NCIS: Origins Season 1, Episode 7, “One Flew Over” is an example of the question facing the CBS prequel: is it just the story of young Leroy Jethro Gibbs, or does it want to be a TV crime drama that stands on its own? This episode does a great job in the former department, and not so great of a job when it comes to the latter.
The case of the week in “One Flew Over” involves an elderly woman found dead off the side of the road. But the circumstances surrounding Alice Glenn’s death, and the people in her life, are given the bare minimum of development just to have some kind of a mystery. The real effort is put into scenes between Gibbs and Franks, which while welcome, feel almost like they’re part of a different show.
NCIS: Origins Explains How Gibbs Met Mike Franks
Austin Stowell and Kyle Schmid Drive Episode 7
The most important part of NCIS: Origins Season 1, Episode 7 is that it spells out Mike Franks’ importance in Gibbs’ life. Audiences get to see the transition from Franks just being the guy investigating the deaths of Gibbs’ family to his becoming a friend and mentor. Watching that relationship move from adversarial to supportive is poignant, particularly two key moments — one where the two literally come to blows after Franks confronts Gibbs about his behavior, and another in which Franks intentionally leaves Gibbs alone with his family’s case file. There’s a lot of emotion in both of those scenes, which is exactly how it should be when re-creating a relationship that viewers know goes on for decades.
Mike Franks (to Gibbs): You’ve come a long way, probie.
Actors Austin Stowell and Kyle Schmid are thus tasked with doing the heavy lifting in this episode. Stowell has already proven that he can take Gibbs from zero to sixty and back again, so he navigates Gibbs’ various outbursts with ease. Schmid meets him toe-to-toe at every turn. The more surprising moments in “One Flew Over” are actually the times when the stars have to rely on their humor. The subplot involves Gibbs taking care of an injured bird that flies into his apartment, and Stowell’s scenes with the bird are so endearing that the audience almost doesn’t want them to end. (And mercifully, the writers give the bird a happy ending, since the bird is a metaphor for Gibbs’ own recovery. On a different show, there would’ve been more grief piled on for drama’s sake.)
When Franks finds out that Lala Dominguez is coming over to his home, he volunteers to help Gibbs build a birdhouse. These little domestic moments are both funny and sweet, and they make up for the fact that there isn’t much else for the episode to hang its hat on. Whenever the episode isn’t focusing on Gibbs, Franks or both, it feels slower and unfocused.
NCIS: Origins Episode 7 Forgets to Develop Its Mystery
The Case of the Week Is Very Underwhelming
Over the last several NCIS: Origins episodes, it’s become clear that the series struggles with its weekly plotlines. It clearly knows where it wants to go with the stories of Gibbs and the characters in his life, but the NIS investigations have been hit or miss — largely due to the stories just not being developed enough. “One Flew Over” is the most obvious example of this dilemma yet, because nothing about its murder case ever gets off the ground.
The biggest question is whether victim Alice Glenn wandered off from her retirement home or was murdered, which isn’t much of a question because if there’s not a murder, then there’s nothing for NIS to look into. There are only three major characters introduced in the story and only one of them is shown as a suspect… which means he can’t actualy be the killer, since it’s almost never the first person considered. And just as in Season 1, Episode 6, “Incognito,” the real perpetrator offers up a full confession so that the writers can neatly tie up the plot. That person’s reason for killing Alice is as standard as a motive gets, too. It gives the impression that the case was thrown together to fit in between all of the Gibbs and Franks material, rather than treated as its own separate idea.
If NCIS: Origins wants to focus solely on Gibbs’ life, that’s absolutely an option, but if it wants to be a fully-rounded TV crime drama, then it needs to put as much detail and thought into its cases as it does its personal stories. The other shows in the franchise (and its predecessor JAG) were able to accomplish this regularly enough. But in the prequel, solving the crime can’t just be a thing that happens before the end credits roll — not if this one wants to last as long as some of the series that came before it.
Can NCIS: Origins Find Its Balance When It Returns?
The Rest of Season 1 Has Room for Improvement
Since the Alice Glenn investigation doesn’t get a ton of screen time, Episode 7 also limits what most of the other characters are able to do. The scene with Lala and Tish Kwa’la proves to be important, because it lays the groundwork for Tish confronting Franks about his unwillingness to stop chasing the person who assaulted her. It also affirms that Eddie didn’t move in with Lala after all, but that doesn’t really matter to viewers, since it’s practically expected after Lala admitted to cheating on him at the end of “Incognito.” NCIS: Origins also has to keep moving the rest of its characters forward in the remainder of the first season.
One only needs to look at Season 1, Episode 10, “Blue Bayou,” which is one of the best NCIS episodes in any of the shows. It fleshed out the backstory of Gibbs’ landlady Ruth (who makes her initial appearance here, when Gibbs first moves into his apartment) and it had a strong idea of the tale it wanted to tell. “One Flew Over” has a good emotional story but nothing else going around it. There’s no engaging mystery, no character development for anyone other than Gibbs or Franks, and not even other scenes that pop off the screen for viewers to remember. In fact, there’s one scene that gets downright weird in the coroner’s office, when one of the medical examiners suggests that Lala and Randy Randolf should have babies. The stereotype of the one quirky character in a TV procedural — usually the technical expert or science person — has become incredibly tired.
The things that NCIS: Origins does, it does very well. It’s certainly cast its two leads correctly. But it doesn’t seem to have a sense of the kind of show it wants to be past that, and it winds up relying on predictable storylines or not developing storylines enough as a result. There’s still plenty of time for Season 1 to course correct and add some punch to the rest of the series, and if it can do that, it could carve out its own place in NCIS franchise history beyond just being a prequel. After all, there’s plenty of stories about Gibbs, Franks and the early days of NIS to tell.