Michael Weatherly Once Felt ‘NCIS’ Being the Number 1 Show Could be a Bad Thing
NCIS used to generate the highest ratings in all of television at the peak of its popularity. But Weatherly felt being the country’s No. 1 show could come with some significant drawbacks.
Michael Weatherly quipped that ‘NCIS’ was better off being the No. 3 show on television
NCIS met and perhaps even surpassed expectations when it became the No. 1 show on television. The show’s former star Mark Harmon once confided that the series took a while to find its footing. At first, NCIS was just getting by.
“We were able to keep it afloat a couple of years because we weren’t good enough to get all the attention, and we weren’t bad enough to get canceled,” Harmon once told Seattle Times. “And the biggest thing: We shoot in Santa Clarita. Nobody from the network wanted to drive out there!”
The show’s first few seasons experienced lukewarm reception and ratings. It wasn’t until its third season that NCIS started to find both itself and its audience. Soon, the show climbed the ranks to being the most-watched program in the country. But in a resurfaced interview with TV Fanatic, Weatherly somewhat longed for the days when NCIS wasn’t as successful.
“I just don’t want anything to change,” Weatherly said. “No. 3 is kind of better. They’re still not gonna cancel you if you’re No. 3. But now everyone’s looking. It’s kind of like when they give you the ball in football.”
Michael Weatherly wondered if audiences thought ‘NCIS’ was a spoof
Weatherly once theorized that the show faltered initially due to how it was presented. In its infancy, he wasn’t sure if audiences knew what to make of NCIS, particularly in the United States. To Weatherly, other countries had a more accurate first impression of the long-running procedural.
“NCIS is sort of [promoted as] ‘The Unit’ meets CSI when clearly, to my way of thinking, we’re more like Scooby-Doo meets M*A*S*H. You know, it’s like we have a mystery van, and we go around, and if weren’t for those damn teenage kids,” Weatherly once told The Futon Critic. “And then Klinger wearing a dress trying to get the Section 8, we’ve got some kookiness. And so it’s always interesting to me because in other countries like France on M6, the personality of the show is much more at the forefront.”
According to the actor’s own experiences, audiences even considered NCIS a parody of another similar series.
“So no one even really… people actually think that NCIS is like making fun of CSI. It’s almost like spoofing it. I mean the sensibility is so much different,” he said.
Weatherly figured that NCIS finally obtaining a syndication run might help improve its status. He might’ve been right, as the show’s constant reruns on platforms like the USA Network have helped create more awareness of the series.
“I do also have this sneaking suspicion that when we start the syndication run – which I think is next summer, not this summer, I think it’s 2008 – I think there’s a portion of the audience that just isn’t around on Tuesday night at 8:00 to sample it,” Weatherly said. “But they might like on Saturday night at like 11 pm. Like come back from a party, smoke a joint, and be surfing around and catch a ‘head slap’ or Ducky talking to a body, or they’re going to see Pauley Perrette and think, ‘Wait a minute, that’s an interesting creature.’ And I think there’s going to be this weird sampling of the ‘other’ audience. Because I think we’ve strip-mined everyone from 50 to 65. I think we’ve found every single one. I don’t think we have to sell to them anymore. It would be a disservice to push ourselves into that.”
