What’s the saying…? “The truth serum shall set you free”?
This week on ABC’s The Rookie — in a documentary-style episode that involved Nolan’s almost-daughter-in-law Abigail, the Westview psychiatric hospital that Liam Glasser used to call home, and the reveal that Angela is a low-key shlock producer — Sgt. Tim Bradford (played by Eric Winter) and Officer Lucy Chen (Melissa O’Neil) accidentally came in contact with sodium pentothal aka “truth serum.”
As one does.
At first just groggy after touching the damp walls of the abandoned facility, Lucy and Tim came to realize they’d been dosed with truth serum. The reveals and realizations that followed were varied… and in one instance quite seismic.
THERE ONCE WAS A HAMSTER….
“I hate making mistakes in front of you,” Tim was first to share, delivering brand-new news to his ex.
Tim then attempted to be prudent, saying, “We should keep quiet until this wears off, it’s better for us.”
But before he knew it, he was sharing his most embarrassing memory, of how in the third grade “I snuck a hamster into our classroom in my pants.”
The duo tries to busy themselves with police work, but one “fast-forward” later, they were back at it — and on a deeper level. Tim said that with the kind of dad he grew up with, he felt he “deserved to be punished. And without him to punish me, I punished myself,” by breaking up with Lucy.
Tim tried to spin that “it’s kind of flattering” for Lucy, that his ultimate punishment was to deny himself her, but she was very quick to note, “You didn’t punish just yourself,” but her as well.
“I know…,” he nodded, “and look, if you never fully forgive me, I totally understand.”
And then the biggest truth came.
“I’ve already forgiven you,” Lucy blurted before catching herself, and awkwardly laughing. “Huh. I wonder when that happened?”
To think we didn’t actually get to hear the “baby names discussed,” as later revealed by the documentarian!
WHERE DOES #CHENFORD GO FROM HERE?
Lucy’s realization-slash-confession is, yes, “another good sign on the way towards where we are going with them,” The Rookie showrunner Alexi Hawley tells TVLine.
“Obviously, there’s the obstacle of the sergeants exam,” the EP is quick to note. “It’s very necessary for Lucy to pass that for them to get on equal footing, if they were to be together. But I do think that her finally realizing that she has forgiven him — and him having done the emotional work on himself he needed to — is a good sign.”
LUCY IS PUT TO THE LITERAL TEST
In next week’s episode, Tim supports Lucy as she prepares for said exam — which, The Rookie being The Rookie, is easier said than done.
“As always, there’s a lot going on in our episodes. There might be a distraction or two…,” Hawley winks. And even once the exam is taken, “they don’t post the results right away, so there’s also the pain of waiting, and the stress of that.”
Viewers, though, won’t have the pain and stress of waiting until Season 8 to know the outcome of Lucy’s exam.
“We’ll know the answer before the end of the season,” Hawley promises, “and maybe we’ll have a bit of storytelling with that.”
