NCIS season 16 episode 5 review: Kasie Hines gets hired full time!

Last week’s episode of NCIS was easily our favorite of the season as we saw Gibbs take a much needed vacation from being the acting director while Vance has been gone. There was a lot of fun and gave us a few laughs as we watched a smiling Gibbs spending time with two of his close friends. The one big looming mystery we still have though is who is this woman that Vance met at physical therapy and why she has been watching him and with the story tonight bringing Vance back to work again we might have a bit more of this mystery unravel.

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Kasie is hired!

If you have been wondering if Kasie was going to become a permanent member of the NCIS team, wonder no longer! Kasie’s temporary employee contract is over and Vance made her position official tonight announcing to everyone that she’s now a permanent part of the team! She’s not an Abby replacement even though she’s doing Abby’s old job (no one will ever replace Abby) and we’ve been really happy with how different the character is. She’s positive and quirky, but in a completely different way the Abby was. We love how awkward she is since we are also really awkward and it makes her someone that we can relate to. Also she loves 50’s music and so do we – friends say we are stuck in a timewarp but we don’t really care, the 50’s had the best music.

Vance and Gibbs at odds

Tonight’s case of the week was really interesting! Normally we get some gruesome murder at the beginning of the episode, but this time we had a woman receiving an old tape from her husband from overseas that got lost in the mail from the 1970’s and it was a goodbye suicide message. What made it interesting was that another Marine has been in jail for over 40 years serving a sentence for the murder of this man even though evidence is surfacing that he didn’t do it. Is there enough here to help get this man out of prison? Gibbs thinks there might be, but his request to exhume the body for further investigation is denied by Vance saying that it’s lacking evidence. Gibbs is able to get more evidence (with the help of the man wrongfully imprisoned for the murder) and tries with Vance again and this time he gets the go ahead helping to get this man freed. Unfortunately whatever the beef is between Gibbs and Vance this episode, that animosity was pretty intense for most of the episode, that is until Gibbs gives Vance a peace offering of a cranberry muffin – then whatever their issue was it was immediately squashed. Why can’t all of life’s smaller issues be dealt with this way? Muffins could solve so many issues.

Related: Check out a preview for what’s coming up on NCIS episode 6!

CarterMatt Verdict

For those of you out there (us included) that have been enjoying the Gibbs and Sloane interactions (‘Slibbs’ if you will) there was a nice exchange tonight where they talked about how well they’ve come to know each other sharing a few small smiles like there’s something more there for them. There were some nice moments with Sloane and Gibbs when they were watching some of the tapes tonight – they were both affected by them at their core and we even saw Sloane touch Gibbs’ hand. We’ve heard that their relationship is going to grow this season, but whether or not it will become romantic… well we can only hope. Great episode tonight!

What did you think of this week’s episode of NCIS and how are you enjoying the season so far? Leave us a comment below and tell us what you think! (Photo: CBS)