The Human Response: When the Living itself is Belied

5×16 – Fish Out of Water

5×07 – The Livelong Day 

4×20 – Purity 

4×11 – Drive 

3×18 – The Dragon and The Fairy 

3×11 – Higher Power 

What happens when, our belief is belied? What happens when, those who are supposed to take care of us betray our belief? What happens when, our nurturers become our exploiters? What happens when, our brethren become our foe? What happens when, we start ceasing to exist? What is our Human Response? Do we accept our loss? Or do we fight back? Or we just keep fighting until we die?

Joe Sachs

Seeing him from last two seasons since Season 3 when he joined the team, I am seeing that Joe Sachs has good grip on the NCIS LA characters. He knows all of them. He is the Consulting Producer for the show and previously worked as the writer for ER along with R Scott Gemmill. He is a doctor by profession, but writes stories on varieties of subjects. On the NCIS interpersonal dynamics, he takes care of the partnership dynamics without compromising the story needs. He adds resolution of the emotion towards the actions that the characters perform. The reason in terms of the emotion is addressed and depicted. On the story side, he picks up sensitive movies, documentaries or books that sensitively question the whys and wherefores of the routines suddenly developing into the catastrophic attention. Along the same sensitive lines, Sachs develops his story, using the same title albeit weaving the story to fit the NCIS LA format. In his stories, the subjects are very important. They are responsible but frustrated human beings trying to make a point, fighting the system as the Higher Power governing them has cheated them, failing to protect them and instead doing the exact opposite for believing in them. They are remorseful of their drastic action that they are reduced to take and would not wanted to take this approach, but feel that they have reason enough to go for the drastic step to teach the lesson to the Higher Power. His stories are poignant portrayals of ideals gone wrong, passions and dreams of people belied and the individuals effort to make it good, fighting with the last straw they have. There is a sensitive and subtle treatment of human subjects, focussing on the casualty and human costs of any ideal cause gone wrong. He forces us to see what has been forgotten, overlooked, until someone challenges authorities to look into things what they have missed. That is Human Response: When the Living itself is Belied. The dominant emotion of a Joe Sachs episode is Pain, Love and Courage. Its a cathartic process.

I have liked all Joe Sachs stories so far. They can never be much widely discussed, but there is that poignant pain; that lingers on our minds. That emotion about feeling the sense of loss gives us through the subject’s pain and that; there also exists a stronger emotion of moral propriety within the subject’s mind, which cannot be snuffed into oblivion or indifference; which drives him to to keep fighting for in order to survive. The lingering feel about the interplay of those emotions of rebellion, disillusionment and retribution; sticks to our mind and our imagination starts to expand it. Take any episode written by Joe Sachs, the stories appeal to us because of the subjects involved could be the disillusioned miscreant fighting for justice in his own way, who makes us look deep into matters we otherwise would never pay attention to. 

I am restricting my analysis to Season 5 Episodes presently. When I do get to start writing summaries and analysis for the past 4 seasons, I will add others to the list.

Season 5

In this season, we have had two Joe Sach stories. 5x07-The LivelongDay and 5x16-Fish Out of Water

Livelong Day has two references. Its Barbara Garson’s book, “All the Livelong Day: The Meaning and Demeaning of Routine Work” and David Fenster’s movie “The Livelong Day.” The movie is actually based on Trains and is about passionate people for whom Train is a way of life, who cannot see Trains being taken away from them. The essential argument underlying in the Book : "All the Livelong Day: The Meaning and Demeaning of Routine Work" is that human beings want to work. We love work. Work is part of our nature. But human beings don't work with the unstoppable fervor of machines, so the people who dole out work have tried to compress us into the role of industrial robots. Barbara Garson doesn't pretend to be impartial. She's outspokenly socialist, believing that the people who do jobs are best capable of judging how those jobs ought to be done. She is not looking for a free hand in the world, and she's not looking to loaf on the clock. But when work is stripped of its inherent meaning and reduced to trivial repetetive twists and pulls, this necessarily strips the workers of some of their noble humanity.

