Why I Love Gibbs: A Study In Filmmaking and Storytelling
Many years ago I met a woman online. Nothing romantic obviously, us disabled men, even when in Canada, rarely are privy to even friendship with women. But this woman, perhaps precisely because she was not from North America, showed great interest in being kind to me. She was from France and so her and I talked for hours and hours and eventually were friends for years before things brought us apart as sometimes happens in life. But forever what she gave me will stay with me, and that includes the love of the TV show NCIS, complete with Abby and her lab.
One of the first things I noticed in this show was that I loved it so much that by the end of the first season, and this is unusual for me as I never even know names of fellow soccer team mates, but I knew the actor's names of every single person in that show. In fact, as a musician, the theme of that show, even now that it's been years since I watched it, elicits a smile from me ear to ear. It's one of those shows I truly love and I don't think its an emotional affection stemming from the French woman at all. The show is just that well made, and hits the spot for me personally. Only the first season did not really impress me much due to the video quality, but the show itself even in the first season had solid writing and solid casting as well as the music was perfectly suited. I am not sure what I don't like visually about the first season, unless the recording on Rogers cable is somehow messed up, but the colours and tones and cinematography seems off. It's as if it's too dark, and red, visually. I know it is not my monitor or television for other shows appear fine. That aside, I have watched even brand new seasons a year or so ago and they are expertly made.
One of the first things I noticed about NCIS after watching it for a few seasons is that it has an arc. It does not have a Babylon 5 character arc, but a Star Trek arc. In that, you do not have to know every previous episode to follow the current one, but if you do, it aids in your joy. Knowing why the directors changed, and knowing how they relate to Gibbs past, will yield a greater depth of embracing the story, but not knowing these details will not lead to a "why are the two ships fighting?" Babylon 5 feeling of missing even one episode. Now many may read into this that I prefer Star Trek over Babylon 5's story telling method. I do not. Neither is better. They are separate ways of depicting a universe, a group of events, and I enjoy both very much. In fact, they are both amazing exercises for the mind. Babylon 5 is more like life. Today is Friday for example. And I am sitting all alone even on a Friday night, working on this laptop computer. It is because on Thursday I had no girlfriend. And that is because on Wednesday all the women of Toronto were far too busy for me to be of interst to them. That is Babylon 5. Where as Star Trek is a bit different. In the Star Trek storytelling method, I am still alone on a Friday night, and I am playing video games, and I am laughing and having a great fun time all by myself, and then in one brief ten second look at a romantic scene on the TV I utter "I wish I wasn't alone on this Friday night like they're not,... sigh.. oh well" and then my fun Friday night moves on. It's a subtle thing, it gives the truth that something's missing, but it does not show and explain in a sequential way events of Thursday and Wednesday. It doesn't teach you how things became this way, it just mentions it in passing. This is Star Trek vs. Babylon 5 storytelling and NCIS' director chose the Star Trek method. And I believe it is because the story is not about its characters and their lives but rather about each episode's presentation of a crime being resolved. The resolution of crimes is presented each episode and through it we are given a bit about the private lives of the officers in question. This is very appropriate for those who protect us, they are not celebrities. We do not need to know if the chief of police cheated on his wife. But we do need to know why a crime against a blonde with a green dress affects him more than a crime against a little boy, if that were the case, for example. After all, we all, even police officers, can not and never should, escape our biases due to our pasts. And neither can Gibbs when talking to a particular red head. This is why I think the director chose for NCIS to use the Star Trek storytelling method. Whereas Babylon 5, we are actually talking about a space station, and we do, we absolutely must know, much about the staff, for they are always on that space station, and we are technically watching people who are due to that future's events forced to live continually in the exact same tiny space. For example, if I lived exclusively on the Apple Computer campus due to a very complicated programming task. I wouldn't be going to beaches, I wouldn't be going to clubs. My day would be programming and wandering around the campus. So a movie about that would have to focus on my life on the campus and not on other activities involving me and thus couldn't teach via storytelling about the world but would have to teach about me and how I cope and do things in that "tiny space". Similarly Babylon 5 is teaching us how those officers of the space station are coping with the universe that created their world in such small enclosures. Sure they go on ships and venture elsewhere in space, to hyperspace, to other worlds and so forth, but that is rare for the staff of the station. So in that case, the director had to add other characters and so forth. Otherwise it would have been Big Brother type of reality TV show.
