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NCIS season 5 thread

#31
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4/9/08 at 6:51pm
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Re: NCIS season 5 thread

Quote:
Originally Posted by Garrett Adams
If limited to a major female character then it would by Ziva. I assume any changes at the top of their NCIS unit would come from within the whole NCIS organization or other Naval resources.

Speaking of Ziva, I liked her more casual hair style exhibited in the first surveillance scenes.

Well the final scene of last night's episode defiantely left a trap-door exit for one of the characters, and it wasn't Ziva.

I also liked Ziva's new hairstyle - it actually reminded me of Kate's...
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#32
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4/10/08 at 9:20am
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Re: NCIS season 5 thread

Quote:
Well the final scene of last night's episode defiantely left a trap-door exit for one of the characters, and it wasn't Ziva.

Agreed on the possible exit and on Zia not being it. But there are a lot of things that "major change" could mean besides "actor/character" leaving the show. Various medical and psersonal issues come to mind, as does the possiblity that an actor committed to a movie or stage role during the strike and wasn't available to film all the scheduled post-strike episodes. Producers are often amenable to writing actors out of "X" episodes so that they can pursue outside projects and certainly aren't above exploiting the situation to goose the sweeps-period ratings by making the absence a plot point in the show.

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Joe
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#33
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4/10/08 at 3:07pm
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Re: NCIS season 5 thread

Quote:
Speaking of Ziva, I liked her more casual hair style exhibited in the first surveillance scenes
Agreed -- I noticed it immediately.
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#34
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4/10/08 at 3:37pm
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Re: NCIS season 5 thread

Quote:
Originally Posted by Joseph DeMartino
Agreed on the possible exit and on Zia not being it.

I believe the blood work was done on the Director Jenny Shepard played by Lauren Holly. If you look at their cast site, you'll see how radical HER hari has been. For a while there she looked like she could actually have had cancer.
Cast - NCIS on CBS
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#35
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4/10/08 at 4:35pm
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Re: NCIS season 5 thread

Quote:
I believe the blood work was done on the Director Jenny Shepard

Since Gibbs said as much and Ducky didn't bother to deny it, I'd say that's the safe bet.

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Joe
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#36
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4/10/08 at 7:41pm
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Re: NCIS season 5 thread

Quote:
Originally Posted by VicB
I believe the blood work was done on the Director Jenny Shepard played by Lauren Holly. If you look at their cast site, you'll see how radical HER hari has been. For a while there she looked like she could actually have had cancer.
Cast - NCIS on CBS

I'm pretty sure he knew who I was refering to. I just tried to avoid any sort of spoiler (including the box type, because I know some people accidently click those), rather than outwardly spoiling the end of the episode.
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#37
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4/11/08 at 3:15pm
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Re: NCIS season 5 thread

Lauren Holly has been commuting from Chicago to L.A. on a weekly basis to film the show and apparently wants to spend more time with her family.


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#38
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4/12/08 at 11:37am
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Re: NCIS season 5 thread

Quote:
I just tried to avoid any sort of spoiler (including the box type, because I know some people accidently click those), rather than outwardly spoiling the end of the episode.

Me, too, until that became a moot point. I've been very careful with spoilers ever since I noticed that they appear in the notification e-mails that thread-subscribers get, and that subscribers will get a notification on the unedited version of a posted message as well as subsequent version. So if you post a message, realize something is a spoiler and then edit the post to fix the problem, susbcribers have already been spoiled.

Not that the reason is really any of our business, but "I want to spend more time with my family" has been the default explanation for sudden resignations for everybody from actors with drug problems to coaches with losing records to politicians who are about to be indicted that I'm automaticaly suspicious whenever I hear the phrase.

Regards,

Joe
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#39
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4/16/08 at 8:13am
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Re: NCIS season 5 thread

Once again network TV promulgates the misinformation that just about anyone is qualified to perform surgery on animals. All it takes is a little volunteer experience cleaning kennels and you're good to go!

Jeez, I want to hurl everytime I see junk TV like this. People get paid good money for this!?

No proper anesthesia, no hair clipping, no sterile prep, no sterile instuments, improper surgical positioning.......

Yet the patient survives and is shaking hands in less than a day!

Never mind that the military has excellent veterinarians, and that this was a highly trained military working dog worth several thousand dollars.

NCIS used to be one of the only network shows I watched. BLEAH!!!
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#40
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4/16/08 at 9:22am
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Re: NCIS season 5 thread

Uhh, you do realize that very little of what NCIS shows actually happens in the day to day life of an agent.

