SPOILERS: TV GUIDE May 2-8, 2011 NCIS' DYNAMIC DUO article transcription

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here's the transcription I did of the article:

TV GUIDE

MAY 2-8, 2011 SPECIAL ISSUE

NCIS'

DYNAMIC DUO

Holy flashback! Tony's secret past revealed - and the very first Gibb head slap

[Mark Harmon and Michael Weatherly [Tuesday on CBS]]

from the Table of Contents:

26 Cover Story: NCIS Mark Harmon and Michael Weatherly buddy up to tell the origin of TV's favorite bromance - both on and off screen.

WHEN TONY MET JETHRO

by Chris Willman

p. 26-29

MICHAEL WEATHERLY AND MARK HARMON FLASHBACK TO THEIR

CHARACTER'S FIRST ENCOUNTER IN A REVEALING NEW EPISODE OF NCIS

photo caption: Harmon admits he grew tired of Gibbs' trademark head slaps happening "20 times an episode," yet he re-created the first for this week's NCIS

TONY DINOZZO IS being utterly condescending to Leroy Jethro Gibbs for the very first time - and the last. Shooting an NCIS interrogation scene unlike any other, Michael Weatherly and Mark Harmon are in flashback mode, circa 2001, facing off as captor and the captured. An abandoned newspaper office building in downtown Los Angeles has been transformed into a Baltimore police station, where DiNozzo has brought a handcuffed Gibbs in for questioning after tackling and arresting on the street. When he learns that his future boss is not a crook but an undercover NCIS agent, he is dumbstruck - by Gibbs' seeming stupidity in getting busted.

"Well, it's official," DiNozzo says, as his then partner takes the cuffs off Gibbs. "He's a cop - a Navy cop." Weatherly starts to improvise as the takes progress. "Navy NCIS," the actor adds, in as patronizing a tone as possible - an inside joke for fans, since that was the silly full title the series briefly bore during its first season in 2003-4. "So what do I call you? Leroy? Jethro?" Adding a line that may not make the final cut, Weatherly snips, "What is this, The Beverly Hillbillies? "

Harmon does some riffing on the script, too, but true to the actor's close-to-the-vest minimalism, all his improv is visual. His famously caffeine-addicted character walks to a coffeemaker, pours himself a cup, registers a moment of disgust and tosses it in his disapproving interrogator's wastebasket. It's the beginning of a beautiful friendship, all right.

NCIS has been and always will be an ensemble show, not a buddy series, but if there's one core relationship that's been at the heart of the comic drama through eight increasingly successful seasons, it's the peculiar bond between Gibbs and DiNozzo, which intrigues on several archetypal levels. "In addition to the student/mentor relationship that exists," says exec producer Gary Glasberg, "there's a father/son aspect to it, a big brother aspect to it and a straight man/comedian aspect to it."

A deep insight into all those may be provided by the flashback episode, " Baltimore ," airing May 3. It's like a superhero-origin story, except instead of radioactive spider bites, we see how Tony picked up his suave clothing tastes, along with what impressed Gibbs enough to hire an impulsive detective who would quickly become his No. 1 son.

And - naturally - we witness the mother of all proto-head slaps across Tony's noggin. Which is not so bad a form of comeuppance, given the initial body slam.

"So much of what we do here is based on trust," says Harmon, taking his lunch break with the crew. "I don't know if you're ever going to be sitting down with some other cast at Year Almost 9, heading towards 190 shows and talking to them about the mutual admirations society they share in their workspace."

Their trust-based improv goes back at least as far as the very first head slap - in real life, not this new fictional backstory - which occurred during filming of the fifth episode in '03. "It was totally spontaneous" on his part, Harmon says, "though I've heard a lot of people claim it! Michael was doing his thing to a young Navy female petty officer on a ship, and it just seemed appropriate at the time to bring him back toward some sort of reality, which certainly the head slap did." The fans loved it, and it became a recurring sight gag. According to one site's estimation, there were at least 23 head slaps in Season 3 - some between other characters - but it's been brought down to a more reasonable average of three for the past few years.

