{"id":2484,"date":"2026-02-17T16:33:46","date_gmt":"2026-02-17T16:33:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/giantnews.us\/?p=2484"},"modified":"2026-02-17T16:33:46","modified_gmt":"2026-02-17T16:33:46","slug":"the-last-toothpick-and-the-legacy-left-behind-rocky-carroll-the-soul-of-ncis-has-passed-away-md20","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/giantnews.us\/?p=2484","title":{"rendered":"The last toothpick and the legacy left behind: Rocky Carroll \u2013 The soul of NCIS has passed away md20"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The last toothpick and the legacy left behind: Rocky Carroll \u2013 The soul of NCIS has passed away md20<\/h1>\n<\/header>\n
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Rocky Carroll\u00a0is once again wearing two director hats \u2014 on camera (as Leon Vance) and behind it \u2014 for the January 23 episode of\u00a0NCIS<\/em>.<\/p>\n

For the 21st episode of the\u00a0CBS\u00a0procedural he\u2019s directed, Carroll has both at least one heart-to-heart and some action scenes when, in \u201cBig Rig,\u201d the team is drawn in to help an already-in-progress undercover FBI operation. An old friend of Torres\u2019 (Wilmer Valderrama) comes to him, disheveled and bloodied, for guidance amidst the op and then disappears, leading to the team trying to track him down.<\/p>\n

Carroll looks ahead to the episode.<\/p>\n

Preview the case.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Rocky Carroll:<\/strong>\u00a0One of our regular agents has to go undercover to try and infiltrate a crime ring that is centered around a trucking company. There is a missing FBI agent and one of our other recurring characters comes on and our NCIS agents risk their lives trying to infiltrate this crime ring. Agent Torres has to go undercover as a long hauler trucker in order to solve this crime.<\/p>\n

What excited you as a director about this episode?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I like the storyline. It takes us out of our sort of normal setting \u2014 the fact that it was an undercover story, the fact that most of it took place in this bar-restaurant-truck stop area \u2014 and we were looking into this whole underworld and one of our regular characters had to go undercover and in disguise. There\u2019s a lot more action in this episode. I\u2019ve directed some episodes where there\u2019s not a single shot fired or a single punch thrown. We more than make up for that in this episode.<\/p>\n

Yeah, there\u2019s quite the fight scene in this one.<\/strong><\/p>\n

I love to do this kind of episode because, as I always say to the writers and the producers, the audiences like to be reminded sometimes just how dangerous this job is. We do such a great job at establishing relationships, the inner office banter back and forth, the characters and how they interact with each other. Every once in a while, you need to remind everyone that these guys risk their lives, that this is a very dangerous job, and every time they go out on a call, there\u2019s a chance they might not come back. You can\u2019t do that every week because it would just make everybody a little too on pins and needles. But this episode we get reminded just how dangerous this job can be.<\/p>\n

What was your favorite scene to direct?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I think [it\u2019s] probably when Torres and Sawyer [Zane Holtz] have a heart-to-heart discussion sitting behind the wheel of this big rig. It\u2019s just the two of them kind of explaining what got them to where they are right now and you just get a deeper understanding. Because I think a lot of times in procedurals, you have these characters that are sort of like Marvel superheroes \u2014 they go out, they chase the bad guys, they bring them to justice \u2014 and what I think\u00a0NCIS<\/em>\u00a0has done so well for so many years is to give you that sense of humanity, that this is a real person and not just a superhero doing this job. So that scene to me is the one moment where you get to see who these guys are, aside from the gun and the badge and all the action.<\/p>\n

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\"Zane<\/p>\n

Sonja Flemming\/CBS<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

What was the most challenging scene to direct?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Any time there\u2019s more than four people in the same scene who have to talk is, to me, the ultimate challenge. It could be a tea party. It doesn\u2019t have to be a fight scene, but we certainly did not shoot a tea party. I had, I think, either seven or eight speaking parts in a warehouse, and then all hell breaks loose. And then I have all the agents and the FBI there. So at one point basically it was like trying to orchestrate a wedding. You had so many people in this warehouse, guns drawn, there\u2019s a fight scene. There\u2019s all sorts of mayhem that ensues. That was the challenge. That\u2019s when I said, OK, I think I\u2019ve been upgraded as a director because when I first started, I didn\u2019t have any scenes like this in my episodes. Now they come pretty regularly.<\/p>\n

McGee (Sean Murray) spends the episode preparing for a game show. How would Vance do on Smart Alecs?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I think Vance would do pretty good on Smart Alecs. Vance has some hidden talents. He\u2019s a closet computer geek. I think he and McGee probably have a lot more in common than \u2014 we used to play it up quite a bit early on in the earlier years that Vance could easily hop on the computer and kind of know his way around things. So I think Vance would have fun on Smart Alecs, but I think he\u2019d grow weary of it, and he would probably tank so he could get back to work.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s coming up for Vance?<\/strong><\/p>\n

We just did an episode not long ago, where Vance and Parker [Gary Cole] end up together in Europe and Germany and there was a love interest. Vance has been a widower for a number of years. So we had a terrific actress who came in to play this character [Marem Hassler as Deputy Lena Paulsen]. Fortunately the character didn\u2019t die in the episode, so maybe she\u2019ll be coming back into Vance\u2019s life, maybe not, I don\u2019t know. But I also see a relationship blooming between Vance and Parker that took a very long time for Vance and Gibbs [Mark Harmon] to establish. So I think we\u2019re sort of walking down that same path now as these two characters who are the senior members of this NCIS team kind of finding their footing with each other.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The last toothpick and the legacy left behind: Rocky Carroll \u2013 The soul of NCIS has passed away md20 Rocky Carroll\u00a0is once again wearing two director hats \u2014 on camera (as Leon Vance) and...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2485,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2484","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nThe last toothpick and the legacy left behind: Rocky Carroll \u2013 The soul of NCIS has passed away md20 - GIANTNEWS<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/giantnews.us\/?p=2484\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The last toothpick and the legacy left behind: Rocky Carroll \u2013 The soul of NCIS has passed away md20 - 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