Both shows started with wonderful Christmas flair: NCIS had a couple cutting down their own Christmas tree in a snow covered forest and NCIS: LA had a beautifully decorated downtown street complete with a Salvation Army Santa. Unfortunately the Christmas Spirit in both shows didn’t last through their first commercials. 

In the NCIS episode, the couple in the woods found a young white Marine, a Muslim, killed while praying toward Mecca. His father, once a Marine Colonel, retired to become a minister because in his words, “When my wife died, I wanted to be closer to God, now he’s taken my son as well.” 

As Gibbs and his team take the forty-eight minutes to figure out who-done-it, the audience is treated with some not so light-handed preaching favoring Islam. At one point, when the father of the killed Marine utters, “God forgive me, and Tom’s God too.” Gibbs responds with, “They are one in the same colonel.”  And although I would beg to differ, anybody who watches NCIS knows that whatever Gibbs says is gospel. 

Spoiler Alert—don’t read on if you plan to watch the episode and want to be surprised. 

It turns out the Marine was murdered by his own brother in what I can only describe as an “Honor Killing.” The ‘Christian’ family was so embarrassed by the son’s conversion to Islam that the brother thought the only recourse he had was to kill him. 

Out of all the cultures in the globe where honor killing is a very serious problem, how many have happened in America within a Christian family? Oh yeah—NONE. Is there a verse in the Bible one can point to where the Christian is instructed to kill the offending family member should he or she decide to convert to another religion? I think not. 

NCIS, what were you thinking? 

And evidently having received the same memo just in time for Christmas, the writers of NCIS: Los Angeles found a way to write into that night’s episode something just as shocking. 

Not too long into the Christmas holiday shopping scene, a young Marine’s head is blown off by his cell phone. The likely suspects are all part of an explosive ordinance disposal unit that was attacked by an IUD in Iraq: a mechanic who lost one leg, a man who turned to God after returning home, and a Muslim who’s face was burned badly in the incident. 

Spoiler Alert—one of these three suspects ends up strapping a bomb to his chest and attempts to become a suicide bomber.  Can you guess which one? 

A key clue in the middle of the episode is dust writing in Arabic on a blown-up car’s rear window.  “Those who reject our faith and deny our signs shall be companions of hell fire.”  At first, LL Cool J’s character attributes the writing to the Koran, Al-Maeda (chapter 5), verse 10. 

So, pulling the classic bait-and-switch on the unsuspecting audience where all things point to the Muslim Marine as the culprit, there is suddenly a break in the case. The staff psychologist is given a Bible by the Christian Marine and wow, he finds this passage in Thessalonians, “In flaming fire, taking vengeance on them that know not God.” And the case is solved—it’s not the Muslim—it’s the Christian blowing up his fellow Marines. 

The scripture is actually 2nd Thessalonians, chapter 2 verse 7 in the King James Version, referring to when Jesus returns to Earth with his angels and brings about the final judgment. It should be noted that in that entire passage there is nothing about the followers of Christ helping out with that vengeance. The Apostle Paul was actually comforting those of the faith that were being persecuted, definitely not telling them to take any vengeance into their own hands. Ah, but I digress.  

That small point didn’t seem to matter to the NCIS writers. They just thought it was best to deliver another Christmas present to my family that afternoon—a Christian suicide bomber. And you might ask when was the last time a Christian strapped on a bomb and became a suicide bomber in this country?  I think you get the point. All I can say is thank God it was only in the warped writer’s imagination. 

These two episodes would have been troubling enough anytime during the year. But to air them back-to-back as their Christmas episodes makes me wonder what agenda the producers had in mind. I have been a fan of both shows and they usually have great scripts. But this day, I was truly disappointed. 

How about a New Year’s resolution NCIS? Go back to good story telling and leave the Christian bashing behind for 2010.

Convicted confidence artist, forger, and counterfeiter Neal Caffrey (Matt Bomer) is released from prison (and shackled with an electronic tracking device) in order to assist FBI agent Peter Burke (Tim DeKay) in catching other criminals. As in the 1960s TV series It Takes a Thief, Caffrey is young, handsome, single, insouciant, creative, and free-spirited, and his FBI handler is more mature, less handsome, and more conventional and stable.

Together, as in all such shows and in real life to a surprising degree, their differing capacities complement each other and make for a highly effective team. The pair work well together in solving the mysteries that face them each week in the board rooms, boudoirs, and mean streets of New York City, and as noted earlier, they do seem to share many of the same values, especially now that Caffrey finds himself confronted by unexpectedly dire consequences of his raffish prior existence, which I’ll discuss later in this article.

