Some fans argue passionately about who was the best female lead: Andrea Parker, Tracey Needham or Catherine Bell. Since Bell starred in 9 out of 10 seasons some people see this debate as moot. Parker was hired for the Pilot episode but NBC did not want her for the series so Donald P. Bellisario was forced to hire Needham. When the show moved to CBS for the second season, Bellisario didn't want to keep Needham, but Parker had already been cast in a lead role in The Pretender and was thus unavailible. Bellisario took a gambit and hired an unknown actress (Bell) who'd had a small role in the last season 1 episode, and the rest is history...
Opinions obviously varied when the comic relief characters Bud and Harriet suffered the tragedy of Harriet giving birth to a stillborn child. Some viewed it as an unnecessarily cruel hand dealt to two undeserving characters while others saw it as a well executed dramatic twist that kicked off dialog on an issue many people are reluctant to talk about in real life.
The sudden retirement of Admiral Chegwidden following season 9.
Ensemble Dark Horse: Special Agent Leroy Jethro Gibbs, who makes his debut in this series during a Backdoor Pilot and became famous for his ice-cold hazing of Rabb in a murder investigation, which was enough to rattle even his cage. Gibbs proved so popular it was enough to constitute a very healthy run in the subsequent spin-off NCIS (which ironically detoured NCIS agents from being viewed as antagonistic entities- well, at least to everyone outside of JAG, who is annoyed by their hardball-prone presence), and from there snowballed into several more spin-offs.
Genius Bonus: Sometimes on JAG, the meaning of military acronyms are never explained to the viewers, and upon rarer occasion are references made to case law without explaining in detail what that case means to the viewers.
Narm: The sheer amount of Theme Music Power-Up in the first season. Anytime anyone did anything mildly heroic, the theme tune would start blaring full blast. After awhile, though, they dialed it back and used a more downplayed version of the theme for awesome moments so it became charming. It certainly helped that it was a really good theme.
Sam Worthington played an Australian sailor in the 60's in the season five episode "Boomerang: Part I".
Joe Spano plays a Navy Captain in the season 3 episode "Clipped Wings." He's more famous as Special Agent Tobias Fornell on NCIS.
Joel McKinnon Miller appeared in the Season 5 episode "Front and Center", and is most noticeable as Detective Hitchcock on Brooklyn Nine-Nine.
The USS Seahawk's CAG in Season 8 is played by Tony Dennison, better known as Lt. Andy Flynn on The Closer and Major Crimes.
Danneel Ackles plays a midshipman in two episodes in the final season.
Stock Footage Failure: In the Season 1 episode "Brig Break", a scene in which a prison bus gets shot down by an attack helicopter and crashes, has two errors: during the crash, the rear of the bus having a lightbar, and the other being desert scenery instead of the forest seen before and after the crash.
The Woobie: Both Bud and Harriet may qualify for this — Bud especially after the seventh season finale.
