Come in two weeks, you’ll be gearing up for two hours of NCIS: going from the nation’s capital with Gibbs and his A-Team at 8pm to the City of Angels with Callen and Hanna at 9pm. NCIS: Los Angeles will follow the Office of Special Projects (OSP), a team of NCIS agents that takes on undercover missions.
NCIS will start season seven with DiNozzo (Michael Weatherly) going behind enemy lines to rescue Ziva (Cote de Pablo) from her captors, while OSP takes on a kidnapping case as Callen returns to work after his near brush with death. Shane Brennan, one of the main writers and executive producers of NCIS, is the executive producer of NCIS: LA. He also wrote “Legend”, the two-part backdoor pilot that debuted last spring and recently last week to introduce OSP, which will have joint investigations with their counterparts. For instance, forensic expert Abby Sciuto (Pauley Perrette) will assist them in the second episode “Kill Shot”, as NCIS Director Leon Vance (Rocky Carroll) will be recurring in six of the 13 episodes.
It has been a decade since a Chosen One and a vampire with a soul fought the good fight in separate towns on the same night on the same network, and now it is happening again on Tuesday nights. What’s going to make NCIS: LA a hit is the onscreen chemistry between leads O’Donnell and LL, as Callen and Hanna’s “bromance” is going to be one of the elements that drives the show, along with spending — hopefully — throughout the series finding out more about the “Legend” behind G. Callen.
The downside, though, is the title NCIS: Los Angeles. Why not just name the series NCIS: Office of Special Projects the first year, and then name it OSP from now on? It worked for NCIS, who started out as Navy NCIS in season one, and the rest, they say, is history, or in this case, it’s “Legend”.
NCIS: Los Angeles premieres September 22 at 9pm on CBS.
