9x14 (#200) "Life before his eyes", 07/02/12

Christina: Any NCIS scoop you care to share?
Sharing is caring, so here's what we can tell you: The show is currently looking to cast the possibly recurring role of Elaine, a friendly waitress who knows her regulars well. She'll first appear in the monumental 200th episode.

NCIS Team Teases 'What If?' Episode No. 200: 'It's About a Pivotal Moment That Gibbs Faces'

elevision’s most watched scripted series, CBS’ NCIS, will have Jethro Gibbs travel down assorted roads not taken when the 200th episode, airing Feb. 7 and titled “Life Before His Eyes,” explores some “What If…?” scenarios à la the 1998 movie Sliding Doors.

NCIS showrunner Gary Glasberg, who got the idea for the landmark episode over the summer, tells TVLine, “It very much is about a pivotal moment that Gibbs faces, and it literally looks back at key moments through nine years of NCIS where decisions had to be made, and had people gone in one direction instead of another, how the world would have ended up.”

In revisiting the past through a new lens, Glasberg says there will be familiar faces, old faces, and faces the fans didn’t think they’d see again…. It was a lot of fun. It was a challenge, but it was a lot of fun.”

But in addition to some blasts from the past, the “alt-reality” adventure — which takes place in large part at the heretofore ever seen diner where Gibbs gets his morning coffee — will serve up fresh takes on familiar relationships. For example, viewers will see Tony and Ziva meet first the first time under very, very different circumstances, in a timeline where Kate’s NCIS desk was never freed up.

“For the first time, I didn’t know what was going to happen [in a scene],” Michael Weatherly says of the encounter. “I literally had to concoct in my mind seven years of ‘What if there was no Ziva in Tony’s life, how would he have been different?’” And Cote de Pablo did same. “The character that she brought into the room was so different from her normal Ziva,” Weatherly reports. “And I came in with my own tweak” — though not rocking “a full Tom Selleck ‘stache,” as he had hoped.

Such revamped relationships and odd proverbial bedfellows are served up for all of the long-running characters. “There are some real weird, dreamlike juxtapositions,” Rocky Carroll tells me, though Vance is still the officious NCIS Director. “There are a lot of surreal, ‘How did we all end up at the same table?’ kind of moments, and the audience is going to love that.”

There’s also some truly shocking moments, such as one that comes in a scene Glasberg screened for the press at the Television Critics Association winter tour on Wednesday afternoon. In that clip, in the aforementioned under-a-bridge diner, Gibbs is approached by a hooded stranger toting a pistol. And just as Jethro begins to ID himself, a shot is fired from someone’s gun.

All told, Glasberg tells me, Gibbs comes away from the illuminating episode with “the realization that the decisions he has made were meant to be. And as he looks around NCIS, he realizes that this is where he should be.”

And how.

[Shannon] di fronte a Gibbs sul set di una tavola calda, con la loro ugualmente defunta figlia accanto a lei, questa angelica rossa sta cercando di convincere il più tormentato eroe della TV che la sua vita non è stata così tragica. "Se non fossimo morte, tu non saresti mai diventato un agente," dice, menzionando con commozione le vite che ha salvato come diretto risultato dell'assassinio della sua famiglia.

"Life Before His Eyes" è per Gibbs l'episodio a "La vita è meravigliosa", in cui ha un momento di mortale terrore e immagina una serie di scenari in una realtà alterata che rivelano come sarebbero potute essere le vite di tutti i personaggi, se avesse preso alcune decisioni diverse lungo la via.

Alcuni sono morti e alcuni sono vivi, in questa tavola calda dell'aldilà piena di doppelganger. Sean Murray sta passando per il set con i capelli più scuri, pettinati diversamente, il che suggerisce che anche i personaggi regolari, come McGee, stanno sperimentando realtà alterate nella fantasia di Gibbs. "Adoro fare questo tipo di cose surreali, oniriche," dice Murray. "L'episodio parla di: e se le cose fossero andate diversamente? E se McGee e Abby fossero sposati?"

"Nella mia particolare realtà del 200° episodio," dice Cote de Pablo, "non sono mai diventata un agente dell'NCIS." Questo perchè il suo predecessore, Kate Todd, non è mai stata uccisa - quindi nessun bisogno di un sostituto importato da Israele. Tony ha un vago ricordo di aver visto di sfuggita Ziva sette anni fa "ma la prossima volta che ci incontriamo è adesso, e io ho diretto diverse missioni per tutta Europa, ed è la vecchia Ziva - forte e diretta e sensuale. E' una grande scena, solo tra me e Michael, con di nuovo la tensione originale. Il che pone la domanda: l'attrazione è inevitabile? E lo è abbastanza."

NCIS | I’ve got a few more scooplets about Episode 200, which I first told you about last week. For starters, the scene that the press got a sneak peek at, involving Gibbs in his diner and a shooting? Yeah, that happens — meaning it’s not one of the “What if?” scenarios imagined by Jethro during the hour (which show boss Gary Glasberg says has a “a Christmas Carol quality to it”). Glasberg also confirmed there is an appearance by rogue Mossad agent Ari Haswari in the same episode – and that’s far from the only blast from the past to expect. Oh, and the first meeting between Tony and Ziva that I told us about? I neglected to mention what Cote de Pablo revealed – that it involves an “interrogation.”

Tony DiNozzo married? Ziva David in handcuffs?

Here’s your first look at the big interrogation scene from next Tuesday’s landmark 200th episode of “NCIS,” which puts an “It’s a Wonderful Life”-style spin on TV’s No. 1 drama.

Fans are used to seeing flirtatious — and single — NCIS agents Tony (Michael Weatherly) and Ziva (Cote de Pablo) on the same side of the table, but in this alternate reality, a married Tony is putting the screws to Ziva, who’s still a Mossad officer.

“The interrogation is between them as if they hadn’t met” six seasons ago, says “NCIS” showrunner Gary Glasberg, who adds that the scenario is meant to explore how their never meeting “would have affected Tony in his world and Ziva in her world.”

The scene is part of the fallout of “a situation” that NCIS boss Jethro Gibbs (Mark Harmon) experiences, which makes him wonder about how decisions he’s made in the past have effected the lives of those around him.

his deduco sia Gibbs.. la conferma la darebbe il sapere se torna Lauren Holly o meno ma se torna mi sa che è una sorpresa.. Quindi boh.

And for that 200th episode, Glasberg says, "We came up with a unique, unexpected story to help us look back on everything prior. You're going to see faces you haven't seen in a long time." Among them: Gibbs' murdered wife Shannon and daughter Kelly, plus recently deceased Mike Franks. Alas, Lauren Holly's Jenny Shepard... likely not.