For a leading man on a massive series, Mark Harmon got to play Special Agent Leroy Jethro Gibbs as a bit of a man of mystery in the NCIS franchise’s mothership series, at least to the point where it had to exhaust whatever it was. that gave him that ghostly look in his baby blues. As the actor has portrayed over 22 seasons, Gibbs never stopped being a strong, silent type, but at the end of that period it didn’t feel like there was much backstory left to mine given the numerous flashbacks to the trauma that led the police officer to a seemingly permanent state of loneliness. So when a prequel series for Gibbs was announced early this year, a series fan might have wondered: Is there an aspect of his longing for his late wife and daughter that has been left remotely untouched?

But it turns out that “NCIS: Origins” do have a raison d’être that doesn’t depend entirely on cases of quick corpse of the week or Shannon-and-Kelly redux. (Although, rest assured, there are plenty of both.) Watching the first few episodes, you start to wonder if the show’s existence isn’t just about milking Jethro for more anguished looks. It’s about righting a mistake the original series made, or at least a creative decision that was considered a mistake by much of the fanbase: the murder of a beloved supporting character, Mike Franks, as a shocking plot point in season 8. When the show’s producers supposedly realized this might have been a misstep, it was too late to bring him back – although God knows they tried, since character actor Muse Watson had to come back again and again as network television’s favorite recurring ghost (or, sure, imaginary conscience). With “Origins,” the franchise can not only bring Franks back to life, but also give Gibbs the chance to be part of a buddy drama. It looks like the new show will be more of a two-hander than initially thought… or at least, with any luck, it will be.

But as fans well know going into the October 13 premiere, none of the cast members from the ongoing original series are returning to play themselves from 1991. (Sorry, aging fans… at least you have that upcoming Tom Hanks movie to look forward to.) Gibbs is played by — no, not Harmon’s son, Sean Harmon, who played his father’s character in several “NCIS” flashback episodes, and executive produces here – but by Austin Stowell, a relative unknown to most viewers. Stowell bears a resemblance to the senior (or junior) Harmon, which is, shall we say, inaccurate. Kyle Schmid, who replaces Watson as Mike Franks from 1991, is closer to the man we remember on screen, minus two or three decades of accumulated crustiness. Will you buy these two as younger, more livewire versions of the dynamic duo that never quite came into their own in the 2000s and 2010s? It remains to be seen how many episodes it will take for the fandom’s collective brain to perform a full reset, but you can guess that “NCIS: Origins” will have a long runway to achieve that.

When we first meet Gibbs again at the start of the two-part premiere, “Enter Sandman,” his wife and daughter have already been killed, which is a relief — no one really needed a full dramatization of that build-up. He’s already so confused by that most recent tragedy that he’s failed a psychological evaluation, we’re repeatedly told, but Franks either has overconfidence in his skills as a sniper and investigator or he’s seeing the NCIS gig simply as a form of rehab. . (Make that NIS, actually… the logos on the caps and jackets in the new series stay true to how the Naval Investigative Service didn’t pick up its “C” until 1992. It also jokingly references how, before “NCIS” When we went to series in 2003, few civilians had any idea what either acronym meant.) They all work out of Camp Pendleton, California under the direction of Special Agent Cliff Walker (Patrick Fischler, who some of us will always remember as the man who literally terrified behind a restaurant on “Mulholland Drive”). For once in a primary “NCIS” series, neither Walker nor anyone else in charge is initially portrayed as an ambiguous, potentially hostile figure — at least not yet; Walker just seems a little nervous and preoccupied.

