What a magpie’s eye sees…

This post will stay at the page top as an intro to this blog. The rest of the entries will be in most-recent order.

“Ooohhh, shiny…”

Shiny, however, has multiple meanings here. It’s whatever catches my attention, positive or negative, and motivates me to share it with those who read this blog. The perspective I present will be one that I’ll endeavor to make as balanced as I can, depending on what research brings to light.

Some of the topics readers can expect to see written about here include: women’s issues, crafting, books, music, movies, TV, writing, science fiction, fantasy, horror and health. I will not reveal much about myself, as I’m a private person, but when it’s relevant to my topic, I’ll include enough to make my point.

This will perhaps sound odd, but I didn’t start this blog to find friends. I have friends. Doesn’t mean I’m not interested in finding more of them, just that finding them isn’t the only reason for this blog. I live in my head a lot, and know others who have brilliant imaginations (some of whom I’ll mention here), and we are, by nature, mostly a solitary bunch. But even we need to exchange information on occasion.

Welcome. Stay a while, if you like.

—The Magpie Eye

Chasing bad guys the Navy way: “NCIS”

“NCIS” / Creators: Don McGill and Donald P. Bellisario / Executive Producer: Donald P. Bellisario / Premiered: 9/23/2003 / Network: CBS / Reruns on: USA, ION / Regular cast (since 2003): Leroy Jethro Gibbs -– Mark Harmon; Anthony “Tony” Di Nozzo — Michael Weatherly; Abigail “Abby” Sciuto -– Pauley Perrette; Dr. Donald “Ducky” Mallard -– David McCallum / Additions to regular cast: Timothy “Tim” McGee — Sean Murray (2004-present); Ziva David — Cote de Pablo (2005-present); Director Leon Vance -– Rocky Carroll (2008-present) / Former regular cast: Director Jenny Shepard – Lauren Holly (2005-08); Caitlin “Kate” Todd – Sasha Alexander (2003-05).

Donald Bellisario has been around the TV game for decades. The former Marine (1955-59) created the very successful “Magnum P.I.” and “JAG,” as well as the long-running “Quantum Leap” and the lesser-known “Airwolf.” Bellisario’s most successful shows are characterized by well-rounded characters (at least one of whom has a military background), an ensemble cast where each character gets at least one episode focused on them, military-flavored humor (which is usually dark, as in “Can’t we just shoot ‘em?”), and characters who are passionate about what they do.

“NCIS” is centered on the special agents assigned to the Major Case Response Team of the Naval Criminal Investigative Service. Senior Special Agent (SA) Leroy Jethro Gibbs leads his three-member team in solving the mysteries of various Navy personnel’s demises -– when he’s not building another boat that he’ll never sail that’s named after another ex-wife. While it has elements similar to “CSI” (another CBS show, starring William Peterson as lead investigator Gil Grissom, who’s leaving that show), its military-based setting and Naval law-enforcement angle set it apart in several ways. Gibbs or the Director gives the orders, the team carries them out, and while they are often asked their opinions, the team members are a little more afraid of Gibbs than Grissom’s people are of him. The interesting thing is that they’re more afraid of Gibbs’ brain than any punishment he might hand them for screwing up. Even the dreaded head-slap.

“JAG” introduced the “NCIS” characters and concept to the viewing public with the technique used for the Miami and New York City spin-off shows of “CSI: Crime Scene Investigation.” In short, have some or all of the cast of the spin-off show make appearances in an episode of the existing series. Dick Wolf’s “Law and Order” shows (the original, “SVU” and “Criminal Intent”) used the same technique.

Several story and character elements appear in nearly every episode (Gibbs interrogating suspects, Di Nozzo being a rather sexist and arrogant pretty boy, Abby explaining forensic evidence to Gibbs and others, Ziva stalking around like she’s chasing every terrorist alive and she has no time for fun, etc.), but the stories in each episode differ enough to keep them from being carbon copies of previous ones. The one-liners fly around like paper airplanes — very carefully targeted ones — and the classic head-slap is a constant possibility. Di Nozzo gets most of the head-slaps, but he’s delivered a few himself, as has Abby. No one, however, head-slaps Gibbs except Gibbs. Mark Harmon has that “don’t even think about it” stare down pat, and has enough sense to use it sparingly.

