# NCIS, the worst successful show ever? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [October 8, 2011, 7:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ncis-the-worst-successful-show-ever/598985 "2011-10-08T07:52:47Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 13\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2014, 4:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ncis-the-worst-successful-show-ever/598985/61 "2014-10-13T16:37:57Z")
> [@realmarine](#): > > Legs smaller than a 5 year old girl ? Or a person that abuses his personal ? No hate, just reality. I’m guessing you live alone with a poodle !!! Two bits of advice, **realmarine** : don’t insult other posters - I’m guessing ‘you live alone with a poodle’ is supposed to be an insult, although for the life of me I can’t figure out why that would be insulting - and consider relaxing. You’re being very rude with people, and it’s not called for. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2014, 5:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ncis-the-worst-successful-show-ever/598985/62 "2014-10-13T17:23:37Z")
> [@Stan\_Shmenge](#): > > So I was whooshed? Sorry, I don’t watch much TV these days. About the only time I see it is when I am at my girlfriend’s building and we go down to the TV room. We watched a few eps of that show that my cousin and others seem to love and I just couldn’t stand it. Even as parody, it seems like kind of a weak sauce though. Between the laughable science and the stock characters I really was wondering WTF? > > And the art direction… Labs just don’t look like that. Government offices just don’t look like that. And if they do, I want a tax cut. Talk about government waste! Yes. The show works on three levels: Great characters and the obvious caring interplay between them. Light humor. No "who is sleeping with who drama’. As in what **SciFiSam** sez. Decent action/plot. As a “wink-wink” parody of similar shows. That’s low key- on purpose. It’s a great show. It’s also NOT arced- on purpose. Too many other shows are arced, and it’s nice to be able to watch a epi out of order once in a while. ---
**Author:** ![Robert163](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/4af34b/32.png) [@Robert163](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Robert163)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2014, 6:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ncis-the-worst-successful-show-ever/598985/63 "2014-10-13T18:19:20Z")
The female mossad agent, the actor, not the character, makes the show unwatchable for me. she is so wooden it is cringeworthy. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2014, 7:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ncis-the-worst-successful-show-ever/598985/64 "2014-10-13T19:25:44Z")
> [@Robert163](#): > > The female mossad agent, the actor, not the character, makes the show unwatchable for me. she is so wooden it is cringeworthy. Been gone for two seasons. ---
**Author:** ![Diceman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/22d042/32.png) [@Diceman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diceman)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2014, 7:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ncis-the-worst-successful-show-ever/598985/65 "2014-10-13T19:31:13Z")
I like NCIS: LA better than the original. Both shows require you to totally shut down every rational cell in your brain, but the LA characters are more fun to watch. One thing I’ve noticed about NCIS: LA: Somewhere around the mid-point of each episode, there _will_ be a major shootout between our heros & the bad guys. It happens in pretty much every episode. ---
**Author:** ![BlackKnight](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/eb8c5e/32.png) [@BlackKnight](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BlackKnight)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2014, 9:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ncis-the-worst-successful-show-ever/598985/66 "2014-10-13T21:01:42Z")
I don’t think it’s the worst successful show, but it’s exceedingly bland to me. It’s like the McDonald’s of television. My dad and brother both love the show, so I’ve watched a fair bit of it here and there while visiting. ---
**Author:** ![sweat209](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9fc348/32.png) [@sweat209](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sweat209)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2014, 9:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ncis-the-worst-successful-show-ever/598985/67 "2014-10-13T21:33:30Z")
The science is not that bad.There are a lot worse shows like Bones and CSI that science is very much so fake. ---
**Author:** ![ftg](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ftg/32/2801_2.png) [@ftg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ftg)\ **Post date:** [October 13, 2014, 9:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ncis-the-worst-successful-show-ever/598985/68 "2014-10-13T21:43:01Z")
> [@thelurkinghorror](#): > > Dude, _Two and a Half Men_… For the win. ---
