The Rookie fandom has a new enemy to loathe with all of our hearts.
Bailey’s husband Jason is a piece of excrement, and after the stunts that he pulled during The Rookie Season 4 Episode 10, he deserves every terrible thing that will ever happen to him.
Hopefully, topping the list is Nolan and the squad throwing him in jail permanently.
The Rookie brought the new year in with a bang and one of their best installments of the season. It had a bit of everything happening simultaneously, from personal elements to crazy cases in which you couldn’t help but invest.
But the follow-up to the Bailey cliffhanger felt like something ripped from a Lifetime movie. While that could sound bad depending on your stance on those, it’s a significant story arc heading in an intriguing direction.
So you’re married, and you didn’t tell me.
Nolan
Generally, there are mixed feelings about Bailey among the fandom. Sometimes it feels weird that they’ve devoted so much time to this character, and incorporating her into storylines takes a lot of effort. And there’s nothing particularly captivating about her romance with Nolan.
The first half-hour of this installment felt like more of the same, but as the storyline progressed, so did one’s interest in it. In hindsight, it was a disservice to Bailey to tease the idea that she was a terrible person who hurt Nolan by not telling him she was married.
And bless Nyla Harper for always saying it as it is because she felt like the viewers’ voice when she told Nolan how messed up it was and that it still constituted lying.
We didn’t need that fake-out. The rest of the story could’ve held its own without it. It took no time to figure out that Bailey was traumatized by her marriage to a narcissistic abuser. Steve Kazee gets all the kudos for his portrayal of the role because he was eerily on point in his depiction, and Jason was maddening on sight.
You realy can’t let her be happy, can you? You can’t stand for her not need to you. Well, I know who you are now. I’m coming after you.
Nolan
Jason played with Bailey like she was a toy, and he seemed to get off on an audience when he did it. He excelled at gaslighting the heck out of her. It’s disturbing how good he was at it!
He spent most of the hour trying to knock Bailey off of her game, implying that she was a bit crazy and he was a changed man and playing mind games with her. By the end of the hour, it was believable that he manipulated his way out of prison when he should’ve been in there longer.
Jason is a menace! He has all the signs of an abuser, including suggesting that he’s not one since he didn’t lay a hand on her, and Bailey is typically an unshakeable character. But like Kazee, Dewan deserves kudos for the subtle ways she portrayed Bailey after Jason’s arrival.
Now, we see all the ways she reacts to things that support her experiences as a woman who survived an abusive relationship, and it also puts her approach to them and Nolan into perspective.
Bailey standing up for herself at his job was an empowering moment, and you rooted for her as she set her boundaries and asserted herself. We should’ve known it would be a short-lived victory, and he’d retaliate.
I’m not angry because you’re married, well, yes, of course I am, I’m more upset that you didn’t tell me about it.
Nolan
It’s frustrating that Bailey knew he was back, expressed reasonable paranoia, but still didn’t assume the worst from him.
The second she had car trouble, she probably should’ve pieced together that he tampered with her car and something was amiss. She felt as if he’d gone into her house, but she still wandered in there anyway, searching around until she found their wedding album on her bed.
Jason took his revenge by setting Bailey up with a felony’s worth of drugs in the car, and he could ruin her career and life with that move. Fortunately, Nolan set aside his hurt about Bailey’s omission, accepted that as a woman who endured what she did, it wasn’t something she was able to share, and let her know how devoted he was to her.
He knows and sees Jason for who and what he is, and we know how protective Nolan is about the people he loves. If he says Jason is going down, then we can believe that’ll happen, even if it takes his entire squad of friends to get the job done.
On the topic of friends — Wesley and James are the bromance I didn’t know we needed. They didn’t give us much time to process Wesley’s six-month suspension from practicing law before they put him into another slightly dangerous but suitable position.
He’s passionate about making a difference in the world, and working alongside James is perfect for him. It also means we can expect more of Wesley incorporated into cases and working with the others. And there’s no such thing as too much Wesley.
It brings the community policing aspect back into the fold again. Of course, Wesley will have to learn how to take a backseat and let James guide him a bit. You’d think after his Elijah experience that he wouldn’t jump into mouthing off to drug dealers he doesn’t know.
The situation with Tyler was heartbreaking. He was a good kid who wanted out, and some adult drug dealer got his grips into him, forcing him to do things he didn’t want to do. He deserved the break Lucy gave him.
And, sadly, he couldn’t wait long enough for Wesley and James to help him. Now he ruined his life with that armed robbery, and if the woman dies, he’ll go down for her death, too.
The case introduced us to Chris, and sorry, I already can’t stand him. He’s too green to be that arrogant and condescending. On top of that, his view of the law and the good he thinks he’s doing is too simplistic and leaves no room for nuance and complexity.
It seems as if they’re angling for an enemies-to-lovers type of thing with him and Lucy. And if that’s the case, I’m dreading it already. It’s too bad their interaction couldn’t end with her telling him off and walking away as she did. It was the best part of their scenes together.
But since they’re playing both sides of the Chenford connection, it would make sense if they paired her up with someone. Right now, they’re playing up the best friends angle with the two partners, but there’s a hint of something else beneath the surface.
Kojo is just like Tim he’s big, gruff, a whole lot of bark, but underneath all of it, he’s a sweetheart.
Lucy
Initially, it seemed as though Ashley’s most prominent issue would be that Tim is super close to Lucy and can’t go a conversation without mentioning her in some capacity. When he brought up that Kojo belonged to her, the wheels seemed to turn in Ashley’s mind. It didn’t help matters that Tim spoils the dog to bits.
He made Kojo a full breakfast of salmon and didn’t have anything for his supposed girlfriend, and he didn’t bat an eye at Lucy’s not at all self-serving or shady comment about Tim breaking up with Ashley if the dog didn’t like her.
To be fair, when it comes to reading people and vibes, dogs and babies tend to tip you off. If they’re spazzing out, it’s something to pay attention to, but Kojo picked up on Ashley’s fear of dogs. Thanks to Tim’s best friend, Lucy, they managed to work through that.
But Tim and Ashely don’t feel like a legitimate couple. They don’t seem to have much of a connection, and it doesn’t help that we don’t see Ashley often either.
But the most notable portion of their scenes and getting a glimpse of Tim’s pristine and not at all suitable for his character apartment. A girl expected some worn leather, splashes of dark and neutral colors, and maybe some sports memorabilia, not all that minimalistic, clinical white. They kept showing him putting his alarm system in.
Will someone break into his place or something soon? It’s odd to fixate on more than once unless something comes from it.
All the personal stuff was so gripping, but so was the big case. The opener was utterly wild!
A plane with no pilot and gold in it crashing and causing a pile-up is something you don’t expect to see at all. How The Rookie comes up with these gems is beyond me!
But if that wasn’t insane enough, we learned that Levi paid a man millions of dollars to get plastic surgery to look like him and do his time in jail. It’s something ripped out of a soap opera, and I ate up every morsel of it!
It had Tim and Angela, our OG besties who need more screentime together, sharing some scenes, and Harper, Nolan, Lucy, and Bradford catching Levi most spectacularly.
We also had Oscar snitching and helping out Nolan. You can’t go wrong there!
Over to you, Rookie Fanatics. Are you also frothing at the mouth over Jason’s evilness? Hit the comments below!
You can watch The Rookie online via TV Fanatic if you missed anything.
Jasmine Blu is a senior staff writer for TV Fanatic. Follow her on Twitter.