The teaser for last night’s NCIS was terrific. Not a word spoken, but dramatic action scored with near-operatic music. The opening scene of the episode was based on that teaser, and was a wonderful example of in media res. Then, of course, it went off into backstory for most of the next 40 minutes. Still, a nice episode.
The Unit played a trick last night. The teaser from last week indicated that someone from the team wouldn’t make it out of the hour alive. That goes beyond foreshadowing, that’s like underlining the biggest clue of a whodunit on the dust jacket. (And it’s not like that hasn’t happened before, either.) They tried their absolute best at legerdemain—concentrate on this hand while I rob you blind with the other—but they showed their hand so transparently during the climax of the episode that I saw what was coming as clearly as if someone from CBS had rung me up and told me what to watch for. Ultimately it came off as something of a cheap trick (good name for a rock band, that). And it wasn’t the only bit of extra-dramatic telegraphing during the show. If someone’s going to die, it’s obviously going to be the one who’s just discovered a reason to be happy with his life.
Take-away message #1: If you’re going to kill someone important on a show, don’t tell me a week in advance. The shooting that ended the season of NCIS a couple of years ago had a much bigger impact because they didn’t telegraph it at all. It wasn’t “a very special episode,” none of that folderol. Maybe the writers do need a bit of a break.
The parting shot on L&O: SVU was brilliant, though. The Hannibal Lecter clone got exactly what he wished for, which wasn’t anything near what he expected. Good for Casey. That was a clever bit of writing.