All this aside, the directorial choice in how NCIS stories were depicted, and how the cameras were filming are flawlessly rendered. I know I used sci-fi to explain this concept, but it is important for it defines the very nature of what we know of the characters. Making their personal lives a spice rather than the focus is what turns me on to turn on my TV when the show is on. Its why I look forward to the show. Because it shows that even those whom every gangster rapper hates, the cops, even they deserve privacy, even though they violate ours, even though they feel justified in investigating via the Homeland Act anyone for anything, even though with NSA and Snowden like surveillance they can watch us peeing and having sex now that cameras can be tinier than a fingernail and imbedded into walls with perfect white coverings, even though they can do that, we the movie makers and fans feel even we should not know what colour Gibbs underwear is - though they can and do know ours. This is in part what I love about NCIS, too, how it is respectful of all life, even criminally troubled life. Never does any character on the show make fun of the guilty, the suspect, nor the dead or injured. Never does even the joker DiNozzo mock the suffering of others. There is no point where Abby gets high on even more drugs than she is always on in her lab and plays with a cadaver disrespectfully. The show could have been made a billion ways from a trillion angles. But it isn't. It's a very human way of seeing life, one with honesty, integrity, and most of all honour - held in the show at every point by Gibbs. For those like me who were forced by our disabilities to sit endlessly at a computer console I am especially fond of McGeek, who is mocked as much as is complimented. This perfectly feels the way my life has been, though all the mockery for me came from women who were jealous of my skills. But still, McGee is your quintessential toolkit of any team. He is the technological pocket knife, and like me, depicted as having absolutely no luck with women. In this way the show portrays not a stereotype as most people will interpret, but a reality of what society should have changed, what society should not have made it so, and what we all should strive to change but none of us are. Abby, with her vampireness is flawless and shows us clearly that yes, a Tattoo does not render one unemployable, and neither does eccentricity. Yes, all of these are silly stereotypes, but as I said, they really are not. They are hints at how much mental floss we all as a society are in dire need of. But also a reminder of why things should not be that way - tattoos are not really a good thing overall, and neither is investigating crime, is it?
There are side characters, passing plots and long arcing plots. And all of them are flawlessly built into the show. Director's of NCIS changing jobs is something that rarely happens in these types of shows and teaches people that even the boss man can change, and it shows how policies of a different boss can shape not just team dynamics, but also may influence if crimes get solved and how they get solved. All of this is in the story and is a great thing to learn, especially if you're a kid who knows nothing of this aspect of the world. We also sometimes get to see the private residences of the officers, and it shows and teaches the personality differences that influence people. It is kind of like how different characters also have different musical tastes, though made readily apparent mostly through Abby's lab, but still an important and rarely shown human trait in many shows. Even the underbelly of this dirty job, examining dead parts and disgusting human flesh, is explained through a very lovable character, Ducky, who has a lot to teach us from a very different generational perspective. Yes, yes, stereotypes exist, but so does dismissing important lessons by labelling them as a stereotype. Look at Star Trek, is the role of Picard not a stereotype? Older gentleman leading a team through difficult situations? So mind blowing, eh? Or look at Sex and the City. A beautiful woman around whose life an entire show is centered and the title has the word "sex" in it? Why wasn't Sex and the City about a disabled man in a wheelchair? Wouldn't that be more mind blowing? But none of you think this way and only point out stereotypes where it suits you. And that's proper and acceptable. Obviously a captain should have lots of experience, and obviously a show with the word sex will be about someone beautiful and not someone whom the rest of you all ignore and think is ugly, such as me, a disabled man who has never had a fun Friday night and thus I sat home and watched NCIS and wrote all of this. A stereotype in a film is actually not a stereotype but a simple method of linking things so they stay in your mind. What you do with that figment is entirely up to you. You know a hot sexy babe is the star of Sex and the City. You know an older man leads the Enterprise, you know that a sexy Russian woman does security for a space station. But how you use that knowledge is entirely up to you. As I have so well explained, these things are not bad nor negative in TV shows, the negative part is seeing them as negative. After all, is it not a stereotype that the Hulk is green as opposed to blue? It is, and Hulk is lovable precisely because he is green. And it is important for the Hulk to be green for it reflects a certain reality of radioactive matter and how it appears in nature I think, though I did not research it much. So from that perspective the colour even of the Hulk, an Avengers team member, can be a powerful teaching tool. Or you can be one of those people who just dismisses it as a stereotype and fail to grasp reality as most of the modern fans seem to who are out of touch with this way of interpreting things.
