NCIS: Sydney Season 3, Episode 17 ‘Fight Club‘ is proof that although this show has had a pretty solid third season and hasn’t really suffered from having twice as many episodes as in Season 2, the added episodes sometimes end up being hours like this one: fun, but ultimately not much more to show for it.
In many ways, that’s the procedural life, and it’s a pretty established way for shows like this one to develop characters and relationships. If anything, NCIS: Sydney did that so well with fewer episodes in its first two seasons that, at times, it feels like we’re not getting enough movement from the dynamics in some of these otherwise fun episodes. But the show still does a pretty good job of reaffirming things, and hey, we still like these characters. So minor gripes here.
For a case-centric hour, ‘Fight Club’ turns out to be a pretty emotional one, if nothing else, because it’s just really sad to imagine the loss of a young life. Often, these shows allow us a sense of separation from the victim of the week. This hour makes you stare that loss right in the face. And we cannot help but feel it.
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WE NEED ANSWERS, PRONTO
One thing the show has done effectively, almost frustratingly so, is withhold some information from us. What’s going on with Trigger and Evie? Inquiring minds want to know. But the show has also set up some other storylines that seem like they have to be going somewhere, like JD’s mystery girlfriend. Now, there are only three more episodes left in the season. So the answers will hopefully come soon.
It’s hard to know what kind of answers we want. It almost makes no sense for there to be nothing going on between Evie and Trigger, but do we want something to be going on between them if it’s not being used to further Evie and DeShawn? Not really. We invested in Evie and DeShawn from the beginning, so it’s hard to bring Trigger two seasons later and have us care more about that possibility.
And we, of course, do not care one iota about JD’s new girlfriend, unless her existence is going to cause Mackey and/or JD to have to confront why their relationship is more than a partnership. It felt, at the beginning of this season, that the show might be ready to go there. Or at least to unequivocally hint at it. Then, JD got a girlfriend. Sometimes there’s no bigger hint than that. But she’d need to show up for that storyline to go somewhere.
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SOME CRUMBS
‘Fight Club’ does throw some crumbs our way, about both Evie and DeShawn and about Mackey and JD. It also does a pretty good job with Blue as part of the team. But that’s all we get, crumbs. Sure, we get Evie and DeShawn as the good team we know they are, but they never take a beat in between the running around for their lives to give us anything else. And JD and Mackey continue to have a fun, sometimes flirty relationship that, on a procedural, is pretty romance-coded, but that’s it.
Despite that, the episode is fun, and it doesn’t really lag. The things the show does well and has already established, this episode does well. Hopefully, though, the last three episodes of the season will go deeper into the dynamics. That is, after all, what we care about.
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Things I think I think:
- Fridge too smart for me. If the fridge is smarter than me, I’m out.
- Yeah, that would be the part of the job I would hate the most, too, JD.
- Blue’s “I gotta recuse myself.” Baby, it doesn’t work like that!
- Killed by a drone is new.
- Yeah, Mackey won’t understand, JD will pretend he understands, but won’t.
- “Don’t call them nerds.” I mean, own it. I do!
- “Yeah, if the Death Star was real.”/”Boss, not here.”
- Evie always eats your lunch, DeShawn. At this point, why don’t you have contingency plans?
- The moral of this episode is AI is dangerous.
- “D, let’s hit it.”
- Okay, look, not knowing about Trigger and Evie is annoying me at this point.
- The whole chase scene with the drone was both cool and terrifying.
- Blue for the win!
- And Trigger, look at you.
- Go team, go.
- JD and Mackey are like kids sometimes, and I say that in a good way..
- Yeah, no autonomous machines for me.
- The way JD smiles at Mackey…
Agree? Disagree? What did you think of NCIS: Sydney Season 3, Episode 17 ‘Fight Club’? Share with us in the comments below! And if you have your own opinion on the show, leave a review/rating on our NCIS: Sydney hub!
NCIS: Sydney airs Tuesdays at 10/9c on CBS.
