MarkHarmon-related stories
Posted Oct 21st 2009 1:32AM by Allison Waldman
Filed under: NCIS, Episode Reviews, Reality-Free
(S07E05) Happy Halloween from your friends at
NCIS! There was definitely some creepy stuff going on with this case, and for the first time in weeks, the concentration of the show was strictly on the mystery. No Ziva flashbacks, no Gibbs questions about Mossad, no Vance at all. It was just about how a Marine recently back from Afghanistan wound up dead in his car on the night before Halloween.
Continue reading Review: NCIS - Code of Conduct
Posted Oct 14th 2009 12:28AM by Allison Waldman
Filed under: OpEd, NCIS, Episode Reviews, Reality-Free
(S07E04) First of all, let's get this out of the way quickly. This might be the best episode of the season. It was all character with just enough action to keep those who love gunfire happy. But most importantly, it cemented Ziva's place in the world of
NCIS (the show and the organization). For that reason alone, this was four stars all the way.
Mad Men is the kind of show where allusions are made and words have meanings that are not always readily apparent. It's a great show to watch, sometimes difficult to comprehend.
NCIS doesn't pretend to be poetic. It presents compelling, dynamic situations in which characters face tough decisions and loyalty is tested and burnished over time. And the words matter here, too.
Tonight the word was mishpocheh. It's Yiddish for family. Ziva used it in one scene referring to her mission on the freighter (the dead Marine was not mishpocheh), but it mattered more in a later scene with Gibbs. More on the complexities of the episode after the jump.
Continue reading NCIS: Good Cop, Bad Cop
Posted Oct 7th 2009 1:28AM by Allison Waldman
Filed under: OpEd, NCIS, Episode Reviews, Reality-Free
(S07E03) Is it even possible that an NCIS team led by Jethro Leroy Gibbs would make a mistake that would leave the agency open to an investigation by a blogger with an attitude? Nah. Not our Jethro. Still, that was the premise for the case on tonight's episode.
Hard as it was for Gibbs, DiNozzo and McGee to believe they'd screwed up, when the blogger -- BeltwayBurns.com -- turned up as a corpse, a whole can of worms was upended and a closed case was suddenly wide open. Fortunately, that meant a lot more chances for Ducky to interact with Gibbs, something sorely missed in the first couple of shows.
Continue reading NCIS: The Inside Man
Posted Jul 2nd 2009 2:55PM by Allison Waldman
Filed under: OpEd, NCIS, Casting, Reality-Free
Leo G. Carroll did it in 1966. Lisa Bonet sort of did it in 1987. What am I talking about? Double duty. That is, playing the same role on two series which are running at the same time. There are probably quite a few other instances, but Leo was head man Mr. Waverly on both
The Man from U.N.C.L.E. and
The Girl from U.N.C.L.E. for a year, and Lisa was Denise Huxtable in college (
A Different World) and when she came home to visit the family in Brooklyn on
The Cosby Show.
Now,
Rocky Carroll will appear on both NCIS shows. Doing double duty makes perfect sense for the
NCIS twosome, especially since they're going to be airing back to back on Tuesday, 8-10 P.M.
Continue reading Rocky Carroll doubling down on NCIS franchise
Posted Nov 26th 2008 2:04PM by Allison Waldman
Filed under: Industry, NCIS, Reality-Free
Considering the fact that
CSI has been the basis for two very, very successful CBS spin-offs --
CSI: Miami and
CSI: New York (in case you've been out of the loop for the past six years) -- it hardly comes as a shock that another CBS ratings powerhouse,
NCIS, is planning a spin-off. Maybe the only shock is that they've waited till now to really put thought into action.
EW's Michael Ausiello landed the exclusive and reports that the
NCIS spin-off will be like the other
CSI's in that they will not take a character from the show and make him/her the centerpiece of that new series. That means you don't have to worry about Ziva, Tony, Abs, McGee and Gibbs breaking up.
