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‘The Rookie’ Season 8 Episode 7 Just Proved That Lucy’s Career Needs To Take a New Direction
Editor’s Note: The following contains spoilers for The Rookie Season 8, Episode 7.It’s always a positive thing when procedurals can reference past events to establish more character development. The Rookie is adept at incorporating previous storylines so that its characters can heal and grow. This week’s episode offers us even more insight into Lucy Chen (Melissa O’Neil) when she’s forced to remember details of her kidnapping from Season 2. When Lucy gets involved with a case that reminds her how not all young women survive what she went through, viewers are allowed even deeper into her healing journey. These types of storylines help the show feel more authentic, and it makes this Season 8 episode all the more powerful.
‘The Rookie’s Lucy and Nyla Take On a Dangerous Mission
The beginning of the episode opens with the Mid-Wilshire gang coming across a woman covered in blood in a dark alley. She has been stabbed multiple times, and even though Nolan tries to administer medical aid, she dies. Minutes later, they discover another female victim who is already dead. Lucy and Nyla Harper (Mekia Cox) determine that these two women were friends and were living in their van. They were likely drug mules for a cartel running product between Mexico and California. Lucy admits that she also tried out the ‘van life’ for nine months after graduate school, and because of her past trauma, she fights to go undercover to get justice for them. Lucy clearly feels similarities between herself and these women, who aren’t alive to fight for themselves. Her passion for the case gets an undercover operation approved for her and Nyla. They pose as lovers and head to the same beach where the two women had spent time.
The operation is supposed to take four weeks, and while it’s hard for Nyla to leave her family and for Lucy to leave Tim Bradford (Eric Winter), the women know this is an important mission. We don’t often get scenes with Nyla and Lucy together, so this partnership is a compelling one. We learn that Lucy quit graduate school after having a panic attack and realized that she needed to make her own decisions in her life, and Nyla has always just wanted to be a cop. For the investigation, the women meet a helpful man named Chase, who lives at the camp.
They also meet a man named Rafael Navarro, who offers them $1,500 to take a small package across the border to Los Angeles. The endeavor is successful, and Navarro tries to up the ante by asking them to carry even more drugs into the U.S. We’re meant to think that Navarro is the killer, but it’s just a red herring. Instead, we learn that Chase was actually in Los Angeles during the time of the murders, and was caught on CCTV driving away with blood on his face. He ends up confessing, and Lucy is completely overcome with emotion after finding justice for the victims. The undercover operation was successful, and it’s always fun to see these cops step outside their comfort zone and try on new personas.
‘The Rookie’ Season 8, Episode 7 Is Centered Around Miles’ Bad Decisions
The secondary storyline in Episode 7 focuses on Miles Penn (Deric Augustine). Although it makes sense that Miles still has a lot to learn as a rookie, the guy just keeps messing up, and it’s getting kind of hard to watch. John Nolan (Nathan Fillion) and Miles are tasked with a surveillance assignment to find a dangerous criminal nicknamed “Hamster.” The two cops go on a stake-out, and Nolan gives Miles the advice that he should never go policing off-duty and should focus on his tasks while his partner is with him. Before they can successfully apprehend Hamster, he is on the run. Miles makes a mistake during the chase, and Hamster is once again in the wind.
Because Nolan is disappointed in him, Miles makes the incredibly stupid decision to show he’s a good cop and decides to go on another stake-out off-duty (which is exactly what Nolan told him not to do). Showcasing even more bad decision-making, Miles also decides to take Seth Ridley (Patrick Keleher) with him to watch out for Hamster. This just raises the stakes since Seth is now a civilian. I’m never all that thrilled to see Seth come back, and this inclusion of his character seemed implausible. In a later scene, we learn that Miles and Seth have been conducting this stake-out for a full two weeks! Finally, Hamster arrives, right when Seth has gone to get food. The criminal pulls a gun on Miles, but luckily, Seth comes back in time to see what’s happening from afar. Hamster forces Miles into a car, while Seth calls Nolan for help.
Don’t Get Your Hopes Up — ‘The Rookie’ Is Far From Done With Its New Worst Character
Don’t get too comfortable!
As they drive away, Seth ends up throwing himself in front of the car to stop them. I know we’re supposed to think Seth has changed, but this still doesn’t make me love him. Backup arrives, Seth is unharmed, and Miles is rescued, but he’s in serious trouble. Bradford even goes so far as to fire Miles. Nolan still has Miles’ back, though, and has convinced Bradford to give Miles two weeks’ leave and a six-month extension of his training program. In the end, Miles is incredibly lucky that he just has to be a rookie for a bit longer instead of having to wash out of the program entirely.
Several Couples Actually Get To Be Happy in ‘The Rookie’ Season 8, Episode 7
There has been so much strife in the romance territory of The Rookie lately. It was nice to see scenes with Nyla’s husband, James (Arjay Smith), being supportive of her undercover mission. We also close out the episode with Chenford reunited, and it’s a good sign that their time apart hasn’t caused any problems. And then there’s Nolan and Bailey Nune (Jenna Dewan), who were almost headed to Splitsville. This episode features Bailey leaving for her DC work assignment for a trial run of five days, and she even orders gifts for Nolan while she’s gone. This episode was pretty dark otherwise, so it was a good thing to have no couple fights occurring.
The only frustrating aspect was that Episode 7 relied pretty heavily on montages to show the passage of time and to illustrate action happening in several different storylines. The problem is that they didn’t always fit together, and some interspliced scenes of Nolan and Bailey were meant to represent how much he misses her, but didn’t make sense in the context of the time frame. Hopefully, future episodes of The Rookie will steer clear of utilizing these montages too much. Otherwise, the show would be smart to include more undercover operations in the future, especially ones where Lucy can keep addressing her trauma in a realistic way.
New episodes of The Rookie air on Monday nights on ABC, with episodes available to stream on Hulu in the U.S.