Last night NCIS reached an incredibly impressive milestone with its 300th (!!) episode last night on CBS.
Much like its silver fox star Mark Harmon, the show is looking good for its years. The 18th episode of the third season ‘Scope’ centered around a shooting of an off- duty officer by American- made bullets, which leads them to a former sniper (played by Taye Diggs) for help on tracing the gun’s origins. There’s the standard case- of- the- week set up, but really the episode is about Gibbs (Harmon) and Diggs’ respective wounded warriors, providing a nice tinge of resonance for the show’s 300th.
The episode also featured MusiCorps, a real life organization that helps veterans heal through music. “We were blown away by what they do, and what they accomplish, and how they work, and we decided that we wanted to build a story around it,” showrunner Gary Glasberg, who also co- wrote the episode, told Parade.
NCIS premiered all the way back in 2003. While it didn’t get great ratings at first within a few seasons, it soon became one of CBS’s most popular shows and was even voted as America’s favorite television show multiple times by Harris Poll (Mark Harmon was just voted favorite television personality this year, too. Do not deny the power of the silver fox.) Much like CSI, the success of the show has produced successful spin- offs. NCIS: Los Angeles (the one with LL Cool J) debuted in 2009 and NCIS: New Oreleans (the Scott Bakula one) in 2014.
The show has largely maintained its original cast with a few exceptions (fare thee well, Ziva.) As hinted in the episode, DiNozzo (Michael Weatherly) will also be leaving the show at the end of this season. Weatherly said goodbye on twitter in January. “Les Moonves & CBS gave me the opportunity of a lifetime,” Weatherly tweeted. “DiNozzo is a wonderful, quixotic character & I couldn’t have had more fun playing him over the past 13 seasons.” Though we’ll be bidding farewell to DiNozzo, we won’t have to wait long to see Weatherly again on CBS. According to Entertainment Weekly, Weatherly has just been cast in Bull, a show based on Dr. Phil’s early days analyzing juries as a trial consultant. Weatherly’s character has ” a physicality and feral intelligence that make him magnetic to women, and a bruising candor,” just like Dr. Phil.
Congratulations to NCIS, here’s to the next 300.
