NCIS, gayness levels, and The Gay Spike

[cimorene]

Damn, the new NCIS was good. And not only good, either - I mean, it was partly good acting, and it was partly better writing than usual, because it was really sparkling, and Michael whassname is really good at - you know, impressions, and being a bit of a goof, and comic timing - so I'm sure they wrote the ep for him, just to let him shine, as it were. But anyway, my point is that it wasn't just better written than usual, it was more gay than usual. Like, okay. In graph form,



NCIS is usually about as gay as Highlander, which is to say, amusingly gay, but not necessarily anything that your typical non-gay, non-slash-goggles-wearer would even pick up on; the realm of repeated humourous subtext, but without the intense focus on interpersonal relations, in a bromance way, that you find in Star Trek and the other higher-up shows on the graph (there are plenty of other shows, too, obviously, I just picked big fandoms that spring immediately to mind as benchmarks). It spikes occasionally, especially in s6, with Agent Afloat and Tony's return to the job WITH BONUS EYEFUCKING AND HANDSHAKES, not to mention the Meet The Parents ep where Gibbs's dad is all over Tony and then inexplicably (or rather, unexplainedly) gives him a sweater., but those spikes have heretofore, due to characterisation and camerawork (ie no lovingly lingering shots of the eyefucking, more like you have to notice it happening is a comic aside when the plot is focussed elsewhere), been still mostly at sub-Star Trek levels. Last night's episode was firmly up above Star Trek gayness levels, although still under Due South (it's hard to get as gay as riding off into the sunset together) - more like The Sentinel (other shows at TS's level of gayness: Merlin, Starsky & Hutch from what I have observed).

I keep refreshing my delicious subscriptions looking for episode tags because I'm too lazy to try to write one myself, but you could totally put a really awesome Gibbs/Dinozzo FT fic either directly after the events of the ep, or shortly after like a few days or weeks. Even though my personal canon places that earlier this season.

ETA: If you haven't seen it, go participate in thefourthvine's Scientific Poll on the subject!http://thefourthvine.livejournal.com/98874.html#cutid1 & http://thefourthvine.livejournal.com/99145.html#cutid1

Comments

[mecurtin.livejournal.com]

You're nuts. The Sentinel is *much* gayer than that, it's soooper-gay. Merlin and S/H are Pretty Damn Gay too, of course, but I sometimes think TS is Gayest Ever.

Ha! I shall do a poll.

[cimness.livejournal.com]

TS is near the top of my graph. Only DS is above it. You're just objecting because I said Merlin and SH are about equal? I was guessing about them (which is why they aren't on the graph) - I haven't watched the canon (well, I've watched about ½ an episode apiece).

[mecurtin.livejournal.com]

No, I'm objecting because TS is The Gayest Ever!! Gayer than a gay gay thing.

[cimness.livejournal.com]

I can't agree that it's gayer than Due South. They were both really gay in subtext and day-to-day... occurrences, but DS ended with riding off into the sunset explicitly, and 'explicitly' is worth extra points, in my book, even if they read about the same most of the time.

[jacquez.livejournal.com]

I am with Mary Ellen, despite agreeing that riding off into the sunset together is EXTREMELY gay.

The reason I am agreeing with ME is "Jim dreams about Blair naked and impaled."

[mecurtin.livejournal.com]

The "merging of their spirit animals" thing, too, which goes beyond gay and into "15-year-old girl's fanfic".

[jacquez.livejournal.com]

The spirit animal thing is one of the factors that makes me agree with the quality of writing cimness has assigned. Because. Damn.

Back on the gayness, there's also the entire structure of the show as a metaphor for the closet.

[liviapenn.livejournal.com]

Icon!

[jacquez.livejournal.com]

dkfasd;flsadfkljasdf;lasdk HAHAHAHAHAAHAHAH

[mamadeb.livejournal.com]

That's also the central metaphor for Merlin, where he has to hide his gaynessmagic.

But, yes. Remember - in TS, they *live* together. In a LOFT. That all by itself makes it about as gay as gay could be.

[cimness.livejournal.com]

True! Those two are both off the scale on subtext.

[cimness.livejournal.com]

I didn't actually know about that! So TS is kind of explicitly gay sometimes too, not just off the scale on subtext? I don't even know whether to classify that kind of symbolism as subtext or explicit. Or explicit subtext?

[jacquez.livejournal.com]

It is not quite Xena-level, but it's...something, all right! It is one of the shows that I've occasionally heard people call "gayer than gay porn" -- usually they are thinking about Cock Ring Ken Jim dressed like he wandered in from Castro St., the naked & impaled dream, or the merging spirit animals when they say this.

I was watching an episode once, and my husband wandered into the room, watched for less than a minute, said "My GOD this show is slashy" and wandered out.