But the key to NCIS' being my favourite show is perhaps Gibbs' love of plain coffee. I just sat here and drank a triple cup without sugar and milk. And it felt heavenly. It is these little trinkets that make or break a show, for too many and too complex and the show feels fake. None whatsoever feels empty. NCIS has found the ying yang, the sweet spot, and I didn't even notice until years after enjoying it. The show was not, I feel, made with science nor formulas. It feels so natural, so complete, and so uniform, that it feels like it actually was made from real life. For I have known an Abby in my day as a corporate lackey. I have known a Gibbs. And I have most surely known a Palmer and a McGee. The actual crime cases are sort of irrelevant, but also not. Each one shows us what the world has produced thus far. It shows us how all the technology, books, and knowledge, how all that we believe to have made us a powerful people, a beautiful species, how it all is still not enough. Despite even Wikipedia, as many of us believed a colossal version of Britanica, would heal the whole world, if only it were free and editable by all, despite even this accomplishment, despite it having lessons on everything imaginable, from the history of the Slavic people, to the full break down of the events of O.J. Simpson's case, we still have people who are killing others for fun and out of boredom, or even worse things, as death is not, unfortunately, the worst NCIS has shown us. When I realized this I felt a bit down. We reached to the very stars with the ISS station orbiting even now, we put a man on the fricking moon, we even built pyramids and railroads coast-to-coast, but we did not heal them or us. In fact, NCIS even has in few places demonstrated that the very machinery of policing causes problems, and can be part of the cause for all the violence they are trying to solve. And perhaps the biggest lesson from NCIS I got, the take away, is that one can not fix crime. We can all only manage it. So policing is not about removing crime, murder, rape and torture. It is merely about managing it. Once I understood this, it was better. I used to think of crime like eliminating cockroaches from my apartment. It is not so - it is more like letting a few roam around and being aware of them and where they are. Sure I can call the exterminator, and build a condo out of materials that never allow any within. But you know, seeing a bug once in a while, is actually a joyful thing. Even if it is one that flew in from the garden out back. With all that condo building considerations for bugs, the windows always need to be open, don't they? No, the analogy breaks down, for no crime ever has to happen, at least no human crime. What the legal system defines as criminal is irrelevant in the grand scheme of things, North Korea taught us all that. The government can declare anything as illegal, so legality is irrelevant. But NCIS does not so much explain what the government of America thinks is illegal, it deals with plain and simple human crimes. Theft is obviously wrong, so is murder. It rarely dwells on minute points of the statue clauses and so forth, and for that it is worth every moment of my time. It shows us that even without a legal system, even if you have never read a single line of it, we all can recognize the wrongs in society. A dead body in a park? Do you really need a book of law to tell you that's wrong? A woman screaming in her apartment? Must I know what line of the constitution that is against? No, and that's the whole point. Legal codes are never explained and they are not needed in a normal society. But the show stops there. It does not go into the philosophy of who forced whom into a life of crime. Why a minority or a gender or an abused sect was forced to live as criminals and how politically that can be corrected. The show stays buoyant and floats atop a simple concept - we know right from wrong intuitively and here is the proof. Technology is used in the show, such as when hard drives are forensically analyzed, and when Gibbs struggles with a cell phone, but even that is shown to not be the point of life. Technology is merely a tool and not some magic potion. It is not a cure all and does not resolve every problem. There are plenty of examples on NCIS how without technology a problem was completely resolved and investigated. In fact, there is even an episode where no technology is possible due to a black out or power loss. NCIS teaches about smart bombs, drones, mines, but also about lying, faking a smile, and owning really cool cars. It shows people being bored at work, and also having a blast, and shows us our society in its full spectrum, from the ugliest to the bravest.