But no nerves for Mike Franks: a cocky, mustached figure of indeterminate southern origin who wears his machismo and political incorrectness on his suspenders. The Franks of ‘NCIS: Origins’ are perhaps the least tortured of all special agents in franchise history, or at least since the early DiNozzio days. It will certainly be easy to overstate the character’s disregard for polite norms, but viewers might get a kick out of the scene in an early episode in which a suspect is interrogated on video about his belief in the terrifying Mothman legend – and the editors of the show. continue to address Franks and lead his colleagues into loud, mocking laughter. Meanwhile, female team members have a locker room discussion about whether or not Franks is a misogynist who is deliberately passing them off for promotions. That could be, but the character is so lovable that, if so, he’s probably in line for some relief before the season is over. As played by Schmid, this Franks looks and sounds a bit like a rougher and rougher Ted Lasso. It’s an enjoyable fine line to watch him play, at this early stage.

Seeing Stowell land in the role of Gibbs presents a bigger hurdle. Even his entrance music asks fans to reconsider the hero they thought they knew: He drives onto the Camp Pendleton base and turns on the Pearl Jam. Is that just to establish a certain historical flavor, or is it really meant to surprise us that Gibbs was once an Eddie Vedder guy? (Franks, for his part, is introduced with a circa-1991 Hank Jr., rather on the nose.) Stowell seems like a handsomer, taller, more chiseled Gibbs than the one we met in middle age, and indeed, the women in the office he meets his first arrival at their headquarters with quick but undeniably salacious double takes. If anything, Stowell looks more like a Brian Dietzen with a bigger neck than Harmon – and he occasionally acts like him, having to play the man whose mouth sometimes hangs open as he’s schooled in the ways of heinous corpses and crime. dissolve. Stowell isn’t that much taller than Harmon in real life, but he seems to tower over every other cast member here, a strapping athlete thrust into the role of preternaturally intuitive agent. It’s so un-Harmon-like in most respects that it almost makes “Origins” feel more like a reboot than a prequel.

But the idea, of course, is that Gibbs was a different man in 1991. Even with the trauma still fresh under his belt, he is still a naive in the woods, as well as a seasoned sniper. So maybe over time we’ll get more used to him, or to the producers’ idea of ​​him. There are moments when you can feel Stowell leaning out of his naturally booming voice and moving more toward Harmon’s softer rasp — which is important, since Harmon do provide commentary for the series, usually at the beginning and end of episodes, offering thoughts on a life spent largely in solitude. (The original actor also appears very briefly at the beginning of the pilot, presumably in the present day, chopping wood.) It’s hard to know what direction the series might take the character in — or whether it will determine how he developed the essential solitude. Harmon played, either more like a beloved partner of Franks, or a bit both ways.

The first four episodes made available for critics’ review plot-wise focus on the franchise’s usual procedural stuff, the elaborate details of which are forgotten as quickly as they are outsourced, while fans accept these as the delivery system for the character stuff that they use. Love. Episode 4 concerns the protection of a soldier’s young daughter abroad, something that inevitably brings up the issues of Gibbs’ guilt for being on duty when his family ended. The real inevitability is that the show will – soon, probably in this first season – tell how Gibbs went to Mexico to secretly kill the man responsible for the deaths of his wife and daughter, an incident that has long since happened in the ‘ NCIS’ lore has been established as having happened. circa 1991. In fact, Gibbs’ father, Jackson Gibbs (a mild-mannered Ralph Waite in the original series, an angrier Robert Taylor in this one), appears just to warn his son not to go to Mexico and do so. Might as well tell him not to build a barge.

Gibbs has a potential love interest in this new show, Lala Dominguez (Mariel Molino), who, in an unfortunate exchange, accuses Franks of being “in heat.” The portent of Harmon’s story suggests she may be in trouble for hitching her wagon to Gibbs’ – as well as the fact that her character never made it to “NCIS” proper. Molino is an attractive actor, so maybe Stowell gets some of the love scenes that Harmon himself always seemed a little wary of before she becomes something else that Gibbs feels guilty about. It’ll be nice if they don’t kill her off – if the main character experiences some angst just because he moved on sexually too quickly, not because he got someone killed again.

But it’s clear who Gibbs’ real love interest will be in “Origins”: Mike Franks. It couldn’t have happened to a nicer bunch of ringers.

“NCIS: Origins” premieres on CBS on October 14 at 9pm ET/PT.