The Rookie Season 7, Episode 3, Spoilers Ahead
Welcome to Chenford Chats, a column dedicated solely to highlighting Tim Bradford and Lucy Chen’s interactions during the latest episode of The Rookie.
Bets are off, quite literally, because Gray clocked what Tim and Lucy were doing with their rookies. Like in “The Shot” and in “The Watcher,” we don’t have much to go off of, so in a way, this change of pace is a good thing. Gray gives them a rookie swap instead, but things get more interesting when Rachel (Jasmine Mathews) comes back into town and maybe more permanently this time. In truth, The Rookie’s “Out of Pocket” doesn’t exactly feature anything tangible for Chenford, but it does make me wonder what Rachel’s role in all this will be.
We can’t deny the elephant in the room, and thankfully, neither do the characters. In fact, it’s almost surprising that both Tim and Lucy individually confront it and so does Rachel. What they also confront is that she ghosted them both when she moved to New York. Because of how The Rookie Season 7, Episode 3, “Out of Pocket,” handles the beginning of this arc, it’s hard to think the show will pull Lucy and Tim through any sort of love triangle now, especially when writers know how significant the romance is to the fans and viewers. Still, it can push them to put the games aside and confront their relationship.
There’s something interesting about the fact that Tim also realizes Lucy has trained her rookie to understand his coaching, which ultimately continues to showcase how much they know about each other. There’s also something to be said for Tim’s reaction to Lucy being called “darlin’.” All of these moments are small, seemingly irrelevant, yet they continue to reveal the denial both these characters are going through.
Again, I highly doubt that the show would pull Rachel back into the equation for some sort of a love triangle because that’s too redundant for the journey Tim and Lucy have been on. Chenford isn’t an ordinary ship on this show, but they’re two people who love each other so intensely that it’s hard to address what went wrong fully. A huge part of that has to do with the fact that they’re both playing a game of denial, and much of the change will imaginably come from Tim finally going to therapy. At the same time, given how the two of them tend to operate when the other is in danger, it wouldn’t shock me if The Rookie used some sort of a life-or-death situation to force them into realizing that this fight should’ve never ended their relationship.
More than anything, in the coming weeks, I feel it’s imperative that the show actually gives viewers something more meaty to hold onto because all of this is getting slightly tiring already. The bets and jokes were fun for five minutes, and it’s a good thing to see that they can be friends because that’s the foundation their relationship was based on, but we do need to start making more progress to ensure that the characters (Tim especially) overcome the terrors that got in the way of their relationship in the first place. Three episodes isn’t a lot, no, but we need something else to truly believe that they’re taking steps toward fixing the damage.
Now streaming on Hulu: What are your thoughts on Chenford’s scenes in The Rookie Season 7, Episode 3, “Out of Pocket?” Let us know in the comments below.
First Featured Image Credit: (Disney/Mike Taing)