But the plots are absurd, Gibbs is presented as a god among men, Tony’s a dickhead, and asswipe (to Gibbs) and a womanizer, McGee is a wimp, Abby’s totally unbelieveable as a Gothic Lab Tech, Dr. Ducky’s a fucking gasbag.
It’s a comic book for junior high school-ers. I cannot understand how an adult can suspend disbelief and watch a show in which so many characters are toons.
I just watched an episode in which a bank robbery is staged at the Marine’s Quantico VA installation, and in the process a bank guard is killed. It is later discovered that all $27,000 from the heist never left the base, and was instead, burnt to ashes in the getaway car.
Aha! Killing the guard was the purpose of this elaborately planned robbery. You see, the guard’s son fucked the robbers over after a previous job, and the son would now come out of hiding to attend the funeral, at which time the bad guys would kidnap him.
I’ve seen the show a couple of times. I think that it’s fucking horrible and I love crime shows. That goth lab tech is the single worst conceived character in the history of TV drama.
I enjoy the interactions between the characters. I’ll admit to wishing Tony would grow up a little, and to being tired of Ziva always conveniently just mis-stating some idiom and Abby could be significantly less weird. I like Ducky, and generally enjoy the team’s interactions.
Yes, the plots are often absurd, and suffer from the need to have excessive amounts of red herrings and people trying too hard to keep secrets. Not to mention the highly convenient amount of really interesting/scary/sinister/etc. stuff which just happens to come to the attention of Gibbs and his team.
But I enjoy it anyway–and not for Johnny L.A.'s stated reason.
Interesting fact: Pauley Perrette, who plays Abby the forensics tech, trained to be a forensics tech in real life before going into acting.
I like NCIS because it has entertaining characters, a rare thing in procedurals in my opinion. It’s about 1000x better than CSI, I can tell you that much.
As I’ve mentioned before, my enjoyment of television shows depends exactly 0% on how much they resemble reality. If I want reality I’ll go outside and deal with the real world. I watch T.V. to enjoy a completely non-realistic world where things are much more interesting and entertaining (if they’re not more entertaining, I won’t watch).
NCIS is one of my favorite shows, and I happen to have watched my tape of the episode you mention about 3 hours ago. I love the characters – they’re fun and cool. They certainly don’t resemble the people in my workplace. Gibbs is a god among men, Tony’s funny and charming and sweet underneath it all, McGee is brilliant and a truly nice guy, Ducky is also brilliant and fascinating to listen to, and Abby is so utterly comfortable in her bizarre world that it makes me feel good just to watch her. Oh, and Ziva is Superwoman.
As for the mysteries, yeah, I knew in the first 30 seconds that the crime had been staged to kill the bank guard. The story, and all of the stories, are just excuses to put the characters into interesting situations so that we can see them interact.
NCIS is produced by Donald Bellisario, whose long string of production credits goes all the way back to Black Sheep Squadron. His shows are like family to me; I recognize the style, the plot points, the actors, and even the characters. McGee is Bud from JAG, who was Mac (2) from Magnum, who was Mac (1) from Magnum, who was Don from Black Sheep (the last three played by the same actor, who also played Bud’s father on JAG). And then there’s the greatest of all Bellisario shows, Quantum Leap.
I’m not saying anyone has to like this stuff but me; I’m just glad that it’s still around and successful enough that I get to enjoy it.
It’s a lot easier to suspend disbelief when it’s a live action cartoon, than it is when it’s supposed to be hard hitting realism and it’s not realistic. The characters are also a lot of fun and interact in interesting ways, as opposed to the CSI shows, where the characters are boring, don’t interact meaningfully, and I mostly want to punch them in the face.
“I hope you’re not referring to David Caruso and Co., because his CSI Miami is the best damned crime drama on TV and I won’t have you___” BarnOwl runs zig zag off stage, laughing and trying to avoid the hail of rotten eggs and tomatoes raining down.
NCIS is one of those shows that I don’t DVR, I never remember when it’s on and don’t think about. But when I’m flipping around and see it on I’ll usually watch. I find it very easy to enjoy. I just don’t think about it much, especially while watching. I don’t need to be intellectually stimulated to be entertained.
But if you DVR them, you can FF through non-plotline scenes like Dinnozzo meeting his latest girlfriends parents at dinner. In fact you can FF through all Dinnozo scenes
What makes the show so great is that they don’t even bother to pretend to worry about how things work in real life. Abby is a lab tech who works completely solo but can do any test imaginable (chemical, mechanical, biological, ad infinitum) in five minutes – why shouldn’t she and McGee be able to share a keyboard to prevent a cyberattack?