‘The Rookie’ Throws Nyla and Miles Together on a Bank Robbery Case
We learned last week that Nyla Harper (Mekia Cox) has been demoted from detective because of her inappropriate conduct with serial killer Liam Glasser (Seth Gabel) last season. She is now being required to head back into uniform as a patrol cop, but to add insult to injury, she discovers at the beginning of Episode 9 that she’ll be working as a training officer once again. Her new rookie will be Miles Penn (Deric Augustine), who’s also fresh off disciplinary action from the department. Things are a bit uncomfortable from the start, as Nyla’s strategy to train Miles is to have him act as the training officer and offer guidance to her as if she were a rookie. Soon, they’re assigned to intercept two bank robbers, and this is when things get interesting.
The two bank robbers happen to be young women, both of whom have been shot. At the hospital, they learn one of the women has died from her injuries. Her girlfriend is in recovery, and Miles thoughtfully interrogates her (based on Nyla’s advice). She confesses that they robbed the bank because she’s over $200,000 in debt from student loans from Stanford. Miles and Nyla know there was a third robber, but aren’t sure who they are. The grandmother of the young woman arrives at the hospital when the police put the pieces together.
Meanwhile, a criminal we’re sick of returns for another heart-pounding episode.
The grandmother had actually robbed a bank back in 1983, and helped her granddaughter plan and execute this new heist. The elderly woman is arrested in front of her hysterical granddaughter, all the while insisting that the fact that the two girls couldn’t simply get ahead in life isn’t right. This is a fascinating case because the suspects aren’t your average bank robbers, and it’s even more entertaining because of Nyla and Miles’ new partnership. At the end of the day, Nyla accepts that Miles is her new rookie, and I’m excited to see even more scenes with these two characters working together.
‘The Rookie’ Season 8, Episode 9 Provides a Crossover with ‘Game Changers’
Episode 9 sees Nolan back with his old rookie, Celina Juarez (Lisseth Chavez). They head to the site of a different robbery, where they discover an improv comedy group has been robbed. This episode then becomes a crossover with Dropout’s Game Changer game show series, including an appearance by Sam Reich. The case actually offers plenty of comic relief for the episode, because the characters involved are intent on cracking non-stop jokes instead of helping Nolan and Celina solve the case. The cops discover that the criminal left his wallet while fleeing which jump-starts their investigation. Eventually, they learn that the wallet was lost inadvertently by an innocent man, and that Reich’s character actually set up a fake robbery for his show, which unsurprisingly turned into a real one. As someone who hasn’t seen Game Changer, these scenes were still silly and fun because of the actors’ commitment to the bit. The only loose end to appear in the episode is that Dash (Beckett Hawley), the drone kid from Season 7, shows up with the Game Changer crew. I don’t really have any idea why he’d appear in the episode, unless there’s a further storyline developing down the line.
There’s one other crime that gets investigated by the gang in this episode. Two people come into the hospital having been accidentally glued to each other. Lieutenant Wade Grey (Richard T. Jones) notices that they have firing pins from a handgun glued to their bodies, which leads the police to discover that they’ve been producing ghost guns. Celina and Lucy Chen (Melissa O’Neil) locate the criminals working on the ghost guns, as well as the epoxy that the couple used that led to their adhesion. They’re subsequently arrested, but it turns out that this extra case is not all that necessary to the episode’s overall narrative.
There’s More Relationship Drama in This Week’s Episode of ‘The Rookie’
Chenford does have a minor storyline in this week’s episode, where Lucy is chastising Tim Bradford (Eric Winter) about his failure to respond to his mom in their group chat. I’m not loving that Lucy basically comes across as a nagging girlfriend throughout this episode, and the conflict does feel a bit repetitive. I do appreciate that Tim’s mother is a callback to the prior episode.
The main relationship drama in The Rookie this week has to do with Wade and his wife, Luna (Angel Parker). Wade discovers that his wife is flirting with a new doctor at the hospital named Oliver Ashton (Charles Michael Davis). Wade even finds Oliver’s sunglasses in Luna’s car, which immediately raises his suspicions that his wife is cheating on him. Wade eventually asks Luna what’s going on, and she admits that while nothing has happened so far between her and Oliver, she does have feelings for him. This is a heartbreaking turn of events, but it is a nice change of pace to see Wade not completely in control of a situation like he usually is.
The episode wraps up with Nolan heading to comfort Wade, even though Bailey (Jenna Dewan) has come home from Washington D.C. for a quick 34-hour trip. I’m not excited to see Bailey back, and this split-second scene just furthers my opinion that her character doesn’t fit into the show’s narrative anymore. Despite this, the episode creates a nice balance of building up new partnerships while also still threatening some formerly solid ones.
New episodes of The Rookie air on Monday nights on ABC, with episodes available to stream on Hulu in the U.S.