Alec Baldwin's Shooting Has NCIS Fans Looking Twice At Season 19 Episode 6
On October 21, 2021, what could be considered the most talked-about on-set death of perhaps the past decade occurred on the set of the Western movie, "Rust." As has now become common knowledge, lead actor Alec Baldwin fired a prop gun during filming, allegedly discharging a live round that injured director Joel Souza and killed director of photography Halyna Hutchins.
This incident could very well affect how firearms are handled in film and TV production moving forward. California senator Dave Cortese, in fact, has already begun work on California state legislation that would place new legal restrictions on just what kinds of firearms could be allowed on set, as well as who would be allowed to wield them.
While this could end up being but one of numerous changes to come in the aftermath of the "Rust" incident, some viewers shared their surprise that a moment in the sixth episode of "NCIS" Season 19, which aired on November 1, "False Start," ended up airing despite a surface-level similarity to the famously tragic shooting that took place less than two weeks prior.
NCIS featured a story about a prop gun murder
In "NCIS" Season 19 Episode 6, the titular Naval Criminal Investigative Service team is tasked with identifying the perpetrator in the murder of a Navy commander and athletic trainer. As it turns out, the murder weapon was a gun loaded with blank rounds, fired in an attempt to intimidate the Navy coach.
In a discussion thread about the episode on the official "NCIS" subreddit, user KHGOB13 wrote, "Given current events this episode really made me do a double take when they revealed how the coach died. I am surprised that they didn't do some reshoots or pull the episode." Their comment received two responses, both of which accentuated the differences between the "Rust" shooting and the fictional incident in this latest episode of "NCIS" — namely that the gun Alec Baldwin fired seems to have contained live rounds rather than blanks as intended, as well as the fact that the murder in "NCIS" was, while not entirely purposeful, nevertheless an intentional firing of a gun at a human target.
For what it's worth, in their recap of the episode, TV blog Monsters & Critics similarly pointed out the similarities between the plot of the "NCIS" episode and the recent, real-life incident.
While "NCIS" remains unaltered, the shooting continues to reverberate throughout the industry.