NCIS gives us two blasts from the past in the Tuesday, November 4, episode: mentions of a past team member (now starring on his own spinoff) and McGee’s (Sean Murray) nom de plume.
Near the beginning of the episode, Dr. Palmer (Brian Dietzen) walks into the bullpen with a tux. McGee remarks on the “fancy clothes — don’t tell me it’s picture day.” Palmer wishes, still hung up on the piece of kale he thinks you can see in his teeth in his. “Barely,” McGee assures him. Palmer asks about the “stash of shoe polish in Tony’s secret desk compartment,” since McGee took over Tony’s (Michael Weatherly, now starring on NCIS: Tony & Ziva on Paramount+) desk when he left and the once probie became the senior field agent.
“No, HR cleared that out years ago,” McGee says. “All I got here is some allergy medication and nasal spray. I’m not sure Tony would approve.”
This mention of Tony comes after the Paramount+ spinoff listed McGee and other NCIS characters on Tony and Ziva’s wedding guest list in a flashback in its first season; ultimately, none of them were seen onscreen, nor was there even a wedding. But with Tony & Ziva‘s first season ending with the pair solidly back together, who knows what’s possible in the future (if it’s renewed)?
“I would love some kind of a crossover. I really would. I think the whole franchise is wonderful. I got to know Brian a little bit at Comic-Con. He just seems like he’s a riot. I think as both a showrunner and a fan, I think that’d be fun if we can work it out,” Tony & Ziva showrunner John McNamara told TV Insider. “Part of the challenge, though, is, I don’t see a universe in which this show is not shot in Europe and they’re in LA or New Orleans or Sydney or Hawai’i. So, that’s a little bit of a challenge just in terms of scheduling, but things can work out. You never know.”
Then, during the course of the investigation, McGee and Torres (Wilmer Valderrama) encounter a book club and one of the members recognizes McGee. “I’m sorry, you’re him, aren’t you? Thom E. Gemcity,” she asks, referring to the name under which McGee writes. She never forgets an author’s photo. But when McGee offers to sign a copy, she reveals, “I’ve never read one. Those kinds of pulp thrillers aren’t really my cup of tea.” It gets even more awkward when she remarks that their person of interest is “like a real-life character from a spy thriller,” McGee comments on her not reading thrillers, and she tells him, “I didn’t read your thrillers.” When he later finds out the book club is an underground railroad for abused women, he says that explains why she hadn’t read his books.
This mention seems to be setting the stage for an upcoming episode that Murray teased for us at the start of the season.
“McGee is also a writer and he writes his Deep Six novels that he bases his characters on, people around him, and has a little writing career. And we actually have a really fun episode that we’re gearing up to do where we dive deep into basically one of those books and characters that McGee is working on,” Murray said in October. “We get to meet McGee’s characters and we get to see him asking his characters for advice. It’s a really cool episode we have coming up.”
Added Gary Cole, “It’s very, very different for the show.”
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