The regulation of head slaps points to an overall balance of tone that has proven tricky - but successful - for NCIS . Weatherly is surely the only actor in any medium who is constantly compared to both James Bond and Jerry Lewis. He looks swanky in a suit - and as Weatherly notes, " Baltimore " is the first time in 40 episodes he's gotten to wear casual dress on the show. He's credible as a man of action and when he's brooding, even after you've seen him dressed up in a fat-Elvis getup. But some fans wondered if the character's competence was being sacrificed for comedy.

Weatherly did, too. "I have been more alert about: Are we going to step on Tony and put him in a position where he suddenly doesn't know how to fight very well?" When Tony got the sillies, "I've always thought, well, it'll be fine - until this year. In 2011, I'm like, no! We've got to protect him a little. But I think the writers were having the same idea.

In the past, Weatherly defended the way DiNozzo's emotional insecurity manifests itself in mirth, and he doesn't miss the ultrastraight roles he played pre- NCIS . "I walk through airports all the time and realize that people love to laugh and get away from the life they're involved in. It's nice to turn on a show where a guy is wearing a birthday hat and acting like a 6-year-old. Sometimes! Not all the time."

The turn toward a slightly more serious Tony elated Weatherly - especially when he made his directorial debut in a March episode. "I'm very happy with the mini evolution and emotional growth spurt that Mr. DiNozzo seems to be experiencing," he says. "In my real life, I got married and have taken on a different vibe and energy, so that probably also informs some of the characterization."

So has the arrival of Sarah Jane Morris as E.J. Bennett [sic 'Barrett'], Tony's new coworker - and love interest. "It's great that he's even thinking of himself as a fully functional person who could have a lasting relationship with one person, as opposed to being this frat boy trapped in a man's body."

But really, his heart belongs to daddy - the surrogate father figure Gibbs. "It's been great working with Mark a lot more over the last five or six episodes," Weatherly says. "Mark's leadership here has been a great example to me about not just how to conduct yourself professionally, but also as a newlywed, and how to balance those two things."

On set today, Weatherly has his 11-month-old German shepherd, Quantum, with him. "I don't bring him a lot, but this was a very hard episode for me, so I needed my Quantum with me. Mark knows that relaxes me, because it's part of your real life you bring to the set. Harmon has over the years tried to let me know that it's OK to put my armor down and not have to be on guard all the time."

If it's too cliché to suggest that the real-life relationship mirrors the one on screen, well, draw your own conclusions. "Thanks, Weatherly!" Harmon mock-complains as the young but ginormous Quantum comes over to the jump up on him in the middle of a thought. " This is helping." Of Weatherly, he says, "He's very funny, and he'd much rather you see that than the real Michael. But we all know the real Michael here. And maybe you see him sometimes on the show."

Gibbs has told outsiders, like Tony's sometimes estranged TV father [Robert Wagner], more about his respect for DiNozzo than he's told Tony himself. "I don't think DiNozzo has any problems knowing where he sits in Gibbs' esteem, any more than Michael has a concern where he sits in mine," says Harmon. "But telling him is so not Gibbs. He's not gonna blow smoke up people's asses."

Like Gibbs and DiNozzo, "Harmon and I are very different people," says Weatherly. "Not in terms of morals, but our approach to problem-solving. I can be bombastic and pulverize everything - burn the village to save the village. He can move through something like a ghost and be very stealth. I deflect with lots of stupid, tangential, digressive, discombobulated stories, and he's cryptic and acutely aware of every single thing he says. And I have no idea what I'm saying!"

Actors and dogs both recognize their masters' voices. "I've been saying for years that Mark Harmon has Cesar Milan-like dog-whisperer qualities. And now I realize how true that is," says Weatherly. "My dog is mine until Harmon's around, and then he thinks Mark is the pack leader." Though he may not admit it, Leroy Jethro Gibbs wouldn't have it any other way.