I’m usually not one for crime shows, but I saw a touching episode of NCIS while on an airplane recently. It’s about a father’s love for his daughter, and I’m a sentimental sucker on the subject, so be forewarned before you proceed.
NCIS (Naval Criminal Investigative Service) is an action drama starring Mark Harmon as NCIS Special Agent Leroy Jethro Gibbs, a former Marine who is now a skilled investigator. Gibbs’ daughter Kelly died 15 years ago, when she was 7. In the recent episode “Requiem,” Kelly’s best childhood friend Maddie is in trouble and later kidnapped, and Gibbs saves her.
When Kelly was little she and Gibbs made a time capsule (pictured) out of one of her lunchboxes and buried it in the front yard. When Maddie first contacts Gibbs, he digs up the time capsule from his front yard but can’t bring himself to open it.
At the end of the show, he takes out a picture of the two girls with their arms around each other as children and a picture of him with his arm around Maddie as an adult, puts them together, and starts to open the time capsule. To watch this final scene, click here.
When it comes to the time capsule, open the letter little Kelly wrote to her dad when he was deployed to Kuwait in 1990, and also click on the dog tags.
It’s nice to see an accurate TV portrayal of father-daughter relationship.