If you’ve turned on a TV since 2003, you’ve probably stumbled on an episode of NCIS. The show is instantly recognizable to fans and channel-hoppers alike thanks to its insistent background music, cheesy lines delivered with a winking air, and thrilling over-the-top plots involving murders, cover-ups, drug rings, and bombs, all set against the backdrop of Washington D.C.’s Navy Yard. This is the show that taught us no death is ever an accident, and it’s never the obvious suspect.
Nearly two decades since it first aired as a spinoff of legal drama JAG, NCIS is still incredibly popular. As of April 2019 it was the most watched drama on TV, and when you look at all entertainment series, only The Big Bang Theory attracted more viewers. It’s also CBS’s longest-running scripted series still on the air. That longevity likely makes it an appealing gig for actors looking to enjoy the stability of a TV show that also has the added excitement of stunts, and plenty have taken their place on the Major Case Response Team. Here’s where you’ve seen some of NCIS’s best-known faces before — and what some of those stars have been doing since.
NCIS star Mark Harmon has played a lot of cops
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You can’t picture NCIS without silver-haired, poker-faced, former Marine Leroy Jethro Gibbs. Played by Mark Harmon, Gibbs has been a fixture of the show since the first season, appearing in the two episodes of JAG that launched NCIS. Harmon has also played him in episodes of spinoff NCIS: New Orleans, which started in 2014, and on Family Guy. (The animated series deemed him “the greatest actor who ever lived.”)
Before getting the chance to lead the NCIS team, Harmon’s career was mixed. As a teenager he was the quarterback for UCLA, following in the footsteps of his father, collegiate football star and sports commentator Tom Harmon. But after his brother-in-law Ricky Nelson convinced him to fill in on his show Ozzie’s Girls, Mark converted to acting.
His movie resume is mostly forgettable, with a few notable exceptions. He had a minor role in Disney’s 2003 Freaky Friday remake, and an uncredited part in Oliver Stone’s Natural Born Killers, and he played an unnamed magazine reporter in cult classic Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. TV is a different story: after playing a cop in a few different series, which saw varying degrees of success, he appeared on four seasons of medical drama Chicago Hope as orthopedic surgeon Jack McNeil. His most critically acclaimed credit was as a bodyguard in political saga The West Wing — a guest part that earned him his second Emmy nod.
NCIS vet Rocky Carroll was nominated for a Tony
Rocky Carroll plays the tough but ultimately fair Director of NCIS, Leon Vance, who took over the top job after the shocking death of predecessor Jennifer Shepard (Lauren Holly) in season five, which aired in 2008. He was promoted from recurring character to series regular for season six, and despite an alarming kidnapping plot line in season 15, and a tense relationship with Gibbs and the team at the start of his tenure, his run as Director has been longer than those of his two predecessors combined.
Away from NCIS, Carroll prefers theater stages to sound stages. After graduating from the Conservatory of Theatre Arts at Webster University in St. Louis, he got a job performing Shakespeare for New York public school students. In 1990 he was nominated for a Tony for Best Featured Actor in a Play for his role in August Wilson’s The Piano Lesson, in which he was understudied by Samuel L. Jackson.
Although he started picking up film credits with a role in the Tom Cruise-led Born on the Fourth of July, Carroll has had more success on the small screen. He’s mostly stuck to police, legal, and medical dramas: he’s had one-off roles in Law & Order, ER, Boston Legal and Grey’s Anatomy, and worked alongside future NCIS co-star Mark Harmon on four seasons of Chicago Hope. Before NCIS, his longest-running TV role was trumpet-playing Joey Emerson on sitcom Roc, alongside his Piano Lesson co-stars Charles S. Dutton and Carl Gordon.
NCIS mainstay David McCallum was in one of the most famous movies of all time
David McCallum has been on board from the very beginning as now-retired Chief Medical Examiner and current official NCIS historian Dr. Donald Mallard, affectionately known as Ducky. Ducky’s long been a fan favorite — but McCallum had a notable career before donning his white coat and signature bowties.
