I’ve been trying to figure out what my feelings were about Tony’s exit, and there are a lot of words involved here because I had a lot of feelings to work through.
First of all, while I find change necessary and refreshing, I also think it is rather painful, and it’s something I have to write my way through so that I can move past it. And something about this series final story was incredible painful for me, and I’m sure I’m not the only one. I haven’t read much of anyone’s posts about last night, but I’m conversant enough with this fandom’s various opinions to guess what some of them might be, so maybe I’m repeating what has already been said.
It meant something to me that Ziva was alive when she left in season 11. It meant that there were possibilities for her character even if she was gone. It meant that there was something invincible about her, given that most characters on this show, male and female, are killed off when they’re written out. So it means something that she’s dead. I kept thinking throughout the episode that surely someone was mistaken. I think that’s been my experience as a Tiva fan: you continue to believe in the impossible and refuse to accept the reality in front of you. If you hear that Ziva is gone and that Cote has left, you immediately start hoping and planning for the day when she might come back, against all odds. So when you hear that she’s gone for good, you keep waiting for the time when that’s not true. I mean, there were pretty big hints dropped that this would happen, there have always been hints that the thing we want isn’t gonna happen they way we want it to. It’s delusional, but still, there’s a part of me that won’t stop hoping or maybe there’s just a part of me that won’t allow myself to feel devastated by the realities of what we saw on screen and whatever happened behind the scenes and whatever bridges were burned to put an end to this character.
Because there’s something about her character that hasn’t ended, and this is where I continue to feel conflicted. My brain tells me that ZIva is now among the list of women who have died to serve another man’s storyline, which feels weird because for years when she was on the show, she owned her own story. I often thought Tony served her journey, and now it’s the other way around, and it’s difficult for me to get my head around that. She wasn’t sidelined when she was on the show like some many women on tv imo, but now she’s gone, and yet she and her sister live on through her child with Tony.
And THIS is what shocked me more than anything. This is were the harsh brutality of Ziva dying meets the fanfiction scenario of her having a child with Tony. What the fuck??? There’s really no way I saw that really happening on this show of all shows. Ever. This was the very last thing I thought this show would do. Ziva’s death devastated me, but this storyline is the more shocking of the two. Now Tony has become one of a list of men on this show (Senior, Gibbs, Vance, Fornell) who are single parents. The man who was afraid of children has a child that he left his job for to take care of.
And this is where I become conflicted again. This storyline feels unreal. Tony was supposed to lead his own team. At one point, I thought he would lead this one in D.C. And now he’s leaving to be a dad and to heal and find answers. It feels unlike Tony, and yet, that’s the point. While I watched the episode, it feel like the old Tony was going away, disappearing and becoming someone else. Tony as a father doesn’t feel like the same guy I’ve been watching for 300+ episodes. He hasn’t become an absent parent out of grief and anger like Senior did all those years ago. Unlike all the other men on this show, he, in the end, hasn’t run back to work to avoid his emotions or to reestablish some normality. Everything has changed for him, and he has changed completely in response to this. It’s shocking to me.
Where women typically are shown as having to choose between work and family, Tony has been placed in this position, and he chose to be with his family, to go to the places that reminded him of Ziva, her life in Israel, and the best times he spent with her there and in Paris. Maybe that might seem emasculating to some, like he is still under Ziva’s power or her shadow, rather than forging a professional life of his own as the leader he was supposed to be, just as Ziva’s death might have felt misogynistic to others, because she died to give him this new life.
I acknowledge the problematic aspects of this storyline, Tony and Ziva’s past, and this show in general. I also realize that there are other things I feel, too, like that for this show to continue, for better or worse, it had to get itself out from under the shadow of Tiva once and for all. Some things had to be laid to rest. Whether that will work out or not isn’t my concern or under my control. I don’t know if I’ll continue to watch the show, not out of hatred for anything that happened storyline-wise, but because I think I got on that elevator with Tony, metaphorically speaking. I keep thinking more about where that character ends up than what will become of the characters who remain, and that’s not meant to be a slight against the show or the cast. It’s just how I feel at the moment.
And with that I might have purged myself of all those thoughts I’ve been playing with these last 15 or so hours. I’ve gotten over the series finale of Six Feet Under, which was emotionally rough for me because there was so full of death of everything and everyone I loved on that show, and it took me days, weeks, months, maybe years to get over it, so I know I’ll get over this finale. Once I do, I hope to look back at this story fondly, even if it broke my heart and blew my mind at the same time. I hope we see a little of Tony and Tali again, possibly years from now, because that was too much for me to handle.
As for Tony, while I have conflicted feelings about everything apparently, I also love what he became because of it, which makes me more confused. So I’ll have to reconcile myself with my own feelings in time.
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