Sometimes the trash takes itself out.
Are we talking about the Elijah situation, Tim’s father, or Donovan? Well, technically, all of it, since The Rookie Season 4 Episode 9 mostly resolved these storylines.
Of course, the winter finale left the door open for some new ones.
One of the lightest storylines, if you exclude Smitty’s self-implosion in the union rep race against Nolan thanks to Tamara’s Gen Z magic, was Nolan and Bailey’s relationship.
Do we know long they’ve been dating? It hasn’t been that long, but they’ve fast-tracked their relationship so much it’s hard to keep up with it at all.
It’s also one of the least appealing aspects of the series, which sadly continues to be an ongoing thing when it comes to Nolan’s love life, and not even bumping Jenna Dewan up to a series regular has helped.
Is there anyone out there who’s invested in this union at all? Nevertheless, Nolan and Bailey’s romance was the cliffhanger of the winter finale, and it’s unlikely anyone will be scrambling to tune back in for that specific dangling thread.
Something about Bailey has Nolan considering marriage, and the lighthearted moments of the hour were in him trying to figure out the best way to propose.
Peak humor was Nolan looking at engagement rings and Lucy and their suspect in a jewelry store robbery judging Nolan for his taste in engagement rings and his uncreative proposal plans.
Bless that man’s heart incriminating himself while explaining to Nolan why he refused to take the Emerald-cut diamond because no one wears those anymore and willing to set up his arresting officer with the people who could help with a flash mob proposal.
You base a proposal on the person of whom you’re proposing. Neither Bailey nor Nolan is the type to go viral with an epic ordeal, so Nolan’s dinner plans and confessing his love seemed great.
Of course, if we ever got a sign as to how fast these two are moving, Nolan realized his son and future fiancee didn’t even meet each other yet.
The running gag of them trying to video call with shoddy connections wasn’t the most interesting either. Henry saw through Nolan’s desperate attempts to orchestrate a quick meeting. He extended his good wishes.
But Bailey went and proved that there’s so much about her that Nolan still doesn’t know. Only on this series would a simple love confession and proposal get thwarted by an unknown husband.
Did Bailey ever mention she was married? And she asked Jason about them letting him “out,” so does that mean he did a stint in prison? You can still get a divorce while in the clinker, so what’s the story there? Why is Bailey still married to someone else, and how did this not come up at all?
It’s safe to say the engagement is not happening anytime soon until we can unpack this tangled romantic situation with Bailey and her mysterious ex. Poor Nolan got blindsided by this.
It wasn’t the most compelling cliffhanger for a midseason finale. Angela and Wesley’s ordeal would’ve worked out better. As it stands, that phone call with Abril didn’t imply there would be any more drama on the horizon.
At the very least, we may not expect something anytime soon. The opening for Angela and the others to cross paths with Abril’s cartel operation is always there, but it’s doubtful Angela will actively pursue Abril right now.
After all the time spent with Elijah as this intimidating force who held Wesley’s life and career in his hands, it was a bit surprising that they didn’t devote most of the hour to taking him down.
The midseason finale and this storyline were the perfect opportunities to focus exclusively on this and perhaps one other arc. They could’ve postponed the engagement, Tim’s confrontation with his father, Harper’s custody issues, or the Smitty union rep thing until the season returned.
For a high-stakes storyline, having it sandwiched among other storylines with vastly conflicting tones took away some intensity and momentum.
It meant a storyline with a lot of tension and conflict fizzled out by the end, and it deserved a bit more. Taking Elijah down was too easy. Although, it’s doubtful that’s the last of him and Brandon Jay McLaren killing the role.
The tension was high when they had to send Wesley in for that meeting with the task of planting that bug. So much hinged on Wesley not tipping Elijah off, and the criminal was enough of a wild card for the danger to feel real.
Initially, Wesley looked too obvious assessing the room for a place to stick the thing. But overall, he did well. He would’ve gotten away with Elijah none the wiser if not for the bug he planted, causing static in the walkie-talkies.
It felt like more harm was coming Angela and Wesley’s way than anything else in those moments, and there was no way out yet. They’ve played out how smart of a criminal Elijah was, and they even admitted that he knew he mentioned the food bank on the bug and would probably move to switch things up.