Like Ducky, McCallum was born in Scotland, in 1933. His first acting gigs were for BBC Radio and the stage. In 1963, he scored a part in The Great Escape, the epic retelling of 76 Allied prisoners’ escape from German POW camp Stalag Luft III in World War II. Despite playing second fiddle to leads Steve McQueen and Richard Attenborough, McCallum capitalized on his new fame, landing the role of Soviet secret agent Illya Kuryakin in hit TV series The Man from U.N.C.L.E., which ran from 1964 to 1968 and turned McCallum into a sex symbol.
After the show ended, McCallum worked steadily in various multi-season TV series, including another World War II escape drama, Colditz. He appeared in ’80s classics Murder, She Wrote and The A-Team, and in the ’90s he was in single episodes of Law & Order and Sex and the City. You might also recognize his voice, especially if you watch kids’ TV: he’s Professor Paradox in animated show Ben 10. He’s also written a novel, Once a Crooked Man, published in 2016.
NCIS star Sean Murray is in the film you watch every Halloween
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Another cast member who has been on the show since season one is Sean Murray, who plays computer wiz Timothy McGee. Murray’s first appearance was in episode seven, and he became a regular at the start of season two. He’s also appeared on NCIS: New Orleans.
In a weird twist, before NCIS, Murray played not one but two different characters on sister show JAG. In a 1998 episode, he played an ensign accused of rape in Japan, and from 2000 to 2001 he appeared in five episodes as Danny Walden, the surly son of Admiral Chegwidden’s girlfriend, Dr. Sydney Walden.
In the early ’90s, Murray was just another aspiring teen idol, complete with floppy blonde hair. In 1993 he had a minor role in This Boy’s Life, an adaptation of a memoir which also starred another rising teen star named Leonardo DiCaprio (you might have heard of him.) That same year, Murray got his chance to be the hero, as Thackery Binx in Hocus Pocus — although his character spends most of the film transformed into a black cat, somewhat reducing the level of exposure the film earned him.
After that, he was in short-lived series Harts of the West — most notable because he met future NCIS co-star Mark Harmon, who had a small part. The next five years were mostly spent making TV movies — aside from a single episode of ER — until JAG called.
NCIS fan favorite Pauley Perrette was in one of the coolest films of the ’00s
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Pauley Perrette played everyone’s favorite over-caffeinated forensic scientist from the very start, appearing in the two episodes of JAG that launched NCIS and in the spinoffs set in New Orleans and LA. In 2017, she announced that season 15 would be her last.
Before NCIS, Perrette appeared on a few TV series that only made it through a season or two, including Party of Five spinoff Time of Your Life, which starred Jennifer Love Hewitt and Jennifer Garner, and legal drama Murder One. She also had small parts in bigger shows, including a waitress named Rebecca in two episodes of Frasier, a groupie in five episodes of The Drew Carey Show, good Samaritan Tanya in two episodes of 24. Right before JAG she was in an episode of rival procedural drama CSI, but her most widely seen pre-NCIS performance was as radio DJ Alice Wisdom in 2000’s Almost Famous, in a scene opposite Philip Seymour Hoffman.
Despite fans’ pleas, Perrette has made it clear that she won’t be returning to NCIS. A few days after her last episode, she implied that she’d been bullied on set, and even subjected to “Multiple Physical Assaults,” but had been silenced by a “very powerful publicity ‘machine’.” In 2019, she named Harmon specifically, tweeting “I am terrified of Harmon and him attacking me.” Her next gig came as a single mom on the CBS sitcom Broke.
NCIS cast member Diona Reasonover is getting her big break
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Stepping in as the character who takes over for fan favorite Abby Sciuto was never going to be an easy task, but for Diona Reasonover it was yet another sign that her star is on the rise. Reasonover plays Kasie Hines, one of Ducky’s graduate students, who meets the team as Ducky’s assistant and then replaces Abby after her resignation.