-You can't zoom in on a fuzzy video image and get a crystal clear image.
-You can't just "pull up" traffic video, private surveillance footage, medical records, or any of the countless other things they do to get info.
-If you shoot your gun (let alone shoot someone else), you are going to sit at a desk for a while and go before a board of inquiry. You're not going out later that day to investigate more.
-A large part of your day is spent writing reports, appearing in court, and putting together cases for prosecutors. It's not driving from scene to scene, interview to interview, desk to home.
-DNA takes days to review, not minutes.

So, with all this, not shaving a dog seems to be one of the more minor faux pas in this (and almost any cop) show.
Randy T.
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#41
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4/16/08 at 10:02am
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Re: NCIS season 5 thread

Quote:
So, with all this, not shaving a dog seems to be one of the more minor faux pas in this (and almost any cop) show.

Not to mention that the dog wrangler probably wouldn't want his very expensive rented dog shaved, and the fact that it is a heck of a lot harder to get an animal to stay still, breathe through a mask and just generally pretend to be under anaesthesia than it is to get a human actor to do so. (Or to literally "play dead")

You've got 42 minutes of screen time to tell your story, and a limited budget for actors, sets, props, etc. So, do you write in another speaking role ($) for a military veterinarian to come in for one scene to perform an accurate-looking operation on a dog ($), allocating several precious minutes to introducing the character and giving him/her a dramatic reason to be there or do you use your regulars, fudge the details and concentrate on the emotional and dramatic interplay between Abby, Ducky and Mr. Palmer?

If you look at regular medical procedures on non-medical shows they are scarcely better than this one. I guess we all get a bit ticked off when we see something outrageously false about our own areas of expertise but - seriously - especially on a TV budget/schedule there are going to be shortcuts and liberties taken. Is a lot of the computer and network stuff you see on TV total crap? You're damned right it is. Do I want to "hurl" everytime a show lets a computer do something magical or somebody instantly link two incompatible systems or crack a security system in 10 minutes when it should take two weeks and a roomful of machines to do it? Nope. I know doctors, cops and lawyers who spot similar flaws in every show they watch, and I don't doubt that plumbers, jockeys and UPS guys do the same. But the fact is we all know that the reality of our jobs is frequently boring and nobody would ever make a TV series out of it.

Regards,

Joe
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#42
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4/16/08 at 1:22pm
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Re: NCIS season 5 thread

Quote:
Originally Posted by Randy Tennison

-You can't zoom in on a fuzzy video image and get a crystal clear image.
-You can't just "pull up" traffic video, private surveillance footage, medical records, or any of the countless other things they do to get info.

To be fair, if the image is digital in nature, you actually can produce a decent image - though it doesn't happen instantly like on the show, and you are correct, it's not going to be lifelike

Also, you actually can "pull up" traffic video, sometimes in real time. My university has a lab that works on technology that does just that. Granted, Calgary has only a million people, so it might not be as feasible in Washington, etc. Further, assuming someone has pre-pulled the files for you, you really can "pull up" medical records of suspects, especially if it's been recently referenced (I assume off-screen at least someone is looking at this stuff).

But yes, for the most part, NCIS takes a few liberties with reality, but then again, people don't actually have super powers (Heroes), smoke monsters don't really fly around tropical islands (LOST), and FBI advisors don't share their cases with their colleagues or parents (Numb3rs). However, NCIS is still one of the best ensemble shows on television, and easily the best procedural (CSI is about as far from reality as you can get for a crime drama).

cheers!
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#43
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4/17/08 at 7:20am
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Re: NCIS season 5 thread

It was no problem for JAG to hire Trisha Yearwood to portray a military psychologist, why would it be a problem for NCIS to fork out a few bucks for a pseudo-real veterinarian?

Sorry, guys, I just can't buy it. I worked too hard for my DVM degree to agree with having it portrayed this way.
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#44
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4/17/08 at 8:09am
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Re: NCIS season 5 thread

Quote:
Originally Posted by Julian Reville
It was no problem for JAG to hire Trisha Yearwood to portray a military psychologist, why would it be a problem for NCIS to fork out a few bucks for a pseudo-real veterinarian?

Sorry, guys, I just can't buy it. I worked too hard for my DVM degree to agree with having it portrayed this way.