What I never realized until I thought deeply about NCIS' success though is why Gibbs is Gibbs. They could have chosen a man in his thirties to be Gibbs. They could have chosen an older woman, too. So the casting decisions were important in choosing the look, but not only that but also the feel. For example, making the lab worker a funky female was a brilliant decision. But so was making Ducky have glasses. The costumes all fit the story, as does the delivery by the actors. When Gibbs refuses to show a smile or when he chooses to, is a key ingredient to his character's rendering of the storytelling dynamics. For it is completely opposite of DiNozzo, and yet they get along, work on a team, and even someone, a foreigner, like Ziva, can get along with the polar opposites. The show's emotional renderings by the actors demonstrates that we as people can work together with such very dramatic differences in personality, if we only wanted to and tried. I have heard many people complaining about their bosses and coworkers being weird and this and that. NCIS' cast shows that in that particular team environment, getting the job done means being professional to each other, without eliminating personality of each member of the team. It means we do not have to behave like machines, we can be ourselves, and professional, and still the job gets done, and it gets done well. Yes it is just a TV show, but it isn't. The writers and the director could have chosen to make NCIS about a dysfunctional team in an office environment which has interpersonal conflicts so severe that Gibbs would get angry at DiNozzo's jokes and the two would bicker endlessly and crimes would never get solved. Ziva could have been a woman who hates men's attitudes and kept complaining to the HR about being made uncomfortable in a patriarchial work place. McGee could have been sexually harassing Abby and there could have been lawsuits a plenty. But instead they focused on trying to relay how problems get solved. Not how they do not. For sabotaging work through miscommunication, and through lack of co-operation and friendly professionalism, is the easiest of things to achieve. Even little kids can sabotage their own families. So that's not really an intelligent skill. I can spill milk every morning and get my parents angry, just like in an office I can complain about everything and anything. But sitting there day in and day out, working with the people, and improving the world - that is the point of NCIS I think. And once the problems are solved, then the real camp fires can happen. I don't know about you, but I can not sit at a camp fire with friends if my city is burning. There are people who can party and enjoy life while all around them is in flames, even while people are screaming they can laugh and frolic in shopping sprees and on beaches, but I am not built like that. Its perhaps why I worked in NOCs of tech giants. I am in a way like Gibbs but also like DiNozzo. And so NCIS depicts for me the reality I lived through my whole work life so far. People being professional, and removing burden from our societies. Though we at the NOC removed the burden from your Internet adventures. The actors themselves do a flawless job and whomever trained them and prepared them did so flawlessly. I have never failed to smile at DiNozzo's smirk let alone other subtle gestures. Even my least favourite clothing choices of characters were pleasant to enjoy. In fact, NCIS is such a great show, that even when I did not like the crime depicted, it was not depicted in a grotesquely ugly fashion. The bits we hate in life were not there while the ugliness was demonstrated. And this I like, for in a way, it protects us from what we oughta be protected from. I am not that fond of seeing people even crying on screen with real tears. Some think that is amazing acting, and yes it is. But behind those tears is a human being, real pain, and I am not into that snuff. After all, if I don't enjoy my friends being upset at missing a goal, why would I want to see something worse on screen? I don't think it should be removed, but at the same time, this is how I am - it's why I never watch horror. Perhaps it's maybe because I was born disabled, so unlike most I know what real horror is like and do not need it depicted to me on the screen. Or maybe it's unrelated.
Either way, I love NCIS' direction in what it shows as much as in what it leaves to the imagination. This is what's missing from many modern action films and horror flicks - very little is left to our personal minds to think and visualize. Even Star Trek and Babylon 5 left much out of the frame and I think both of those shows were better for it. For example, how does Data get dressed? Or how does, in Babylon 5, G'Kar choose a brand of lotion. These are funny and silly examples, and yet they could have been in the shows, and even their distant cousins when it comes to conflict, dialogue and romance. What is not shown in all these shows is very important. What angles the cameraman did not hold the camera at is also key. And what choices the visualizing crews with CGIs made also matter. For everything in these shows is made scientifically and precisely to spec. You know how when you choose to draw a circle on a paper and you draw it? You chose not to draw a triangle or a square. This is what I am trying to explain. What you chose not to draw is what made it a circle and a great accomplishment. Similarly, Gibbs affinity for red heads is like Picard's affinity for Earl Grey. Choices, choices, and not choices. Thank you to all that made NCIS, and I look forward to more of your fine work, whenever I make the choice to enjoy my Friday nights, such as they are.
