NCIS is America’s favorite television show—of all time! This alarming “fact” is brought to us by something called The Harris Poll. Those of you who have seen the results of this questionable survey may have noticed that the truly awful Two & A Half Men holds tight at fourth place, sandwiched between M*A*S*H and Seinfeld—seriously. Two & A Half Men is apparently the favorite among Democrats. No, really, I’m serious.
Even if NCIS’s claim to all-time favorite status is dubious, it really does garner consistently high ratings for CBS. The show, which the network describes as “more than just an action drama,” follows “the sometimes complex and always amusing dynamics of a team forced to work together in high-stress situations.”
In NCIS, mundane office politics act as a ground against which all manner of life-and-death scenarios play out. The show’s producers and writers seem to have gotten the message that cutesy characters soften the impact of lazy storytelling. The characters are all talented and brilliant, we are told, so their conclusions—however commonsensical—are presented as evidence not only of their genius, but of that of the writers as well. Plot points, however, are spoon-fed to an audience apparently too stupid to pick up on nuance (what little there is). Most irritating of all, several strokes of a keyboard can bring up precisely the information sought, however obscure, with nifty graphics to boot. This allows the writers to sidestep actual procedure in favor of hi-tech show-and-tell. We know something cool is about to happen when the house music is pumped up and we’re in Abby’s lab. Her coolness is announced by her personal style—she’s goth!
NCIS is hardly the only show to hide terrible writing behind ostensibly lovable characters. In fact, it’s easier to come up with examples of shows that don’t do this—Law and Order, Seinfeld, 30 Rock—than to list the ones that do. Perhaps the most egregious offender was Lost, which seemed for six seasons to be advancing the plot to end all plots. Its (inevitably) disappointing conclusion made it clear that it had been about the characters and their relationships all along.
Some of you out there (mom, dad, anyone?) may be wondering why I bother to complain. After all, it’s just TV, and people enjoy what they enjoy. I, too, have been known to sail the smooth waters of mindless television from time to time (from 9pm to 11pm, actually). My concern, if it can be called that, is this: people and relationships are things that most of us have, or can seek out, in our own lives. The Naval Criminal Investigative Service is not. So why, in our television-watching, do we accept flimsy, one-dimensional versions of the former as compensation for the deficiencies of the latter?
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