NCIS:LA obsession with Russia

One of the things I find it curious to observe is how foreign characters are portrayed on my favorite scenes. I have discovered that the writers of NCIS:LA are obsessed with Russia/Russians. I swear, almost every other episode, mentions or has Russia/Russian military/Russian spies/Russia as an enemy/Russian characters. And every time they have Russian characters appearing in the show, they never speak with English with a Russian accent and the Russian characters are always the bad guys.

There has, if my memory serves me right, never been a Russian character on the show that speaks English with a proper Russian accent. I am fluent speaker of English but I still have an accent because I learned it as a Lingua Franca just like a Russian person would do. The Russian characters always have an American accent in varying degrees.

And there has only been one Russian character on the show that was shown as a friend, but of course that character was then killed. And the rest of Russian sleeper agents were left on to shoot at the American agents and yet again reinforce the stereotypical image that Russia has agents in America and that they are willing to fight Americans to get their own agenda. It´s 2012 people, not 1980! The meeting in Reykjavik with Gorbachev and Reagan happened decades ago!

I am in no way Russian but I am a European that happens to be a huge fan of the country. Not to mention the fact I have studied Russian history and have some knowledge of the history and culture of the country and can read the Cyrilic alphabet. I highly enjoy NCIS:LA as a TV show but the way in which they portray Russians has never sat right with me and never will. The writers of the show are way too caught up in stereotypes of the country that are long since outdated and have been since the Cold War ended.

I have zero idea whether there are Russian sleeper agents in USA today, there might or might not be. I am tempted to go with the latter however. The possibility of there being agents is obviously intriguing and I expect the writers enjoy being able to explore possible scenarios of what might happen in real life it sleeper agents suddenly got active. It does provide some good material for storytelling.

But please, oh please stop being so obsessed with Russia and portraying it as an American enemy, because it´s not (just like no European country is, we may not always like America but we are all it´s allies). Why can´t they go with another country or better yet, stop being so obsessed with the idea of there being sleeper agents all over the place in America and start doing more Naval concentrated story lines.

I am a big NCIS:LA fan but I do wish they´d shift their focus and am hoping they´ll do so. The shows a lot of good things but this is one of their major downsides in my opinion.