By AMY CHOZICK

LOS ANGELES—The biggest hit on television this season doesn't generate much buzz. Critics shun it, awards ceremonies overlook it. Its stars rarely hit the red carpet.

Yet CBS's crime-fighting procedural "NCIS" attracts about 22 million viewers each week, more than any other show on television.
We are supposed to be on the brink of a brand new era in television, but "NCIS" doesn't fit. As the networks fight to figure out online, "NCIS" barely has a fan Web site, much less the endless digital dissecting of "Lost." Its viewers seldom time-shift—they sit down to watch at the appointed time. Advertisers crave a young, urban demographic; "NCIS" does best among older folks in the middle of the country. And rather than hoping to cash in down the road with DVD sales as "The Sopranos" did, "NCIS" makes money for its owner the old-fashioned way: through foreign sales and reruns. It's the No. 1 U.S. show in Australia and the top primetime show on its network in France, as well as the No. 1 rerun of a network show in the U.S.
"NCIS" is proof that even if the economics of the business are in upheaval, large swathes of the audience still want traditional storytelling, righteous heroes, and reality that's not offensively gritty.
CBS executives say the success of "NCIS," which stands for Naval Criminal Investigative Service, rests in the show's levity. In between solving crimes related to the military, "NCIS" star Mark Harmon's Special Agent Leroy Jethro Gibbs and his cohorts exchange witty guy banter and crack jokes, even as they stand over a dismembered corpse.

"It's a simple formula," says executive producer Shane Brennan. "The characters have a lot of fun. They make audiences smile…and, of course, they get to carry guns."

Humor isn't the show's secret weapon, though. "Law & Order" ushered in a sober-minded period for cop shows, but crime fighters have been wisecracking for years, from "The Rockford Files" to "NYPD Blue."

Producers say they avoid any jokes that are too parochial or potentially offensive. "You don't want to alienate an audience domestically or internationally," Mr. Brennan says.

So the humor can be rather tame: In a recent episode Special Agent Anthony DiNozzo played by Michael Weatherly asks a witness if she can describe a suspect in a multiple murder and break in. "He was a male," the witness replies. "A male man?" Mr. DiNozzo retorts.

Each episode typically opens with a murder, but the series rarely broaches darker crimes like rape or child molestation that appear regularly on programs such as "Law & Order: SVU." Even the airy Washington office where the main action takes place is brighter and more functional than the grimy New York police precincts in competing police shows.

The approach speaks to the larger programming philosophy of CBS, the top-rated network in total prime-time viewers. Hit shows such as "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation" and "CSI: Miami" may not drive the cultural dialogue but they do attract tens of millions of viewers each week.
CBS Chief Executive Leslie Moonves inherited this identity—CBS has been the network of the heartland since the days of "Gunsmoke"—but he is a creature of the old broadcast model and vigorously defends it. A onetime actor who ran television for Warner Bros. before moving to CBS, Mr. Moonves runs a company with few cable assets—it's all about the network. So while he might not have a choice, he believes his job is to entertain the masses. "It's populist entertainment," he says. " 'NCIS' is the No. 1 scripted TV show in the universe. We'll take that any day of the week."

