The Rookie Star Talks ‘Adorable’ #Chenford Scene in Episode 100 — Plus, Scoop on Aaron’s ‘Misstep’

Matt Webb Mitovich
·4 min read

The following contains spoilers from the Feb. 27 episode of ABC’s The Rookie.

As ABC’s The Rookie celebrated 100 episodes — and as John and Bailey navigated all manner of pre-wedding hiccups! — Tim (played by Eric Winter) found a novel way to show Lucy (Melissa O’Neil) what (ahem) “healthy communication looks like.”

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Coming out of last week’s parking lot quarrel, Lucy stuck to her belief that Tim had reservations about her undercover work should she make detective; Tim meanwhile maintained that she had his unqualified support. They each expressed as much in separate bachelor/ette parties the night before Bailey and John’s wedding.

Shortly after Tim asked the guys how he could prove to Lucy he is telling the truth, Lucy got a call from her beau, inviting her to… the cop shop? And upon arriving at work, Lucy learns that Tim is waiting for her in… the Interrogation Room??

Stranger still, he was waiting there hooked up to a polygraph! “I am go to prove to you that I’m rooting for you,” he explained to Lucy.

Not one to forsake such an opportunity to ask “anything” — after all, “you did go to all this trouble…,” she grinned — Lucy started off simple, by confirming that Tim has been lying to her about setting free “outside” the bugs in her apartment she asks him to trap.

She then leaned in closer, took a beat, and went deeper.

“Do you love me?”

Tim looked at Lucy ohhh-so-warmly and asserted, “Yes. I love you.”

Then, “the big one,” Lucy announced: “Do you want me to be an undercover detective?” Tim answered yes… but the lie detector flagged his fib. A bit gut-punched himself, he nodded, “I guess we really do have a problem.”

But by the time the two shared a dance at the wedding, all was right between #Chenford. Admitting that he still was haunted by what his ex-wife went through while UC, Tim said to Lucy, “Your dream should have nothing to do with my issues.”

“We’re going to get through this,” Lucy affirmed, adding: “I love you.”

Asked about the lie detector scene during The Rookie‘s recent TCA winter press tour panel, showrunner Alexi Hawley said, “We’re always looking to walk a fun line with ‘Chenford’ and their relationship, which obviously came into its own last season, and that seemed like a really fun way to get to the next stage, but also to throw a complication in there at the same time. I thought it was super fun to shoot.”

Lucy’s portrayer, Melissa O’Neil, in turn remarked, “You know what? That [scene] was adorable.

“It’s one of those exciting situations where when Alexi is directing,” she continued, “and I feel like we all have a bit more freedom to collaborate with him because he’s right there with us in the room, and we’re like, ‘What do you think about this?’ So, yeah, we had a lot of fun.”

Decidedly less fun, in the 100th episode, was Thorsen (Tru Valentino) clearly not doing well in the wake of cheating death. He made it clear to both Nyla and Celina (Mekia Cox and Lisseth Chavez) that he is not sharing the things (e.g. “violent” dreams) that he should be with the LAPD shrink.

He also has mistaken the bond he and fellow victim Celina share for something more. When Aaron went in for a kiss at the wedding reception and was rebuffed, he decided to get hammered — rendering him useless, it would turn out, when Celina got kidnapped by some heroin dealers she and Nyla had been tracking.

“He is still trying to come back from being shot at the end of the season,” showrunner Hawley told TVLine. “This is part of his journey and it’s a misstep, obviously.”

“The thing that we’re leading into is that the department shrink works for the LAPD, so he’s trying to navigate that line of ‘getting back on duty’ when sometimes that isn’t the same as [treating] mental health. Ultimately, we will navigate that with him.”

What did you think of Episode 100?

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