That humor, and the way the characters work like a family, melds the series together; without it, “NCIS” would look like a really bad remake of “Dragnet.” It’s the kind of humor Bellisario and the “Magnum” writers developed really well during the course of the “Magnum” run, a bantering interplay between characters that recalls the early Hollywood studio films (Katharine Hepburn’s early films, “My Girl Friday,” etc.). “NCIS” humor is also more intelligent than the level to which “CSI” writers have descended in the last few seasons. “CSI” relies on episode-opening groaners far too much now. In the Season 6 opener for “NCIS,” the assistant coroner makes a groaner joke (aka a spoonerism, a play on words) to one of the replacement agents, and neither Gibbs nor Ducky even smile.

There’s a similar dark humor among the characters of Bellisario-created shows, but the “NCIS” crew is a lot more playful. And because it’s a show that debuted after 9/11, there’s a running plot thread about terrorists and the people who give them guns — one in particular that Director Jenny Shepard wanted to kill more than she wanted to breathe, and for very personal reasons. Credit goes to the writers on this show that the wish-fulfillment card is very seldom played, because not using it makes for much better television.

Photography techniques used on “NCIS” follow the handheld and jumpcut standards adapted from feature films, with a few twists. Camera shots of cadavers in Ducky’s lab are full-body, but almost always with an overhead lab light aimed directly at the torso to disguise the genitals. With both sexes of cadavers, the chest is usually already open, so no worries about showing female mammary appendages. It’s a clever way to sidestep television censor restrictions in order to make the scene look as realistic as possible. I bet the sfx team on this show had a field day with devising the most realistic props for these scenes; they’re very well done.

It’s a safe bet that anyone who enjoys either the “Law and Order” or “CSI” shows would also enjoy “NCIS.” The foundations for all three are similar, but the way they’re fleshed out makes them each unique.

Background Trivia

* Gibbs was a Marine Corps sniper.

* Di Nozzo was a Baltimore Metro PD homicide detective.

* McGee is a biomedical engineer and computer forensics specialist.

* Ziva David is the Mossad liaison officer (for the terrorist plot angle). Her father, Eli David (played by Michael Nouri), is the head of Mossadand her half-brother Ari is a double agent.

* Abby Sciuto was raised Roman Catholic in New Orleans and still attends church services, which probably accounts for her fascination for grandiose ritual and pageantry (as reflected in her personal Goth style) and affinity for being on a convent bowling team.

* Dr. Mallard was in the British military, and possibly worked in their intelligence community.

* Director Jenny Shepard and Gibbs once worked as field agents for a U.S. intelligence agency and had a romance while on assignment in Europe (Paris, maybe?).

* Caitlin Todd was a Secret Service agent.

TV, or not TV?

Television in America has changed since it first invaded homes across this country over 50 years ago. But how has it changed, were the changes permanent or temporary, and what does today’s TV tell us about ourselves as Americans and as human beings?

The formats of television have changed, just a bit. Back in the old days, there were variety shows, comedies, some dramas, and sporting events. We still have some of those, but the variety show has died along with vaudeville, its immediate ancestor, and MTV brought us the concept of music television, which has grown beyond its music-video borders to encompass channels with music and music-connected specials and series.

The advent of civil-rights demonstrations brought a spate of shows featuring “pocotpt” (people of color other than pale tan) which, sadly, never evolved into showing us the lives of actual people of color, except for “The Cosby Show,” which showed us that “pocotpt” are like people everywhere, and we really needed that lesson to continue. So much of the change TV may have wrought in Americans’ social consciousness has come through comedy (Archie Bunker, for one; remember?). The pill is easier to swallow if it’s sweetened.

