“Bury Your Dead” inaugurates the series' fifth season and first aired Tuesday, September 25, 2007.
Out of the miasma of NCIS’s stormy fourth season emerges the link between NCIS Director Jenny Shepard (Lauren Holly) and her nemesis Le Grenouille, who we have learned is Rene Benoit, father of Dr. Jeanne Benoit (Scottie Thompson), paramour of Special Agent Tony DiNozzo (Michael Weatherly). If that were not a full dance ticket for the director, Shepard’s father, Colonel Jasper Shepard (Webster Williams) resurfaces - in relation to the Le Grenouille case - after having been dead for 12 years.
That is the plot line on screen. The bigger story is the exit of producer/writer Donald P. Bellisario from the set of NCIS. Web and print scuttlebutt pitted Bellisario against a discontented central star Mark Harmon. Harmon and the staff were allegedly frustrated with Bellisario’s micromanagement which led to 16- to 20-hour work days by the end of season four and they squawked — loudly. The result is this changing of the guard as the series reaches its maturity in its fifth season. In any event, it should be interesting if not exciting to see how season five plays out.
And speaking of season five, the season premiere “Bury Your Dead” picks up where the limping season four finale left off, but in grand style reflecting the absence of Bellisario from the writing team. This episode opens with Director Shepard dreaming of the death of her father which reveals a fragmented subconscious link to Le Grenouille.
Festivities break to Tony just having met Rene Benoit (being greeted by his deep cover name, Professor Anthony DeNardo) at the end of last season’s ”Angel of Death”. Jeanne, her father, and Tony are riding in a limousine, ostensibly on the way to breakfast together. In the car the three converse about Tony’s ability to shoot a gun, having killed a junkie threatening Jeanne in “Angel of Death.” The conversation is interrupted by Jeanne’s beeper reminding her that she did not sign the death certificate of the two unfortunates back at the hospital.
The limousine returns to the hospital and seeing the opportunity to get away, believing his cover has been blown, Tony begins his exit. The scene breaks to NCIS headquarters where the viewer is reminded that it is actually Saturday morning and Mossad Agent-on-Loan-to-NCIS Ziva David (Cote de Pablo) and Special Agent Tim McGee (Sean Murray) run into one another as an elevator door opens. Ziva interrogates McGee about his presence at work on a Saturday only to find that both McGee and Special Agent Leroy Jethro Gibbs (Mark Harmon) have been at headquarters all night. The central question then becomes "where is Tony?"
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