Sara Netzley
·4-min read
“It was one of the best weeks,” the Illinois native tells EW.
At 364 appearances and counting, actor Brian Dietzen has been involved in more than a third of all the episodes in NCIS’ family of shows on CBS. But in a week that welcomed the franchise's 1,000th entry, Dietzen tells Entertainment Weekly that one episode in particular stands out.
“That's one of my tops,” Dietzen says. “That's probably my favorite one.”
The hour of TV in question is “Keep Going,” the season 14 episode that finds Dietzen’s lovable medical examiner Jimmy Palmer out on a ledge — literally — trying to rescue a man threatening to jump.
But it’s not only the Palmer focus that makes this episode memorable for the former Illinois resident; it’s also what was happening at the same time in the Midwest.
“While we were shooting that episode, I got to watch my beloved Chicago Cubs win the World Series for the first time since 1908,” Dietzen recalls.
The majority of Dietzen’s work in "Keep Going" takes place up against the side of a building, which made it tough for him to follow the action on the field during breaks in filming. Luckily for him, the NCIS crew is full of fellow Cubs fans who gave assists from the ground.
“Chad Erickson is one of our camera guys, and I’d look down between takes. He was like a first-base coach giving me signs on what the score was and what the count was. And then I’d rush home and try to watch the last few innings,” Dietzen says. “It was one of the best weeks.”
Of course, it didn’t hurt that the episode Dietzen was filming during the Cubs’ 2016 victory run ended up being one of the most highly rated of the long-running series, coming in at No. 3 overall with a 9.2 audience rating on IMDb.com.
“Keep Going” is a rare out-of-lab episode for Dietzen’s character, whose kindness and compassion is on full display as he tries to talk a despondent man down from the ledge.
“We’ve got a couple of those episodes over the course of the series, where either Abby or Jimmy or Ducky or Kasie — the lab-coat folks down in the basem*nt — find their way out into the field, and those fish-out-of-water tales are always very entertaining,” Dietzen says. “It's a wonderful thing as an actor.”
The episode was written by Scott Williams, Dietzen’s future collaborator on the three episodes the pair went on to write together.
“It really turned into just a two-man play out there on the ledge,” Dietzen says. “All the characters were there to support Jimmy, and I think people love seeing that, seeing everyone come together to save one of their own. That was a special one for me, for sure.”
However, Dietzen’s 14-year-old son, one of two children he shares with his wife, Kelly, doesn’t feel quite the same way about his father’s big episode now that he’s started watching NCIS from the beginning.
“He came up to me a couple of weeks ago, and he goes, ‘Dad, I found it, I found my favorite episode of NCIS,’” Dietzen says. “And I'm thinking it's got to be something that's, you know, centered around his dad, right? And he just goes, ‘Probie.’” But Dietzen can’t fault his son for loving the season 3 outing that focuses on Sean Murray’s character, Timothy McGee. “It’s such a good episode! And Sean is so good in it,” Dietzen says. “I was like, ‘Dude, you're right. That's a fantastic episode.’”
When he shared the news with Murray, the two had a similar thought: “Isn’t it wild that our kids now are watching the show? My son didn't exist when the show started, and neither did Sean’s kids.”
One thing that Dietzen’s L.A. born-and-bred children aren’t missing out on is the Wrigley Field experience that their dad grew up with... sort of. On one family trip to the friendly confines, Deitzen recalls a tap on the shoulder from the people in the row behind him with an offer to share the baked goods they'd brought from home.
“My daughter looked at me and my wife as we're taking the cupcakes, and she was like, ‘What are you doing?’” Dietzen says with a laugh. “It’s like, ‘Honey, this is the Midwest. It’s not Los Angeles. People just are really nice here. They'll bring cupcakes to the Cubs games.'"
NCIS airs Mondays at 9 p.m. ET/PT on CBS.
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Read the original article on Entertainment Weekly.
