After a long hiatus, we’re back! The Rookie 5×08 “The Collar” and The Rookie 5×09 “Take Back” aired the same night in a two-hour special mid-season finale and brought us plenty of Chenford feels as we explored Celina’s character a bit more…with mixed results. Ready?
Here we go!
You Deserve Someone is Worth The Effort in The Rookie 5×08 “The Collar”
The Rookie 5×08 “The Collar” and The Rookie 5×09 “Take Back” are the most Chenford episodes of the entire show and we love it! But let’s start from the beginning. In The Rookie 5×08 “The Collar,” Chris is determined to take his relationship with Lucy one step further, and he’s too pushy and intense about it.
It’s impossible not to notice how Lucy avoids telling him that she loves him, how evasive she is about the new house, how she doesn’t respond to his kisses, or how she even turns her face away when he going to kiss her. So we think that’s precisely why Chris is so insistent on moving in together. Deep down, Chris knows that something is wrong with his relationship with Lucy so he tries to hold on to that relationship with everything he has to keep it from falling apart.
Lucy, for her part, doesn’t really want to move in with Chris and commit to a life with him. But she doesn’t understand why she doesn’t want to do it, she feels that she should. He is a wonderful man who loves her and doesn’t understand what is wrong with her. Actually, there’s nothing wrong with her, he just doesn’t love him and that’s all. Yeah, Chris may be a great guy but Lucy doesn’t have feelings for him. And that’s not bad, it’s just what it is. Lucy can’t make herself feel something she doesn’t feel.
In the middle of all this, is Tim. Something turned in his stomach when he found out about the step that Lucy and Chris were thinking of taking, but he covered it up as best he could. If that makes her happy… but the fact is it doesn’t. Lucy is not happy, she is uncomfortable with Chris’s insistence and with her own feelings.
So he tries to be objective and help her in The Rookie 5×08 “The Collar.” Lucy deserves someone worth the effort – yeah, we die with that line too. And Lucy doesn’t even argue with Chris because she doesn’t feel like he does. She deserves more. They both deserve more.
He Just Isn’t…[You]
Then Lucy accepts something she hadn’t even allowed herself to accept until then: Chris is a great guy but he’s not…Tim. She is in love with Tim. Lucy not only verbalizes it for the first time, but she does it in front of Tim and the last word is implied.
And Tim can’t take it anymore. He has been denying himself how he feels about Lucy for years. Making excuses for himself not to do something about it. All for fear of what might happen, fear of rejection, fear that she wouldn’t feel the same…
But Lucy is here, in front of him, opening her heart wide open, showing him everything she feels for him, trusting him to be this vulnerable next to him. It’s now or never. If she’s brave enough to tell him how she feels about him without even expecting Tim to reciprocate, he should be brave enough to let her know that she’s not alone in this.
Now Lucy is the scared one. Chris is the safe bet, just as Ashley – or anyone before her – was for Tim, as Lucy herself points out. But if she decides to take this leap of faith, she would be leaping into the unknown. She had never really fallen in love with someone until she met Tim and that is scary because she knows that this is the most important relationship she will ever have in her life and if something goes wrong…she doesn’t know if she could get over it.
That’s how intense Lucy’s feelings are and when she first verbalizes them it feels real, it feels liberating… but Tim is there. Lucy is afraid that she has scared him but nothing could be further from the truth because he feels the same way and was afraid of being the only one. This is the last push Tim needed. Knowing that Lucy’s feelings are just as intense as his own feelings gives Tim even more reassurance that he’s doing the right thing. And finally, Tim asks Lucy out on a date.
Tear off the Band-Aids Was Never Chenford’s Strong Point in The Rookie 5×09 “Take Back”
I swear that the lighting in this scene is art. You see the emotion of the characters through the light. When they talk about their fears and doubts, the light is darker but when they finally decide to hold hands and take that step together, when Lucy finally says yes to something she has been waiting for years, everything lights up with the hope of a future.
The scene gets a little darker again when Lucy has second thoughts and says no to Tim. Here we also panic, but there is nothing to fear, she just wants to make things right and finish with Chris first, he deserves that. And we agree.
The bad thing about breakups is that someone always gets hurt, no matter how you do it. Lucy never wanted to hurt Chris so she tries to break up with him as smoothly as possible, so much so that Tim even begins to think that she has second thoughts. And he loves her enough to be willing to let her go if that’s what she wants…but it’s not.