Although NCIS’ longevity makes Kasie easily Reasonover’s most prestigious role, you may remember her from smaller parts in a few well-known shows. She was in single episodes of Comedy Bang! Bang, Boy Meets World spinoff Girl Meets World, Superstore, 2 Broke Girls, Transparent, and Grace and Frankie. She also had a big role in Clipped, a critically panned one-season series about a group of friends who open a barbershop. Reasonover agrees that NCIS is her biggest acting gig yet. In 2018, she said that she “freaked out” when she saw herself in the opening credits for the first time, and that it was cool seeing people dressed as Kasie that Halloween.
Even if you’d never seen Reasonover before she joined Ducky’s lab, you might have laughed at her jokes. Reasonover wrote for documentary-meets-comedy series Adam Ruins Everything and Amazon’s I Love Dick, and was a senior writer for Sarah Silverman’s I Love You, America. She’ll probably have many more credits to freak out over.
NCIS cast member Emily Wickersham spent years playing anonymous roles
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Emily Wickersham joined NCIS as former NSA analyst Eleanor Bishop, better known as Ellie, for season 11 in 2013. She’s also appeared in an episode of NCIS: New Orleans.
Before playing Ellie, Wickersham had mostly played almost anonymous characters. For instance, she was credited in 2008 rom-com Definitely, Maybe — which starred Ryan Gosling and Isla Fisher — as “1998 intern.” Two years later, her part in the Robert Pattinson-led romantic drama Remember Me was labeled “Miami Blonde.” At least she got a name for her minor part in I Am Number Four — Nicole — and in 2012 she finally got more screen time playing Amanda Seyfriend’s sister Molly in thriller Gone. (Given the critical slamming the film received, that might not have been a good thing.)
Wickersham has had better luck on TV. Four years before joining NCIS, she was in an episode of rival crime drama Law & Order: Criminal Intent, and in 2011 she had an unnamed part in an episode of Gossip Girl. She had a minor role in the American remake of the hit Scandinavian dramaThe Bridge, but one of her coolest jobs came early in her career, when she played A.J.’s girlfriend Rhiannon in four episodes of The Sopranos. For now, Wickersham is making the most of NCIS, saying, “it is a really awesome job to get to do every day.”
NCIS new kid Wilmer Valderrama was in this provocative music video
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Wilmer Valderrama plays Ellie Bishop’s on-again, off-again love interest, former undercover agent Nick Torres. Valderrama is a rookie in the NCIS cast, joining in season 15, but he’s backed by a sturdy TV resume. Like Wickersham, Valderrama will forever be able to brag that he was in The Sopranos — although only for one episode, playing an unnamed character. Depending on your taste in TV, the character you’re most likely to associate with him is Fez from That ’70s Show: Valderrama played the naive foreign exchange student of unknown nationality in every one of its 200 episodes.
Alternatively, parents who have ceded control of the TV to their kids may know him as repairman Manny from animated show Handy Manny. Back in grownup land, he appeared in Raising Hope and five episodes of Grey’s Anatomy, guest starred on two seasons of The Ranch, and was part of the main cast in the single season of the TV reboot of Minority Report. If you’re more of a horror fan, you might recognize Valderrama from another TV reboot, From Dusk Till Dawn, in which he played vampire Carlos Madrigal.
Away from TV, he had an uncredited role in Queen Latifah’s now-classic comedy Beauty Shop, and appeared in Fast Food Nation, the dramatization of the non-fiction book of the same name. And if you never watch movies or TV, you may still know Valderrama thanks to LMFAO’s video for “Sexy and I Know It.”
NCIS player Brian Dietzen wrote a short film
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Although he didn’t get that all-important opening credits shot until season nine, Brian Dietzen has been playing assistant medical examiner since episode 21 of the first season of NCIS. He’s also appeared in an episode of the New Orleans-set spinoff.
Dietzen’s acting career started out where most people’s end: at his elementary school’s Christmas pageant. He stayed in his home state to attend the University of Colorado, and participated in the Colorado Shakespeare Festival for two years before moving to Los Angeles. Despite his fairly successful stage career, he wasn’t flooded with offers in Hollywood.
