The perennially popular CBS drama “NCIS†ended last season with the ultimate cliffhanger. Practically every major character was set up to be killed off as NCIS headquarters was bombed and the venerable Ducky (David McCallum) suffered a heart attack.
But within minutes of the start of the Season 10 premiere on Tuesday night, everyone had made an appearance, dazed or cut or breathing with difficulty but still with us. Mucking with success is not something Hollywood does cavalierly.
Some radical fans might have been hoping for a major-character death on the theory that a long-running show needs to shake itself up now and then. If nothing else, killing off a major player might get “NCIS,⠀ whose excellence has come to be taken for granted, buzzed about again, the way it was in Season 2 when it put a bullet into the head of a central figure, Kate, at the end of the wrenching “Twilight†episode.
But there was no such shocker Tuesday night; just more evidence of why this show endures: distinctive characters, skilled actors, an ability to mix humor into the gloomiest situations. Even as the rubble was still being searched after the bombing, there were Tony (Michael Weatherly) and Ziva (Cote de Pablo), trapped in an elevator, exchanging flirty wisecracks. (Is this the season those two get smoochy?)
There was a death eventually, however: the disturbed, bomb-making Harper Dearing (Richard Schiff), who began terrorizing the NCIS team last season and who blew up headquarters. Gibbs (Mark Harmon) put a knife into him late in the episode. But the end of Dearing's story arc seems unlikely to end the impact of his actions. This series has always clu ng to its most traumatizing moments, using them to deepen characters and letting them reverberate through subsequent episodes and seasons. It was news of the bombing that led to Ducky's heart attack, but Tuesday night there were suggestions that he wasn't the only member of the team who was dramatically affected. Nobody snaps at Gibbs the way Ziva did.
But will mere personality changes be enough to keep “NCIS†interesting? Or should some major character have paid the ultimate price Tuesday night? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.
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