I haven’t seen a lot of NCIS, but I saw some of it one year when it ran before The Amazing Race, so I’m somewhat conversant with it. Not enough that I didn’t have to drop by the IMDB to gather up the character’s names, but enough that I can of have a handle on the main characters. Of course, that’s because the characters are, very much, characters.
The notable thing about NCIS, a spin-off of CBS’ old series JAG and a show that actually has been building its audience as the years have gone along, is that it’s probably network TV’s squarest, most old-fashioned series, while desperately wanting to be a hip, cutting edge show CSI. It’s your stodgy uncle who wants to hang out with you and your friends. I’m not knocking the show, it’s a solidly crafted series, and that should not be underrated. It can’t help but being what it is, though. And although it tries hard, with occasionally very violent episodes, or even by graphically bumping off a long-running central character, it just can’t shake its essentially hidebound sensibilities.
The major form this stodginess takes is in a cast of characters right out of a kit. Gibbs (Mark Harmon) is the old school, tight-lipped ass kicking Marine sniper who leads the team. He’s right off an old Western show from the ’50s or ’60s, hard as nails, stoic, basically omniscient and invulnerable, but with a quietly supportive and sensitive side that winks at us occasionally. He’s a doer, not a sayer.
DiNozzo is the comically horndog, egomaniacal guy who alternates between being a valued, super-competent member of this highly elite team, and the screw-up butt of most of the show’s jokes. Remember how Jack Tripper on Three Company’s was always trying to get into every woman’s pants, unless they were trying to get into his pants, at which point he got all skittish and demure? Like that. DiNozzo entertains a lot of people, obviously, but I can’t get past the fact that he exhibits two sides, each of which basically contradicts the other. Plus, the guy playing him is over 40 now, and it just seems time for him to get away from the jackass thing.
Abby is the silly spunky Goth super tech grrrrrl, cute as a button, addicted to ersatz Big Gulp, and able to perform (pretty much literal) magic with her advanced computers and other scientific equipment. Basically she’s one of the Powerpuff Girls all grown up and majored at MIT. I find her continued Goth attire increasingly problematic as the show enters its seventh season (especially now that the actress playing her has hit 30), but apparently I’m in the minority. I mean, she still looks good and stuff, but really, how long can a grown woman sport the ‘Catholic school girl with studded leather collar’ look and not seem sort of pathetic?
McGee is basically the nerdy, easily wounded foil for DiNozzo’s antics. He’s the bland straight man. I guess he’s got ticks, but they are less readily apparent to a casual viewer like myself.
Ziva is an Israeli ex-Mossad assassin (I think) and your typical waifish butt-kicker. She has the inevitable love/hate thing going on with DiNozzo, and it’s a bit tiresome (to me at least) to watch these two adults dance around their obvious attraction to one another year after year. If I remember right, her comic trait is issuing an endless stream of malapropisms in her attempts to master American slang.
More on the sidelines is the show’s veteran actor, former Man from UNCLE David McCallum as coroner Ducky. Ducky appears to be the lovable eccentric wise man, sort of a mom figure for the younger cast opposite Harmon’s taciturn father figure.
The point being, these characters are patently artificial, and some of them are downright cartoons. This is held in check by the actors, who aren’t great thespians, most of them, but who manage to (generally) to make you look past their inherent goofiness. Still, it’s hard to get past the fact that this IS, in fact, your father’s action show.
I should again really stress that it is not my intention to knock this program. For my money, it’s old-fashionedness is its main strength. There are zillions of hipper, more lightweight shows on TV right now, but NCIS‘ all but utter lack of irony oddly gives it a fairly unique feel. It’s easy to mock the show for reaching an aging audience demographic, but at least it’s not about some half-shaven man boy tooling around in a cherry 1968 Barracuda and who lives in a gigantic loft apartment in a converted former fire station.
Last night we got the premiere of NCIS: Los Angeles, a new spinoff which will run after the original NCIS every Tuesday. I assumed the new program would premiere via one of those back to back crossovers, starting on NCIS and moving on to the new show. Somewhat surprisingly, this wasn’t the case, although such a crossover is surely only a matter of time.
This one is much more generic, being just your basic urban buddy cop series. They bicker and smartass one another, but deep down, man, they love each other like brothers. The show wears its own equally failed attempts at hipness more on its sleeve, especially in co-starring rapper/actor LL Cool Jay. His partner is played by pretty boy Chris O’Donnell.
Like many actors of his maturity-impaired generation, O’Donnell remains boyish even though he’s nearly 40, and the show really makes sure we understand how GOSH DARN VULNERABLE AND RACKED WITH INNER PAIN he is. (Oh, for the days of James Stewart, John Wayne, Humphrey Bogart, Gregory Peck, etc.) The show is much more forthrightly urban than its progenitor and its cast skews younger, except for netting Oscar winning actress Linda Hunt as the guy’s boss. Hunt’s presence is the most exciting thing the program has to offer.
The buddy cop thing is the show’s major divergence from it’s predecessor, and arguably its greatest weakness, until they get a groove going between the two. NCIS is toplined by old school hardass Mark Harmon, due to turn 60 in a few years. Although the show features an ensemble cast, everyone else is Harmon’s supporting character, much like the folks who revolve around David Caruso in CSI: Miami.
NCIS: Los Angeles, in contrast, features your usual mismatched two man template, like a zillion other series since Starsky & Hutch. The pair is surrounded by a highly generic—your basic young, hot Benetton ad array—backup team who chill at your now obligatory super high-tech headquarters with insanely advanced computer equipment. It’s pretty clear already that they will constitute your normal group of pretty ciphers and purportedly loveable eccentrics, like the guy whose shtick appears to be that he’s a walking encyclopedia. He’s basically like Dex in those Yellow Pages ads.
In the end, it would be risky to reinvent the wheel, and NCIS: Los Angeles most surely doesn’t try. It’s unfair to judge the show after one episode. Given its pedigree it will surely be professionally mounted, and quite possibly provide fans of NCIS, and JAG before it, with another pleasant if not particularly strenuous hour of TV every week.
Even so, I expect the lack of a canny pro like Mark Harmon at the helm will hurt the show more than they think it will, rather than draw in a younger demographic. The fact is—and who would have thought it 20 years ago?—that Harmon dominates the screen with an effortless masculine grace that neither Cool J nor O’Donnell can remotely touch. Indeed, neither can hold a candle even to the increasingly calcified and hilarious David Caruso. The latter might be our new William Shatner, but he still has a lot more ‘it’ than these two. (Indeed, if he didn’t, he couldn’t be a Shatner.)
Primarily, I hope Hunt’s character grows into more than the parade of wacky quirks we see in this first episode. I certainly don’t begrudge her a steady paycheck, but man, she brings a lot more to the table than they are using so far.
