NCIS: why did Jimmy's wife die? The off-screen death, and the writers' reason for it
Breena Palmer was already gone by the time NCIS came back to her, and the show delivered the news in a single line of dialogue. Here is when it happened, what the episode said out loud and what it left to inference, and the reason the writers put the loss on Jimmy rather than anyone else on the team.
Brian Dietzen knew months before the audience did, and was given time to prepare for it. The line that ends Breena Palmer lasts about four seconds.
Breena died of complications from COVID-19 in December 2020, and NCIS revealed it in "The First Day", the seventh episode of season 18 and the 405th of the series, which aired on 9 February 2021. Nothing was shown. Nothing had been foreshadowed. Because of hospital restrictions, Jimmy was not able to be with her, and had to speak to her over video calls before she died.
How the episode delivered it
Season 18 had been running in a pre-pandemic timeline; "The First Day" jumps the show forward into a world that has been through it. Jimmy, played by Dietzen, spends most of the hour aggressively cheerful. The information arrives while he explains why his mother has moved in, saying he lost Breena and that work, solo parenting and home schooling had become too much, so he called in a lifeline.
The cause is never stated cleanly. He hands out cleaning supplies. He struggles to get the words "COVID-19" out of his mouth. He eventually breaks down in front of Gibbs, who has his own history with this, and Gibbs organises an office memorial for her.
Read more: What does NCIS use for dead bodies? The autopsy-room method, straight from producer Mark Horowitz
Why the writers chose Jimmy
Dietzen explained the reasoning to Entertainment Tonight in February 2021, after speaking at length with Margaret Lester, then a new writer on the staff.
"We want the advent of COVID to hit our team," the producers told him.
The constraint was that nobody on the team could be lost. Working outwards from that, the writers landed on the most relentlessly optimistic character in the building and took his wife. Dietzen has described it as a strong storytelling mechanism and a very sad one, and said he was notified well in advance so he could prepare.
It also allowed the show to acknowledge the pandemic without committing to it. NCIS otherwise skipped the whole thing — sensible for a series that sells reruns worldwide and would rather not date itself.
Who Breena actually was
- Debut — season 7's "Mother's Day", as Jimmy's date. Michelle Pierce played her.
- Job — mortician, which is how she and Jimmy ended up in the same orbit.
- Marriage — May 2012, in the season 9 finale "Till Death Do Us Part".
- Daughter — Victoria Elizabeth, born in season 12's "We Build, We Fight", named after Ducky's mother.
- Total screen time — seven episodes across 13 seasons, which is part of why the death hit lighter for viewers than for Jimmy.
The goodbye that arrived a season later
Dietzen co-wrote the season 19 episode "The Helpers", in which Jimmy, unconscious from toxin exposure, sits in a field with Breena and tells her he misses her. She tells him to open his eyes. Pierce returned to play it.
"Jimmy never got to say goodbye to his wife on-camera," Dietzen told TVLine.
Neither, he pointed out, did the audience.
For the record: Jimmy's daughter is named after Ducky's mother, and Ducky himself was written out in season 21 following David McCallum's death in September 2023. Palmer has now buried both of them.
Earlier we wrote: Who was on NCIS from the beginning? Only one of the original cast is still in the credits more than two decades on