Now, I am not knocking dS's gayness, because...partnership is like a marriage, son!

[cimness.livejournal.com]

They approach the gay from different angles, in fact! The porny sexualised angle and the MARRIAGE~ angle. ? Okay, I admit, I definitely noticed the high porniness content in the eps of TS I've seen, too, even though they weren't quite THAT symbolic.

[jacquez.livejournal.com]

Hm, that's so, now that I think of it.

dS is about commitment and trust and riding off into the sunset.

TS is more like a steamy romance novel that involves a marriage of convenience and has a lot of mistrust, stupid fights, and porny sex in it; and eventually at the very very end Blair gives up his old lover because he loves his husband and they decide to stay together.

[kmazzy.livejournal.com]

now i want more things on this graph!!

[cimness.livejournal.com]

Feel free to make your own!

[kmazzy.livejournal.com]

i don't know enough to do that! i would put supernatural somewhere near the sentinel though.

[cimness.livejournal.com]

Hahahha, so would I! Except I don't find it very gay. I mean, it's an intense bromance but it's clearly a BROmance. All homoerotica completely unintentional (and I generally find, unnecessary: it goes away for me if I blink and remember they're brothers...)

[kmazzy.livejournal.com]

it's gayer in my mind than in the actual show...

[jacquez.livejournal.com]

Bromance makes me wonder: how gay is Scrubs?

...now I need to go youtube "Guy Love". 'scuse.

[melannen.livejournal.com]

I saw this and couldn't resist making my own (http://melannen.katycat.net/slashgraph.png)! I hope you don't mind. This is genius!

[cimness.livejournal.com]

No, it's no-rights-reserved!

[damned-colonial.livejournal.com]

You know what's interesting about your one? The plot points follow a roughly U shape. So what I'm seeing there is that the slashy shows are either brilliantly written or horribly written, but that the shows with merely average writing just aren't usually that slashy. Hmm.

[melannen.livejournal.com]

I saw that too. But I'm not sure if it's a real effect, or just that when shows are THAT SLASHY I have trouble being objective about the writing!

(It may come down to - if the slashy relationships are well done, I rated the slash high, and if the slashy relationships are deeply, deeply over-the-top and campy, I rated the slash high, but shows where I was so-so on the writing, I was so-so on the relationships too.)

[brownbetty]

Maybe the slash factor tends to dispose one to have a higher opinion of the writing, unless the writing is really really really bad, in which case there's no denying it.

[brownbetty]

I've never seen Sentinel, but I cannot believe the writing level was worse than on Merlin! Is this possible?

Now I want to see it.

[melannen.livejournal.com]

I've only seen about an episode of each! But my reasoning goes like this: in Merlin fic, people use actual (non-slash-related) plot points in episodes; they write about one-episode guest stars; they write what are essentially "casefile" fics. As far as I can tell, nobody ever does that in Sentinel - they just seem to write relationship-focused stuff, to the point that I couldn't tell you a single plot point from any Sentinel episode that doesn't bear directly on Jim & Blair's big gay love. Whereas I could probably give you a pretty good summary of all of Merlin so far. (Though this may just be because Merlin doesn't *have* plot points that aren't about big gay love.) So Merlin's writing must have something going for it that Sentinel's doesn't.

(Also, I think I'm more forgiving than a lot of people of the way Merlin-BBC relates to the mythos. Compared to some of the stuff I read the last time I was in King Arthur fandom, the Slash Dragon is a nuanced and accurate interpretation of the original story.)

[cimness.livejournal.com]

Hell, yes. I say this from the POV of 3 eps of TS and about 1½ of Merlin.

[cimness.livejournal.com]

wax_jism, who has actually watched most of both, backs me up with YES IT REALLY REALLY REALLY IS. She says that in Merlin, part of it is that they're being silly on purpose and just having fun. The Sentinel's badness is entirely down to actually being that bad.

[apatheia-jane.livejournal.com]

When I heard of the graph concept, I immediately thought of BL as belonging top right.

I would very much argue with your placement of Xena as having better quality writing than Torchwood.

And X-files being better written than BSG. OMG season 8, Chris Carter why did you hate us so much?

[phineasjones.livejournal.com]

ahahaha i love that graph.

[cimness.livejournal.com]

I was thinking about a 'humour/crack' scale too but I'm not really up to 3D graphs yet. :D

[mecurtin.livejournal.com]

"Crack" should be about how much of the characters' naked butts you got to see. *nodnod*

[copracat]

I think Merlin has the potential to be Even Gayer Than The Sentinel and possibly Even Gayer Than Due South. I mean, we already know that, eventually, Arthur is going to die and Merlin is going to take to his big gay couch of pining for a thousand years or until Arthur returns, whichever comes later*.

I love your graph. It makes me want to watch NCIS.


