Tonight on CBS NCIS: ORIGINS returns with an all-new Tuesday, October 28, 2025, season 2 episode 3 called, “The Edge,” and we have your weekly NCIS: ORIGINS recap below.
In tonight’s NCIS: ORIGINS season 2 episode 3 called “The Edge,” as per the CBS synopsis, “When Dr. Donald “Ducky” Mallard (Adam Campbell), a liaison from D.C. headquarters and an old acquaintance of Gibbs’, arrives to evaluate whether Pendleton needs an in-house medical examiner, not everyone trusts that’s the real reason behind his visit”
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A young Dr. Donald “Ducky” Mallard had taken Gibbs’s advice to go work with NIS. He was working out of the DC office. He left it to go visit the West Coast because NIS was about to be restructured. They were even thinking of changing the name. Some felt the West Coast deserved an in-house medical examiner. Ducky was to be the liaison to determine if he was truly needed or not. Franks has been relying on the county’s medical examiner. They’ve been sharing with the county and its been alright. It just hasn’t always been practical. There were plenty of times when county took precedent over them.
Anyways, the whole team was told about the liaison. The same goes for Franks. He just forgot about it because he was in a bad mood. He tried to get Gary Callahan’s vet bills covered by NIS. Wheeler turned him down. He said they weren’t going to pay for a dog. Wheeler also found the bills excessive. It didn’t matter that the dog has often closed cases for them. The dog might be sick and that could explain why Franks was so aggressive. Franks completely forget about the liaison. He heard Ducky issuing facts and he kicked him out of the crime scene.
The crime scene was a good one too. Mimi Lam was the wife of Navy Lieutenant Commander Roland Lam. They were opening a restaurant and she appeared to have gotten caught in the freezer. She froze to death. Now, it could be accidental or it could be murder. NIS had to determine which. They also needed an autopsy to make double sure and so the county having a mass casualty event came at the wrong time. It meant the Chief couldn’t do the autopsy. He had to hand over the autopsy to Ducky. The same Ducky that remembered Gibbs with fondness and Gibbs hardly calls them friends.
It had been twelve years since they last spoke. It happened right before he met Shannon. Gibbs forgot almost everything else and it doesn’t help that Ducky keeps calling him “Jethro”. He doesn’t actually go by his middle name. Even his team thought that was odd. Wheeler had warned Lala and Randy that he felt the liaison was there to see if they could be made redundant after the restructuring. He didn’t quite buy the story that they just wanted to see if they needed a medical examiner.
Franks heard about Wheeler’s theory. It made him concerned. He noticed that Ducky was taking notes in an actual notebook and told Gibbs to get close enough to see what he was writing. He never got the chance because Ducky found something important. He found out that the victim was strangled to death. The best bet would be her husband. Roland claimed that he had a fight with his wife earlier and that he thought she was blowing off some steam. Roland also mentioned that he was supposed to do inventory. And he thought she died because he failed to do the job himself.
Roland was the first to voice that he thought this was an accident. He thought his wife went in and that freezer closed in behind her. What Ducky was finding was proving that was untrue. Ducky knows she was murdered before she was frozen. He also spotted that she had a note in her hand. She clung on it as she died. Ducky slowly thawed her out bit by bit. By time they came to his hand, he read the note that said RoLam. Ducky and Lala came to believe that she named her killer in her final moments.
Lala was only there because Gibbs failed to find out what was in the notebook. Franks then sent Lala in to get information. Lala took the job for another reason. She wanted to ask Ducky about her traumatic brain injury. She found out that he used to be a doctor with live patients before changing fields. She wanted to know if her injury was going to ruin her life because she used to love sourdough and now she can’t stand the taste. She also didn’t want to tell her friends because she didn’t want them to worry about her.
Ducky pointed out that his heart remains unchanged. She still cares about people. She still cares about the job. That’s what matters. Lala and Randy later determined that Mimi wasn’t talking about her killer in the note. She just wrote down her computer password. She was an IT Specialist. She had to keep the day job because the restaurant was already and heavily in debt. She worked at a law firm, a seed packing plant, and an auto repair shop. Gibbs and Franks were both crap at getting information off computers.
Randy being in charge actually got the job done. Randy found Mimi’s floppy disk. He opened it and he found out she copied information about a nerve agent. Something far more dangerous than Operation Orange. Mimi found something digitalizing everyone’s records. She found out they created a nerve agent. It was used to kill her. She also knew that it could be found and transported frozen. She walked into the freezer herself to preserve the evidence. Ducky was blaming himself for thawing her out and destroying the evidence.
Until he remembered her porcelain molar. It was colder than the rest of her. Ducky remembered it and he helped close the case. The molar had the neurotoxin. It led back to the seed packing plant. He was doing other business on the side. NIS stopped him and they got justice for Mimi. Ducky also helped everyone. He helped Lala with her doubts. Franks with his depressed dog. He also cured Mary Jo’s headache. Gibbs helped him in return. He gave Ducky the idea to start talking to the bodies like his patients and he never stopped. It lasted all the way till retirement.
Gibbs now misses him more than he ever thought he would.
The End