The NCIS Season 10 Scene That Went Too Far

CBS' long-running military cop drama "NCIS" has remained on the air for 18 full seasons and counting. Seemingly against all odds, even hundreds of episodes in, the series manages to keep its dedicated viewers engaged with some unexpected plotlines. For example, an episode midway into Season 19 included a key development between the NCIS team and the media, turning a longtime dynamic on its head for the first time.

While "NCIS" is managing to introduce fresh ideas nearly two decades after its premiere, Season 10 is perhaps one of the most eventful seasons from throughout its entire run. The premiere of Season 10 Episode 12, for example, was a massive success, drawing the most viewers of any "NCIS" episode to date. On the other end of the spectrum, the Season 10 premiere includes a plot point that continues to baffle a portion of the show's fanbase years later.

While Season 10 has plenty of high points, one moment in particular — akin to the confusing behavior of the NCIS team in Episode 1 — became a source of outright ridicule among a certain subset of viewers with specialized knowledge, marking perhaps the most heinous instance of the producers of "NCIS" getting a little too fast and loose with their material.

The 14th episode of "NCIS" Season 10, titled "Canary," chronicles the attempts of the NCIS team to track down and arrest a notorious cyberterrorist, Ajay Khan (Vik Sahay). While to the average viewer, the investigation seems to proceed smoothly, fans with IT knowledge noticed a glaring error in the scene in which the team locates Ajay. As pointed out on Reddit in a thread about the episode, the NCIS team tracks him down digitally with the IP address 192.168.0.14, a local IP, described by the original poster as "silly." In a similar Reddit thread started by user u/husky231, a reply by user unknownemoji likened this to a phone number beginning with 555.

In the wake of the episode airing, a popular Twitter account by web developer John Papa shared a summary of the moment with an added "LOL." The IMDb goofs page for the episode even outlines how this IP address would simply direct the NCIS team to a computer in their own facility, rather than the lair of a skilled hacker.

Most notably, a screenshot of this IP address was shared to the general "Funny" subreddit just after the episode aired and upvoted more than 2000 times. Ultimately, the creators of "NCIS" went a step too far when they included a string of numbers recognizable to a subset of the series' audience as entirely meaningless, undermining what is otherwise supposed to be a serious, climactic moment.