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5.08 Designated Target
| ◄ Previous Episode | Season #: 5 | Episode #: 08 | Air Date: November 13, 2007 | Next Episode ► |
Designated Target
| Synopsis: |
| A murder investigation of a Rear Admiral takes a shocking turn when a woman, a political refugee, returns home to search for her husband. |
| Episode Recap: |
| The NCIS team's investigation into the assassination of a Rear Admiral takes an unexpected and emotional turn when they meet a woman searching for her missing husband, a political refugee from Burundi, in Africa. The Rear Admiral's official car broke down so he took a cab. Cutting through the park, a motorbike pulls alongside, shoots the driver, the cab crashes, and they then shoot the admiral. Team pursues the idea that the admiral is the victim, but Ducky finds that the cabbie's tooth was pulled. They realise that the killers do not know exactly whom they seek and they swiped photo, tooth for DNA and fingerprints, to try to identify that it is the right "hit". Tony and Ziva investigate the cab company, find that the dead cabbie was off the books and that leads them, eventually, to find that a series of 'hits' on cabbies have the same MO. But first they find the place where Burundian cabbies hang out, which leads them to a 'professor' who seemingly tries to help them. When the professor makes a mobile phone call, Tony and Ziva have McGee trace it and that leads to a woman from Burundi who has just arrived in the US. They start out to find her, but she arrives at NCIS HQ to claim the body...and then says the dead man is not her husband. The team realize the hitmen are pursuing any cabbie who looks like the woman's husband. He was a political activist in Burundi and there are those who don't want him to return to lead a new party. Turns out the State Dept helped him escape Burundi in the first place: they interview the ex-agent who dealt with his case...and later find he is still an agent and, just in the nick of time, they realise that he has sold information to the hitmen. The man thought it was old Intel of no use but the lynchpin to the whole deal is the taxi dispatcher: he is the only one who knew all of the cabbies and could identify when they were working 'off the books'. When the team finds the taxi dispatcher, he is dead, but only just. They actually hear the hitmen roar away on their motorbike. Tracking down the missing target was the challenge: Abby, who is on No-Caf-Pow is struggling with the lack of caffeine. She takes a fingerprint that the missing man left on the locket that he gave his wife (on the photo in the locket, so it is a well preserved print) and they start trying to match it to drivers' licenses. When Abby gets sleepy because of lack of caffeine, she tries to talk herself out of it and tells Gibbs that she is still on the meter: Gibbs rewards her with coffee because she has just broken the case. Gibbs realises that the target would have stopped doing the cabs when the first murder happened and would be 'off meter', so he has McGee search on the Burundian 'gypsy cabbies' who have NOT worked since the first murder. From the five that turn up, the wife identifies her husband's driver's ID photo. That leads them to an address and they get there in time to prevent the "professor" and the hitmen from killing the cabbie in his own driveway. When Gibbs speaks to the man, having disarmed him, the man professes concern about his wife. Gibbs, in a softhearted moment, actually brought the civilian wife of the target man along to a gun battle with hitmen (because Ziva gave him a "look" back at NCIS HQ). She sensibly stayed in the car during the gun battle but, once the husband came up the driveway beside the house, she emerges and goes to him for the happy reunion, except he is shocked to see her, and his new wife and child emerge from the house. The old wife is told that he had the impression she had been killed when the whole village was wiped out in Burundi and she never answered his letters (she only received one). He apologises, but it is clear he does not see her as his future. She withdraws gracefully, announcing that she is just glad he is still alive. She gets into the car. Ziva, who had been impressed when she first interviewed the old wife, with the woman's belief in her husband being her soulmate, watches this non-reunion from the sidelines (as does the rest of the team.) Tony just gives Ziva a "hard look" and says nothing, but it is a fairly hostile glare. In this episode, Ziva did ask Tony whether he believed in soul mates but he gave a flip answer and she indicates she thinks he doesn't understand the concept. Throughout the episode, Tony has needled Ziva for her lack of idiomatic English (her failure to know slang terms, her failure to use contractions (she asks what are contraptions? ummm, one hates to criticize but here the writers