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| Wednesday, March 24, 2010 08:56 PM |
| On the Viewer - NCIS |
 by Fëanor |
I'm not going to try to review every episode of this show I've seen in the last few weeks, because that would be far too much work, but I just wanted to mention how much I've come to enjoy it. It's a Law and Order-style detective series, except the investigators work for the Navy, so every crime has to do with a murdered marine or a terrorist on a submarine or some such thing. At first the show seemed pretty ridiculous to me, and there are still some elements of it that are pretty unbelievable. The speed and ease with which they track people's cell phones or dig up every bit of information about them; the impossibly advanced technology they have daily access to; the way they're able to find fingerprints or DNA on anything; the way they're able to take a completely mutilated body and somehow still identify the person and determine the time of death; and so forth and so on. But if you can swallow all that, there's some great stuff here. Each episode covers a complete case, from the discovery of the crime, through the investigation, to the solution. But each episode is also set in a larger story arc, with many recurring characters. Those characters and their relationships are all interesting. Ziva is beautiful and deadly, Abbey is cute and funny, Gibbs is the ultimate bad-ass. The mysteries are intriguing and addictive - it's hard to walk away from an episode once it's started, because you need to see how it turns out. The action is exciting. The writing is strong, with moments of comedy and tragedy that are equally effective. In fact, the show can be surprisingly moving. Every once in a while it even gets arty and avant garde, like the episode immediately after the death of Kate.
NCIS isn't the best show ever, but it's good, fun television, and very comforting to watch in its own way. |
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