I’m a casual viewer of NCIS, and I have a question about the character DiNozzo. In many episodes that I’ve seen, they make a sort of point about his being an old movie buff. He rattles off dates, plot points, and main actors in an endearing or annoying way, depending on your perspective.
However, I recently saw what seemed to be a very early episode, which involved the team traveling to Guantanamo to investigate the death of a sailor (marine?) who had swallowed emeralds in an attempt to smuggle them to the U.S. They made a point of DiNozzo missing references to old movies (specifically High Noon, IIRC) and made it seem like he had no interest at all in the genre.
Is this an explained character development? I mean, does he suddenly get interested in old movies at some point during the series and dive in? Or did they just decide to take his character in that direction and write off the early episodes?
I have just recently watched the first two seasons, and DiNozzo just becomes a movie expert. They never explain why or how. In fact it happens rather quickly. The episode you mentioned was in season one, and by the middle of season two he is a movie expert.
They did a similar thing with McGee. In an early episode, McGee unwittingly goes in to a patch of poison ivy. However, in a recent episode, he becomes an Eagle Scout who can track animals and other things. An Eagle Scout would most likely be able to recognize poison ivy.
To worry about the plots making sense, or the characters having any kind of coherent personalities, is to totally miss the point of NCIS. It’s fun because it doesn’t make any real-world sense.
Very true…a lot of the things that happen on NCIS have little real-world correlation. I don’t think any organization would put up with its employees smacking each other on the back of the head as much as it’s done there. Although I did have a good laugh in the episode where everyone was required to sit through a sexual-harassment seminar and Abby was told that she shouldn’t be hugging people all the time. Of course, I may be prejudiced by the fact that I would take a job there in an instant just for the opportunity to have her hug me.
Abby is even more different from the first season. She was originally a streetwise sexpot, but by season three (Caitlin’s departure/Ziva’s arrival), she was pretty thoroughly infantilized.
And Ziva is a lot more one-note than she used to be. I guess it’s easier to write for an ensemble if they can all be reduced to one or two archetypal traits. I love the show anyway, though.
Re: DiNozzo, I get the feeling his “movie buff” schtick may be a tip of the hat to Remington Steele, to whom he bears a slight physical resemblance. BTW, does “DiNozzo” have a literal Italian meaning? I think it may be “from marriage,” ironic because of his resistance to commitment and his being a figurative (and possibly literal) bastard.
Perhaps DiNozzo did not want his nerd flag flying while at Gitmo. I understand they have a rather limited tolerance for personal idiosyncrasies, such as special dietary restrictions or the wearing of the Navy FWU*, down there.
I find Abby more and more annoying as time goes by. I used to find her very attractive but she has become as you say infantilized and in too many instances seems more like a frightened child that shouldn’t be allowed in a lab without supervision. I would have expected her character to evolve and eventually grow out of that but it just seems to get worse and worse. Not that it is stopping me from watching week after week.
Okay, having been stuck in a situation where I watched a few eps of this over the past few days, I realized there was -something- that was bugging me about Abby. ‘Infantilized’ is definately the word. Thanks for clearing that up!
Nah, he’s made several references to classic 1940s and 1950s movies such as John Wayne in “The Sands of Iwo Gima” (1949), Fred MacMurray in “Double Indemnity” (1944), DOA (1950) etc., and displays the pretty much the same level of knowledge about the films of that era.
I’ve heard some fans spin it and say that in the episode mentioned in the OP, the character was intrigued by the bartender’s movie knowledge, and over the next few months becomes a movie buff.
As much as I enjoy the show, it sounds like fan wank to me.
