Retrospective: 3.12 Boxed In

Let’s kick off our NCIS hiatus retrospective with the season three bottle episode Boxed In. I’ve picked it because I was reminded of it in the dying minutes of season nine when Tony and Ziva ended up trapped (one assumes) an in elevator after an explosion. Trapped, I say! Their spaces are getting smaller and smaller. Next time I expect they’ll pay homage to Out of Sight and have them stuck in the trunk of a car together. Cool.

Boxed In begins with Tony and Ziva wandering through a huge dock filled with shipping containers. Tony’s relating a tale about his previous night’s activities, and telling Ziva she should have been there. “You would have loved it! Two warriors squaring off in the rain!” I was going to say that didn’t sound like a date, but I can actually see Tony getting behind the idea of Ziva participating in a chick fight in the rain. Ziva says she had plans with McGee, and Tony continues for a moment on his story (“Mud glistening off their thongs…”) before his brain catches up with his ears. He can’t believe she was with McGee, and Ziva explains that she made him dinner. She likes to cook. And she throws in that Jimmy seemed to like it. Tony is appalled. “Palmer? I’ve never even been to your place, and you’re cooking dinner for McGeek and the autopsy gremlin?” My God, this is so early in their partnership. It’s like they’re two different people. Except not really, because this happens:

Yeah, she grabs his hand. She’s trying to draw his attention to two crates that have been unloaded from a container and look suspicious (that’s not supposed to happen at the dock, duh!). But you know what? There have been times in the past when she would’ve grabbed his attention by just punching him in the ribs. Hand-holding suggests that she’s a bit of a smitten kitten.

So they snap out of their discussion of their personal lives and but on their special agent faces. Guns are pulled and they run down the sides of the shipping container, but find no one inside it. That’s probably because the dude who was unloading it is now standing behind them with a machine gun. I hate it when that happens. “Hmm, I thought John was supposed to be in his office, but…Oh! There he is! He’s got the machine gun out again. Tsk, what a joker!”

Ziva sees the shooter and pulls Tony out of the line of fire, and then they turn and start shooting back at him.

Hey, that looks really cool, Dynamic Duo! Someone should put that on a t-shirt.

 Ta-da!

So, shoot shoot shoot, pop pop pop, Tony tells her to take cover inside the shipping container. And then, wouldn’t you know it, the bad guys close the door on them and they’re trapped inside. Ruh-row!

“I think we’ve just been screwed in here, Tony.”

“The term is ‘bolted’.”

Shut up, Tony.

Ziva’s not big on sitting around and waiting for other people to come help her, so she tries launching a few kicks at the door.

You won’t believe this, but launching a couple of roundhouse kicks at a steel door that’s been bolted closed from the outside won’t open it. And Tony knows it, because he already tried that. So Ziva lays into Tony (verbally) instead, because it was his stupid idea to take cover in the container. Tony calmly tells her not to panic, which just pisses her off even more (to his delight).

Another thing you won’t believe? Cell phone reception sucks when you’re surrounded by steel.

I know, right? Total wackiness city. Ziva tries her phone too and declares herself “braless”. “I noticed that earlier, but on your phone they’re called bars,” Tony retorts. It’s not like we don’t expect him to make the comment, but dude, not helping.

Tony protests that none of this is his fault, and adds (while standing in front of Ziva’s ass) that he likes “dark, tight spaces.” 

Good lord, NCIS! Ziva thinks that’s only until they insist on some kind of commitment. Tony insists that he was referring to his childhood bedroom. Ziva’s face:

 Yeah. What she said.

Tony posits that because their bad guys have unloaded the container (except of all the crates that are still in the container with them. Hello, logic) then they’re probably not coming back. Ziva’s like, ‘Yeah, how does that help us? We’re still here and I’m freezing.’ Tony thinks they could fire a couple of rounds out of the ventilation holes to get someone’s attention, but Ziva’s like ‘Idiot, if they didn’t hear the massive fire fight we just had then they’re not going to hear a single shot. Oh, and that’s a great way to waste our ammunition that we’ll need when bad guys come back. BRILLIANT!’ Geez, she’s seriously pissy with him right now. I still like it more than the jealousy bullshit of later seasons.