One of the first things I noticed in this show was that I loved it so much that by the end of the first season, and this is unusual for me as I never even know names of fellow soccer team mates, but I knew the actor's names of every single person in that show. In fact, as a musician, the theme of that show, even now that it's been years since I watched it, elicits a smile from me ear to ear. It's one of those shows I truly love and I don't think its an emotional affection stemming from the French woman at all. The show is just that well made, and hits the spot for me personally. Only the first season did not really impress me much due to the video quality, but the show itself even in the first season had solid writing and solid casting as well as the music was perfectly suited. I am not sure what I don't like visually about the first season, unless the recording on Rogers cable is somehow messed up, but the colours and tones and cinematography seems off. It's as if it's too dark, and red, visually. I know it is not my monitor or television for other shows appear fine. That aside, I have watched even brand new seasons a year or so ago and they are expertly made.
One of the first things I noticed about NCIS after watching it for a few seasons is that it has an arc. It does not have a Babylon 5 character arc, but a Star Trek arc. In that, you do not have to know every previous episode to follow the current one, but if you do, it aids in your joy. Knowing why the directors changed, and knowing how they relate to Gibbs past, will yield a greater depth of embracing the story, but not knowing these details will not lead to a "why are the two ships fighting?" Babylon 5 feeling of missing even one episode. Now many may read into this that I prefer Star Trek over Babylon 5's story telling method. I do not. Neither is better. They are separate ways of depicting a universe, a group of events, and I enjoy both very much. In fact, they are both amazing exercises for the mind. Babylon 5 is more like life. Today is Friday for example. And I am sitting all alone even on a Friday night, working on this laptop computer. It is because on Thursday I had no girlfriend. And that is because on Wednesday all the women of Toronto were far too busy for me to be of interst to them. That is Babylon 5. Where as Star Trek is a bit different. In the Star Trek storytelling method, I am still alone on a Friday night, and I am playing video games, and I am laughing and having a great fun time all by myself, and then in one brief ten second look at a romantic scene on the TV I utter "I wish I wasn't alone on this Friday night like they're not,... sigh.. oh well" and then my fun Friday night moves on. It's a subtle thing, it gives the truth that something's missing, but it does not show and explain in a sequential way events of Thursday and Wednesday. It doesn't teach you how things became this way, it just mentions it in passing. This is Star Trek vs. Babylon 5 storytelling and NCIS' director chose the Star Trek method. And I believe it is because the story is not about its characters and their lives but rather about each episode's presentation of a crime being resolved. The resolution of crimes is presented each episode and through it we are given a bit about the private lives of the officers in question. This is very appropriate for those who protect us, they are not celebrities. We do not need to know if the chief of police cheated on his wife. But we do need to know why a crime against a blonde with a green dress affects him more than a crime against a little boy, if that were the case, for example. After all, we all, even police officers, can not and never should, escape our biases due to our pasts. And neither can Gibbs when talking to a particular red head. This is why I think the director chose for NCIS to use the Star Trek storytelling method. Whereas Babylon 5, we are actually talking about a space station, and we do, we absolutely must know, much about the staff, for they are always on that space station, and we are technically watching people who are due to that future's events forced to live continually in the exact same tiny space. For example, if I lived exclusively on the Apple Computer campus due to a very complicated programming task. I wouldn't be going to beaches, I wouldn't be going to clubs. My day would be programming and wandering around the campus. So a movie about that would have to focus on my life on the campus and not on other activities involving me and thus couldn't teach via storytelling about the world but would have to teach about me and how I cope and do things in that "tiny space". Similarly Babylon 5 is teaching us how those officers of the space station are coping with the universe that created their world in such small enclosures. Sure they go on ships and venture elsewhere in space, to hyperspace, to other worlds and so forth, but that is rare for the staff of the station. So in that case, the director had to add other characters and so forth. Otherwise it would have been Big Brother type of reality TV show.
