NCIS Season 7 Episode 2: "Reunion" Recap & Review

Is Ziva Back with Team Gibbs?

You might think this episode of NCIS is about how Team Gibbs solves the grizzly murders of three men in a hotel room, including a naval staff sergeant and a Pentagon file clerk. They have been killed off in very horrible ways: one suffocated by a duffel bag, another forced into alcohol poisoning and the third drowned in a toilet.

However, this episode is really all about Ziva. Ziva David, ex-Mossad Liaison Officer for NCIS, who as of the beginning of the show still hasn't officially rejoined the team after being rescued in a daring mission by NCIS in Somalia.

Ziva is everywhere this episode. Ziva apologizing to Gibbs. Ziva given the verbal equivalent of a Gibbs Slap by Abby. Ziva and Director Vance debating if she can rejoin the team or not. comes Ziva going to get a psych evaluation. Ziva somehow getting coffee in the same place that McGee does. Ziva giving Tony the MacGuffin that helps to unlock the rest of the case. Ziva, Ziva Ziva!

Don't think I'm complaining though. Fans have been wanting some answers as to the future of our favorite Israeli "exchange student" and in this episode, we get...most of them. What her loyalties are, how she realizes she was wrong about the Tony / Rivkin face-off, what she has come to realize about who she can really trust. Unfortunately her real feelings for Tony...well, it looks like that still waits in the wings, the better to tease loyal "Tiva" supporters with.

The fun begins as a stripper in a cop costume enters a hotel room, discovering the bodies and giving her best horror movie scream. We come back from the title sequence with Agent Fillmore, Ziva's latest replacement handing in her resignation, claiming Tony is too much of a childish and juvenile attention-seeker and McGee the willing sidekick who sidekicks too much. This results in some fun interplay in the following acts when McGee tries to "man up" and take the leadership position, but well, he is just too McGee in these situations for his own good. I definitely like that try as they might, there is no one who can really fill Ziva's shoes as the third member of the team.