SPOILER ALERT: The following contains spoilers for NCIS: Origins Season 2, Episode 6.

The magic trick that NCIS: Origins keeps pulling off is finding ways to break or subvert TV procedural stereotypes. Season 2, Episode 6, “Happy Birthday” is another example of that. It’s focused on Randy Randolf, who’s often used by the CBS show for comic relief, and the episode taking place on his birthday suggests this could be simply an entertaining detour. In actuality, this hour is much more than that.

It’s fair to compare this episode to Season 1’s “Touchstones,” which revealed the backstory of Michael Harney’s character Kowalski (who plays a small but pivotal role in this story). Like “Touchstones,” this episode takes a character whom fans see a certain way and gets them to reconsider that opinion. Audiences learned enough about Randy in the first season to get that he’s not always the funny guy, but he’s still so often used in that capacity that “Happy Birthday” still carries a lot of weight. It explains what shaped Randy’s attitude, which then gives viewers a better understanding of why he’s the comic relief character. This is an important distinction: it’s not “let’s throw one serious episode at the funny character.” It’s “this is why the character is written this way, not only for him, but for the entire show.”

The case of the week is a bit labyrinthine—a soldier’s body is found in a way that resembles a cold case homicide, and the NIS team eventually learns that the witness who found the body is the killer. He staged the crime scene in hopes of forcing anyone to reopen his sister’s case. It’s not the most compelling investigation NCIS: Origins has ever done, but this is an episode where the procedural part is secondary to the stories between the main characters. It’s the C-story at best.

The A-story involves Randy’s character journey in relation to what seems like a tenuous connection: he attempts to look up the old case in the computer database he’s been working so hard on. When he can’t find it, that creates several different story points. There’s Randy’s self-esteem struggling because he can’t locate it; he sleeps in the office because he spent all night looking through the paper files. There’s the reveal that Cliff Wheeler accidentally deleted said file during his short stint as a field agent, which almost becomes the reveal of Wheeler’s personal life (but thankfully doesn’t).

Most importantly, though, is the chasm this initially minor thing creates between Randy and Mike Franks. Franks is even more testy than usual about Randy’s computer, and when he tries to unplug it in the middle of a blow-up, he ends up wrecking the device instead. This means that all of Randy’s hard work has gone down the drain, which is understandably crushing to Randy. Franks refuses to apologize, because he thinks that reliance on technology is changing Randy. And that lack of an apology then starts a fight between Randy and Franks. There are three different levels to one scene with a destroyed computer.

Franks’ issues go beyond the computer or Randy; it’s great to get a quick phone check-in with his brother Mason to confirm that story will continue (and that viewers will get to see more of Philip Winchester). The B-story in the episode is that some of the belongings Franks mailed back from the family ranch in Texas have gotten lost by the post office. Franks is adjusting to the shift in his family dynamic, and he doesn’t take change well. He’s then seeing what he perceives as change in Randy—only for Randy to point out that if Franks thinks that, then he doesn’t know him at all. This is a big scene for both characters. When Randy takes over that moment, it shows the truth of Randy and that he can be on even footing with Franks, just like Gibbs or Lala. And Franks gets a wake-up call; as entertaining as his strong personality is, NCIS: Origins has done well to establish that the team dynamic goes both ways.

The thing is, Franks has a valid point about technology taking away from the human aspects of crime-solving (and life in general). Speaking of Philip Winchester, he starred in an NBC series called The Player where his character Alex Kane made this exact argument. In a world filled with technology—and in genre shows increasingly reliant on it, to the point where almost every crime series has a “tech expert” in the ensemble—the “old school” methods get regularly overlooked. If NCIS: Origins wants to dive into this topic, it’s the perfect show to put more emphasis on the less technical side of crime-solving. Between its prequel setting and its character-driven stories, it can easily get away with not using as much technology. That doesn’t mean it’s not incredibly sweet when Franks offers to help Herm rebuild Randy’s database at the end of the hour.

Elsewhere, the Lala and Flaco subplot pushes further to the fore. In “Happy Birthday,” Lala learns that the man Flaco wanted her to catch has now killed two more people. Later, she finds one of his associates named Manuel breaking into her place (although he buys her a better lock for her front door). The end of the episode is another scene of Lala in church—but this time she’s not alone. And to hear both characters say that they wish they could be more like Randy, even if he’s not mentioned by name, is similarly touching. It’s something that everyone in this NCIS: Origins episode wants better, even the characters who would be considered as “bad guys.”

Gibbs does confront Lala about Manuel, only as “guy with the Impala,” and also mentions him to Franks. Lala succeeds in playing this off as just a guy she’s dating, but Origins fans know that won’t last, especially now that Gibbs is asking Franks about him, too. It is painful for Gibbs to say that Lala can trust him and then she doesn’t, but this is one more scene where audiences are shown how complex the dynamic between those two characters is (and thus why it had such an impact on Gibbs).

But from that bittersweet moment to the visceral enjoyment of watching both Gibbs and Randy briefly have to brawl their way out of a secret fight club, “Happy Birthday” is peppered with memorable scenes. And it all comes back to more flashbacks—this time of Randy as a child, comforting his mother when she breaks down over their financial stress. Audiences leave with a clear understanding of why Randy approaches life with such a sunny attitude; it’s a choice on his part and what keeps him going. They also get, through Franks, a grasp of why his approach is one more critical element of the NIS team. And maybe they might leave wanting to be a little more like Randy Randolf themselves.

NCIS: Origins airs Tuesdays at 9:00 p.m. ET/PT on CBS. Photo Credit: Courtesy of CBS.

Article content is (c)2020-2025 Brittany Frederick and may not be excerpted or reproduced without express written permission by the author. Follow me on Twitter at @BFTVTwtr and on Instagram at @BFTVGram. For story pitches, contact me at tvbrittanyf@yahoo.com.