I know Gary Glasberg has mentioned we will see the events that led up to the cliffhanger with Gibbs in the NCIS finale. But will we also get to see what McGee, Tony and Ziva have been doing in their four-month absence? I’m eager to see how they adapted to life outside NCIS and without Gibbs’s rules (particularly Rule No. 12). –Cheryl
If I’m any good at reading between Glasberg’s lines, viewers will be made privy to at least some of that when Season 11 arrives. “The season opener is going to take us from where we left off all the way up to the point where we’re seeing Gibbs,” he says, As for Tony, Ziva and McGee in particular, “There will be a portion in which they’re still resigned, and then it’ll develop from there. I don’t want to give too much away about the opener yet, but we’ll learn what happened with Tony and Ziva and McGee, I promise.”

I’m curious as to your thoughts on NCIS‘ baiting of “Tiva” fans without delivering. This season, especially, saw the showrunner pushing the notion of the couple becoming a reality, yet once again it did not happen. Even worse, [the finale] found them calling each other “friends,” the same label they applied to each other in Season 9′s “A Desperate Man.” Do you as a reporter find it difficult to see these things teased, when they never come fruition? Or do you think it’s just part of the game and “business as usual”? In addition, do you feel that at some point this bait-and-switch will impact viewership? –Dee
A very sound question, because as you note, I have long witnessed this to-and-fro as well. Quite honestly, I think NCIS and show boss Gary Glasberg face a tremendously difficult juggling act with this (would-be) couple because it is TV’s most watched program, and like a game of Jenga, you can’t be quite sure which slight move could send things toppling. Is NCIS No. 1 because it metes out exactly 25 milligrams of romance every third episode, and never a bit more? Is there a fear that going all-in with Tiva will soap up the show too much? Look at the comments sure to populate below; if one out of three is against the coupling, does that confirm the show would risk disenfranchising some 5 million viewers? (And if you do put them together, will the outcry nonetheless continue if “not enough” intimacy is displayed, a la Castle, presenting a no-win scenario?) All I can do on my end is press for some semblance of concrete evidence behind any loaded quotes (about any topic), then trust the show will follow through to some degree.

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Looks like on August 20th we’re getting the new Season 10 DVD set!

Check out the Special Features:

Audio Commentary with Gary Glasberg and Tony Wharmby
Audio Commentary with Michael Weatherly and Scott Williams
Audio Commentary with Pauley Perrette and Gina Monreal
Audio Commentary with David McCallum and Brian Dietzen
Deleted Scenes
Featurette: Death In The Family
Featurette: Mr. Carroll Goes To Washington
Featurette: 10 Items Or Less
Featurette: X Marks The Spot: A Look At Season X
Featurette: You Wear It Well
Featurette: Dinozzo’s Digs
Featurette: Ten Years Aft
Webisodes: Inside NCIS

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Got any NCIS scoops, particularly on McGee? –Marla
As revealed in the season finale, Tim’s got himself a new honey. And though show boss Gary Glasberg has yet to decide what “type” the mysterious Delilah is, viewers will eventually get to lay eyes on her. “I’m hoping to pick [that storyline] up and explain more — and hopefully, at some point, we’ll get to meet Delilah, as well,” Glasberg says.

Question: I’m curious about NCIS‘ four-month time jump in the finale — will the show flash back to those intervening months when it returns this fall? —Jacob
Ausiello: Not sure if we’ll get actual flashbacks, but exec producer Gary Glasberg promises that “everything that happened that led up to Gibbs looking through that rifle will be explained,” adding, “All the pieces will fit together.”

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.

NCIS | To Inside Liners Nisha, Joyce and others, this is for you. With many “Tiva” fans fretting that the pair’s season-ending heart-to-heart essentially landed Tony in the dreaded Friend Zone, showrunner Gary Glasberg maintains that over the course of Season 10, “We made huge strides. Their relationship has evolved, has changed. They’re a little more open with each other and a little more emotionally connected, certainly more than where we were at the beginning of the season.” With that same passionate group of ‘shippers having been vested in “The Year of Tiva” (a mantra initiated by, I believe it was, Michael Weatherly), Glasberg admits the couple’s closeness “may not be the big leap that a lot of people would like it to be, but I also feel like we’re enjoying the pace at which this is happening. That’s not to say we’re not headed in the direction everyone would like to go, but I think we’re getting there.” As the EP explains, “It’s very complicated when two agents who are working together get into a relationship, and that’s something that [Tony and Ziva] would be very conscious of. So I think they would tread lightly, which is why, in theory, we’re treading lightly and being very careful about the steps that we take.” (As for Cote de Pablo’s contract status for Season 11, as of Wednesday night, Glasberg had no update to share: “I wish I had information for you, but I don’t.”)

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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.

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NCIS closed out its tenth season with an episode that left a team divided, Gibbs with a sniper rifle in his hands, and someone we know in the crosshairs of said gun. (For a full recap, click here.)

