‘NCIS’ season 12 spoilers: Mark Harmon’s Gibbs versus pirates
Who’s in the mood for a little swashbuckling? While we have a hard time thinking that it is this type of pirates that we are going to see Agent Gibbs taking on during the October 21 episode of “NCIS,” wouldn’t that make things so much more fun?
Here is what we know about this installment right now. The title for the episode is “The San Dominick,” and the story revolves around a joint Coast Guard and NCIS training event that goes terribly awry. We have the return of Diane Neal as CGIS Agent Borin, and also a guest appearance from frequent “Supernatural” guest star Jim Beaver to boot. Take a look at the synopsis below for some further details:
“During a joint Coast Guard and NCIS training exercise at sea, Gibbs and CGIS Agent Borin spot a deceased man overboard, who is discovered to be a missing crew member from a ship 60 nautical miles away. Upon boarding the ship for questioning, Gibbs finds himself on a vessel that has been commandeered by pirates.”
This episode will probably feel a little more like “Captain Phillips” than anything, and it may be one of the best episodes that Mark Harmon has gotten a chance to do in a little while. He has remained the front of the series, but save for a few episodes here and there like the finale of last season, most of the time the supporting characters tend to take more of the limelight when it comes to personal stories.
What do you think about the idea of this episode? Share some of your thoughts right now with a comment, and head over to the link here to get the latest “NCIS” preview right now! Also, be sure to sign up to get some further TV updates right now on everything we cover via our CarterMatt Newsletter.
Photo: CBS
sadtonyfan
October 4, 2014 @ 3:59 am
What are they talking about? Nearly every episode features super Gibbs. Personally I wish that this series could return to the premise of being about a team of agents who fight Navy crimes, but it has become the super Gibbs hour. In the season premier it was Gibbs versus helicopter crash, wolves, heavily armed mercinaries. This episode seems to feature Gibbs versus pirates. Why is the spoiler pretending that Gibbs being the only one who the writers care to write any significant stories for is such a rarity? That’s just plain BS. This is just another in a long line of super Gibbs feature episodes. I’m sick of super Gibbs. And notice how they start promoting a month in advance. They don’t do that with anyone elses episodes.
liz laughlin
October 6, 2014 @ 8:53 pm
I understand your pain but I don’t think complaining will do that much good. They were paying Michael Weatherly about $250,000 per episode on his previous contract and on this round of negotiations, he was the holdout. He now has his own production company and I don’t know how that fits in to things but I imagine that he is making $300,000 per ep. or higher now. So, why pay him all that money and not use him more?
This show has always been the Mark Harmon show. I think that Gibbs was originally supposed to be Bellisario’s alter ego. There is a story that Harmon never really liked the way that the Gibbs character was written and so he went to DP Bellisario and asked him to make Gibbs more flamboyant. Bellisario refused to change the character . If this story is true, that could have contributed to the problems between the men and Bellisario’s departure as show runner. (Bellisario was forbidden to have any input to the creative process after he left. That seems very harsh to treat the show’s creator like that.) As I said above, I think that Bellisario created Gibbs as his alter ego. Both Gibbs and Bellisario were retired Marine Corps Gunnery Sergeants Both had four wives. Gibbs, I think was Bellisario’s way to live out a fantasy. Since it was his fantasy he was not likely to change the character for Harmon.
It may be that keeping Gibbs (a character that Harmon really didn’t like that much) as the center of things is a contract demand that keeps Harmon on board. NCIS is Harmon’s greatest and most lucrative acting endeavor Another interesting thing is that Glasberg recently said that one of the things he needed to deal with was the suggestions from above. It could also be that TPTB are micro-managing the show. The problem with that is Michael Weatherly has always had Les Moonves as a fan. If Weatherly played hardball with TPTB, his lack of prominence in the show may be like taking him to the woodshed for a good spanking These are just some ideas to think about. I am a big fan of Bellisario’s work, both JAG and NCIS..
sadtonyfan
October 7, 2014 @ 12:45 am
Seems pretty petty and unprofessional if they are punishing Tony fans in order to punish Michael Weatherly for wanting to be paid in a manner commensurate with his importance to and time spent dedicating his career to the show. I think he’s being punished too and I fear his high Q score may be more damaging to his NCIS writing than if his Q score had been safely below other more favored actors. Who knows? It’s pure speculation to be sure. But I can say with absolute certainty that the show has since Ziva (who used to be the other character who had constant focus) left, become far too super Gibbs heavy and this is a sad and wasteful limitation. The other thing I can say with absolute certainty is that Michael Weatherly’s immensely popular Tony DiNozzo has been for many years devolved, diminished in importance, and generally demeaned for many years, and from what little I’ve read of tptb’s “plans” for Tony seem to indicate more of the same, only with even less significance than before. He and Abby are the only ones who seem not to rate any upcoming drama that doesn’t seem to be more than the C plot and they topped their categories in Q scores. Go figure.
liz laughlin
October 7, 2014 @ 3:49 am
I’m just guessing at what’s going on. If Weatherly has some outside projects in the works, maybe he doesn’t want a lot of work on NCIS right now. I’ve also thought that maybe since Weatherly defended Cote de Pablo’s decision to leave, that might have caused problems with TPTB. Most of the other cast members didn’t say much about it.. Even though CBS and Cote are now singing Kumbaya together, everything leading up to her departure indicated problems.
It’s really hard to say but you are not the only one who has complained about the lack of Tony centered episodes. As a fan of Tony, the upside for you is that he did sign a contract . He’s not going anywhere. They probably will have a Tony centered episode sometime in the future. Last season you had to wait for The Admiral’s Daughter to see Tony carry the ball for the team. Good Luck on this.
liz laughlin
October 3, 2014 @ 6:19 pm
Since Gibbs is the main character and Harmon is the highest paid actor on the show, it seems that we should be seeing a lot of him. The first two episodes had a lot of Mark Harmon but I guess this has more of his personal life? The real positive here is that we will see the return of Diane Neal, a top notch actress.