'NCIS' Season 17 Episode 2: Ziva reveals she was never too far from family but chastizes Gibbs for not looking for her
It turns out Ziva David (Cote de Pablo) was closer than we could have ever imagined in the last few years. Even though she has been underground, separated from Tony DiNozzo (Michael Weatherly) and Tali (played by the twins Emelia Golfieri and Layla Golfieri) and her NCIS family, she was keeping tabs on all of them.
In two shocking scenes, Ziva reveals that while everyone abandoned her after her faked death, she was still keeping watch, like a guardian angel. In the first scene, she reunites with "Ducky" aka Dr. Donald Mallard (David McCallum) in Leroy Gibbs' basement.
While chatting with Ducky, she shows him a picture of Tali taken from far away. While she kept Tony in the dark because "the less Tony knows, the better", she had been keeping an eye on her daughter even when she went underground. This is where she drops the next bombshell -- it turns out she hadn't meant to disappear without letting Leroy Gibbs (Mark Harmon) know.
She tells Ducky she left behind clues that only Gibbs could follow to let him know she was alive. In a second complimentary scene, Ziva and Gibbs finally hash it out. It is no secret that Ziva sees Gibbs as a surrogate father figure.
It turns out, when she asked him about seeing his daughter for "one more minute" in the last episode, she wasn't talking about Gibbs' daughter, Kelly, or even referring to her own situation with Tali. Instead, she was expressing her sense of betrayal that Gibbs hadn't come looking for her after her faked death. "You abandoned me!" she shouts.
She reveals that when she had heard that Gibbs and McGee had been kidnapped and presumably killed in Paraguay, she used whatever means necessary to find them, not believing they were dead. While the rescue helicopter got them out safely, she worked in the shadows to take care of the captors so that no one would come looking for revenge.
She revealed that the scar on her wrist was from being wounded during the encounter to stop these captors in Paraguay. In a stinging accusal, she tells Gibbs "it's what you do for family", while he hadn't even hoped she "was still alive".
Later in the episode, Gibbs apologizes to her but it is clear that Ziva feels like her "family" let her down. However, she is clear she still wants to keep Tony in the dark while she wraps up the loose ends after Sahar's death.
Hopefully, her second appearance on the show, later in the season, will see her finally emerge, "into the light" for real. Then, we can all have that 'Tiva' reunion we've been waiting for since we heard of Ziva's return on the show.
'NCIS' airs on Tuesday at 8 p.m. on CBS.
