AFTER A MYSTERIOUS ILLNESS STRIKES CHILDREN FROM MILITARY FAMILIES, THE NCIS TEAM PARTNERS WITH THE NAVAL MEDICAL RESEARCH CENTER IN HOPES OF FINDING A CURE BEFORE THE HOLIDAYS, ON “NCIS,” TUESDAY, DEC. 17

Meredith Eaton and Ben Vereen Guest Star

“Homesick” – After a mysterious illness strikes children from military families, Gibbs and the team investigate the cause. Meanwhile, Abby and Jimmy partner with the Naval Medical Research Center to determine the strain of illness, all in hopes of delivering a cure before the holidays. Also, Director Vance struggles with forgiveness as his estranged father-in-law makes a surprise visit to his home, on NCIS, Tuesday, Dec. 17 (8:00-9:00 PM, ET/PT) on the CBS Television Network. Meredith Eaton guest stars as Carol Wilson, a lab tech with the Naval Medical Research Center, and Ben Vereen guest stars as Lamar, Vance’s estranged father-in-law.

CHEAT TWEET: The #NCIS team hopes to find a cure to a mysterious illness striking children B4 the holidays #NCIS 12/17 8pm

Any McGee scoop? I don’t feel like he’s gotten enough to do on NCIS lately.– Jacinda
“He’s going to play a really big part after the holidays,” EP Gary Glasberg assures me. “And Delilah’s still around. He’s got his work cut out for him in some stuff coming up.” And speaking of the holidays, you won’t want to miss the Dec. 17 outing. It’s a nail-biting hour that will find the team trying to crack the case of a strange outbreak occurring within military families. “It’s an Abby-centric story. So it’s Abby and Carol [Meredith Eaton] and Palmer really focused in the lab to try to focus on what’s going on,” Glasberg teases. There’s also a “really, really loving” story involving Vance, who is celebrating his first Christmas without his wife. Tissues, please!

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Question: Mike, Mike, Mike… What can you tell me about NCIS‘s 250th episode? —Marsha
Ausiello: Marha, Marsha, Marsha… I can tell you that someone from Gibbs’ past will resurface around the time of the CBS phenom’s landmark episode. Sources confirm to me exclusively that Susanna Thompson is set to reprise her role as Jethro’s ex, Hollis Mann, this January. And, show boss Gary Glasberg, teases: “She is coming back in an unexpected way.”

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COMPLICATIONS ARISE WHEN THE NCIS TEAM DISCOVERS A LINK BETWEEN A MURDER VICTIM AND THE BOYFRIEND OF GIBBS’ EX-WIFE, ON “NCIS,” TUESDAY, DEC. 10

“Devil’s Triad” – Complications arise when the NCIS team discovers a link between a murder victim and the current boyfriend of Gibbs and Agent Fornell’s ex-wife. Meanwhile, NSA Analyst Ellie Bishop adjusts to joining the NCIS team, on NCIS, Tuesday, Dec. 10 (8:00-9:00 PM, ET/PT) on the CBS Television Network. Joe Spano (“Hill Street Blues”) returns as Senior FBI Agent T.C. Fornell and Melinda McGraw (“Men of a Certain Age”) returns as Diane Sterling, Gibbs’ ex-wife.

CHEAT TWEET: The complications are endless when Gibbs’ ex-wife returns #NCIS 12/10 8pm

WRITTEN BY: Steven D. Binder
DIRECTED BY: Arvin Brown

When will NCIS pick up the Parsa storyline? I am really excited to see it play out! –Jenny
I, too, wondered about when this season’s Big Bad might rear his ugly head again. Showrunner Gary Glabserg told me, “We’ll get back into that story after the holidays – and hopefully kick off the year with something significant.”

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BEVERLY HILLS, CA—It took Michael Weatherly to finally explain his former co-star Cote de Pablo’s departure from NCIS.

After eight seasons as special agent Ziva David, de Pablo announced last June she would not return to the series. CBS wanted her back. The producers wanted her back, but de Pablo stuck to her guns and walked away from TV’s No. 1 drama. (It airs Tuesday nights at 8 p.m. on Global.)

Ziva and Weatherly’s character, senior special agent Anthony DiNozzo, had a long-running will-they, won’t-they relationship on the show.

“It was really with the arrival of Cote that I think something special happened there,” Weatherly told a gathering of international press earlier this month. While it was “never a love story, never rolling over and pillow talk,” there was always a great deal of chemistry between the characters. He compared the big orange squad room on NCIS to the newsroom in the classic film His Girl Friday, with DiNozzo and Ziva having an intense love-hate connection like Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell in the movie.

What happens next? Weatherly says his character is finally getting in touch with feelings he never knew he had. “Kind of like you don’t know what you’re missing till it’s gone,” he says. This leads to some soul searching and then, next Tuesday, on the Nov. 19 episode, the arrival of a new actress and a new love interest for DiNozzo: Emily Wickersham, who joins the cast full-time as NSA analyst Eleanor “Ellie” Bishop, a specialist in international terrorism and global preparation.

“I think the audience is going to be extremely interested and rewarded,” says Weatherly. “The chemistry is magical.”

“We’re thrilled to have her,” Mark Harmon, who plays DiNozzo’s boss Leroy “Jethro” Gibbs, told the same reporters one day earlier. “We’re all intrigued and satisfied with the actress.”

Still, Wickersham has some big shoes to fill. De Pablo’s arrival led to a sharp upturn in popularity for the series. As Harmon noted, she had been with the cast eight seasons. “That’s high school and college.”

There was the usual speculation at first that de Pablo’s departure was a negotiating ploy; that she was holding out for more money. All involved insist that that’s not the case. The actress simply wanted a break from the series.

“It’s a very tough commitment,” says Weatherly, who adds, “Boo-hoo, go cry in a bag of money.”