In 2002 he was in an episode of Boston Public, a drama about a high school that also featured Sean Murray, also playing a character named David. That same year, his big break was meant to be the lead in comedy series My Guide to Becoming a Rock Star, but it was cancelled after one season.
In 2003, he was in From Justin to Kelly, which starred Kelly Clarkson fresh from her American Idol win. Unfortunately it bombed, but Dietzen got NCIS the next year. And he’s not sitting back on his cushy TV job. In 2012, Dietzen wrote and starred in his own short film, Congratulations, about a marriage proposal that drives a couple apart.
NCIS star Maria Bello was in this essential ’00s rom-com
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Maria Bello joined NCIS as operational psychologist Dr. Jacqueline Sloane, known to the team as Jack, in 2017 for season 15. She’d been working steadily in TV and film since the early ’90s: her first big role on the small screen was as Mrs. Smith in Mr. and Mrs. Smith, the TV version of the 2005 Angelina Jolie/Brad Pitt film about married secret agents. The series only lasted one season, but Bello landed a role in hot medical drama ER. playing Doctor Anna Del Amico from the end of season three through season four.
Sticking to 911 dramas, Bello was also in two episodes of Law & Order: SVU n 2010, and played the lead in the American adaptation of hit British crime drama Prime Suspect, which ended after one season. More recently, she was in a season of Amazon’s legal show Goliath.
You may also remember Bello from her roles in big movies. She appeared in dramas A History of Violence and World Trade Center, action movie Assault On Precinct 13, comedies Thank You For Smoking and Grownups, and rom-com The Jane Austen Bookclub with Emily Blunt. She also had a supporting role opposite Johnny Depp in Secret Window. But if you were a teenager in 2000, there’s one major reason Bello is familiar to you: she played hard-working, hard-partying bar owner Lil in essential sleepover movie Coyote Ugly.
NCIS star Jennifer Esposito was forced to leave this CBS show
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Jennifer Esposito’s NCIS character Alex Quinn has long relationships with many on the team, thanks to her previous position at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center — but Esposito herself was only on the show for one season.
Before her brief stint on NCIS, Esposito was in two notable movies: horror sequel I Still Know What You Did Last Summer and Spike Lee’s Summer of Sam. These kickstarted her TV career: she had a main part in two seasons of political comedy Spin City, starring Michael J. Fox, and in sitcom Samantha Who?, about a woman, played by Christina Applegate, who gets amnesia. In 2010 Esposito joined police drama Blue Bloods, but said she was forced to leave in the third season because CBS wouldn’t make accommodations for her celiac disease: she’s since published two books about her experience with the condition. It didn’t hold back her acting career: she went on to appear in Mistresses and critically acclaimed drama The Affair.
Law & Order fans have no excuse for not recognizing Esposito, although you might not know exactly why. She’s played four different characters in the franchise: she was in Law & Order in 1996 and 2006, and in Law & Order: SVU in 2000 and 2019. She’s also in Amazon’s super-anti-hero series The Boys.
NCIS vet Lauren Holly has played so many love interests
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Lauren Holly’s Jenny Shepard took over as Director of NCIS in season three, after predecessor Thomas Morrow’s resignation — but the character’s dramatic death at the hands of Russian assassins in season five made it clear that she wouldn’t be coming back.
Before joining NCIS, Holly was probably best known for playing Mary Swanson in 1994 comedy Dumb and Dumber, opposite Jim Carrey and Jeff Daniels. The next year she was Greg Kinnear’s fiancée in the remake of Audrey Hepburn classic Sabrina, which also starred Harrison Ford. In 1999’s Any Given Sunday she played Dennis Quaid’s unsympathetic wife. By 2000 she’d been promoted to ex-wife, playing Mel Gibson’s in What Women Want.
Holly’s pre-NCIS TV career saw glimmers of success. After a three-year run on daytime drama All My Children, she played a sheriff’s deputy in crime drama Picket Fences, which ran for four seasons, and like Mark Harmon and Rocky Carroll, she played a doctor in Chicago Hope. Prior to her NCIS role, Holly appeared in one episode of CSI: Miami in 2003.
