‘NCIS’ season 14 premiere review: Alex Quinn, Nick Torres’ debut a winning one

Going into the season 14 premiere of “NCIS,” we admittedly carried with us a certain degree of trepidation. We lost Michael Weatherly, and as a result of that, we feared a dramatic change in the team’s dynamic. He was a source of comedic relief, a great personality, and someone beloved by fans.

Now that we’ve said all of that, didn’t this turn out a little better than we expected? For a premiere, we got a lot done here in between taking on a case and effectively introducing Alex Quinn (Jennifer Esposito) and Nick Torres (Wilmer Valderrama), two people from very different backgrounds who proved to be tremendous assets in their own way for the team. For Alex, she was a longtime teacher who had no problem challenging people with big personalities, and that includes Gibbs. Their dynamic for one episode in was fantastic, witty, smart, and really entertaining.

Meanwhile, for Nick what we saw was a guy so used to doing things his own way that he had a hard time adapting to a team mentality. This was a tad more uneven, given that for much of the episode we saw him stuck into that role of “rebellious rogue agent who needs to be put in his place.” That can be a challenging thing to watch if it goes on for a long time, so hopefully the show got a lot of that out of its system in the premiere and we can move forward.

Overall, there were some fun moments, whether it be McGee and Bishop getting used to the changes in seating to Quinn telling Gibbs off for repeatedly getting rid of many of her recommendations. “NCIS” is thankfully still “NCIS,” the show that we remember and the show so many loved. We do miss Michael, but we’d consider this to be a solid start to a show that has managed to entertain even after almost a decade and a half on the air. Grade: B.

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