In Which NCIS Openly Admits that Gibbs is a Cowboy.

So there wasn't a new episode of NCIS this week, which makes me sad. So instead I'm sitting here on a Tuesday night watching one of the reruns on USA (the cable network, not the country) watching one of the old episodes from the first season, back before Ziva and McGee were a regular part of the show. In other words, I'm the most bored that I can be while watching an episode of NCIS. So what is a young Miss Julie to do in order to make the most of this situation? Why, reminisce about the last new episode of NCIS, of course! (Note that I'm likely to give things away, so if you want to watch the episode first, go here, or if that doesn't work just go to cbs.com and find it there.)

So when I finally got caught up last week and saw the latest episode from this season, happily titled "South by Southwest," my first reaction was the following:

OMG GIBBS ON A HORSE GIBBS ON A HORSE!!!!

And not just Gibbs either, my friends. There's Gibbs, the grizzled old Sheriff whose name escapes me, and, of course, Special Agent Anthony DiNozzo, who I think came along just so he could make that Blazing Saddles reference later in the episode. Old Sheriff also openly and without irony refers to Tony as a "tenderfoot" at one point. Not only that, but we also have some stunning desert-y scenery (meant to be in the area of Yuma, AZ, no less, home of my sister, her husband, and the adorable little folks they hang out with every day), uranium paintings by a wild West hippie painter woman, and - AND - there's this part where Gibbs stands his ground, under fire, and shoots a helicopter pilot with a shotgun. The helicopter then explodes, though you only get to see that through the satellite feed Ziva and McGee are watching back at base. In other words, this was pretty much THE BEST NCIS EPISODE EVER.

Something you should know about me is that I really like horses, and I really like people who ride horses, and I have this thing where I think real, non-hick cowboys are impossibly cool. My mother grew up moving to different ranches throughout western Montana because her father was a real, chaps-wearing, ride-the-range cowboy. My dad used to catch pigs and "break" horses to make extra money; last Winter he told us the story of the time they hitched a team of horses up to a truck that got stuck in the snow on the old family farm. It's in the blood, folks. So when I see Leroy Jethro Gibbs, whom I was already convinced might actually be the coolest person on the planet, tacking up a western saddle and riding through the Arizona badlands with his usual confident ease? Well, let's just say it warms my heart to a pretty serious degree. And then when he leaps off that horse in one fluid motion, shotgun in hand, and takes aim at some passing murderer in a helicopter? Friends, I am sold. Even the sight of Tony bouncing around awkwardly on horseback made me smile, and not just in a mocking kind of way (one might be tempted to wonder what Tony is doing here in the first place. I can only assume he was chosen because Ziva might spook the horse, and the horse might spook McGee. Plus Tony has the ridiculous cowboy boots and, as I mentioned, the Blazing Saddles jokes).

My rerun is over, so I'll just go ahead and sum up. This episode was AWESOME. Go watch it now.

Bonus reason to like it: you get to see Abby's black lace parasol.

I WANT ONE.
...And then I want to be fabulous enough to use it in public. The end.