Please tell me this isn't the case? I stopped watching after season 7 and have been planning on watching seasons 8-11 sometime around Thanksgiving with some time off work that I am taking.
It isn't the worst thing on TV, but last night was pretty weak. NCIS is just what it is. Banter between Tony and Kate/Ziva/Anything with a vagina, Gibbs being pissy but in a loving way, Abby being an allegedly sexy nerd with a heart of gold, English quips from the Man From Uncle, nerdiness from the assistant.. just the same formula reheated and repeated every week.
The "grab a plane" thing and the guy gets from DC to a police vehicle in Finland in about half an hour? That bothers me. It has to make some sense timeline wise or it crosses the line into stupidity.
The distance from DC to Finland is about 4000 miles. Let's say DiNozzo was able to get Eldon W. Joersz to fly him there in a Lockheed SR71 Blackbird. You're STILL looking at two hours of flight time in the fastest plane ever recorded. We all know Joersz isn't available. So let's put him on a fighter jet. Average speed there? At best about 1400 mph. So now we're THREE hours out. But you know Tony isn't on a fighter. He's in a transport of some kind. So let's put him in the Gulfstream G450 (which the Navy doesn't officially use but could possibly have available). Cruising speed is about 680 mph. Now we're a SIX hour flight at best. And that's probably a reasonable estimation of the quickest actual flight time to get him there.
That doesn't take into consideration getting to the airport in DC, pre-flight checks, landing, connecting with Finland security forces and driving 20+ miles into the middle of nowhere AND locating someone on the ground who had no outgoing signal.
But he gets there in the time it takes Gibbs to double back on three shooters who are less than a half mile behind him? AND Gibbs and the bad guy are standing in the middle of the only road within a hundred miles engaged in a face-to-face standoff/showdown? Yeah, that's happening.
PLUS, these three guys (one barely able to walk) trick the bad guys and come up on their empty truck. Instead of stealing the damn thing and driving the 15 miles to freedom -- they blow it up? So they can wander around and shoot at each other? stuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuupid.
You don't have to get everything perfect, but I don't like having my intelligence insulted.