WARNING: The following contains spoilers for NCIS Season 19, Episode 1, “Blood in the water,” which aired September 20 on CBS.
From the very beginning of NCIS, Gibbs’ favorite hobby has been building boats, and over the course of the show, he’s finished two of them. For some reason, though, he likes to build them in his basement. It’s a grand idea for his hermit-like personality, except for the obvious: there’s no way to get the boats out. However, he somehow manages to get both boats out, and the whole thing has become a running gag.
It’s one of the biggest questions fans want to see answered before NCIS draws to an end. Unfortunately, they will probably never will, as everyone knows it’s a ridiculous premise and an unanswerable dilemma. In fact, it has become an unspoken joke that the writers make fun of from time to time, and that happens yet again in “Blood in the Water.”
The Season 18 finale showed Gibbs walking away from NCIS and taking his new boat, named Rule 91, on its maiden voyage, before the whole thing exploded. The Season 19 premiere picks up right where the finale left off. As expected, Gibbs survived the explosion and is rescued by an older couple. Meanwhile, NCIS finds out about what happened from the local police and rushes to investigate.
When McGee and Torres arrive, the officer asks if they will be taking over the investigation. This leads to them trying to explain that the boat shards that divers had found were part of their boss' boat. Somehow, it comes up that Gibbs' built the boat in his basement over the course of the past seven years, which funnily enough means that, when they try to move on from the explanation, the officer stops them with a question that has little to do with what actually happened.
Thoroughly confused, she asks the most pressing and obvious question on her mind, “how did he get it out?” -- ironically also the question fans have been asking for a while. True to form, Torres ignores the matter and moves on without as much as blinking at the legitimate question.
Clearly the writers were once again poking fun at the boat dilemma, and if this episode is any indication, fans may never know how Gibbs gets the boats out of his basement. Sometimes it’s better to keep some mysteries, after all.
To see more of Gibbs and the NCIS team, watch CBS’ NCIS on Monday nights at 9 pm. ET.