The New York native can never stay serious for too long. He quotes Oscar Wilde’s line, “Life is too important to be taken seriously.”

Weatherly suggested that de Pablo was simply at a different stage in her personal life than some of her more settled cast members, “No weddings, no funerals, no birthdays,” he said of the long hours and total commitment a 22-episode network TV drama demands. “You’re just deployed.”

While Weatherly and others seem to have their lives lined up for now, “Cote’s still figuring out the life part,” he says. “She just wanted a break.”

He says he’ll miss her sense of humour on the set. “She is cosmically funny,” he says. “We never really saw that side of Ziva because she was always kicking people in the face.”

Weatherly’s life became a lot more settled after he met his second wife, Bojana Jankovic, at a rock concert in Vancouver in 2009. The couple have two children, a 19-month old girl named Olivia and a baby boy named Liam, born just a few weeks ago.

Having two children under the age of 2 “is like having 30,” he says. “It’s like running a pre-school. Good thing I married a doctor.”

The new boy only has eyes for his mom, says the 45-year-old actor. “When you’re not lactating, you’re not interesting.”

Weatherly is part of what his co-star, Pauley Perrette (forensic specialist Abby Sciuto), calls the “Core Four” of the series. She, Weatherly, Harmon and veteran actor David McCallum (chief medical examiner David “Ducky” Mallard) have been with the popular drama all 11 seasons.

Perrette told reporters she got the news de Pablo was leaving one morning when she woke up to several text messages from fellow cast members and producers. “I thought somebody died,” she said. She called Harmon first and got the news.

“At the end of the day, not only can you not make decisions for other people, but often you can’t understand theirs,” says Perrette, who says she would not leave her “dream job” under any circumstances. “Part of the problem with the rest of us being left or saddled with answering this question to other people is that it’s really not an answer.”

There’s no cover-up, there’s no drama, “I guess it was just a life decision,” says Perrette.

Weatherly says he’s looking forward to his character’s own “lightning bolt moment” on the series. Fans should not be surprised to see DiNozzo settling down. It may even be time — as Weatherly’s “dad” on the series, Robert Wagner, apparently suggested — for some little DiNozzos. “I think the dude is ready for some love,” Weatherly says.

Asked what he thought de Pablo should do next, Weatherly, once again, went for the funny.

“I’d put her in a space suit: a very tight space suit,” he says. “Oh, oh, somebody just optioned that. We just sold, ‘Sci-Fi Ziva.’”

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I’m dying to know who this new NCIS female agent will end up with: Tony (Michael Weatherly) or Gibbs (Mark Harmon)? — Leslie, Portland, Oregon

Try neither. Turns out, analyst Ellie Bishop (Emily Wickersham, who debuts Nov. 19) is happily married, and executive producer Gary Glasberg has no adulterous plans in the works. “We will eventually meet her husband, who is an attorney with the NSA,” says Glasberg, who may also introduce Ellie’s brothers. “This is a very different relationship from anything we’ve had. There’s something interesting in this world when you have a spouse you can’t tell everything to, and taking on the added responsibilities of this new job could come with consequences.”

Though that may sound like the setup for a split, Glasberg describes Ellie’s relationship with Gibbs as a fatherly mentorship, while she and Tony will develop a sibling-like bond. Glasberg also plans to address the tragic 1995 Oklahoma City bombing that influenced Ellie’s desire to work with the NSA. The Nov. 19 episode will find Tony discussing dating for the first time since Ziva’s exit, and 2014 will likely see the eligible bachelor dipping back into the dating pool.

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I heard that NCIS is going to do another spinoff. Any info, please? And are any of the current cast moving to it? –Donald
As previously reported, the prospective offshoot is set in New Orleans and will be introduced via a spring 2014 episode of the mothership. As for its cast, Gary Glasberg – who is exec-producing the planted pilot with NCIS frontman Mark Harmon – says there will “absolutely” be opportunities for familiar faces to swing by NOLA. When I then passed along a reader’s suggestion that CGIS Agent Borin (played by Diane Neal) — whom Gibbs recently sorta-offered a job — be part of the spin-off’s cast, Glasberg hedged, “I haven’t quite put [the list of characters] together yet, but that is an interesting idea!” Speaking of which….

Forget the character Bishop — bring Diane Neal on as an NCIS regular! She has great chemistry with the cast. Please tell me we will see more of her character. –Robin
When I, too, shared with show boss Gary Glasberg my enjoyment of Neal’s most recent visit, he joined in on the fanning. “I really appreciate the fact that everyone responds so well to the guest stars that come in, and Diane Neal is more than that — she’s a part of this family, and we will continue to use her. To have her come back is super-important, and we’ll continue to do that.”

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Any new NCIS scoop? What’s in store for my favorite special agent DiNozzo? I love that the show still acknowledges Ziva’s absence and I hope it doesn’t disappear completely as I’m not ready to move on. — Cheryl
It won’t. 1) Michael Weatherly seems to be enjoying having so much to sink his teeth into. 2) EP Gary Glasberg says it won’t. And 3) Nos. 1 and 2 are enough. “We’re letting the character continue on this natural path of dealing with the ups and downs of Ziva’s absence,” says Glasberg. “Those ups and downs will continue. Slowly but surely — just as in the real world — he’s getting refocused and getting his life together. He’s figuring things out.”

NCIS scoop! Where was Vance last week?! — Terri
Don’t worry, he’s around. And look for him to have a huge storyline in a December episode that will [SCOOP!] guest-star BEN VEREEN as a relative of the late Jackie Vance. “Vance and his kids have to get through the holidays with all the emotion that comes with it, and part of it is to introduce this character and the interaction that Vereen’s character will have with Vance,” says Glasberg.

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