After leaving NCIS, Holly stuck with the crime genre, playing medical examiner Dr. Betty Rogers in Motive, which ran for four seasons. She also appeared in the last season of thriller Designated Survivor, opposite Kiefer Sutherland and Natascha McElhone. She’s still working hard, in an even more brutal setting: next she’ll be in Tiny Pretty Things, a series about a ballet school.
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Questionable Things We Ignore In NCIS
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BY ALY KIRKAUG. 8, 2022 5:25 PM EST
CBS’s “NCIS” is a gold-star fan-favorite within the procedural crime TV genre. Agent Leroy Jethro Gibbs (Mark Harmon), sometimes known as Jethro to his closest colleagues, leads a team of talented agents to solve the hardest cases to hit the U.S. Navy and U.S. Marines. “NCIS” is one of the better procedural crime dramas, and not just because of Gibbs’ heart of gold or because Abby Sciuto (Pauley Perrette) is so loveable, but because the show offers fans a layer of authenticity and a glimpse into the lives of service members rarely accessible to the civilian eye. Each episode follows the team as they go about solving crimes, taking down terrorists, and capturing rampant serial killers.
“NCIS” is CBS’s most watched broadcast series and has been hailed as a TV “juggernaut.” But even a juggernaut, unstoppable though it may be, has flaws. Whether it’s the departures from real-life plausibility that are caught by fact-checking fans or the multiple blatant workplace violations, there are a lot of missteps throughout the show’s run, which started all the way back in 2003. Here are some questionable things in “NCIS.”
Agent Gibbs smacks his employees
CBS/Netflix
Have the writers of “NCIS” ever heard of this wild new concept called a “lawsuit?” Gibbs has a gargantuan superiority complex, and while that may be fine to a degree, we draw the line at smacking your employees upside the head when they make mistakes.
The show and its characters make it out to be like casual physical abuse is Gibbs’ way of showing paternal guidance — with a quick move that says, “Nope, try again.” When a member of his team makes even a small mistake, instead of saying, “Hey, maybe try this other method of problem solving or critical thinking because that clearly isn’t working,” he goes straight for smacking. In one instance, he delays a slap to Agent Tony DiNozzo (Michael Weatherly) after DiNozzo makes a joke and says, “It’s no fun if you know it’s coming.” DiNozzo responds by turning around and slapping Agent Tim McGee (Sean Murray).
In any normal workplace context, that’s clear-cut grounds for instant dismissal. It wouldn’t matter if you were a lowly agent or running the whole show. Workplace assault is not all that and a bag of chips. Gibbs, as a senior special agent capable of running his own team of individuals, should know that.
Abby and Ducky’s jobs are heavily exaggerated
CBS/Netflix
Procedural crime dramas have a way of manipulating the reality-based aspects of their characters’ jobs. In order to fast track some of the scenes that would normally involve a lab filled with a team of scientists, it sort of makes sense for a TV show to speed up the forensic process.
In the case of “NCIS,” Abby and Ducky’s (David McCallum) jobs wouldn’t exist in real life. We don’t mean that forensic analysts and medical examiners aren’t actual jobs — obviously, they are. However, a forensic analyst and medical examiner wouldn’t work within an NCIS building; they wouldn’t have a direct line of communication to an NCIS agent, nor would only there only be one of each. A real-life NCIS field office would work with local state or county medical examiners and labs for forensic evidence and each one would certainly have more than one person working there (via Crime Museum). Gibbs’ team also isn’t the only group of field agents that operates in that branch of NCIS. In that case, Abby and Ducky would have to keep up with Gibbs’ cases and every other agent’s cases. If that were true for real-world counterparts, the overtime costs alone would be astronomical.
For the sake of television, it’s pretty much a necessity to keep the show’s pacing punchy and exciting. Otherwise, each episode would be a victim of the red-taped, glacial pace of real-time forensic sciences.
