We’re back! The Rookie 5×02 “Labor Day” focuses on the case of the week while giving us some hints of the immediate — and not so immediate — future of our favorite characters. All spiced up with Chenford angst. Ready?
Here we go!
An Offer You Can’t Refuse…
Lucy gets her dream offer in The Rookie 5×02 “Labor Day” but is about to turn it down. A part of her feels that Chris needs her and she can’t leave him. It’s a normal reaction. Probably if someone we care about was in Chris’s situation, the priority would be to help him/her recover.
However, there is something else that overshadows the normal worry that anyone would feel: guilt. Lucy feels guilty about what she almost did with Tim. She can’t help but think that if she hadn’t been thinking about Tim all the time, so focused on him and the spark they have together, if she hadn’t gotten carried away to the point of no return, she would have checked on Chris and everything could have been different.
No one knows what would have happened, that’s the truth. But Lucy can’t help but feel that she abandoned Chris completely, and as a result, he almost died. So she is now willing to never leave him again, even at the cost of losing the career opportunity of her dreams.
And if anyone had any doubts that Lucy and Chris’s relationship was doomed, no one can now. In The Rookie 5×02 “Labor Day” it’s found that Lucy is next to Chris because of guilt. Does she care about him? Yes, of course, Chris is a decent man who really loves her, but at this point, they’re more united by the guilt Lucy feels than anything else.
Distance and Time Heal Everything…Right?
As always, the only one able to read through Lucy’s facade is Tim. He knows that she is doing this mainly out of guilt. And he tries to put distance between them. Nothing happened that night…and never will.
Of course, this knowing each other’s heart Chenford thing is a two-way alley. So Lucy realizes that Tim wants to take her away and the job gives him the perfect opportunity. Tim was too close to the edge and is so afraid to jump that he decides to walk away.
When he tells Lucy that nothing will happen between them he is trying to convince himself. Since Tim knows that if they work together it will only be a matter of time before that happens, he is taking Lucy’s new job as an opportunity to distance himself.
And Lucy gets the message…and it hurts like hell. Her eyes filled with tears because she really thought they could… but Tim slammed the door on her. In the previous review, we commented that everything would get worse before it got better and that curves would come. Here they are.
The System is Difficult to Change
Wes arrives at the DA’s office ready to change things in The Rookie 5×02 “Labor Day.” But it won’t be that easy. He just wants to go after the real criminals while his boss just wants to see as many convictions as possible. Honestly, were we expecting anything different from the guy who charged an innocent kid with a felony? No, we expected just what happened.
This creates an interesting dynamic since Wes is not going to give up and his boss is going to make things very difficult for him. Wes won’t always find a real criminal to catch and this will bring quite a bit of conflict with his boss. Those conflicts, if the show focuses on them well, can be a stark and raw criticism of the American penal system. We like it!
Nyla and James are the cutest. I swear I always try to talk more about them but there are no words that do them justice. They’re PERFECT and all ships should have them as a model. That’s all.
Essential Lessons
Speaking of James and Nyla, The Rookie 5×02 “Labor Day” taught us three essential lessons:
- Never mess with a pregnant woman, above all if you’re an annoying neighbor who thinks he’s too smart. Especially if that woman is Nyla Harper.
- Always believe what that woman tells you.
- Nyla Harper is a QUEEN.
PS: Angela knows. You always have to listen to Angela.
PD2: We like Nolan as a training officer. We think he’s going to take a different approach than everyone else and it’s quite interesting.
The Rookie Season 5 airs Sundays at 10/9 on ABC.
