that scene where the dog eats the heart - idk what show - is hard to top.

Fair enough. NCIS really does have a lot of contenders for dumbest scene. What makes this for me is the Christmas imagery, though, especially the strategically placed Christmas trees in the gunfight shots.

I guess it's a testament to something about this show, I'm not sure what exactly, that I've watched 9 seasons and I still can't really tell how much of the self-parody is intentional, although I suspect it's probably less than I give it credit for.

It's also worth pointing out that the ex-Mossad character was shoehorned in early in the series as an obvious attempt to counter criticism of its depiction of middle eastern characters in season 1, but they cast a Chilean actress.

Also the female characters in season 1, which were pretty bad, too. She was a twofer, covering their bases by being a Middle Eastern (though still safely non-Palestinian) character who was also a tough woman who held her own with the male characters. It was really transparent when it happened.

Oh don't get me wrong, this is a pretty dumb scene. It's certainly clumsy in how it cuts back and forth between the fight to the death and the birth. It's just kind of tepid in its stupidity, like the writers just needed to crank out a scene and they wanted to make it just "arty" enough that the grannies would clutch their handkerchiefs and feel like this was a special Christmas moment.

Violence set to Christmas carols is an old trick too.

For sure, there's just something about the way they did it in this that hit all the right notes to me last night. Hardest I've laughed without anyone else around in weeks.

I'm a fan of SECAM Nights, myself.

That was supposed to be a reply to Binro below.