Spin Off; NCIS, Los Angeles

As with Law & Order which had a number of ‘spin offs’ , so to CSI, and NCIS. The first spin off is based in Los Angeles, the second in New Orleans.

The cast and their interactions are different, yet similar. There’s the nerd who, like Ducky, is always going off on a tangent of a great deal of information. The geek, who like McGee can get into and out of secure computer systems.

The Director is the same person who will later go on to NCIS; Director Vance. He begins in L.A.

There is a larger cast, two representing one of the NCIS members. So that there’s a psychological profiler, like Ducky, and a Head, who is like Gibbs mixed with a bean counter.   However, the two main characters,  ‘Callen’, played by Chris O’Donnel and Sam Hanna, played by LL Cool J, get most of the screen time and focus.

The action moves very fast, the plots are tricky. The agents are not all ‘on the books’ the two leads are badgeless and undercover most of the time.

I have just begun watching it, so the first epi is the grabber. I can see how and why a ‘spinoff’ was done as NCIS is a very popular and top rated series, and anything that suggests NCIS would get the eyes.

The proof of the value of spinoffs has been proven with Law & Order and CSI, and clearly, having the first spin off of NCIS beginning in 2009 and continuing to present, it has to be a good show, worth viewing.

One of the joys of the long running drama is that it becomes your ‘foundation.’   You can always grab an episode when you’re waiting for another season to begin or another episode to air of one of the other programs you have watched, perhaps a bit too quickly.

I ought have put myself on a Blue Blood diet so that I would still be in a previous season, not waiting for the next episode.

As I have not finished NCIS (the original) and have just begun spin off One, (Los Angeles) I should have something to watch while waiting for the next episode of The Americans or Empire.

The value of these episodic shows is that unlike the story arc, which virtually impels you to watch the next ‘chapter’, episodic have that ease of slipping in and out without dislocation.

This is the value of those programs in which beyond the characters, there is little carry over from week to week, so watching in order or not isn’t an issue.