‘NCIS: Sydney’ might have set up an enemies-to-lovers story, but showrunner Morgan O’Neill is clearly in denial

NCIS: Sydney might have made a mistake by centering itself around two attractive people who clash at every opportunity, because there’s one guaranteed thing fans are going to beg for those two people to do: Kiss! Everybody loves an enemies-to-lovers story, and that’s what the new NCIS spinoff has established in just one episode between NCIS Agent Michelle Mackey (Olivia Swann) and AFP Agent JD Dempsey (Todd Lasance).

Unfortunately for those already rooting for the couple (#Macksey, perhaps?), show creator Morgan O’Neill is here to crush your dreams.

“We have absolutely no intention of them being anything other than good, professional colleagues,” he told The Messenger, but… “But you never know. Like, the world has a funny way of shifting the radar. But they’re cops, and they’re trying to do their job as best as possible. The internet will do what the internet does.”

The problem that O’Neill has set up for himself here is that earlier on in this same interview, he said this: “If [Mackey] says jump, [Dempsey] will jump, but he’ll make sure he does it on his terms, and he’ll make sure she knows it in a subtle way. They start off kind of like they’re Bruce Willis and Cybill Shepherd in Moonlighting. They’re head to head, but gently, slowly, they begrudgingly begin to respect one another, and they see qualities in the other person that are kind of appealing to them.”

While younger audiences might not know or remember, Moonlighting is the most classic example of two people working together to solve cases while also weathering insane romantic and sexual tension. That was before the internet was even a thing, but, like life, shipping finds a way. If you’re not planning to get your characters together, comparing them to Moonlight is a weird choice. O’Neill walked it back a bit when we pointed that out, blaming the head of Paramount Australia, Beverly McGarvey.

“It was Bev McGarvey’s reference, the Moonlighting one,” O’Neill said. “She’s like, ‘I love Moonlighting!’ I’m like, ‘This is not Moonlighting!’ And she’s like, ‘You never know!’ But they definitely have a real chemistry, and I think that’s part of the fun of the show.”

O’Neill describes Dempsey as the “antidote” to Mackey. “Where she kind of snaps, he just smiles, and he’s got that larrikin Australian quality, which is a bit anti-authoritarian and ‘I really don’t give a sh– about how important you are, I’m going to treat you like a person’ type thing,” he explained. “It’s a bit disarming and confusing for Mackey, who’s used to a more rigid hierarchy.”

Over the course of the season, O’Neill says their relationship will change.

“They gently start to resonate with one another, and they get closer and closer,” he said. “Hopefully by the end, they’re using that yin yang thing in a way that wouldn’t otherwise be able to solve crimes as well. The superpower is their difference, I think. They’re a really interesting pair…When I watch it, I think they have enormous on-screen chemistry, which is matched by their enormous off-screen chemistry.”

But again, O’Neill just sees it as a “genuine friendship,” for now. We shall see!

NCIS: Sydney airs Tuesdays at 8 p.m. on CBS.