The use of confidence schemes as a central plot element is of course a common theme in contemporary television, including highly enjoyable series such as Hustle, Leverage, and The Mentalist, and is undoubtedly a topic of relevance in this time which the public perceives as unusually rife with political and economic corruption (though in fact it’s really all pretty much as usual with the human race).

As with Hustle and The Mentalist, White Collar is extravagantly forgiving of the unsavory elements of Neal’s past–he was a liar and a thief, after all–but without denying the moral import of his actions. It posits instead a redemptive point of view that acknowledges the superiority of repentance and reconciliation over simple punishment, while recognizing that many (if not most) people of a criminal bent are not interested in reform.

Those thoughts are all under the surface, however, not stated openly, though anyone with normal acuity and a moral sense will surely see them. That, too, is how series television works best.

Another appealing and rather unusual element of White Collar is a happy marriage at the center of the show. Burke is married to Elizabeth (Tiffani Thiessen), an attractive, smart, perceptive and understanding woman. This latter quality is important because Burke’s work often puts strains on the amount of time he can spend with her, and he has in the past been all too inclined to take her for granted.

Here too, Caffrey does some good work, educating Burke about the importance of treating his wife well. This is made particularly poignant by another central story element of the show: while working for the FBI, Caffrey is surreptitiously pursuing the solution to a mystery of his own, the disappearance and probable abduction of his girlfriend. While recycling and slightly varying the central plot elements of Monk, Leverage, and several other such series, the abduction scenario gives the viewer a strong sense that Caffrey has paid a high price for his prior crimes and is now acutely aware of their cost to others, and is thus a good candidate for forgiveness and redemption (as appears to be true also of The Mentalist, although it’s not clear that much of what Patrick Jane did was actually criminal).

The supporting cast is quite talented, including Diahann Carroll, Willie Garson, Natalie Morales, and James Rebhorn. It’s particularly good to see Carroll back on TV, and Rebhorn is always a strong screen presence.

Also enjoyable is the show’s measured but definite appreciation for the finer things in life–good food, good clothes, nice cars, attractive people, comfortable and elegant home furnishings, and other such creature comforts. Caffrey’s role in the cases, which typically consists of undercover work (as in NCIS: Los Angeles but among a much more moneyed group of people) involves him rubbing elbows with beautiful and wealthy people and going to expensive restaurants and trendy nightclubs.

While being intrinsically pleasing–nice things are pleasant to look at, after all–this aspect of the show also means something. In the perpetually Puritanism-suffused United States, it’s sometimes important to be reminded that the natural world is not intrinsically evil and that it’s all right to enjoy life as long as one does not harm others or ignore the plight of the less-fortunate in doing so.

The modern-day Luddites who would send us all back to the eighteenth century (or the fifth, or prehistoric times) in a quest for environmental purity are only the most recent manifestation of this Manichean attitude, and White Collar is appealingly free of that impulse–and quite enjoyable for it.

As noted earlier, however, the theme of personal redemption is at the forefront of the show. Central to that theme in plot terms is the issue of whether Burke can really trust Caffrey, whether the latter has truly turned his back on his old ways. Episode 3, “Book of Hours,” is especially attentive to this issue. As Burke and Elizabeth discuss the agent’s concerns about having to trust Caffrey, she says, “Sometimes you just have to take a leap of faith.”

The episode explores the concept of faith in a much deeper way as well. A pre-Renaissance Bible with alleged healing powers has been stolen from a Catholic church, and Caffrey and Burke are assigned to find and retrieve it. The two discuss the possibility of whether miracles really can happen, with Burke, a lapsed Catholic, arguing against the possibility, and the stylish, free-spirited Caffrey arguing for it.

That’s a refreshing reversal of the roles Hollywood usually assigns in discussions of religious faith, of course; typically the religious person has been shown as dour and unhappy and the doubter as much more likable.

In the end of “Book of Hours,” the Bible literally saves Caffrey’s life. Burke jokingly says, “I guess the Big Guy had your back.” Moments later, the book saves the life of a dying dog, and Caffrey tells the still-skeptical Burke, “I’ll take my miracles where I can get them,” and, “He [God] works in mysterious ways.” Here, too, White Collar reflects the much-greater openness to religion shown in recent series such as Monk, Psych, Leverage, CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, The Mentalist, and numerous others, a much more liberal and fair-minded attitude than Hollywood showed for many years before the current decade.

With such classical liberal, generous, and morally sound attitudes, sharp writing, appealing performances, a surprisingly fresh visual presentation of New York City, a serious interest in the moral content of its characters’ choices, and a strong sense that people are happiest when they’re doing good things together, White Collar is the very model of a modern TV drama series.

