NCIS Had One Hell of a Premiere; NCIS: Los Angeles Not So Much - TV-News - EZTV

Tuesday 29th of May 2012 04:39:21 EST

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NCIS Had One Hell of a Premiere; NCIS: Los Angeles Not So Much	NCIS	Login to vote
The original stayed true to form, but the spinoff is a little too glitzy for our taste. If last night's episode of NCIS taught you anything, it was that Special Agent Leroy Jethro Gibbs (Mark Harmon) is a complete badass. Also, he may or may not be superhuman. I'm pretty sure it's impossible to snipe at someone from that far away. Other lessons from NCIS's Season 8 premiere? Interrogation doesn't have to include excessive physical torture, truth serum doesn't hurt that much, and strong handshakes indicate overcompensation. I'm glad I know all this now. But seriously. "Truth or Consequences" (watch the full episode here) was a solid opener, no? 20 million people certainly thought so. Not only did the writers conveniently make the show accessible for new viewers via Tony's (Michael Weatherly) scene-setting, character-describing flashbacks, but they also advanced Ziva's (Cote de Pablo) storyline. Rather heavily, if you ask me -- I thought it would take the crew a few more episodes to retrieve her, but Gibbs is not a man to question. At least she's back in DC, after a freaky stint in Israel and who-knows-where-else, scarred but ready and able to NCIS it up again. Now she just has to make amends with Tony. It was mildly amusing to watch the guys search for another Ziva. Every actress (and candidate!) who walked in the door was a virtual hybrid of Jessica Alba and Sarah Palin -- the complete and obvious opposite of Ziva herself. The whole affair just made her presence on the team, however controversial, that much more necessary. It's good that she's back, but it's going to be a tenuous run until everyone gets used to each other again. And lucky for us, it'll make for great television. Let's move west, shall we? Nevermind the beautiful setting and the beautiful people: NCIS: Los Angeles is a modern-day high-class buddy cop show. CBS tried pretty hard to cover it up with the whole spinoff angle, and the whole Chris-O'Donnell's-more-than-Robin angle and the whole LL-Cool-J's-more-than-a-rapper angle, but there's not much else to it. Granted, O'Donnell and LL Cool J have great chemistry in the pilot -- it's just that the whole thing is shoved into a designer package. The LA sunshine is too shiny, their clothes are too scuff-free, and they're both a little too good-looking to be believable cops. Plus, Linda Hunt in the Q-esque role is just ... weird. Idiosyncratic. Distracting. Irritating. She's a caricature of herself at this point. NCIS: Los Angeles pales in comparison to its gritty, rough-around-the-edges, ensemble-cast counterpart. But, if it can somehow capitalize on the lead characters' backstories, we might see an improvement. G. Callen (O'Donnell) and Sam Hanna (Cool J, or whatever the equivalent of his last name is) originally appeared on NCIS, so they've got seven seasons of material to refer to in the spinoff. They've led interesting lives, too: Callen returns to NCIS in Los Angeles after being shot several times -- and yes, G is his full first name. Hanna is an ex-Navy SEAL and is fluent in Arabic. Karate-chopping and gun-waving will only get you so far, guys. You've got to reel us in with something different. The No Crew Is Superior crap isn't going to cut it, either.

Written by: latifa [23rd Sep 09, 16:23]