The long-awaited return also found Nolan and the team hunting down Jason and Oscar while Bailey stayed safely overseas
Welcome back to the Mid-Wilshire Division and get ready for more sprawling shootouts in the streets of Los Angeles, “The Rookie” is back for Season 7. The action-packed, strike-shortened Season 6 brought a big Chenford breakup that broke fans’ hearts; a shady psychiatrist, Blair London (Danielle Campbell), who even got Tim to open up to her before her; and a devious turn for Monica (Bridget Regan), who emerged as the season’s big bad before escaping in the finale — but not before she and Blair got Mid-Wilshire tangled up in a corruption scandal that cost the lives of officers. Oh, and not only did recurring bad guy and fan-favorite Oscar Hutchinson (Matthew Glave) break out of prison, he brought Bailey’s criminal ex-husband Jason Wyler with him.
Naturally, Season 7 picks up in the thick of the action with the team hunting down Oscar and Jason. We start with John Nolan (Nathan Fillion) and Celina Jaurez (Lisseth Chavez) surveilling from a rooftop, where we get a sizeable info drop before they launch into the attack. The key points to know: 1) A few weeks have passed and John is back in action, his first day back on the job after being shot in the hind. 2) Bailey (Jenna Dewan) is deployed with the National Guard outside of the country. 3) Wade Grey (Richard T. Jones) has been promoted from sergeant to lieutenant.
Back to the action, they close in on a home in a residential neighborhood in search of the targets — boom! The folks inside are highly armed and there’s an officer down as soon as they breach the doorway. A relentless shootout ensues, which allows one of the criminals to sneak out while the team takes down the rest … until Nolan comes careening into her with the help of a scooter and arrests her. Unfortunately, they do not find top priority fugitives Oscar and Jason.
At the station, we meet our new rookies — a “fainting goat” and a “peacock” according to tough-guy training officer Tim Bradford (Eric Winter). Seth Ridley (Patrick Keleher) is the so-called fainting goat — a timid but dedicated trainee who wants to help people, but seems poised to struggle with decisive action in the line of fire. Miles Penn (Deric Augustine) is the peacocking cowboy, a former Texas PD officer who considers himself a rookie in name only and came to Hollywood seeking glory.
They should make a handful for their training officers, Bradford and … Lucy Chen (Melissa O’Neil). In need of another T.O., Lt. Grey used his new position to pull some strings and get Chen a promotion. She still wants to do undercover work, but he convinces her this is a short term favor that will only boost her when a detective spot opens up. Chen says she’s honored he asked and promises not to let him down.
When Bradford finds out, he offers Chen pointers and she gives him a big thanks-but-no-thanks and says she’s going to train her rookie with a more “modern approach.” Who’s gonna train the better rookie — the hardass or the softie? Bradford wants to put money it and Chen’s in. It’s a bet between exes. They agree to track progress and decide whose rookie is best trained after a month, with the winner racking up the most successes and fewest infractions in the daily reports. It’s not quite the romantic reunion Chenford fans have been hoping, but it lights a fun spark of competition between the two after their elevator heart-to-heart in the Season 6 finale.
When Nolan finds out about the bet, he insists one of them is going to get a ringer with Penn having two years of experience on a force, but Bradford argues it’s the opposite — rookies from other states have to be untrained and then retrained. He gets to find out firsthand when Lt. Grey assigns Penn to Bradford, Ridley to Chen, and Penn kind of immediately proves Bradford right when he pisses off Lt. Grey and makes a pass at Chen right out of the gate. Bradford shuts him down hard on that second point, naturally.
And there’s more drama at the station yet. Given the fallout from the mess that Monica and Blair made, the Assistant DA (and Det. Lopez’s husband) Wesley Evers (Shawn Ashmore), has been assigned temporarily to review evidence related to the case, much to the chagrin of the cops. That includes monitoring police reports and recordings from Blair’s therapy sessions with the officers. And what should he hear when reviewing those files but a fellow detective, Detective Graham (Ivan Hernandez), who says he can’t stop fantasizing about Angela. Wesley later approaches Det. Graham, who calls him a “hall monitor” and razzes that he didn’t think Evers and Lopez would last, because he “always thought she’d end up with a cop.” But then, concedes Evers “must be doing something right.” He’s more charming than contentious, but it’s clear that a seed of doubt has been planted in Evers’ mind.
The second half of the episode really kicks the action into full gear. Nolan and Juarez are on patrol, and she’s catching him up on what’s going on with Aaron (Tru Valentino), who she says is “over in North Hollywood, settling in and happy that no one at the station knows he was a patient of Blair’s.” They roll up on an armed robbery in progress at a pharmacy, where Nolan hesitates to take a shot. The thief immediately opens fire when he sees the cops, runs out and jacks a car, shooting the driver on his way out, leaving Nolan to ruminate on the shot he didn’t take.
Brand new T.O. Chen and her day-one trainee Ridley are the ones who discover the suspect vehicle from he robbery. When they approach, they see the suspect in the front seat, but only after Ridley pulls him out and cuffs him do they realize he OD’d. Ridley immediately gets sick, throwing up in the car and contaminating the crime scene. Later, he explains to Chen that he wasn’t being a “delicate flower,” he was having a trauma response because his high school girlfriend OD’d in front of him. She gives him an understanding speech about how the cops always have to keep the personal separate, because when they lose control, bad things happen.
But Chen isn’t the only one struggling with her rookie. Bradford and Penn are also out on patrol, when a car comes recklessly speeding past them, Penn is thrilled to get “a little action” and jokes about shooting out the tires. When the car crashes, he races into action, violating several points of protocol in process, and after they have the suspect in custody, Bradford really lets him have it, and reminds him that joke about shooting out he tires won’t be so funny if a civil liberty attorney gets to it. When they bring the car back to the station, the department’s radioactivity alarm goes off, slingshotting the team into yet another, even higher stakes mission: there’s a nuke loose in Los Angeles and they have to retrieve it.
Special Agent Garza (Felix Solis) delivers the details: 12 hours ago, a suitcase arrived on a cargo ship from eastern Europe carrying cold war relic from Ukraine that got turned over for demolition. A secure convoy was meant to take it to Oklahoma to be decommissioned but the nuke went missing at the port sometime before dawn. After a bit of misdirection where the team takes down some accomplices at a location that doesn’t have the bomb, we get one more of “The Rookie’s” signature action set-pieces in the streets of LA, as they chase down a trio of criminals in possession of the nuke, followed by a huge shoot out in the middle of the city. Chen takes down one of the three, and Nolan, who spent the day doubting himself, takes the critical shot to bring the other two suspects down.
