For a leading man in a massive series, Mark Harmon got to play Special Agent Leroy Jethro Gibbs as a bit of a man of mystery on the “NCIS” franchise mothership series, at least up to the point that it had to exhaust whatever it was that put that haunted look in his baby blues. As portrayed by the actor over 22 seasons, Gibbs never did stop being the strong, taciturn type, but at the close of that tenure it didn’t feel like could possibly be much backstory left to mine, given the myriad flashbacks to the trauma that led the lawman to a seemingly permanent state of loner-dom. So when a prequel series for Gibbs was announced early this year, a series fan might’ve wondered: Is there any aspect of his pining for his dead wife and daughter that’s been left remotely unplummed?
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But, as it turns out, “NCIS: Origins” does have a raison d’etre that doesn’t depend entirely on quickie corpse-of-the-week cases or on Shannon-and-Kelly redux. (Although, rest assured, there’s plenty of both of those.) Watching the first few episodes, you start to wonder whether the show’s existence isn’t just about milking Jethro for more tortured looks. It’s about rectifying a mistake the original series made, or at least a creative decision that was considered an error by much of the fan base: the killing-off of a beloved supporting character, Mike Franks, as a shocking plot point in Season 8. Once the series’ producers presumably realized that might’ve been a misstep, it was too late to bring him back — though God knows they tried, as character actor Muse Watson got to come back again and again as network television’s favorite recurring ghost (or, sure, imaginary conscience). With “Origins,” the franchise not only gets to resurrect Franks, but give Gibbs the chance to be part of a buddy drama. The new show looks like it will be more of a two-hander than first imagined… or at least, with any luck, it will be.
But as fans well know going into the Oct. 13 premiere, none of the cast members from the still-ongoing original series are returning to play their 1991 selves. (Sorry, de-aging fans… at least you have that upcoming Tom Hanks movie to look forward to.) Gibbs is played by — no, not Harmon’s son, Sean Harmon, who portrayed his dad’s character in multiple “NCIS” flashback episodes, and is executive-producing here — but by Austin Stowell, a relative unknown to most viewers. Stowell bears a resemblance to the senior (or junior) Harmon that is, shall we say, inexact. Kyle Schmid, who steps in for Watson as a 1991 Mike Franks, is closer to the guy we remember on screen, minus two or three decades of accumulated crustiness. Will you buy these two as younger, more livewire versions of the dynamic duo that never quite got its full due in the 2000s and 2010s? It remains to be seen how many episodes it might take for the fandom’s collective brain to do a complete reset, but you can guess that “NCIS: Origins” will get a long runway to try to accomplish that.
When we first re-meet Gibbs at the beginning of the two-parter premiere, “Enter Sandman,” his wife and daughter have already been killed, which is quite a relief — no one really needed a full dramatization of that buildup. He’s messed up enough by that still-recent tragedy that he’s failed a psych evaluation, we’re repeatedly told, yet Franks either has undue faith in his sniper-turned-investigator skills or just sees giving him the NCIS gig as a form of rehab. (Make that NIS, actually … the logos on the caps and jackets in the new series stay true to how the Naval Investigative Service didn’t pick up its “C” until 1992. It also jokily alludes to how, prior to “NCIS” going to series in 2003, few civilians had any idea what the hell either acronym meant.) They’re all working out of Camp Pendleton in California under the direction of Special Agent Cliff Walker (Patrick Fischler, always to be remembered by some of us as the guy who gets literally scared to death behind a diner in “Mulholland Drive”). For once in a primary “NCIS” series, neither Walker nor anybody else in charge is portrayed initially as an ambiguous, possibly adversarial figure — at least not yet; Walker just seems a little nervous and preoccupied.