Tony remains calm (pissing her off even more, the little shit) and asks for her suggestion. Ziva—God bless her—wants to bust out of there now. That brilliant, completely unthought out plan gives Tony a reason to blatantly mock her, like he’s acting out a scene from a movie (he probably is).

As you can imagine, Ziva does not appreciate this. She starts yelling and then he yells back and THEN he goes back to his Zen place and tells her to chillax. Gibbs will find them. Ziva’s new to the team at this stage, so she takes the news thusly:

Argh!

She takes him at his word, but you know she’s not used to relying on other people to get her out of a jam. This episode is a lesson in teamwork for our Ziva.

Over in MTAC, Gibbs is having a videoconference with some dude in a suit talking about the cargo in the container that Tony and Ziva were originally looking for. He throws around words like “cluster bomblets” and “Iraq” and Gibbs guesses that the bomblets are, like, totally cute but probably unstable. Maybe they’re got little bows on them. Or they’re wearing bonnets and booties. Aw, cute little bomblets. Don’t know why Gibbs has a bug up his ass about them. The cargo was loaded in Senegal last week, and Gibbs wants to know why they’re only hearing about it now. Suit dude is all, “You ever work with the French, Agent Gibbs?” Oh, has he ever.

Flashback time! (Hey, remember how when Shane Brennan took over the show it was all about the Gibbs/Jenny flashbacks? Yeah, me too. I hated those.)

Gibbs got arrested by the gendarmes at some point in his Paris operation with Jenny. Fuckin’ Paris. What is it with this show and Paris? Anyway, Gibbs get the message that suit dude is trying to convey: the French are assholes and no one should ever be forced to work with them. (I have no personal experience that would allow me to weigh in on such an inflammatory statement. But American TV leads me to believe this is true.)

McGee wanders in looking all nervous and timid and tells Gibbs that Tony said he and Ziva had gotten new intel re: the ship and were switching their location. But the phone reception was terrible, so he didn’t catch the new location. Gibbs is hardly pleased with this information and tells McGee to find them. Because now he’s having visions of Tony and Ziva getting blown up by cluster bomblets.

Back in the container, Tony has discovered that many of the crates contain DVDs

Like a kid on Christmas. They’re Bollywood movies, which Tony says is low in his list of genres, but they’re “babe heavy”. Tony wonders why the bad guys would shoot at them over Bollywood movies, but Ziva doesn’t really care. She just wants to get out. She’s not exactly a highly trained investigator yet, folks. Her interests lie in blowing holes in the door so they can jimmy it open. With his eyes on the DVDs, Tony starts to say that firing a bullet in the container would be a really bad idea because of the ricochet—

Too late.

Ziva fires off a round at the door and, just like Tony says, it ricochets around the container. (Reality check interlude: surely Mossad-trained Ziva would have known that?) Ziva jumps into alpha protector mode and crash tackles Tony to the ground, covering him from the bullet.

“As I was saying, there’s a good chance the bullet might ricochet and kill one of us,” Tony says angrily. You can tell he’s angry because his face and gone red and the vein in his forehead is bulging. I never noticed that before.

Still lying on top of him, Ziva apologises. He asks why she’s still lying on top of him. Ziva says she’s protecting him (even though the bullet has lost its energy or has imbedded itself in a crate or something and is no longer a threat). She says he didn’t seem to mind when they were undercover, and Tony points out that duh, she was naked and on top of him then. Big difference. Ziva lifts her head to suggest that if it were warmer in the container…wink wink. But Tony still tells her to get off him. 

Heh. Denied. Still nice to look at.

Back in the bullpen, Gibbs talks to some guy about locating Tony and Ziva.

