Illustration by Eric Faison/The Daily Beast/CBS
I had only seen one episode of NCIS before I watched NCIS: Origins. This is not a brag; normally, as a reviewer, I’d try to conceal my ignorance as best as possible. Ideally, I’d take time to catch up on episodes of the original before attempting to discuss the prequel in order to place the series in its proper context. In this case, that wasn’t necessary, because NCIS: Origins is an all-you-can-eat buffet of cop clichés. If you’ve ever seen a procedural, on film or on TV, you’ll be able to follow this one just fine.
Monday night’s two-part series premiere, “Enter Sandman,” opens with the first of many folksy aphorisms—this series’ love language. “My dad used to say, ‘Wherever you go, there you are.’ I guess he was right,” Mark Harmon, whose return to the series is a huge deal according to the Variety articles I read in anticipation of this review, growls in voiceover over closeup shots of grizzled hands building a fire in the wilderness. This refers to the arc of his character, Leroy Jethro Gibbs, a fan favorite whose backstory as a Marine sniper-turned-Navy cop is explored in NCIS: Origins. He keeps running, but his problems keep catching up with him. Maybe he should try therapy?
He does have a lot to unpack. As NCIS: Origins begins, Gibbs (played here by Austin Stowell) is a young man who has just been assigned to the NIS (Naval Intelligence Service; the “C” for “criminal” was added later) at Camp Pendleton in California after returning home from a tour of duty in Iraq. (The first time around—Origins is set in 1991.) It’s mentioned several times that Gibbs failed his psych evaluation before taking the NIS job, and he really has no business carrying a gun. But he does carry one. And he’s a steadier shot than the rest of them, trauma be damned.
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