(S04E23) This was kind of a confusing episode to me. Not that the story was hard to follow, just that it seemed poorly conceived. I thought the case of the week was well done, but kind of out of place. With it being the end of the season, and the plan already in place to make this a two parter, I would have rather seen something that focused in on the big stories.

It almost felt like flipping the channels between two episodes that were running at the same time. The brief phone conversations between Gibbs and Shepard kind of tied the two stories together, but more than anything, they just pointed out that the story of the week was taking up time that could have been spent on La Grenouille. Maybe I'm just a little impatient, having caught a bit of the finale fever, but it just didn't all fit together for me.

(S04E14) And that is why sweeps are so good. We finally got some answers concerning what Director Shepard has been doing with Tony for the last few months. Plus, those answers involved a big guest star, Armand Assante. Fun stuff.

I was happy to see them get going with the undercover story. And pretty happy with the results as well. The rest of the team stumbling into the middle of the ongoing La Grenouille investigation while following their own leads was a good way to do it. Having the tip come from Ziva's Mossad connections put it out of Shepard's court.

The thing that surprised me most about all of it was the revelation that Gibbs has been in the dark the whole time. There really did seem to be some hints that Gibbs was in on it. Just some clever misdirection from the writers I guess.