by Bob Trowbridge

Created on: July 26, 2008

My wife and I are big fans of "CSI" and the "CSI Miami" spin-off. We watched "CSI New York" but it never quite stuck. I was a fan of "JAG," a show my wife never watched. When it came to "NCIS," I watched it and enjoyed it without my wife. She must have made some kind of negative assumptions about the show without watching it.

Eventually, she watched an episode with me and became hooked. Now she is trying to catch up on previous episodes when they do marathons. I can't speak for her, but I think I like NCIS better than the original CSI or CSI Miami. I like it better than JAG as well.

Since these things are very subjective and involve personal taste, it is sometimes difficult to pin down what makes one similar show more enjoyable than another. In reading books and watching movies, I have come to some conclusions about what makes a good book or a good movie. I think this may apply to TV programs as well.

In reading certain fantasy books, I noticed that there was a big difference in my level of enjoyment between different authors. I may want to write fantasy some day and I need to understand what that difference is. The plots are not that different, nor are the types of characters or the types of action. What makes one book so much better than another?

I finally figured out that it was strictly based on the characters and their relationships. To put it simply, I had to care about the characters. I had to care about what happened to them. I had to care about their problems and challenges. I had to care about their relationships.

It didn't really matter how much action there was or how exciting it might be. If I didn't really care about the characters, because they were just too wooden or two-dimensional, the action just didn't bring about any sense of excitement.

I found this in movies too. I don't know if others had the same experience, but I loved the first Star Wars trilogy and really did not like the second trilogy (the second trilogy being the prequel to the first three movies). The special effects were better in the second trilogy. The battles were more exciting. There were more and better aliens. In terms of the visual content, it was better. There was nothing wrong with the story line, particularly.

The problem was that I just didn't care about the characters. I didn't care about the young Obi Wan Kenobi. I didn't care about Anakin Skywalker. I didn't care about Queen Padme. I didn't even like Yoda. These characters didn't seem to have any depth and I just couldn't

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