‘NCIS’ franchise learns to time travel with prequel series ‘Origins’

As humans in a changing world we crave continuity, reliability. Before we walk into a room, we like to be fairly certain of what we’ll find — walls, floor, furniture, not hot coals or clouds of poison gas. Thus the popularity of the franchise. It may not lead to great, revolutionary art, but at the end of a long day, when you kick off your shoes and sink down into the sofa, you may not be in the mood for “Les Demoiselles d’Avignon” or a stuffed goat with a tire around its middle.

“NCIS,” for Naval Criminal Investigative Service, is a theoretically inexhaustible series about an elevated team of military police investigating cases involving military personnel; you might think that is too shallow a drawer to fill several series over many years, but you would be wrong, especially given how thin the writers are willing to stretch that connection.

The series offers a full-course meal of mainstream theatrical possibilities. It’s a police procedural, a metaphorical family comedy, a workplace comedy, a soap opera, a melodrama, a low-budget action adventure. You get good-looking heroes, a smattering of goofballs, a quirky medical examiner or two, a little romance — the amino acids of many such procedurals, to be sure, but “NCIS” is especially deft at combining kick-back entertainment with lean-forward tension. The military association adds a patriotic element, which I imagine some viewers prize, though the very premise of the series implies that the military is not squeaky clean. These aren’t shows I customarily watch, but it’s easy to see why people do.

The franchise has included iterations set in Los Angeles, New Orleans, Hawaii and Sydney, each applying local color and flavor to a tried-and-true formula; some have come and gone, some have not been around long enough to go, but none is likely to display the staying power or global penetration of the original, about to embark Monday on its 22nd season.

Following that premiere on CBS, home to all “NCIS” series, is the newest addition to the family, “NCIS: Origins.” Instead of setting up in a new city, however, we are being sent through time, back to 1991, when “newly minted special agent” Leroy Jethro Gibbs (Austin Stowell), played by Mark Harmon in the original and narrating here, has just joined the team he will one day lead. (A team that has not yet added the C to its acronym, which looks odd on the windbreakers but is quicker to bark at suspects.)

We are in Oceanside — a new city, after all — on the grounds of Camp Pendleton. That it’s the least obviously sexy setting in the “NCIS” collection — no offense, Oceanside, not to say the ocean itself — is echoed in the team’s drab Quonset-hut headquarters, a stark contrast to the bright, modern, high-tech lairs of the contemporary shows. Here, we’re in a world of phone booths, pagers and bulky computers no one knows how to work, of Walkmans and videotape, which both simplifies and complicates the action. It is, in its way, a kind of relief, a vacation from Now.

Television

In the idealized America of CBS procedurals, cops can do no wrong

On ‘CSI,’ ‘FBI’ and ‘NCIS,’ law enforcement is capable, reliable, idealistic, free from corruption and outside of politics or prejudice.

Oct. 6, 2021

Kyle Schmid as Mike Franks and Tyla Abercrumbie as Mary Jo Hayes in a scene from “NCIS: Origins.”

(Sonja Flemming/CBS)

Harmon, who left the series after the 19th season to be replaced by Gary Cole, established the model of the “NCIS” team leader — the stern yet supportive surrogate parent, time-worn, time-tested, ever ready to buck hidebound authority when necessary. Young Gibbs, a Marine sniper just recalled from Iraq after the murder of his wife and child, is not (yet) that person, though we get some hints he might be: his numbered “rules,” his “gut feelings.” At the moment, he’s neck-deep in trauma, getting in bar fights, failing his “psych eval.” There is some concern that he’s unstable, not quite Mel-Gibson-in-“Lethal Weapon” crazy, but potentially a danger to himself and others.

That the main character is a member of the team rather than its leader, as in other “NCIS” series, can feel a little awkward, given that it’s necessary for Gibbs, fresh behind the ears though he may be, to stand out from the group — that he see what others miss, and can handle a situation in an original way. When he says of a suspect, “He’s not our guy,” it won’t be that guy. It throws the ensemble off balance.

The team leader is Mike Franks (Kyle Schmid), Gibbs’ cowboy predecessor and mentor; with his horseshoe mustache, dark glasses and cigarettes, he’s like a ’90s cop dressed as a ’70s cop. (Older Franks, played by Muse Watson, appeared in some dramatic episodes of “NCIS.”) Hot-shot agent Lala Dominguez (Mariel Molino) is competitive and wary of Gibbs. (“You’re on my squad,” says Gibbs upon meeting her. “No, you’re on mine,” she replies, reasonably enough.) Agent Vera Strickland (Diany Rodriguez), who briefly appeared in the original series, is so far underused. (Only four episodes were available for review.)

Dark feelings and internal conflicts characterize these first episodes, which are full of raised voices, clenched jaws and steely stares. Necessary mood lightening is supplied by agent Randy Randolf (Caleb Martin Foote), friendly, chatty and the only one who wears a suit to work; “head secretary in charge” Mary Jo Hayes (Tyla Abercrumbie); and Granville “Granny” Dawson (Daniel Bellomy), promoted after a couple of episodes to the K-9 squad and the care of a dog named Special Agent Gary Callahan. (“It’s just the one dog, but he’s all the dog you need.”) Bobby Moynihan (major comic relief), Lori Petty and Julian Black Antelope provide forensic backup.

As to Stowell, he is square-jawed and broad-shouldered and though his casting was obviously the end of many discussions, he does not strike me as someone who will grow up to become Mark Harmon. (Harmon’s son Sean, who had the original idea for “Origins,” developed by franchise vets David J. North and Gina Lucita Monreal, played the younger Gibbs in “NCIS” flashbacks.) He could stand to relax a little. But perhaps that’s the point.