Stream It Or Skip It?

Despite the fact that Cote de Pablo left NCIS as a regular in 2013 and Michael Weatherly left as a regular in 2016, their characters, Tony DiNozzo and Ziva David continue to be the 22-year-old procedural’s most popular characters, especially because they were so good together as their characters became a romantic pair. We expect fans of the parent show being really excited that Ziva and Tony are back in their own NCIS spinoff. But will the return match the excitement fans have for it.

Opening Shot: A montage that goes over the relationship between former NCIS agent Tony DiNozzo (Michael Weatherly) and former Mossad agent Ziva David (Cote de Pablo), including the time period where Tony thought Ziva was dead, his discovery that they had a daughter named Tali, and their reunion in 2020.

The Gist: We see Tony jump into a church window, sliding on the floor and banging his head on a Jesus statue. He sees a tux and puts it on; he then sees Ziva in a wedding dress. While he says she looks beautiful, all she says is “let’s get this over with.” That’s when we see her at the altar with someone else; Tony is hiding and holding a gun, eyeing a woman in the audience who has a gun, as well.

Nine days earlier in Paris, that same woman initiates a cyberattack that drains hundreds of millions of euros from an Interpol bank account. Tony’s security firm has been contracted to protect those accounts, so when his chief technical officer, Claudette Carron (Amita Suman), gets an alert to the theft, she barrels into a Zoom meeting to let Tony know. They race to the bank, with cops chasing them through the city, and Claudette finds the computer with the thumb drive causing all the chaos. It has the number “9.4” printed in it. Of course his Interpol contacts, Henry (James D’Arcy) and Jonah (Julian Ovenden) are interested in it, but want him to hold onto it for now.

In the meantime, Ziva is working as the head of a private school that caters to diplomats’ kids. During a meeting, she hears a truck backfire and is able to not flinch, due to her work with a therapist over the past few years. As we see in the video Tony took of her reunion with him and Tali five years prior, that wasn’t always the case.

Tony and Ziva aren’t together romantically, but when they get together to co-parent 12-year-old Tali (Isla Gie), the chemistry the two of them always had is still there. But when a thug invades Tony’s office demanding 9.4, showing him live video surveillance of Tali with her nanny, Tony has Claudette slyly contact Ziva, who springs into action. Soon, the two of them are working together to flush out the whereabouts of the thumb drive, which turns out to be a local hospital. But this time, the funds that are withdrawn are sent through Tony’s company’s accounts to implicate him to Interpol. The two set out to find the hacker who created the 9.4 code.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? If it’s isn’t glaringly obvious, NCIS: Tony & Ziva is a spinoff of the original NCIS. There’s a hint of the short-lived CSI: Cyber in here, too.

Our Take: Just like Criminal Minds: Evolution, another streaming spinoff of a longtime CBS procedural, NCIS: Tony & Ziva has switched to a continuing-storyline format, which is telegraphed by the opening scene where Ziva stands at the altar with Boris (Max Osinski), the hacker who was contracted to code 9.4. One problem, though, is that the continuing story feels like an elongated episode of the NCIS mothership.

Sure, a cybercriminal threatening the world’s economies — especially one that has the inside connections that the cyberterrorist, Martine (Nassima Benchicou), actually has — deserves more than one episode. But an entire 10-episode season? Feels like a stretch to us.

But are we really here for the cyberterror part of the story? Of course not; most NCIS fans are streaming Tony & Ziva for, well, Tony and Ziva. They want to see their favorite couple back together again, romantically as well as professionally. We get the latter in the first few episodes of the season, but we imagine the former is going to happen at some point. You don’t throw Weatherly and de Pablo back together after over a decade and not think that their characters won’t respark what made them such fan favorites during the original series’ first decade.

Weatherly and de Pablo slide right back into their characters with ease, with showrunner John McNamara and staff giving both of them the same kind of crackling wise-ass dialogue that they had on the original series. There is some promise with the new characters we’re introduced to in the first episode, especially Claudette, who seems to be Tony’s right hand in the security business. We also like that Isla Gie’s Tali is written as the preteen product of two cagey and intelligent people but is still a 12-year-old.

Of course, we also have to suspend our disbelief that Tony and Ziva, who are now both civilians, can do some of the things they do and not get arrested for it. At one point in the first episode, they both brandish their NCIS IDs and badges, which we’re shocked that they still have, and it barely merits a mention from Jonah, one of the Interpol liaisons that work with Tony and his security company. Will the two of them be able to go undercover and do spy-type stuff even if they have no government giving them cover? It seems like they can, and we’ll just have to accept that if we want to enjoy the series for what it is.

Sex and Skin: None in the first episode.

Parting Shot: Boris tells Tony and Ziva, “If you fight this lady, you’ll lose.”

Sleeper Star: Lara Rossi plays Sophie, Tali’s nanny that is more than just a nanny; let’s just say she’s government trained, and not in the art of washing kids’ clothes.

Most Pilot-y Line: “It is our daughter; it is our mess!” says Ziva as Tony tries to take ownership of Tali being tailed by cyberterrorists.

Our Call: STREAM IT. We’re not fans of the case Tony and Ziva have to figure out on NCIS: Tony & Ziva, but we like the fact that Weatherly and de Pablo are back in their fan-favorite roles, and their chemistry is as good as ever.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.