In many ways "NCIS" is a throwback to the early days of broadcast television when viewers sat around the living room and tuned in for "family hour," a wholesome hour of entertaining but bland programming, says Brad Adgate, senior vice president of research at Horizon Media, a media planning and ad-placement firm. "It's family friendly. It's mainstream. It's not controversial. Advertisers like that," Mr. Adgate says.
But advertisers also love young people with money, who supposedly aren't set in their ways about what brands they use and can be persuaded to switch. That's why a 30-second advertisement during "NCIS" costs $133,304, compared with $140,065 for "CSI: Miami" and more than $240,000 for ABC's "Grey's Anatomy," both of which attract younger audiences, according to an Oct. 26 report by Advertising Age magazine. By contrast, the average "NCIS" viewer this season is 56 years old, according to Nielsen Co.
While "NCIS" has the ratings crown for the first half of the season, Fox's "American Idol," which attracts around 30 million viewers, returns next month. "Idol" draws a younger crowd so "NCIS" largely retains its audience, but "Idol" is likely to rule the second half.
The audience for "NCIS" is loyal. Most shows peak in their third or fourth season, then viewers move on to the next thing. Yet "NCIS" is hitting its apex as a hoary seven-year-old. "Navy NCIS" (CBS dropped the redundant "Navy" in the first season) premiered in 2003, a spinoff of the legal drama "JAG," the acronym for "Judge Advocate General," about military attorneys. The series attracted about 11.8 million viewers a week in its first season and for the next several years steadily ranked in the top 20 television series.
Creator Don Bellisario, who also created "Magnum P.I." and "Quantum Leap," grew up in a small coal mining town in western Pennsylvania and served in the Marine Corps. He says he dislikes "long, windy dialogue" and tried to create government officials who talk in a way that would appeal to a large middle-American audience. He went through the original scripts of "NCIS" and compressed the dialogue, added more pithy jokes and made sure the military was painted in the most positive light possible. Military officials get to read scripts of the show beforehand; they in turn provide cooperation with the producers.
A former creative director at an ad agency, Mr. Bellisario says he learned about writing dialogue from creating commercials. "When you have 28.5 seconds, you tend to get it all in there," he says. On casting Mr. Harmon, he says, "I saw a guest shot he did on 'West Wing' where he played a Secret Service agent. He had that boyish face. I thought the best thing to do was to give him a minimum of dialogue."

In 2007 CBS replaced Mr. Bellisario, after his management style clashed with Mr. Harmon. CBS and Mr. Harmon declined to comment.

Mr. Brennan took over and made a few subtle tweaks to the original format. He toned down the frenetic camera movement—a feature of TV drama since "E.R."—and slowed down dialogue and plot developments to allow for more in-depth and revealing moments between characters. For example, last season an episode called "Heartland" followed Gibbs as he traveled to his hometown of Stillwater, Pa., to meet his father, a general-store owner played by Ralph Waite, onetime patriarch of "The Waltons." At the end of the fifth season, Mr. Brennan devised a cliffhanger ending that killed the NCIS unit's boss, played by Lauren Holly.

The crime-fighting procedural first became popular with "Dragnet," the 1952 series that followed Los Angeles detective Joe Friday. The genre tapped into national anxiety about the Cold War, gave viewers an escape and reassured them that dedicated public servants were "making things right with the world while you're sleeping," says television historian Tim Brooks. As the country became more secure in the 1970s and '80s police shows like "Hawaii Five-O" and "Miami Vice" took a lighter and sexier turn.
The broadness of "NCIS" helps it cross borders. CBS has licensed the series in over 190 foreign markets. Along with its following in Australia and France, it is a top performer in the U.K., Italy and Germany. Adding to its international appeal, in 2005 Cote de Pablo, a Chilean-born stage actress who plays Israeli ex-Mossad agent Ziva David, joined the "NCIS" cast. Daniela Ruah, a longtime celebrity in Portugal, plays Junior Field Agent Kensi Blye in "NCIS: Los Angeles."

Like the "Law & Order" franchise, the self-contained storylines of "NCIS" lend it to performing well in reruns, when they run every day, and in cable marathons. Serialized shows like "Lost" or "24" are harder to sell into syndication. "People want to tune in and tune out and not feel like they've lost anything," says Bonnie Hammer, president of NBC Universal Cable Entertainment, whose USA network airs the show to about 3.5 million viewers per episode.
Reruns no longer command the huge dollars they did a generation ago, but the spinoff series "NCIS: Los Angeles" is an exception. Last September, the show attracted more than 20 million viewers when it premiered and became the top-rated new drama of the season. It is considered to be such a sure thing in the syndication market that CBS sold the rights to USA for $2.35 million per episode after just seven weeks on the air. This is thought to be record-breakingly early: Usually it takes several years for a show to prove itself before reaping this kind of windfall. And for CBS, the nine-figure revenue that will likely follow makes up for the lower advertising rates it must charge. USA will begin airing weekly "NCIS: Los Angeles" reruns in the fall of 2011.