Holy crap! It’s not just some guy. It’s McGee Classic! Dude has gone through quite the transformation. Anyway, McGee Classic says that he tried to track the GPS in their cell phones but he’s not getting a signal. Maybe their phones are off (unlikely) or they’re in a structure that’s blocking the signal! Gibbs thinks they might be inside a ship, but McGee’s sticking to the theory that they’re just waiting until they’re in a location with better reception. Gibbs is all “Grr! You should have told me all this earlier!” McGee tries to stutter an explanation but eventually just apologies. And Gibbs replies, “GRR, don’t apologise, weakling!” And he storms out.

Gibbs Classic interlude:

The changes are subtle, but definitely there. Ya cranky old bastard.

Shipping container. Tony manages to get Ziva thinking like an investigator and they start talking about how the DVDs aren’t the weapons they were expecting to find in there. Tony realises that they space they’re in right now is smaller than it looked on the outside, and wouldn’t you know it, he’s right! Ziva kicks in the plywood back wall and they crawl into another space filled with more crates. But these ones have these markings on them:

Ooh! Looks like they found their cluster bombs. (Or DID THEY?) Also, Ziva’s Arabic skillz come in handy when she reads out the ominous markings on the crate to Tony: “This way up.” Ooooh. “Handle with care.” OOOOH! “Death to America.” Ahh, there’s the kicker. What we have here are some good ol’ fashioned terrorists. Or DO WE?

Heroes that they are, the Dynamic Duo decide to open the crates and have a look-see. Sorry, that should have read ‘crazy heroes with death wishes that they are’. Tony’s using his handy knife to open the box while explosives expert Ziva sits back and offers helpful tips like “careful” and “booby trapped”. Tony offers his own helpful information back, in saying that if the [possible] bomb goes off, he just wants her to know now that “Your life would’ve had more meaning if you’d slept with me.” Classic DiNozzo. And I don’t necessarily mean that as a compliment. “If you had anything else on your mind, perhaps I would have,” Ziva replies. You know what? At this point in their relationship I actually believe her.

They get the box open. Is it a bomb?

No. Just millions of dollars. Tony promises to buy Ziva a house when they get out of the shipping container.

Oh, look! She’s finally warming to him. But living like Trump ain’t in their future, because Tony quickly deduces that the money is counterfeit because the ink smells. He offers an old dollar note out of his pocket for a comparison sniff.

She says it smells like stake alcohol and Tony’s armpit. Hey, remember when Ziva used to make fun of Tony all the time for being smelly? Yeah, he’s not pleased.

He proves his point by setting fire to it. If it were real, it would have burned orange. 

See? It's blue flame. Fake. Check out Tony with the knowledge! Remember back when he sometimes did and said smart things? Yeah.

Gibbs and McGee have made it to port security at the dock. Head security dude says Tony and Ziva checked in at 7.06am (geez, really?) and headed to the north expansion of the dock. McGee tells him they changed their location, and security dude gets all uppity that they didn’t tell him and starts taking it out on McGee. McGee is still a little baby seal in season three, so he backs off timidly.

My, we have come a long way, haven’t we darling? Season nine McGee would be far more assertive.

They establish that no one knows where Tony and Ziva are, so they decide to head out to where they were last seen. But for that, they’ll need security tapes.

Shipping container. Tony is trying to count the money while Ziva uses the DVD crates to build “a defensive perimeter.” She wants him to help, but now he’s got a great idea to burn the money. Ziva thinks they’ll die of smoke inhalation, but Tony goes all sciency and tells her that heat rises, so the smoke will go out through the container’s ventilation slots and draw attention to their position (not to mention warm them up). Yeah, but…smoke isn’t heat, honey. Smoke doesn’t rise, unless it’s being sucked up by the air. Or something. Anyway, Tony sets fire to a stack of money.

It gets a bit out of control, the smoke starts to choke them and they have to put it out.

