There is nothing like a focused Tony. I like him goofy, but when he gets his agent on and really buckles down, he is hot like the sun.

Now I'm going to have to re-watch this past season's opener, when he's tied to the chair and wit-duelling the terrorist.

I loved that season opener of NCIS, but the next episode left me cold and I haven't watched since. After all this time, Tony should be not so goofy anymore. I'm tired of the whole goofy frat-boy schtick.

It is who he is. Lots of grown men don't get over it. But he can do the serious when he needs to. It doesn't bother me.

I thought they were going to tone it down, after he was so solidly bad assed but still funny in the season opener. But they've kept him randomly childish and insecure. The chat roulette episode was just daft. It's a workplace full of people I'd slap. Except Vance. He kinda scares me.

The second ep of the season was just on a Saturday rerun a few weeks ago, and I saw it for the first time. I actually like it, mostly because we got a lot more of McGee and Tony working together on a case, which we only saw glimpses of in the season opener.

The Ziva stuff in that ep was rather meh until the last shot of the two guys coming back to the bullpen to see her at her desk again--that was a nice batch of reaction shots from all three of them.

But they've kept him randomly childish and insecure.

There's times I like it and times I don't. The thing is, if this was Two and Half Men or HIMYM, we wouldn't really care. We figure it's par for the course because they're comedies. I kinda like that NCIS is willing to go to that place and make Tony so over the top, I'm sure it's one of the reasons they are so highly rated. They can pull in the folks who stick to half hour comedies with the stupid Tony tricks.

It's how he copes with everything. I find it interesting that we've seen everyone's homes except for Abby's and Tony's (Abby's, probably because they don't know how to decorate it properly). We only really see behind Tony's facade when he's over at Gibbs' place, which is an interesting reflection of Tony-as-Gibbs-Jr.

I like that he's still able to be juvenile, it shows he's not like all the other dour, driven, obsessed, haunted, "see my tortured past and pain" cops you see on TV. It's one reason I like Castle, the cops still have lives outside the job.

all the other dour, driven, obsessed, haunted, "see my tortured past and pain" cops

Is it really that bad out there? I mean, assuming you don't watch SVU or CI? Sure, they torture their pasts, but you don't actually have to be an ass to get past that, like Tony and his crap. Look at the Criminal Minds gang--it's one of the reasons I love them so much. They have some of the most horrendous crimes to deal with, plus they've given Morgan and Reid and slightly Prentiss tortured pasts, and they move beyond them pretty well (Reid tries, really he does). Only Hotch is stamped by his, and his past is the vaguest of them all.

I don't know. With Tony it strikes me that they put in comic relief where a personality is supposed to go, and are trusting that enough people will think "charming devil." I can only take it when I don't think about its persistence across all these episodes, and the fact that they actually let Tim grow up a bit over that period.

Still, Abby may not grow up, and Gibbs seems to have regressed, so I'm looking for the wrong stuff for this show if I'm demanding character arcs. Just...there were hints of what might have been after Jeanne. And then, nowt.

Yeah, I'm starting to realize that season was a total anomaly. It was also after that they kicked Bellasario out of the day-to-day running of the show. I don't know how much he had to do with the storylines and character development we saw in season 4. I loved the Tony/Jeanne arc, but hated the Jenny/Frog stuff with a passion and despised Jenny just in general.

Ack. I'll keep watching, though. I like all the characters and I love that at least Jimmy and McGee are getting better arcs as time goes on. The rest are sort of in suspended animation, and while that grates against the growth of the others, I think they're afraid to change them too much because most people who watch the show like Tony, Abby and Gibbs just the way they are.