Old School. Biblically Independent.
By Samantha Song | TV | October 4, 2026
October has arrived, and apparently every television network celebrated by hiring a federal agent.
This week has U.S. Marshals, the FBI, the CIA, three separate NCIS shows, Chicago’s entire emergency-services infrastructure, two Law & Orders, sheriffs, firefighters, cops in Boston, and Carrie Preston wandering around crime scenes dressed like she is attending a garden party.
If you commit a crime this week, statistically speaking, a CBS character is already outside.
Here is what is arriving this week, sorted by how aggressively television has expanded the American law-enforcement workforce.
Sunday, October 4th begins CBS Premiere Week with Marshals (CBS, season two premiere) and Tracker (CBS, season four premiere), which means Justin Hartley’s Colter Shaw is once again driving around America locating people who have gone missing under increasingly suspicious circumstances. Colter’s entire career continues to depend on encountering families whose problems are considerably more complicated than the initial phone call suggested.
Marshals, meanwhile, returns for Season 2 immediately beforehand, continuing CBS’s extremely successful strategy of putting attractive people in tactical gear on Sunday nights and allowing the procedural machinery to handle the rest.
Vibe: A man has gone missing. Justin Hartley has put on a henley. These events must be related.
Monday, October 5th is where CBS begins behaving as though the federal government has purchased the entire network. FBI (CBS, season nine premiere) returns at 8, followed by CIA (CBS, season two premiere) at 9, and Harlan Coben’s Final Twist (CBS, season two premiere) at 10. Three hours. Three investigations. Absolutely nobody is getting home in time for dinner.
FBI has now reached Season 9, meaning the agents of the New York field office have prevented enough catastrophic threats to make Manhattan’s continued existence feel statistically miraculous. CIA, meanwhile, continues CBS’s experiment in taking Tom Ellis’s charisma and giving it national-security clearance. Then Harlan Coben arrives at 10 to remind everyone that sometimes you don’t need an international conspiracy. Sometimes you just need a suburban family with seventeen secrets and a person who disappeared in 2004.
Vibe: CBS has obtained security clearance.
Tuesday, October 6th is NCIS: New York (CBS, series premiere), because after more than twenty years of NCIS, television has finally located an American city somehow underserved by federal investigators. LL Cool J returns as Sam Hanna, bringing his NCIS: Los Angeles character home to New York and partnering with Scott Caan’s new special agent. To me this is particularly funny because Scott Caan already spent ten seasons playing a cop on Hawaii Five-0, which crossed over with NCIS: Los Angeles. The CBS procedural universe has now become sufficiently complicated that Scott Caan could theoretically encounter someone who remembers a completely different Scott Caan.
The mothership NCIS begins Season 24 immediately beforehand, while NCIS: Origins returns for Season 3 afterward. A sailor has jaywalked and twelve federal agents are mobilizing.
Vibe: Law & Order, but somebody somewhere has technically been on a boat.
Wednesday, October 7th belongs to Abbott Elementary (ABC, season six premiere), which returns to Willard R. Abbott Elementary and the increasingly heroic group of teachers attempting to educate children despite insufficient funding, bureaucratic nonsense, and Ava Coleman being allowed to remain in charge of anything. After three consecutive days of federal crimes, Abbott offers the week’s refreshing change of pace: people whose greatest immediate threat is an elementary-school budget meeting.
NBC has other plans. Chicago Med returns for Season 12, Chicago Fire for Season 15, and Chicago P.D. for Season 14, once again suggesting that essentially every emergency occurring within Chicago city limits happens to the same interconnected group of extremely attractive municipal employees.
Vibe: Thirty minutes where nobody has a gun and the biggest institutional crisis is the school district. What a relief.
Thursday, October 8th gives us Elsbeth (CBS, season four premiere), returning Carrie Preston’s Elsbeth Tascioni to New York for another season of walking into extremely expensive apartments, complimenting someone’s lamps, asking seventeen apparently irrelevant questions, and quietly determining that someone’s charming celebrity crush standing in front of her committed murder.