Another perfectly good (?) idea gets stomped on.

Gibbs is talking to Abby. The reception is terrible, but she eventually gets that he’s asking her to check security footage of the docks for Tony and Ziva. He’s all cranky (goes without saying, really) so Abby wants to talk to McGee. He confirms that Tony and Ziva are missing but doesn’t want to talk more because Gibbs is stalking around him like a lion getting ready to bite his head off. Abby makes McGee promise to call her as soon as he’s “Gibbs-free.” Heh.

Security dude tells Gibbs where the Senegalese ships are docked, and Gibbs decides to go look at them.

Shipping container. The fire is out and Tony counters Ziva’s claim that it was his worst idea ever by referring to a time he challenged a date to an oyster-eating competition. Oh, vomit. They go back to building Ziva’s defensive perimeter.

While they move boxes around, Tony asks how one wrangles an invitation to dinner at her place (remember she had McGee and Jimmy over the night before?). Ziva teases him about feeling left out. Tony says he can see why she would have invited McGee—he would have been a good guest and probably brought wine (“And dessert,” Ziva adds). But he doesn’t get the Palmer thing. He thinks he’s had more stimulating conversations with cats. Hey, now. Watch your mouth, boy. Ziva says she likes Jimmy, and that he tuned her piano. I still think that sounds like a euphemism.

That gets Tony talking about his piano playing days, and his music teacher who used to hit him with a ruler whenever he made a mistake.

He looks a little too fond o that memory, no? “Where you any good?” Ziva asks. Tony replies, “Yeah. She was.”

Ziva’s face:

Didn’t pick him as the type to enjoy being smacked.

Ducky! Hey, it’s nice to see him looking well. Even if he's listening to Abby and looking at her like she's insane. (Oh God, I’m tearing up again.)

 Abby’s irritated with Gibbs (is this the first time that’s ever happened?) for withholding information.

Ooh, pouty. Also, Abby Classic looks a little rounder, paler and overall goth-er than Abby now. She tells Ducky that she thinks Tony and Ziva are in trouble. Ducky’s concerned. There really wasn’t much point to that scene.

Shipping container. More moving of crates. Tony tells Ziva he likes her firing slot.

Stop flirting!

Ziva tells him that it’s okay for him to admit he’s scared. He laughs it off and starts talking about Steve McQueen, and then accuses her of having no fantasy life. Ziva insists that’s she does too, and of course now he wants to hear it.

She says her fantasy concerns him…and a Sumo wrestler. He doesn’t want to hear any more, and Ziva accuses him of being all about hot women and heroic men and refusing to dig any deeper within himself. So Tony starts talking about all the deep movies that he likes. Oh man, one or two references an episode is okay, but the movie thing really grates after a while. WE GET IT. He likes movies. He can break them down and apply them to his life and cases. ENOUGH.

The discussion leads Ziva to “obliquely” reveal something about her sex life, which Tony finds stunning because she never talks about herself. She says she likes privacy, but Tony does the “we could die here” speech and starts throwing personal questions at her.

She’s laughing until he innocently asks, “First time you realised Daddy wasn’t perfect?”

DENIED. He crossed a line. Not that he knew that going in, but now he feels kind of bad about it.

Oy vey, if only you knew what was in store, buddy.

The awkward moment is interrupted when the container is lifted by a forklift and they both fall over. That’s a new take on the ‘I wish the ground would open up and swallow me’ moment.

Oh no! Just as they’re being lifted and driven away, Gibbs and McGee roll up at that exact spot. McGee does a bit of a scout around and finds Tony and Ziva’s car. But of course they’re not there. They spread out to look for them and Gibbs finds some blood which leads them to this guy:

He was the guy shooting at Tony and Ziva in the teaser. NCIS crime scene techs turn up to help process the scene, and so Gibbs has a moment spare to blow up a latex glove and make a farm animal out of it. 

