Fans of the History channel reality show American Pickers might be happy to hear that there will soon be another place on TV where they can see show creator and star Mike Wolfe. The professional antique collector has signed on for a role in the popular CBS crime drama NCIS.
According to Entertainment Weekly, Mike Wolfe will be playing himself in the NCIS episode scheduled to air on March 13. In it, Gibbs and Ducky will actually be watching an episode of American Pickers when they recognize a 200-year-old war stick that Wolfe is handling, and realize the item could be a match for a case from a decade ago that went cold. Gibbs then tracks Wolfe down to get a look at the war stick, which he finds out Wolfe bought from someone, and the cold case is reopened. There's no word right now if Wolfe's retail store, Antique Archaeology, will make an appearance in the episode as well.
Considering how well this episode of NCIS will work American Pickers into the storyline, it's possible that someone on staff at the long-running procedural is a big fan, and that wouldn't be a surprise at all. American Pickers has been airing on the History channel since 2010, and has 18 seasons and 245 episodes under its Americana laced belt. The series follows "picker" partners Mike Wolfe and Frank Fritz as they travel the country by car looking for rare collectibles and treasures they can sell in their shops, acquire for clients or keep for their personal collections. The duo usually looks through collections most people would see, upon original inspection, as junk, including people's barns, sheds, homes and anywhere else they might keep large stores of old items. The show has a huge following, and the series premiere became the highest rated History channel debut since Ice Road Truckers in 2007.
The war stick in question is basically a giant club with dangerous-looking bumps all over the clubbing end, so it's a good bet that this thing was used to kill the hell out of someone back in the day. Also, this is NCIS, and while the possibility of there being espionage or terrorism involved in the case isn't completely out of the way, it's hard to deny that this sounds like a straight up murder case that never got solved because the investigators couldn't quite locate the murder weapon.
You can see more of Mike Wolfe on American Pickers, which airs Mondays at 9 p.m. EST, while NCIS can be seen Tuesdays at 8 p.m. EST on CBS. For more on what you can watch in the coming weeks on the small screen, be sure to check out our midseason premiere guide.
