Who will be the new boss on NCIS? It sounds like even the producers don’t know yet, although the cast has ideas!
NCIS has seen a lot of cast changes over its long run, but this season is still a shocker. After 18 years as Director Leon Vance, Rocky Carroll left the series in March after Vance was shockingly killed off. That means the NCIS team needs a new director.
Episodes have mentioned a rotating list of acting directors, at least one of whom turned out to be corrupt. It’ll be a bit before we get a new regular star in the cast, although the fans have ideas and so do the actors.
Talking to TVLine at the CBS Fest, Brian Dietzen, who plays Jimmy Palmer, chimed in with his ideas as he admitted showrunner Steven D. Binder has kept the cast in the dark as to who the new director can be.
"My preference, I'd like to see a familiar face. Especially with all the tumult of losing Director Vance, I would like to see a familiar face there, so that we kind of know what our bearings are. But for the rest of this season, I think it's fair to say we're not getting anyone set in stone quite yet."
Both Dietzen and Wilmer Valderrama, who plays Nick Torres, suggested a great candidate would be Parker (Gary Cole), who’s already a veteran team leader. Valderrama said, “My vote was always this guy, but he also likes to be in the field. It’s an opportunity to shake things up. It's an opportunity to create new waves, and we'll see what happens.”
Cole himself actually argued that Parker wouldn’t be a good choice as director, as “he’s got a little too many anger issues.” (That’s putting it mildly). He hinted the writers have "played around with something that happens in reality, which is that it'll be a position that possibly isn't filled, or there are interim people that just keep parading through."
He seems likely the position will be filled for good for season 24, but who will it be?
Binder himself reminded TVLine that before Carroll joined the show, the NCIS director wasn’t that important a position in the storylines. It was Carroll’s talent that elevated the role to importance, and perhaps it’s not going to be the same without him.
"Prior to him appearing, we had a director we saw every now and then... When Rocky came on the show, he wasn't originally in that many episodes. He was sort of an as-needed kind of thing. And he grew the role and got more and more episodes each year, and then became the role. So you almost retire the jersey with him."
That suggests the director role may not be as vital in the future. Binder added that they were never focusing on filling the role right away, as they wanted to focus on the team dynamics and morning Vance. He also related that it’s unlikely a team member like Parker will be promoted to the spot, as it will throw off the team chemistry.
Obviously, fans would love to see Mark Harmon return as Gibbs becoming the new director would be a brilliant turn. It's probably not going to happen, although some other past character surprisingly coming back to now be the boss would be fun. Then again, the director might just end up being someone mentioned while never seen.
Yet Binder isn’t ruling out signing someone on, as “now if we can find a way to have a director who's also really involved in the cases somehow, that might be interesting... But that's what we're thinking about."
It does seem more likely that the series does have some famous TV actor coming in as the new director with only a scene or two per episode. It would also fit for an outsider now running the NCIS office and handling their unusual cases. We’ll see how it unfolds, as either way, a new boss after nearly two decades is one of NCIS’s biggest shakeups yet.
NCIS airs Tuesdays at 8/7c on CBS.
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