NCIS: The Fourth Season [6 Discs] [DVD]

Still not completely recovered from the serious injuries incurred during the near-apocalyptic Season Three finale of NCIS, Leroy Jethro Gibbs (Mark Harmon) has at the outset of Season Four retired from his position as head of the Naval Criminal Investigative Service comprised of Ziva David (Cote de Pablo), Tony DiNozzo (Michael Weatherly), Abby Sciuto (Pauley Perrette), Tim McGee (Sean Murray) and Dr. Donald "Ducky" Mallard (David McCallum). Now the team is under the command of hotheaded DiNozzo--but not for long. Emerging from his self-imposed exile when his coworker Ziva is placed in jeopardy in the season opener "Shalom", Gibbs has assumed command of the team by the next episode "Escape", and within a few weeks he's working at full throttle. However, despite the tantalizing revelations throughout Season Three, the intensely private Gibbs still remains something of an enigma to the other NCI-ers--a fact that proves most frustrating to the unit's director Jennifer Shepard (Lauren Holly, who also happens to be Gibbs' former lover. (Among the "clues" to Gibbs' former life this time around is the unexpected appearance of his sister Sarah, played by Troian Bellisario, daughter of series producer Donald P. Bellisario). Newcomers to the recurring-character roster this year included Scottie Thompson as Tony's girlfriend Jeanne Benoit, a DC-based doctor; and Susanna Thompson as Lt. Col. Hollis Mann, Gibbs' counterpart in the Army CID, with whom Gibbs implicitly begins a romance as the season winds down. Season Four concludes with the cliffhanging "Angel of Death", in which all the team members are ordered to take a Homeland Security polygraph tests. Can it be that the many secrets long withheld by Gibbs and his cohorts are at last to be exposed for the world to see?~Hal Erickson