“ER” brought a style of storytelling that was immediate and arresting, due mainly to its setting (an emergency room at a busy city hospital), but also due to the ensemble cast’s individual story lines. The characters weren’t static, a la “The Donna Reed Show” (1950s or thereabouts, for you young whippersnappers), so they became almost real people to viewers. The intensity of this kind of writing owes part of its success to “MASH,” of course, which was probably where this intense-character writing technique saw its first flowering. That was a comedy, though. “ER” may have been the first successful drama to employ it. 1980s primetime soaps like “Dynasty,” “Dallas” and their ilk don’t count; their characters remained pretty much the same through each series’ run.

In today’s popular series, there are interesting elements that seem new, but may not be. “Heroes” recalls the “Superman” series, albeit in a more sophisticated form; it seems American audiences were thirsting for a show with ordinary people called to do extraordinary things. It certainly didn’t hurt that the tinctures of secret government conspiracies, surviving high school, acculturation and accepting destiny were added in. “Lost” is full of hotties but also has people who look more like us than some of us are willing to admit, and not physically. Most of the really scary stuff is off camera, a la Hitchcock, and apparently enough viewers are willing to put up with the long-stick-with-a- very-tiny-carrot approach the writers use to keep them watching.

“Heroes” didn’t interest me because I’m not into conspiracy theories and I’m way past high school. I’ve read enough comics, both classic and modern, to perceive a familiar path in the series, and I’ve been down that path already. “Lost” just plain pissed me off. The end of Season One had little to no payoff for me as a viewer; there just wasn’t enough going on to wonder what would happen next week.

Ensemble casts can make or break a show. “Babylon 5″ had an outstanding ensemble cast, and even survived the replacement of its male lead. Of course, “B5″ also had J. Michael Straczynski as its series creator and writer, and JMS had that puppy planned out over 5 years way ahead of time. The networks who allowed the entire series to be broadcast are to be commended; it remains, arguably, the best science fiction show ever aired.

Yes, not even “Battlestar Galactica” in its latest incarnation can beat “B5″ — and I’m a big fan of “BG,” too. The reason I rate “BG” behind “B5″ is that “BG” is a reinvention, whereas “B5″ was made of whole cloth, all new and shiny, with dozens of touchpoints from written SF that made it that much more attractive to bookworms like me. “BG” has some SF touchpoints as well, of course, but “BG” is military space opera, which is a bit different than the kind of space opera that “B5″ employed as a foundation. Where “BG” recalls Heinlein, “B5″ recalls Clarke. Discuss.

And yet, and yet…television keeps doing stupid things. Why am I surprised? I shouldn’t be, really.

The infection known as the “reality” show is pandemic. The latest nonsense is a group of celebs being sent to live in a prison. Gee, do we get to see the gang rapes? I wish I could be in the same room for five minutes with the cretin who thought up this idea. I’d do to that person what I’d do to the people who created “Flavor of Love” and “I Love New York” and “The Bachelor” and “Big Brother” and all the other dreck of that nature. Exactly what I would do is not for public consumption; suffice it to say, it would not be pretty.

And yet and yet…even the “reality” show format has some interesting offshoots. The DIY craze is still going strong, a decade or so down the road, and television programming reflects this. The DIY Network and HGTV are crammed with shows that give us tips on painting, remodeling, rearranging, carpentry, plumbing, and on and on. Home organizers are big: “Mission Organization,” “Clean House,” and “neat” are popular shows, and that’s just three of them. “The Carol Duvall Show” fed the inner crafter in millions of people, and got me started in what I do in the crafting world today. Ms. Duvall has moved on to a well-deserved retirement from her show, but other shows such as “B. Original” and “Creative Juice” have picked up where she left off. There are more, many more, so let’s leave it here for now.

Of course, there are other formats not mentioned here, but I leave them for someone else to cover. Blogs are for what the blogger is interested in, after all.

Television in America isn’t just American anymore, either. With the advent of cable and satellite TV, we can get British shows on BBC America, and there are a plethora of Spanish-language shows, not to mention the advent of the novela style of TV from South America in the form of “Ugly Betty” (bless Salma Hayek for getting this on the air!). But that’s just a dusting of what’s available from around the globe that hasn’t made it to American audiences yet. These things take time; TV producers are still slow to change what they perceive to be winning horses.

It’s my fervent hope that the crap will eventually go away, and leave the better shows behind. But that’s probably not gonna happen.