Tony & Ziva Not Being A Procedural Like NCIS Can Redeem The Franchise

Warning! SPOILERS about NCIS: Tony & Ziva season 1, episodes 1-3 ahead.

NCIS: Tony & Ziva’s release on Paramount+ immediately highlighted a major difference from its parent series NCIS, revealing it as one of its biggest strengths that can also potentially help the franchise in the long run. Its first three episodes dropping on September 4 made it clear that Paramount+’s Tony & Ziva would be unlike anything in the NCIS franchise.

Beginning five years after Ziva reunited with Tony and Tali, Tony & Ziva episode 1 had to work simultaneously as an update about everything that happened in the decade since the titular duo were last seen together and as the setup for the spinoff’s story. This made Tony & Ziva’s different approach compared to NCIS and its spinoffs extremely evident.

Tony & Ziva Not Being A Procedural Sets It Apart From NCIS But Keeps Its Best Qualities

Tony & Ziva focusing exclusively on the titular characters’ lives in Paris, even after the Interpol funds being stolen kick-started the action, made the NCIS spinoff much different from the parent series. While NCIS advanced plenty of season-long arcs, the main story followed one investigation per episode, or a few at most. This isn’t the case for Tony & Ziva.

Following just the case of Tony and Ziva being framed for something they didn’t do doesn’t let the story feel stale in Tony & Ziva’s first three episodes due to its pace, which introduced plenty of variables without letting the titular characters land on any one workable clue. This makes Tony & Ziva a crime drama very different from NCIS.

While clashing in this defining characteristic, Tony & Ziva episodes 1 to 3 proved able to keep the parent series’ best qualities. Even with McGee, Gibbs, and others not appearing in Tony & Ziva, the feeling of a group working together to catch the bad guys is embodied by Boris, Fruzsi, and Claudette supporting Tony and Ziva despite their differences.

The chemistry between the titular characters and the natural group banter in the midst of an extremely time-sensitive and action-packed investigation make Tony & Ziva feel like a variation of NCIS, still keeping what was always great about it. What insight this could lead to might also help the NCIS franchise as a whole if Tony & Ziva is successful.

How Tony & Ziva’s Premise Could Lead The Way For Other NCIS Spinoffs

NCIS’s multiple spinoffs make it difficult to view the franchise as struggling, but it’s evident that it partially was after the cancellations of NCIS: Los Angeles, and even more puzzlingly so, NCIS: New Orleans and NCIS: Hawai’i in the early 2020s. While Tony & Ziva and NCIS: Origins increased the franchise’s onscreen presence, the Paramount+ spinoff can do much more.

Like NCIS followed its MCRT team’s investigations closely, most of its spinoffs did the same, whether in other places or timelines, in the case of the Gibbs-focused prequel Origins. Tony & Ziva’s titular characters not being part of the force anymore inevitably forces the spinoff not to share the format formula that had always been synonymous with NCIS.

This is an incredible chance for the NCIS franchise if Tony & Ziva proves successful even without being a procedural. The spinoff’s titular characters are arguably among NCIS’s more popular, but if the franchise were to follow NCIS: Tony & Ziva’s example and branch out with spinoffs on other characters away from the force, it could be revitalized even more.

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