NCIS season 18 finale thoughts
May. 26th, 2021 10:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
helsinkibabyI wrote this for tumblr earlier today which is where most of the NCIS/Ellick fandom appears to be, but I find tumblr a hell site for being able to find anything so I’m also posting it here.
There are spoilers for the finale that aired in the states last night, although I’ve not seen the full episode and am going from reviews and one particular scene that’s been posted to tumblr and Twitter. It also contains a very brief reference to NCIS Los Angeles and their finale from Sunday night.
So I don’t often post my thoughts in tumblr but wanted to add my thoughts to last nights NCIS finale, which full disclosure, I have not yet seen in full, just spoilers, GIFs and *that* scene, you know the one, which I saw over breakfast this morning and thank goodness it was after I’d eaten because it would have ruined my appetite otherwise.
Let me be clear. I hate this. The Ellie that I saw in that scene is not the Ellie that I have watched for the last eight years. Cold, remote, almost angry... Nick didn’t seem like the Nick we know either but at least I can head canon that that he was coming from a place of anger and hurt and heartbreak, he had to hold himself together or he’d splinter into a million pieces. But Ellie? I do not get it. It was crappy, shitty writing and a terrible way to get a character to leave. If you’re going to write out a character, you need to do it in a way that doesn’t completely assassinate their character - which, for all the issues that NCIS Los Angeles have had with their writing this year and previous years, the way they wrote out not one but two characters in their season finale was A+. Made sense, happy ending, ship ahoy (even if it’s not my ship) job done. This ending is so not that, it’s not even funny. I am so disgusted I can’t even be angry.
’m seeing lots of Tiva parallels being pointed out which obviously I get. However, this rings different to me. Because way back at the start of season eleven, I felt, even though not many people agreed with me, that the writers did the best they could with a bad situation. Cote wanted to leave, they had two eps to write her out and yes, her breakdown could have had its own half season (full season?) arc, but they had two eps so they did what they could. And the orange grove scene, the airport goodbye (“I’m rooting for you, Ziva” “Tony, you are so... loved.”) - yes, they broke my heart but they also left me hopeful. That these two people loved each other, that it was just circumstance forcing them apart and there was hope that they could find each other again. And that whenever Weatherly left, they would. (Let’s ignore the clusterfuck that was the season 13 finale, shall we?)
With Tiva, I felt as if there was hope. The door was left open.
With that Ellick scene, the door is not left open. The door is blown off the building and floating in the water in smithereens with what is left of Gibbs’s boat.
And it does hurt. Because I loved this ship for its own sake. And I really loved the community on tumblr for it. I’m not a big ship kinda gal, my ships are rare pairs and crack ships and “what the heck are you smoking?” kind of pairs. To find videos and gifs and discourse? To sit down and read a fic that I didn’t write myself? It has been a joy of my life these last few years, particularly these last six months. (Long Covid is just as fun as it sounds, wear a mask kids) I’ve been in fandom a loooooong time and, until this morning, the Ellick fandom has been nothing but joy. And I hate that this is how it ended.
My last thought? I went back and looked up Wilmer’s TV Line article because I was afraid I was misremembering the quote. This is what he said.
“ I think we’re going to combine a lot of the seeds we planted through Season 17 and 18 and give the fans a real finale. Like, a real, explosive finale that a show whose loyal audience shows up live for deserves to see.”
Wilmer. NCIS writers. I know you will never see this. But if you think this ending was what a loyal audience deserves? From the very depths of my very soul, kindly fuck all the way off.
There are spoilers for the finale that aired in the states last night, although I’ve not seen the full episode and am going from reviews and one particular scene that’s been posted to tumblr and Twitter. It also contains a very brief reference to NCIS Los Angeles and their finale from Sunday night.
So I don’t often post my thoughts in tumblr but wanted to add my thoughts to last nights NCIS finale, which full disclosure, I have not yet seen in full, just spoilers, GIFs and *that* scene, you know the one, which I saw over breakfast this morning and thank goodness it was after I’d eaten because it would have ruined my appetite otherwise.
Let me be clear. I hate this. The Ellie that I saw in that scene is not the Ellie that I have watched for the last eight years. Cold, remote, almost angry... Nick didn’t seem like the Nick we know either but at least I can head canon that that he was coming from a place of anger and hurt and heartbreak, he had to hold himself together or he’d splinter into a million pieces. But Ellie? I do not get it. It was crappy, shitty writing and a terrible way to get a character to leave. If you’re going to write out a character, you need to do it in a way that doesn’t completely assassinate their character - which, for all the issues that NCIS Los Angeles have had with their writing this year and previous years, the way they wrote out not one but two characters in their season finale was A+. Made sense, happy ending, ship ahoy (even if it’s not my ship) job done. This ending is so not that, it’s not even funny. I am so disgusted I can’t even be angry.
’m seeing lots of Tiva parallels being pointed out which obviously I get. However, this rings different to me. Because way back at the start of season eleven, I felt, even though not many people agreed with me, that the writers did the best they could with a bad situation. Cote wanted to leave, they had two eps to write her out and yes, her breakdown could have had its own half season (full season?) arc, but they had two eps so they did what they could. And the orange grove scene, the airport goodbye (“I’m rooting for you, Ziva” “Tony, you are so... loved.”) - yes, they broke my heart but they also left me hopeful. That these two people loved each other, that it was just circumstance forcing them apart and there was hope that they could find each other again. And that whenever Weatherly left, they would. (Let’s ignore the clusterfuck that was the season 13 finale, shall we?)
With Tiva, I felt as if there was hope. The door was left open.
With that Ellick scene, the door is not left open. The door is blown off the building and floating in the water in smithereens with what is left of Gibbs’s boat.
And it does hurt. Because I loved this ship for its own sake. And I really loved the community on tumblr for it. I’m not a big ship kinda gal, my ships are rare pairs and crack ships and “what the heck are you smoking?” kind of pairs. To find videos and gifs and discourse? To sit down and read a fic that I didn’t write myself? It has been a joy of my life these last few years, particularly these last six months. (Long Covid is just as fun as it sounds, wear a mask kids) I’ve been in fandom a loooooong time and, until this morning, the Ellick fandom has been nothing but joy. And I hate that this is how it ended.
My last thought? I went back and looked up Wilmer’s TV Line article because I was afraid I was misremembering the quote. This is what he said.
“ I think we’re going to combine a lot of the seeds we planted through Season 17 and 18 and give the fans a real finale. Like, a real, explosive finale that a show whose loyal audience shows up live for deserves to see.”
Wilmer. NCIS writers. I know you will never see this. But if you think this ending was what a loyal audience deserves? From the very depths of my very soul, kindly fuck all the way off.