And after the fans' reaction at the end of last season, when the team was split up as the new director took over only to be reunited early this season, that's a major relief.
Continue reading NCIS planning a spin-off
Posted Nov 18th 2008 3:04PM by Allison Waldman
Filed under: NCIS, TV Squad Lists, Reality-Free
Something amazing has happened recently in the TV media: the critics have discovered CBS's stealth ratings champ,
NCIS, and it's now cool to come out of the closet and declare your fandom. Articles in
USA Today, the
Los Angeles Times and
The New York Times have reported the fact that not only is
NCIS consistently in the top five of the weekly Nielsen ratings, but it's also a smart, well-acted and compelling TV show.
There are reasons to admire
NCIS, and if you haven't been watching, here's five really good reasons to check out the show. I know that before I got coerced into giving
NCIS a try, I didn't think I'd like it, but boy, was I wrong.
Continue reading Five reasons why it's cool to like NCIS
Posted May 21st 2008 12:25AM by Allison Waldman
Filed under: Video, NCIS, Episode Reviews, Reality-Free
(S0518/19) Well, the previews didn't lie. For weeks now, we've been told in previews and commercials -- not to mention numerous stories in the press -- that one of the principals would die on the finale of
NCIS. The producers delivered; someone died. In one way, the death of Jenny Shephard, NCIS director, is the least painful loss, and also the most obvious. If you had Lauren Holly in the
NCIS pool, you're the winner. For most of the episodes since the return from the strike, viewers have known that Ducky had determined that the director was sick. Jethro knew it; so did Jenny. But Jenny didn't know that Jethro knew. (Can you follow that?) Anyway, what it means in the big picture is that before tonight's two-hour finale, Jenny Shephard was the most likely candidate to bite the dust.
Continue reading NCIS: Judgment Day (season finale) - VIDEO
Posted Apr 8th 2008 2:41PM by Isabelle Carreau
Filed under: TV Squad Polls, Watercooler Talk, NCIS, Casting, Reality-Free
Late last night,
TV Guide's Michael Ausiello put in print words that
NCIS fans didn't want to see: "
NCIS Star Goes AWOL!" As soon as the news hit the Internet, my inbox was flooded with emails asking if I knew who was set to leave the show at the end of the season. I poked my spoilers sources but no answers yet.
NCIS fans will remember that around the same time last year, we heard that
Mark Harmon wanted out because of creator Donald P. Bellisario. The latter accepted to reduce his involvement on the show so that Harmon would stay. So who is it this time? Could it be Harmon? Let's analyze the situation and make our predictions.
Continue reading Major NCIS shake up
Posted May 23rd 2007 9:19AM by Brett Love
Filed under: NCIS, Episode Reviews
(
S04E24) CBS has been teasing this episode for a couple weeks now, with promises of secrets being revealed. They did get to the big one, though that was more of a confirmation of what we already expected. Overall though, I think they oversold it. Another case of the promotions department writing checks that the writers aren't cashing.
That feeling of something being incomplete carried over into the rest of the episode as well. It just didn't have the feel of the big season finale. The show set a very high bar with "Twilight" in season two and can't afford to just phone it in like this. Half of this episode could have just been dropped right in the middle of any other episode and it wouldn't have made a difference. That's fine, for episodes 2 through 23, but the big guns have to come out for the first and the last.
Continue reading NCIS: Angel Of Death (season finale)
Posted May 9th 2007 9:04AM by Brett Love
Filed under: NCIS, Episode Reviews
(S04E23) This was kind of a confusing episode to me. Not that the story was hard to follow, just that it seemed poorly conceived. I thought the case of the week was well done, but kind of out of place. With it being the end of the season, and the plan already in place to make this a two parter, I would have rather seen something that focused in on the big stories.
It almost felt like flipping the channels between two episodes that were running at the same time. The brief phone conversations between Gibbs and Shepard kind of tied the two stories together, but more than anything, they just pointed out that the story of the week was taking up time that could have been spent on La Grenouille. Maybe I'm just a little impatient, having caught a bit of the finale fever, but it just didn't all fit together for me.