So where do we go from here? Executive producer Gary Glasberg has the scoop:

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: I have to say, I couldn’t have predicted where this season was going to end.
GARY GLASBERG: Thank you. This has been a really fun season for me and fun for everyone because, first of all, we tried some very untraditional things. As Mark Harmon and others have said, we did multiple [episodes] that could have been season enders this season — the car crash, killing Ziva’s dad, the revenge factor of killing Bodnar. It was one thing after another and because of that, I wanted to do something different for the actual season finale. So we got into this case that Parsons (guest star Colin Hanks) was building against the team and against Gibbs, and I think it worked pretty well.

Tell me about how you arrived at that storyline.
One of the things we really started to think about was, ten seasons into a show — 234 episodes — [there were] so many cases, so many opportunities and ways that Gibbs handled things but maybe crossed some lines in the way that he handled them. And someone had to have noticed that somewhere along the way. There are people who are paying attention and what if someone — an investigator who was out for his own reasons — decided that this was the opportunity and the moment to go after them and basically say,’You can’t keep doing this.’ Ziva going after Bodnar was just sort of the straw that broke the camel’s back.

And, naturally, Gibbs had to get out of hot water, but that came with a price.
His team resigns and puts their badges down on Vance’s desk and Morrow, along with Vance and others, come to him and say, ‘We can make all of this go away if you help us with this case.’ And it’s, ultimately, a case linked to that head of the Navy SEAL that we were dealing with. All those threads will tie up.

To clarify: That case that Gibbs is working ties into the “threat on home soil” that Morrow mentioned, correct?
Exactly, yes. And, ultimately, jumping ahead four months, we don’t see who’s in that town car but we know it’s someone Fornell is protecting and we’re left with Fornell in Gibbs’ sights.

Well, I immediately thought, ‘Well, it can’t be Fornell…can it?’
Exactly! “Can it?” All the pieces will fit together, I promise.

How quickly? Tell me about how we pick up next season.
Yes. The episode will pick up and we’ll sort of see, in steps leading up to…[background chatter] Brian Dietzen is telling me to be very secretive and not tell you anything.

NO!
[Laughs] In the season opener, we will see the progression of time leading up to that moment that everyone just experienced, and in that progression, we’ll see the case that Gibbs is assigned to, the specifics of the case, how it is unfolded, who the players are, and then when we get to the exact moment. It will all make sense.

Is the whole episode that lead-up?
Yes.

Does that mean we’re also going to learn what McGee, Tony and Ziva were up to in those four jobless months?
Yes.

Have you already figured that out?
I’m starting to. There are a bunch of pieces that are floating around in my head and at some point, when I’m sitting on a beach in Hawaii I’ll figure it all out.

I do have to talk about some of the other characters, obviously. There were so many great character nuggets in this episode. First: McGee has a girlfriend!
The lovely Delilah. That will likely payoff at some point as well. We may even meet Delilah.

Is that something you want to do quickly next season?
I don’t know. It depends on how much I can handle in the opening episode. But, yeah, there are some threads and nuggets — there’s Delilah, there’s the Palmer baby. There are all kinds of little cookies in there that hopefully people will pick up on.

Tony and Ziva had a significant moment in this episode. The question I’m seeing most on Twitter: Did Ziva just ‘Friend zone’ Tony?
I don’t think so. I think there’s a little more to it than that. I think they’re sort of dancing around each other and trying to get a sense of how to move forward and, based on everything that’s happened in the last year, where they are and what the next step is going to be. And, you know, we’re letting it slowly percolate and build and hopefully get it to a place that’s going to be satisfying for everybody.

I thought the forehead kiss was a nice touch.
Thank you. It might not satisfy everyone out there, but I think we’re getting there — she even reaches up with her hand and puts it very gently, and in a lovely way, on his shoulder before that kiss happens. I think there are gestures being made that have definitely advanced from where we were a year ago.

I liked Abby’s video game, by the way. Can we get that released?
Isn’t that cool? Our post-production people did a fantastic job on that.

Any final words on the season?
This has been a really fantastic season for us. Best numbers we’ve ever had — more viewers than we’ve ever had. I couldn’t be more thrilled with the state the show is in. We’ve hired a couple of new writers, we’re already working on five or six of the stories for next season. Everybody is energized and ready to go. We’re going to take a few days off and come back and keep going. The show’s in a really fantastic place and we’re constantly surprising each other about where we want to go and what we want to do. And as long as we keep feeling that, I don’t really see an end in sight for NCIS.

This finale felt like a treat for people who have been watching. That’s not really the procedural way.
It’s true. It was definitely a different season ender but I feel like it’s been a very different season and in doing that, I wanted to come through with something that wasn’t what people normally would have expected. I certainly hope that’s what I deliverered.

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“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.

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