The LaSalle Plot Hole In NCIS: New Orleans That Still Bothers Fans

Lucas Black has exited CBS' take on the Crescent City, and his departure has fans taking a look back at his time on the show. The one-time star of The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift has built up much more goodwill via his portrayal of Christopher LaSalle over the first six seasons of the NCIS: New Orleans. But there are a few things that still stick in fans' collective craws as they look back over his time on the fictional force. While it might seem like a minor detail, dedicated NCIS Redditors can't let go of a small technical mistake with LaSalle's truck.

For the uninitiated, LaSalle is deeply in love with his 2015 pickup. But while building up this core piece of his character, the crew of NCIS goofed on the license plate. As one fan shared on the forum Movie Mistakes, LaSalle's pickup has a green bicentennial license plate. The problem? Those plates weren't issued in 2015. The bicentennial plates celebrated a specific time, as you might imagine, and were only available in 2011 and 2012.

"Furthermore, pick-up trucks in Louisiana are always provided with basic seven-digit plates with only the state name, the digits, and the state motto Sportsman's Paradise," they wrote.

LaSalle's truck wasn't the only goof spotted by eagle-eyed fans. Following his on-screen death, and with the series currently on hiatus, deep dives into old episodes are bringing up mistakes — some particularly timely.

A pretty egregious error turned up in the season 1 episode "Carrier," with the team fighting an extremely contagious virus in the city. Given how on-edge everyone is about contagions and proper procedure in the current moment, rewatchers quickly spotted the improper procedures by the scientists in the episode. Specifically, a CDC investigator's respirator can be seen practically hanging off her face, making it useless.

"Carol's mask does not even touch her nose," wrote one incredulous fan on Movie Mistakes. Against all odds, the heroes of NCIS manage to not get infected. Through no caution of their own, they avoid bringing down a plague on the city of New Orleans — even without properly covering their noses and mouths. 

The entire show is built around a character who should ring false to anyone familiar with New Orleans. Though Scott Bakula's character is meant to be born and raised around New Orleans, his accent is nowhere near the dialects spoken in the city.

While they've softened and melded like all accents since the invention of television, New Orleans has several distinct accents that mark a person as hailing from different parts of the city. The most common accent known outside of New Orleans is called "Yat" (from the greeting "Where y'at?") and sounds a bit like the traditional Brooklyn accent. Bakula began the series attempting a Cajun accent, which is from a part of Louisiana several hours west of the city.

The St. Louis native shared an explanation with STL Today around the premiere of the series. "They wrote this character who is born and bred in New Orleans, but they didn't want the full-on accent," Bakula said. "We're still working on how I'll sound."