The team steals Air Force One in the first episode
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In the very first episode of “NCIS,” titled “Yankee White,” the death of a Marine on Air Force One triggers a mess of jurisdictional complications. The ultimate question of this episode is who claims jurisdiction over the death of a Naval commander who dies on Air Force One? Do Gibbs and his team have any right to fly away with the president’s plane in order to hold such jurisdiction?
Ok — let’s break this one down. It’s weird. The second the president walks off the plane, the Secret Service loses jurisdiction, and it gets handed off to FBI, hence FBI Agent Fornell’s (Joe Spano) presence at the crime scene. But in accordance with SECNAV Instruction (via Department of the Navy), since NCIS has a horse in this race in the form of a dead officer, “joint criminal investigations […] conducted with the FBI […] designate NCIS as having exclusive responsibility.” So, in the real world, NCIS actually would have jurisdiction to take custody of the body. But does that really give them the right to snatch the president’s plane to ensure they keep custody? And if they can’t take the plane, how is it that we never hear about anyone getting in trouble for that stunt?
Agent Gibbs’ rules are weird and random
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One of Gibbs’ quirks is his lengthy list of personal and professional rules (via TV Insider).
Some of them make sense in the professional setting of “NCIS.” For instance: Rule number two, “Always wear gloves at a crime scene,” and rule number 10, “Never get personally involved in a case.” Some of the other rules, however, are weird rules to impose on subordinates. Rule nine says, “Never go anywhere without a knife.” Another one, rule eight, says, “Never take anything for granted.” Sure, that’s a good life lesson to teach your kids, but how does that help Gibbs’ team take down the bad guys?
Some rules are slightly weird, while others are downright unnecessary. For example, rule 22 says, “Never mess with a Marine’s coffee if you want to live.” Perhaps a more appropriate and professional version of that sentiment might be, “Please don’t mess with the things I consume. That kind of bothers me. Thanks.” Gibbs’ rules even go so far as proving to viewers that he’s at least a bit paranoid; specifically, there’s rule 36 — “If it feels like you’re being played, you probably are.” Then there’s Rule 40, “If it seems like someone’s out to get you, they are.” Neither of these informal laws of conduct provide much support in work or personal life.
Ducky commits some serious forensic no-no’s
CBS/Netflix
When it comes to forensics, contaminations are one of the worst mess-ups that can happen to an investigation. It’s also the case that biohazardous materials, which can possibly cause illness and contamination, are frequent fliers in a medical examiner’s field. Ducky, who is supposed to be the best at what he does, ought to know how not to contaminate a forensic lab or spread unsanitary materials.
In “Sub Rosa,” Ducky potentially contaminates several areas with biohazardous materials. He meets Abby in her lab after performing an autopsy. As he enters Abby’s area, we can see he is still in his surgical gown and there’s blood smeared all over the front. Blood is considered a biohazard material (via UCSD) and not only does bringing it out of his lab and into Abby’s increase the chances for an infection to break loose, but it could potentially contaminate any other evidence that is present in Abby’s workspace. Gross.
In other episodes, Ducky, among other investigators, commits potential crime scene contamination through lack of proper personal protection equipment. The National Institute of Justice explains that crime scene investigators must have items such as “gloves, booties, hair covering, overalls, and mask,” readily available for a crime scene sweep. Get it together, Ducky.
The team is inexplicably the only force against that one terrorist
CBS/Netflix
The team encounters their very first multi-episode “NCIS” villain near the end of Season 1. By the “NCIS” Season 2 finale, he’s still at large.
But we’re more curious about why a standard criminal investigative team would seemingly be the sole faction charged with taking down terrorist Ari Haswari (Rudolf Martin). Gibbs and his agents typically take on cases that involve far more standard crimes than counterterrorism. In fact, real-life NCIS does include counterterrorism efforts, but that wouldn’t include a team like Gibbs’. The “NCIS” group would probably have to undergo a lot of extra training dedicated to counterterrorism that would hardly ever come up in their day-to-day work. Even after all that, where exactly is the time to get all their other case work done if they’re going after terrorists?
