We finally got our first non-Ziva (Cote de Pablo) episode and in all honesty—it wasn’t that bad.
Showrunner and Executive Producer Gary Glasberg along with some of the cast have repeatedly assured fans the show will continue to be successful and will adapt to the unexpected changes.
We saw some of that adaption pretty early in Tuesday's episode as the title sequence has been totally revamped. This took away some of the pain of not seeing Cote de Pablo’s name and face in the sequence. However, it still felt like something was missing.
The episode did a good job of acknowledging Ziva’s absence without hurting the storyline or being overly sentimental. There was the nice moment with Tony’s (Michael Weatherly) picture still being on Ziva’s computer screen. Ducky’s (David McCallum) joke about McGee (Sean Murray) wearing Ziva’s scarf made a touching moment funny as well.
There were many things that stayed the same throughout the episode which reminded fans that the factors that make NCIS great haven’t left. Gibbs’ (Mark Harmon) confusion at McGee’s idea to use Twitter in the investigation still proves he’s amusingly out of touch with technology. Tony’s enjoyment at McGee’s inability to find his credentials still proves they have a funny probee/ranking officer relationship. Ducky's permission to let Palmer (Brian Dietzen) deal with his adoption issues still shows they are still very much mentor/mentee. And Abby (Pauley Perrette), well, Abby just continued to be Abby.
Roma Maffia made her debut as Vera Strickland, the first of a few fill-ins in Ziva’s absence until Emily Wickersham’s Bishop appears. She was funny at times and it was nice to see Gibbs referred to as “probee” once again.
All-in-all Glassberg and his team put together a solid episode post-Ziva and it looks like the show will be just fine. I will miss the butchered idioms, “Tiva” and Ziva’s unique ability to be threatening. However, we fans will have to move on. And with this fist post-Ziva episode, Glasberg and his team are doing a good job of helping us do just that.
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“NCIS” airs Tuesdays at 8/7c on CBS.
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