Santa’s Messin’ With the Kid

Santa’s Messin’ With the Kid!

Here’s an unexpected Christmas present courtesy of CBS television: On the Tuesday, Dec. 15, 2009, episode of the crime drama NCIS (7:00 pm CST, 8:00 pm EST), Eddie C. Campbell’s song “Santa’s Messin’ With the Kid,” as performed by Lynyrd Skynyrd, is heard in the background when agents DiNozzo and David go to a honky-tonk bar.

CBS has already pulled one blues surprise this season, in the Sept. 3 episode of another crime show, CSI, entitled “Gone Dead Train,” named after – of course – the King Solomon Hill record. Two of the CSI investigators turn out to be prewar blues collectors who try to stump each other – one plays Robert Johnson’s “Dead Shrimp Blues,” which is too easy, and the other counters with “Gone Dead Train,” prompting the incorrect guess “Mississippi John Hurt?” Way off. Hill sounds like Blind Lemon, not John Hurt.

Still, kudos to the writer, Jacqueline Hoyt, and even to CSI co-star Laurence Fishburne, despite his previous miscasting as Ike Turner in “What’s Love Got to Do With It?”