CDN Television: Rookie Blue, Episode 1.2 "Mercury Retrograde"

Rookie Blue
Season One, Episode Two, "Mercury Retrograde"
Original Air Date:  July 1, 2010

In the second episode of this new Canadian crime drama, McNally starts the show off by arresting a mugger while out of uniform.  Sam Swarek is in uniform because he didn't want to take a desk job and he isn't suitable for undercover because his cover was blown by McNally.  This week, they are looking for an escaped murderer.  The training partnerships have changed.  Diaz and Nash are assigned to the desk to man the tip line, Shaw is now training Epstein, Williams now has Peck and McNally is now partnered with the undercover officer she arrested on her first day on the job, Sam.  Sam and McNally go to get a confidential informant of his.  He sends her in with the orders to arrest her on a warrant which he hands to McNally.  She has problems from the start and must call her father for advice.  She makes the arrest, which isn't really an arrest at all because the warrant is as fake as the charges.  The informant, Emily, is the accountant of Anton Hill, the subject of Sam's failed eight-month undercover operation.  After Emily gets away from the man Sam left her with to watch over her, they find that Emily's apartment has been trashed and she is missing.  Nash gets a tip that leads the police to a restaurant where they find their escapee.  Peck, however, lets him get away.  They follow him to a university where Epstein corners and subdues him but Peck rushes in and steals the arrest right from under Epstein because "she needs it".  Meanwhile, Sam has left McNally at the station while he goes to find Emily.  McNally puts two and two together to figure out where the missing data they are looking for is and she leaves the station to get it.  Sam gets in trouble with Hill's accomplices and McNally comes to his and Emily's aid.  Sam and McNally almost kiss outside the bar where they go to unwind but both pull back, Sam saying McNally isn't his type and McNally saying she doesn't date cops.  Peck sees what happens between them.

I'm still enjoying this show.  So far, it hasn't done anything to make me roll my eyes and think "oh, man, this is pretty bad".  I hope it never does, quite frankly, as I've had enough of that feeling already this week.



Andy McNally is still very much the fish out of water but she's starting to warm up to the job a little bit.  She disobeys orders and ends up coming to the aid of her training partner and his CI.  Sam tells her she acted like a cop.  I'm finding Andy a very likable character.  She wants to do good on her job and I think she really tries too hard.  Some things end up working out and some don't.  But that's life, isn't it?

I'm disliking Peck even more this week.  She's proving herself to be not very nice.  She's out for herself and no one else.  If she wasn't, she wouldn't have stolen Epstein's arrest.  I'm convinced she's going to, at some point, use what she saw between Sam and Andy against one or both of them.  She's sneaky and just plain selfish. 

Shaw gets some good one-liners definitely adding some comedy to the show.  The pretty boy Homicide detective is really making it obvious that he's got a thing for Andy.  I'm still rooting for Sam.  I love Sam's character and I'm going to put my bets down on him.  I'll probably lose but, oh well.

I've read some comments around the Internet about this show.  I've seen a mixture of good and bad.  Yes, this episode did have chase scenes, a breaking down a door scene, a lock picking scene and good cops and bad cops.  I had to chuckle at one comment I read complaining about the chase scenes being in the show.  Hello?  It's a cop show!  That's what cop shows usually have in them.  Usually, if you've seen one cop show you've seen them all.  But, in my opinion, what sets them apart is the characters.

Maybe I'm just too easy on shows but if they give me a good half hour or hour of entertainment I'm likely to enjoy them and keep watching them until they stop providing that entertainment.  Rookie Blue doesn't leave me wishing I had the last hour of my life back like another show I've watched recently.  I can deal with your typical chase scene because I like the characters.  And I do like (most) of the characters in Rookie Blue so I think I'll be sticking with it for a while yet.