I’m not going to watch NCIS anymore. No more Lauren Holly, Pauley Perrette, cool Bellisario plots, and excellent direction by Tom and Frank Wright – one of the best shows on television.
Just not going to watch it anymore. Why? There are lines in any job you do, that you just do not cross. Ever. They exist, no matter what job you do, and no matter what occupation you have.
If you are an accountant, you don’t cook the books. You never break the law for your client. Period. If you are a doctor, you don’t prescribe meds for a patient that feeds their addiction, and then keep false records for them. If you are an engineer, you don’t design things that are unsafe, specifying cheap, substandard materials.
I know. All of you can think of someone in our recent past who have done exactly those things. They crossed a line that they should not have. We know about them because they were caught doing it and are paying the price for it. It was all over the news.
So what has this to do with NCIS on television?
How about an execution in front of the team, performed by the old law enforcer who trained their boss? The bad guy was caught. He had dropped his gun. A minute passed. Then he was shot, execution style, and left for dead. A joke was made by the team about it, as they were walking away, and the show ended. It had a strange, surreal feel of “Police Squad” to it.
A line was crossed. One that never should have been crossed. Not by someone in law enforcement. Not by the good guys.
At least, that is how my generation was brought up.
It is a small issue, I know. But one that is becoming increasingly common in our world, here at the dawn of the third millennium.
Congress passes a law allowing us to torture our prisoners. It is for the greater good. Congress looks the other way when one of its own abuses the young. They need his vote. Nobody has rebuilt New Orleans, even yet. Oil companies continue to make billions in embarrassing profits off of our shortages.
The breaking of trust by those we entrust with our lives and our civilization is so common we don’t even blink at it anymore. Lines have been crossed so often by so many, that we do not feel the need to have integrity in our own lives. Who is to care if we do not?
In fact, when we are confronted by those who never cross lines, we are shocked. The Amish community, when their private world suddenly became public in their great tragedy, we marvel at their integrity. Would it also shock you to learn that our whole nation used to be like them? No longer are we that people. We have gone far beyond what we were, by individually crossing one line at a time.
I admit that my tastes in television are narrow. So this crossing of the line there may be far more prevalent than I ever realized. Most shows, I never watch because they are asinine. Some I do not watch because they evidently are written no moral standard I can recognize.
But I expected that there would always be one line that was never crossed in that medium, and it was crossed last night. Something good died that should never have. It seems a very poor way to do anything about it, by voting with my remote.
I cling to my standards and sensibilities like rags, in a world that seems to be spinning ever more out of control. I no longer see any difference between us and our enemies. I expect our enemies to be ruthless, law-breaking, insensitive, amoral bastards. I don’t expect us, the good guys, to be that way too.
I wonder if you feel the same way about it?
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