Some time back I was bemoaning the fact that TBS had reduced the number of Law and Order reruns and that I was reduced to watching House and Bones. It was then a friend—and I forget which one—told me about another show called NCIS. She—I do remember it was a she—said that I should watch a run of 3 episodes in a row to get familiar with the characters and their relationships and I would be hooked.
Little did she know that history was in the making. I am now an addict and will now watch NCIS in preference to Law and Order. And she (thank you whoever you are) was right: It is about the characters.
In particular it is about the central character Leroy Jethro Gibbs (played by Mark Harmon), known simply as “Gibbs” to the rest of the characters.
Writers often try to send a message with names, and I have to wonder whether this is being done here. Leroy is French for “the King.” Gibbs, with his ubiquitous coffee cup and head of gray hair, is very authoritarian.
And Jethro was the father-in-law of Moses, the lawgiver, and Gibbs has quite a few rules that he pounds into the heads of his team.
Coincidences? Gibbs and I don’t like coincidences, especially when the fit so well.
More important than either of those things is one single thing: Gibbs is a good man.
From a certain point of view, saying this might be surprising. He has been divorced three times after all, and, in addition to this, he has killed for revenge, pure and simple. Yet these episodes in his history are ripples proceeding from a tragedy within it. While he was a marine gunnery sergeant assigned in the Gulf War as a sniper, his wife and daughter were killed by a drug dealer back home. The drug dealer fled to Mexico to escape justice and there Gibbs found him and, with the use of his sniper’s art, executed him. Gibb’s then married a series of women—red heads just like his dead wife—who were imitations of his lost love.
Gibbs still carries this pain with him, and it manifests itself as he helps the wives and children of soldiers and sailors whose husbands are deployed overseas.
Those who are on his team at NCIS serve as his surrogate family, the sons—and especially the daughters—that he was denied. Central among these is Abby (played by Pauley Perette), who is a Goth that works in forensics. She is his favorite and an emotional replacement for his lost daughter. This quasi-familial relationship among the characters has been remarked upon within the series itself. During a period when there was a female director of NCIS (played by Lauren Holly), Abby once interrupted an argument between Gibbs and the director by saying “The kids don’t like it when Mommy and Daddy fight.”
