NCIS
Pauley Perrette's lab rat Abby has been let loose in the NCIS squad room. In a scene she's shooting for a big two-part episode airing November 16 and 23, she's trying to play pin the tail on the bomber. Pointing to a video of a suspect playing on a computer screen, she blurts out to Sean Murray's McGee, "He just confessed he knew how to make the murder weapon! I mean, how many people know how to make a homemade Claymore mine?"
"In this room?" asks McGee. A couple of visiting Israeli agents raise their hands. So does Cote de Pablo, as NCIS team member Ziva David. Then, sheepishly, so does Abby herself. "OK, fine," she mutters, reluctantly withdrawing her point.
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Perrette and de Pablo may be easy on the eyes, but they can be hard-asses, too. In a medium where many actresses are ...
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An Abby-centric NCIS episode can never be anything other than a good thing, so it was nice seeing Pauley Perrette get to pull out that black parasol — last seen protecting her from the Mexican sun — and do a little obsessive field work in "Cracked." The object of her fascination was a dead Navy lieutenant turned biotech engineer who left behind mountains and mountains of mysterious formulas, along with a history of mental illness. "How's that for dedication?" Abby asked, upon finding that the dead woman had ambidextrously tattooed both her arms with reams of scientific mumbo-jumbo. "I'm officially a fan."
This led to Abby even going down to autopsy to talk to the corpse ...
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To loosely paraphrase that old Limp Bizkit song: "I watched it for the squeaky." Squeaky Tony DiNozzo, that is, who turned out to be allergic to the suburbs in NCIS' "Dead Air" episode. Some fans worry that the character has gotten too silly, and these folks may have been mortified, not mollified, that DiNozzo spent much of the hour speaking in a scratchy-helium voice. Not everyone probably cottoned to the idea of hearing Tony, interrogating a terrorism suspect, half-shout "You want to spend the rest of your life in prison? Fine by me!" in a Mickey-Mouse-meets-Rod-Stewart voice. So you'll have to forgive those of us who couldn't stifle a laugh. There's always been a truism about how rare it is to find a beautiful woman who can pull off comedy, and this is a good moment to point out how equally unusual it is to find a beautiful man who'll go as wonderfully far out on the limb of ridiculousness as Michael Weatherly will.
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"We done with our tea and crumpets?" asked Gibbs (Mark Harmon), interrupting a cozy moment between his team and a British ally-or-adversary in "Royals and Loyals." This particular NCIS episode wasn't done at all, of course, exploiting every stereotype of Anglo-American differences. The false suspect of the week, Royal Marine Major Peter Molloy (Daniel Gillies), insulted our tea ("tastes like paper"), our beer ("horse excrement"), and our Gibbs (by comparing him to...
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The "Short Fuse" episode of NCIS presents a terrible quandary for series historians. For whoever is counting the all-time number of head slaps that Mark Harmon gives Michael Weatherly — and we know you're out there — does Gibbs slapping DiNozzo's cardboard standup count, or not? Debate.
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Brian Dietzen
HE PLAYS NCIS' handsomely bespectacled nerd Jimmy Palmer, who assists medical examiner Ducky (David McCallum). Dietzen came in to shoot a one-day guest appearance near the end of the first season — and has been on most of the episodes since, thanks to "his comic timing and the way he plays so well with McCallum," says exec producer Shane Brennan.
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NCIS
If ever you needed proof of just how different NCIS and its spinoff NCIS: Los Angeles are, consider "Worst Nightmare," this week's episode of the mothership show. On NCIS: L.A., the team operates under top secrecy at all times, to the point of even the headquarters building being disguised; the agents pretty much go undercover just to go to the bathroom. Meanwhile, the latest hour of NCIS centered around the not-so-secret presence of... interns.
Interns? Yep, NCIS had an infestation of 'em, and rather than break out a can of Raid, Gibbs (Mark Harmon) was intentionally encouraging the influx of college students, showing off his softer — softie? — side....
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Remember the series My Three Sons? It's looking like Season 8 of NCIS could be subtitled Our Three Fathers. Not only did the kickoff to the season center around Gibbs Sr. — aka Ralph Waite — but teasers were pointedly offered for the imminent returns of DiNozzo Sr. and Ziva Sr. Perhaps the theme music could be temporarily replaced with a nice chorus of that old John Hiatt song, "Your Dad Did."
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