What happened to Jimmy Palmer’s wife Breena on NCIS?

NCIS is without a doubt one of the most successful shows on television today, if not ever. The CBS police procedural has been running for a staggering 22 seasons and counting, with nearly 500 episodes. It’s even more than in Criminal Minds. One of the main characters of the series is Jimmy Palmer. Jimmy, played by actor Brian Dietzen, has been there since the beginning, first appearing at the end of Season 1. Since then, it has become a staple of the series. Unfortunately, Mrs. Palmer was not so lucky.

Breena Palmer, played by Michelle Pearce, didn’t appear in nearly as many episodes of the show. However, it is no less important. She also made a big impact, especially with her exit from “NCIS.” For fans of the show, the death of Breena Palmer was a strong blow and is still being discussed. With that in mind, it’s worth examining what exactly happened to her and, perhaps more importantly, why it happened.

Death is just part of any long-running show. This is just the nature of the beast. But some deaths hit especially hard. Glenn’s brutal death in The Walking Dead, for examplewhich fans still talk about to this day. This, as brutal as it was, was still shown to the audience, making it real. In Breena Palmer’s case, it was like the snap of a finger. Poof, she’s gone. That’s because Breena was killed off-screen on “NCIS,” which made the whole thing more than awesome.

“NCIS” Season 18 aired while the COVID-19 pandemic was still raging. The episode “Day One” aired in February 2021, more than a year after the global disaster. The fact that his beloved wife died as a result of the coronavirus was confirmed by Jimmy personally. “You guys were so great when, you know, I lost Bryna,” he tells the team in the episode, explaining that his mom is moving in to help out. “Between work, raising single kids, school, it was too much. So I called lifeline.”

It was that. In an interview with ET after the episode aired, Brian Dietzen explained where Jimmy’s head was as it all unfolded.

“In this week’s episode, we see Jimmy trying to maintain as much happiness as possible, trying to say, ‘Hey, my glass is half full here.’ I’m doing really well,” while we, the audience, can see that this may not be the case. He’s doing the best he can, just keeping his head above water, but that can only happen for so long before there’s a certain turning point.”

The COVID-19 pandemic was too big of an event for many media outlets to ignore. In some cases, shows have chosen not to address it. In other cases, it shows how Futurama used the pandemic to push the narrative. In the case of “NCIS”, it was considered appropriate to touch on what happened, in particular, the tragic loss of life around the world. As Dietzen explained in the same interview, the death of his character’s wife was a way of acknowledging what was happening in the world at that moment.

“I think that’s been one of the interesting and obviously heartbreaking things about this disease that we’ve all seen is that these people on the front lines were working as emergency medicine physicians who had to go out on their own to experience grief. And yet they’re being asked to just keep working, because if they stop working, then we don’t have our front line anymore, in many ways this episode was a recognition of the people who have lost others during this pandemic.”

Still, that didn’t make the death any less scary for longtime fans of the show. Breena Palmer wasn’t a series regular, but considering Jimmy is the show’s host, her death was a big deal. Having it happen off-screen was a bold choice, but one made for a deliberate reason.

In terms of screen time impact, Michelle Pearce’s time as Breena Palmer on “NCIS” is pretty impressive. The actress appeared in a total of six episodes of the series before her departure from the screen. But things are coming back, and as of this writing, Pierce has appeared in seven episodes of the show.

In the 19th season of NCIS, Pierce returned as Breena in the episode “The Helpers”. However, it didn’t feel like a comeback John Goodman as Dan after his death in the Roseanne revival.. Most likely, Breena’s posthumous appearance on the show happened during a dream sequence that was placed at the beginning of the episode. It shows Jimmy lying with his head on Breena’s lap in the middle of a field, talking about how much he misses her.

Talking to TVLine after the episode aired, Brian Dietzen, who also co-wrote the episode, explained why they included the scene in the show.

“It’s not just about giving a cool cinematic opening… I wanted Michelle back on set, and she wanted to come too. The fact that we were able to bring Michelle back was just such a blessing because she was definitely one of my favorite co-workers on the show.”

“NCIS” is now streaming on Paramount+, or you can buy seasons of the show on DVD through Amazon.