The real-life counterterrorism portions of NCIS would take on a case like Ari’s, and it would probably take years of dedicated work and a lot of information sharing with other federal branches (via NCIS). It’s a safe story arc, especially for the era in which it was originally aired. In the years following 9/11, counterterrorism and heavily inflated patriotism flooded the United States, making this a TV plotline that went over well with American audiences.
The team plays fast and loose with the rules
CBS/Netflix
Bending the rules is one thing, but the way the “NCIS” team actually breaks some laws is on a whole other level.
In one instance, DiNozzo needs access to someone’s home to search for evidence. In any normal circumstance, he’d have to obtain a warrant to get into the house. But to fast track the situation, he creates exigent circumstances to enter the house by hurling a rock through the window. In his mind — and in the show’s mind, apparently — this gives him justification to enter the house. Someone has apparently broken in, which means law enforcement officer DiNozzo should probably go check that out. You know … for evidence.
McGee is the good boy of the group. He can be counted on to always follow the rules and solve the case within the confines of the law. But in “Twisted Sister,” his sister shows up at his door panicking and covered in blood, and the rules fly out the window. McGee uses NCIS resources on the down-low to figure out what happened, and he lies to his superiors in an attempt to protect his sister. When Gibbs finds out McGee is withholding some serious evidence and a prime suspect, he’s really mad. In any normal criminal investigative job, McGee would probably be fired and possibly even prosecuted. It’s one of McGee’s worst moments on “NCIS” without question.
The team treats newbies pretty badly
CBS/Netflix
Next to allowing their employees to thwack each other around the office, the authority figures of “NCIS” apparently have no issue with hazing, either. Since McGee is what the team refers to as a “probie,” he’s often the one on the receiving end of DiNozzo’s cruelty. Sometimes DiNozzo’s wrath is minimized to mild pranking, teasing, or passing of his cases’ scut work; sometimes, it ranges to DiNozzo just plain harassing McGee.
In “Forced Entry,” we see some of the milder forms of abuse McGee deals with. DiNozzo hands McGee Gibbs’ coffee and tell McGee he got it just for him. If you remember Gibbs’ rules, you know not to mess with a Marine’s coffee if you want to remain among the living. But McGee drinks it and spends the first portion of the episode frantically apologizing to Gibbs. Not seconds after, McGee falls victim to another one of DiNozzo’s so-called pranks when McGee tells Kate that DiNozzo invited him to a fundraising party — one whose guest list is filled with “Playboy centerfolds.” In reality, DiNozzo is dragging McGee to sling soup at a homeless shelter and Kate lets him think he’s walking into a 15-year-old boy’s dream party.
DiNozzo makes fun of Agent David’s English
CBS/Netflix
Ziva David (Cote de Pablo) is one of the more capable agents in “NCIS.” She is a highly skilled Mossad officer who joins “NCIS” after Kate’s murder.
Of her many talents as an NCIS field agent, Ziva explains in “Switch” that she knows at least five languages. Clearly, she’s fluent in English. An r/NCIS subreddit suggests she can actually speak up to 10 languages and we see her use a few throughout several “NCIS” episodes. Keeping up with that many languages is practically an Olympic sport, and if Ziva has significant conversational abilities in most of them, if not all 10, that’s pretty darn impressive.
So why the heck is DiNozzo always correcting her? Perhaps if she was just learning to speak English, it may be a nicety on DiNozzo’s part to correct her most obvious mistakes, but she mostly only trips up on English idioms. Idioms are sometimes even difficult for native speakers to get right, so it’s not very nice of DiNozzo to correct her every chance he gets. According to a CBS trivia quiz, DiNozzo only speaks English and Spanish, so maybe he shouldn’t be getting all over Ziva for her English idioms because she’d laugh him right out of eight other styles of conversation.
There are a lot of sexist overtones
CBS/Netflix
“NCIS” spent some time in hot water when fans and critics started asking, “Is NCIS sexist?” A lot of concerns over the show’s depiction of women came about because of Michael Weatherly’s character, DiNozzo.
