NCIS season 19 spoilers: Will there be more standalone cases?

Yesterday, we reported that the NCIS season 19 premiere is going to dovetail into a few more stories like it after the fact. The show is going to spend a little while on this search for a serial killer, which is the sort of thing that also complicates Gibbs’ future. For the time being, it’s not altogether clear whether he will return to the team or even if the character will die.

What we can go ahead and tell you is this: You are eventually going to have a chance to see more standalone cases. The show will be getting back to its bread and butter before too long.

Watch our NCIS season 18 finale review! In this discussion we get into the Gibbs cliffhanger, plus what happened to Bishop. After you check that out we suggest that you SUBSCRIBE to Matt & Jess on YouTube. That’s the #1 way to ensure that you don’t miss other updates coming this season.

Speaking in a new interview with TVLine, show executive producer Steven D. Binder confirmed that there was a real desire to eventually get back to the story-of-the-week format after the serial-killer arc, mostly because this is such a huge part of what the show is:

…After we put some of these things to bed that we have been running with for a while [with the serial-killer arc], one of the things we said to ourselves was, “Let’s get back to some interesting cases without any overarching arcs.” Out of 400-plus episodes, 360 of them are described that way, but we’ve been not doing that for a while, so I think it’s time for us to sort of regroup and get back to telling good mysteries of the week with interesting characters, interesting stories, emotional hooks, and a satisfying ending.

We do think eventually we’ll have another arc or something close to it, but we could be waiting a little while to see it. We think a part of going back to story-of-the-week episodes is tied to the show wanting to make sure they keep its core audience. One of the appealing things about NCIS over the years is that viewers can watch an episode, miss one, and then come back and watch again without needing a lot of information that they missed. It is built to be a quick hour of escapism for people out there.

Related – Get some more news when it comes to Gibbs’ status at present

Are you glad that NCIS season 19 will have some standalone cases?

Be sure to share right now in the attached comments! Once you do just that, remember to stick around — there are more updates ahead that you don’t want to miss. (Photo: CBS.)

This article was written by Jess Carter. Be sure to follow her on Twitter.