The Rookie Season 2 Episode 16 went meta and shoved officer Lucy Chen onto the American Idol audition stage. For those who were unaware, actress Melissa O’ Neil won the fairly certain that was actually her belting out that song. I’m generally not the biggest fan of these type of crossovers but Chen has a wonderful voice and I’m hoping the show throw in some more opportunities to let us hear it.
Perhaps something more organic, like Karaoke night or some other event where I won’t be completely distracted by Katy Perry’s earrings. I kept trying to figure out if I loved them or hated them. I am still not certain. That must have been incredibly stressful on Nolan and his ex-wife and I did love to get more peeks into that time in his life. But around it was Nyla Harper doing most of the sharing which is rather extraordinary considering how determined she was to keep her and John’s at work relationship strictly professional at the start of The Rookie Season 2.
As Donovan told Nolan about the horrible incident in the grocery store with Lila, but if this had happened a few months ago, Harper would have clammed up and refused to contribute any more to the story.
Now, not only didn’t she bristle at John knowing about this scary moment from her recent past, she even added to the story him that her ex used it to restrict her visitation with their daughter. That’s a huge amount of sharing for someone like Harper. Then she doubled down on it by asking Nolan to be a buffer between her and Donovan at dinner. She and Nolan have been through a lot even in few short months she’s been his training officer.
Nolan is loyal and trustworthy and kind, also a parent who has been divorced and perhaps that’s the kind of thing you have to live through to truly understand. Kudos to Harper for really listening to Lila and not brushing all of her fears off as a child’s bad dream. Lila needed her mother to take her seriously. Am I being paranoid thinking that Grace might pull the rug out from under Nolan and go back to her ex?
