Does NCIS plan on continuing the storyline regarding McGee’s father having Stage 4 cancer? –Jeannie
Show boss Gary Glasberg was “really pleased” with that March episode, “Squall,” and how it built to “an understanding — and a resolution — between the two characters.” That said, and though it’s too soon to tease Season 11, he says the storyline “is certainly something that we’ve left open and that we’d like to revisit, not only dealing with the admiral’s health issues, but in terms of what their relationship is moving forward.”

What happened the third NCIS spinoff? Are they going to do it, or did it die and nothing has been said? –Lori
NCIS: Red be dead. Granted, we never reported that outright during the madness of Upfronts, but it’d take an epic poem to detail every pilot that does not make the cut.

Source

The CBS Fan Awards are back. This time they have Five different catagories, Best “Tell it like it is” moment, Best “oh no they didn’t” moment, Best Butt-kicking moment, Best Chemistry Moment and Best Dynamic Duo. NCIS is nominated in Best Butt-kicking moment and Best Dynamic Duo, so be sure to go and vote for NCIS.

Did you enjoy this week’s season finale? Did my post-mortem with Gary Glasberg leave you hungry for more? You’re in luck. Here are some outtakes!

Q: Are Palmer’s baby plans going to be a big part of his arc next season?
Glasberg: I think so. I’d like to get into it. It’s sort of a subject matter that I think is important to talk about and I’d like to do it properly and I’d like to see he and Breena go through the rigors that are involved and we’ll see where it takes them and how it ends up.

Q: What do you see as Tony and Ziva’s arc next season? I felt like there was closure on the matter of her one-night stand, some of Tony’s bitterness was let go.
Glasberg: There absolutely was [closure], and it’s just a matter of sort of where we’re going to take it next. That’s something I’m going to sit down with all the writers after we come back and talk about what the next step is and where we’re going to go.

Q: Are we going to see Colin Hanks again?
Glasberg: Yes, you’ll see him in the season opener. And I have to tell you, Mark Harmon just loves Colin Hanks and if — we’ll have to see how this story unfolds and where it goes and we can talk again as we get closer to the season premiere, but he’s a fun guy.

Q: How quickly are we going to address the issue of McGee’s new girlfriend? I know there might be some disappointed McAbby fans out there…
Glasberg: Tim’s had girlfriends before. A few seasons ago he dated this computer gamer who was out there. Things come up. I understand people are concerned but it’s part of the complexity that they all work together.

Source

“NCIS” may be the most popular show on television that nobody talks about.

“Nobody,” of course, means TV critics, trend spotters, self-appointed arbiters of the pop zeitgeist. The CBS military procedural doesn’t command the reverence afforded the likes of “Game of Thrones,” “Mad Men,” and “Downton Abbey,” or even nerd-chic shows like “New Girl” and “The Big Bang Theory.”

But when you’re the No. 1 scripted show on TV going on your 10th year, you are hard to ignore. It has had some acknowledgment over the years: USA Today dubbed the show “CBS’ Invisible Success” in 2005 — two years after predicting its demise. Canada’s Postmedia News crowned it “most underrated” and the “Susan Lucci of broadcast TV shows” for never winning an award. The Wrap mentioned “NCIS” in passing, in a recent report about six veteran shows defying the ratings skid.

Push past these nobodies, though, and you’ll find the adoration of legions (cracking 25 million in January, thanks in no small part to USA network marathons since 2008). “NCIS” isn’t just the top-ranking show but also the third-longest-running (nonanimated) primetime show on today, after “Law & Order: SVU” and “CSI.” It’s not just gray hairs either, with McClatchy Newspapers pointing out in February, “It has higher ratings with viewers ages 18-49 — a demographic advertisers love — than ‘Glee,’ ‘Dancing With the Stars,’ and ‘The Office.'” (“American Idol” was toppled in March.)

Wait, there’s more: This week’s finale is episode 234, which passes up its predecessor “J.A.G.” (227 episodes, but over 11 seasons) and might pass an even greater milestone: outlasting “M*A*S*H” (251 episodes), which among other distinctions is the most-watched military-themed show in American television history, drawing 125 million viewers to its finale.