During the first few seasons, DiNozzo and Kate are constantly bickering about the differences between men and women all while plopping women into two-dimensional stereotypical roles and behaviors. It’s honestly more than a little tacky and cringy. In later seasons, there’s a pretty big shift in DiNozzo and the overall tone of the show, as audiences grew tired of watching the same prejudiced banter (via Express UK).
Fans noticed a shift in “NCIS” personalities around Season 9. But instead of it being a step away from their initial portrayal in earlier seasons – which would probably mean multiple personality rewrites — the shift was designed to allow the show’s women more depth, as opposed to the shallowness we’d previously seen.
Agent Todd experiences the Navy’s discrimination against women on submarines (almost)
CBS/Netflix
The U.S. military has a reputation for being a boys’ club. Women were long excluded from military service in some form or another. In “Sub Rosa,” we see a pretty modern example of that exclusion.
As the episode goes, Gibbs and one of his agents must board a nuclear submarine to solve one of their cases. While Gibbs and Kate are talking to the captain of the boat, he speaks pretty blatantly about the “inconveniences” of a woman boarding. Until 2010, the U.S. Navy banned women from serving on submarines altogether; a woman working on a sub was still considered new and scary to some of the Navy’s old timers. Gibbs’ somehow convinces the captain that Kate is a better person for this job than DiNozzo. Maybe this was the show’s way of proving Gibbs was some kind of chivalrous champion for women.
In real life, Kate would’ve encountered some inconveniences of her own. There were no accommodations for women on submarines at all before the ban was lifted, so sleeping and going to the bathroom on the sub would have been a whole issue for Kate. After 2010, the Navy had to retrofit subs with a surprising number of modifications to include women (via U.S. Veterans Magazine).
DiNozzo is a harassment lawsuit waiting to happen
CBS/Netflix
Apparently, rules are loose guidelines when it comes to the “NCIS” workplace. Even someone like DiNozzo should know when to pump the breaks and start thinking with his head instead of his other appendages.
DiNozzo has nearly no filter when it comes to talking to women, whether it be at work or when he’s off the clock. But since what he does in his own time is up to him, we’re more concerned when he’s trying to pick up women while working cases. In “Forced Entry,” he and Kate are sent to question a suspect at a base hospital. When he approaches the desk to ask the Lieutenant on duty about the suspect, he asks her out to a lunch date so he can go through some routine questions. Uh-huh, sure, DiNozzo. She flashes him a look, as well as her engagement ring, then provides Kate with the necessary information. Even after the rejection, he continues to push by saying that engaged is not technically married and implies she’s on the fence about her wedding. We cringe.
Later, in “Mind Games,” he steals a female colleague’s birth control pills and holds them in the air for her to retrieve like she’s a child, all while saying that she couldn’t possibly need them unless she’s seeing someone. Not a great look, DiNozzo. Not great at all.
Some real-life accuracies are way underappreciated
CBS/Netflix
Despite there being some implausible dramatizations in “NCIS,” the show is also true to real life in ways that many civilians would likely glance over.
The NCIS is, in fact, a very real branch of criminal investigation and their jurisdiction is conveyed more or less accurately throughout the show, even with the roles of Abby and Ducky being out of whack with reality (via NCIS). In an interview with KDKA (via CBS), real-life NCIS agents give credit to “NCIS” and “NCIS LA” for being a “very realistic” depiction of what the organization does for Navy and Marine families. They track down those who violate the U.S. Military Code of Conduct and deal with them accordingly.
In another instance, the episode “Sub Rosa” of “NCIS” shows some surprising accuracies about the life on a U.S. Naval nuclear submarine. Thanks to an inside look from ABC News from 2019, the public learned that the dive procedures, launch sequences, and maintenance protocols in the episode are all the real deal; even the part where sailors take out all the ice cream to fit a dead body in the freezer until they get back to shore, Reddit confirms. These boats won’t go off-schedule for anything.
