The Rookie Season 6, Episode 7 Review: “Crushed” Is Too Experimental for Its Own Good
After a three-week break, The Rookie returned to pick up the pieces from the big ChenFord (fan’s name for Chen and Bradford’s relationship) breakup. One key element of any procedural is balancing the series’ status quo while allowing the characters to change incrementally. However, in Season 6, Episode 7, “Crushed,” The Rookie centers the character drama on the concept of sudden, big changes. Meanwhile, the Mid-Wilshire Precinct is all hands on deck in the hunt for a missing nanny, who turns up dead.
What makes The Rookie so watchable are the character relationships. This episode makes clever use of its ensemble cast, balancing the friendly banter and tense workplace demands before leveraging them all to solve the case of the week. Unfortunately, the time spent on the case is far less interesting than the characters’ personal stories. Case in point, Nyla Harper and Angela Lopez hunting for new nannies together. Meanwhile, Sgt. Wade Gray rides around with Lucy Chen to evaluate her state of mind after breaking up with Tim Bradford. What’s more, Lucy’s roommate Tamara Collins is also moving out. John Nolan and Bailey Nune are trying to have a baby, and Bailey is rushing things because of her age. Almost the entire cast of characters on The Rookie are facing significant changes, and they make for better stories than the week’s obligatory missing persons case. There’s also a change to how the episodes are shot, and it’s a questionable one.
The Experimental Visual Storytelling in “Crushed” Doesn’t Really Work
While It’s Good to Try New Things, the Episode’s Hyper-Immersive Camera Work Was Questionable
The Rookie is no stranger to taking novel approaches to the visual presentation of its episodes. Most commonly, The Rookie uses a true crime documentary format for a real-world feel. “Crushed” does this as well, but instead of filming the episode as if it were a reality show, everything was shot using only cameras present in the scene. The show often uses footage from the Axion bodycams the characters wear, which is used by 80% of larger, real-world police departments. Not only is this footage visually interesting, the use of them in the series is subtle message to the audience about the value of these devices to protect both officers and suspects.
That being said, the bodycam footage works best when it’s used to break up the more traditional camera shots used in the episode. It puts the viewer right in the center of the action, if even for a brief moment. This is still more than enough time to ramp up an episode’s immersion. But in “Crushed,” from the moment the officers go on duty, the only shots viewers saw came from body cameras, shop cameras, security cameras or — in a few regrettable moments — phone cameras. It’s unclear why the producers and directors chose this approach, but it’s too much of a gimmick. Instead of feeling like a part of the action, viewers just feel like they’re missing some of it.
For those who enjoy a cinema verité (French for “truthful cinema”) and a hyper-realistic approach to filmmaking, this may work. But for those who don’t, the camera work serves as yet another barrier that blocks audiences from connecting to connect to the case at hand. Viewers may find themselves realizing just how important staged closeups and blocking are when it comes to connecting with the characters onscreen, whether it’s the people involved in the case or new recurring characters like Dr. Brenda Vaughn. In fairness, it’s good to see a contemporary series take wild creative risks like this late into its run, especially with The Rookie slated to return for Season 7. However, this particular experiment was more of a failure than a success.
The ChenFord Breakup Dominated This Episode
Tim Bradford Dumped Lucy Chen, and This Breakup’s Fallout Took Center Stage
Since John Nolan and Bailey Nune tied the martial knot, The Rookie smartly allowed their relationship to be a safe haven for fans. Their conflict is minimal, and time spent with those characters focuses on making them be as adorable as possible. ChenFord is The Rookie ‘s biggest ship, and all of its drama is focused on Lucy and Tim falling apart. Bradford was caught up in another scandal involving his former Army compatriots rather than his ex-wife. He lied to the Army and conducted an illegal, shady investigation into one of his soldiers who was previously thought dead. He’s fired from the Metro Division, and he broke up with Lucy.
Sgt. Gray rode with Lucy because of this breakup and because her roommate is moving out. He knew Tamara Collins is more like Lucy’s child than just someone she shares a kitchen with, so he gave her a metaphorical shoulder to cry on. Conveniently, Celina Juarez needs a place to live, so she and Lucy will be the new off-duty pairing on The Rookie, which promises to be fun. Meanwhile, Tim, Dr. Vaugh and Aaron Thorsen, who was her patient, rode together as they worked the case. The episode downplayed Thorsen’s affection for his former therapist, and for good reason.
