After dropping three episodes at once last week, NCIS: Tony & Ziva cinched our attention and have now slowed their roll with weekly episode releases. The latest NCIS spin-off flies us to Paris, where Tony DiNozzo (Michael Weatherly) and Ziva David (Cote de Pablo) are playing house with their daughter Tali (Isla Gie) when their inability to dodge trouble eventually catches up to them. Jet-setting onto an espionage adventure, the pair strive to clear their name of an Interpol robbery by tracking down the true culprit while dodging vehicular danger and married ex-girlfriends. Each of the three episodes in the premiere hinted at an upcoming wedding that is going to be used as a ruse to lure their target in, that is, Interpol agent Martine (Nassima Benchicou). And in Episode 4, “Wedding Crashers,” the fateful, white-clad day has come.
At the end of the previous episode, Tony and Ziva decide to take the offensive in this investigation, and instead of chasing leads to find out who stole the money from Interpol and framed them, they set up a trap in the form of a wedding. Well, they really hijack Boris (Maximilian Osinski) and Fruzsi’s (Anne-Marie Waldeck) wedding. Martine is the mysterious woman who was involved in the hospital ransom, though the crew know that she is acting under orders. Nevertheless, they make her the target of their trap and cast their lure through a seemingly innocuous phone call by Boris. He pretends to threaten Martine to stay away from him by cloning her voice, provoking her into keeping tabs on him and attending the wedding.
The next step in the plan is to set up the wedding itself. They replaced Boris and Fruzsi’s guest list with paroled prisoners (courtesy of Boris’ hacking skills) and started decorating the church. Tony and Ziva are on the phone with Tali and see a lilac in the marital decorations, sparking a memory from five years ago. Tony and Ziva were sitting on a park bench while Tali was in the playground when Ziva saw someone she didn’t recognize giving her daughter a cupcake. She reacts instinctively and races toward the cupcake, snatching it viciously from her hands. Tony quickly intervenes, introducing Ziva to one of Tali’s friends’ mothers, and Ziva tries to rectify the situation by laughing it off and pretending she saw a bee, yet is left unsettled.
Later, in the flashback, the small family is back home and Tali wakes up from a nightmare while wetting the bed. Tony, who had been raising Tali for the last few years, takes it in stride and quickly gets her into a bath while changing the sheets. Ziva is more perturbed by this experience, realizing how much she has missed out on Tali’s childhood. It’s a saddening moment that immediately switches when Tony asks if she would move in so she wouldn’t have to miss out on any more moments. The scene becomes even more joyous as Tony proposes to Ziva, and she very happily says yes.
‘NCIS: Tony & Ziva’ Episode 4 Features a Wedding Gone Wrong
But before the spin-off could really get this faux-wedding started, there was only one thing left to do: give Boris and Fruzsi a real ceremony. Since the location was set up and Claudette (Amita Suman) was ordained, it was the perfect opportunity to tie these two lovebirds together in a heartfelt scene, followed by an equally joyous dance. But this is rudely interrupted by the police who have come here to arrest… Fruzsi? In a shocking and deliciously dramatic scene, she whips around to the camera and declares there’s a lot we don’t know about her before she is escorted out in cuffs.
The plan goes on, but now Ziva has to step in for the fake bride, and Boris is anxious about Fruzsi. Now we finally see the context of the ambiguous opening scenes of the first three episodes, where Tony runs into the room after attaching a tracker to Martine’s car and changes into a crisp, black tux. Cue the charged moment of Tony and Ziva staring at each other in wedding attire, then Ziva walking down the aisle while Tony texts Martine as Henry (James D’Arcy) to keep her phone out in the open where Claudette can wirelessly clone and transfer her data. Even though Tony is grasping at straws while texting Martine, the plan is operating smoothly.
Meanwhile, Boris’ concern for Fruzsi is gradually mounting until he insists that Claudette check the prison records so they can hack her out of there. However, when Claudette does so, she can’t find any record of Fruzsi even being arrested, setting off alarms for everyone on the team. We soon realize the arrest was fake and that Martine’s companion had abducted Fruzsi. So, while Ziva was patiently trying to keep up pretenses of tying the knot, Tony races off to a nearby building (that Claudette tracked her to) to untie the knots holding Fruzsi.
Tony and Ziva End Their Violent Wedding Antics With a Kiss
The increasing tension hits a climax when the real Henry comes bursting through the doors — no good wedding comes without a dramatic objection. The prisoner-guests do their part by scattering, creating a chaos that allows Boris and Claudette to slip away while Ziva keeps her eyes on Martine. When Martine runs, Ziva closely follows but is also pursued by Henry. While Ziva and Henry are fighting (one that Ziva undoubtedly wins), Tony is also wrapped up in a physical confrontation with Fruzsi’s kidnapper. He only just manages to win by using the attacker’s momentum against him, causing him to fall out of a window and into the river below.
When Ziva finally reaches Martine, it looks like she is about to escape when a well-timed entrance from Tony leaves the Interpol agent cornered. They take her phone and bag for good measure, then make their own escape. In his tousled tux and her torn wedding dress (much to Fruzsi’s disapproval), Tony and Ziva jump into the yacht waiting for them at the dock, and they all make their clean getaway onto the water. But the excitement doesn’t end there as Tony and Ziva take a few minutes rifling through their emotions and tantalizing scenes of unbuttoning dresses. After all that, they decide actions are better than words and end the episode with an electrifying, highly anticipated and promising kiss.
New episodes of NCIS: Tony & Ziva premiere every Thursday on Paramount+ in the U.S.
