Can we talk about NCIS for a moment?
23 Seasons. Seriously?!
When I first moved back to Phoenix from SF in 2003 and was staying with my Dad, I got into watching NCIS because that’s what he watched. It was fun, engaging, and justice almost always came to the bad guys (something that was sorely needed two years after the still-fresh wound of 9/11). When I moved out and got back into my own place, the apartment complex I moved into provided their own—and only their own—satellite television service at an exorbitant monthly fee. It wasn’t even connected to Cox for you to bypass. There was no other option. Nope, thanks. I’ll stick with broadcast.
So I continued with NCIS via broadcast TV.
When Sasha Alexander was unceremoniously killed off left the show in 2005 my interest started waning as I realized she was my favorite character. But I stuck with it because—even though I now had real cable available—it was fun, engaging and justice almost always came to the bad guys (something still sorely needed, hip deep into the Bush/Cheney years). And I suprisingly embraced the addition of Cote de Pablo’s Ziva charcter to replace Sasha Alexander.
When Pauly Perrette left the show and more importantly I learned the reasons why, I almost gave up on it again, but it was fun, engaging, yadda, yadda, yadda…
It was only after Cote de Pablo’s brief return to —and departure from—the series followed by Michael Weatherly leaving that my interest started waning altogether. When Mark Harmon (whom I originally discovered many years earlier via Goliath Awaits) left his role as Gibbs to go behind the camera and produce, that was pretty much the death knell for me. To be honest, I gave the replacement cast a couple seasons, but the chemistry that the original series actors had just wasn’t there. Gary Cole, Wilmer Valderrama (I still see him in his role from That 70s’s Show), and Brian Deitzen are all fine actors, but this just wasn’t the NCIS I’d grown to love. It didn’t help that the stories seemingly started to alternate between “let’s scare grandma with the dark web (or whatever boogeyman was current)” and “social cause of the week.”
And then there’re the spinoffs…NCIS: New Orleans was decent enough, but it wasn’t worth recording to watch at a later time. If we missed it, we missed it, and didn’t feel a sense of loss. And as far as the others (NCIS:Sydney immediately comes to mind) are concerned…well, don’t even get me started.
What say you? Do any of you still watch the show? Age-wise from the commercials alone it was obvious I’m was target audience, but I’ve lost interest in the entire franchise and can’t be bothered to even check in on it these days. There are so many other excellent police procedurals out there (a genre that Ben and I both love), that we don’t have time to waste on this pablum.
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