Stream It Or Skip It: ‘NCIS: Origins’ On CBS, About Jethro Gibbs’ First Days As An NCIS Agent

Ever since Mark Harmon left the original NCIS in 2021, fans have been looking forward to seeing him and his character, Leroy Jethro Gibbs, come back to the franchise in one way or another. So when the prequel series NCIS: Origins was announced with Harmon attached as a narrator and executive producer, fans of the franchise got excited. But how much of Harmon as Gibbs are we going to see, given that the show takes place 33 years ago?

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Opening Shot: We see a shot of a forest, and a familiar voice says, “My dad used to say, wherever you go, there you are.”

The Gist: Gibbs narrates what sounds like his thoughts, and he talks about the stories about his time in NCIS that he’s never told anyone.

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We go back to 1991 at Camp Pendleton. A younger Leroy Jethro Gibbs (Austin Stowell) blasts Pearl Jam as he drives to his first day as a special agent for the Naval Investigative Service (NIS). The former Marine has joined NIS not long after the murder of his wife and young daughter. He’s introduced to everyone by Special Agent Bernard “Randy” Randolf (Caleb Foote), as we see the lead agent, Mike Franks (Kyle Schmid) getting paged while driving in the desert. He stops by a pay phone and pretty much threatens the guy using the phone so he can call in.

Franks bursts into the office and tells Gibbs and Randolf that a body has been found in a burnt-down house. When they get there, Special Agent Special Agent Lala Dominguez (Mariel Molino) is already there; there are animal bones all over the house, as if whoever was in the house was into having the skeletons around in a ritualistic fashion. The woman who lived in the house is burned almost beyond recognition, with her skull smashed. It’s so overwhelming to Gibbs, he gets physically ill.

Back at Camp Pendleton, Special Agent In Charge Cliff Walker (Patrick Fischler) tells Franks that they’re both taking a huge risk bringing Gibbs on, especially given the fact that Gibbs failed his psych evaluation. But for currently unknown reasons, Franks is vouching for Gibs, and Franks’ influence goes a long way at the eternally underappreciated NIS.

Dominguez doesn’t trust Gibbs, either, and she somehow knows about his psych eval. The two of them get into a scrape as they question a junkie named Bug that’s connected to the victim. The agents then find out from ME, Témet Téngalkat (Julian Black Antelope) and his assistant, Dr. Lenora Friedman (Lori Petty), that the victim was shot. As Dominguez confronts Gibbs the darkroom while she prints her crime scene photos, he notices something in one of the pictures that brings him back to the scene, where he figures out that the gunshot came from a sniper’s rifle, over 1300 yards away.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? There isn’t much of a doubt that NCIS: Origins is part of the NCIS franchise, given all of the elements of each of that franchise’s shows are there. There are just no smartphones.

Our Take: NCIS veterans Gina Lucita Monreal and David J. North are the showrunners of NCIS: Origins , which also has Mark and Chris Harmon among its executive producers; Chris Harmon, who played a young Gibbs on the mothership series, actually conceived the idea of a show featuring Gibbs’ first days in NCIS. The show does give Gibbs more backstory than the character had in his 18 years on the mothership, but in essence, Origins is a case-of-the-week NCIS series.

The first story, about this mysterious sniper that may or may not have military connections, isn’t really a worthwhile two-part story, especially when it comes to how it’s solved. It does point out Gibbs’ investigative skills and the conflict that he has with Dominguez that may define their ongoing relationship. But as far as an NCIS case is concerned, we’ve seen far better.

It seems the themes of Origins are going to be how what was then called NIS doesn’t get any respect from other federal law enforcement agencies, how Dominguez and fellow agent Vera Strickland (Diany Rodriguez) fight early-’90s sexism in law enforcement in their own ways. But the biggest theme is going to be Gibbs trying to shake the murders of his wife and daughter, perhaps with support from his father Jackson (Robert Taylor).

Stowell brings Harmon’s stoicism to the younger Gibbs, but one whose anger is still just under that stoic surface. In a lot of ways, though, this NCIS might be centered on Schmid’s character Mike Franks as much as it is on Gibbs. Schmid is somewhat old-fashioned, but with his quirks — he listens to power-pop ballads before interrogating suspects. He seems to have a rebellious streak, but he also respects the chain of command. He will of course be Gibbs’ mentor at the agency, and it seems like there’s a backstory developing with him and his significant other, but what that story is is largely undefined in the first two episodes.

What the show also needs to stop doing is leaning on its period for atmosphere. We don’t need to hear cars blaring hits from the time period, or Randolf highlighting the new IBM PS/2 with the color monitor that is installed in the office. Gen Xers like us roll our eyes at these references, while the younger viewers (does NCIS have younger viewers?) don’t really care. Monreal and North need to let those references fade into the background; the only good time to reference the time period is to point out how investigations differed in the pre-internet, pre-smartphone era. Anything other than that makes the show feel like it’s trying to be an episode of The Goldbergs .

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Sex and Skin: Franks and his SO are shown having relations, and we actually see the woman’s bare back.

Parting Shot: “This is a story of her,” the older Gibbs says as the younger one looks at Dominguez at the scene of a sniper attack on the beach.

Sleeper Star: Tyla Abercrumbie is Mary Jo Sullivan, who keeps the NIS office running, and seems to have a bead on how to properly talk back to Franks and earn his respect. We also see Bobby Moynihan as Woodrow “Woody” Browne, the director of NIS’s forensic lab; he’s seemingly there to provide the comic relief that the franchise usually reserves for either MEs or forensic techs.

Most Pilot-y Line: We get it; it’s 1991 and the agents get alerted via pagers. We saw far too many shots of those infernal devices in the first two episodes, including the text screens on them. We don’t need to see them again.

Our Call: STREAM IT. NCIS: Origins is a solid NCIS prequel that promises some backstory for Gibbs while introducing us to how the agency operated when even other government agencies had no idea it existed.

Joel Keller ( @joelkeller ) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com , VanityFair.com , Fast Company and elsewhere.

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