The episode ended with a surprising choice from Bradford to actively seek therapy after the ride-along. Dr. Vaughn cleared him to return to duty, just as she did for Thorsen after his near-fatal shooting. However, Bradford sought her out for an emergency therapy session. This was a bold move on the storytellers’ part. Bradford is now one of the rare military veterans in fiction in need of mental health treatment, but isn’t portrayed as “broken” or even dangerous. He’s still a hero on the show, and him seeking help only adds to that reputation.
“Crushed” Used Its Characters Well to Solve a Contrived & Uninteresting Case
The Rookie Struggled to Make Its Latest Kidnapping Gripping and Suspenseful
Rather than working on disparate investigations throughout the episode, “Crushed” deploys the whole cast on a single case. This worked very well. However, it worked best when it facilitated the asides about the many kinds of changes going on in the characters’ lives. The case was really just a narrative device to examine the characters’ changing lives. From Bailey calling Nolan for a mid-shift hook-up to the discussion amongst the crew about the cost of nanny services, these moments showed just how strong the characters were outside their jobs on what’s ostensibly a workplace drama. In fact, these made the relatively lackluster case almost make sense.
It also didn’t help that the case was so needlessly convoluted. Along with the aforementioned camera gimmick, if the episode focused on the characters and the seismic changes going on in their personal lives, a straightforward case wouldn’t get in the way. The officers were just after an adult man who groomed his nanny and seemingly kidnapped her. There didn’t even have to be a murder or a complicated motive, but of course, The Rookie’s latest episode had two people die to artificially ratchet up the tension. Eventually, they reveal the victim was actually the killer through a tearful confession. A situation and revelation this complex deserves more nuance than it got.
There’s a storytelling adage this episode should’ve listened to: “You can tell an odd story, or you can tell a story oddly. Rarely can you do both.” With “Crushed,” The Rookie tried to do both, but did neither effectively. The choice to shoot most of the episode through body and security cameras put too much distance between the characters who audiences really cared about and the already meandering case they were solving.
The Rookie Continues to Struggle With Plot & Character in “Crushed”
For an Episode So Focused on Character, Too Many Story Threads Were Left Dangling
While this episode has its strengths — especially in the character-driven moments — the central case and the filmmaking’s real-time nature weren’t the most effective ways to showcase things. And even before the episode’s focus shifted to the case, its story beats were rushed, while characters’ choices and reactions were inconsistent to previous events. For example, Angela’s reaction to her nanny being legally armed was contrived. It seemed unlikely that the nanny wouldn’t have been upfront about carrying a gun in the house of a police detective and prosecutor earlier, or at least off-screen. Also, at least two criminal kingpins already personally targeted their family before. It makes some sense for the nanny to arm herself in light of her employer’s brushes with violence.
Similarly, Tamara’s decision to move out of Lucy’s apartment felt like another instance where a character did something simply because the plot needed a dramatic beat to happen. Tamara’s choice should’ve been a bigger deal or, at least, been foreshadowed before the ChenFord breakup especially since Lucy basically adopted Tamara. Having their big goodbye take place off-screen was a disservice to one of the show’s most emotionally resonant relationships. The follow-up to this was Lucy’s ride with Sgt. Gray. He rode with Lucy out of concern for her. The moments where Chen was uncomfortable were played well, since she didn’t know if she was talking to a friend or her boss. Rather than making that clear through his action or dialogue, Sgt. Gray was just there. His heart was in the right place, but he would’ve benefited from a few more scenes and developments from the episode.
Lastly, Bradford snapped at Thorsen in an intentionally out-of-character moment, showcasing his inner turmoil. However, he’s not a rookie anymore. The episode missed the opportunity to have these characters address that fact, and how Bradford still had little control over his temper despite his supposed tenure. Perhaps having all the characters work on the same case left the writers pressed for time and space, so they left many of these character threads dangling since they could be picked up again in future episodes. The character’s individual drama was the most interesting part of “Crushed,” but their lack of resolution left the overall story incomplete.