Last April in a special crossover episode of "NCIS," CBS introduced the new spinoff, a slightly sleeker take on the original format featuring expensive on-location scenes shot around L.A. and starring rapper LL Cool J and Chris O'Donnell, casting choices that CBS executives hope will help woo younger audiences.

On a recent Monday afternoon more than 100 crew members dodged travelers to set up for a tense action sequence in the bustling Art Deco lobby of Union Station. At one point a handsome perpetrator holds Kensi Blye at gunpoint. Mr. O'Donnell's character, G. Callen, a special agent with a shadowy past, stands by to save the day.

Taking a break near a food buffet set up outside Union Station in Los Angeles for the "NCIS: LA" crew, story editor Dave Kalstein, 32, pulled up the sleeve of his puffy jacket to reveal an arm covered in tattoos. He says none of his friends in Los Angeles watch "NCIS," preferring the likes of "Mad Men" or "Lost." He says he could have worked on shows with younger, hipper audiences like ABC's new science-fiction series "V," but he chose the "NCIS" spinoff because of the franchise's mass appeal.
"It's the difference between indie rock and pop music…Wes Anderson and Steven Spielberg," Mr. Kalstein says. On a break from rehearsing a gunfight, LL Cool J, who plays Special Agent Sam Hanna, a former Navy SEAL who speaks fluent Arabic, sat down at a bagel shop inside the station and shook hands with passing fans.
"I don't think edgy or not edgy," he said of his latest TV project. "It's a fun show if you're at home on a Tuesday night."

Write to Amy Chozick at amy.chozick@wsj.com

When “NCIS” settles for being a standard crime procedural, one can see why it has become the highest-rated scripted series on television. When the show gets a little more ambitious, it can be just plain silly.

The two most recent episodes showed both the good and the bad “NCIS.”

To start with the good, last week the Naval Criminal Investigative Service team looked into the death of a Navy lieutenant who had been shot while she was trying to break into a web hosting company. The plot was a sturdy, serviceable mystery in which viewers had a chance to spot the real villain but likely didn’t figure out who he was until the end.

The team’s usual comical interaction revolved around a city-wide blackout that had left them unable to use their high-tech forensic tools. This gave Gibbs (Mark Harmon) a chance to show off his old-school skills and let Tony (Michael Weatherly) make a bunch of allusions to classic TV procedurals.

When Tony said to a witness, “Just the facts, ma’am,” the show’s older viewers were probably tickled to finally hear a pop-culture reference they could understand.

Both the dialogue and the plotting could have worked this angle more wittily, but the episode was otherwise satisfying and — in a good way — instantly forgettable. The ensemble cast is strong enough that any one of them can support a subplot; in this case, the lovable forensic specialist Abby (Pauley Perrette) got to step up and solve the mystery.

The main characters’ byplay was corny but comfortable in that veteran-TV-ensemble sort of way.

By contrast, the episode that aired two weeks ago felt seriously out of balance. The head of the NCIS, Leon Vance (Rocky Carroll), was pursuing his nemesis, Lee Wuan Kai (Kelly Hu, who had played the same character on a crossover episode of “NCIS: Los Angeles” three weeks before). She had been trained in a North Korean program that turned orphan girls into superassassins.

This premise was not played for laughs.

Poor Rocky Carroll actually had to keep a straight face while saying that he had been pursuing the assassin for 20 years and that she had killed his partner. (Do you think that in the nemesis training program, there’s a special section on partner killing?)

“In some ways,” Vance said solemnly, “I know Kai better than I know myself.”

Action movies can carry off this kind of absurdity because they usually maintain a consistent tone throughout. This episode, however, spent way too much time showing Tony teasing McGee (Sean Murray) about his new girlfriend. Though fans were probably happy to see McGee getting lucky, Tony’s interest in McGee’s private life got progressively creepier.

Meanwhile, the Vance-Kai plot went completely off the rails: It turned out that she wanted him to kill her because she was ashamed of the evil person she had become and he was her only long-term relationship.

“NCIS” should leave the mentally unstable supervillains and similar plot devices to Bond movies or to shows like “24.” Give this cast a clever but not too complicated mystery, and the hour flies by.

