NCIS/Awesome

• In "Psych Out" Gibbs periodically spars with the head of 'psych-ops' aka The US department of Psychological warfare. half-way through the episode, Gibbs shows up unexplainedly at her kid's middle school. (which is classified info, since her kid is her one weakness). He then smiles without saying a word, while the US secretary of MIND GAMES proceeds to completely lose her shit. EPIC
• In "Once a Hero," Agent Lee - previously known mostly for sneaking off to have trysts with geeky assistant ME Jimmy Palmer - goes undercover to help the team bust a slave trader who kidnaps Chinese girls and pimps them out. She keeps her cool, even when the trader uncovers her bug, and when the rest of the team bursts in, she does her part by ruthlessly and efficiently beating down The Dragon and taking his gun. Magnificent.
  • She gets another one when, after being revealed as the mole and being held hostage by the Big Bad of the arc, she gives Gibbs the nod to shoot through her.
• In another episode, McGee, after being repeatedly harassed by the Deputy Secretary of State, verbally slaps her down and basically hangs up on her. The three people operating the video link in the room applaud.
  • Making the scene slightly more awesome for McGee is the fact that one of the three people there, and the first to start applauding, is played by Don S. Davis - General Hammond of Stargate SG-1.
  • McGee gets another one when he stands up to a prison full of convicts in "Caged"
    • "I've never hit a woman before, but you come at me with that thing and I will drop you!"
• Palmer himself gets one in the season five episode "About Face." After spending most of the episode in a deep funk over not being able to identify a man who surprised him at a crime scene and shot at him, when he finally does remember enough for the team to roll out to make the collar, he follows them to the scene only to be ordered by Gibbs to stay in the car. When he happens to catch sight of the shooter about to drive away, he takes off his glasses, floors his car, lets out a berserker yell and rams the gunman's truck, stopping him long enough for the team to get there and make the arrest. When Gibbs asks him what the hell he thought he was doing, he replies (somewhat dazedly) that he did not leave the car. Gibbs even pays him a characteristically oblique compliment for his atypical badassery.
• In "Iced," the team determines that a Marine was murdered as part of a hood's plot to take over leadership of a gang, but can't put together enough proof to go to court. Gibbs essentially says "No. We're not losing another one," and brings the guy in anyhow, and while Ziva, McGee, and Tony each take turns interrogating him, Gibbs brings in several other members of the gang, taking them through the evidence they've collected and explaining how the guy they thought was relaying orders from their leader had actually murdered the leader and three of his lieutenants by using the Marine as bait, concluding by pointing out that he'll never get a conviction. Then he collects the perp from the interrogation room and drives him back to his gang's hangout. Cut to the next morning and a news report about the perp's body being found in a dumpster, killed gang execution-style. Gibbs walks by and asks the team, "What are you all lookin' at?"
• Any scene with Gibbs and Tobias Fornell drips of awesome. "And people say we're bastards?" "Only because they know us."
• Heck, Ziva's first scene. She walks into the NCIS bullpen to find Tony fantasizing about their recently departed teammate, Kate. She sizes up the situation, and with a few well-placed questions manages to knock Tony completely off his game. He never quite recovers.
• Tony has his own CMofA in the pre-credits teaser of the season five episode "Requiem." Seeing Gibbs drive a car off a dock and into the water to escape gunfire from two mooks, Tony charges the gunmen head-on, shooting them both without missing a beat and then tossing his pistol aside to dive in after the car then hauls Gibbs and a civilian up and out of the water. .
  • This tops his previous Crowning Moment in season three's "Under Covers," when the team rushed to his rescue only to find that he'd already kicked the ever-living hell out of the mook who was about to shoot him, despite being tied to a chair.
  • "I didn't say it it was a perfect plan."
• Abby in "Bloodbath." "And don't look up my skirt!" * TAZE*
  • And later in that episode, Abby and Gibbs both get one simply by Gibbs turning off a light.
• One for Ducky: "Release the captives, Mr. Palmer!" in "Witch Hunt", a Halloween. The 'captives' referred to are a pair of masked teenagers dressed as ninja who'd made them late to the crime scene by egging the forensics van. Ducky had gone after them, subdued them and locked them in the back of the van. Once Jimmy lets them out, Ducky marches up, hands them paper towels and cleaning liquid, and tells them to get to work cleaning their mess. Everything is clean and the teens are gone before Ducky gets back. The icing on the cake is Ducky's commentary after setting them to work.

Ducky: "Nothing that impressive. After all, it's not like they were real ninjas..."

