NCIS TV Guide Article

For those of you who do not want to waste the $3.50 for the new TV guide, here's the NCIS article.

At the end of NCIS' sixth season, the love-hate relationship between "Tiva" --Michael Weatherly's Tony and Cote de Pablo's Ziva-- came to a dramatic head. But not a romantic one. Tony killed Ziva's Mossad-agent boyfriend, which didn't bolster chances of interoffice romance. Then boss man Gibbs (Mark Harmon) downsized Ziva while they were visiting Israel, leaving her to be kidnapped and beaten in the flashforward final scene. Are fans finally satisfied Tiva will never become a couple?

"They're still hoping something will happen," says Weatherly. "And [those fans] are not alone. Cote's also hoping something will happen. What can I say? I'm like the Death Star turning on the tractor beam. I have to be careful walking through the house. If there are any loose metal objects, they fly across the room and get stuck. That's how I roll. Magnetic Man."

Sigh. We could use straighter answers. For those we go to executive produce Shane Brennan...aka Enigmatic Man. Does he thinks fans were happy with how the Tiva arc wrapped up?

"What makes you think it's wrapped up?" says Brennan. He knows half the audience wants a more emotional Tony 'n' Ziva epiphany and half would dread it, so he has to play both sides: "We'll be resolving it in a way the vast bulk of the audience will find very satisfying."

Don't worry, the rest of the ensemble hasn't been forgotten. "We've got a very cool arc planned for Abby [Pauley Perrett], and a very cool arc for McGee [Sean Murray]," Brennan says. After last season's flirtation, could those be... the same arc? He won't say, but "McAbby" could just beat Tiva to first base. As for Gibbs, who's had a long-mysterious hobby at home, "The boat's gone from his basement," Brennan says. "What the hell is Gibbs gonna put in there? So he's on a particular journey as well. I'll just say the boat returns in a most unexpected way." (During sweeps, if you must know!)

In the meantime, Tony is interviewing Ziva' replacements. "They're all beautiful. Television, right?" Weatherly shrugs. "A line 20-deep of young, attractive, eligible law-enforcement women-- that's a heady, musky brew for Tony, and he's figuratively engorged. But he's concerned and conflicted. He'd like Ziva at the desk. The first episode is filled with twists, and we'll delve deeper and finally strike a nerve inside Tony. It's a root-canal season premiere."

When we visited the set, Weatherly was in camouflage gear, sweaty, bloody and freshly beaten. So either he's gone off to rescue Ziva, or else the actor met with trouble while jogging in the 99-degree heat around the show's Valencia, California soundstage. Most likely the former, though this is top-secret stuff.

"This is my African look," he says. "But I've been instructed not to talk about that. I can say I've never had as much fun and as wild a time as I have on this episode. You know when you're really thirsty and you have a piece of Juicy Fruit gum? And every gland in your mouth just starts squirting, like there's a leak under your tongue? That's how I've felt filming this. It's that exciting. An endocrinologist would watch this premiere and feel that glandularly we are in danger of an overload." Sounds juicy! --Chris Willman