With troops finally being withdrawn from Afghanistan and Iraq, there has been what Fox News has called a “militainment” surge on TV and in movies. Yet since 2001, only a handful of primetime shows have revolved around the military: “The Unit,” “J.A.G.,” “Generation Kill,” “24,” “Army Wives,” and “Homeland”), plus a few reality programs (“Combat Missions,” “Stars and Stripes,” and whatever’s on Discovery’s Military Channel).

Debuting Sept. 23, 2003, during the Bush era and the war on terror, “NCIS” has been one of the few shows to feature men and women in uniform during primetime, week after week.

Ask executive producer Gary Glasberg about its place among military shows, though, and he will say it’s unique. “It’s a combination of humor and suspense and action and pathos, and all of these elements come together in a way that the other shows … don’t do,” says Glasberg, who looks to shows like “M*A*S*H” and “The West Wing” for inspiration. “To me, that’s what makes it accessible and opens up to a broader audience.”

“If you look at our show, it became more character driven,” says Leon Carroll, a former NCIS agent and the show’s consultant since day one. “We don’t do uniforms in our show that much, and you see them even less on [spinoff] ‘NCIS: Los Angeles.'” The show has adapted a successful military model: “The military tends not to emphasize individuals, they tend to emphasize teamwork.”

The longevity of “NCIS” may lie less in its military focus than in its criminal diversity. The civilian federal agency’s real-life investigations run the gamut from white-collar crimes to counterintelligence operations. Storylines can come from calls to the secretary of the Navy, interviews with female Marines, and chats with military families who visit the set. Some of the show’s scripts could have easily landed in the inbox for “Law & Order” or “Monk.” Serial-killer plots steer clear of the torture-porn of a “Criminal Minds” or “Hannibal.”

While it may not be “The Office,” “NCIS” is as much a workplace show as it is about murder investigations. Its formula is more akin to that of “Bones,” the Fox show about a team of forensic anthropologists working on FBI cases. Camaraderie, banter, pranks, and goofy eccentricities galore (like Abby Sciuto, the Goth forensic expert who owns a stuffed farting hippo called Bert) balance out grittier themes like PTSD, weapons trafficking, and religious or sexual intolerance. The Wall Street Journal called the show’s humor “rather tame,” but it translates in 200 international markets.

And how ordinary their main characters and guest actors can be, and still pull off extraordinary acts of heroism or villainy in a day’s work, may be what ultimately draws audiences. “These are people with kids that go to school and families, and this is the job that they do every day,” Glasberg says. “Part of what drives them is a genuine desire and belief in serving their country, and that’s where the patriotism really does come in.”

Making mistakes, decisive moves

When the show celebrated its 200th episode last season, star Mark Harmon attributed its success to being “a show that wasn’t good enough to get all that noticed and wasn’t bad enough to get canceled.”

That breathing room gave it time to revamp. The Australian (yes, it’s No. 1 in Australian) has called its run remarkable, especially since the show started out “uneasily” with “stilted” character interactions. “But the cast pulled it off by slowly embracing the corniness and deadpanning the military cop theme and melodrama,” the article notes. “The show has grown funnier, quirkier and more confident season by season; now it’s far less like a square crime drama and more of a satisfyingly grown-up TV comedy for an ageing audience.”

That revamp includes decisive moves that still rank high in memorable TV-deaths history: In the first-season finale, a Mossad renegade shot lead character Caitlin Todd (Sasha Alexander, now on “Rizzoli & Isles”) in the forehead. The next episode showed teammates coping by interacting with the Caitlin of their imagination — for wolfish agent Tony DiNozzo, that involved her wearing dominatrix gear.

Neither rank nor friendship — nor being a fan favorite — protects you: Characters like NCIS director Jenny Shepherd (Lauren Holly) and former agent and Gibbs mentor Mike Franks (Muse Watson) have suffered violent endings. And that renegade who killed agent Todd was killed by his own half-sister, Ziva David (Cote de Pablo), who later became part of the team.

In this past season, her father — the head of Mossad and David’s father — was assassinated in a machine-gun assault that also killed Jackie (Paula Newsome), the mother of two and wife of the NCIS director, Leon Vance (Rocky Carroll). “I don’t necessarily see that as ruthless,” Glasberg says of the death count. “I have no problems coming up with stuff that keeps audiences on their toes.”

