police procedural crime drama that, as of this writing, has completed its 12th season and has been renewed for a 13th. It has aired on CBS on Tuesday nights at 8:00 since it premiered in 2003. The show revolves around the Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS), an actual civilian-run law enforcement agency of the U.S. Navy. It follows the investigations of the Major Case Response Team (MCRT) located at the Washington Navy Yard in Washington, DC. Special Agent Leroy Jethro Gibbs (Harmon) leads this team, which is made up of Special Agents Tony DiNozzo (Michael Weatherly); Eleanor Bishop (Emily Wickersham) (who replaced the departed Cote de Pablo midway through Season 11); Timothy McGee (Sean Murray), Chief Medical Examiner Donald "Ducky" Mallard (David McCallum), and forensics expert Abby Sciuto (Pauley Perrette.) I've always thought that "NCIS" Season 8 was (and remains) one of the show's very best seasons of all time. This particular season, which ran from September 2010 through May 2011, is packed with some of the most dramatic, suspenseful, and moving episodes in the history of the show, and gives strong evidence that writers, producers, and actors were consistently working at their "full stretch" of creativity. Powerful individual episodes abound throughout the eighth season. "Enemies Foreign" and "Enemies Domestic," are two linked episodes where a visit to the US by Israeli Mossad director Eli David embroils the entire NCIS agency in chaos. It is in this pair of episodes that NCIS Director Leon Vance's shadowy history begins to be revealed. Other singularly outstanding episodes include: "Recruited," where the MCRT investigates a Navy recruiter's murder while "Ducky" is visited by his predecessor as Medical Examiner; and "A Man Walks Into a Bar," where each MCRT member must undergo a mandatory psychological evaluation, while at the same time investigating the shipboard slaying of a Naval officer. "NCIS" Season 8 also embarks on a wonderfully dramatic and suspenseful multi-episode story arc involving the "Port-to-Port Killer," a case that introduces a new team, complicates personal and professional relationships between agents on both teams, and further strains the already tenuous relationship between Director Vance and Special Agent Gibbs. Simply put, "NCIS" Season 8 is a standout season in every respect. Highly recommended.

Nice series. Great price for a whole season

If you have high blood pressure, watch these shows. They are fantastic. They make my life bearable and happy. I could watch them 24.7; especially the original ones with TONY and ZIVA. There are no awards great enough for them to be recognized. THis is the best show that I have ever seen in my life. I am 76 years old. I cannot live without this program. I hope they bring Ziva and Tony back. The newer shows are not as good.

Good price

This show just keeps getting better and better. Michael Weatherly's directing debut was outstanding. Every episode this season was awesome, so well acted and directed. One episode has past clips in and I have to say this is the best 'clip show' I have ever seen. Some shows have always had too many clips so it was all clips and no current show. This was not one of those. There is even a clip never seen before. Great stuff. I just can't stop watching this excellent season over and over. It has lots of humour/humor and is great fun, plus all the serious stuff - not to be missed. What a treat. The final episode makes what to come in season 9 so intriguing. I can't wait.

Great show but I have to take a break from it every so often. It becomes repetitive and predictable at times. What draws me back to it are the characters. Gibbs, Abby, and Ducky are the core. As much as I like the show, I feel it has about run its course. Don't hate me! Just saying. Even Mash had to end.

NCIS has always been a show driven by characters, but Season Eight felt like the most personal season to date as bad guys seemed to take aim at the family members of our favorite NCIS agents more than any season before or since. This tone was set early on with the family drug cartel shooting up the shop of Gibbs father Jackson in an effort to send a message to Gibbs in the wrap up to the season seven arc. There’s also more complex interactions between Ziva and her father and Tony and his father. NCIS continued to tell entertaining stories of course. However, I couldn’t help but think that as we watched how close the bad guys came to the NCIS team that we might lose one of this core of actors that has really ramped NCIS into high gear for a six to seven year period call it season four to ten. The writers do a good job in making the viewer feel as though no member of the cast is safe and that things could change in a moment. Good storytelling + utilization of the unknown continues to make NCIS a winner.

Great DVD series

リージョン１だからパソコンで見ようとおもっていたけれどなぜかＤＶＤプレーヤーで見れました。 シーズン９はダメだったからこれだけ特別だったのかもしれませんが得した気分です。

Acteurs fantastiques, en Français. Excellente série a voir absolument. Je recommande

Es geht hierbei nicht um den Inhalt der Staffel - dass der gut ist, brauche ich hier nicht zu diskutieren -, sondern, dass ich einfach nur jedem empfehlen kann, sich ausländische DVD Boxen zu kaufen, weil man sich dann erstens dieses elende Zweigeteilte der Staffel erspart, wie es scheinbar nur hier in Deutschland vermehrt üblich ist, sondern weil die Boxen meistens auch billiger sind als bei uns. Gut, dann ist die ganze Schrift der Box eben in Italienisch, sodass man sich am besten ein Blatt mit einem Episodenguide ausdruckt, aber wenn ich dafür Geld spare, ist mir das egal. Die Tonspuren, also natürlich Deutsch und Englisch, sind ja dieselben wie in deutschen Boxen auch, von daher ist mir das egal, was draußen draufsteht.

Bester Preis für die Leistung für eine tolle DVD Sammlung und das in der Landessprache. Ergänzt die Sammlung und sieht gut aus