NCIS Season Finale

[Pelranius]

NCIS isn't the worst offender. That goes to CSI: Miami but take heart, they've been cancelled.

You don't say! Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia!!!!

[Enigma]

AFAIK, CSI:NY is probably next to go since their ratings are worse off than Miami.

[Alkaloid]

The whole gitmo/patriot act has been turning up in a lot of shows now and it's kind of weird the way its used. It seems to range from asshole incompetents wandering around doing things that are blatantly unethical or illegal and shouting 'God bless the patriot act rar rar rar' while the main cast sit there with there face in their hands, to ones where competent professionals are doing things they acknowledge they probably shouldn't be allowed to but will do because the patriot act lets them get away with it and its a quick way to get what they want done, to the NCIS thing where it seems to vary, half the time the gitmo thing is looked on as reasonable and half the time they at least question the ethics of the whole thing, and then there are shows like 24 that present the only reasonable way to deal with terrorism as locking anyone who may or may not be involved in a dark room and torturing them while shouting. I'm glad it is at least acknowledged and hasn't just been swept under the rug entirely.

[Tsyroc]

When the show first came out I couldn't stand it because I'd been in the Navy too recently and I had a lot of problems with suspension of disbelief. Even now I doubt I could watch JAG for very long, even though I'd kind of like to see the episodes that first introduce Gibbs and his team.

Are you implying JAG was not an accurate representation of the Navy and Marine Corps legal profession?

Me and you are going to have words, buddy.

They at least got the hotness of the female Marine Corps and Navy officers right.

The rest, especially the fighter pilot lawyer, ehhhhhhhhhhhhh no comment.

[RogueIce]

I like it because I think the characters are fun, but at times it doesn't seem to know whether it wants to be a crime show (just investigate the murders), do the whole undercover thing that was its premise, or be an action show (they do rack up an amazing body count).

In some of the episodes, they take cases that should be handled by the LAPD or FBI.

Yeah. NCIS is a little better, but not by much. Inasmuch as they usually have the "dead petty officer/dead Marine" as their excuse to get involved in something that really doesn't involve the Navy much. I'm also curious about those times it's some reservist. I mean, technically they may have jurisdiction, but I wonder how often the real NCIS would assert it or simply leave it to the local agency.

To NCIS: LA's credit though, those times when it really should be handled by the LAPD or FBI, they usually have Callen or someone ask, "This isn't Navy/Marine Corps, so why us?" or something like that. To which Hetty will handwave it with some national security thingy or whatever. So at least the writers acknowledge it even when they don't give the flimsy justification of some dead Sailor or Marine that the parent show does.

Honestly, I'm not sure which approach is better.

The rest, especially the fighter pilot lawyer, ehhhhhhhhhhhhh no comment.

Look, you served aboard a carrier, so you should know better than anyone that the Navy only actually has like three pilots and the CAG on any given carrier, so clearly they need to rely upon the expert skills of the Judge Advocate General's Corps.

[Thanas]

That's par the course for that gang. They are all shitheads and sociopaths.

The show also ROUTINELY implies that the only people who say nothing without a lawyer present are guilty, or at the very least sleazeballs. It's probably because any halfway competent lawyer would make their interrogations inadmissible in court with only a slightest effort.

They also send a clear "torture is good" measure. Well, except when it is done to their people, of course.

JAG was a similar offender, but at least they showed internal dissent about that and did not have a "let's follow our glorious leader (Gibbs)" message. Also had less of the theatrics.

[Darksider]

I still want to see an episode of at least one of these damn police procedurals where somebody they put away gets off due to their shitty procedure and gestapo tactics, and the "heroes" have to face the fact that the dude is free to kill maim or whatever because of them

[RogueIce]

I know people see the old Dragnet and Adam-12 shows as Jack Webb sucking up to the LAPD, and they do sort of. But they did feature a few times when a case got tossed due to some technicality or procedual thing, and they'd even show cops getting in trouble for excessive force and such (including a main character) though their "excessive force" would barely even qualify as a warm-up by modern standards...

Of course those shows were about cops who did follow procedure like 99% of the time so it's not like they were getting away with stuff. And if they saw another cop do something bad, they'd always say, "Tell it like it is" and didn't treat Internal Affairs as The Enemy who were simplyout to crucify good cops (the mindset was kinda there in one episode of Dragnet when Friday and Gannon were on IA, but they explained their role and the cops they were investigating came around to seeing them as guys doing a job, just like them).

[Stofsk]

My mum likes NCIS, I think for the 'buddy cop' aspect to it. She's also fond of giving me a Gibbs-style slap whenever I annoy her. I complain, but... nobody listens. She doesn't watch it religiously though I don't think. Have they always been fond of torturing suspects or threatening to send them to gitmo, or was that kind of thing introduced half-way through the show or in a handful of episodes people here are exaggerating?

Law & Order in its early years was one of the best police procedural and legal dramas ever produced. My metric for quality is first, look if Adam Schiff is DA. If he's not, it'll blow. Some people prefer Ben Stone to Jack McCoy and go by that metric, and I can see their point. But I think after Steven Hill left the show, it took a definite nosedive in quality.

/threadhijack

[Thanas]

My mum likes NCIS, I think for the 'buddy cop' aspect to it. She's also fond of giving me a Gibbs-style slap whenever I annoy her. I complain, but... nobody listens. She doesn't watch it religiously though I don't think. Have they always been fond of torturing suspects or threatening to send them to gitmo, or was that kind of thing introduced half-way through the show or in a handful of episodes people here are exaggerating?

Like D said, very early on.

(though it was not the third episode. It was the first, where master interrogator Gibbs foils a terrorist plot by sharing wine with a terrorist and treating him nice after the marine hit-him style of interrogation failed. And don't make my head hurt even more).

The show sucks. It is almost a worse offender than the new Hawaii 5-0, but the difference is only one in volume- while I can remember only one instance of NCIS actually torturing someone, Hawaii does it nearly every goddamned show.

[JointStrikeFighter]

In one NCIS episodes they explicitly told some drug dealers they would have their mate from Mossad fabricate some transmissions from al quads mentioning the gang and send them to gitmo

[Revy]

I used to watch NCIS a lot, but I just got fed up with it after a while because it got boring IMO. The first three season were the best I think, and after that they just started exaggerating the character traits and overdoing the running gags to an excessive degree. I also think they could have done with a decent recurring villain like Ari again, someone who would actually beat them or outsmart them every so often.

I've mostly been watching the Mentalist now, because it focuses less on forensics, has no autopsies you have to sit through, and the main sleuth character Jane is fun to watch for the sheer outrageous stuff he gets up to. It also has a recurring villain who is a serial killer that seems to be impossible to catch. Just lately they had a two episode season finale setting up a trap to get him to show up, and it looks like he did, but when the FBI crash his car and riddle it with bullets they find that he abducted the CBI's director, taped him to the backseat and gagged him, and spoke through a radio or cell phone he'd stuck to the guy in order to make it seem like he was there. And this was in a blacked out limo, so they couldn't tell until they opened the car door and saw the taped up body. He's like Moriarty if Moriarty were a serial killer rather than a crime boss. He's so bad he somehow has other serial killers working for him and gives them tips on how to be better killers.