Even after seven seasons, CBS’ juggernaut procedural NCIS is still hitting ‘em out of the park, thanks to a solid, diverse lineup. TV.com spoke to Cote de Pablo, who plays Special Agent Ziva David, about her role on the show.

TV.com: What’s it like to play someone with such a complicated, tumultuous past?

Cote de Pablo: I really love it and I’ll tell you why. It never gets boring, and you always have something to draw from. It’s sort of like an actor’s dream, that you’re able to constantly feed the character [from the] character’s past. And, so that’s always a fun thing and also a huge challenge because you feel like you have to really deliver. It keeps you on your toes. You have a responsibility to the character and you have to try to respect it as much as possible and try to do your best to honor it.

Have you studied any of the languages that Ziva speaks?

I actually speak fluent English and Spanish and … I dabble in a couple of languages, but I’m not fluent in German, Russian and Arabic. [Ziva]’s like a little prodigy when it comes to languages and that’s what makes the character fun to play. And it obviously presents a huge challenge to me because whenever they throw something else at me. I just have to sort of tackle it and go with it. But it’s not easy. Especially given the time that they give us to get on with all these things. And they bring in people to help you phonetically and all of that. But, it doesn’t seem to ever be perfect enough, especially when you try to be as perfect as possible, and you have twenty-four hours to learn a language phonetically.

What do you think drives Ziva to act the way she does?

Well, definitely her past. I think she’s been thrown into this American situation. That’s what I label the NCIS world. It was not her choice to come to the United States to be a part of this agency. She was sort of thrown in here because she was covering a mission from Israel … and I feel that she used this group of people as her dysfunctional family. I think she’s really learned to love them and, at times, especially towards the end of last year, it became very confusing to her where her loyalty was. Was it her family in Israel or was it her family in the United States? And so it’s a tug of war between the most important things to a lot of human beings, which [are] family and blood.

Do you relate to Ziva at all?

I relate to her a lot and then at times it just feels like … she’s so not like me. I would have to say, of course, you draw from you own personal experiences to make some of Ziva’s experiences as real as they can be. I haven’t lived [a] dramatic life. But there are things that you obviously draw from. I came to the States when I was ten and that was, in many ways, very hard. I left a world behind and I sure can relate to that — to being taken from one place and placed into another land and then start[ing] from scratch.

What do you think Ziva’s future is going to hold at NCIS?

I sure do hope that she stays with NCIS. I think she really does see them as her family and I love every person that’s there. However, I think later on in this season, things are going to be questioned by something coming from far away lands, maybe a father figure.

You’ve described Ziva as someone who’s not afraid of men. Does that affect her relationship with Tony (Michael Weatherly)? Why is Tony different from all the other guys?

You know what it is? She calls him “idiot” so many times. And she’s got this brother-sister relationship with him. But at times it crosses the line and goes into sexual tension territory. The only way I can describe her feelings for Tony is that they get blurred and then it’s a lot deeper than what it seems. They trusted each other and they lost their trust in each other. But I think the underlying emotion is always love … However, she’s always thinking, “My God, he’s such an idiot!” But at the same time, she knows that all of that is sort of like a cover-up for something that’s really soft and mushy on the inside. Because if you see the episodes with him, he comes across as a total idiot.

Do you and Michael Weatherly ever discuss your characters’ relationship?

[Tony and Ziva's] relationship is — people just love it and I think they love it for a reason. Michael and I, when we get together and we work on scenes, we never talk about what our intentions are. We never talk about what he wants to get out of a scene. He’s got his own set of intentions and I’ve got my own set of intentions and within that, when we get together … we don’t know what the other person is going to put into the pot.

Why you think this show has become so popular?

I’ll tell you why. This has been something that we’ve talked about, Rocky Carroll, Brian Dietzen, David McCallum, Michael Weatherly, Sean Murray, Pauley Perrette, Mark Harmon and myself. The success of the show is based on this perfect chemistry. If you take any of these characters away and tried to do the show, it would not be the same thing … I think the show is a character driven show in a procedural format and I think people tune in because they like to see these relationships. These relationships are based on the fact that we get along and that we genuinely like each other and we trust each other.