*All over the world Arthurian scholars are groaning in unexplained pain.

[cimness.livejournal.com]

That's definitely true. If you could count on the show using that part of canon, at least, it would get plenty of Riding into the Sunset points.

[cobweb-diamond.livejournal.com]

the gay present in "bounce" was awesome and epic. i love NCIS but this was not only a good ep but was more or less Gibbs and DiNozzo eyefucking and then Dinozzo having multiple tiny overoyed fits whenever Gibbs uncharacteristicaly complemented him. it was getting to the point where i was thinking, "shit, Gibbs is being so nice to DiNozzo they must be going to kill one of them off!"

p.s. if there is fic for this ep, recc it! i don't think i've ever read good Gibbs/DiNozzo fic...

[cimness.livejournal.com]

I read one, but it was preslashy, not actual slash. However, there is some good Gibbs/DiNozzo fic. Hoyden's springs to mind, but I've read one I quite liked by rageprufrock as well: try http://delicious.com/cimness/gibbs%2Fdinozzo and try the sidebar tags +!, +rec, and +♥ for the more outstanding ones (in one way or another). Jane Davitt's written some snappy dialogue (without substantial plottiness or romantic development that I recall), twoweevils has written far too few stories which are generally too short but some of my favourites (esp "Dating George Clooney" and "On It, Boss"), and cupidsbow has written, I think, two pieces that were both outstanding (esp "Say When").

[ratcreature]

I feel the quality of TS writing is maligned here. The show wasn't *that* bad.

[cimness.livejournal.com]

I didn't take a poll, but I definitely find The Sentinel that bad in comparison to the other shows represented on the graph.

[liviapenn.livejournal.com]

Hmm... that much worse than Highlander? Really? Not just the best eps of Highlander?

*is going to get beaten by highlander fen friends*

[cimness.livejournal.com]

Hmmm... well... I kinda placed the dots by squinting but... I guess I'd say on 1-10 I put TS at 2 and Highlander at 4. But it must be said that I *deliberately* only watched the Methos episodes and it's quite possible the Highlander average is more like a 3.

On the scale of how much alcohol I needed to get through an episode in good humour, TS is somewhere around "2 glasses of wine and some hard liquor", while Highlander is more like "1 glass of wine and some chocolate".

...Scientific, right?

[thefourthvine.livejournal.com]

I think this calls for a poll! May I do it?

[cimness.livejournal.com]

Knock yourself out!

[making-gray.livejournal.com]

Yes, the slash overloaded my brain! It set a completely unprecedented level of gay on NCIS. I seriously hope the rest of s6 continues like this. I loved the stairwell!sexconversation.

[cimness.livejournal.com]

LOL inorite. I was like, "Is he srsly - haha, wouldn't it be great if he dragged him into the stairwell and got in his face to tell him that he loves him has faith or something, not that even NCIS would be THAT gay. HO- WHAT - HOLY SHIT."

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

The graph is genius. Did you make this graph yourself? *is convinced it must stem from at least an MIT research project or similar* Hoho.

I am now going to map the entire world output of anything onto this graph.

[cimness.livejournal.com]

I made it out of my own brain, but thefourthvine is doing a Scientific Study with POLLS now and a 1-10 scale as opposed to an "eyeball it" scale which is what I used. :D MORE GRAPHS TO FOLLOW!!!!! I ♥ graphs.

[rageprufrock.livejournal.com]

This chart is the best thing I have ever seen.

[cimness.livejournal.com]

I can't help thinking that a big, scientific one will be the most beautiful thing ever.

[laceymcbain.livejournal.com]

Someone so needs to add Starsky and Hutch into one of these graphs. Honestly. They hold hands in the squadroom and are about as touchy-feely as Jim and Blair. Possibly moreso (if possible).

[cimness.livejournal.com]

Well, I'm afraid I have never watched S&H so, although I am well aware of their seminal fandom position and whatnot, I could not undertake to add them to my graph, which came entirely from my own canon familiarity with the fandoms in question and was created with the scientific method of "squint at the screen for a second and then place the dots by feel". So, you know, we'd better wait for TFV.

[klangley56.livejournal.com]

Well, never been one to look at fandom through slash-colored glasses, but if I were . . .

I've read slash since the original slash pairing, K/S, and dozens since, and I can confirm that you will never, ever (ever) see anything with more "slash potential" than "Starsky and Hutch."

Ever.

It's not just the physicality, it's the emotional content. They were "me and thee against the world."

"The Sentinel" (of which I am also a fan) is but a pale reflection.

[sherrold.livejournal.com]

Oh so true. And today-style RPSers would have gone crazy: when Merv Griffin called the show a cop show, Hutch's actor corrected him, saying, "No, it's a love story about two cops." Oy.