User Reviews

NCIS became one of TV's all-time hit series due to cast chemistry and excellent writing. Both attributes are on view in "Cover Story", one of my all-time favorite episodes.

On IMDb only a single review is posted, spending its entire length foolishly complaining about a technical error. This is a symptom of our trivia-obsessed current culture, where a clown who finds continuity errors and goofs in major films has a huge website following, but in which young buffs no longer look up to an incisive role model like Pauline Kael or Andrew Sarris the way we boomers did while cultivating our motion picture obsession.

An ingenious script by David North grabs the viewer by the throat early on when McGee discovers that his sense of déja vu at the crime scene stems from the victim so closely resembling one of the fictional characters of his latest novel. He's stymied at Chapter 7 with writer's block, but the other NCIS crew stop mocking him when they discover that they are all potential victims, since Timothy has been using them as the close-to-the-bone models for his invented protagonists.

This element of jeopardy for the team was a clever device to extend the episode beyond its obviously McGee-centric premise. And like many a latter-day episode of "Castle", it permitted the viewer to revel in the comparison of "fictional" vs. "real" (just as fictional, however) characters as the descriptions in the novel-in-progress became clear.

This gimmick was terrifically developed, and the fact that the clue to catching the killer was a goof did not spoil the episode at all. As I watched I fleetingly was aware of the much-used nature of a typewriter ribbon, but my mind glossed over this fact and accepted the twist -such is the want-to-believe nature of a fan. Ordinarily a nitpicker, I wanted to enjoy this episode, and I did.

I like the bit with the pickup in the drive through coffee shop