The smooch that shook the world!

Perhaps that's what the show was going for when we saw McGee and Bishop lock lips on the front drive of their house on NCIS Season 13 Episode 3.

Seems kind of sad to note that it was hardly believable, not just because we know Bishop is married and McGee has a girlfriend, but because we could never picture the two of them together under any circumstances.

Watch NCIS Season 13 Episode 3 Online

This show was, for the most part, uneven and at times confusing.

Things got a bit convoluted after the first commercial break, and we saw Bishop and McGee conversing together in the bullpen. I had to go back and re-watch that part again, just to catch the all-too fleeting caption "one week later". This is the second time the show has done this, and I'm certain there were others who were thrown off by the skewed timeline.

It's a great device when used properly, but it's a dicey one. A certain amount of care is needed to ensure the audience doesn't get too lost in the flip forward (or backward).

The case itself was messy, what with all of the diversions thrown in.

We only learned near the end of the show that Newton's death had nothing to do with the cold case he had still been investigating two years after the case closed. We were never told how or why he began investigating the Hudsons, or what it was that prompted Dean Hudson to eventually kill him.

There were two other pointless scenes in the story.

The first was the other diversion involving Master Sergeant Ramsey Dillon, who had previously been identified as a possible suspect in the two year old cold case. Only he turned out to be an actor in a theater production of La Cage Aux Folles. To be fair, diversions like this are standard for this show. So standard that they're almost predictable.

The second scene was Gibbs' interview of Lauren's family lawyer Randall Worthington. Other than providing us with George Wyner's very familiar face, that part of the story went nowhere and contributed nothing.

There might have been a third subplot that qualified as pointless, involving Tony's hunt for his ancestral roots. The only saving grace in that was his quiet talk with Gibbs about his search for "a sense of belonging" – and the fact that he mentioned he's not likely going to have kids. This put the exclamation point on an earlier revelation that he's having relationship issues with Zoe.

Other than that, it was just another excuse to paint Tony as a clown once again, after we learned that his ancestor Archibald Drummond was a con man who died in prison. Cue the rolled eyes as his team sat around the office – including Gibbs – and smirked.

It's like some of the show's writers didn't get the memo. The Tony-as-clown shtick is beyond tiresome. It's as unwelcome as Palmer's "oh is Gibbs right behind me?" act. I thought we had gotten beyond that.

We now know that Bishop and Jake are also having relationship issues. We can only hope this doesn't mean Tony and Bishop will drop their SOs and take up with each other.

Speaking of Bishop, it was hard at first to decide whether she was brave or foolhardy in her decision to break into the Hudsons' home to do some snooping. I'm going to pick "foolish" here. Abby told her that Gibbs and Tony were on the way, and we all know that it's standard procedure to never go in alone. A forensic scientist at the other end of a video feed does not qualify as backup. Her excuse that Gibbs is always telling her to take the initiative just sounds lame.

Final thoughts:

• Tony tried to get out of going on the road with Gibbs. Once might be understandable, but twice is not a coincidence. The two clearly have some unresolved issues.
• One good thing we can say about Tony: he no longer cowers at Gibbs. He's been speaking his mind more openly since last season and continues to do so now.
• Rather than have Abby tell us about her accident with the cop car, it would have been great to have seen it.
• We got to see McGee pouting again. He's becoming more firmly entrenched as an immature and insecure guy. I mean so what if Tony didn't tell him about his relationship issues?
• I had to go back and re-watch parts of the show in order to understand it better. You can too when you watch NCIS online

Now it's over to you. What are your thoughts on this episode? Why do you think Tony and Zoe are in trouble?

NCIS Cast: Before They Were Stars

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Douglas Wolfe was a staff writer for TV Fanatic. He retired in 2016. Follow him on Twitter