guss-77 Reviews

NCIS: Los Angeles: A Long Time Coming (2023) Season 14, Episode 10

The writing on this episode is simply terrible

[1/10 · 29 January 2023]

I mean, NCIS L. A. is not the smartest show at the best of times, but this was really bad:

• Namazi just losing it out of the blue (we've seen her keep her cool under more serious problems).

• Roundtree doing really good anti-interrogation until the badee pulls out the stupidest trick in the book and then he just falls apart.

• They have Hetty out of the show and AWOL for so long and suddenly she reaches out?

• Kensi being less than helpful with her "the neighbors were out so we left them messages, hope they get back to us in time to save our friend".

• Torres directly spilling the beans about an ultra-secret unsanctioned murder plan to a person that for all he knows is a black market weapon dealer - and he didn't even need to do that, as that no one questioned him about it.

And so one and so on. None of that makes sense - but I saw the previous two episodes of this cross over and they're all just as bad. The original NCIS one made the most sense, so I thought what they did is let the original NCIS writers run roughshod over the entire shared universe, but looking at the writing credits, this isn't what happened - the original NCIS was written by "some guy", while Hawaii and L. A were written by their respective show runners - who definitely should know better.

Faster (2010)

This was a turd

[2/10 · 18 September 2021]

It is boring and cliched and the final twist is expected from basically the third scene. This movie makes about as much sense as what Billy Bob Thornton tells his girlfriend, towards the end of the movie (its not a spoiler) - "I've been reading up on women, and I think I got you figured out."

Could be that that line is very well disguised self satire, but I doubt it.

The only actor that pulls his own weight there is Jackson-Cohen, and I couldn't care less about his character.

Aside from that, there was no redeeming qualities - it was a slow movie, the action scenes were boring, the second car chase was shot badly and wholly uninspiring. The first car chase was shot slightly better but I found it stupid on all counts and a good example on how not to do a getaway chase.

CSI: Crime Scene Investigation: Kitty (2014) Season 14, Episode 21

Horrible episode, horrible character, horrible pilot

[1/10 · 16 October 2014]

This episode is basically the Pilot to a new series starring Patricia Arquette (Agent Ryan) and it feels like something completely unrelated to the regular CSI world.

Warning "spoiler" (I can't see how I can spoil this more than the episode itself, but whatever).

This whole episode was a shrine to Agent Ryan who is a horrible Marry Sue (all Mary Sue's are terrible, but it takes a special kind of Mary Sue to be so smug about it) - she knows everything, she is brilliant both in the lab and in the interrogation room, she is so brave to confront an armed criminal in the field and she can also kicks butt (she didn't need the SWAT team to break in - she disarmed the criminal herself). The regular CSI team is just the backdrop in this episode, half the cast only have one scene with a couple of lines, and they all fade to the background with the brilliance of Ryan.

Aside from that, the usual gripes: The technical references are completely silly, the criminal's behavior makes no sense, the ending is stupid.

If you skip one CSI episode in your life, make sure its this one.