‘NCIS’ season 11 spoilers: Cote de Pablo’s exit addressed by CBS boss

While CBS may have already addressed the decision by Cote de Pablo to leave “NCIS” after eight years on the job earlier this summer, the network’s boss Les Moonves decided to yet again address the topic during his Television Critics Association panel Monday morning. It only seems appropriate that he would want to since the network and the CBS TV studio have been questioned vigorously on Twitter the past week or so, with there also being Twitter trending topics out there hoping to convince them to bring the actress back.

However, Moonves reasserted the previous statement that this really was Cote’s decision to leave the show, and that there were even salary increases made during negotiations in order to try and convince her to stay for season 11 rather than to depart early on:

“I really want to clarify: We offered Cote de Pablo a lot of money — and then we offered her even more money. We really didn’t want to lose her, we love her. We think she’s terrific. We obviously were in discussions … ultimately she decided she didn’t want to do the show. It was her decision. We don’t like losing anybody. We did everything humanly possible [and] exhausted every opportunity, and she just decided she didn’t want to do the show.”

Moonves still did not comment on whether or not Ziva will leave “NCIS” in a means that will allow her to return someday, or if the character will be killed off. We’ll say this, based on our experience studying numerous situations like this: If the character is killed off, there are only three reasons for it.

1. The actor made it clear that they were not interested in ever returning to the show, which would create story problems as it would not be something their character would do. A good example of that is the death of Matthew Crawley on “Downton Abbey,” as he would not abandon his wife and son.

2. The character’s death services the future of the show. One good example of this is Eric Dane on “Grey’s Anatomy.” He never wanted to leave, but killing Mark forced the other character to examine their own lives, and eventually led to the foundation of the Grey-Sloan Memorial Hospital.

3. The actor has unfortunately passed in real life (see John Ritter, more recently what “Glee” plans to do with Cory Monteith’s passing).

If you have yet to see what Pauley Perrette said this weekend about Cote’s death, you can find this and other season 11 scoop out over at the link here.

Photo: CBS