Overall, if you just take the look of it, this episode seems weird or disjointed or somehow very cut and dry, and yeah, there was a lot of hype and it's not the OMG amazing kind of reaction, I wasn't all shockingly impressed but when I actually sat down and thought about it, I actually enjoyed seeing the what-ifs and all the different moments, and in the end, this episode served its main purpose - to give Gibbs the peace to move on and stop second-guessing himself and also to understand good people having to make difficult decisions.
It has been far too long that Gibbs has carried these demons and are constantly haunted by his decisions, not to mention his stubborn sense of right and wrong - and it's not to say he won't be now - but there's nothing like a near life and death situation to put things into perspective and realize that all those times he spent feeling guilty or letting his doubts win over or being stubborn, he was lucky to have what he got and things could have been far different.
Over the years, a lot of things has happened and a lot of lives have been lost - Gibbs hasn't always dealt with it, instead he's buried it, and in moments, you see him blame himself for everything that's happened and always hoping that he should have done this or that to change things but this episode is sort of his wake-up call, to stop wallowing in the past and wondering about what went wrong and instead focus on the people he's helped and the lives that are still living. Gibbs has been living in the past for too long, this is to set him sailing in the right direction again with more pep in his step to know that he's got his team, that his decisions however they might have turned out, was eventually a good decision.
This episode is really about Gibbs' guilt in the end - a lot of the things he's carried inside and never said - it's having his doubts finally confronted and for him to see that maybe some of the things that happened was terrible and hard, but good things, happy things, did come out of it. He lost Shannon and Kelly, and those wounds doesn't heal, but that brought him to NCIS, it brought him to Franks, and it brought him to his Gibblets. If Kate hadn't have died, there'd never be Ziva, but then this team that he's taught and watched grow up wouldn't have existed either.
It's not always perfect and you can't always get what you want, life is about compromises and this is Gibbs' turn to learn that, to really realize that maybe some of the things he wished he still had would have been there, but the things that he carries with him now and enjoys now wouldn't be. And he has to come to terms with letting go of the past and embracing the future, embracing this team and this family that he's lucky to have.
I might be the only one feeling this way but Gibbs seems to have for a while lost the spring in his step - like he's just a robot going through the motions, trying to hold onto some relic of the past - but I feel like this episode is catharsis, not just for Gibbs but for the show and for the audience, it's a chance to open and embrace a new chapter - to realize that some things in the past may not have turned out the way we wished, but ultimately, it led to the things that we love now and enjoy and we shouldn't waste life trying to grab something out of reach when there is something beautiful right in front of our eyes.
A lot of things happened that led this team to the way it is now - but if none of those things had happened, this team wouldn't be the way it is.
There's not much action in this episode, but I think the heart of the story is in the thinking, and in the realization for Gibbs that he's never confronted a lot of those feelings inside of him and it was time to do it because you never know when life can end and you shouldn't just let life go by.
The more I think about it, the more I enjoy this episode. It's unconventional, it's not the usual case-way, but I think ultimately, it is something that Gibbs severely needed after the 9 years of carrying that weight and guilt and finally being able to let it go and realize that he may not have always made the right decisions and things didn't always turn out perfectly, but the life he has now, he wouldn't and shouldn't trade it for the world. He needed to know that and I'm not sure he knew that before with the same kind of convection as he does now.
By the way, great to see the old faces, but did anyone actually see Agent Chris Pacci? Because actor Tim Kelleher was credited in the guest role and I totally did not see him and I was trying to look for him - especially considering that Pacci's death was something that Gibbs never really recovered from and always felt guilty about...
Anyways, that was long-winded but I found this to be a very thoughtful episode - and the what-ifs moments I realize that some aren't seemingly very logical, but this is happening in Gibbs' head, and I think his feelings and his guilt influenced a lot of how those what-ifs ended up turning out in his head, and when I think about it, from Gibbs' POV, those actually made a lot of sense.
Could it episode have been better? Yeah it could, if there was more time to develop the plot than just one-hour, it would be really amazing to analyze all those life-changing moments, but for an one-hour episode, I thought it was rather thought-provoking. It's a rather introspective episode and I think it's a hit or a miss kind of episode with the fans. You either did enjoy it or you probably didn't.
I found it to be a pretty great 200th episode and a nice little rebirth kind of moment for Gibbs to get the fire back in his eyes again, it's nice to see it back indeed.
As for the aging of the show, I think it is a show working still in its good years and I don't find it to be a decline, I've actually enjoyed quite a lot of the episodes this season than I did even in the show's early years. But to each his/her own.
And the whole Stargate comparison, I hardly think it's a rip-off from Stargate - just because there's similar scenes doesn't mean it's a rip-off and frankly, I've seen this kind of storyline tactics done way before Stargate even existed so it's not like this is copyrighted to Stargate alone. It's a story tactic that many shows use and I like it here for NCIS, they used it well.
. There been a really decline quality of writing and production of NCIS starting with last season and continuing in to this season. Sadly this is timing wise Ncis's decline is mirroring what happened to another great classic tv show the original Hawaii Five 0. Any Five-0 episode past season 8 was a real crap shoot and seasons 10 -12 were mostly god awful bad and mostly unwatchable. Maybe there needs to be a shake up some new producers and writers ? Because this brand of plot plagiarism is really sad. And for me turn this into 200 episode to forget. 
Meanwhile they got Rudolph Martin and Lauren Holly back and did nothing with them. 
