As much as fans may be enjoying the FBI Tuesdays lineup, it doesn’t sound like more crossovers are coming.
The current season kicked off with an epic crossover of FBI, FBI: Most Wanted, and the premiere of FBI: International. However, various issues are going to prevent these crossovers from becoming a regular event anytime soon.
One Chicago leading the way in new crossover appeal
There have been cases in TV history of shows doing crossovers. It occurred several times on CBS procedurals with CSI and such series as Without A Trace.
Interestingly, while NCIS has occasionally done episodes of agents showing up on NCIS: Los Angeles and NCIS: New Orleans, they never had a full-on crossover event between the three spin-offs.
The CW’s Arrowverse has had a few significant events teaming up the characters of their shows. But it’s the One Chicago franchise that has truly pushed the idea of an interconnected TV show universe.
It’s natural for the Chicago Fire workers to run into some of the Chicago PD cops while both sides go to Chicago Med for an emergency. There’s also connections between the shows, such as Chicago Fire’s Mouch married to Chicago PD’s Trudy.
Several times, the One Chicago shows have had crossover events, each showing how natural and organic the world feels. It helps the shows are all set and filmed in the same city to allow the actors easy access to each set.
The Law & Order franchise is picking that up as there have already been a few crossovers between Law & Order: Special Victims Unit and Law & Order: Organized Crime.
Yet, while fans can hope the FBI shows follow that path, it sounds like the sheer logistics will be difficult.
Why another FBI crossover is unlikely
The key reason why an FBI crossover is complex is that FBI: International is filmed on location in Budapest and covers a team that works across Europe. As showrunner Derek Haas told TV Insider, that makes it harder to work in a team-up, both in logistics and a proper storyline.
“I can’t imagine us doing another one this year. It was so much more work than when we do the Chicago ones. Just even having the bad guy go all the way through the three episodes, get him to Hungary. You’ve got jet lag issues. You’ve got working hours issues. It was way harder than even the hardest Chicago crossover that we’ve done.”
Haas added it was difficult just to do the brief cameos of Jubal Valentine (Jeremy Sisto) and Isobel Castille (Alana De La Garza) doing video chats from the New York office.
“In Chicago, when we do one of those things, we just have the director walk next door and shoot whatever we need to shoot and then come back. Those sets are a hundred yards apart. But here, we have to have the director fly to New York to shoot any Jubal and Isobel scenes, and sometimes we just don’t have time. So we love them. We want to use them as much as we can. We like the idea that they know each other. But the first three episodes we were like, ‘Let’s do it!’ and then we’ve gotten to be a little bit more cautious as we pick the right episodes.”
Haas added that he wanted to play on how Jubal and Fly Team leader Scott Forrester (Luke Kleintank) have a past together. “I’m going to pitch and try to have a Jubal makes his way to Hungary episode.”
Haas also revealed why the crossover had OA (Zeeko Zaki) be the one working with the Fly Team because Zaki and Kleintank had worked together before. The effortless chemistry worked for the episode.
“The two actors knew each other before. They had done a project together [2015’s Max]. So they just had an instant competitiveness, but also chemistry.”
While it sounds like there aren’t many crossovers in the works, it’s possible the producers may build up to an event for later this year as seeing the FBI teams working together would spark Tuesdays up nicely.
FBI Tuesdays begins with FBI Season 4 at 8/7c on CBS.