In love with 'NCIS' - 重返犯罪現場

這篇文章是我在伊甸園討論區內看到的，雖然大陸網友有譯文，但我還是轉原文過
來。

本文作者Julia Keller是05年普立茲特寫寫作獎（Pulitzer Prize for Feature
Writing）、曾在普林斯頓大學教授過新聞寫作。

現在於芝加哥論壇報（本文出處）工作

正文以下：

http://www.chicagotribune.com/features/lifestyle/
chi-ncis-love-0407apr07,0,4570530.column

Julia Keller: In love with 'NCIS'
April 7, 2009
Let me count the ways. We've got Gibbs and McGee and DiNozzo and Abby and
Ducky and Vance. Have I forgotten anyone else in the—oh, right! And the-
re's Ziva, who is likely to retaliate for my forgetfulness as only a for-
mer Mossad agent can: cleverly, stealthily, leaving no forensically disc-
ernible marks.

Spring is here, and I'm in love again. But it's not some unreliable human
being who has snatched my heart away. It's a TV series: "NCIS." The init-
ials stand for "Naval Criminal Investigative Service," a real-life feder-
al agency that, like its fictional avatar, handles law-enforcement cases
relating to the Navy and Marine Corps. The series premiered Sept. 23, 20
03, as a spinoff of "JAG," and has been airing at 7 p.m. Tuesdays on CBS
ever since.

In TV years, that length of time translates to "forever, give or take."
A TV series typically sheds viewers as it ages. "NCIS," though, is that
rare thing: a venerable franchise whose audience is actually increasing.
The show moved into the top 10 in its fifth season. Between its first s-
eason and the current one, it rose from No. 26 to No. 5. In recent week-
s, more than 18 million people have tuned in each Tuesday to watch it.
Among scripted shows, "NCIS" regularly lures more viewers than anything
on NBC, ABC or Fox, a CBS spokesman reports. And it's more popular among
young people than shows such as "The Simpsons," "Family Guy" and "30 Rock."
On college campuses, it's edging close to cult status.

But enough with the numbers. This, after all, is a love story.

Oh, yes. There is a magical alchemy to the "NCIS" ensemble, a mystical
blend of actors and roles that just ... somehow ... works. If it were
easy to duplicate, somebody would have done it. But how do you make
another Gibbs, the coffee-obsessed, snappishly impatient ex-Marine with
the armor-piercing stare who's building a boat in his basement? Or Ziva,
the Israeli assassin who mixes up her English idioms but never forgets a
face or a clue or a grudge? Or DiNozzo, the peppery playboy? Or Abby, who
sleeps in a coffin but is always wide awake when it's time for a ballist-
ics test or a fingerprint match?

"NCIS" has an adhesive quality, a stickiness that doesn't kick in until
you've watched a dozen or so episodes back to back to back. There's acti-
on. There's espionage. You'll find patriotism and heroism and humor.

Rich Heldenfels, a pop culture writer for the Akron Beacon Journal, reme-
mbers reviewing "NCIS" upon its 2003 debut. "It's long been underestimat-
ed by writers looking for buzz-worthy shows," he says. "As much as the
'JAG' connection helped bring some viewers into the tent, it suggested
the show was something other than what it meant to be from the beginn-
ing—funny, sometimes edgy, respectful of its characters but skeptical
of authority, unpredictable."

The online message boards are equally positive, but blunter. "NCIS:
the words of heaven," one fan wrote. Gushed another: " 'NCIS' ought to
be a Schedule II drug." And then there was this: "I pretty much stopped
watching regular TV when I went to college, but 'NCIS' is the only show
I keep watching religiously."

I know what that fan means, although my feelings for "NCIS"—OK, for H-
armon—are anything but religious. His Gibbs is the Heathcliff of the
"NCIS" team, handsome and brooding and haunted. Latecomers to the show
such as me are forced to piece together the reasons for his sadness: the
death of a wife and a child, creating a loneliness that—despite subseq-
uent relationships—never lessens.

Revealed over the stop-and-start, herky-jerky course of six seasons, that
plot point might come across as melodramatic.

Emerging from a single ribbon of episodes, though, it is as profound as an
earnest "semper fi" uttered to a comrade.

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