The death count, though, is one thing that does bother the congenial Carroll. “We’ve had agents in shootings and we’ve had agents who have been attacked in interrogations, but we’ve never had any fatalities as a result of that,” says Carroll. “The show has, obviously, killed off more agents than you can count. And actually, there have been times when I said something to Gary when they were going to kill more.” Carroll has been able to save a few fictional lives.

Given its track record, who’s imperiled? “I’m very excited about this season ender,” Glasberg confides to Yahoo! TV. “Last year we had a huge cliffhanger with an explosion at the Navy Yard and Ducky with his heart attack.” The manhunt for Ilan Bodnar (Oded Fehr) — the renegade Mossad agent who masterminded his boss’s assassination — just ended with his being tossed off a ship by his vengeful daughter.

“Understandably, there’s an investigation into Bodnar’s death,” Glasberg says, conducted by a Department of Defense investigator, Richard Parsons (Colin Hanks). “It puts our team in a difficult place, and Vance and Gibbs in a difficult place, and that investigation will take us into the finale and takes us to a legal place where we need some help, and end up turning to John Jackson.”

For die-hard “NCIS” fans, Jackson will be a familiar figure from the show’s predecessor as military attorney Albert Jethro “A.J.” Chegwidden. “I wanted to bring back a JAG,” Glasberg says. “It’s a nice reunion, and it’s very tense and, I hope, suspenseful for people and drives all the way to the finale and teases when we come back, so I’m excited about it.”

And in typical “NCIS” fashion, there will be peculiar twists like the return of Muse Watson as Gibbs’s conscience. “There are a couple of bizarre scenes that I’ve written that the actors are having fun with. That will be in a finale.”

And will agents DiNozzo and David? “Part of the fun is keeping that tease alive,” Glasberg says. “Who’s to say where we’re going with Tony and Ziva, but it’s certainly fun getting there.”

The season finale of “NCIS” airs Tuesday, 5/14 at 8 PM on CBS.

Source

Next Week bust week for our cast. A couple talks shows and it’s Upfronts.

Monday May 13th, Mark Harmon will be on The Late Show with David Letterman.

Tuesday May 14th, Mark Harmon, Michael Weatherly, Cote de Pablo, Pauley Perrette and Brian Dietzen will all be on The Talk.

If anyone pop up we will let you know.

What is Gibbs building in his basement on NCIS? Will we find out before the season ends? –Joyce
“Your question is perfectly timed,” showrunner Gary Glasberg answers. ” Don’t miss the season finale (airing May 14) and you’ll see what Gibbs has been slowly working on in the basement for months. It’s going to be a terrific new addition for our family.” Hmm. “Addition”? “Family”? It’s a big ol’ crib!

I saw CBS advertising “the last three episodes” of NCIS. Does this mean “ever,” or this season? They did not specify. –Sharon
I answer only because I received a stupefying amount of questions about this cruel CBS promo. Rest assured, NCIS was renewed for Season 11 some time ago. (We’re just still waiting on Cote.)

Source

NCIS (Tuesday, 5/14, 8/7c, CBS)

There are ghosts both literal and figurative in NCIS’s finale, which brings back one character who was killed off two years ago and ­another who hasn’t been seen for more than a decade. It should be bait enough for hard-core NCIS-heads that late, lamented mentor Mike Franks (Muse Watson) makes his second posthumous ­appearance as an otherworldly sounding board for Gibbs (Mark Harmon). But sometimes a guy needs a lawyer even more than he needs a conscience. Enter John M. Jackson as A.J. Chegwidden, who was a regular on JAG when that series launched NCIS as a spinoff 10 years ago. “It is a big stretch of time” after which to revive a character, says NCIS executive producer Gary Glasberg, “yet there’s a connection to those JAG characters that’s similar to the way people feel about our characters.” He says the story “isn’t necessarily JAG-related” but reintroduces A.J. as an attorney who’s now working in the private sector. Gibbs is in need of expert legal counsel because he’s in hot water with a Department of Defense investigator (Colin Hanks) over the team’s aggressive handling of a Mossad leader’s assassination. As for Franks’s latest spiritual appearance, hints Glasberg, it involves a few phantasmagoric scenes “that will leave people questioning whether what they’re seeing is real or not real, and how it’s informing Gibbs’s decision making.”

