NCIS Bosses Frank Cardea and George Schenck on the Season 14 Finale and What Lies Ahead

How do you follow up Tim McGee (Sean Murray) and Delilah Fielding's (Margo Harshman) surprise wedding in the penultimate episode of NCIS's 14th season? You send the team -- Gibbs (Mark Harmon), McGee, and Torres (Wilmer Valderrama) -- to Paraguay to recover body parts from a missing Navy SEAL, who disappeared during an unsanctioned trip to South America in the action-packed hour that closes out the season.

The investigation begins in Washington, D.C., where the team discovers that the SEAL wasn't in Paraguay by himself, and as they start putting it together, through modern technology, they realize that he may still be alive. That’s when they decide to go down and get him.

"By a fingerprint, he’s identified as a SEAL, whose wife thought he was on vacation fishing in Canada," says showrunner Frank Cardea. "We have to inform her that he’s in Paraguay, or at least part of him was. Then we realize that he might still be alive, and that’s when three members of our team go down there to find him. When they get down there, the investigation takes a huge turn in a direction no one expected."

"It’s a story like the one with the computer," adds showrunner George Schenck. "It starts where it’s just a mystery of a missing Navy SEAL, but when we get there, it turns out to be a much bigger story. What he was involved in, we have no idea. It leads to a really excited climax, which we don’t want to reveal, but it’s a cliffhanger."

During our conversation, Schenck and Cardera also reveal that the cliffhanger will be concluded in the first episode back, what their concerns were when they took over as showrunners this year, they also talk about FaceTiming with former cast member Michael Weatherly, we get their predictions for Season 15, and more.

When you first took over after showrunner Gary Glasberg died, what was your biggest concern?

Frank:  We have a real family here. George and I have been here since Season 1. Most of the crew has been here since Season 1. It was a real tragedy losing Gary at such an early age [50]. The family just all pulled together like families do in these situations. Our concern was to just keep the quality of the show up. That was our goal.

George:  If it had been a Season 1 or 2 show, trying to find itself, but we all know what the show is and just keeping it going is all we had to do.

Frank:  We had just recently introduced three new characters -- Clayton Reeves (Duane Henry), Nick Torres, and Alex Quinn (Jennifer Esposito) -- and they still hadn’t really found their legs yet. In the tradition of NCIS, we helped those characters become who they were by the end of the season.

I’ve talked to several of the cast, who said with all of the new characters this season, they almost feel like it’s a new show. How do you think the show’s doing without the DiNozzo (Michael Weatherly) character?

George:  Without a doubt, it’s a loss.

Frank:  There was no replacing Michael either in front of the camera or behind the camera. Michael was a huge part of the family. He gave us 13 great years and we all wish him well. He even FaceTimes with the cast on a regular basis and some of the crew members. In the middle of the day, someone will come up and hand you a phone and there’s Michael’s face. He’s a great guy. I think the show has held up. In their own way, the new characters found different aspects of being… Wilmer has a lot of that same mischief, but he’s a totally different person.

George:  The formula is to, hopefully, tell a good mystery, a good story, in which our characters are always themselves. We always say when you’re on a stakeout, the two people that are in the car, the banter between them, the relationships, those things are always going on, so we get to know our characters as they do what they do.

Doeshaving the new characters give you fresh story ideas?

Frank:  It definitely does. George and I have been here for a lot of years. We’ll be known to pitch an idea for an episode and one of the younger writers will say, "I think we did that episode in Season 3 and I think you guys wrote it."  It’s like, "Oh, I thought it sounded familiar."

We haven’t seen too much of Clayton Reeves this season. Since this finale is an international episode, any chance he’ll be back for that?

George:  Just about everybody is in this episode.

Frank:  He most certainly will. As I’ve been telling people, I wouldn’t miss the last five minutes. There’s a twist in the last five minutes.

So Torres doesn’t seem to be a man to follow orders. I'm curious; do you think Gibbs sees his younger self in Torres perhaps?

Frank:  Just a little bit. In the episode two weeks ago, in an elevator scene, they share that they both have many secrets that have Band-Aids covering things.

George:  There are some similarities.

Frank:  The Torres character has changed since the beginning of the season. At the beginning of the year, he was pretty much a loner who had been on undercover for so long, he didn’t know how to part of a team. He’s become more and more a part of the team as the season progressed. By the final episode, you’ll see that he’s embraced the brotherhood of the NCIS team.

With all these characters now, is it hard to give everybody screen time?

Frank:  It can be. There are episodes where not everybody is completely featured. When Michael left, he was really replaced by three people. Reeves is not a full time character. Some of them have slightly less screen time. They all understand that. Hopefully, when they are on screen, it’s meaningful.

Quinn seems to have some secrets. Do we know them all, or will more be revealed?

Frank:  We discovered a couple of weeks ago that she has a mother who’s a concern of hers and is going to consume a little of her time. Quinn is a character that is more of an adult than most of the others. She trained most of the agents that she works with.

Right, but there’s all these little teases about her romantic entanglements in the past.

Frank:  Our show has been great about doing that over the seasons. We’ll drop a little nugget; maybe not get back to it for a dozen episodes or so. Then you’ll find out why we did that.  Sometimes we don’t know why we did it.

Season 14 was pretty much laid out when Gary Glasberg passed. Going into next season, it’s all you.What do you predict?

Frank:  I think the seasons where the show really cooked well was in Seasons 6-10 when it was stories with humor but with…

George:  …good mystery and more stand-alone episodes than two or three-parters. Not that we may not do one if one deems that it’s worth it. I think more stand-alone episodes and fun mysteries. Characters having fun.

Frank:  Probably towards the end of the season, maybe the last four or five episodes, we may fall into an arc.

The NCIS Season 14 finale airs Tuesday, May 16 at 8 p.m. ET/PT on CBS.