• Everything the team does in the episode, "Call of Silence" 2x7, concerning Ernest Yost, culminating in Gibbs in the interrogation room with him, triggering a flashback so that they can prove him innocent of murder, and let him keep his Medal of Honor.
  • This troper would like to mention the scene where Lt. Cmdr. Coleman of JAG, with two Marine escorts, arrives to formally arrest Yost and take him to Quantico. Yost is willing to go, but Tony and Kate attempt to stall; as the argument gets more heated, Tony reaches over to Yost and moves his tie to the side to reveal his Medal of Honor. Coleman shuts up fast and she and the Marines immediately snap to attention and salute. Disrespect of the Medal of Honor or one of its recipients is pretty much heresy to the military. While there is no military regulation that requires a salute, it has been a long standing military tradition to render a salute first to a Medal of Honor recipient, regardless of their rank. This troper thinks that any person who has won that medal deserves a salute from any other member of the armed forces, and a "Thank You Very Much" from any American not in uniform!
    • With respect sir, I'd like to direct you to a quote from one Leroy Jethro Gibbs, a CMOA in its own right.

Gibbs: You don't "win" the Medal of Honor...You're awarded it, for conspicuous gallantry above and beyond the call of duty.

• • The greatest scene for this troper was when Kate read off the circumstances surrounding Yost being awarded the Medal of Honor. She reads them in a narrative fashion, describing the unimaginable heroics as a stooped old widower walks down a hall. Tear Jerker as well.
• In the season 5 finale, the team's new boss actually understanding McGee's Techno Babble. "So, actually, you haven't done anything!"
• Also, Jenny dying in pretty much the most awesome fashion not involving an explosion. She takes, what, four guys with her?
  • Heard from my DI in boot camp many years ago. "If you going to buy the farm anyway, see how many of the bastards you can take with you!"
  • Another for Jenny: In Hiatus part 1, she manages to get into the ICU to visit Gibbs by calling then Secretary-of-State Condoleezza Rice. What tops it all off is this:

Head Nurse: Calling the president's not gonna work.
Jenny: The president? Now that would be overkill.

• • • Extra bonus points in that she begins the call: "Condi? Jenny."
    • Moments after that, a completely distraught Abby walks up to the nurse and nearly has a nervous breakdown, begging to see Gibbs and showing her a driver's license as ID, babbling that she looks different from her photo but that's her, honest, and the exasperated nurse just waves her through.
• Tony is a murder suspect. In his cell, he interrogates himself, including amateur psychoanalysis. Also a CMOA for Michael Weatherly, who acts the hell out of the whole scene.
  • Arguably topped by Gibbs, who watches silently, and when DiNozzo doubts himself, gives DiNozzo his patented Gibbs Slap to return him to reality.
  • In the same episode, Abby goes on a monologue that "I know that forensics was just testing me. And I will rise up, and I will find the man who did this to Tony and I will crucify him!!!" Cue her assistant turning away very slowly in fear.
    • Mostly because he was the man that did it.
    • And she did what she said she was going to do!
• "See No Evil".

McGee: "This is the FBI, Grayson. Come out with your hands in the air. You didn't think you'd get away with this?"

• • And later:

Perp(cornered by Kate and Tony): "I know the FBI's SOP [standard operating procedure]. I want a cell phone and a negotiator. Now!"
Gibbs(behind and above, gun pointed at the perp): "We're not the FBI, dirtbag!"

• In "Legacy," in order to plant a hidden camera in an auto shop, LA NCIS agent Kenzie pulls her cute little sports car over, finds a piece of pipe on the sidewalk, and bashes in a headlight. When this attracts the attention of a number of nearby thugs, she backs them down by pulling her gun, and gets back into the car to drive it to the shop where she manages to fast-talk the owner into taking it in, giving her the few seconds she needs to duck inside as well and plant the camera.
• At the end of the episode where a unrepentant Serial Killer named Kyle Boone tries to get the best of Gibbs AND receive a stay of execution, Boone is being led away, laughing tauntingly about Gibbs' apparent failure to find a kidnapped agent. Not only do Team Gibbs reveal to Boone that his plan failed, his accomplice was killed, and he is still on schedule to be executed, but the crowning moment comes with Gibbs' goodbye to the killer:

Gibbs: "Enjoy Hell."

• Ziva has been framed for murder, the FBI are hunting her, and she has to take the real killer alive or she'll never able to clear herself. She tracks the guy down, only to find out the person who hired him killed him just before she arrived. She lets herself appear to get beaten in a fight so that the Iranian agent responsible will villain monologue and give away to Ziva her identity and who she works for and why they did it. She tells her it was easier than she thought to get her to talk, beats the crap out of her. Then she pulls up her shirt, takes off the recording device taped to her abdomen, and announces, "I'm not just a killer any more, I'm an investigator!" to the rest of Team Gibbs after they arrive. This is the climax of her gradually learning how to be an investigator over the course of the last year. Huge character moment and totally awesome.
• This troper has to give it to Gibbs in Season Two's "The Bone Yard", where he pulls a successful Xanatos Roulette on not only a bunch of mobsters, but on the FBI and his own team, which involves him holding the mob boss's son hostage in exchange for the identity of the mobsters' mole in the FBI. Gibbs brings the actual mole as backup, and proceeds to briar patch the mob boss into killing his own mole. To cap it all off, the episode ends with Gibbs and Fornell walking out of the elevator to the astonished looks of the NCIS team - Gibbs faked Fornell's death.
• In the season 7 premiere, Tony is captured by terrorists, goes through a rough interrogation under the effects of a truth serum, swearing his captor will die. After telling the terrorists all about his team in NCIS, he makes this remark vis-a-vis a True Lies reference:

