Review – NCIS: New Orleans is back with a timely season six premiere

NCIS: New Orleans returns to form with a timely season six premiere.

It seems like there’s no stopping NCIS, the second longest-running scripted live action series on American TV. Seventeen series and three spin-offs speak for themselves in their success. Watching NCIS: New Orleans‘ season six premiere ‘Judgement Call’, it’s not hard to see why.

Just like the ease at which the characters throw new information, realisations and analysis at one another in their hunt for a suspect, NCIS: New Orleans is a well oiled machine. It’s a format that works, mixing impressive action scenes with jaw-dropping plot twists while still maintaining a handle on the emotional stories of its characters.

‘Judgement Call’ is a perfect example of all this at work, contrasting the emotional journeys of Pride and Khoury, through the story of finding a former serviceman on a revenge mission. There is drama (the episode literally opens in the midst of a huge secret service operation), there are fast decisions and mistakes, and there are consequences.

By contrasting Pride, the team’s supervising agent, who is older, white and male, with the actions of Khoury, a younger woman of colour – we can see clearly the barriers that the latter faces. Both face reviews for their behaviour, but while Pride is commended, Khoury is punished. The ordeal reaches a tipping point that finds Khoury with almost no agency on the future of her career, while Pride gains the ability to pull strings in matters that barely involve him.

It’s a smart, and very topical way of examine the difficulties women, and particularly women of colour, face in the workplace – even in the NCIS.