Lucy hasn’t changed her mind, she just doesn’t know how to approach the breakup. The thing with breakups is that it’s better to rip the band-aid off, yes, it hurts, but it hurts more if they don’t stop giving you hope. Lucy’s indecision causes her to break up with Chris in probably the worst way ever, but at least it’s done. And he did well to go. Lucy doesn’t love him, nothing she says or does is going to be able to change that or mitigate the blow… so there’s no point.
Now, it’s time for Chenford to start walking the path of their forever together. They’ll start with a date.
Stereotypes That Should Be Left Behind in The Rookie 5×08 “The Collar”
Celina was also a major focus in these last two episodes of The Rookie. In The Rookie 5×08 “The Collar” I got quite angry with the show because there are already two occasions in which they show this superstitious side of Celina. And although it may be to keep the humor and escape all the tension of the episode, it is quite a coincidence that the Latinx character has this very… esoteric side. It looks like a stereotype.
I am not the best person to talk about stereotypes because I’m Spanish, so I don’t speak with knowledge of the facts. However, these scenes with Celina reminded me of some Gloria scenes on Modern Family – a series known for ridiculing stereotypes.
So I felt like I had to say that I didn’t like it at all seeing something like that in The Rookie, in this case, without it being a criticism through humor. It’s time to get away from this and be better. I said what I said.
The Rookie 5×09 “Take Back” Urgently Needs Legal Counsel
As a counterpart, in The Rookie 5×09 “Take Back” we see a side of Celina that we had never seen. And we have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, we like to see a more personal and vulnerable side of Celina, we like that the show explores how her work as a police officer is affecting and changing her in some way and how she continues to choose it despite everything because it is her calling.
But, on the other hand, the basis on which The Rookie 5×09 “Take Back” explored this is…absurd. Speaking as a lawyer here, there are a lot of holes in this plot. The detainee resisted and Celina used the necessary force to arrest him, that is, there was no excess force (something that her body camera can easily prove).
In addition, they took him to the hospital, where they did tests and found no problem so, in any case, if this had been something, it would be medical negligence. As if that weren’t enough, there was a fight in the brig and this man was beaten up multiple times – although we don’t know why.
So how in the world could Celina have had anything to do with his death? By the time she and Nolan took the detainee to the hospital, their responsibility was over. From then on, it would be the medical professionals who, if anything, would have made a mistake by not diagnosing some underlying problem in their patient.
So yeah, the basis where Celina was almost fired and faced with an investigation in The Rookie 5×09 “Take Back” doesn’t make sense. That is why we are glad that everything has been resolved in the same episode in favor of Celina. Thank the goddess.
Do You Love New York?
New York is a place you either love or hate. And, although Luna had a very high opinion of her city, after what happened in The Rookie 5×09 “Take Back” she surely agrees much more with her husband. Dominique grew up. She’s in college and has a lot more freedom. She is at the age to experiment, make mistakes, and find herself.
That sometimes means hiding a few things from your parents because you’re afraid they’ll reject the person you’re becoming when you don’t even know who she/he is. That makes Luna and Grey feel like they don’t know their own daughter and are dealing with a stranger. It hurts, but that’s part of growing up.
What’s not part of growing up is getting kidnapped. Dominique went through a horrible experience and I admire her so much for still being left alone in New York. She decides to face her fears head-on. Dominique isn’t going to run away to LA because she knows that if she does, she won’t find a way back…and she doesn’t plan to live in fear. Brave indeed.
Other Stuff in The Rookie 5×08 “The Collar” & The Rookie 5×09 “Take Back”
- Chenford are the cutest I swear.
- They’re going on a date! ON A DATE! DO YOU HEAR US SCREAMING!?
- Lucy speaking in Spanish, if she already had me, now she has me double.
- That doll looks devilish…the further away the better.
- In Bailey’s defense, the coyote looked a lot like a puppy.
- Chris went too intense. Boy, relax!
- Smitty LMAO.
- The Grey family has it handled.
- I need to know a lot more about Celina’s sister.
- Aaron as a detective…I like it!
- Wes is so sweet.
- Aaron is us when he reacted to Lucy and Chris breaking up.
- The stunts in this show, wow!
The Rookie Season 5 airs Sundays at 10/9 on ABC and will back with new episodes on January 3 at Tuesdays along with The Rookie: Feds.
