Warning: SPOILERS for the NCIS: Origins episode “Happy Birthday” are ahead!
NCIS: Origins may chiefly be about Leroy Jethro Gibbs’ early years as an NIS agent, but obviously there’s no shortage of opportunities for the other leading characters to shine. For “Happy Birthday,” the latest episode to air on the 2025 TV schedule, it was Caleb Foote’s Bernard “Randy” Randolph and Kyle Schmid’s Mike Franks who shined brightest with moments that highlighted what make them such compelling characters. In the midst of that, though, the subplot revolving around Mariel Molino’s Lala Dominguez and Flaco Navarro, head of the 63rd Street Chacales, took a curious turn.
How Randy Shined In This Episode
Randy is the most upbeat member of NCIS: Origins’ main cast, and “Happy Birthday” showed that he’s been like this ever since he was a kid. He and his mom only had each other, and even when times were tough, they did their best to ensure those didn’t get them down. James Brown’s “I Feel Good” was a favorite in their household, and when Randy’s mom wasn’t able to make enough sales on one of his birthdays, he insisted she not sell off their 8-track player so that she could buy him a present. Listening to music with his mother was more important.
Unfortunately, the events of “Happy Birthday” meant that 1992 was another rough birthday for Randy. The case he and the team were investigating involved a body that had a quarter lodged in the victim’s throat. That latter fact reminded Randy of a case that he’d plugged into the NIS computer in recent months, but he was having trouble locating the file. In a fit of frustration over how obsessed Randy was with tracking down this old case, Mike Franks destroyed the computer, though he’d only meant to unplug it. All of Randy’s hard work digitizing cases over the last several months was destroyed in seconds.
The good news is that the team was able to find out the details of this other case, as it turned down Wheeler had accidentally deleted it a few episodes back and had the hard copy retrieved, but then it had been misplaced. This episode’s main case was solved, but the big takeaway with Randy was that like the rest of us, even he has hard days. But his optimism still manages to break through in the end, and hopefully that never changes. Speaking of which…
How Mike Franks Shined In This Episode
So why was Mike Franks so angry about Randy using the computer this week? Well, anyone familiar with the character knows that like Gibbs, Franks doesn’t like computers or anything in the way of post-1990 technology. But in this case, there was more to it, as he thought Randy spending so much time on the computer was messing with his head and changing who he was. It led to a tense, though thankfully brief confrontation between the two.
At the end of “Happy Birthday,” while helping Herm Daniels load the first case into Randy’s new computer, Mike explained where his outburst with the computer had come from:
I didn’t mean to break the other one. Y’all keep saying those things are the future. Could be they start sucking out the stuff that makes us look at each other. Life already throws enough change at you. It’s like, you blink and your big brother is acting like you’re the big brother… I just don’t want Rando to go changing too. People person stuff, happy, I don’t want him losing that.
The big brother stuff refers to how Mike had spent “Happy Birthday” trying to track down some packages with his older brother Mason’s stuff from their now-sold-off ranch in Texas. Clearly he’s still grappling with his changed dynamic with his brother, and this dovetailed into him being worried Randy was changing for the worse. Still, it was nice to have that added insight into Mike’s distrust of technology, and he made a decent point about the computers. Just look at how smartphones and social media have changed human interaction a few decades later.
What’s Going On Between Lala And Flaco’s Guy?
NCIS: Origins cleared up Lala’s fate right out the get-go in the Season 2 premiere, though she is still dealing with complications from her car accident. Then she’s also dealing with that Flaco situation, as Lala refused to help the gang leader take down Luna, one of his rivals, by any means necessary in “Who by Fire.” In this episode, one of Flaco’s men we’d seen previously, later identified as Manuel Santiago, followed her on his boss’ behalf and informed her that Luna had killed two more Chacales.
But then things got weird when Manuel showed up at Lala’s apartment, after he’d already broken in there to place pictures of the killed men, to drop off a new, better lock for her door. Why is that weird? Because Flaco didn’t know Manuel has returned to the apartment, nor did he know about when he met up later with Lala at that church she’s been visiting. He’d started going this church too after he and Flaco had previously intercepted her there, and Manuel and Lala had a surprisingly open conversation while seated next to each other on that church pew.
So is Manuel expressing a sincere interest in Lala that has nothing to do with Flaco’s agenda, or is this some kind of long con? If it’s the former option, could this lead to the two of them developing a romantic relationship? If so, what happens when Flaco finds out? If it’s the latter option, what’s the endgame? Whatever the answers are, I don’t see this ending well.