Tony: "You have 30 seconds to live, Salim."
Terrorist: "You're still bound! You're lying!"
Tony: "I can't lie, and I didn't say I was gonna be the one to kill you. Remember when I told you my boss was a sniper?"
* Boom! Headshot!* , * camera zooms to Gibbs on a cliff outside the terrorist camp*

• • The whole episode is one giant CMoA for Tony, starting off with "I'm here to kill ya" all the way through the end.
  • And of course, Gibbs sniping two armed terrorists from a cliff a half-mile away through a sand-covered window into a basement, then a third at close range just for good measure.
• In another episode, when a Mossad Officer comes to bring Ziva back to Israel, Gibbs yells at him to tell Eli David that she's off limits.
• In "Dead Man Talking"

Gibbs(Gun about 4 inches from killer's forehead): "His name was Chris Pacci. He was a friend."
Killer(starts to raise gun)
Gibbs(bang.)

• The end of one episode involving an obsessed stalker that doesn't know the new identity of his old girlfriend, so he's been killing women that look like her. After he's found out he holds a gun pointed at Gibbs, who couldn't get his own gun up in time. He repeatedly yells at Gibbs to drop his gun. Gibbs tosses it at him, distracting him long enough to tackle him. The guy manages to throw him off and starts running, but Gibbs calmly picks up his rifle and shoots the guy in the butt, bringing him down. Then as he walks over to the guy, he calmly slings his rifle over his shoulder, smiling a bit.
• Ari takes control of autopsy. One of the things that Ducky says to him is, "I can't wait to weigh your liver." That threat was just so creative and fantastic, and it was delivered is such a terrifying voice.
  • In a later episode, when Ari has Gerald call Ducky to ask a favor (ie, arrange a meeting), Ducky almost casually offers him a free autopsy. Again it's the tone and delivery that makes it awesome.
• While investigating the murder of an ROTC officer on a college campus, Gibbs realizes that the commanding officer of the course is the killer. The guy surprises him and a fight ensues while Kate and Tony try to break inside the room, which Gibbs locked at the start of the interrogation. We see Gibbs on the floor with the killer holding a gun to his head. By the time Kate and Tony break the lock by shooting it out, Gibbs has knocked the guy out.
• Gibbs in 7x09, "Child's Play", when he asks the savant girl the episode has revolved around to calculate the odds that Ziva will miss a shot at the bad guy...who's holding a gun to the girl's head. She calmly works it out at 97.6%. Gibbs gives the bad guy one more chance to surrender. He doesn't. Big mistake.
• In 7x22, "Borderland," Abby's presenting at a law enforcement symposium in Mexico. One woman insults her fashion sense by asking her who told her that the Day of the Dead was in May. Abby retaliates by providing very detailed facts about the woman based solely on observing her, leaving said woman speechless.
• Score one for Jackson Gibbs in the season eight premiere. Confronted by the Mexican drug lord who's been seeking revenge against his boy, what does he do? Fires off a round with his Winchester, gets her to leave his shop, and retreats to said shop's storm cellar before the bitch and her cronies attempt to gun him down. Certainly not the cliff hanger resolution this troper was expecting, that's for sure.
  • Same episode. Gibbs needs to resolve the whole Reynosa mess without giving up the evidence report that says he's a murderer, and needs to keep his team, father AND mentor safe. He nails both siblings, by having one murder the other, in a well-constructed Xanatos Roulette.
• How about scoring one for Anthony DiNozzo, Sr., in "Broken Arrow"? Ziva gets a hand in kicking two killers' asses with the help of Tony's father (played by 80-year-old Robert Wagner). He takes down one of them WITH ONE PUNCH (Ziva needs a punch and a kick to drop the other). Old men really kick ass on NCIS.
• In Enemies Domestic, a rogue ex-NCIS veteran who'd been setting Leon up to die since 1991 comes to the man's sick bed and tries to get him overdosed with morphine. Out of the blue the rogue's face changes, from smug grin to Oh Shit. The camera pans out, revealing that Vance has stabbed his chest with the switchblade Gibbs gave him.
  • Gibbs gets an assist on this since he anticipated that Vance would need it.
  • Rule #9: Never go anywhere without a knife.
• The show as a whole earns some kind of awesome-ness award for the fact that the big mid-season event in Season 7 was not some big plot event or game changer but just seeing Gibbs' living room.
• Ducky gets one in the Season 4 episode "Dead and Unburied," where he manages to catch the murderer by spotting a quick facial expression, then unraveling his entire motivation and plan.
• And who can forget Tony turning Obfuscating Stupidity into a CMOA when he gets Eli David to admit to something he really doesn't want to admit to, while TONY is the one being interrogated.
  • The Oh Crap look on Eli's face, coupled with the very subtle-but-still-there "did I just see that?" on Vance's face just cements the awesome.
• A victim of the week got one in "Witch Hunt". Her daughter had been kidnapped, and one of the kidnappers had remained with her, posing as her sister. The instant she gets word that her daughter is safe, she turns on her 'sister' and knocks her to the ground, telling Gibbs and the team the truth. Then she kicks the kidnapper again. And again.
• Tony and McGee interrogate a prisoner and use Christmas cookies as a lie detector. The guy is a tough Russian criminal so they know he will not easily give up any information. In the interrogation room they offer him some cookies a coworker baked. While he is eating the cookies, they start asking him simple questions and watch his reactions. When he hesitates after one question they use this as an opening and start asking more serious questions about the case. When they reveal to the guy that they know who really hired him, he chokes on a cookie. Frustrated the guy takes the remaining cookies and smashes them on the table. He is so angry that he reveals what his partners are up to.
• In "Kill Screen", Gibbs stops a computer mainframe from breaking through the Pentagon's firewalls and wiping out every military computer on the grid...by shooting it.
• In "Housekeeping", Gibbs, Ziva and McGee pursue ex-Green Beret Casey Stratton all the way that he fell into an ambush set up by FBI agents.
• Special Agent Courtney Krieger. She and Ziva are dropping off an "innocent" delivery boy and get the call to stop and bring him back. The guy steals Courtney's gun and starts shooting at Ziva. Courtney, previously a petite, shy, somewhat clumsy greenhorn, then proceeds to surprise-attack him from behind, disarm him, and slam his face into the car repeatedly until he stops fighting.
• Mike Franks goes out the only way he ever could or should.

