A group of tech experts have explained what makes a specific NCIS scene incredibly inaccurate. NCIS is a show that focuses on members of the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, a group that investigates crimes involving the U.S. Navy. The police procedural that was created by Donald P. Bellisario and Don McGill has continued since it premiered in September 2003.
NCIS’ cast has featured notable actors like Mark Harmon, Sasha Alexander, Michael Weatherly, Pauley Perrette, Gary Cole, Lauren Holly, Rocky Carroll, and Jennifer Esposito. Now that NCIS season 23 will premiere soon, it makes sense to look back at the show’s history. Sadly, some aspects of the crime drama’s storytelling have fallen short.
The hosts of the Linus Tech Tips YouTube channel, Linus Sebastian and Luke Lafreniere, teamed up with Wendell Wilson from Level One Techs to judge TV tech scenes. During their video collaboration, the trio discussed a scene from NCIS, season 8, episode 13, “Freedom”. The scene featured a man discussing a woman’s computer and her gaming achievements with her.
As the clip begins, the man asks the woman whether her computer has a 12-core CPU. In response, the woman brags that the PC actually has a 16-core CPU with a 10 Mbps internet connection, or as she calls it, a “10-meg pipe.” In response to that dialogue, the experts then weighed in on how inaccurate the scene already was.
Luke Lafreniere: Oh, everything’s wrong so far… No one talks this way.
Wendell Wilson: I mean if it’s from a point in time where 10 mega was a lot you wouldn’t say 16-core It would have been like a dual-8 core or something, or quad-4 core.
Linus Sebastian: Yeah, and you would almost never if someone complements your tower go number of CPU cores, internet speed.
Wendell Wilson: That’s not how that works.
Linus Sebastian: You’re competing head-to-head for latency to matter. You’re not trying to set a high score and then uploading it. Does she need to upload her high score really fast?
As the scene continued, the woman and man discussed her supposedly earning many video game high scores. To be exact, the man states at one point that the woman has “the high score in virtually every massively multiplayer online role-playing game.” The three experts then questioned people playing for high scores in MMO games in 2011 when the episode aired.
The tech experts also discussed that it would be impossible for a single player to be the best at every MMO game at the same time. Finally, one of the experts brought up the fact that the tech specs that the woman bragged about in the clip weren’t even possible at the time the episode aired.
Linus Sebastian: The least of these problems is that a 16-core processor didn’t exist at that point.
What This Means For NCIS
Throughout the show’s history, there have been many fantastic NCIS episodes. That is a great thing for the show, since it has always seemed clear that the team behind the series want to craft compelling episodes that viewers can take seriously.
Based on the tech experts’ take on the aforementioned scene, however, some NCIS elements shouldn’t be taken at face value. Instead, viewers should recognize that the crime drama is a show that is meant to entertain and not necessarily educate.
Our Take On How Unrealistic NCIS’ Tech Scenes Can Be
For viewers of the show, finding out how comically inaccurate NCIS’ computer tech scenes can be is pretty amusing. As interesting as it is to see three experts tear moments from the show apart, however, it really shouldn’t affect whether people enjoy the series very much.
It seems very safe to say that NCIS viewers don’t watch to learn about computers. Instead, the show is meant to engage viewers and the truth is the series’ clearly unrealistic tech jargon won’t ruin that for most viewers.
