Yahoo Lifestyle NCIS: Origins Recap: Gibbs and Lala Reach an Agreement Before They Grow Any Closer
This week on CBS’ NCIS: Origins, a break-in at the NIS evidence room led to a resignation — and the discovery of a betrayal. Plus, Lala drew a line in the sand, before she and Gibbs grow any closer.
This week’s episode of NCIS: Origins offered a miniature “origin” story for evidence custodian Kowalski (played by Orange Is the New Black‘s Michael Harney), with a couple of flashbacks to the end of his time as a POW in the Korean War. We saw that upon tasting freedom again, a young Kowalski held onto a rock that had been unceremoniously tossed at his feet one day, as a symbol of something that was all his — and to this day he keeps it nearby.
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Kowalski similarly came to feel that the evidence locker was a huge part of who he was, so when it was broken into and ransacked one night, and more than $40,000 stolen from it, he felt violated, and at sea. When Franks and others persisted in working the room as a crime scene, Kowalski eventually roared at everyone, demanding time alone to make sense of his upended work space. Not long after, Kowalski left his handwritten resignation at the foot of the stairs leading up to SAC Walker’s office.
It then fell on Dawson — who we learned was bumped from field duty some time ago, due to a blunder, and assigned to the evidence locker — to get things back in order.
While at first it appeared to be a break-in (and possibly the work of a coke ring that had recently been busted to the tune of the stolen $40K), a closer examination of the floor by the basement window that had been broken revealed that it was in fact an inside job. Knowing that the pinched cash had traces of cocaine on it, Agent Gary Callahan was enlisted to sniff around the office. The doggo’s nose led Franks to a filing cabinet shared by Special Agents Vera Strickland and Roger Murphy. Confronted by Franks, Roger folded like a house of cards, explaining that he had racked up some gambling debts and his mom was being threatened if he didn’t square things away.
As if that wasn’t bad enough, Roger also confessed to leaking the whereabouts of Mildred, the little girl/murder witness that Mary Jo offered shelter to earlier in the season, in exchange for $20K — unaware that he was dealing with the hitman tasked with taking out the kid (and that Gibbs wound up killing). Suffice to say, Mary Jo asked for (and got) some private time to tell Roger what she thinks of him!
By episode’s end, Kowalski returned to NIS and withdrew his resignation, moved by a visit Dawson had paid to his home. Upon seeing how Dawson had gotten the cage and the log book back in working order, Kowalski gifted the kid with his prized rock.
Elsewhere this week, Lala clocked that Gibbs had come into the office early when the heist was discovered — just as she had done the day before, to catch up on paper work. Hmmm. Later, when seeking out a POI with Gibbs, Lala bumped into that rando she hooked up with in her truck much earlier this season, while dating Eddie. Gibbs mistook the guy for Eddie himself, and Lala confessed that it was someone else, that she had done “some pretty awful” things while with her “amazing” ex. Lala opened up to Gibbs that she was still processing what he had done in Mexico (killing Pedro Hernandez, and telling Franks but not her), and he probably is, too, so… maybe they shouldn’t be trying to bump into each other at the office before hours. And Gibbs agreed. “If you miss Eddie, you should tell him,” Gibbs suggested. And last we saw, Lala phoned Eddie for the first time in a while, and he picked up…
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