gibbs

And so ends the sixth season of NCIS. For some reason, I didn't think the show would even last one season, but sometimes a show just surprises you with how strong it does in the ratings. If anything, the show has gotten stronger as the years have gone on. It survived the departure of its creator and has hung around long enough to spawn a spinoff this fall, with Chris O'Donnell and LL Cool J. No name for that show yet. Any ideas? They'll probably think of something with an "NCIS" and a ":" in it.

Next Wednesday, CBS will be announcing its schedule for the new season, and while rumors have swirled that Cold Case or Without A Trace might be on the chopping block -- despite good ratings -- one sure thing seems to be the spinoff from NCIS.

Well, now that I've seen the two-part NCIS episode that served as a pilot for the show, I'm hoping that CBS gives this new series a thumbs-down. I don't expect that to happen, but if it were my decision, I wouldn't dump a solid series with a loyal viewership like Cold Case or Without A Trace, for the hope of LL Cool J and Chris O'Donnell's overly fussy, overly procedural NCIS derivative step-child.

(S06E01) All summer long, NCIS fans have been simmering about how the team was broken up in the season finale. It was bad enough that Jenny had died and a new director -- well, actually, the acting director -- was named to take her place, but then his first action was to reassign DiNozzo, McGee and David and give Gibbs three new agents. As the ads for NCIS reminded us, "breaking up is hard to do."

Well, I'm relieved to report that the team may not be together, but they're still intact. It's not as confusing as it seems and if you watched tonight's return, it was clear that the powers that be knew what they were doing with the storyline. Picking up 126 days since the break up, you got the sense that Jethro was nearly as vexed about the changes as Abby, even though he was refraining from putting pictures and postcards on the bulletin board.

For more about how all the pieces of the puzzle have come together so that those that are scattered can still be whole, read after the jump.