NCISseason6

NCIS: Naval Criminal Investigative Service season 6

Yeah I know you guys are wondering what I’m doing reviewing NCIS for the site. Well you know what I like this show! Not only that but I think this show has a strange cult following as well, because there are a lot of NCIS “closet” fans in the horror world. Plus this is a damn good show and one of the better things you will catch on network T.V.

For those unfamiliar with the show each episode we see a group of investigators that work for the Navy solve crimes that involve Naval and Marine Corps personal. Leading the team is grizzled ex-Marine Jethro Gibbs (played by Mark Harmon). Also along for the ride is a Mossad agent on loan from Israel, a former cop and self styled ladies man, the tech geek, a coroner, and the Goth girl lab tech (my favorite!). Each episode they are faced with a new crime that they need to solve. But what makes this show really cool, at least to me, are the story arcs that can last an entire season (and in some cases are multiple season arcs). This makes for even more interesting characters and stories that have a bit more impact than many of the crime of the week dramas that dominate the genre.

Season 6 starts off just as strong as season 5 ended. The season opens with the team broken up (because of the events of the previous season finale) and the first couple of episodes are used to introduce a new director and reassemble the team. They are pretty good episodes, but honestly the show works better when the cast is together. Some of my favorite episodes from the season are Cloak, which has the NCIS team being used to test security at a supposed secure facility. There are a ton of twists and turns that make this a really fun episode to watch. Also I really enjoyed Broken Bird, which features the Dr.Mallard (aka.Ducky) the team’s coroner. This character is played by an old favorite David McCallum (The Man from U.N.C.L.E.) who is great as this eccentric character. In much the same way I enjoyed the episode Toxic because it featured the Abby character, who is the teams lab technician and resident Goth oddball. Another fun episode is South by Southwest where the team has to head out west to solve a crime that happened on the streets of Washington D.C. Finally the last 2 episodes of the season bring back another Mossad agent that has a history with the team. After he is killed while attacking a member of the NCIS team they all must fly to Israel to deal with the consequences.

Overall this is a great show and season 6 is another strong effort. In fact the only 2 episodes that I thought were less then stellar are the pair towards the end of the year where they were setting up the spin off series. The show is well written with likeable characters and worth checking out. This is what I wish that we had more of on T.V. and less of the mind numbingly dumb reality shows.

3 out of 4

reviewed by John Shatzer