All this aside, the directorial choice in how NCIS stories were depicted, and how the cameras were filming are flawlessly rendered. I know I used sci-fi to explain this concept, but it is important for it defines the very nature of what we know of the characters. Making their personal lives a spice rather than the focus is what turns me on to turn on my TV when the show is on. Its why I look forward to the show. Because it shows that even those whom every gangster rapper hates, the cops, even they deserve privacy, even though they violate ours, even though they feel justified in investigating via the Homeland Act anyone for anything, even though with NSA and Snowden like surveillance they can watch us peeing and having sex now that cameras can be tinier than a fingernail and imbedded into walls with perfect white coverings, even though they can do that, we the movie makers and fans feel even we should not know what colour Gibbs underwear is - though they can and do know ours. This is in part what I love about NCIS, too, how it is respectful of all life, even criminally troubled life. Never does any character on the show make fun of the guilty, the suspect, nor the dead or injured. Never does even the joker DiNozzo mock the suffering of others. There is no point where Abby gets high on even more drugs than she is always on in her lab and plays with a cadaver disrespectfully. The show could have been made a billion ways from a trillion angles. But it isn't. It's a very human way of seeing life, one with honesty, integrity, and most of all honour - held in the show at every point by Gibbs. For those like me who were forced by our disabilities to sit endlessly at a computer console I am especially fond of McGeek, who is mocked as much as is complimented. This perfectly feels the way my life has been, though all the mockery for me came from women who were jealous of my skills. But still, McGee is your quintessential toolkit of any team. He is the technological pocket knife, and like me, depicted as having absolutely no luck with women. In this way the show portrays not a stereotype as most people will interpret, but a reality of what society should have changed, what society should not have made it so, and what we all should strive to change but none of us are. Abby, with her vampireness is flawless and shows us clearly that yes, a Tattoo does not render one unemployable, and neither does eccentricity. Yes, all of these are silly stereotypes, but as I said, they really are not. They are hints at how much mental floss we all as a society are in dire need of. But also a reminder of why things should not be that way - tattoos are not really a good thing overall, and neither is investigating crime, is it?
There are side characters, passing plots and long arcing plots. And all of them are flawlessly built into the show. Director's of NCIS changing jobs is something that rarely happens in these types of shows and teaches people that even the boss man can change, and it shows how policies of a different boss can shape not just team dynamics, but also may influence if crimes get solved and how they get solved. All of this is in the story and is a great thing to learn, especially if you're a kid who knows nothing of this aspect of the world. We also sometimes get to see the private residences of the officers, and it shows and teaches the personality differences that influence people. It is kind of like how different characters also have different musical tastes, though made readily apparent mostly through Abby's lab, but still an important and rarely shown human trait in many shows. Even the underbelly of this dirty job, examining dead parts and disgusting human flesh, is explained through a very lovable character, Ducky, who has a lot to teach us from a very different generational perspective. Yes, yes, stereotypes exist, but so does dismissing important lessons by labelling them as a stereotype. Look at Star Trek, is the role of Picard not a stereotype? Older gentleman leading a team through difficult situations? So mind blowing, eh? Or look at Sex and the City. A beautiful woman around whose life an entire show is centered and the title has the word "sex" in it? Why wasn't Sex and the City about a disabled man in a wheelchair? Wouldn't that be more mind blowing? But none of you think this way and only point out stereotypes where it suits you. And that's proper and acceptable. Obviously a captain should have lots of experience, and obviously a show with the word sex will be about someone beautiful and not someone whom the rest of you all ignore and think is ugly, such as me, a disabled man who has never had a fun Friday night and thus I sat home and watched NCIS and wrote all of this. A stereotype in a film is actually not a stereotype but a simple method of linking things so they stay in your mind. What you do with that figment is entirely up to you. You know a hot sexy babe is the star of Sex and the City. You know an older man leads the Enterprise, you know that a sexy Russian woman does security for a space station. But how you use that knowledge is entirely up to you. As I have so well explained, these things are not bad nor negative in TV shows, the negative part is seeing them as negative. After all, is it not a stereotype that the Hulk is green as opposed to blue? It is, and Hulk is lovable precisely because he is green. And it is important for the Hulk to be green for it reflects a certain reality of radioactive matter and how it appears in nature I think, though I did not research it much. So from that perspective the colour even of the Hulk, an Avengers team member, can be a powerful teaching tool. Or you can be one of those people who just dismisses it as a stereotype and fail to grasp reality as most of the modern fans seem to who are out of touch with this way of interpreting things.
