CBS
In their official report on streaming data for 2023, Nielsen listed NCIS as the third-most-viewed program, trailing only on-demand babysitter Bluey and the curious post-facto new-to-Netflix juggernaut Suits. The CBS procedural, spun off in 2003 as the order to the similarly Navy-oriented JAG’s law, racked up a cumulative total of 39.4 billion minutes in front of our eyeballs; last year alone, the human race spent nearly 75 millennia watching Special Agent Leroy Jethro Gibbs get the drop on no-goodniks around the DC metro area. His closest competitors in spirit, the various public service squads peopling the Dick Wolf-verse over on NBC, didn’t even crack the top 10.
A logical person might assume that there must be something special about a cultural object of such remarkable popularity and longevity, but during tonight’s double season premiere for NCIS and fourth spinoff NCIS: Hawai’i, the opposite appears true. The bone-deep ordinariness of this franchise is its greatest strength, or at least its secret to success with viewers in search of programming that demands so little of them, it can feasibly be watched all the time forever. Forget “challenging,” this school of TV production barely even aspires to “stimulating,” instead going for a pleasant numbing effect not unlike a strong dose of morphine or the final stages before one freezes to death.
As the flagship series launches its 21st season, some anxiety about aging would’ve been understandable. After all, longtime lead Mark Harmon left during the 19th, and replacing his squad supervisor—even with the stalwart, dependable Gary Cole, his confident baritone assuring us that the American people are in good hands—could’ve provoked a full-on existential crisis in the writing staff. But no: The premiere is standard operating procedure. It follows up on a cliffhanger that saw agent Torres (Wilmer Valderrama, erstwhile Fez of That ’70s Show) remanded to the prison where he’d just done an undercover stint, checked back in under his own name after confessing to the murder of his boyhood abuser (Al Sapienza, perhaps best known as The Sopranos’ Mikey “Mr. GQ” Palmice). Of course there’s more to the situation than that, but he’ll have to make it through a dark night of the soul before anyone proves it, during which he gets to do lots of the thoughtful glowering that constitutes Serious Acting under the CBS Method.