'NCIS' Season 20 Teased as 'Season of Love'

By Stephen Andrew

NCIS Season 20 premieres Monday on CBS, and the series showrunner has teased that it will be the "season of love." Speaking to TVLine, Steven S. Binder spoke about some of the relationship dynamics that will be explored, saying, "I've been calling it 'the season of love.' So we may see a bunch of things happening, with a bunch of our characters."

Contrasting the approach to the romantic connection between Special Agent Knight and Dr. Jimmy Palmer — played by Katrina Law and Brian Dietzen, respectively — as compared to past ones such as Special Agents Anthony D. "Tony" DiNozzo, Jr. (Michael Weatherly) and Ziva David (Cote de Pablo), who fans often referred to as "Tiva," Binder explained, "This one is something that we birthed ourselves, in a vacuum. We didn't want to go down the same road we went down before. Instead, we wanted it to play out more realistically – two people at work, who actually have feelings towards each other, and they're not being so coy about it."

NCIS Season 19 ended back in May, and during the final episode, fans got to see two fan-favorite characters become a couple after months of romantic tension. In the season finale, Palmer and Knight had their very first on-screen kiss, a big moment that had been building over the season, as the pair were regularly seen being very flirty. Ahead of the finale, Dietzen spoke about the romantic tension between his and Law's characters. 

"When you have a wonderful time on something that is a 'date-not-a-date,' and then you both choose not to talk about it to one another that inevitably will bring up some sort of, 'Hey, why are we not talking about this, we had a really good time?'" Dietzen told Parade.com in an exclusive interview. "I think the next natural progression of that is should we talk about 'Is there something there?' I was happy that they wrote this episode to address that and say maybe there is something there."

Speaking about the nature of Jimmy and Jessica being co-workers and friends, Dietzen said, "So, they've had a closeness and I can understand anyone's perspective who says, 'I don't want to jeopardize that closeness for something that may not pan out.' But I really like Jimmy's demeanor and overall perspective of saying, 'You'll never catch a wave if you don't get on that surfboard.' There's something to be said for that." He added, "Yeah, we can live lives of peace and safety and never leave our house but maybe we won't get the rewards and the great life that we want if we don't take a chance here and there." Fans can catch up on past seasons of NCIS anytime on Paramount+. Those interested in trying out a free trial of Paramount+ can do so by clicking here.

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