- Title: NCIS: Origins – Bend, Don’t Break
- IMDb: link
The case of the week involves a dead dealer found on the edge of Camp Pendleton. The victim had been selling Marijuana to petty officers on the base leading the team to the local mall, which will soon have both guns and toys stolen by the same crew, and where they receive a warning from the dead dealer’s partner about the curse of “the Moth Man” (a local urban legend) which no one, other than Gibbs (Austin Stowell), takes seriously. Still in the neighborhood, Jackson (Robert Taylor) has a conversation with Mike Franks (Kyle Schmid) in an attempt to talk him into cutting Leroy loose from NIS. The discussion only further alienates father and son after Franks benches the probie.
We’re still in the early moments of Gibbs fitting into NIS and, other than a few glimpses, a fair bit away from the man he will eventually become. Refusing to stand down, and unable to legally hold the suspect, we get our first example of the Gibbs elevator trick. The episode, which also returns Mark Harmon for narration, also gives us the infamous Rules. While Gibbs is having fun at the mall, Lala (Mariel Molino) and Vera (Diany Rodriguez) track down toys stolen from the mall by the same crew but not the guns although some quick thinking in the lab, and Gibbs researching their suspect, puts the final pieces of the case into place.
