NCIS: Origins Season 2 Episode 11 Delivers New Orleans Flavor with Dwayne Pride’s Debut

Dwayne Pride made his debut!

One of the most endearing things about NCIS: Origins is its ability to honor legacy characters by referencing and introducing them.

And once again, we had some bittersweet revelations about NCIS lore.

For those original NCIS fans and fans of NCIS: Orleans, they know about the special dynamic Gibbs had with Special Agent Dwayne Pride.

The two worked together for years as part of an intra-agency task force, the Fed Five.

And as we saw in the backdoor pilot for NCIS: Orleans, when investigating the death of that task force’s leader, McLane, it reunited the crew, including Gibbs, Pride, and Franks.

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Through those interactions, we saw this much lighter side of Gibbs. In the presence of Pride, he was more easygoing, taking on Pride’s more laissez-faire, go-with-the-flow, New Orleans attitude and energy.

And it’s true that with Dwayne, we saw the most down-to-earth version of Gibbs in the present timeline.

So it was actually fun to see the exact opposite in their first and second encounters.

And it was a smart move on NCIS: Origins’ part to build the tension there before they succeeded in teasing a lifelong friendship. 

For one, the Ducky Tribute episode worked so well in part because it was the lightest we saw Gibbs in the Origins timeline.

Ducky has thus far been one of the only people who could make Gibbs smile and who radiated a light so bright that Gibbs couldn’t deny it or shy away.

If they attempted to pull the same with Dwayne Pride’s introduction, it would’ve undermined that at worst and been too redundant at best.

And Origins excels at nuanced storytelling so that even the simplest interactions have meaning, purpose, and real effect.

Now, NCIS: Origins by no means had the same type of impact on me that the Ducky episode did.

I’d even argue that Pride’s incorporation into the episode here felt a bit understated compared to what I had expected. 

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And as someone who didn’t regularly or religiously watch NCIS: Orleans beyond catching an occasional episode here and there, Pride’s presence didn’t have the same emotional impact on me that Ducky’s did.

But it was still a solid enough hour, and one where Gibbs was so relatable that it was funny.

I, too, am guilty of holding a grudge. And his sour attitude toward Pride was as amusing as Pride’s inability to give a damn about said attitude.

There’s something about when someone gets under your skin, and you can’t even properly explain why. Meanwhile, everyone else is just lapping them up, which only agitates you further.

Pride was totally an acquired taste, and for a bit, Gibbs didn’t acquire it at all.

Pride’s carefree demeanor could easily be read as obnoxious arrogance. He comes right out with things, disrupting the quiet, carefully curated dynamics and structures put in place. 

There were so many times when it was easy to fall right in line with Gibbs’ annoyance, even when it was fairly obvious that his one-sided beef was fueled by his misreading of a situation with his father.

And I had to laugh that Pride likely knew Gibbs didn’t have all the details and was mad for no reason, but he didn’t let it bother him in the least and found it amusing.

Their displays of competitiveness and machismo were hilarious and entertaining to everyone around them.

The only real annoyance came when it almost impacted the job.

I have to commend Shea Buckner for his performance. He captured that perfect combination of obnoxious charm.

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You wanted to be annoyed by him, but he was also so charismatic that you couldn’t hate the guy, and Buckner walked that line well.

He also has such an uncanny likeness to Scott Bakula that Origins once again deserves kudos for nailing the casting.

I also desperately need to see Shea Buckner and Jon Bernthal in a project together playing brothers.

How can one actor have such a versatile look? Never mind that.

As we’ve learned, nothing quite forges a bond like going through a near-death experience together. Their undercover mission relied heavily on them having each other’s backs.

It was also another great way to show Gibbs’ evolution. By now, his being called “probie” feels more like affection than a logistical assessment of how he handles things, since he adapted easily to the meet.

He was observant enough to notice that it was actually the woman calling the shots. And his act he put on with Pride got them through that door.

They would’ve been golden if the ship captain hadn’t been there and immediately identified them.

And Pride and Gibbs had each other’s backs as they waited for backup to get to them. Holding their own on a mission that went sour because of McLane’s bull crap and Mike’s Man Crush on him.

I’m thrilled that we saw how easily Gibbs and Pride put their differences aside, or rather, Gibbs did. Pride was fine the whole time, which is so peak him.

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And Pride’s advice to Gibbs about Diane was great. I loved the pure love he exuded just talking about his own wife.

Gibbs should’ve brought Diane to the bar with the others. And there are so many layers to why he was so resistant.

It’s interesting that he had been fine with the date nights with Randy and his wife, but a public event with the entire team was too much.

I do understand that they’re digging into other things with that reluctance. Still, as someone who often likes to keep my different worlds apart and gets anxious when they collide or overlap, I could totally empathize with Gibbs.

And it rarely has anything to do with other people in my life when I do it, just my own neuroticism for whatever reason. 

But for Gibbs, there was the matter of having a woman he loves and is married to, Diane, meeting the woman he loves and can’t shake, Lala.

