In the NCIS: Origins episode “One Flew Over,” viewers learned that the off-the-books psych profile Mike Franks requested from Vera Strickland in the series premiere was for his girlfriend, Tish Kwa’la, who’d been sexually assaulted before the series started. Tish told Franks to stop trying to find her rapist, as she wanted to put that traumatic event behind her, but Origins co-showrunner David J. North teased to CinemaBlend that this wouldn’t be an easy thing for Kyle Schmid’s character to do. Sure enough, “Monsoon,” the latest Origins episode to air on the 2025 TV schedule, ended with Tish breaking up with Franks after he confided in her that he never stopped his investigation. However, Schmid told me in a recent interview that the story between these two isn’t done just yet.
After learning from Schmid was it was like playing Mike Franks for the 1982-set flashbacks in our conversation ahead of “Monsoon” (which can now be watched with a Paramount+ subscription), I asked him where Franks goes from here and copes with the love of his life walking out at him, and the actor answered: There’s an interrogation scene, I think it’s in the last episode. I got a guy cornered in the last episode, and I asked him a question, [he] doesn’t answer it. And by not answering the question, he answers my question. Throughout Episode 13, Mike is given every opportunity to walk away. He doesn’t. Even at the end, he doesn’t say, ‘Fine. I’ll bury it deep, man. I love you.’ He knows himself. He knows, even as Tish is walking out the door, that it’s not over. That story is not done. And he can’t, for the life of him, because Tish is his life, walk away from it. There’s just something so embedded in him that has been broken and violated that he is unwilling to walk away from. And so it is absolutely bittersweet only in the sense that we’re going to see what happens.
The “Monsoon” flashbacks showed that Mike Franks and Tish met when the latter’s tire blew out right as she was driving by the former, who’d had his motorcycle stolen at a gas station and was left to walk on the side of the road. Franks changed Tish’s tire for her and she paid him for his work, but a spark quickly formed between the two, and she drove him back to her place to cut his hair and shave off his beard, giving him his signature mustachioed look.
Franks had been struggling since coming back from the Vietnam War, but meeting Tish led to him getting his act together, and clearly they had a wonderful relationship going since they were still together nine years later.
Unfortunately, upon learning that Franks lied to her, Tish decided that while she still loved hi, she couldn’t be with her anymore. Per Kyle Schmid though, these two aren’t out of each other’s lives for good, particularly because Franks is still so determined to find the man who raped her. We know from the original NCIS that Mike Franks and Tish Kwa’la ultimately don’t stay together, as the latter was never mentioned, but perhaps they could temporarily reconcile later on in NCIS: Origins.
At the very least, I expect that Mike Franks will either track down Tish’s assailant by the end of Season 1 or make significant headway in his investigation to be picked up on Season 2, assuming CBS orders it. We’ll see as new Origins episodes air Mondays at 10 pm ET.
