TV Guide Magazine October 25, 2021

PLEASANT PROGRESS What a pleasure it is to see Abby (Meghan Ory) smile and laugh again on Hallmark Channel’s Chesapeake Shores! Jesse Metcalfe’s Trace was so stale I almost stopped watching several seasons ago. It is so much fun watching two handsome guys flirting with Abby—and two more good-looking guys flirting with Bree (Emilie Ullerup) as well. How refreshing! I love Chesapeake Shores all over again. —June SAD TV Jeers to ABC’s A Million Little Things. Could any show be more depressing? I have watched for two years now, but I am done. This show should have quit after last season. I have never seen a group of friends with so much bad luck. —Barbara BOO—YEAH! What a delightful new show CBS’s Ghosts is! And to add to the joy, there is…

Gibbs has left the bullpen. The tight-lipped, steely-eyed NCIS boss man, played by Mark Harmon since 2003, retired in the October 11 episode and was last seen happily fly-fishing in Alaska. Although indefinitely suspended, he’d just gone very rogue in helping take down a mining company CEO. But instead of catching a seaplane to D.C., he dropped this bombshell: “I’m not going back home.” Since last spring, rumors had been swirling that the actor (who is also an exec producer) was ready to exit the CBS hit, with reports that his Season 19 participation would be limited. But no one expected it to be this limited! Gibbs said his goodbyes to most team members in flashback—he even dunked that good old flip phone in a cup of coffee! Is there even…

“HIATUS (PART 1)” (Season 3, Episode 23) “It’s a coma he doesn’t want to come out of,” observes the doctor treating Gibbs, unconscious after a terrorist blast. For a while, we kinda didn’t want him to either. The loner was reliving happy days of surfside horseback rides and movie night with his wife and daughter before his predeployment promise “I will come back safe. I love you.” But horrible recollections intrude: their deaths, contemplating suicide, revenge on their killer, lying in a field hospital bed after a 1991 explosion during Desert Storm. (Turns out, his current doc is the same one who treated him then!) Gibbs awakens and doesn’t even recognize his close friend Ducky (David McCallum). Heartbreaking. “HEARTLAND” (Season 6, Episode 4) A case takes the team to Gibbs’ Stillwater, Pennsylvania, hometown, where we…

MICHAEL WEATHERLY Anthony DiNozzo “[Harmon is] a very rare person in this business because there’s no assistant, no entourage. Mark is largely just a very straightforward, approachable, calm, assertive guy. He’s not a people pleaser.” (2009) DAVID MCCALLUM “Ducky” Mallard “There was always a certain degree of chaos [at one point during the series’ production], but it’s all gone now. Mark was instrumental in putting our house in order—I really thank him for that.” (2007) COTE DE PABLO Ziva David “We were always trying to infuse [scenes] with different things, try something new. Mark has been here for years, and he’s still bringing it.” (2019) PAM DAWBER Marcie Warren (and Mark’s real-life wife) “Mark is for the best of everybody and everything. His ego does not extend. He just wants it all to work.” (2021) Meet the new NCIS boss—Gary Cole Q&A,…

@TVGMMattRoush I’d like to complain about the abrupt firing of Jamie Gray Hyder and Demore Barnes from Law & Order: SVU. Both characters were a welcome addition to the show! Why did NBC drop them? I am very, very disappointed. Hoping you can explain. —Eve MATT ROUSH: The Law & Order franchise is well known for its revolving door for supporting cast members. With few exceptions, a gig on a Law & Order show is not a lifetime assignment, although Kat (Hyder) and Deputy Chief Garland (Barnes) had unusually short tenures. Whether this was a creative or budgetary decision was never explained, but I’d agree the optics were worse than usual, losing a young LGBTQ officer and the show’s first Black deputy chief in one fell swoop. I keep hearing about a new…

Sundays, 9/8c, HBO WORDS WOUND LIKE bullets in the family battleground and media fishbowl of HBO’s Emmy-winning Succession, which is worth every minute of the excruciating two-year wait between Seasons 2 and 3. That’s how long we’ve been reeling from the shock of heir apparent Kendall Roy (Jeremy Strong) turning whistleblower, the damaged sacrificial lamb biting back to expose the Roy company’s scandalous financial and sexual misdeeds. “It’s war!” bellows Logan Roy (Brian Cox), patriarch and power-broking CEO, who steams as the remaining offspring under his thumb squirm with uncivil ambition, wasting no opportunity to attack and undercut their fellow siblings and other rivals. Here’s Logan shooting down the hopes of an underling who suggests he could take over should the old man temporarily step aside: “If your hands are clean, it’s only…