have goofed...this is a woman who speaks multiple languages, so she is more likely than most to know terms like 'contraction' or even 'past participle'. She most definitely knows her way around a grammar primer as her errors are idiomatic, but her grammar is usually perfect (even her tenses)). Ziva has accused Tony of being xenophobic, as he was so hostile to the illegal immigrants. It is an odd dynamic between them in this episode. The only supposed humor in the episode is from McGee getting a girlfriend (the girl across the hall in his apartment building) but she turns out to be peculiar: she takes his mail, steals his credit card ID, uses the cards to run up $65k bills, gives him a cheque (because her dad is a billionaire) but wants McGee to get her arrested. It is how she gets her kicks. Otherwise, he likes her. He confides in caffeine-free Abby when Abby pushes him to tell all (she comes to his desk to demand answers as to what is wrong). Abby tells him to report the nutcase and that McGee has Abby's love and "that should be enough". But she doesn't say it romantically. The director featured for a few scenes with the state dept guy. Just grilling him and pulling rank and not a lot happens other than info for moving the story forward. Gibbs in the background does his silent menace act, and they use the threat of Gitmo to get the state dept freelancer to confess that he sold info to the bad guys. (the usual device...makes one wonder how did Gibbs get info before the Patriot Act took away legal rights?) There is a scene where Tony gives his credentials as the great-grandson of an immigrant who started a transport company and compares that to Ziva who 'flew in first class'. She points out that she was on an industrial/military plane but his point is that his ancestors went through Ellis Island and she sailed into a cushy job in NCIS. |
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| Started By | Thread Subject | Replies | Last Post | ||
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| levioso | Thoughts about Zeva and Tony | 3 | Feb 25 2009, 7:40 AM EST by Taormina | ||
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Thread started: Nov 14 2007, 12:19 PM EST
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After watching last nights episode, two thoughts ran through my head. First, that for as tough as Zeva is, she's such a romantic. Talk about opposing personalities...but I like the dueling sides of her personality.
The other thought was that I really don't think they should continue with the sexual tension between Tony and Zeva. If you look at the 2 people those they fell in love with, neither have exhibit those traits. It's a recipe for disaster. And more importantly, they'd wind up writing one of those characters off and I really do not want to lose either of them. I really like both of those characters. Thoughts?
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| chickadeebaby | THIS EPISODE | 16 | Nov 16 2007, 12:57 PM EST by tcrow61 | ||
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Thread started: Nov 13 2007, 9:10 PM EST
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Anyone else just see the episode??? Woah! How SAD??
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| Sorgiña | Re: Use of contractions by Ziva | 2 | Nov 15 2007, 6:58 AM EST by Sorgiña | ||
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Thread started: Nov 14 2007, 7:09 AM EST
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Having taught English as a foreign language for many years, not to mention having dealt with foreigners frequently all my life, one of the big giveaways of foreigner speakers even those who master the language is to use the long verb format in their sentences. Although it seems easy to English speakers, the use of contractions for foreigners is very hard to grasp, even for polyglots as in the case of Ziva. Furthermore, it's one of the things that tends to annoy those of us teaching English as a foreign language to students with advanced level, i.e. Cambridge Proficiency Certificate (Top grade TOEFL - but exam function has a a different format), is their tendency to use long format, mainly because they feel uncomfortable using the contracted format. Also contractions are difficult to understand for foreigners, you need to be really immersed in the language 100% for several years on the trot.
I find my father even after 60 years in the UK at times still reverts to the long format, particularly if he's been speaking to somebody in his own languages (Basque + Spanish - which also have contractions by the way) for a while beforehand, and until he gets back into the swing of English he does not use contractions. Don't presume to be an absolute authority but after teaching over 20 years, I reckon I do have some authority on the matter.
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