We can believe that the cops got a warrant in time and acted quickly enough, but the crew catching Elijah’s men in the food bank full of drugs felt too fortuitous, considering that catching Elijah and having enough to make things stick took this long in the first place.
The squad breaching the pantry with the rap music blaring was an exciting scene, and the shootout was intense, though, especially when they took out two men and showed they meant business. Elijah’s second caved, and while he wasn’t forthcoming with information and probably never will be, they at least have him in custody.
It’s the type of action this story arc earned, and the only downside to it was that it was short-lived. I wish they kept up that momentum and thrills for the remainder of the hour, it would’ve had us on the edge of our seats, and the show knows how to do that well.
Of course, Abril made up for it coming in as a dark horse no one saw in the works.
They worked so hard to get to Elijah, and they did, but it was Abril who did the most damage. The gun-slinging badass isn’t a joke or one to reckon with at all.
As La Fiera’s trusty sicaria, she’s taken over the drug cartel. It goes to show you that no matter how hard law enforcement works to end organizations, someone will always come in, pick things up, and carry on with it.
Sometimes it has to feel as if their intentions are futile. But Abril has a different course of action she intends to take with running things.
She had reason to take out all of Elijah’s men and ruin his operation. She needed to punish him for helping Wesley and undermining La Fiera, so it was all business.
Abril also took out three gangs while there, so she has territory in Los Angeles. It means she’ll have her finger on the pulse in Los Angeles, and she’ll loom over them as a threat only in the sense of her operation thriving, running through there.
She’ll possibly cross paths with Angela because of that, but for not, she doesn’t take unnecessary risks that don’t suit her well. She sounds more calculated and strategic and not one who acts on emotion.
It puts Angela and Wesley in a safe enough place for now, with the possibility of more drama down the road. With Elijah down and out and Abril uninterested in them, things should settle down for a bit.
The Abril angle is intriguing if it comes up again, and it was one baddie taking down another, but if this is the official end of Elijah’s arc, it wasn’t the most climactic after the build-up we had.
But if Wesley lives to fight another day as a loving husband and father and as an attorney, then we can’t ask for anything more.
Maybe he can teach some pointers to Donovan, who is the absolute worst. What universe is he living in where he believes he can continue holding it over Harper’s head that she’s a working mother?
It’s beyond sexist and gross, and the more he doubles down on it, the worse it gets. Harper has made career moves and lifestyle changes to be a better mother for her daughter because of Donovan, and no matter what she does, it’s never good enough for him.
It’s disturbing how comfortable he is in keeping their daughter away from her mother. He brings up two years of their daughter’s life as a point where Harper wasn’t up to par in his eyes and acts as though the rest of those years don’t matter.
And Harper’s daughter is old enough to have input on where she’d like to spend time and how much of her mother she’d like to see. As a young woman, especially one of color, Donovan should want better for his daughter instead of using her as a pawn in his browbeating of Harper.
It sucked that Harper had this entail about Penelope, and as much as they tried to emphasize that they weren’t shaming Penelope for her former life as an escort, it didn’t matter.
Her past as an escort still got utilized as fodder in this custody battle, and it’s how Harper won. Sure, it came with a cost since Donovan broke up with Penelope (because she lied, which reminds him of Harper but not because of her former job), and Lila is upset about all of it.
Somehow, Donovan caused this drama, backed Harper into a corner until she didn’t have many options, broke up with Penelope, and still, he found a way to put all of this blame on Harper.
She’ll carry the burden and guilt of hurting her daughter and breaking up Donovan’s engagement as if it’s not on him. It’s ludicrous.
But all of this should require an impartial judge who considers the child’s best interest and doesn’t resort to sexist views on women to put this to bed anyway.
It’s in Lila’s best interest not to get upended and relocated when she doesn’t have to, and Donovan should have considered Harper’s deal of keeping her for the schoolyear while he had her during the summers and visited whenever he liked.
And Penelope isn’t Lila’s mother, so he looked foolish when implying that she’s somehow a better replacement for an active biological mother.
Unfortunately, we know this probably isn’t the end of Harper having to prove herself as a mother to her child. Donovan will probably let Nyla know that Harper is why Penelope is gone.
