How Fans Really Feel About The NCIS Episodes Of JAG

There are lots of ways one could break down the many eras that CBS' long-running crime procedural "NCIS" has seen come and go. We've lived through the La Grenouille years, the post-Tiva epoch, and the Jennifer Esposito season. Then there's the biggest divide of them all: BNCIS and ANCIS, or, Before "NCIS" and After "NCIS."

As any fan of the show worth their Caf-Pow knows, before "NCIS" even existed, it was teased during a two-part backdoor pilot on the legal drama "JAG." Those episodes — titled "Ice Queen" and "Meltdown" — introduced the concept of the upcoming series as well as many of the characters who would go on to make up the cast of the first season. Gibbs (Mark Harmon, who recently exited the show) was there, as were DiNozzo (Michael Weatherly), Abby (Pauley Perrette), Ducky (David McCallum), and an NCIS agent named Vivian Blackadder (Robyn Lively) who never made the leap to the series itself.

The "JAG" episodes clearly did a good job of selling the concept of the series before it even existed, but how do fans feel about them now that "NCIS" has been on the air for nearly 20 years? Thanks to Reddit, we can find out.

In a thread simply titled "JAG," Reddit user u/lilysommer had some opinions to share about the episodes that started it all. "I just watched the ncis episodes on jag for the first time and would just like to say that I highly recommend watching them if you haven't," they wrote. After laying out a few differences they noted, including DiNozzo and Abby's "flirty relationship" and Gibbs' more jovial personality, they concluded, "I found it highly entertaining considering the changes to the characters' personalities they made when ncis started."

One thing u/lilysommer didn't love about those older episodes, though, was Vivian Blackadder. They wrote, "the actress playing the female agent is quite bad, thank god the went with Kate instead." User u/ACCER1 agreed, writing, "I didn't like Blackadder at all. I was glad she was dropped."

Another aspect of the BNCIS era that several fans commented on was the change in Abby's vocal stylings. User u/captainblue posed the question, "Is it just me or is Abby's voice different in them?" They got a confirmation from u/Dzdawgz, who wrote, "She went from Baritone to Tenor to squeaky."

It all just goes to show how fascinating the study of history can be.