Source

GIBBS AND THE TEAM ARE ASSIGNED LEGAL COUNSEL AFTER THE DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE IG INVESTIGATOR PUTS THEIR FUTURE AT THE AGENCY IN JEOPARDY, ON THE 10TH SEASON FINALE OF “NCIS,” TUESDAY, MAY 14

Guest Stars Include Colin Hanks as Department of Defense IG Investigator Richard Parsons, Muse Watson as Mike Franks and John M. Jackson as Rear Admiral AJ Chegwidden

“Damned If You Do” – The international manhunt for Eli David and Jackie Vance’s killer turns into a federal witch hunt against Gibbs and the team, which questions their unconventional methods and threatens their future at the agency, on the 10th season finale of NCIS, Tuesday, May 14 (8:00-9:00 PM, ET/PT) on the CBS Television Network. Guest stars include Colin Hanks as Department of Defense IG Investigator Richard Parsons, Muse Watson as Mike Franks, and John M. Jackson as Rear Admiral AJ Chegwidden.

CHEAT TWEET: Gibbs & the team’s future at #NCIS is threatened by DOD Investigator on season 10 finale 5/14 8pm ET/PT

Michael Weatherly has played Special Agent Tony DiNozzo for 10 seasons on NCIS, and since Ziva David (Cote de Pablo) showed up on the NCIS scene in season three, the sexual tension has been in constant fluctuation. Their interactions on the show are scrutinized by viewers. Now in season 10, it seemed like Tony and Ziva, “Tiva” to scrutineers, were just about to really admit their feelings… and then they got in a car crash. Weatherly weighs in on where the relationship’s been and where it’s going.

At what point did you find out that this season was going to be a turning point season for your character’s relationship with Ziva?

Michael Weatherly: I don’t know if it is necessarily. I think that their relationship is just a big circle. It’s constantly turning. They are locked in a binary death spiral. This year proves to be particularly interesting, but when they met, who knew — well, the audience did, but Tony didn’t know — that she killed her own brother, who had killed Tony’s previous partner, and that created the space in the squadron for Ziva to arrive. Had Ziva’s brother not killed Kate, there would be no Ziva. It’s all very tricky. And then Tony did kill her boyfriend once.

Yes, I remember that.

MW: (laughs) You know what I’m saying? Look at these guys! It’s like watching a scorpion and a black widow try and figure each other out. Or a praying mantis and a black widow? One of them eats your head after it mates with you, right?

But yeah, these guys, they’ve got a rich history of conflict and physical attraction and physical repulsion. There’s a lot of bickering, they swerve wildly into sibling country, and then careen over the cliff into possible kissing cousins, and suddenly they find themselves — I mean, they’re holding hands at the end of “Berlin.” It’s fantastic how these writers just fuck with everybody. And to think that [NCIS writer-producer] Gary Glasberg has a background writing Rugrats.

We just shot a scene this season where the writer had his hands above the air in a silent cheer, and his face looked like the Edvard Munch painting. He was so fucking excited that Tiva was full-on Tiva. I think people who watch the show who enjoy their Mark Harmon and liberal doses of the other characters might find it somewhat irritating that these two are cutting a rug, so to speak, in “Berlin.” Sharing some longing looks, bedroom-eyes. I think that’s probably disconcerting to some fans of the show, and other fans probably think it’s long overdue, and yet others are probably thinking it spells the absolute doom, the moonlighting death.

Tell me more about this Munch face one of the writers made.

MW: Well actually he was described as holding his hands above his head like Philip Seymour Hoffman holding the boom in Boogie Nights while Mark Wahlberg was doing the sex scene. Yes, it was a great moment. I hope it’s not just cheesy melodrama — I think we achieved something on a character level that was very interesting. It was about communication and trust between people that work together, share an attraction for each other, but the boundaries have blurred a little bit, and that’s what Tony and Ziva are dealing with, ultimately.

Did you not foresee that it would progress like this for such a long time?

MW: It was like a herpes virus. It laid dormant for so long, I thought it had gone away. And I’m talking simplex 1. I’m not referring to any sort of genital herpes. But still, the simplex 1 can be painful and unsightly. Not to compare Tiva to herpes — I guess that’s unfair. But I did not see it coming. I still don’t see it coming — not in any real way.

