NCIS Season 22 wrapped up earlier this month on the 2025 TV schedule, with the finale delivering a devastating second for Gary Cole’s Alden Parker in its closing moments. Now we wait till Season 23 premieres as a part of CBS’ 2025-2026 fall TV lineup, however a few of chances are you’ll end up pondering again to when Cole took over from Mark Harmon in NCIS Season 19’s early episodes. The Parker actor mirrored on this time of transition with me lately and defined why he thought his character bought a “actually good entrance.”
After Cole mentioned the Season 22 finale’s ending twist and the way he expects this may lead to Season 23 wanting very totally different for Parker, I requested him what he thought was the largest approach his character had modified since we first met him within the episode “Practically Departed.” The Workplace House alum began off by telling me:
I all the time appreciated the way in which he was launched. I believed that was a very good entrance for a personality. It made sense. To return into an setting of a present that is been on that lengthy and your lead character is exiting… However they dealt with that nicely. It wasn’t like Gibbs left after which this new man reveals up, knocks on the door and goes, ‘Hello, I am the brand new man!’ He was concerned with them, however he wasn’t conversant in them. And over time I grew to become extra conversant in the group, and I spotted that he was nothing like Gibbs.
Alden Parker got here onto the NCIS scene as an FBI agent whom Harmon’s Leroy Jethro Gibbs crossed paths with whereas wanting into Paul LaMere, the person who blew up Gibbs’ boat whereas he was on it. Lengthy story brief, Gibbs, Parker and the remainder of the primary NCIS characters amassed sufficient proof to arrest LaMere’s boss, although Parker was fired from the FBI for not bringing Gibbs in like he was ordered to do. After Gibbs determined to remain in Naktok Bay, Alaska, Parker joined NCIS to take over his place as group chief.
So like Gary Cole laid out, introducing Parker concurrently Harmon’s time on the present was winding down allowed for a smoother transition vs. if he’d are available instantly after Harmon’s final look. It additionally rapidly grew to become clear that Parker’s management fashion was very a lot not like Gibbs’, with Cole saying:
He wasn’t a frontrunner within the sense that he considered himself as a frontrunner. That was a job description. However on some stage, he was simply one other man within the room besides when some authority was required. However he used that sparingly, I believed, and the way in which the writers did that.
Cole then gave me a particular instance from one in every of his earliest NCIS episodes about how Alden Parker acknowledged that Gibbs not being round anymore was bizarre for everybody, together with himself. Because the actor laid out:
I believe there was one episode, perhaps it was two episodes after Mark left, it was form of a daily routine scene within the squad room the place we’re breaking down who the unhealthy man is, what I am gonna do, the place we’re gonna go. And in the course of it, Parker simply says, ‘Look, I do know that is bizarre. I do know you had someone right here for a very long time. I really feel bizarre too,’ and mainly simply acknowledge the truth that sure, it is a totally different scenario than we’re used to, however all of us should stay with it.
Hey, tackle the elephant within the room when you can, proper? Gary Cole actually welcomed this, wrapping up this portion of our interview by saying:
And I appreciated that. I believed it was form of humorous, however it was actual too as a result of it was stating what really occurred. As time glided by, we meshed as a group. Each actor I labored with, I discovered one thing that I might hook into with them, after which hopefully they did with me as nicely.
Clearly issues have been going nicely for Gary Cole if he’s heading into his fifth season on NCIS. However whereas Cole’s nonetheless having a great time on the CBS present, Alden Parker may be very a lot not in a great place proper now as a result of aforementioned tragedy. Moreover, the thriller of the little woman from his previous named Lily, which was launched within the Season 21 finale, nonetheless hasn’t been absolutely resolved.
So Parker undoubtedly has so much developing for him in NCIS Season 23, and we’ll preserve you apprised of what’s taking place with him and the remainder of the primary forged when the subsequent batch of episodes kicks off. In the meantime, these of you who’re on the lookout for a Leroy Jethro Gibbs can be clever to observe Austin Stowell’s youthful model of the character in NCIS: Origins, which is returning for Season 2.