Had to come out of hiatus (even if no one else reads this) to talk about NCIS: Los Angeles ending at the end of this current season. IIRC, this show historically tend to get last minute renewals, so at least this time they know this is gonna be their last hurrah.
Rumour has it among the fandom that there's a Sydney (Australia?) version in the works.
To be fair, like the show, everyone who has been on it since the beginning are getting long in the tooth to still be FIELD AGENTS. At this point, they could have been higher up the command chain by now.
My guess as to why it's not getting renewed is the same reason for why a lot of long-running shows don't get renewed: MONEY. You can more or less tell that the budget for this show wasn't as huge as it was earlier in the run.
- For an office that's always short-handed, you haven't seen all 4 OG characters (O' Donnell, LL Cool J, Ruah and Olsen) in too many episodes together probably in the last few seasons, with one or more of them written out of an episode in some fashion of late.
- A lot fewer explosions. Don't tell me no one else has noticed the pyro budget for this show earlier on was bananas.
- Hiring the younger people (to both be working on the field and/or ops) probably didn't cost them THAT much? I also cannot imagine how much the main 4 are paid per episode at this point cos at least 3 of them have been there since the beginning, all those years ago. OMG the residual payments they must be getting at this point. Maybe they can help O' Donnell gets his kids through college? Dude's got FIVE KIDS, who's been on the show in some capacity.
What I will miss:
- Someone asking their involvement in "case of the week", which is a fair point, but kinda funny.
- Because the OSP is forever short-handed it's stupid hilarious, the rolodex of recurring characters. Sabatino's been in a bunch of agencies by this point - CIA, US Marshals, FBI...?
- The banter. For a show that's more about dealing with national security threats (or threats to anyone in the cast, let's be real) and less about dead sailors (they haven't had a ME character for awhile), this is the more light hearted one of the franchise.
- Thinking about Daniela Ruah and Eric Olsen, who are IRL brother and sister in-law, playing a married couple, with HIS brother (her husband, who met on this show) as his stunt double. Is he still? I not sure. How is that NOT AWKWARD?!
- Callen and Anna's wedding?
- The main 4 either getting reassigned higher up the chain, or quitting/retiring while they still can?
- OSP getting shut down, giving the Admiral something to cheer for?
- Hetty showing up for aforementioned wedding?
- How many of the recurring characters will we see again?