Well, I think you should pretty much give up watching ALL television and movies then, if you are hoping for reality - heck, even reality TV isn't really real.
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#45
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4/17/08 at 11:03am
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Re: NCIS season 5 thread

Quote:
It was no problem for JAG to hire Trisha Yearwood to portray a military psychologist, why would it be a problem for NCIS to fork out a few bucks for a pseudo-real veterinarian?

So you're comparing stunt-casting a celebrity to goose ratings for sweeps month to wasting money on an extra speaking role for a single scene that won't add a single rating point or any dramatic value to the episode, but will salve the egos of verterinarians everywhere? I'm sorry, but I think you have lost all sense of perspective on this matter.

If I owned a studio and a producer on one of my shows did that I'd fire him on the spot.

Regards,

Joe
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#46
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4/17/08 at 11:24am
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Re: NCIS season 5 thread

You'd fire someone for spending a few grand who was attempting to make a believable plotline? I guess those Hollywood types are really hurting for money, poor babies.

That really amazes me.
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#47
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4/17/08 at 1:17pm
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Re: NCIS season 5 thread

Yes, I'd fire someone for wasting time and money on something that not only wasn't a "plotline" but which was barely a footnote to a minor scene, an item of such cosmic unimportance that I can't believe I've spent as much time as I have discussing it, and I certainly don't propose to waste any more on it. Mountain. Molehill. Do the math.

Regards,

Joe
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#48
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4/17/08 at 5:43pm
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Re: NCIS season 5 thread

Quote:
Originally Posted by Josh Dial
To be fair, if the image is digital in nature, you actually can produce a decent image - though it doesn't happen instantly like on the show, and you are correct, it's not going to be lifelike

As someone who works with digital surveillance video on a daily basis, I can tell you that I would kill for the abilities portrayed on these shows. They just don't exist.

If you have an image made up of pixels, and you blow up the image, you get . . .bigger pixels. You can't pull detail out of 6 rectangles of differing color.

Yes, you can use software to try to extrapolate what the image might be by comparing using an algorhythm that looks at the images before and after, but, if after doing it, you can read a license plate, count yourself lucky.

In the business, we call this the "CSI Factor". People believe you can do the things that are shown on TV. They expect it. And when you don't do it, they question why, not realizing that it's fiction.

My favorite one was on Las Vegas, when they were reviewing a recorded image, and turned on the "infrared", which showed what was under the clothing. I laughed very hard at that one.
Randy T.
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"Oh, come on, guys. It's so simple, maybe you need a refresher course. It's all ball bearings nowadays!"
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#49
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4/17/08 at 8:36pm
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Re: NCIS season 5 thread

Quote:
Originally Posted by Randy Tennison
As someone who works with digital surveillance video on a daily basis, I can tell you that I would kill for the abilities portrayed on these shows. They just don't exist.

If you have an image made up of pixels, and you blow up the image, you get . . .bigger pixels. You can't pull detail out of 6 rectangles of differing color.

Yes, you can use software to try to extrapolate what the image might be by comparing using an algorhythm that looks at the images before and after, but, if after doing it, you can read a license plate, count yourself lucky.

In the business, we call this the "CSI Factor". People believe you can do the things that are shown on TV. They expect it. And when you don't do it, they question why, not realizing that it's fiction.

My favorite one was on Las Vegas, when they were reviewing a recorded image, and turned on the "infrared", which showed what was under the clothing. I laughed very hard at that one.

Thanks for speaking to this Randy. I don't work on it like you do, but I am often asked about it and I research the available tools from time to time to stay on top of things so that I am not completely ignorant. I was pretty sure that despite recent improvements it was still not up to the standards of most of what we see on TV. It nice though that every now and then we'll be watching a show that actually portrays things in a semi-believable manner. It's not a lot, but it does happen.
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#50
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4/18/08 at 6:39am
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Re: NCIS season 5 thread

Quote:
attempting to make a believable plotline
As others have said, anyone who has an unusual job seen portrayed on TV or the movies will see their job portrayed wrong.

To paraphase Julian, "Sorry, guys, I just can't buy it. I worked too hard for my ... dolphins ...to agree with having it portrayed this way"

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#51
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4/18/08 at 7:34am
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Re: NCIS season 5 thread

Quote:
Originally Posted by Randy Tennison
As someone who works with digital surveillance video on a daily basis, I can tell you that I would kill for the abilities portrayed on these shows. They just don't exist.

As someone who also works with digital video, I am sorry to break it to you that they DO exist. Of course they don't work like they do on TV shows, but, as I said, if the camera captures a purely digital image, you can actually zoom in to a certain degree, and clean it up.

