‘NCIS’ season 11, episode 17 review: Tony rocks out, and we feel sorry for Jimmy
Tonight’s “NCIS” episode could be titled two separate ways: “Rock and a Hard Place” (which is the actual title for the episode), or “The One Where Jimmy Palmer Gets No Happy Ending.” Seriously? If the writers wanted us to come away from this one feeling completely awful for the guy, the succeeded.
We suppose the positive about this is that it gave Brian Dietzen a very good story, which is nice given that he hasn’t really had that much to do in close to forever. He was so looking forward to welcoming a child into his world, only to soon realize that the birth bother decided that they wanted to keep the baby instead. For innovation, we cannot exactly give this a high mark of approval, given that we have seen this happen so many times before. What really sold it was more of the scenes between Dietzen and Mark Harmon, who totally plays the grizzled “never give up” guy better than anyone else on TV.
As for what Tony was up to this week, we found most of this entertaining since it put him in the odd position of having to babysit an aging rock star, played by a guy we love very much in Keith Carradine (playing a very different sort of character than usual). There were some nice twists ad turns in here, but nothing completely out of the ordinary save for the guy star, and the chance to see Michael Weatherly mix it up.
The overall take on this episode is that really, it is once again a tale of two halves. As horrible as we felt about the end of Jimmy’s story, there was some of the best acting we’ve seen on the show in a while with it. (Also, kudos to Pauley Perrette.) The Tony story, meanwhile, was cheesy enough to be served at a nacho stand … but sometimes, nachos can be good. To us probably the most appealing thing about it is that it felt a little more old-school than some recent hours, and it balanced out the characters better rather than giving us too much of one or two people for consecutive weeks. Still, it’s not “NCIS” Shakespeare. Grade: B-.
We’re more intrigued by next week’s jaunt to New Orleans, which you can see more of at the link here in the form of the first promo. Also, sign up now for our CarterMatt Newsletter if you want to get a few more updates from us via email.
Photo: CBS