The dynamics here are so rich and complex, rather than just drama-fueled and messy. Maybe that’s why I find the Gibbs/Lala thing so riveting.

Their feelings for each other are beyond their control, but they both keep making active choices not to act on them. It’s a delicious tension… sad, too, because it’s doubtful that they ever fully blossomed into a regular romance.

Lala and Diane’s meeting went well. And Diane being acknowledged in this way makes everything real. It’s an interesting place for them to be.

This hour was also heartbreaking because we got the full lore behind the Fed Five, and it’s tarnished.

The entire hour touched on the sexism deep within the agency and just naturally ingrained in life.

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Origins, allowing this particular thread to be woven throughout the series constantly, is one of its strongest and most admirable moves.

We constantly see what Lala, Vera, Mary Jo, and others face daily in this male-dominated field. It’s exhaustive but realistic.

Even with the case — all the intel suggested it was the henchman running the operation and not this woman. And only Gibbs clocked who the real leader was.

She likely knew that people would only respond to men calling the shots.

And that’s how it was with Vera and this program. She built it up herself, put her hard work, sweat, and tears into it, and once again, the agency screws her over. 

The NIS ladies constantly leave hints and let their male counterparts know that the sexism they face is a problem, and they often check them on theirs and essentially call for them to be allies and mindful.

And most of the guys tend to forget or unwittingly partake in things.

Mike is a prime example. He spent the whole hour so far up McLane’s derriere because of a speech the guy gave that he loved.

And he was molding himself around McLane in the process. It was really something to watch Mike hero-worshipping someone in real time.

He was so unaware that McLane was tapping into Mike’s worst traits, specifically his sexism.

Thanks to McLane, he benched Lala like it was nothing for no other reason than McLane is an ass about women. McLane wouldn’t even listen to Vera during her own meeting and acted as if she were a secretary he could dismiss.

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It takes Mike a while to realize when things have gone too far. And by the time he likely realized how the Fed Five was playing out, it was clicking into place. 

Vera, knocking some sense into him, did it further. His line of thinking made sense for the situation. He and Gibbs took the picture and agreed to the whole thing to keep Vera’s program close to home.

But they cut her out completely and credited McLane with her task force.

It certainly tarnishes the idea of the Fed Five, doesn’t it? Even seeing them exclude Randy was a slap in the face.

He was all over that investigation, breached the building just like they did, was incredible under gunfire, and took them down just like the others did.

But because Randy doesn’t present the specific brand of machismo deemed desirable for agents: hyper masculine, rugged, and so forth, they left him out.

And Felix only got tacked on because of the financial component, when the only thing he did was find Dalton’s paper opener.

All of this for the aesthetic and optics… erasing the real heroes and hard work of those who become nothing more than footnotes more often than not written in invisible ink.

The adversity Vera faces makes me respect this character beyond measure. She basically built NCIS into what it is and never fully got the credit for any of it. It’s wild. 

It’s just so damn infuriating to witness how she constantly gets cut out of her own story. Herstory, if you will. And for someone like McLane at that.

Mike can be such an asshole, but he doesn’t abide by anyone disrespecting his people. His hero worship vanished the second he saw McLane brazenly disrespecting Vera and dismissing her.

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I do love that you never forget how he and Vera were partners before all of this. That disrespect was all it took for Mike to snap out of it and stand up for her, and it may not have made much of a difference, but it mattered.

Vera was and still is a force of damn nature in this agency, and it’s remarkable that between what she pioneered for criminal profiling and this intragency thing she orchestrated, that the agency as we know and even these characters would’t be what they are.

I love that Origins gets to tell the stories behind the story, adds all of these layers and more context to things we thought we already knew.

Because seeing the root and origins of the Fed Five and recognizing that it’s absolutely nothing like we envisioned is enough to have my blood boiling, but it’s also so fascinating.

I truly love how they’ve handled the sexism of the time and how it’s a constant thread they pull carefully throughout, and even how it shapes many of the male characters.

Randy is the very antithesis of the pervasive toxic masculinity and machismo that permeated the agency.

Mike is very much old school, but he recognizes that he’s surrounded by powerful women who aren’t afraid to check him, and it makes a world of difference.

Gibbs has this quiet awareness that’s interesting to see, but he’s also obivous in other ways, too.

And Wheeler, who has the specific situational awareness and hypervigilance that comes with a queer man masking out of necessity in his field during the 90s will always be fascinating, too.

I love seeing the women respond to it, too. Lala almost has to assimilate into the culture, often leading to the perception of her as “one of the guys.”

Mary Jo is one who fully embraces her femininity almost in a mark of defiance when she pushes back against the sexism, and Vera is just all defiance through and through.

We have a full hour that introduced a franchise legend, and I loved every second of it, but it also made me appreciate the women of NIS all the more, too.

Over to you, NCIS: Origins Fanatics.

What did you think of Pride’s debut? Did the Fed Five’s real history surprise you? Grab a snack and join me in the comments below, baby!!

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