No, "cleaning it up" doesn't make it crystal clear, and no, you can't zoom in enough to see the reflection on some guys sunglasses, then use the shadow to triangulate his location on the earth, and then pinpoint which bank he's going to rob, but you CAN do things like pull a still from a red light camera (sadly, Calgary has these in spades), and capture the license plate - even when it's SLIGHTLY blurry.

Home surveillance and personal security is, of course, different. No law enforcement is going to see that westpoint ring on someone's finger when they are a big blur on the video.

But seriously, it is techinically possible to clean up certain types of images, especially ones from high end, recently made digital cameras (and no, I don't mean personal digital cameras).

You'll note that in my post I never said "perfect, hang on your wall quality picture." But basically claiming that law enforcement works with blurry video and useless footage is false.
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#52
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4/18/08 at 9:14am
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Re: NCIS season 5 thread

Quote:
As someone who also works with digital video, I am sorry to break it to you that they DO exist...

No, "cleaning it up" doesn't make it crystal clear, and no, you can't zoom in enough to see the reflection on some guys sunglasses, then use the shadow to triangulate his location on the earth, and then pinpoint which bank he's going to rob

But your caveat elminates exactly the "abilities" Randy was talking about, so I don't see how your ability to clean up very good quality digital video invalidates Randy's point about the absurd things seen on shows like NCIS and CSI where the team digitizes the analog VHS video footage from convenience store that hasn't put in a new tape in two years and has never cleaned the tape heads and ends up being able to read the barcode on the candy bar the killer is eating.
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#53
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4/18/08 at 10:33pm
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Re: NCIS season 5 thread

Quote:
Originally Posted by Joseph DeMartino
But your caveat elminates exactly the "abilities" Randy was talking about, so I don't see how your ability to clean up very good quality digital video invalidates Randy's point about the absurd things seen on shows like NCIS and CSI where the team digitizes the analog VHS video footage from convenience store that hasn't put in a new tape in two years and has never cleaned the tape heads and ends up being able to read the barcode on the candy bar the killer is eating.

Exactly. There is a big difference between the exaggerations and worse that are often shown on tv and the cleaning up of plate image with high contrast pixels to help get a readable image.
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#54
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4/24/08 at 8:44am
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Re: NCIS season 5 thread

No comments on this week's show? I thought it was very well done (assuming you've been following the storyline over the course of the show). It had some humor, good drama and resolution.
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#55
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4/24/08 at 9:08am
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Re: NCIS season 5 thread

Quote:
Originally Posted by DavidJ
No comments on this week's show? I thought it was very well done (assuming you've been following the storyline over the course of the show). It had some humor, good drama and resolution.

I thought it was a really good episode. A good finish to the la grenouille arc. The scene with Jeanne and Tony was pretty heartbreaking.
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#56
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4/25/08 at 10:56am
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Re: NCIS season 5 thread

I was so engrossed in sticking pins in my homemade Dr. Mallard voodoo doll that I forgot to watch.
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#57
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4/27/08 at 1:31pm
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Re: NCIS season 5 thread

I let out a LOL when Gibbs just kept out pulling out computer hardware from the 80s and 90s.

"Jee-sus, it's like Iwo Jima out there" - Roger Sterling on "Mad Men"
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#58
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4/27/08 at 4:11pm
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Re: NCIS season 5 thread

I thought it was a very good episode. It was nice to see Jeanne again, and good that she was at least able to get some "closure" (that awful word) with regard to her realtionship with Tony. (That whole part, including Ziva's role in events, was very well-handled.)

Quote:
A good finish to the la grenouille arc.

I'm not so sure it is finished, at least when it comes to its consequences. I think it will come up again, between Jenny and Jethro if not between her and the authorities. So... did Jenny waste The Frog? Or did the CIA guy do it? If so, how did her gun end up on La Granouille's boat? And are we ever going to find out any more about the death of Jenny's father and the odd bruise he shared with La Granouille. So many questions, so few episodes left.

Regards,

Joe
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#59
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4/28/08 at 4:25am
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Re: NCIS season 5 thread

Quote:
Originally Posted by Patrick Sun
I let out a LOL when Gibbs just kept out pulling out computer hardware from the 80s and 90s.

I loved that McGee was still able to get the job done with them! Kid's a genius!

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#60
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4/28/08 at 6:23pm
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Re: NCIS season 5 thread

I came away from the episode thinking either the Frog killed himself or Jenny's not really dead father did it.


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