A new episode, new review! The Rookie: Feds 1×17 “Payback” showed us the different ways to deal with our past, some healthy and others not so much. Ready?
Here we go!
Old Grudges in The Rookie: Feds 1×17 “Payback”
Cutty suffered greatly when he was wrongfully imprisoned. But he’s not the only one who did it and we see that clearly in The Rookie: Feds 1×17 “Payback.” Simone grew up without her father and that inevitably marked her.
If that hadn’t happened, she might not have felt the need to dedicate her life to helping less fortunate children in the community if she hadn’t been one. Maybe she hadn’t felt the need to join the FBI to make sure that a mistake like the one that put her father in jail would never happen again.
The past is part of us, of who we are. And Simone remembers those difficult moments, the missed birthdays, the moments when she looked around for her father and he wasn’t there, and all the times she put up with no one believing her father’s innocence. Cutty remembers it too but they both deal with what happened differently in The Rookie: Feds 1×17 “Payback.”
Can We Forgive?
Simone cannot forgive the person who caused what happened. She finds nothing healing in doing so, on the contrary. She feels that she would be betraying herself and her father if she did. For Simone, the grudge is a reminder that not all agents are like her and that she must keep fighting to change that.
Cutty, on the other hand, finds catharsis in forgiveness in The Rookie: Feds 1×17 “Payback.” For him, the grudge is just a heavy weight that is useless to keep when the past is just that, the past. And forgiving the cop who hurt him so much, giving him peace when he is leaving this world, brings peace to Cutty.
And both are right.
There is no right answer to the question of whether or not to forgive someone who hurt you. Sometimes you’ll find it liberating to do it, and other times you just can’t. And that’s fine.
For his part, Carter also deals with old grudges in The Rookie: Feds 1×17 “Payback.” Although his pain is not comparable to Cutty and Simone’s, it was sad to see the way he never got what he so deserved. Also, this helps to understand why he was so determined in the beginning to help Candice in exchange for a promotion.
Names are Complicated
Mark’s visit to Laura doesn’t start well in The Rookie: Feds 1×17 “Payback.” He wanted to have thatconversation about their relationship…and she wasn’t quite ready for it. And the two positions are understandable.
As for Mark, he doesn’t know what to expect. He doesn’t know what expectations to have regarding his relationship with Laura and it’s killing him a little every day. So Mark needs to name what he and Laura have because that’s the only way to know if they’re on the same page.
For her part, Laura has a dilemma with this in The Rookie: Feds 1×17 “Payback.” The last time she named a relationship, it all turned out to be a mess. So now she’s afraid because a name means that everything is real… and that her heart can be broken again.
However, Laura realized how important the name was to Mark, but more importantly, she understood why. So she put her fears on a scale and she was able to overcome them, giving an appropriate name to the relationship she has with Mark. And we love it!
Recycled Villains in The Rookie: Feds 1×17 “Payback”
I don’t understand why The Rookie: Feds 1×17 “Payback” recycled a villain who is originally from The Rookie. We feel that this same story should have been given to April but in the mother series. We said what we said.
That being said, the execution of this storyline wasn’t the best. April went from one thing to another and it was hard to get the rhythm of it all while you were trying to figure out what was going on. And it’s not that we care much because we barely saw any of her in The Rookie.
So we could say that April is a villain with potential to whom The Rookie: Feds 1×17 “Payback” didn’t know how to do much justice and in The Rookie she didn’t get the focus she deserved.
The Rookie: Feds season 1 airs Tuesdays at 9/10 on ABC.
