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Date Posted: 10:47:47 04/23/03 Wed
Author: Tracy
Subject: Here you go
In reply to: Tracy 's message, "My thoughts on Ice Queen (I'll post inside due to length)" on 10:46:34 04/23/03 Wed

1. Mark Harmon’s (Agent Gibbs – I don’t recall his first name) character made a good first impression. Even when I thought he was being a bit of an ass later in the show (honestly, he did strike me as being a lot like Harm and you know what happens when you put two alpha males in a room together), I kept going back to the idea that he really did have a heart beneath that gruff exterior. I don’t know if it will hold up, but his character is off to a good start. And he made a good point with his last question (even though they are very shaky on motive – exactly how would Harm killing Singer protect Sergei? Harm assumed that he was protecting Sergei by being tight lipped because he was never corrected on the time frame of Singer’s death and assumed that NCIS thought Sergei was the killer). Although Gibbs could probably exercise a little bit more control over certain members of his team ….
2. Viv Blackadder did not make a good first impression. I quickly grew tired of her attitude. I understand her brother died, but I expect a former FBI/current NCIS agent to be a lot more professional. The way she was acting, hell would freeze over before I would let her near that terrorist case they kept going on about. And I believe Gibbs was lead investigator. Where did she get off constantly trying to tell him how to run his investigation, especially if she’s only joined NCIS within the last couple of years (sometime after October 2000, when the USS Cole was hit)? If Gibbs has so much experience that he’s a team leader, I would think he would know how to run an investigation. He would have been justified in knocking her back more than he did.
3. What was the point of Michael Weatherby’s character (whose name I did not catch at all – see what an impression he made?)? He seemed to do nothing the entire episode but get on Gibbs’ nerves and chase Viv - at least he was less obnoxious about that than …..
4. Ducky. My first impression was his voice got on my nerves. My second impression was his character was annoying. My third impression was the way he openly pursued Viv was even more annoying – he almost came off as perverted. My fourth …. I think you get the point. Someone pointed out that you have to have a sense of humor in that kind of job. Excuse me, what about Lieutenant Commander Teresa Coulter? She is confident, professional and still comes across as caring about her victims and what happened to them. Terri is very much a Southern lady, even when dealing with stuff that would have a lot of people running for a barf bag. Ducky seemed to just care about shocking everyone. I didn’t find him to be a professional at all.
5. That girl (I have not a clue what her name is) who did the forensic work – my first impression was that her hairstyle and looks reminded me of Jan from Grease. Is this the 50s or the first decade of the 21st century? Not a good thing – I thought Jan was the most annoying character in that movie. On NCIS (I don’t consider this to be JAG – this was another show with JAG characters as guest stars), she was second to Ducky in the annoyance factor, but it was close. And I found her taste in art questionable. Not that I’m typically a squeamish person (I was six the first time I saw the movie Halloween) – but I have problems with this at the “family hour”. If I had kids, I’d probably be leery about letting them watch JAG after this.
6. Speaking of the squeamish factor – I found a lot to object to there. On thing I do have to point out – I’ve never watched CSI and have only seen two episodes of CSI: Miami, so I can’t really compare NCIS to those shows (although from what I’ve heard from people who have watched all these shows, there are more similarities than Kip said there would be), but both of those shows are on at a later hour. If I was a parent used to the way JAG usually portrays things (the only truly squeamish thing I’ve ever seen on JAG was Bud losing his leg), I would have been shocked at this episode. JAG usually hints at stuff like this rather than showing it outright (I’m thinking ‘Nobody’s Child’ as an example – it was chilling without being overt – you saw Annie’s body and the blood, but you couldn’t really see *what* happened to her) – in this episode, I was turned off the moment they pulled back Loren’s hair and actually showed the face that was not there anymore. And don’t get me started on her baby girl being stuck in a jar. Did we really need to see that? It did nothing to propel the story, but was simply there for the shock value. And let’s not get into certain real life events which this was uncomfortably close to. At best, I found a lot of aspects of this show to be insensitive.