**Author:** ![Diceman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/22d042/32.png) [@Diceman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diceman)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2014, 1:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ncis-the-worst-successful-show-ever/598985/69 "2014-10-14T13:30:25Z")
> [@ftg](#): > > For the win. _Two and a Half Men_ is in the same unenviable category that _Eight Simple Rules_ ended up in: a Zombie Show, trying to limp along without the one guy who carried the show in the first place. ---
**Author:** ![bump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7c8e57/32.png) [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2014, 2:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ncis-the-worst-successful-show-ever/598985/70 "2014-10-14T14:32:22Z")
FWIW… despite my glowing commentary above, I do realize that the “science” is lacking. I used to do computer forensics myself, and I cringe every time that McGee and Abby go and dig something out of a hard drive in like an hour. It typically took us multiple hours just to image a drive so that we could analyze it without messing it up as evidence. Analysis took even longer- and it’s still a wash I’m sure, in that increased speed from things like 7200 RPM drives and USB 3.0 are offset by the increasing drive sizes in use. If anything, I’d think that drive size has gone up faster than speed, slowing the whole thing down. But I’m not watching the show for realism… if I was, I’d expect them to waste a lot of time, find no emails or smoking guns on the computers, and only realize later that the bad guy had steganographically encoded the schematics on the image used for his cell phone’s background or something like that. Kind of a diabolical mix of hiding it really deeply… in plain sight. ---
**Author:** ![Count\_Blucher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/c5a1d2/32.png) [@Count\_Blucher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Count_Blucher)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2014, 3:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ncis-the-worst-successful-show-ever/598985/71 "2014-10-14T15:23:49Z")
Criminal Minds. (I wasn’t kidding about that shark) This week, someone with what looks like a Kay-Bee Toys remote controller is “threatening the world” by making a jumbo jet fly up and down. (Agents must be speeding to the scene before the terrorist activates that 2nd 9-volt battery and makes that plane REALLY go super-sonic…!) **"Put down the remote… and walk away…!"** - I guess gun point is one way to keep people from changing to a different network. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2014, 3:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ncis-the-worst-successful-show-ever/598985/72 "2014-10-14T15:32:11Z")
> [@bump](#): > > That’s the reason for the success in a nutshell. People aren’t watching NCIS to see how the crew solve the problem at hand, they’re watching it to see the crew interact and even grow over the course of the show. > > That’s what shocks me about NCIS is that the characters actually change over time, and not in the typical way where the defining traits of popular characters get amplified ab absurdum, and by the final seasons, the characters bear no relation to the original ones. (think Homer Simpson, Sheldon Cooper, etc…) > > Instead, we get a Gibbs who’s actually softened up over the course of the show, and taken a more paternal role. We have a Tony who has matured, and a McGee who’s grown up and toughened up. The whole Kate/Ziva/Ellie thing. Even Ducky has changed with the death of his mother, and in last week’s episode. > . Yes, exactly. The interplay reminds of of STtOS. ---
**Author:** ![johnpost](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/f17d59/32.png) [@johnpost](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/johnpost)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2014, 3:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ncis-the-worst-successful-show-ever/598985/73 "2014-10-14T15:38:49Z")
> [@bump](#): > > FWIW… despite my glowing commentary above, I do realize that the “science” is lacking. I used to do computer forensics myself, and I cringe every time that McGee and Abby go and dig something out of a hard drive in like an hour. It typically took us multiple hours just to image a drive so that we could analyze it without messing it up as evidence. Analysis took even longer- and it’s still a wash I’m sure, in that increased speed from things like 7200 RPM drives and USB 3.0 are offset by the increasing drive sizes in use. If anything, I’d think that drive size has gone up faster than speed, slowing the whole thing down. don’t watch Scorpion they do it in seconds. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ncis-the-worst-successful-show-ever/598985.md?page=3)