5x07-Livelong Day is the story is about Mitch Rome, who dreamt all his life to work for Rail Roads, did all his study about trains and rail roads and yet, his employer, denies him his right to work just because he became "The Man who knew too much" and had to be erased out of the system. Mitch Rome is the Train Brakesman for FWRY Railroads. He has always loved trains and wanted to be the engineer.He was to be promoted as the engineer when he is fired on charges of Marijuana intake and causing an accident. Its a false charge on Mitch Rome by his company as he was being the whistle-blower to his corporation when he was sending letters to them to stop running the freight trains carrying dangerous chemicals from busy downtown areas against the FRA guidelines. His employers instead of listening to his pleas, fire him and then hire a detective Anthony Tregor to end him. Anthony Tregor successfully frames Mitch Rome in the Train Gaurd killing case along with Bellamy, convinces Bellamy to blow up the train that Mitch Rome was planning to hijack. Mitch Rome has only one intention- to make people hear and see what he is saying. He wants to make a point by stopping the train in busy down-town area. Alas his train brakes are failed and he cannot do that. The NCIS team helps him in two ways, 1) clearing him of marijuana intake and finding evidence of how his employers framed him 2) preventing the disaster that he set on the sabotaged train when he started his mission. His mother and him are actually good people. The son gets caught in the employers punishing him for doing his job. His plight is like Barbara Garsen’s Book “All the Livelong Day: The Meaning and Demeaning of Routine Work”. Mitch’s work is demeaned by his own employers when they should have been proud of him for doing the job correctly. 

Fish Out of Water is documentary movie about “what does Bible have to say about being gay?” In this story, Joe Sachs weaves a story for Densi and Deeks, with the serious side of the “Love Story” coming up for the first time after Frozen Lake. The complication of two working partners falling in love and what implications each can have regards to his or her career is touched upon through the Guest character DEA Agent Talia. And yet by the end of the episode, Deeks is adamant about what he wants. If he fell in love with his work-partner and it has become a purposeful and meaningful existence for him, makes him a better person, he would fight for all of it, and be ready for any kind of fight he has to take up with his authorities. The simple human reason being, how can falling in love be demeaned as complicated if one can be reasonable enough to work it out. 

For all of these arguments, there are consequences and the persons, who ask these questions get charged of breaking the law, but in the end, their question is valid enough for us to put our thoughts to amend a wrong. We can see that the emotional meltdown that Deeks goes through in 5x16-FishOutofWater consequences both professionally and personally, he starts to fight for his own individuality, his beliefs, all that his existence is made of in the subsequent episodes. It starts becoming a fight between him and authority as represented by Henrietta Lange and a fight between him and professionalism as represented by Special Agent Kensi Blye. In 5x19-SpoilsofWar, Deeks disproves Hetty that he can let his emotions get in the middle of the rescue operation. Even if he loses himself briefly, Deeks finds his ground. And continuing with his spirit of talking back to Hetty for being right, although well within the permissible limits of talking back to his Boss, Deeks demands of Hetty, when is she going to allow Kensi to work with him. "I want my partner back". That happens in 5x20-Windfall. There is clear articulation of Hetty remarking on Deeks questions, "yet you question about my judgement". Deeks though acting subservient to Hetty, does not relent on what he personally thinks of her decision. Hetty does relent, He lets Kensi start working with Deeks. And after working a case together, Deeks goes for another rebellious questioning with Kensi and shows her what he thinks of her personal investment towards him. That's in 5x21-Three Heats. Kensi's indecisiveness towards their relationship, Deeks sees it as a professional affront to his capabilities as seen through her personal and professionally critical eyes. So just by being a good work-partner to her, he lets go the personal dangling "thing" between them, showing Kensi that if she prefers professionalism, then so be it. He breaks away from her. Its slam dunk case he makes for himself against two judging women against his professional integrity. One has to either trust or distrust. One cannot be in perpetual doubtful state of "is he going to be one of us or be the weakling or a traitor, just because he is good at his undercover persona." Deeks cannot let Kensi become the DEA Agent like Talia or cannot let him get turned into Paulo Angelo as the NCIS under Hetty make of him. Slam Dunk rebellion of the Crass Distrust.