7. Who was that masked man, or rather, who were those people masquerading as our beloved JAG staff? I’ll go point by point on this…..
a. The staff as a whole – could they have been any colder about Singer’s death? Except for Harriet, who had reached a bit of an understanding with Loren and was pregnant herself (possible about the same period of time at this point that Loren was when she died), not a single one of them really appeared to really care that a co-worker, even a heartily disliked one, was murdered and her body found in such a horrible condition. I supposed I could say that at least they weren’t singing ‘Ding, Dong, The Witch Is Dead’.
b. AJ – I always thought he was smarter than that. He walked blindly into Gibbs’ trap and I would have thought he would know Harm better than he appeared to.
c. Mac – we didn’t really see her enough to get much of a reaction from her. But I thought they should have expounded more on her reaction to Harm having gone behind her back (which is how I saw it back then and how she apparently sees it now) in his investigation of Singer. And couldn’t we have at least gotten a throw away line that Mac didn’t think Harm did it (since it seemed kind of obvious at that point they were already focusing on Harm as a suspect). And I’m already dreading next week. I’m not holding my breath waiting for a good reason to be given why she isn’t ready to take down NCIS for going after Harm. I just keep having ‘Contemptuous Words’ flashbacks when I think about it. I try to remember ‘People v. Rabb’, but that other episode was more recent, therefore it stands out as how Mac behaves when Harm is in trouble. She does love him, right? Isn’t that what she told Sturgis? She doesn’t act like it. The man she loves is being accused of murder and …. Um, nothing so far.
d. Bud – I thought Bud had grown a lot more than that. And why was he even being asked the questions he was and, more to the point, why was he acting the way he was? A five-year-old with a Ouiji board would know that there was no way possible that Bud was the father of Singer’s baby since he was still in the hospital when she left – or did they somehow think he was going at it with her in his hospital room with his roommate egging them on? Bud should have known he had nothing to worry about so why was he so nervous? Plus, an idiot could have figured out there was no way Bud could have thrown her over the railing. He is physically incapable of it, possibly was even before he lost one leg. But I didn’t hear them ask him a single question about if he might have seen something between Singer and anyone else which might point to animosity. Yeah, I know, most of the JAG staff felt that way about Singer, but I’m thinking of him seeing Harm and Singer go at it at the office in ‘Complications’. In contrast ….
e. They did ask Coates about what she saw at Benzingers. Okay, so they knew from the bartender that she had been in that night Harm and Singer were (although I question the bartender’s memory – I can see him remembering Harm and Singer’s confrontation, but would he really remember every other patron in the place that exact night almost four months ago?). And hers was the only believable reaction. You could tell she was torn between telling the truth and worrying about getting Harm, who has done so much for her, in trouble. Coates really has grown up from the conniving woman we first saw in ‘Answered Prayers’.
f. If Harm was so busy trying to protect Loren’s (and his brother’s) privacy, why would he have kept a file (and at the office no less!) on his own investigation into the paternity of baby girl Singer? It made no sense. It seemed like they needed something to give NCIS an excuse to interview Manetti, who otherwise would have served no purpose whatsoever. It came across as a lame attempt to connect the dots that should have been connected in some other manner (perhaps the bartender with the amazing memory would have remembered Manetti and told NCIS that she had been asking a lot of questions about Singer back in November – but that was never brought up that I recall).
g. I’ve saved the worst for last. Who was that man and what did he do with our Harmon Rabb? Like AJ, he should have recognized the games Gibbs was playing a mile off since he’s played them often enough himself. He was so incompetent that he seemed to purposely go out of his way to make himself look guilty – why the hell didn’t he lawyer up (and I’m not necessarily saying it had to be Mac in there with him, since she was also being questioned – Sturgis could have served that purpose since NCIS appeared so disinterested in talking to him that he didn’t even appear in the episode). Of course, he was operating under a huge misconception – when Singer died. But NCIS couldn’t clue him in on that one or the story would have died right there – Harm would have realized that there was no way Sergei could be the killer and he would have opened up possibly about Singer and Sergei. And if NCIS thinks that Harm might have killed to protect his brother, why did it not occur to a *single* one of them that he might be covering to protect who he thinks might be the real killer (or at least someone with a possible motive) – Sergei.
8. Let’s talk about the evidence, everything that led NCIS to bungle their way into Harm as the killer.
a. Motive? What would it be? How would killing Singer protect Sergei? He wasn’t in the US military, so having gotten involved with her wouldn’t have ruined his career. At worst, all that Sergei did was get involved with a woman his brother hated. Hardly compelling reason to murder anyone. And Singer wasn’t even holding the possibility of Sergei being the father over his head to get anything out of him. And if they’d done any research into Harm’s background, they would know he would go to the ends of the earth (literally) for his family and, going with the idea that Harm thinks Sergei is the father of baby girl Singer, why would he kill Singer while she was pregnant and thereby kill his own niece? If they’d stopped the think about it, NCIS would have realized their whole theory has enough holes in it to fly a Tomcat through.