Is there nothing the man can’t do? They determine that Tony and Ziva took fire from both sides, and McGee worries that means they’re dead and asks if he should get divers in the water. Gibbs says no. Because aside from making farm animals out of latex gloves, the other special skill Gibbs is making use of today is his ability to feel it in his waters when one of his team dies. Handy!

Over at the dead guy, Ducky decides that his shitty dental work means he’s not from the US.

Shipping container. Tony’s hands are full of Ziva’s ass to help steady her as she tries to look out the ventilation slots to see where they’re going.

They fret over how the container will be transported to wherever they’re going: train, boat or truck.

They’re very pretty when they fret.

They hear the engine of a truck, and decide that they can leave a trail from the port to wherever they’re being taken. But with what? They don’t have any breadcrumbs. No sweat, they’ll use the counterfeit money. A brilliant plan, except a hobo who happens to be stumbling by as they leave the port starts picking up all the money.

Ziva keeps shoving money out of the container while Tony devises a brilliant plan to boost the reception of his cell phone. He just needs a wire (Ziva’s necklace), the spine of a DVD case and who in the goddamn hell is this guy? I’d like him to visit our show a little more often. 

Lab. Abby’s found Tony and Ziva on the surveillance tapes, and they all watch the two of them walk around the port and then draw their guns. But there’s a blasted container in the way so they can’t tell what happens next. Damn you, shipping container! Damn you to hell! They also see two bad guys with guns before one of them shoots out the security camera. BUT! All is not lost, because McGee’s noticed that there’s a container missing from the crime scene shots they just took at that location that was there on the video. So Tony and Ziva must have taken cover inside it!

Gibbs is relieved.

Hey, we hardly ever see Gibbs smile anymore.

McGuyver Tony uses Ziva’s hair band to attach her necklace to the DVD spine. Now all he needs is something to attach this new antenna to his cell phone. Ziva says they probably won’t need it because she’s shoved a couple of thousand dollars out the ventilation holes, and it’s only a matter of time before someone finds them. Except that the hobo is still following the trail of money and picking it all up. BLAST!

Port security, they’re trying to find out where the container went.

Container. They’ve arrived at their destination. Tony’s still looking for something to attach the antenna to his cell phone. Luckily for them, Ziva had some sex recently that resulted in friction burns to her knees, so she just pulls off a Band Aid and hands it over. 

That's so gross.

Lab. Abby determines that the three bullets that hit dead guy all came from Tony’s gun. Also? None of the blood they found on the scene was Tony or Ziva’s. You know, in case you were worried about that and thought that one of them had a massive gunshot wound in their sternum that I’d neglected to mention until now. Nevertheless, Abby’s freaking out even though she’s trying to talk herself out of freaking out, and thank God Ducky’s there to giver her a hug.

Oh God. Ducky. I just can’t right now.

Container. A bad guy cracks open one of the doors and yells at Tony and Ziva to come out. They both take cover behind Ziva’s crates, and she responds by waiting until she can see bad guy’s foot and then putting a bullet through it. Good girl. She tells Tony to try to make his phone call now that his rig is complete.

And what a rig.

Tony gets on to Gibbs and tells him they left a trail of money. The reception cuts out but Abby manages to triangulate Tony’s location to within 500 metres. Well, phew.

It’s McGuyver day on NCIS, because the bad guys have built a pulley system that allows them to open the doors of the container from a safe distance to avoid being shot. Crafty buggers. Without warning (how rude!), they then start shooting machine guns into the container. Tony and Ziva shoot back from behind their barricades (how many bullets do they have in a clip?), then retreat and look nervous.

Abby can’t get Gibbs or McGee on their cell phones so calls port security. She asks them to relay a message on the radio to tell Gibbs where Tony and Ziva are. Security dude who’s been working with Gibbs and McGee to locate the Dynamic Duo promises to pass on the message.