It’s a sign! “NCIS” on CBShas been the No. 1 show on Tuesday nights for four weeks. It is the highest rated show on TV. Why is this important except for advertisers who want to sell products?

It is important because America is choosing to watch Special Agent Leroy Jethro Gibbs catch “dirtbags.” It’s a cop show, you may say. Yes, but these cops are in the Naval Criminal Investigative Service. They solve crimes involving Sailors and Marines. So for one hour every Tuesday (2 hours if you count “NCIS-Los Angeles,” the spinoff) we are in the world of the United States Navy and Marine Corps.
There are many reasons to watch the show. It is face paced, clever and the audience is drawn into this team with all its unique characters. They are a family and we want to be one of them. They have talents we wish we had and they use them for good.

Special Agent Tony Dinozza (Michael Weatherly) is the goof off from every office we’ve ever worked in. But he is a former cop and relies on his instincts to come up with that one idea that might solve the case. Of course, he is also a great shot and a good fighter which comes in handy with bad guys.

Special Agent Timothy McGee (Sean Murray). He is the geek in the office. We know we need him but we can’t figure out what he is doing on the computer. But we pretend we do like Tony. In an increasingly technological world he is the hacker of choice. He is also a good field agent and can shoot as well as the rest of them. I like him especially because he is a best-selling author who wrote a book loosely based on his team mates.

Forensics Specialist Abby Shuitto (Pauley Perrette), a goth with a master degree in Forensic Science, finds that impossible bit of DNA or chemical compound that solves the case. When all the others have to keep their cool, she is the emotional outlet for all of us. Alone in her lab she plays music, sings, talks to her machines and yells.

Officer Ziva David (Cote de Pablo)… After last night’s episode I think we can call her “Special Agent.” A former Mossad agent with Daddy problems, she had the task of joining the team after the death of Special Agent Caitlin Todd by Ari the terrorist who turns out to be her half brother who she had to kill to save Gibbs (a little soap opera). I love her character. She is tough, complicated very capable and wounded emotionally. And she wears her Star of David around her neck for all to see.

Dr. Donald Mallard or “Ducky” (David McCallum), the medical examiner who talks to the corpse. I’ve learned a lot of stuff listening to his digressions into history. He is the symbol of integrity and honor. His work is to find out how the victim was killed so he can help the team catch the killer. But he never forgets the specimen in front of him was once a living human being who has a family and friends who loved him.

Special Agent Leroy Jethro Gibbs (Mark Harmon), the Special Agent in charge of the team. I left him for last because he is the embodiment of why I think this show says something about America. He is an ex-Marine and fought in Desert Storm. But we learn from him that there is no such thing as an ex-Marine. He is a wounded soul who tragically lost his family. He has seen war and understands those who are in battle now. He knows the truth about the world as he yelled at Dinozzo once, “We are at war and I expect you to fight that war 24/7” His younger team members look up to him and want his approval. He is hard to please. He expects the best. We can all remember a teacher who was really hard on us but whom we appreciated later because we learned to be our best.

One thing Gibbs teaches us is that members of the Navy and the Marines are human like us. But because of their choice to serve we should appreciate the sacrifices and pressures they and their families endure while protecting us. The Navy’s motto is “Honor, Courage and Commitment” and sailors strive to live up to it every day on carriers, submarines and in far away bases. Semper Fidelius-Always Faithful is the Marine motto. Once a Marine, always a Marine. This sense of being committed to something greater than one’s self is what makes this show different and why viewers are drawn to it. All of this crime fighting takes place on Navy and Marine bases, aircraft carriers, submarines, and the Navy Yard.
Sometimes it is just like civilian crime. It could be a jealous husband, wife or lover, betrayed best friends, or criminals turning on each other. But our team knows that any crime involving the military can threaten the security of the United States. Navy and Marine personnel deal with sensitive information everyday. These investigators have to know what is merely crime or something bigger and more dangerous.