b. Harm’s fingerprints in Singer’s car? Huh? Why would he have even been in her car? I would assume he took his own car to Benzinger’s (I haven’t re-watched ‘Complications’ recently but does anyone remember if he met her there or did they arrive together?). And what exactly does his being in her car prove? They don’t know when he was in her car. Since she was at sea for several months, I would think they might have found Sergei’s prints in the car as well, yet they only seemed interested in matching Harm’s prints, not anyone else’s. And he told Sergei in ‘Second Acts’ that he had Singer call Sergei from the parking lot of Benzinger’s (okay, maybe they were in Singer’s car when they called – although why were they doing this outside, even in a car, in January? Can we say cold?) and that he gave Singer his cell phone to call, which brings us to….
c. Cell phone records. Why would they look into Harm’s yet not Singer’s (and Tiner said she had a cell phone because he had tried to call it when AJ had him looking for her)? If you assume Harm killed Singer to protect Sergei, wouldn’t you expect Singer to have been in constant contact, trying to get something out of Sergei? Yet they didn’t even check to see if Singer called Sergei or *anyone else* on her cell phone or if anyone called her. Heck, they didn’t seem too interesting in looking for any other suspects at all. Maybe her cell phone would have had a lot of calls to someone (say, Lindsey) which would have pointed to another suspect. NCIS was too quick to rush to judgment – they quickly developed a theory and interpreted the fact to fit that theory only instead of looking at different possible explanations. Harm ought to drag them into court for railroading him.
d. The cover. I know the timeline doesn’t appear to fit between when Singer was killed and when Lindsey picked up Harm’s cover, but I’ve got a theory about that on which I’m waiting until next week to see if I’m right. But Viv commented that the cover they found was “just like that one” (referring to Harm’s). Well, DUH, every single Commander in the US Navy, and possibly Captains as well (I don’t think they go to the double rows of braids until flag rank), has that same cover. Is NCIS really that stupid to see that as evidence of any kind at this point? Not what I would call compelling evidence until they do any kind of testing on that cover (for instance, on hair fibers found inside the cover) and there had not been enough time for that – they had just found it. Heck, the cover might just prove to exonerate Harm if they find someone else’s hair in it. Shouldn’t they wait for those tests to come back before jumping to the conclusion that it is Harm’s. If Harm’s hair were found in the cover, then I could justify arresting him at this point, but they don’t have that kind of evidence yet. At best, they have a very weak circumstantial case.
e. Time of death. They know Singer was supposed to fly to San Diego on 6 January and that Harm and Singer were in Benzinger’s on the 4th. That doesn’t narrow down the time of death very much. Harm being seen with Singer on that date doesn’t do anything towards proving he had anything to do with it. I don’t recall seeing them ask any questions about who else Singer might have been seen with *after* she and Harm were at Benzingers. Where her credit cards used after that time? If she, for instance, bought gasoline for her car on 5 January, we would know she was alive at least until then. Then what if Harm has an alibi for a period after that? Then Harm would be eliminated as the killer – end of a very weak story. But NCIS didn’t even look into whether Harm had an alibi or Singer was possibly seen by *anyone* after the night of the 4th. It looks like TPTB said ‘Okay, let’s put Harm under suspicion of a crime (again!) and make everything else fit to that.’ They didn’t fit it together very well and some of the stuff was too telegraphed. The thing with the cover, for instance. And the time of death – I figured out five minutes into the episode that Singer had been dead since January. And I think, even if I had not known going in that Singer was the deceased, I would not have been shocked by that. They were making too big a deal about the death for it to be anyone else (why would we care if Jane Schmoe was the deceased, but supposedly, we would care that it was Singer)….
9. What was the shocker, by the way? Enough said.
10. Production values. Several people have commented on this, so I thought I’d say something as well. I don’t pay attention to those kinds of things. I expect the story to grab me. I don’t care if you are God’s gift to directing and have the best production values ever. If the story doesn’t grab me, it’s just a slick, glossy package with no substance to it (example – ‘Saving Private Ryan’, without the compelling personal stories of the soldiers, would have been just one big long battle – a well done battle, but simply a battle). I used to expect better from JAG, but my expectations have really gone down for this show since season five. I’m pleasantly surprised (‘Need To Know’, ‘In Country’) when the show manages to rise above my expectations, but I’ve learned the hard way to stop setting myself up for a fall (‘Retreat, Hell’ hurt enormously).

In a nutshell, I like Mark Harmon and always have, but I don’t know if that’s enough to get me watching NCIS on a regular basis, but I’m not heavily inclined in its favor so far. And I want our regular JAG back – no more excuses.

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