The Tony DiNozzo character is trapped like a fly in amber from prehistoric days because he has to be. If Tony actually gets his groove on, gets his shit together, grows up a little bit, knocks the chip off his shoulder, gets the girl, or just gets on with it, then he’s out of that squad room. He doesn’t get paid that much now. Not to be too inside-baseball about the whole thing, but come on. You know Tony and Ziva can never really have any kind of a thing because first of all they’re coworkers, and that’s just a stupid idea. Second of all, she’s a ninja assassin with all sorts of issues. Yes, we know he’s emotionally arrested and he has some commitment phobias, but look at her! Have we seen a successful relationship pop out of her?

No.

MW: No. Everyone gives Tony all this grief for being an overgrown frat boy. But Ziva David, she’s just a train wreck of a girl. Most of the guys that she’s slept with are dead. If you had a girlfriend, and more than 50 percent of the people she’d slept with were dead — and by the way, she’s not 90, I’m talking about a healthy young female — that’s a weird amount, even for someone in Israeli intelligence. I’m just saying.

How aware are you of the fan interest in Tiva? Have you read any of the fan fiction? Does it feel weird to be in this highly scrutinized television relationship?

MW: Well, I am aware of it only as much as you become aware of these things through doing press, talking to people about it. Of course, this has been conjured, I would think, through the internet. I don’t go in for fan fiction and trolling on boards and all that stuff because I find that it doesn’t lead to a healthy outlook. I surmise from interactions with people and conversations. There’s probably all kinds of crazy CNN fan fiction; I don’t know anything about it. What would the Don Lemon–Anderson Cooper name conjunction be?

Danderson?

MW: Anderson Cooper and Don Lemon. Coomon? Or Looper? I guess it is more like Ben and Jen and Brangelina. Usually the first names, isn’t it?

Maybe Aan. Two As.

MW: Danderson’s not bad. Or just Dander. Anyway, I am aware of it. It doesn’t really impact me too much, but I find it highly amusing.

This has been going on so long, I was just wondering if there are any inside jokes about these moments when you’re filming? What is the reaction to that on set?

MW: Nobody really makes any fun of it. We take our jobs pretty seriously. At the beginning of season seven, I went to Africa and rescued her ass. I have always enjoyed the push-and-pull and the tension of Tony and Ziva. I think it’s clear that he has very strong feelings about and for her, but he also knows what the boundaries are and what the rules are. I did a show before this one, Dark Angel, and they tried putting those characters together, and that was bad. That was bad for the show. Bad. You don’t want to put characters together.

It seems like maybe crime procedurals are well-suited to these ongoing, sexual tension–heavy relationships — I’m also thinking of Bones — because there’s not that much continuity in the action of each episode, so to have continuity in the relationships that really doesn’t change works.

MW: Didn’t they have a baby, the Bones people?

Yeah, they gave in a couple of seasons ago.

MW: I mean, I don’t know anything about it, but I would say as a stranger to the whole situation that I don’t approve. But yes, it does give continuity.

One of the great things and the hallmarks of NCIS, a CBS crime procedural spinoff of JAG, which was in its own way a law procedural show with heaping spoonfuls of patriotism and a solid moral compass, is that our show has kind of a serious office place dramedy feel to me. Sometimes it feels like we’re doing West Wing meets Scrubs. It feels like we have a job that we do; it just so happens that we’re investigating crimes. But we work in cubicles, and we have a hierarchy, and there’s a boss. Nobody has superpowers, but we all have paper clips and staplers. I really am very attracted to the office work of NCIS. I think that a majority of the show, or at least a major chunk of the show, takes place in the squad room, where we’re not just deciphering the clues of the case of the week, but we’re also giving each other a good old fashioned hard time. To me it’s not just action-adventure. Our show has at various times, something approaching action, but my favorite parts of it are just the interactions between people.

I’ve noticed that it seems the turning points, or as you put it, “parts of the circle,” for Ziva and Tony, happen in foreign places.

MW: When you’re away from the prying eyes of the office. It’s always those business trips that you’ve got to watch out for. Everybody gets into trouble on the expense account. DiNozzo did go to the Bahamas with Dorneget earlier this year, and he got busted for his expense account there, actually. But I don’t know if anything romantic happens with Dornie. I don’t know if DiNozzo goes both ways.

Maybe in the cartoon.

MW: There’s more road. You know, that would be nice, to see DiNozzo on the cover of Out magazine. I think that would confound some of our viewers, but then maybe not surprise others at all.

Source