Sunday, December 30, 2012

Thoughts on NCIS ep "Dog Tags" (S5)

I normally don't watch this episode, because I get so angry at Abby. I don't like being angry at Abby, since she's one of my favorite characters on the show (in fact, there are a couple of episodes I don't watch, simply for that reason.)

At the beginning of the episode, Team Gibbs is at the home of a Petty Officer Kyle Hanson, a Navy dog handler to serve a warrant (they're trying to find out how drugs are getting on the base). When they break into the house, they find the man dead, apparently mauled. Cut to the back of the house, where a dog crashes through the back door and attacks McGee. The team inside hears a gunshot and run out to find the dog down and McGee bleeding from bites to the neck and arm.

Ducky (medical examiner) treats both McGee and the dog's wounds, and Gibbs orders McGee to take the dog back to NCIS headquarters. Cut to the evidence garage, where Abby meets McGee and sees that he's been bitten. She opens the car door and sees the dog muzzled, lying on McGee's blazer, and with a bandage covering the gunshot wound. She then gets angry at McGee, demanding to know how he could shoot "a poor sweet dog" and calling him "Bad McGee!" I couldn't believe it. She wasn't there; she didn't know what happened! (And I gotta tell you, I loved the exchange she and McGee had.

Abby (after McGee tells her that the dog [allegedly] killed his handler): Dogs don't kill people! People kill people!
McGee: People with dogs who kill people kill people!

Yeah. Made no sense to me either.)

Anyway, Abby spends the rest of the episode trying to prove the dog's innocence (which she does; another Petty Officer was responsible for the murder and planting cocaine in Hanson's house to make it look like he was part of the drug smuggling ring.) At one point, she takes "Jethro" (she renamed the dog from Butch) back to Pax River to see if she can find more evidence. What she finds is dog skeletons, which she calls in to the team. When they get to the base, McGee asks her, "Shouldn't that dog be muzzled?" to which she replies, "Muzzle yourself, McGee! It's not like he shot you." Oh, that had my blood boiling. I so wanted to yell, "Muzzle yourself, Abby! It's not like McGee tried to rip the dog's throat out." (See what I mean about being angry with her? To be fair to Abby, though, the team did find out later that the dog was high on cocaine at the time, although at this point in the episode, they didn't know that.)

Another point where I was angry at her was when Jethro had to have surgery to remove part of a knife blade from his stomach (Petty Officer Perilli had broken her knife while stabbing Hanson, and the dog swallowed it). Abby went around collecting donations to get him flowers (I have to agree with McGee: Flowers for a dog?) Abby showed him her spiked wrist cuffs and said, "You see these little spiky things, McGee? Some people wear them just for show. I don't." (Yeah. Threatening a federal agent. That's really smart, Abs! *smacks head*)

And then there's the end of the episode, where Abby basically tricks McGee into adopting the dog. Maybe I wouldn't have a problem with it, seeing as how the dog was proved innocent in the end, but then I'm not McGee. (I wonder what ever happened to Jethro? Except for a picture in a subsequent episode where he and McGee seem to be getting along just fine (the pic is of Jethro licking McGee's face)), we haven't heard word one about him.

*Some quick remarks about how other members of the team (notably Gibbs and Tony) treated McGee:

  • As mentioned before, Gibbs orders McGee to take Butch back to headquarters... by himself. Even though Butch was muzzled and had been shot, I wouldn't feel comfortable doing that. After all, he attacked McGee once -- what would keep him from doing it again?
  • That stupid barking dog CD that Tony was playing when McGee came up from the evidence garage! Good thing the poor guy apparently has a strong heart and nerves of steel...
Well, that's it for today. Maybe I'll start doing the occasional NCIS episode review when the mood strikes me. (If anyone's interested in reading my thoughts on the show.) Let me know if you are?

And just fyi: If a dog ever attacked me, I'd grab whatever I could (a gun, a shovel, a tree branch) and shoot it or beat it off. I love dogs, but I love my life more.

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