• by Adam Buckman , Featured Columnist, October 14, 2024

The series premiere of “NCIS: Origins” on CBS Monday night is a one-hour collection of clichés.

And that happens to be its greatest strength. With a show like “NCIS: Origins,” the “NCIS” brand name tells you everything you need to know about the show.

This new show fulfills every possible expectation. It is a prequel series to CBS’s long-running and hugely popular “NCIS,” which starts its 22nd season Monday night at 8 Eastern, leading in to two back-to-back episodes of “Origins.”

The origin story in the new series is the story of how Leroy Jethro Gibbs, boss of the original “NCIS” unit, began his career in 1991. 

Austin Stowell (above photo) plays the young Gibbs in “NCIS: Origins,” which is narrated by Mark Harmon, who played the original Gibbs.

In “NCIS: Origins,” Gibbs is a United States Marine who has apparently qualified for work in an NCIS unit at Camp Pendleton, a Marine base in southern California.

NCIS stands for Naval Criminal Investigative Service, but in the time frame of the new show, the acronym is NIS -- Naval Investigative Service without the “C.”

These are detectives who investigate crimes involving Navy personnel either on base or off of it.

The new, young Gibbs character is a man of few words who is recovering from a tragedy in his personal life that has left him in a deep state of mourning. 

He is a strong, silent type not unlike the Jack Reacher character played by Alan Ritchson on Amazon’s “Reacher.”

As one would expect, young Gibbs does not fit in right away in his new unit. But as time goes on in the two episodes on premiere night, he begins to make an impression on his co-workers by staying slightly ahead of them in the investigation of a suspected sniper the media has nicknamed The Sandman.

It just so happens that Gibbs is a Marine sniper, so he has special insights into how the Sandman goes about his business.

The other characters we all have come to expect in procedurals of this type -- particularly the ones on CBS -- include the unit chief, a tough, macho, swaggering eccentric with a heart of gold who stretches the rules and sometimes breaks them.

Also in the unit is a young woman investigator who swaggers like the men and feels it is her responsibility to haze the newcomer, or at the very least question everything he does.

Her treatment of him comes across as unnecessarily mean and contrived. As a result, she is the least likable and most unsympathetic character on the show.

Then there is the straitlaced member of the unit who wears a tie, and in the premiere, there were at least two quirky medical examiners/forensics specialists. Thus, all the “types” are present and accounted for. 

In keeping with a long tradition of CBS procedurals, the Sandman sniper is a serial killer, which is quite a case for young Gibbs to face on his first days on the job.

Also traditional for CBS are the scenes of crime-scene gore -- mainly corpses in various stages of death, including a woman who was burned to death practically beyond recognition.

CBS has had shows like this one since the original “CSI” premiered in 2000. The success of the “CSI” and “NCIS” franchises for more than two decades pretty much speaks for itself.

“NCIS: Origins” premieres Monday, October 14, 9-11 p.m. Eastern on CBS.