But the key to NCIS' being my favourite show is perhaps Gibbs' love of plain coffee. I just sat here and drank a triple cup without sugar and milk. And it felt heavenly. It is these little trinkets that make or break a show, for too many and too complex and the show feels fake. None whatsoever feels empty. NCIS has found the ying yang, the sweet spot, and I didn't even notice until years after enjoying it. The show was not, I feel, made with science nor formulas. It feels so natural, so complete, and so uniform, that it feels like it actually was made from real life. For I have known an Abby in my day as a corporate lackey. I have known a Gibbs. And I have most surely known a Palmer and a McGee. The actual crime cases are sort of irrelevant, but also not. Each one shows us what the world has produced thus far. It shows us how all the technology, books, and knowledge, how all that we believe to have made us a powerful people, a beautiful species, how it all is still not enough. Despite even Wikipedia, as many of us believed a colossal version of Britanica, would heal the whole world, if only it were free and editable by all, despite even this accomplishment, despite it having lessons on everything imaginable, from the history of the Slavic people, to the full break down of the events of O.J. Simpson's case, we still have people who are killing others for fun and out of boredom, or even worse things, as death is not, unfortunately, the worst NCIS has shown us. When I realized this I felt a bit down. We reached to the very stars with the ISS station orbiting even now, we put a man on the fricking moon, we even built pyramids and railroads coast-to-coast, but we did not heal them or us. In fact, NCIS even has in few places demonstrated that the very machinery of policing causes problems, and can be part of the cause for all the violence they are trying to solve. And perhaps the biggest lesson from NCIS I got, the take away, is that one can not fix crime. We can all only manage it. So policing is not about removing crime, murder, rape and torture. It is merely about managing it. Once I understood this, it was better. I used to think of crime like eliminating cockroaches from my apartment. It is not so - it is more like letting a few roam around and being aware of them and where they are. Sure I can call the exterminator, and build a condo out of materials that never allow any within. But you know, seeing a bug once in a while, is actually a joyful thing. Even if it is one that flew in from the garden out back. With all that condo building considerations for bugs, the windows always need to be open, don't they? No, the analogy breaks down, for no crime ever has to happen, at least no human crime. What the legal system defines as criminal is irrelevant in the grand scheme of things, North Korea taught us all that. The government can declare anything as illegal, so legality is irrelevant. But NCIS does not so much explain what the government of America thinks is illegal, it deals with plain and simple human crimes. Theft is obviously wrong, so is murder. It rarely dwells on minute points of the statue clauses and so forth, and for that it is worth every moment of my time. It shows us that even without a legal system, even if you have never read a single line of it, we all can recognize the wrongs in society. A dead body in a park? Do you really need a book of law to tell you that's wrong? A woman screaming in her apartment? Must I know what line of the constitution that is against? No, and that's the whole point. Legal codes are never explained and they are not needed in a normal society. But the show stops there. It does not go into the philosophy of who forced whom into a life of crime. Why a minority or a gender or an abused sect was forced to live as criminals and how politically that can be corrected. The show stays buoyant and floats atop a simple concept - we know right from wrong intuitively and here is the proof. Technology is used in the show, such as when hard drives are forensically analyzed, and when Gibbs struggles with a cell phone, but even that is shown to not be the point of life. Technology is merely a tool and not some magic potion. It is not a cure all and does not resolve every problem. There are plenty of examples on NCIS how without technology a problem was completely resolved and investigated. In fact, there is even an episode where no technology is possible due to a black out or power loss. NCIS teaches about smart bombs, drones, mines, but also about lying, faking a smile, and owning really cool cars. It shows people being bored at work, and also having a blast, and shows us our society in its full spectrum, from the ugliest to the bravest.