Those who value surface originality above all other considerations will probably find it to be far beneath their dignity–but those who appreciate the good things formula fiction can do (as the brilliant critic, belle-lettrist, and fiction writer G. K. Chesterton repeatedly stressed) may find White Collar very much to their liking.

It is important because America is choosing to watch Special Agent Leroy Jethro Gibbs catch “dirtbags.” It’s a cop show, you may say. Yes, but these cops are in the Naval Criminal Investigative Service. They solve crimes involving Sailors and Marines. So for one hour every Tuesday (2 hours if you count “NCIS-Los Angeles,” the spinoff) we are in the world of the United States Navy and Marine Corps. 

There are many reasons to watch the show. It is face paced, clever and the audience is drawn into this team with all its unique characters. They are a family and we want to be one of them. They have talents we wish we had and they use them for good. 

Special Agent Tony Dinozza (Michael Weatherly) is the goof off from every office we’ve ever worked in. But he is a former cop and relies on his instincts to come up with that one idea that might solve the case. Of course, he is also a great shot and a good fighter which comes in handy with bad guys. 

Special Agent Timothy McGee (Sean Murray). He is the geek in the office. We know we need him but we can’t figure out what he is doing on the computer. But we pretend we do like Tony. In an increasingly technological world he is the hacker of choice. He is also a good field agent and can shoot as well as the rest of them. I like him especially because he is a best-selling author who wrote a book loosely based on his team mates. 

Forensics Specialist Abby Shuitto (Pauley Perrette), a goth with a master degree in Forensic Science, finds that impossible bit of DNA or chemical compound that solves the case. When all the others have to keep their cool, she is the emotional outlet for all of us. Alone in her lab she plays music, sings, talks to her machines and yells. 

Officer Ziva David (Cote de Pablo)… After last night’s episode I think we can call her “Special Agent.” A former Mossad agent with Daddy problems, she had the task of joining the team after the death of Special Agent Caitlin Todd by Ari the terrorist who turns out to be her half brother who she had to kill to save Gibbs (a little soap opera). I love her character. She is tough, complicated very capable and wounded emotionally. And she wears her Star of David around her neck for all to see. 

Dr. Donald Mallard or “Ducky” (David McCallum), the medical examiner who talks to the corpse. I’ve learned a lot of stuff listening to his digressions into history. He is the symbol of integrity and honor. His work is to find out how the victim was killed so he can help the team catch the killer. But he never forgets the specimen in front of him was once a living human being who has a family and friends who loved him. 

Special Agent Leroy Jethro Gibbs (Mark Harmon), the Special Agent in charge of the team. I left him for last because he is the embodiment of why I think this show says something about America. He is an ex-Marine and fought in Desert Storm. But we learn from him that there is no such thing as an ex-Marine. He is a wounded soul who tragically lost his family. He has seen war and understands those who are in battle now. He knows the truth about the world as he yelled at Dinozzo once, “We are at war and I expect you to fight that war 24/7” His younger team members look up to him and want his approval. He is hard to please. He expects the best. We can all remember a teacher who was really hard on us but whom we appreciated later because we learned to be our best. 

One thing Gibbs teaches us is that members of the Navy and the Marines are human like us. But because of their choice to serve we should appreciate the sacrifices and pressures they and their families endure while protecting us. The Navy’s motto is “Honor, Courage and Commitment” and sailors strive to live up to it every day on carriers, submarines and in far away bases.  Semper Fidelius-Always Faithful is the Marine motto.  Once a Marine, always a Marine. This sense of being committed to something greater than one’s self is what makes this show different and why viewers are drawn to it. 

All of this crime fighting takes place on Navy and Marine bases, aircraft carriers, submarines, and the Navy Yard. Sometimes it is just like civilian crime. It could be a jealous husband, wife or lover, betrayed best friends, or criminals turning on each other. But our team knows that any crime involving the military can threaten the security of the United States. Navy and Marine personnel deal with sensitive information everyday. These investigators have to know what is merely crime or something bigger and more dangerous. 

There has always been an overt acknowledgement on the show of the threat of terrorism The real NCIS agents deal with anti-terrorism operations.  To the real agents and those on the show it is not a “man-made disaster,” it is a terrorist attack. The war in Iraq or Afghanistan is not an “overseas contingency operation.” It is real war and it will go on for a long time even if our approved political vocabulary does not recognize it. We are in danger every minute and this team recognizes it. That is one of the reasons why I believe the show is such a hit. 

It is sad that the threat of terrorism is more real on a TV show than in our government. I noticed the other day that Janet Napolitano, our Homeland Security Secretary, had to admit in an interview that there were some people in the United States with al Qaeda leanings that want to hurt us. Duh!!! 

But on Tuesday nights, when we watch “NCIS,” we know Gibbs has our back. Semper Fi!