The Rookie Fails Miserably at Romance, and This Couple Proves It
The popular show doesn't know what to do with its love stories.
The Rookie has been a consistent hit for ABC since it premiered in 2018, cementing Nathan Fillion's status as network television's ultimate leading man. Fans loved the premise of a grown man joining the LAPD and trying to perform on par with 20-year-olds, and brilliant acting by the show's cast and interesting weekly cases helped The Rookie become one of the most popular procedurals on the air.
However, the show still sucks at one thing — depicting relationships.
Like any other primetime crime show, The Rookie spends a lot of screen time developing the characters' chemistry and trying to show the budding romance between the cops. But unlike Law & Order, The Rookie's writing team really struggles to make their romance stories feel real, and that seems to annoy fans quite a bit.
Take Nyla and James, for example — this couple seemed like the perfect romantic counterpart to the crime aspects of the show but, in reality, turned out to be a huge bummer. The two characters just don't act like people who are in love, and it really takes the fans out of the immersion.
'I find their interactions super stiff; they don't seem to really have chemistry for me, and it's super obvious that every time an actual screen couple would kiss, they just hug or part ways without any physical contact. It's super weird to watch honestly. But in general, I have to say that the show does overall a bad job depicting relationships,' a fan summed up the common complaint.
The Rookie's other couples like Tim and Lucy or Nolan and Bailey managed to capture the interest of viewers early on. But in the end, both of them failed miserably because there's simply no romantic chemistry between them, and the writers don't even bother to create some interesting scenarios for the couples to blossom with.
All in all, it looks like The Rookie's writing team is much better at creating interesting crime stories than they are at writing believable romances, and the producers should really look into fixing that problem.
Source: Reddit.