NCIS : Enquêtes spéciales

Finally Bellisario got it right. Gibbs and his gang are first and foremost investigators, not hoity-toity staff officers who moonlight as stereotyped combat soldiers with thickly-laid-on patriotic dogma that would make Ward Carroll vomit with rage. At no time do they ever try to borrow an F-14 to go on some bombing raid over the international hot spot du semaine; they stick to their job descriptions the whole time. They also have personalities and eccentricities that make them a better ridealong than overstarched Harmless Rabbit and whatever babe he happens to be working with this season, such as Gibbs' coffee addiction, Ducky's intellectual ramblings, DiNozzo's attempts at being a cool womanizer, Abby's interesting blend of science nerd and goth grrrl, and Kate as the token vaguely normal neophyte thrown into the mix. Too bad this couldn't have been done with JAG in the first place.

Great show for 15 years after that it went downhill. It started when Michael Weatherly left and went from there. From about the 2019 season onward it left its primary theme of military based crime investigation and started become a melodrama of horrible episodes about things like prison reform and side stories that had next to nothing to do with the military. Once this started happening the show lost all respect and became unwatchable.

This has become my favorite regular show on the main networks. The stories are good enough to keep me watching and the character interplay can be quite amusing at times. Gibbs is great...watching the others react to him makes me chuckle. Abby is perfectly believable, despite the goth overtones...she is strong, smart, yet still sexy and feminine. I think Pauley Perette was the ideal actress to cast. The writing seems to continue at an even keel...if nothing else getting better as more episodes are shown. I think the producers have a hit here. I go back each week. Definitely worth your time...even if it means taping or tivo'ing it (which I do)...something to look forward to when I can't make 8:00 on Tuesday.

When the show first started out it was a little shaky, but since then has grown into its own. The characters are believable, both annoying and enchanting, and the plots are wonderful. There's a depth and a comradeship that isn't often showed this well in television. It isn't forced or faked; it's entirely true to life and believable.

The underlying sexual tension between several of the characters is also intriguing and interesting to watch, the most obvious of these being the relationship between Tony and Kate, but there's also hints at Kate and Gibbs, McGee and Abby, and so on. It's a crime drama that's both serious and light-hearted, and a wonderful show for anyone who likes fascinating stories, good humor, and great character interaction.

I used to thoroughly enjoy this series, but with Ziva and Tony gone and Abby apparently about to leave, it has gone right down in my estimation. The three new cast members are very poor substitutes for the above, the two females (especially the dark one) being the most annoying. One feels no empathy towards them, and they seem unlikely characters to exist in an organisation such as NCIS.

Has the USA gone to same way as the UK in being unable to produce decent TV series (or films) any longer? Guess I'll just have to stick to watching older stuff on DVD.

What a shame.