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‘The Rookie’ Wraps Up With a Chenford Cliffhanger That Saves an Uneven Season 8
ABC’s The Rookie has offered plenty of exciting twists and turns this season. Our favorite police force has dealt with several terrifying villains, and we’ve even had a pretty blissful season of Chenford romance. But there were also some disappointing moments. The procedural still seems devoted to throwing in those pesky documentary-style episodes, and Season 8 relied way too heavily on bringing back old characters that didn’t offer anything to the current storytelling. I would have said that this season has been an uneven ride, except that the last moment in the finale ensures that I’ll be tuning in next season.
‘The Rookie’ Endangers Most of the Crew During an Exciting Mission
The episode opens with John Nolan (Nathan Fillion) underwater with shots ricocheting around him. It appears to be a dream, except that this exact scenario plays out later on. The main storyline in the episode revolves around criminal mastermind Heath Everett (Jeffrey Vincent Parise) being transferred from a Terminal Island prison to a nearby courthouse. Liam Glasser’s (Seth Gabel) lawyer, Malcolm (Sean Patrick Thomas), has sort of nonsensically become part of Everett’s legal team. He shows up at Wesley Evers’ (Shawn Ashmore) house to make amends, and asks whether Tim Bradford (Eric Winter) would be willing to drop the bribery charge against Everett. Wesley will be “paid handsomely,” which just seems like trading in one bribe for another — more on this later. In a completely predictable turn of events, Everett escapes during the prison transfer, although his escape is legendary. Somehow, a helicopter with a gigantic magnet simply lifts the entire van that Everett is in, and carries him off.
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Through an elaborate plan, Everett ends up on a big ship, located near San Diego. The LAPD comes up with a small strike force to recapture Everett, which all seems hugely unrealistic for a local police precinct to take on. To make things even sillier, firefighter/EMT Bailey Nune (Jenna Dewan) comes along. The whole team paints their faces in camo and rides up to the ship in dinghies. This entire sequence of events is extremely hard to see, which has always been one of my biggest criticisms of The Rookie. Let’s just say that there’s a lot of shooting as Everett’s men try to protect him. Eventually, Everett is nabbed, and Nolan is separated from the group. He is able to defend himself and ends up driving a car on the ship (I know) until he’s forced to jump into the water. We see the exact scenario in his dream play out, but Bailey pulls him to safety, and all is well again. But I was stupid to think that Everett being in custody meant things were over.
‘The Rookie’ Season 8, Episode 18 Sets Up a Few Less Important Plots
There is so much major excitement happening with the take-down of Everett, but The Rookie still tried to set up a few secondary storylines. To tie up Wesley’s narrative, he decides to actually take Malcolm up on his offer and also joins Everett’s legal team. He approaches Tim to back down on the bribery charge, and Tim (appropriately) loses his cool. He tells Wesley their friendship has officially ended. In an out-of-character move, Wesley even says that perhaps it was Tim himself who elicited the bribe from Everett. At the end of the episode, Angela Lopez (Alyssa Diaz) tells Tim that Wesley has actually been working as a double agent to help capture Everett. Because this happens offscreen, it feels completely unearned and also unethical (which Wesley wouldn’t be down for, right?) Not sure why The Rookie writers decided to throw all of this into the episode, because Wesley deserves better than a throwaway side plot that doesn’t make sense. And we don’t really get any resolution in the argument between Tim and Wesley.
The finale episode also gives us a Miles Penn (Deric Augustine) plot, which should have been a main storyline in another episode. Miles thinks that he’s going to be done with the rookie program that day. But things go south when he’s put in charge of the station after everyone else is occupied with Everett’s escape. It’s immediately clear that Miles might not be up for the challenge, as we see chaos unfold with several drunk and disorderly criminals. In a terrifying moment, a shootout occurs in the station, which means that Miles didn’t process someone correctly. Miles is bewildered and assures Lucy and Nyla Harper (Mekia Cox) that he searched everyone. He is sidelined for duty, especially because one of the prisoners died in the gunfire, and a cop was injured. We later see Miles crying in the locker room, convinced he’s going to wash out. Nyla comes in to give him the good news: two other officers didn’t search the gunman correctly earlier, and he was able to stash a gun in the holding cell. Miles isn’t at fault, but when he asks if he’s actually still graduating, Nyla informs him that he officially has three weeks left. However, she’s going to put in a recommendation that he be accelerated out of the program. Miles offers such a great energy to the show, so I’m glad he won’t be exiting.
‘The Rookie’s Chenford Gets a Blissful Engagement, and Then…
All of Tim’s friends implore him to finally ask Lucy to marry him, but first, Tim loses the ring in another entirely predictable plot point. Who would put a priceless ring in their pocket? Everyone helps him look for the ring, and eventually it’s located. Tim and Lucy go for a sunset walk on the beach, and in one of the loveliest moments in the show, he tells her how much she has changed his life and how much she means to him. He proposes, she says yes, and there couldn’t have been a sweeter, more perfect engagement moment for Chenford. I thought the episode was going to end there, but in one shocking twist, a man and woman come up to Lucy and Tim on the beach. At first, they just congratulate them on their engagement, and then they stick needles in both of their necks! One whispers, “Heath Everett says payback is a bitch!” and we finally get what’s happening. Everett is taking his revenge, but the culprits put hoods over Tim and Lucy’s heads, so they’re being kidnapped, not killed. As they reach for each other and start to lose consciousness, the episode ends.
This is a fantastic way to end the season. It sets up enough intrigue for Season 9, and guarantees that viewers will want to tune back in to find out what happens to the newly engaged couple. The episode does have some missteps. For example, I didn’t even get into the unimportant sideplot of Dash (Beckett Hawley) needing letters of recommendation from Nolan and Bailey for college. But the show did ratchet up the action with the exciting boat mission, and Everett seems to have been made our new, official big baddie. I’m a sucker for a good cliffhanger, and with this finale, The Rookie has ensured I’m a fan once again.
The Rookie is available to stream on Hulu in the U.S.
The Rookie
A surprising twist at the end of the finale promises an exciting future for the show.
- Release Date
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October 16, 2018
- Showrunner
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Alexi Hawley
- We finally get a sweet, moving Chenford engagement.
- That shocking twist means we’ll eagerly anticipate Season 9.
- The entire mission is way too dark to make out what’s happening.
- Bailey tagging along again makes zero sense.
- Would LAPD cops actually take on a mission like this?
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