Epic Fail: NCIS

The writing is nearly perfect. 

This is exactly what you would expect from a show that is still going strong after 14 seasons at the top of the rankings!

Wow.  Fourteen seasons and counting is amazing for any show, let alone an hour-long drama. 

I came to be a fan late. I started watching NCIS at season 12. Thanks to streaming, I've been binge-watching from season one.

Everything was going great until I hit episode 14 of season 4. That's when the writing stumbled. 

No, it wasn't a stumble. The writing tripped, fell flat on its face, chipped a tooth, and broke its nose.

This post is a minor rant.

Episode 14 of season 4, "Blowback," introduces a new villain, "Le Grenouille." Le Grenouille is a French illicit arms dealer and the arch-nemesis of NCIS Director, Jenny Shepard played by Lauren Holly.

Forget the fact that Lauren Holly looks too young to be the director of a major federal agency. I have no issues with that. Besides, she's a lot easier on the eyes than the current director, Rocky Carroll. 

My issue is with Le Grenouille. It wouldn't be so bad if he was a one-shot character. No, he is a recurring character spread throughout the season. In fact, much of the season revolves around him.

'Le Grenouille" is played by a major actor, Armand Assante. Armand really should have told the writers about their major screw-up. 

Maybe he didn't know.

The errors just kept repeating themselves. I watched in morbid fascination. I figured that sooner or later someone would point out the screw-ups.

No one ever did, apparently.

Why this is an Epic Fail

1 - Let's start with the "Le" part of "Le Grenouille." French has noun-gender. "Grenouille" is feminine, therefore it should be "La Grenouille." The fact that the moniker refers to a man is irrelevant to the French language.

2 - The show explains how arms dealers give themselves code names. Le Grenouille gave himself a grammatically incorrect name? Not bloody likely.

It gets worse. . .

3 - In French, "grenouille" means "frog." No French arms dealer (or Quebecer for that matter) would use that name. Frog is a derogatory term for French speakers. 

It would be like a Spanish arms dealer calling himself the "Greaser Spic." Or, an Italian arms dealers calling himself the "Dago Wop." Or, a black arms dealer calling himself the "N..." (you get the point)

I can live with those errors. I'm used to the butchery of the French language and, worse, French-Quebecer culture in movies and television. 

The only accurate portrayal was on "Mad Men," when Megan Draper (Jessica Paré) kicked in a door with a thundering, "KAWWWLISSE!" That scene was probably written as, "Sacré blue." Ms.  Paré is a native Montrealer and likely set the record straight. 

No Quebecer would ever say, " Sacré blue." I doubt anyone would.

NCIS did not have the luxury of having Ms. Paré on hand.

NCIS' writers should have used Google Translate

Google translate has a pronunciation function. That would have stopped me from cringing every time the cast pronounced, "Le Grenouille."

Every character pronounced Le Grenouille as Le Grenn-WEE.

WTF is a grenn-wee?

I get the fact that some sounds are not found in some languages. 

French speakers have great difficulty with the "th" sound in English. The word "the" often comes out as "duh."

The "th" sound in French is like "t." Tea, the beverage, is thé but pronounced té. You know how to pronounce discotheque. 

Similarly, "ouille" is not found in the English language. It is not even remotely similar to "wee."

To correctly pronounce it, let's borrow from something everyone knows how to pronounce. 

We all know the Yiddish term, "Oy vey," and how to pronounce it.

Great.

Only use the "oy" part.

Replace the o sound with an oo sound as in, "Oo, baby, yes," or "Moo," the sound a cow makes if you prefer the PC version.

Now you have the correct pronunciation for Grenouille. It's sort of like grenn-ooy, not grenn-wee.

You can hear it for yourself at https://translate.google.ca/?hl=en&tab=wT#en/fr/frog

It's the little things that annoy.

Rant mode off.