And she’ll have to spend more time helping her daughter adapt to Donovan and Penelope’s breakup or something. Harper deserves so much better than this man attacking her all of the time.
In the meantime, the Bradford family arc wasn’t any less messy.
Again, it’s bizarre how Tim’s feelings about his father and how he chooses to deal with what happened during his childhood get invalidated by Genny and sometimes Lucy.
Genny gaslit him into helping with the house, and he did. But the second they found that gun, and he took off to crack a case that affected their family, she was pissy at him again.
It didn’t seem fair at all. Why was there no space for Tim to cope with things in his way without kowtowing to his sister?
People deal with things differently, and it should’ve been fine if he wanted to hire someone else to deal with the house and sell it without a second thought.
He was there helping, and Genny was pushing things by using it to reminisce on memories from their childhood. It’s like Tim gave into her, and she couldn’t even do him the courtesy of respecting any of his boundaries.
The house doesn’t hold happy memories for him, and maybe pretending as if it did was triggering. Genny and Lucy giggling, taking their sweet time talking about proms and such when Tim wanted to do the work and get it over, with was ridiculous.
It’s also something to be said about Tim’s status as the eldest child who probably saw and knew far more than Genny did. And yet, as the oldest, he had to keep setting his feelings aside for his sister.
Genny’s gaslighting aside, she seems cool, and it’s cute that the siblings will be closer now, but they did Tim dirty with this storyline where he got treated like the bad guy for having boundaries and wanting nothing to do with his abusive father.
It was plausible that Tom Bradford did something terrible and was behind Frank’s death. As a cop and his son, it’s understandable that Tim needed to figure all of this out.
Tom’s affair with Monica gave him enough motive. And it was this case that prompted Tim to visit his father for the first time in over a decade. To say it was intense is an understatement, but Winter and Remar gave you chills
Tom was quite the character, and by the end of the hour, Genny’s argument that the man changed didn’t ring true. Tom revealed himself as the monster that Tim remembers when he challenged his son to come at him. And he didn’t respond well to Tim’s accusations, and his response to the abuse and how he wasn’t any different than Frank was abominable.
Tom thinks that his physical punishment and abusive, toxic behavior were what toughened him up and made him a man. In Tom’s eyes, as long as he wasn’t beating up on a woman, it was okay, I guess.
It had to be a slap in the face to learn that his father risked everything back then and still, in the present, but he didn’t have that same care and commitment to his family. Tom was still willing to cover for Monica. He felt it was the right thing to do, but morality excluded his wife and children.
And Tim learned the hard lesson of how to accept the apology you never get.
It was a bit of closure for Tim, or at least a pathway toward it, and Lucy provided support and comfort.
Tim’s vulnerability with Lucy and the sweetness of their hug would’ve been infinitely better if Lucy wasn’t part of the problem with her approach with Tim throughout this arc.
Chenford is great, but it felt as if Lucy overstepped too many times during this thing with Tim and his sister, and she was confoundingly immature during situations that required more seriousness.
Fortunately, Tim brought up the Tim Tests and asserted that he is nothing like his father, to which she agreed. It was her most cringe-worthy faux pas, and it needed a follow-up. You can only imagine how jarring and hurtful it was when Lucy made the comparison.
The ongoing beauty of this arc has been witnessing Eric Winter’s range by depicting this vulnerable side of Bradford we don’t always get to see. He’s been fantastic with that. Who didn’t want to hug him after that final scene with his father?
It still feels like they can revisit this when Tom passes away. Maybe by then, he’ll make real amends and acknowledge the pain he caused his children.
It’s so much about Tim the man didn’t know and missed out on, and they got right to business for their first meeting in years. Indeed, we’ll expect more heartache and glimpses into Tim’s life in his off time.
The midseason finale wasn’t as action-packed as the promos teased, but entertaining, nonetheless, and I cannot wait to see what the second half of the season has in store.
Over to you, Rookie Fanatics.
Did you enjoy how they wrapped up Elijah’s arc? What are your thoughts on Tim and Harper’s personal storylines? Are you invested in Nolan and Bailey at all? Hit the comments below!
You can watch The Rookie online here via TV Fanatic!
Jasmine Blu is a senior staff writer for TV Fanatic. Follow her on Twitter.