‘NCIS’: Is Photo Gibbs Put on Tony’s Desk on ‘Origins’ Out?
Mark Harmon and Michael Weatherly‘s Gibbs and Tony reunion on NCIS: Origins included a moment that could have carried over onto the mothership: The latter took out a framed photo and set it on the director’s desk. So, did it carry over?
From our close examination of the scenes in the Tuesday, October 27, episode of NCIS, which does take place after that reunion, as confirmed in-show, that photo is nowhere to be seen in Tony’s office. However, the episode does include dialogue that suggests why.
Tony turns to Knight (Katrina Law), with help with his daughter, seeking advice from someone who was once a teen girl, and keeps it under wraps by calling it the Anderson case. McGee (Sean Murray) then asks Tony if that case has anything to do with the “secret visitor” he had recently. “No, and let’s keep the secret in ‘secret visitor,’” Tony tells him. It could be that Tony put that photo away in order to make sure that remains the case.
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It was in the October 20 episode of NCIS: Origins that Gibbs visited Tony at NCIS HQ as part of his search for who tried to kill him and is going after another target. While in the director’s office, Gibbs took a framed photo of himself, Tony, and Ducky (the late David McCallum) out of a box and put it on the desk.
Origins showrunner David J. North told TV Insider that Harmon added that moment in.
“The script, it’s written that Mark picks the photo up and just looks at it in the moving box. But Mark being Mark, he kind of does whatever he wants, and so he stuck it on the desk,” he laughed. “So it’s Steve’s problem to deal with now, whether they want that photo there or not. That was not in the script, but Mark makes Mark choices, and I dare anyone on that set to go tell him no.”
North confirmed that he did talk to NCIS showrunner Steven D. Binder about it. “I don’t know where he’ll land with that, but I didn’t want to make them have to do anything that they didn’t want to do as far as what photos were,” he said.
As for where that photo came from, North credited former JAG and NCIS EP Mark Horowitz. “Mark is a wonderful, wonderful photographer and took many photos over the years,” he said. “And that photo came from him, but I’m not sure if there wasn’t photo-shopping done in some way or not. I don’t know what season, one of the earlier seasons, but it originated with the great Mark Horowitz.”
NCIS, Tuesdays, 8/7c, CBS