Skip to main content

Men In Black: After Agent K's retirement, why was Agent J left as senior partner?


From my limited understanding, generally police-type agencies partner an experienced senior agent/detective with a junior one.


However, at the end of "Men In Black" movie, Agent K announces that he's ready to retire and he has been training Agent J as replacement:



I haven't been looking for a partner. I've been looking for a replacement.



Now, Agent J is a brand new green rookie - he was hired just a couple of days before (based on my understanding of movies' timeline); and doesn't know anything; see the scenes with Agent K explains obvious beginner type stuff to J, including how to identify a bug, or general methods and mission of MIB, or hell, the starting-off on the job:



Kay: Cool, whatever you say, slick, but I need to tell you something about all your skills. As of right now, they mean precisely... dick.




So, how come Agent J ends up being the senior partner once Agent K retires, instead of being partnered up with another senior agent till he stops being such a rookie?


NOTE: I'm specifically asking about the very end of MIB1, where Agent J is a senior partner to agent L - not about eventual MIB2 where J is obviously more experienced and more likely qualifies to be a senior partner.



Answer



I don't have any concrete canon information to back this up, but:


My guess would be that there are a limited number of people who they (the MiB org) would consider as a field agent, as the field agents likely get exposed to a slew of more exotic experiences than the people who work on base. Therefore they would need people who can handle all the weirdness on a constant basis and not break down. Secondly, they would also want an agent that is already familiar with the retiring agent's patrol region; in this case NYC and the surrounding area. This would limit agent's getting lost when on duty or making cultural gaffes when trying to make up new histories for the people they flash.


Considering the two above points, which may or may not be valid, it may take a considerable amount of time to find someone who can work in the field. After all, by the start of MiB2 agent J had retired a number of candidates and was in the process of washing another. Zed, while upset at having lost another candidate, was not overly discouraged, which would seem to indicate that it was not uncommon for it to take a while to find agents. Add to this that the field agents seem to work in pairs (at the start of MiB there was only K and his partner) there just may have not been another unpaired senior agent available in the NYC area.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Did the gatekeeper and the keymaster get intimate in Ghostbusters?

According to TVTropes ( usual warning, don't follow the link or you'll waste half your life in a twisty maze of content ): In Ghostbusters, it's strongly implied that Dana Barret, while possessed by Zuul the Gatekeeper, had sex with Louis Tully, who was possessed by Vinz Clortho the Keymaster (key, gate, get it?), in order to free Big Bad Gozer. In fact, a deleted scene from the movie has Venkman explicitly asking Dana if she and Louis "did it". I turned the quote into a spoiler since it contains really poor-taste joke, but the gist of it is that it's implied that as part of freeing Gozer , the two characters possessed by the Keymaster and the Gatekeeper had sex. Is there any canon confirmation or denial of this theory (canon meaning something from creators' interviews, DVD commentary, script, delete scenes etc...)? Answer The Richard Mueller novelisation and both versions of the script strongly suggest that they didn't have sex (or at the very l...
1 comment
Read more

Why didn't The Doctor or Clara recognize Missy right away?

So after it was established that Missy is actually both the Master, and the "woman in the shop" who gave Clara the TARDIS number... ...why didn't The Doctor or Clara recognize her right away? I remember the Tenth Doctor in The Sound of Drums stating that Timelords had a way of recognizing other Timelords no matter if they had regenerated. And Clara should have recognized her as well... I'm hoping for a better explanation than "Moffat screwed up", and that I actually missed something after two watchthroughs of the episode. Answer There seems to be a lot of in-canon uncertainty as to the extent to which Time Lords can recognise one another which far pre-dates Moffat's tenure. From the Time Lords page on Wikipedia : Whether or not Time Lords can recognise each other across regenerations is not made entirely clear: In The War Games, the War Chief recognises the Second Doctor despite his regeneration and it is implied that the Doctor knows him when they fir...
Post a Comment
Read more

story identification - Animation: floating island, flying pests

At least 20 years ago I watched a short animated film which stuck in my mind. The whole thing was wordless, possibly European, and I'm pretty sure I didn't imagine it... It featured a flying island which was inhabited by some creatures who (in my memory) reminded me of the Moomins. The island was frequently bothered by large winged animals who swooped around, although I don't think they did any actual damage. At the end one of the moomin creatures suddenly gets a weird feeling, feels forced to climb to the top of the island and then plunges down a shaft right through the centre - only to emerge at the bottom as one of the flyers. Answer Skywhales from 1983. The story begins with a man warning the tribe of approaching skywhales. The drummers then warn everybody of the hunt as everyone get prepared to set "sail". Except one man is found in his home sleeping as the noise wake him up. He then gets ready and is about to take his weapon as he hesitates then decides ...
Post a Comment
Read more

warhammer40k - What evidence supposedly supports Tau as related to the Necrontyr?

I've heard of rumours saying that the Tau from Warhammer 40K are in fact the Necrontyr. Is there anything that supports this statement, in WH40K canon? I just found this, on 1d4 chan 1 : Helping Necrons? Or are they Necrontyr descendants? An often overlooked issue is that Tau have no warp signatures, just like Necrons, hate Warpspawns and Warp in general, just like Necrons, have the exact same skull shape,stature and short lives, and the overwhelming need for Technology and beam weapons, JUST LIKE NECRONS. GW may have planned a race that simply prepares a pacified, multiracial galaxy for Necrons to feast upon, supported by Ethereals that have a C'tan phase blade. Then there is a reference of "dark seed in east" by the Deceiver, so the tricky C'tan might give Tzeentch the finger in the JUST AS PLANNED competition. Or maybe GW just has so little creativity that they simply made a new civ conforming to an Old One's standards without knowing it. Is this the connec...
Post a Comment
Read more