There has always been an overt acknowledgement on the show of the threat of terrorism The real NCIS agents deal with anti-terrorism operations. To the real agents and those on the show it is not a “man-made disaster,” it is a terrorist attack. The war in Iraq or Afghanistan is not an “overseas contingency operation.” It is real war and it will go on for a long time even if our approved political vocabulary does not recognize it. We are in danger every minute and this team recognizes it. That is one of the reasons why I believe the show is such a hit.

It is sad that the threat of terrorism is more real on a TV show than in our government. I noticed the other day that Janet Napolitano, our Homeland Security Secretary, had to admit in an interview that there were some people in the United States with al Qaeda leanings that want to hurt us. Duh!!!

But on Tuesday nights, when we watch “NCIS,” we know Gibbs has our back. Semper Fi!

Copyright © 2009, The Los Angeles Times

The second NCIS soundtrack (available Nov. 3) is mostly made up of exclusive cuts featured in the current seventh season, including Bob Dylan’s “California,” an outtake from the mid-’60s Bringing It All Back Home sessions that was widely bootlegged but never officially released until now, along with tracks by Sheryl Crow, John Mellencamp, Norah Jones, Joss Stone and others.

But Michael Weatherly’s "Bitter and Blue" may be the main attraction for serious NCIS-aholics. The artist also known as Tony DiNozzo first picked up the guitar at 15 and started writing songs to expunge his feelings while his parents were getting divorced, then realized that—hey!—“girls like music,” he says. “But they didn’t so much like the music I liked. Watching someone badly sing Elvis Costello, it’s painful for them.” His “very long, tragic attempt at pop stardom” picked up when he started busking on NYC subway platforms, making $100–$150 a day. Eventually he recorded over 50 songs in a studio and put together a band that played clubs like Manhattan’s Limelight while seeking a deal.

When he found work as an actor in the ’90s, Weatherly abandoned his rock-star dreams, but he kept writing songs. “Bitter and Blue” was penned at a rare low ebb. He had just broken up with his fiancée, Dark Angel costar Jessica Alba, and was traveling to New York on weekends to see his son (from his marriage to ex–Loving costar Amelia Heinle) while working on the not-so-wildly-popular first season of NCIS in Los Angeles.

For more than two hours, Weatherly serenaded TV Guide Magazine with original songs as well as the Squeeze/Crowded House/Nick Lowe chestnuts that influenced him. He coulda been a contender. But “sometimes you’re very glad certain things didn’t materialize,” he says. “Somebody might’ve thought, ‘He’s not very good, but maybe he’s marketable in some Backstreet Boys way.’ If some marketing dude had cottoned onto me when I was in my early twenties, holy s–t, that would’ve been a disaster.”

But there’s an alternate universe where the road not taken was driven down after all. “There’s a certain delusional part of me that very much believes I have six albums out,” Weatherly admits. “I’m almost surprised when I go into [L.A.’s] Amoeba Records and it’s, ‘Oh, they don’t have my album. That’s odd! Well, sold out, I guess.’”

To hear an excerpt of Michael Weatherly's "Bitter and Blue," click here. And to read more about the NCIS soundtrack, pick up the new issue of TV Guide Magazine, on newsstands October 22!

“NCIS” has to have one of the clunkiest and least descriptive titles on TV. Really, what’s an NCIS? At least with “How I Met Your Mother” you can do the cool HIMYM.

The military procedural show about the Naval Criminal Investigative Services has already been broken down to an acronym that fails to click. But that hasn’t stopped viewers from making it the No. 1 show on television.

And not just squeaking by at No. 1. With more than 20 million viewers, “NCIS” has four million more viewers than the No. 2 show, “Dancing with the Stars,” and four million more than the second highest-rated drama — spin-off sibling “NCIS: Los Angeles.”

“NCIS” gives viewers a nice self-contained mystery each week, while allowing an ongoing story that rewards the regulars. But it never ceases to find inviting ways to bring newcomers into the inner circle. In the first episode of this season, agent Tony DiNozzo, was interrogated by a terrorist. Tony gave up all kinds of intimate information about the people in his department, which allowed those who haven’t been loyal viewers to gain insight into each of the principals. It was a refresher course even fans probably didn’t mind taking since it was filled with the sly humor “NCIS” loyalists love.

