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‘The Rookie’ recap: Season 5, episode 1 – Did Chenford have sex?

September 26, 2022

The following contains massive spoilers from The recruitSeason 5 premiere.

This Sunday evening at The recruitSeason 5 Premiere, What Happened in Vegas Between “Dim” and “Juicy” Didn’t Stay in Vegas for Tim and Lucy.

Before resuming their undercover dynamic as a thug and his girlfriend, Sergeant Bradford (played by Eric Winter) and Officer Chen (Melissa O’Neil) were each pressured by confidants (Lopez, Tamara) to respond of all real feelings are brewing under the surface.

Later, en route to Vegas in a drug dealer’s pajamas, they shared another passionate and prolonged “fake” kiss to help sell Dim and Juicy’s Mile High Club antics. Afterwards, Tim himself even checked on Lucy on how she might feel – but she ignored their convincing “practice” kiss as merely having the understandable effect of an intimate act.

After this successful mission was completed and Tim walked Lucy home, she argued that they were technically still “undercover” as lovebirds, and she invited Tim inside. After careful consideration, he took the bait.

Taking “Chenford” this far into the Season 5 premiere “felt like the organic place to go,” showrunner Alexi Hawley told TVLine. “The reality is when he was his direct supervisor, there was no way [to go there]. Even now we’re in a place where there’s a gap in terms of rankings, so that’s still a problem, but I felt like we were building in that place where it felt natural to push it.

The lookalike twist from the Season 4 finale, which paved the way for Tim and Lucy to impersonate a criminal couple, “allowed us to let some things show that the audience completely saw below the surface,” Hawley noted, “and now we’re at a place where we can’t ignore it. So this season we absolutely have to look at what it’s going to be, the next step of that.

But what the ‘next step’ will look like now that Tim and Lucy’s couple have been interrupted by the shocking discovery of the latter’s beau, ADA Chris Sanford (Kanoa Goo), sprawled on his couch with his wrists slit – the grisly job from the series escaped the killer Rosalind Dyer?

Rosalind has been mad at Lucy for not showing up in court and not playing her game…” Hawley says of Dyer’s agenda. “It was his way of getting revenge on Lucy. And it was also a pretty brutal obstacle to throw in Chenford’s way.

Whatever Chris’ fate, “there will be a great sense of guilt” for Lucy, who takes the blame for him being targeted. “Rosalind only chose Chris because of Lucy, so that’s definitely going to have an impact,” Hawley says.

Will a shaken Lucy compartmentalize what was about to happen between her and Tim, as she analyzes what happened to Chris? “It will definitely impact her perspective on what she was about to do with Tim,” Hawley warns. “It’s something she’ll have to navigate – this shocking reality or this splash of cold water” in an intimate moment.

Elsewhere in the Season 5 premiere: Officer John Nolan (Nathan Fillion) received a ‘golden ticket’ for his crafty heroism in the Season 4 finale – prompting him to choose the LAPD’s next job that he wanted.

Affirm that golden tickets in such a scenario are real things, Hawley notes, “You can’t say, ‘I want to be commissioner,’ but any division, any job you want, they will be train you for – that’s why I love the gag of everyone saying what to do”, K-9 unit / learning to keep the dog included!

Nolan will instead use the award to get back on the training officer track, which “fits right in with what we’re trying to do as a cop show that talks about how the only way for the police to change is for the police at changesays Hawley.

What kind of TO will Nolan be, once his new concert is launched with episode 3 (and after a modest jump in time)? Will he be inspired by Tim, Nyla, Angela or Talia when breaking in his first boot?

“I think Nolan is an empathetic person at heart – he listens, he asks questions – so I don’t think anyone would believe him to be a badass like Tim,” Hawley says. But there is this line of being too nice or too ready to give the benefit of the doubt on a job when it can come out of nowhere and turn everything upside down.

“We are going to launch a plot to him,” Hawley shares, which will beg the question, “How do you train someone when chaos happens?

I want a scoop The recruitor for any other show? Email InsideLine@tvline.com and your question may be answered via Matt’s Inside Line.