NCIS Considers Offering Safe Harbor

NCIS teams up with Coast Guard investigator Abigail Borin (Diane Neal) when a Coast Guard petty officer is shot dead aboard what was thought to have been an abandoned ship floating toward Norfolk Naval Station.

“Safe Harbor” focused on a Lebanese family–a husband, wife, and two sons–found in one of the ship’s compartments. At first, they claimed to have sought passage from the ship’s crew, but it was soon determined they four had been the only people aboard for a week. The United States’ immigration policies generated much of the episode’s tension. Some would say the family should have been granted asylum right away, that the U.S. should provide to all the freedom for which it stands. The episode challenged that notion by identifying the father as a former terrorist bomber.

So “Safe Harbor” was a classic shell game: Which member of the family had shot the petty officer? With four suspects, my own opinion could never lean too heavily toward any one of them. The episode had a good balance of elements: emotional weight from Ziva bonding with the mother while questioning her aboard the ship, and the far-reaching decision whether to grant asylum set against the close quarters of the ship.

The nits I have to pick with “Safe Harbor” are at the beginning and the climax. After the pre-credits sequence where the petty officer was killed, the action shifted to the squad room at NCIS, and they weren’t on the case yet. I would have liked to maintain the momentum and see more of how the Coast Guard reacted immediately after the shooting.

I liked the discovery of a plot to convince the U.S. to let the ship dock and then set off a bomb that would damage or destroy several ships at Norfolk. The mother played a crucial role talking one of her sons out of detonating the bomb. As moving as this was, I don’t know that someone who seemed so committed to bombing moments earlier could be talked out of doing it.