Television Trope: The Non-Marriage of the Cool Older Dude

A common issue with television characters is speculation about who they will date/court/marry. 

Dinozzo and Ziva. Sam and Diane.  

The desire to pair up characters is so strong that entire words exist to explain it: slash (usually male/male pairs) and shipping (Castle + Beckett = Caskett). 

I have no problem with slash and shipping efforts although they can get fairly amusing (see video).

Here's the point: Fairly or unfairly, the older cool guy can remain unattached without needing to pair up. 

Bellisario used this "given" fairly intelligently with Gibbs (who may be married now--NCIS lasted too long for me to keep going). Like with Al from Quantum Leap (who has a very different personality), Gibbs remains unattached because he will never be able to find a substitute for his first wife. And feels no need to try. 

The mellower and more extroverted Doc Sloan (a cross between Gibbs and Al) falls into the same category. Although, like Gibbs, he courts and dates a variety of interesting woman, including (most amusingly) an IRS agent, he doesn't feel the need to pair up. 

This is not quite the same as Monk, who mourns forever the loss of Trudy. As Danny points out to his grandfather and father in Blue Bloods, staying alone for the rest of his life isn't all that attractive a proposition. 

Yet Tom Selleck as Frank and Henry as his father manage to stay unattached. 

It is arguably more about writing than about reality. Plenty of older gentleman (including some of my own uncles) remarry late in life, though not always wisely. If I was cynical, I would say that the audience cares more about the youngsters (Jamie and Eddie, for instance) than about the older folks. However, the variety of lovers on Love Boat and the successful marriages of Provenza-Patrice and Flynn-Raydor on Major Crimes prove that assumption wrong.

I think the motif centers more on writing stability. A wife for Doc Sloan would get in the way of his investigations unless the show turned into Mr. and Mrs. Murder. In Diagnosis Murder, both father and son stayed unattached. Likewise, on NCIS, Dinozzo stayed unattached enough that he could devote himself entirely to his father figure, Gibbs. (Until the actor left, and the character went to find Ziva.)

There's always the risk of a Linda Reagan (Amy Carlson) deciding to drop the show and do something else. Can't blame the actress! But it does worry the scriptwriters. Easier to keep the leads unattached--and easier to keep them unattached if they are older. 

(There is another solution to this problem that I wish more scriptwriters would use--the character is constantly referred to but never shows up, like Maris on Frasier. Unfortunately for the character of Linda, the family scenes in Blue Bloods are too important for this approach to work as a solution. At least for Linda. It might work if Vanessa Ray as Eddie decides to do something else.)