NCIS Bosses Frank Cardea and Steven Binder Share the 411 on What's Ahead in Season 16

Whether or not Director Vance (Rocky Carroll) survives his abduction is the question on the minds of NCIS fans when season 16 begins on Tuesday night -- and the answer will come by the end of the premiere episode.

Show runners Frank Cardea and Steven Binder reveal that the story picks up almost immediately after, but then it jumps four weeks. And after that jump, Special Agent Leroy Jethro Gibbs (Mark Harmon) is assigned the role of acting director in Vance's absence while the team searches worldwide for his whereabouts.

"If you're a fan of the show, you're familiar with the backstory between our characters Sloane [Maria Bello], Hakim [Pej Vahdat] and Vance and it really seemed like this is the climax of that emotional arc," Binder tells Parade.com in this exclusive interview. "So, we're going to put this to bed, emotionally, in this episode. That being said, we're not killing our bad guy so if the opportunity presents itself, we're certainly going to not say no to it, but as of now, the plans are that this will end the same way our season 15 kidnapping ended. There's parallels and mirror images and exact opposites for that episode."

Want to know what else to expect in season 16? Keep reading for the 411 on Gibbs, McGee (Sean Murray), Torres (Wilmer Valderrama), Bishop (Emily Wickersham) and Dr. Mallard (David McCallum).

What are going to be the emotional ramifications from the kidnapping?

On the surface, you'll feel like it's been resolved, we got the guy, but the reality is these things don't necessarily go away. Vance has got some new issues, maybe, to deal with. So, that's grist for a very talented writing staff to see what they can make of it. Let's put it that way.

In this episode, since Hakim has Vance out of the U.S., will other agencies be called in? It's a great excuse to bring in Delilah [Margo Harshman]. We didn't see much of her last season.

Steve Binder: Don't assume that he's out of the U.S.

Frank Cardea: We do love Delilah. She's not in this episode, but I think you'll see her during the season.

The show had a lot of loss last year with Clayton Reeves [Duane Henry] dying and Abby [Pauley Perrette] leaving. How do you deal with that?

Frank Cardea:  In the first couple of episodes, we certainly deal with the Clayton loss. It's brought up a couple of times and how our characters are adjusting to it.

But how do you turn it around and make it a happier place?

Steven Binder: The glib answer that I always give when people ask me those questions is that's the rub. That's the climb and that's the skill. That's always been the show: How do we marry these dead bodies in their worst possible position with humor? My answer to that is that's life. I always reference Terms of Endearment when they're discussing the cancer and then someone does a spit take and it's one of the funniest moments in the script. If you can do a spit take during someone revealing they have cancer, you can do anything and that's how we do it. We look for truth and truth is often funny.

Initially, the show focused more on the core group, but we've had so many new characters lately. Will we be going back and will it be Gibbs, McGee, Bishop and Torres, or are you planning to add another agent this season?

No. We agree with you. We're going back to that core group of four people. There are other characters. There's Jimmy [Brian Dietzen] in autopsy, Diona Reasonover will be in the lab, Ducky [David McCallum] is around, Vance is upstairs, and so is Sloane, but we will rely more on that core group of people who live together in the squad room.

Speaking of Torres, in the finale it seemed like he was very interested in Sloane, not just as a fellow agent, but as a woman. Am I just seeing something there that doesn't exist or could they be the next DiNozzo [Michael Weatherly] and Ziva [Cote de Pablo]?

Steven Binder: I'd say you got that half right. One of those people might be pondering a workplace romance, but it will not be with Sloane. Torres might be shining on someone in the bullpen.

Ellie Bishop?

Steven Binder: There's not a lot of choices. It's either Bishop or McGee.

The fans didn't take to Ellie Bishop when she first replaced Ziva, because replacing Ziva was a really hard thing to do for anybody, but then when Ellie went through her divorce, I think people rallied around her.

Frank Cardea: I think the rollout of the Bishop character was a little abrupt and it should have been slowed down a bit, but people did tend to grow to like her.

After her divorce, Ellie lost another man that she was in love with. Has she healed enough to move on with her personal life this season?