What I never realized until I thought deeply about NCIS' success though is why Gibbs is Gibbs. They could have chosen a man in his thirties to be Gibbs. They could have chosen an older woman, too. So the casting decisions were important in choosing the look, but not only that but also the feel. For example, making the lab worker a funky female was a brilliant decision. But so was making Ducky have glasses. The costumes all fit the story, as does the delivery by the actors. When Gibbs refuses to show a smile or when he chooses to, is a key ingredient to his character's rendering of the storytelling dynamics. For it is completely opposite of DiNozzo, and yet they get along, work on a team, and even someone, a foreigner, like Ziva, can get along with the polar opposites. The show's emotional renderings by the actors demonstrates that we as people can work together with such very dramatic differences in personality, if we only wanted to and tried. I have heard many people complaining about their bosses and coworkers being weird and this and that. NCIS' cast shows that in that particular team environment, getting the job done means being professional to each other, without eliminating personality of each member of the team. It means we do not have to behave like machines, we can be ourselves, and professional, and still the job gets done, and it gets done well. Yes it is just a TV show, but it isn't. The writers and the director could have chosen to make NCIS about a dysfunctional team in an office environment which has interpersonal conflicts so severe that Gibbs would get angry at DiNozzo's jokes and the two would bicker endlessly and crimes would never get solved. Ziva could have been a woman who hates men's attitudes and kept complaining to the HR about being made uncomfortable in a patriarchial work place. McGee could have been sexually harassing Abby and there could have been lawsuits a plenty. But instead they focused on trying to relay how problems get solved. Not how they do not. For sabotaging work through miscommunication, and through lack of co-operation and friendly professionalism, is the easiest of things to achieve. Even little kids can sabotage their own families. So that's not really an intelligent skill. I can spill milk every morning and get my parents angry, just like in an office I can complain about everything and anything. But sitting there day in and day out, working with the people, and improving the world - that is the point of NCIS I think. And once the problems are solved, then the real camp fires can happen. I don't know about you, but I can not sit at a camp fire with friends if my city is burning. There are people who can party and enjoy life while all around them is in flames, even while people are screaming they can laugh and frolic in shopping sprees and on beaches, but I am not built like that. Its perhaps why I worked in NOCs of tech giants. I am in a way like Gibbs but also like DiNozzo. And so NCIS depicts for me the reality I lived through my whole work life so far. People being professional, and removing burden from our societies. Though we at the NOC removed the burden from your Internet adventures. The actors themselves do a flawless job and whomever trained them and prepared them did so flawlessly. I have never failed to smile at DiNozzo's smirk let alone other subtle gestures. Even my least favourite clothing choices of characters were pleasant to enjoy. In fact, NCIS is such a great show, that even when I did not like the crime depicted, it was not depicted in a grotesquely ugly fashion. The bits we hate in life were not there while the ugliness was demonstrated. And this I like, for in a way, it protects us from what we oughta be protected from. I am not that fond of seeing people even crying on screen with real tears. Some think that is amazing acting, and yes it is. But behind those tears is a human being, real pain, and I am not into that snuff. After all, if I don't enjoy my friends being upset at missing a goal, why would I want to see something worse on screen? I don't think it should be removed, but at the same time, this is how I am - it's why I never watch horror. Perhaps it's maybe because I was born disabled, so unlike most I know what real horror is like and do not need it depicted to me on the screen. Or maybe it's unrelated.
Either way, I love NCIS' direction in what it shows as much as in what it leaves to the imagination. This is what's missing from many modern action films and horror flicks - very little is left to our personal minds to think and visualize. Even Star Trek and Babylon 5 left much out of the frame and I think both of those shows were better for it. For example, how does Data get dressed? Or how does, in Babylon 5, G'Kar choose a brand of lotion. These are funny and silly examples, and yet they could have been in the shows, and even their distant cousins when it comes to conflict, dialogue and romance. What is not shown in all these shows is very important. What angles the cameraman did not hold the camera at is also key. And what choices the visualizing crews with CGIs made also matter. For everything in these shows is made scientifically and precisely to spec. You know how when you choose to draw a circle on a paper and you draw it? You chose not to draw a triangle or a square. This is what I am trying to explain. What you chose not to draw is what made it a circle and a great accomplishment. Similarly, Gibbs affinity for red heads is like Picard's affinity for Earl Grey. Choices, choices, and not choices. Thank you to all that made NCIS, and I look forward to more of your fine work, whenever I make the choice to enjoy my Friday nights, such as they are.
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