S13.E09: Under the Influence

[thewhiteowl]

The NCIS team helps a U.S. ambassador search for her missing daughter, Gia, a popular social media influencer. Also, Agent Aliyah De León returns to support the team with the case.

[milkyaqua]

They are really scraping the bottom to find subjects to cover on this show.

[MissLucas]

I liked Kensi's line about raising sons. The whole episode felt very after school special.

Dear Deeks, my friends kids got to school in a remote, unglamorous, un-cool town on the countryside and they need smartphones because a s*itload of school activities are organized and co-ordinated by text messages/WhatsApp (even in pre-pandemic times). I'm sure that's not much different in a place like LA. Of course once your hypothetical kid is ready for preschool we've probably moved from handheld device to interface implants.

[Danielg342]

12 hours ago, milkyaqua said:

They are really scraping the bottom to find subjects to cover on this show.

...and they resorted to what's arguably one of Hollywood's worst cliches right now, the "incel episode". I mean, I get it- there are a lot of mean and scary things that go on with the incel community, both offline and online, that doesn't make any self-professed incels look all that great or sympathetic, and I'm not sure how an incel could ever come across as sympathetic in a story, but Hollywood goes over the top in portraying their evilness. Any time there's a villain described as an incel in a Hollywood episode, like this one, you can forget getting any kind of nuance or character development at all- the villain will be a cartoony, one-dimensional, crazed, lazy strawman that are pretty much all interchangeable. Once you've seen one, you've seen them all.

Now, I admit, I missed the first part of this episode so maybe the baddies had more development in the scenes I missed...but, from what I saw (the last 25 minutes or so), it sure didn't look like we had a compelling villain tonight.

[Sweet Tooth]

21 hours ago, Danielg342 said:

n a story, but Hollywood goes over the top in portraying their evilness. Any time there's a villain described as an incel in a Hollywood episode, like this one, you can forget getting any kind of nuance or character development at all- the villain will be a cartoony, one-dimensional, crazed, lazy strawman that are pretty much all interchangeable. Once you've seen one, you've seen them all.

It's so funny, because they also did that with the influencers. Like, both of them were insufferable. 

It would have even been okay if they stuck to the stereotypes, but then by the end of the show, showed some growth 

For instance, made Gia seem a little less shallow and a lot more grateful.

And making that Jax kid realize what all of his trolling was doing.

But it just kind of ended, and we'll never see any of these people again.

[Danielg342]

3 hours ago, Sweet Tooth said:

It's so funny, because they also did that with the influencers. Like, both of them were insufferable. 

It would have even been okay if they stuck to the stereotypes, but then by the end of the show, showed some growth 

For instance, made Gia seem a little less shallow and a lot more grateful.

And making that Jax kid realize what all of his trolling was doing.

But it just kind of ended, and we'll never see any of these people again.

I agree completely. No self-reflection, no self-awareness, no realization about what they are doing and it's true impact, not to mention what could happen as a result of it...we just had flat characterization.

I mean it might have been nice if Jax (I'm assuming that Jax was the guy Sam Hanna was interrogating at the end...I didn't catch the episode from the beginning, so I missed his name) had broken in interrogation because he realized that his trolling had gone too far. Many within the incel community brush off what they do as "just a joke" but, as this episode showed (and, not to go too far off-topic, the S.W.A.T. episode right after it) that "just a joke" can have consequences far greater than one could imagine. They're not "harmless" at all.

What truly does get me about the incel episodes is that Hollywood never really asks the question about why the incels do what they do and feel the way they feel in the first place, beyond maybe a cursory mention that they "hate being rejected by women". It's such lazy storytelling- no one wakes up one day and says "I hate women". Those feelings develop over time usually due to a wide variety of factors (chief among them being unrequited love and toxic masculinity), but Hollywood writers neglect them all. Even if we simply got an incel villain who does what he does because a woman he had a crush on in high school "friend-zoned" him it would be a drastic improvement from what we do get out of Hollywood.

[Sweet Tooth]

18 hours ago, Danielg342 said:

What truly does get me about the incel episodes is that Hollywood never really asks the question about why the incels do what they do and feel the way they feel in the first place, beyond maybe a cursory mention that they "hate being rejected by women". It's such lazy storytelling- no one wakes up one day and says "I hate women". Those feelings develop over time usually due to a wide variety of factors (chief among them being unrequited love and toxic masculinity), but Hollywood writers neglect them all. Even if we simply got an incel villain who does what he does because a woman he had a crush on in high school "friend-zoned" him it would be a drastic improvement from what we do get out of Hollywood.

Sam hitting home to Jax that his "harmless" trolling led to real violence should have been taken a couple of steps further.

Perhaps looking to get him help or whatever. 

The guy actually holding the influencer could have at least, near the end, realized that he couldn't really kill the girl, and admitted to her he just wants people to see him.

It was clear his mom indulged him and paid absolutely no attention to what he was doing. That could have been a nice catalyst for him to admit that he needed someone to love him for who he was, and she could have admitted that her whole fakey facade was because she also felt insecure.

It could have been a learning opportunity for both of them. 

But the girl didn't seem at all scared while tied to that chair. There was no buildup to the defiant, strong woman taunting him.

This could have been a really amazing episode, but sadly, they didn't go deeper with it.

[LittlePeas3]

This seemed such a shallow episode.  Who really cares about an ambassadors kid who is an influencer? Yes, I am over 40 and couldn't give a rats backside about influencers.  This show has veered so far away from the original premise of undercover and naval issues it is not funny.  If I hadn't been watching from the beginning, I would have ditched it by now.  

 

Having watched some original episodes of late in the break, I can not get over how much Kensi's accent has evolved, it is so nasal now and high pitched and any "exoticness" it had is now gone.  

[Tony Dickson]

Welcome to another episode of NCIS: Dead Memes

Militias, incels, what's next, chewing gum in class?