Steven Binder: Since he was killed, she might even be more damaged. Where this goes, we're going to see where the day takes us. That's what I'll say about that, but I would say to you that what you described as a bug might actually be a feature in terms of what happens when there's a budding romance and someone's not ready. That can be interesting, too.

What about bringing Lindsay Wagner back as her mom? And when her brothers are there that's always good comedy.

Frank Cardea: We've had great guest stars over the last 16 years with Gibbs' father and RJ Wagner as DiNozzo's father. The episode with her brothers was, I thought, a great episode and I think you may see one or all three of them back sometime in the future and Lindsay Wagner also.

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What about Gibbs this season? What do we see foreshadowing for him?

Frank Cardea: Well, at the beginning of the year, he is in the unique position when the director is gone and, for a few episodes after, he's the interim director and he's not real happy about it. Not a position he enjoys.

Hadn't that happen for him once before and he's just not a people person?

Steven Binder: Yes, it did. It was, gosh, 11 or 12 years ago. We really focused on it in that episode. In this episode, it's really getting in the way of what he's trying to do because this is a pressing case.

Frank Cardea: The real director is being held captive and he doesn't want to deal with the mundane paper-pushing part of the job.

But he would also be bad at the political part of the job with having to make nice with people.

Steven Binder: He's actually terrible.

Frank Cardea: He's doesn't have a great bedside manner.

Fornell (Joe Spano) lost his job at the FBI and he became a private eye. Will we be seeing him?

Steven Binder: We absolutely will, very fitting, upfront, pretty early. Coming off the last conversation we were just having, Gibbs was pulling double duty. He was being Special Agent Gibbs, but also Interim Director Gibbs, so he decides to take a little break at his favorite middle-of-nowhere cabin, and ends up getting some unexpected guests. You can guess one of them is Fornell, and then the other one is an actor by the name of Don Lake, who played in an episode last year. Gibbs' R&R is destroyed by these two and, luckily, Kasie intervenes, giving him something to do. So, he goes to the woods to get away from work and everybody shows up, so he goes back.

Diona is the replacement for Abby. The character was a little too quirky for me when we first met her. Is she going to calm down a little bit now that Kasie is a regular member of the team and it is her real job?

Frank Cardea: She isn't Pauley and we didn't want to try and make her Pauley or Abby. She's her own person. I think what you saw was a little nervousness on the character's part, being thrust into this high-pressure, right-out-of-school position. She grows and becomes more comfortable in her own skin, so to speak, in a future episode.

What do we have planned for McGee this season? You mentioned Delilah might be back. He is the senior agent now. He is taking on responsibility, plus he is a family man.

Steven Binder: We'd love to explore something with his family. We're overdue. On the lighter side, we do discover that McGee is a closet reality TV fan when we have an episode that involves a reality TV show and it turns out McGee is super fan, which he tries to play down. But it's like a superfan of Star Trek suddenly at a Star Trek convention that can't keep their mouth shut. So, we get some comedy out of that, but I think you're right. This is a season where he's on top now. He's the big guy so I think there could be something there.

What I do miss about him is he was writing novels. I liked that he had that part of him, the creative aspect of him to balance out the computer nerd aspect.

Steven Binder: Well, having kids certainly takes your free time away, so I don't know if he'll be getting back to writing another book.

Frank Cardea: I don't know. At the end of last year, Sloane mentions to him that she was a fan of his writing. We brought it back up at the end of last year and that was done by design.

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The show is going into a 16th season. You've had a lot of cast change. What do you think is the essence of it that people tune in even with all the changes?

Frank Cardea: I think it's the dynamic of our family. It is like a family even though it takes place in a workplace. Gibbs is the leader of that family. He's got the children who misbehave once in a while, and we've got the avuncular Ducky. It's something that exists off camera on our show and, I think, it shows on camera that it really is a family. I think that's the appeal. Gibbs is that family member you all want to have.

So, is Ducky back full time this season or is he still going to be working on other projects?

Steven Binder: We'll be following, for the first half of the season, the same model we did last year where he's in and out at a regular enough interval that, hopefully, you don't miss his absence. Then we're going to try and come up with an evolution for this character and how he fits into the show, still keeping him around because everybody loves him.

NCIS begins its new season tonight at 8 p.m. ET/PT on CBS.