Continue reading NCIS: Trojan Horse
Posted May 2nd 2007 9:40AM by Brett Love
Filed under: NCIS, Episode Reviews
(S04E22) We started season four with a look at Tony taking over for the retired Gibbs. So it's fitting that as we move toward the end of the season we get to see the two of them in parallel stories. They both are facing big decisions where the women in their lives are concerned. And both of them are struggling with what to do, though for different reasons.
Over the last 90 episodes we have learned plenty about Gibbs' past. The issues he has with making a more official commitment to his relationship with Hollis (Susana Thompson) didn't come as a surprise. Gibbs has baggage, and a lot of it. It's a complicated situation and I really like the way they handled it.
Continue reading NCIS: In The Dark
Posted Apr 25th 2007 11:59AM by Brett Love
Filed under: NCIS, Episode Reviews
(S04E21) This week the
NCIS team managed to put the viewer in the same position as Jenny. Unfortunately, that's not a good thing. When she opened up that cargo container and realized that she had been taken for a ride, I was right there with her, because the viewers had been on a ride of their own.
Now, I get how the formula works.
NCIS is a mostly stand alone show, with serial elements. And I'm perfectly fine with that. I've been waiting anxiously for the last half of the season to get some answers about Tony/Jeanne and Le Grenouille, and that's fine. I enjoy the stand alone episodes while we wait. This week though, I would describe as a stand alone serial episode. What I mean is that while they were playing with the ongoing storylines, in the end it amounted to nothing. With the possible exception of knowing that Tony had dinner with Jeanne's mother, this episode could be left off the DVD and the story wouldn't miss a beat.
Continue reading NCIS: Brothers in Arms
Posted Apr 24th 2007 4:22PM by Bob Sassone
Filed under: Celebrities, NCIS
Michael Ausiello at TV Guide is reporting a big scoop: NCIS star Mark Harmon is threatening to walk off the hit CBS show.
Citing inside sources, Ausiello says that Harmon has always been fed up with producer Donald Bellisario's (Magnum, P.I., JAG, Quantum Leap) "chaotic management style" and wants off the show. The source also says that Harmon is one of the nicest guys on television and that he's in the right on this one. The dispute is described as "a big standoff."
So I'll ask you readers the same thing that Ausiello asks his readers: can NCIS survive without Mark Harmon, or is he the main reason to watch the show?
[via TV Tattle]
Posted Apr 11th 2007 9:30AM by Brett Love
Filed under: NCIS, Episode Reviews
(S04E20) Twenty episodes in, and I'm chomping at the bit to get to the Tony/Jeanne story. Credit to team
NCIS that they have created an arc that has people waiting anxiously for a resolution. With that in mind, if you would have told me that we were going to get a stand alone episode that didn't get into any of the big seasonal stories, I doubt I would have been excited about it.
But then they went and did this. Bringing McGee's next book, "Rock Hollow," into the picture made for some great scenes. And those scenes were really what sold this one. The actual mystery was interesting, but more for what we learned about McGee and the new book than the actual whodunnit aspect. I thought they gave Landon away right off the bat when he recognized "Thom."
Continue reading NCIS: Cover Story
Posted Apr 4th 2007 9:00AM by Brett Love
Filed under: NCIS, Episode Reviews
(S04E19) Those pesky writers at
NCIS just continue to tease us with the Tony/Jeanne story. I saw that Scottie Thompson was going to be in this episode, and after the way the last one ended I was hopeful that we would get tipped off to just what is going on there. No such luck, but I'm ok with that. There were a lot of other things to like about this installment.
Things like the case. The conflicting results from Abby and Ducky had me all confused. Having the plan hinge on the voice modeling software was an interesting way to go with it. The magic door was also a fun twist, and made even more so thanks to Tony's scene both discovering it, and trying to defeat it.
Continue reading NCIS: Grace Period
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