The following contains major spoilers from NCIS: Sydney Season 2, Episode 4, “Truth Sabre,” which debuted Friday, Feb. 28 on CBS.
NCIS: Sydney Season 2, Episode 4, “Truth Sabre,” wants to be the kind of technothriller that audiences loved in the 1990s. All the components are there: lots of complicated dialogue, matters of national security and a conspiracy element. But the CBS spinoff tries to set itself apart by then also incorporating a side of teenage relationship drama, and the combination doesn’t quite gel.
“Truth Sabre” starts with Commander Kira Mason’s car being blown up in her own driveway. The team learns quickly that Mason is in charge of doing some very important IT work for the United States Navy, and it’s obvious that the crime is related to that project. It’s the how that stumps the agents, but also makes for the weakest part of an average episode.
NCIS: Sydney Gets Too Much Mileage Out of Technobabble
Season 2, Episode 4 Leans on Some Tired Jokes
NCIS: Sydney Season 2, Episode 4 gets itself lost in technical jargon and concepts. Half of the time the script feels like it’s winking at the audience, making far too many jokes about how certain characters don’t understand technology. JD Dempsey ribs Michelle Mackey about not grasping basic terminology, as Mackey can’t tell the difference between software, hardware and firmware; she thinks hardware is just “better than software.” Meanwhile at the office, the writers go the particularly easy route of having the oldest character be particularly clueless. Doc Roy gets into an early argument with the printer before Blue has to help him figure out his phone and email. After he had such emotional scenes in Episode 3, “Back in the USSR,” it’s a shame to see the coroner largely reduced to a series of jokes. And then there’s the number of truly cringe-worthy one-liners throughout the episode.
JD Dempsey (to Mackey): My first car was a real bomb, but it’s got nothing on this.
The other half of the time, the plot involves characters having to explain to other characters what something does or means. And when the characters have to keep catching up, so does the audience. Mason has to offer up a whole explanation about how the IT hub where she works is handling a massive data migration between servers; it’s several minutes of incredibly clunky dialogue, and as soon as she mentions that there’s a potential vulnerability, viewers know where the episode’s plot is going. It’s just a matter of waiting for the NCIS team to get to that point. This is the first hurdle of technothrillers: a great script simplifies everything down so the lay viewer can focus more on the plot instead of the technicalities. “Truth Sabre” never does that.
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NCIS: Sydney Season 2, Episode 4 Gets Distracted by Family Issues
The Episode Sticks to TV Stereotypes
The twist in “Truth Sabre” is that the bad guys are using Mason’s daughter Grace and her unresolved feelings over her father’s death to carry out their cyberattack. However, this part of the story unfolds in the most stereotypical fashion. Grace is written like every other moody, snarky TV teenager that viewers might find on a teen drama. Her attitude gets to the point where she becomes annoying when she appears. Making this more cliche is that DeShawn Jackson and Evie Cooper are stationed in the Mason home to keep an eye on Grace, and their scenes are stereotypical too, bantering about how only Evie seems to be able to sort of connect with Grace. And then they predictably lose sight of her and she’s able to sneak out of the home. What NCIS: Sydney calls a plot twist just ends up becoming the least interesting part of the show, at least until the final act.
It’s revealed that Grace has been manipulated by her boyfriend Jake, but “Jake” is just an AI construct created by the real villains. That’s not shocking, but at least it’s entertaining to anyone who’s ever watched an episode of Catfish: The TV Show. Viewers will resist the urge to roll their eyes when Grace still thinks “Jake” is real even after being told otherwise, thanks to a previously generated video made for exactly that situation. It’s presented as a smart way to keep Grace ensnared, but it’s pretty easy to see through. It’s even easier to predict that the pair of antagonists are people close to Kira: her engineer Gene and her chief of staff Heather. Many TV procedurals have used the “someone who’s supposed to be a good guy” twist, and even if that wasn’t true, NCIS: Sydney doesn’t present any other alternative suspects. Dempsey even has his eye on Gene early after an initial conversation, classifying him as a “tech bro.”
While the plot itself is predictable because it relies so heavily on character stereotypes and plot cliches, at least there’s some action to keep things moving along. Heather is stopped because the helicopter that lands on top of a parking garage happens to be flown by Mackey, who does the classic “turn around and reveal self to bad guy” move — complete with a flight-related joke. Having Gene killed off late in the episode also makes things just difficult enough to keep the tension up. But neither he nor Heather are ever developed enough for fans to really feel anything about them betraying Kira.
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NCIS: Sydney Offers Some Insight Into Evie Cooper
Season 2, Episode 4 Reveals Some Poignant Details
Speaking of character development, DeShawn and Evie get some in “Truth Sabre.” DeShawn has decided he wants to teach Evie to swim after she revealed she couldn’t in NCIS: Sydney Season 2, Episode 2, “Fire in the Hole.” Evie isn’t interested, but the fact that he’d even try says a lot about how much he cares about her. At the end of the episode, DeShawn speculates that the reason Evie doesn’t know how to swim is because she never really had a childhood.
Evie reveals in conversation with Grace that she had to help her mother raise her siblings when she was younger. And the two of them do seem to form a connection eventually, as evidenced by how Grace yells for Evie when Heather takes her hostage, and how Evie is the one to hug and reassure her afterward. It’s nice to see some vulnerability to Evie, because for most of Season 2, she’s been the sassy, sarcastic character. But that isn’t all there is to her, plus this piece of information then adds to DeShawn’s understanding of her as well.
NCIS: Sydney Season 2, Episode 5 isn’t an episode that fans will want to watch again. It keeps from being too slow or boring, but it gets caught up in its own cyber-mystery, and then once viewers get underneath that, what’s left is too predictable and broad. When the writers get creative, as they did with “Fire in the Hole,” they can turn out stories that feel like they’re unique to this NCIS spinoff. But when they seem to be playing it safe, as they do here, there’s nothing that can’t be done elsewhere.
NCIS: Sydney airs Fridays at 8:00 p.m. on CBS.
NCIS: Sydney Season 2, Episode 4
- Release Date
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November 10, 2023
- Showrunner
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Morgan O’Neill
- Writers
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Morgan O’Neill
- There are enough plot twists to keep the episode moving steadily.
- Audiences get a little more perspective on Evie Cooper.
- The identities of the real bad guys are fairly obvious.
- The comic subplot involving Doc Roy might as well not exist.