"My name's Mike Franks. I figure I got one more fight left in me. You want it?"

• In "Boxed In," when Tony and Ziva are trapped in the shipping crate and are surrounded by gun-toting smugglers, Ziva yells for them to speak up, drawing one of them closer to the opening. She shoots him in the foot through a small crevice in the door. Great aim and just awesome in general.
• In "Newborn King", Palmer finally snaps at his cynical, disrespectful father-in-law.

Palmer: (to Tony and Tim) Good luck.
Ed Slater: Yeah... good luck.

Palmer: ...Why in the world would you say it like that?

Slater: W-why? The weather, the road closures, cause they're never gonna make it?

Palmer: How the hell would you know? They're trained agents!

Slater: Well...

Palmer: You might not respect me, or what it is we do here, but you have got to respect the fact that these people, my people, are risking their lives.

Slater: Well, if you're gonna put it like that...

Palmer: There's no other way to put it. Until you can figure that out, we're not going anywhere. Sit down, and shut up.

• A personal fav, but in "Murder 2.0", the murderer had made Gibbs into his nemesis, the one he had to "defeat". As it continues, they manage to learn the identity of the fourth victim was someone who they had briefly met and the friend of the roommate of the first victim, who was the killer. Turns out the "victim" was the actual murderer, planning to use the NCIS team, specifically Gibbs, to be the weapon killing the REAL fourth victim. That is pretty clever, but Gibbs figures out the camera, which always shows the victim, isn't aimed at HIM but at the girl believed to be the murderer, which GIBBS figures out. However, this ISN'T what I thought was awesome. At the end, the murderer is giggling about how they'll be famous because of this. EVERYONE would know their name, but not Gibbs'. So WHAT do they do? They WITHHOLD their identity (claiming national security over a terrorist suspect) so that they would go down as a nobody forever, only known by their handle, and Gibbs ends up the one well known, at least in NCIS. And in the end, Gibbs doesn't even attend the ceremony to award him a medal. The fact that he's humble enough to not take that award is what TRULY tops this crowning moment.
• Ziva and Tony have an important subject at a safehouse apartment. They know that two assassins are on their way up. While Tony takes the subject into a back bedroom, Ziva calmly plants herself in the middle of the living room, takes up a gun in each hand, and points each at two doors, both on separate walls entirely, leading in from the hallway. Outside, the two assassins take up positions in front of each door and, at a silent count, burst in, guns at the ready. They don't even have time to be surprised that Ziva's already opening fire on them before they're dead.