Meanwhile NBC returns Law & Order: SVU (NBC, season 28 premiere) and Law & Order (NBC, season 26 premiere). Mariska Hargitay has now played Olivia Benson for so long that actual police officers could theoretically have watched SVU as children, become detectives, retired, and continued watching Olivia Benson work.
Vibe: The murderer spent six months planning the perfect crime and forgot to account for a tiny woman in an extraordinary coat saying, “Oh, that’s interesting!”
Friday, October 9th abandons all pretense and delivers an action film based on a toy car. Matchbox: The Movie (Apple TV) stars John Cena as a CIA agent on the run, directed by the mastermind behind Extraction—which means you’re about to watch ninety minutes of a professional wrestler saving the world while driving around in small cars that Mattel owns. Randeep Hooda co-stars, adding at least one actor who understands actual stakes.
CBS sends three more procedurals: Sheriff Country returns for Season 2, Fire Country for Season 5, and Boston Blue for Season 2.
Vibe: Somewhere, a toy company is charging money for this.
Saturday, October 10th finally lowers everyone’s blood pressure with The Spirit of Halloween (Hallmark Channel, movie premiere), starring Meghan Ory and Kevin McGarry. Ory plays Everly Stone, a woman who dislikes Halloween and is visited by three friendly ghosts who apparently intend to change her perspective on the holiday—apparently she wasn’t sufficiently enthusiastic about pumpkins. Kevin McGarry plays Beau, her friend and potential romantic interest.
CBS also begins Season 39 of 48 Hours, ensuring that anyone insufficiently frightened by the friendly Hallmark ghosts can immediately switch channels and remember that actual humans remain much worse.
Vibe: Three ghosts have crossed the boundary between life and death because Meghan Ory needs to have more fun in October.
Also this week:
Ninja Scroll (theaters, Sunday, October 4, 4K remastered rerelease)
Georgie & Mandy’s First Marriage (CBS, Thursday, October 8, season three premiere)
Eternally Yours (CBS, Thursday, October 8, series premiere)
Cupertino (CBS, Thursday, October 8, series premiere)
Avatar Aang: The Last Airbender (theaters, Friday, October 9)
Misty Green (theaters, Friday, October 9)
Other Mommy (theaters, Friday, October 9)
Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother (theaters, Friday, October 9)
Fjord (theaters, Friday, October 9)
This Week’s Hostage: NCIS: New York
There are more sophisticated options this week.
Abbott Elementary is one of the best comedies on television.
Elsbeth remains the only detective show where the detective can arrive at a murder scene dressed like an extremely wealthy kindergarten teacher and immediately become the smartest person in the building.
You have a million CBS releases to catch up on, but CBS has made another NCIS. In New York. And LL Cool J is back. You have to respect the audacity.
NCIS premiered in 2003. Since then, this franchise has investigated naval crime in Los Angeles, New Orleans, Hawai’i, Sydney, Washington, and now New York. There have been prequels. There have been crossovers. Characters have crossed oceans. Mark Harmon has narrated things. LL Cool J has survived approximately four thousand tactical operations.
At this point, I don’t even know what qualifies as an NCIS jurisdiction.
Someone steals a sandwich from a sailor at LaGuardia and Sam Hanna may rappel through the ceiling.
More importantly, Scott Caan is here.
Scott Caan already spent a decade solving crimes as Danny Williams on Hawaii Five-0, a series that crossed over with NCIS: Los Angeles, the show where LL Cool J played Sam Hanna.
Now Scott Caan is playing an entirely different federal agent opposite Sam Hanna.
Nobody mention Hawaii.
Nobody make eye contact.
We are simply accepting this.
There are Chicago cops, New York cops, California firefighters, Boston cops, and whatever jurisdiction Elsbeth has personally decided belongs to her.
But LL Cool J has arrived in New York and brought another CBS procedural into existence.
You are watching.
I am watching.
The Navy has jurisdiction somehow.
