NCIS: Origins Season 1, Episode 10 Review: ‘Blue Bayou’

NCIS: Origins Season 1, Episode 10 ‘Blue Bayou’ outdoes a pretty great last episode, and is, without a doubt, the best hour in the show’s young season. Big words considering the episode barely has basically no Randy, only a little Franks and Lala, and focuses on Gibbs before he came to NIS and his friendship with his landlady, Ruth.

And yet, this hour—which is both incredibly sad and truly emotional, manages to give us the best version of Gibbs. The one that cares. The one that tries. The one that truly struggles, but that wants to be better. And the one that can form a real bond with a woman who was only supposed to be his landlady and truly became his best friend.

The thing about Gibbs is that, as we will get to know him later, as we’re getting to know him now, there have been a lot of important people in his life. Sometimes that makes it feel like there isn’t space for any more. Like there’s a finite number of people that can define someone’s life. But that isn’t so, it never has been. People can come into your life, change it and go, for many different reasons. Gibbs just happens to have been lucky enough, at different points in his life, to have found the people he needed when he needed them. This part of the story is about what he needed right after he lost Shannon and Kelly.

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SHE WASN’T EVEN MINE TO LOSE

NCIS: Origins Season 1, Episode 10 ‘Blue Bayou’ isn’t really about Gibbs and Lala, but in many ways, it’s leading to a new version of Gibbs and Lala, one where they are partners, and perhaps from that a little more. If NCIS: Origins was trying to pretend their dynamic didn’t have romantic undertones, that’s done now. This episode puts that to rest. But the reason it is that, that it can be that, it’s that Gibbs hasn’t had someone he feels like he can trust, someone he feels he can open up to, rely on—and more importantly, someone he wants to invite into his life, as messy and dark as it sometimes is, in a long time.

And funnily enough, neither has Lala, even though she very recently had a boyfriend. We don’t yet know enough about her to know why she’s hiding pieces of herself, why she’s only showing the people closest to her what she thinks they want to see, but there’s no doubt that Lala isn’t truly being herself. And just as there’s a part of Gibbs that senses he can be himself with Lala, there’s a sense that she feels Gibbs might be the person she can be herself with. That if she shows him her scars, her “ugly side,” the things she’s always been afraid of people seeing, he won’t turn away. Just as she didn’t turn away from his.

It’s a rare thing, to find someone that isn’t scared of the worst parts of you. Not someone who loves the bad side, no, but someone who can embrace you fully and say, “I got you, I don’t care if it’s a good day or a bad day.” Has Gibbs ever really had that with someone else?

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WHEN YOU GOT A PARTNER

..you only gotta do two corners each. This is the lesson of Ruth in NCIS: Origins Season 1, Episode 10 ‘Blue Bayou’ but it will apply to Gibbs with multiple people in his life, starting with Mike Franks. It was a little begrudgingly, of course. Franks didn’t want to involve himself in Gibbs’s life. He didn’t want to care. But Mike Franks is the kind of guy that, once he’s in, he’s all in. And right now, he’s fully in with Gibbs.

But the thing is, so are Lala and Randy. That’s a corner for each. That’s the thing about having a team, not just a partner. There are fewer corners for you to take on. Gibbs will go on to have a team in the future, once he leads, but it’s very clear that the foundations of that, of how to work with a team, how to rely on how, come from this time in his life, these people. From Mike, Randy, and Lala. From NIS. And from a woman who saw a man sleeping in his car and said, you know what, no. You’re not going to let yourself die out here.

Instead, you’re going to go out there and you’re going to get better, one puzzle piece at a time. And you’re going to become the man you were always destined to be. Not for me, and not for the family you’ve lost, but for you. Because you deserve that, Ruth was the first one who saw that. And, perhaps, because she did, at one point, Gibbs did as well.

MORE: Could Kate Todd show up on NCIS: Origins?

Things I think I think:

• “She knew I killed the man who killed my family.”
• “She would have been right to tear me up for going outside the law, for not telling her the truth, hell she would have been right to turn me in. She didn’t do any of that.”
• But the fact that she couldn’t bring herself to look at him was probably worse.
• “I’m sorry.”/”For which part? Someone killed my family, I don’t know what I’d do. Maybe the same thing you did.”
• The problem is trust.
• “I don’t trust you. I don’t trust Franks. I sure as hell don’t trust the two of you together.”
• “What kind of team is that?”
• AND AFTER ALL OF THAT, “It was my first Christmas without my family.” This episode is pulling no punches.
• “She wasn’t even mine to lose, not even close.”
• A man can, indeed, only take so much.
• Ok, what was that call?
• Well, I guess we’ll move on from building things to the boats.
• Man, I get Franks not wanting to know, I do. But what did he expect out of Gibbs?
• Ruth doing puzzles with him killed me.
• “Sometimes it’s better to feel sad than feel nothing at all.”
• “I tell you I’m a crap mother, you tell me you killed a guy.”
• That letter! “Don’t be a little bitch.”
• Of course, she’s sick. Of course.
• No wonder he failed his psych eval!
• A bar fight to “Blue Bayou.” Fitting.
• Also kinda fitting that it is Ruth who kinda convinces Franks to give Gibbs a chance.
• “It is your business. You just wish it wasn’t.” Ain’t that the truth?
• “One day, over beers, he told me about his talk with Ruth.”
• “I wish I could have saved her like she saved me.”
• I’m not crying, it’s just raining on my face.
• But she got to spend time with her son!
• Okay, what’s Operation Sundown?
• Is it a long story, though?
• “I got time. My meeting with Wheeler isn’t until Monday.”
• “She was still a long way from trusting me, but she said she wanted to try.”
• “When you got a partner, you only gotta do two corners each.”
• Second sniper??

Agree? Disagree? What did you think about NCIS: Origins Season 1, Episode 10 ‘Blue Bayou’? Share with us in the comments below!

NCIS: Origins airs on CBS on Mondays at 10/9c. New episodes will return on January 27, 2025.

Here are our NCIS: Origins reviews:

• NCIS: Origins Episode 1 & 2
• NCIS: Origins Episode 3
• NCIS: Origins Episode 4
• NCIS: Origins Episode 5
• NCIS: Origins Episode 6
• NCIS: Origins Episode 7
• NCIS: Origins Episode 8
• NCIS: Origins Episode 9