No nerves for Mike Franks, though — a cocky, mustachioed figure of indeterminate Southern origin who wears his machismo and political incorrectness on his suspenders. The Franks of “NCIS: Origins” might be the least tortured of any special agent in franchise history, or at least since early-DiNozzio days. It will surely be easy to overplay the character’s inconsideration for polite norms, but viewers may get a kick out of the scene in an early episode where a suspect is seen being interrogated on video about his belief in the fearsome Mothman legend — and the show’s editors keep cutting to Franks leading his colleagues in uproarious, derisive laughter. Meanwhile, female team members have a locker room discussion over whether or not Franks is a misogynist who deliberately passes them over for promotions. He might be, but the character is so lovable that, if so, he’s probably in line for some enlightenment before the season is up. As played by Schmid, this Franks looks and sounds a little like a ruder and cruder Ted Lasso. It’s an enjoyable fine line to watch him play, in this early going.
Watching Stowell land in the role of Gibbs presents a bigger hurdle. Even his entrance music asks fans to reconsider the hero they thought they knew: He drives onto the Camp Pendleton base cranking up the Pearl Jam. Is that just to establish some period flavor, or is it really meant to blow our minds that Gibbs was once an Eddie Vedder kinda guy? (Franks, for his part, is introduced with some circa-1991 Hank Jr., rather on the nose.) Stowell seems like a hunkier, taller, more chiseled Gibbs than the one we met deeper into middle age, and indeed, the women in the office meet his first arrival at their headquarters with quick but unmistakably lustful double-takes. If anything, Stowell resembles a Brian Dietzen with a bigger neck more than he does Harmon — and he occasionally acts like him, too, having to play the guy whose mouth is sometimes agape as he is educated into the ways of gruesome corpses and crime-solving. Stowell isn’t that much taller than Harmon in real life, but he seems to tower over every other cast member here, a beefy athlete thrust into the role of preternaturally intuitive agent. He’s so un-Harmon-like in most ways, in fact, that it almost makes “Origins” feel more like a reboot than a prequel.
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But of course the idea is that Gibbs was a different guy in 1991. Even with the trauma freshly under his belt, he’s still a naif in the woods, as well as a seasoned sniper. So maybe we’ll get more used to him, or the producers’ idea of him, over time. There are moments when you can feel Stowell leaning out of his naturally booming voice and more into Harmon’s quieter rasp — which is important, since Harmon does provide narration for the series, mostly at the beginning and end of episodes, offering thoughts on a life spent largely solitarily. (The original actor also shows up very briefly at the beginning of the pilot, presumably in the present day, chopping wood.) It’s hard to know which way the series might take the character — whether it’ll establish how he developed the essential loneliness Harmon played, or as more of a beloved partner to Franks, or a bit of having it both ways.
The first four episodes that were made available for review for critics concentrate plotwise on the franchise’s usual procedural cases, the elaborate details of which are forgotten as quickly as they’re farmed out, while fans accept these as the delivery system for the character stuff they love. Epidode 4 deals with the protection of a young daughter of a soldier overseas, something that inevitably brings up Gibbs’ guilt issues for having been on duty when his family met its end. The real inevitably is that — before long, probably in this first season — the show will recount how Gibbs went to Mexico to covertly kill the man responsible for his wife and daughter’s deaths, an incident long ago established in “NCIS” lore as having happened around 1991. In fact, Gibbs’ father, Jackson Gibbs (a gentle Ralph Waite in the original series, an angrier Robert Taylor in this one), shows up just in order to warn his son not to go to Mexico and do that. He may as well tell him not to build an indoor boat.
Gibbs has a potential love interest in this new show, Lala Dominguez (Mariel Molino), whom Franks in one unfortunate exchange accuses of being “in heat.” The portent of Harmon’s narration suggests that she may be in trouble for hitching her wagon to Gibbs’ — as does the fact that her character never made it to “NCIS” proper. Molino is an appealing actor, so maybe Stowell will get some of the love scenes that Harmon always seemed a little wary of doing himself, before she becomes something else for Gibbs to feel guilty about. It’ll be nice if they don’t kill her off — if the lead character gets to experience some anguish just because he moved on sexually too soon, not because he got somebody murdered again.
But it’s clear who Gibbs’ real love interest in “Origins” will be: Mike Franks. It couldn’t happen to a nicer couple of ringers.
“NCIS: Origins” premieres on CBS on Oct. 14 at 9 p.m. ET/PT.
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