NCIS shocked fans by killing off Director Leon Vance (Rocky Carroll) in the 500th episode. In the rest of Season 23, an interim director filled that open position at the agency and was never seen. But, as the finale revealed, LaRoche (Seamus Dever), the former deputy director and now U.S. associate attorney general, seems to have his eye on the seat with a very pointed look in its direction in a conversation in the office with Parker (Gary Cole). So, does that mean that he could be the next director, at least temporarily?
Well, for now, it doesn’t sound like there are any plans to fill that spot permanently, based on what executive producer Steven D. Binder told TV Insider after the Season 23 finale. The reason that Vance lasted as long as he did, 18 seasons, is “a testament to Rocky Carroll,” he said.
Binder pointed out that at the beginning of the series, the director of the agency wasn’t a series regular Alan Dale recurred as Tom Morrow, appearing in seven episodes across the first three seasons. In fact, he appeared in the same number of episodes after he’d left the position, in Seasons 10-13.
“The structure of the show didn’t really support [the director being a] regular fixture,” Binder explained. “Sure, if you want to do the cliche thing where the boss is telling you, ‘Speed up the case,’ or ‘SecNav’s leaning down my neck,’ or things like that. But we skipped by those sort of classic, and by classic, I don’t mean great, types of storytelling. And I think that partially is responsible for some of the early success of NCIS, is we just didn’t do things the regular way. So the role of the director was not necessarily supposed to be all there all the time.”
After Morrow came Jenny Shepard (Lauren Holly), who also had a past with Gibbs (Mark Harmon). She was a regular for three seasons before being killed off. “She was fantastic, but it was just very difficult to write that character in, which is why we wrote her off partially,” said the EP.
After Jenny came Vance, and Carroll was initially not going to be a series regular. “We were going to use a director sporadically and sparingly when we felt like we needed it here and there. And what ended up happening was Rocky was just such a fantastic actor and such a great guy to work with that he just ended up being in the show more and more. Even though structurally, it still sometimes was difficult to find a novel and interesting place for a supervisor to show up, because that’s really what he was. He was a supervisor. He wasn’t really doing the work. And sometimes we did episodes that were all about him, and those were some of our best episodes. But as a supervisor character, that’s not necessarily great storytelling,” Binder shared.
“So, when Rocky exited the show, we weren’t feeling like, ‘My gosh, we need to get a manager back in here. We need to get that supervisor character back in here.’ Unless there’s a strong reason to do it, again, we’ve been letting the stories dictate where we go with the director chair,” he continued. “And other than playing the loss of Vance, and that sort of has given us some things to play about, OK, what’s going to happen now? The idea that we all landed on and gravitated to is we want to address that because we have to, and then we want to get back to telling stories with our core four [Parker, Sean Murray‘s McGee, Katrina Law‘s Knight, and Wilmer Valderrama‘s Torres] and Kasie [Diona Reasonover] and Jimmy Palmer [Brian Dietzen] down in autopsy and telling the best stories we can there. And that usually doesn’t mean involving a supervisor.”
So, for now, they’re going to see how it goes for Season 24. That could very well include what’s going on with LaRoche.
“We’ve sort of played this game with him a little more than — he’s fantastic, too, by the way — we’d initially intended. And I think that’s also because when we’re looking for stories to tell,” Binder said, noting at the time that the writers were on hiatus, so they haven’t started breaking next season’s stories. “But I think we’re going to play out his story probably once and for all in regards to his designs, and then we’ll see where that lands us. The designs are what is the best story. … I think one of the other secrets to our success is we don’t make these grand decisions upfront and then try and service them because sometimes, and oftentimes, and most of the times, things just want to go a certain way. And if you’ve already decided you’re going to do this, it handcuffs you, and then you can’t go off in interesting and surprising ways.”
What are you hoping to see when it comes to the agency’s director next season? Let us know in the comments section below.
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