It was an episode of goodbyes.

Both Ziva and Phineas exited the series, at least for now, on NCIS Season 17 Episode 11.

It was a heartwarming episode that would have been a perfect place to break for the holiday hiatus.

Oops, too late for that.

Instead, it will be just the first during a January full of new episodes, robbing it some of lingering impact.

Rather than just picking up where NCIS Season 17 Episode 10 ended, the story of how Gibbs told Phineas about his mother's death was told via dark flashbacks pulled out of Gibbs by Jack, instead.

Of course, Gibbs blamed himself for Sarah/Sahar's death and Phineas's resulting disappearance.

And so did Ziva blame herself, for that matter.

At least we finally found out who Phineas was.

It was an interesting twist that he was actually Sahar's son. It seemed much more likely that she had just acquired an...