Tony and Ziva are still taking cover behind the crates as the bad guys keep peppering them with bullets. Tony frets that he’s down to four bullets (finally). Ziva says she has six, but doesnt think it matters because if the gunfire from outside continues as it has it’ll rip apart the crates and they’ll be dead. They pause as Tony covers her head against fire.

Tony comes up with another idea. He yells at the bad guys that if they don’t stop shooting, he’ll set fire to all their money. Then he throws out two flaming bundles to prove he means it. Head bad guy tells them to stop burning his precious counterfeit money, and asks what they’re proposing to do now. “Surrender!” Tony yells. “Then throw out your weapons!” head bad guy replies. Doy! Tony meant that bad guy should surrender to them, but head bad guy thinks that’s not going to happen. There’s $15 million in the container an he is confident (and Ziva agrees) that they’ll be dead before they burn half of it. Tony decides that the only thing to do is stall until Gibbs finds them.

Speaking of, Gibbs has found a hobo on the street picking up money. He remembers Tony told him to follow the money, so he gets some helpful advice from the hobo on the money trail. Hold on, Tony and Ziva! Gibbs is comin’ for ya!

Bang bang bang! Ziva’s out of bullets and Tony’s arm appears to be injured. Head bad guys orders them out of the container. It’s looking so bad for Tony and Ziva that she takes their last moments alive to apologise for not inviting him to dinner last night. Oh, well that’s really decent of you Ziva. I’m sure he appreciates that and would tell you so, if not for port security guy suddenly turning up and holding the bad guys at gunpoint. Yay for port security guy!

OR NOT!

Because once Tony and Ziva are out of the container, port security guy turns his gun on them. Turns out he’s been in on the shipment of counterfeit money from the start. And Gibbs’ gut didn’t pick up on that? Hmm. Interesting. It’s not like Gibbs gut to be on the fritz when his team is in trouble. Usually it’s all set to make leaps in logic and pull information out of thin air to help him save the day. Ah well, we all have bad days.

Tony and Ziva are only too happy to tell EVIL port security guy that they burned a bunch of his money. EVIL port security guy looses his cool and cocks his gun, but then Gibbs FINALLY shows up and saves the day. Of course. Ziva kicks EVIL port security guy in the nuts, which seems a little sloppy for her but whatever. She’s mad. And she needs to pee real bad.

Back in the bullpen after a long day being stuck in a box, Tony’s arm is in a sling and he has McGee clean soot from the fire off his face.

Yeah, I can’t see modern day McGee doing that. Eventually McGee Classic tires of it too and decides that Tony’s wound shouldn’t prevent him from cleaning his own damn face. Tony’s all passive aggressive ‘Don’t come to me for help the next time you get shot, then,’ and McGee counters that Ziva told him Tony didn’t get shot, but scratched his arm on a crate. That’s more like it.

Abby comes running in to wrap her arms around Tony and tell him how worried she was about him.

McGee’s reaction:

Tony’s reaction to McGee’s reaction:

Good lord.

Abby frets over who’s going to drive Tony home, which is when Ziva arrives to say she is. She’s going to make him dinner tonight! Aw, these two are finally starting to bond. Then, to Ziva’s absolute shock (and ours—Abby was not keen on Ziva at this point in time) Abby grabs her in a tight hug as well.

“I’m glad you’re not dead,” Abby states. Yowza. Abby must’ve really hated her to be so measured instead of jumping up and down and rambling like normal.

Anyway, Ziva says she’s cooking Italian for dinner, and Abby tells Tony that Ziva’s cooking rocks. Apparently she was at dinner last night too. And so was Gibbs. And then the episode ends on Tony looking kind of pouty. Ah, don’t worry about it. Wait until Gibbs retires at the end of this season and you start spending evenings at Ziva’s place. Bet she cooks for you then, if you know what I mean and I think you do*.

*They totally didn’t sleep together that summer.

That’s it! Thanks for joining me on this week’s retrospective. I’ll aim to do another next week.