Sometimes, with police procedurals, it’s a good idea to switch things up with the format. These shows can tend to be a bit formulaic and a change of pace is warranted. The Rookie has done this throughout its run, with a few documentary-style episodes. Starting in Season 3, the series uses these stand-alone episodes to put its characters in front of a documentary crew as they detail a particular case. While this seemed fun at first, I’m begging the writers to avoid using this gimmick in future episodes. With this tactic, it feels like we don’t get a lot of real face-time with the characters (although one Chenford interaction has made my day!), and this episode tries to tie way too many past cases together. For me, Episode 15 just ends up feeling disjointed, and the multitude of side characters has left me feeling confused. Here’s a rundown of how the documentary episode plays out.
Nolan Has Ties to a Missing Woman in ‘The Rookie’
The episode opens with the Mid-Wilshire Police Department sitting down to meet with the documentary crew they’ve worked with in previous episodes. John Nolan (Nathan Fillion) discusses the case of a missing woman named Abigail Tierney (Madeleine Coghlan), who used to be the fiancé of Nolan’s son. They have since broken up, but then she was reported missing. There are a lot of cheesy red herrings in Abigail’s case. She is initially making a horror movie, so we see many shots of her scream-acting, and we learn that Angela Lopez (Alyssa Diaz) donated money to help produce the movie.
None of this is actually all that relevant to the plot. While spending time with Angela, Abigail learns about serial killer Liam Glasser (Seth Gabel), who had links to the Westview Psychiatric Institute. Although it seems wildly out of character that Angela would offer details about an open case, Abigail gets inspired to change her movie into a documentary about Westview.
Abigail meets with Glasser in prison, and while his creepy persona has always been a welcome addition to the show, trying to tie this character into the story feels a little unnecessary. Abigail then gains access to the abandoned ward at Westview (by flirting with the security guard), and that’s the last time anyone sees her. Rachel Hall (Jasmine Mathews) pops up (because we’re fitting in every single side character in this episode) because she conveniently worked at Westview for a year.
Then, completely nonsensically, a nanny named Mary who was a patient at Westview is interviewed, and she just so happens to be the nanny of Charlotte Russell, one of the little girls who stabbed her friend, from Episode 10. Zuzu, the bizarre AI element from that same episode, tells them that Abigail is in Room 666 at the hospital. I get that the writers weren’t completely done with the Zuzu thing, but it felt odd that they were trying to fit it into this episode.
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Besides the documentary crew filming this whole investigation, there are also some ghost hunters that stop by Westview. They don’t add anything to the episode, other than a little silly humor as they roam the hospital. Tim Bradford (Eric Winter) and Lucy Chen (Melissa O’Neil) start looking for Abigail at Westview, and observe that the walls seem to be wet. Before they know it, they’ve been mysteriously drugged by something in the hospital and call for backup.
The only reason I’m not completely panning this episode is because of this Chenford moment. The substance acts as a truth serum, and Chenford finally gets real with each other. Tim admits that he has internalized the harsh punishments his father used to inflict on him as a kid, and that the worst thing he could think of to do to hurt himself was to break up with her. Lucy confesses that she’s already forgiven him. Later in the documentary interview, we learn that the conversation between the two went in all kinds of weird directions (including the fact that they discussed potential baby names!!!).
It’s not entirely clear where the relationship will head after the two of them get the truth serum out of their systems (or if they’ll even remember all of what they discussed), but I’m happy we got a solid scene for them in this episode.
The Case Gets Solved in a Convoluted Way in ‘The Rookie’
Nolan and Celina Juarez (Lisseth Chavez) arrive as backup, and they discover a walled-off area in the abandoned ward. They break through the wall to discover Abigail, who is amazingly still alive. She had enough food in her purse to survive, but she’d been drugged as well (and had made friends with a skeleton named Bob). Turns out, Zuzu was right, and the room was marked 666. This is where the episode truly lost me. The details behind Abigail’s case got way too convoluted for me to follow exactly, but here’s what I could piece together.
Decades ago, Westview was conducting experiments on humans (like the famous CIA MK-Ultra experiments on interrogation and mind control). Dr. Julius Erikson (Ray Siegle) was a psychologist hired by the CIA and was the director of Westview. He continued his creepy experiments in secret, which explains why many patients at Westview got worse after they were institutionalized there. He went off the rails, dumped all of his chemicals in the hospital, and that’s why Tim and Lucy got dosed. He also walled up his secret office, where Abigail was trapped.
Frankly, the next part is too confusing for a complete breakdown. But Abigail almost gets killed by the security guard again because he’s trying to help the new head of the hospital cover up all of their misdeeds. The Mid-Wilshire crew also determines that the hospital was forcing many of its rich patients into conservatorships to help their families gain control of their finances. And this is what happened to the nanny they interviewed earlier in the episode. Bob the Skeleton was a PI that got taken out when he stumbled upon the Westview crimes. The police are able to charge the new head of the hospital with a whole host of things, and then Westview is shut down for good.
The only real takeaway from this episode that might come up in the future is that Glasser is going to potentially use all of the wild things that happened at Westview as a new defense. He tells Abigail that he spent so much time at the hospital, and with all those hallucinogens in the air, perhaps he wasn’t in his right mind when he carried out his crimes. Instead of continuing to claim that he’s innocent, maybe Glasser is going to go down the insanity plea road.
Either way, I think this could have been placed in an episode with a regular narrative, without going off the rails with this whole documentary episode. I appreciate The Rookie trying to switch things up with these types of episodes, but I prefer straightforward storytelling that doesn’t rely on random characters and plots from many episodes ago. This episode got way too complicated, and besides Chenford maybe moving towards a future together (fingers crossed), there weren’t a ton of really meaningful developments that made me glad I tuned in. So, please, from now on, let’s skip the documentary gimmick!
New episodes of The Rookie air on Tuesday nights on ABC, with episodes available to stream on Hulu in the U.S.