Despite the show’s popularity, TV critics have long shoved this viewer-friendly baby into a corner. “NCIS” lacks the hipness of “Lost,” or newcomers “Glee” or “Modern Family.”

So what do the viewers know that apathetic critics don’t?
Here are five reasons “NCIS” shouldn’t be overlooked:

The military angle
“NCIS” started out as a spin-off of “JAG,” a much-snappier titled NBC series about the United States Navy’s Judge Advocate General corps of attorneys. CBS picked up the series after NBC canceled it — just one of many false steps NBC had made on its way down the food chain. ”NCIS” spun-off from “JAG” in 2003 and has been steadily climbing in the ratings.

The ratings rise could be due to a number of reasons, but you can’t discount the fact that there are no other broadcast series currently on the air that depict military life, even in a slight way. In a nation filled with veterans and military families, “NCIS” speaks to service to your country with every episode relating to a case involving the military, and ongoing storylines centering on loyalty, including Ziva David’s sense of duty to Israel. With the flag waving proudly in the opening credits to the respect given to the team's leader, former Marine sniper Jethro Gibbs, the red, white, and blue run through this show.
Humor
While other military series, including "JAG" and "The Unit," haven’t spent much time in the laugh department, ”NCIS” loves diving into the chuckle zone. Sure, most of the jokes are corny, but all in good-natured fun. The team indulges in plenty of buddy humor, and can’t seem to let a good pun go unsaid. After finding out in one episode that the killer used a Rock Star-like guitar game controller as a murder weapon, NCIS investigator Ziva responds, “So our killer is an axe murderer.” Ouch.

Leroy Jethro Gibbs
One of the great characters on TV, played to perfection by Mark Harmon. He’s a man who doesn’t talk much, but says volumes with a look. In the first episode of this season, Tony describes Gibbs as a functional mute. He’s been married four times, divorced three times. His first wife and his daughter were murdered, although no one on his team knows about them. He’s addicted to coffee and has a protective relationship with young forensic scientist Abby Sciuto. After meeting a man who had been abusive to Abby, Gibbs told him the only reason why he was still walking was because he hadn't heard about him until that day. Make sure Gibbs is always on your side. Gibbs is the dad everyone wants to please. And he doesn’t have much patience with long-winded explanations. “Bottom line” cuts most of the chatter off in mid-sentence.

Two very bad girls
Who can resist a couple of bad girls? Not "NCIS" viewers. Tony under truth serum by the terrorist describes Abby as “ A paradox wrapped in an oxymoron surrounded by a contradiction in terms. Sleeps in a coffin. Really, the happiest Goth you’ll ever meet.” The irresistible Pauley Perrette plays Abby, who sports leather leather and tattoos, and blurts first, thinks later. Ziva’s the tough Mossad agent who just this season joined NCIS. She’s a killing machine, but has found her gentler side with the unit. Sort of. She's still the girl who killed her half-brother even if it was to save Gibbs, or perhaps due to orders from her ruthless dad.

Three generations of hot guys
That’s right. We have nothing but sizzle coming from these men of "NCIS." David McCallum plays chief medical examiner Donald “Ducky” Mallard. One time Gibbs was asked what Ducky looked like when he was younger. He responded “Illya Kuryakin.” That was the Russian spy McCallum played in the 1960s TV show “The Man From U.N.C.L.E.” McCallum was the Brad Pitt of his day.

Then we have Mark Harmon, the former UCLA quarterback who was voted People magazine’s Sexiest Man Alive in 1986. He looks like Paul Newman, and remarkably just keeps getting better with age.

And finally the current crop of hunky guys represented by Michael Weatherly, who plays the wild card Tony and once was engaged to his “Dark Angel” co-star Jessica Alba. For the nerd herd, we have cyber cutie Sean Murray, who plays the series techno-savvy agent Tim McGee. McGee’s often unaware of his hot guy status, as we learned this season when he had to retake his polygraph test just because the woman conducting the test wanted to see him again.

Susan C. Young is a writer in Northern California.

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/33331155/ns/entertainment-television/