The Rookie: Feds could benefit greatly from forcing its characters face deadly real-life consequences like its parent show The Rookie.
Part of what makes ABC’s The Rookie believable is that it kills or harms its characters when they’re caught in perilous situations, a key element that is lacking in its new spinoff, The Rookie: Feds. Starring TV veteran Nathan Fillion, The Rookie has never been afraid of writing scenarios where the police officers, regardless if they are primary or secondary figures, encounter serious trauma and in some instances, death. If The Rookie: Feds, hopes to engage more viewers and build its audience for upcoming seasons, it will need to up the ante with its characters like its parent show.
The Rookie: Feds, whose premise is similar to the original, centers around a middle-aged rookie in law enforcement in L.A. Starring Niecy Nash-Betts as FBI agent trainee Simone Clark, the series protagonist, Feds delivered a first season full of wild and dangerous situations involving kidnappings, political assassinations, terrorist threats and wars with drug cartels. However, each time viewers expected one of the main characters to meet a tragic end during an extremely volatile case, the character(s) came through unscathed.
The Rookie Gains Realism By Killing Or Harming Characters
The Rookie has shocked viewers by killing off its characters, like Captain Zoe Anderson in season 1 and Officer Jackson West in season 4, or by deeply traumatizing them through abduction and torture like Officer Lucy Chen in season 2. Throughout five seasons, Nathan Fillion’s Training Officer John Nolan and other main characters have been shot, beaten up, and seriously injured by other means while conducting routine traffic stops, undercover investigations and homicide cases.
The series accurately portrays law enforcement in the field and poignantly shows the human side of diverse characters who seek to make the world a better place while grappling with the reality of fear, guilt, death and grief that comes with their work. The Rookie gains realism by killing or harming its characters to remind audiences that real-life law enforcement agencies put themselves at risk on a daily basis. It all makes the stakes higher for both the characters and the audience involved, asking them to invest more of themselves in the stories involved.
Characters In The Rookie: Feds Who Need to Face Real-Life Consequences
Throughout its first season, The Rookie: Feds kept its agents and their loved ones safe despite incidents that should have left a few of them dead or with injuries that would force them into early retirement. The closets the spin-off came to killing off a character was when Simone’s taskforce unit leader, Special Agent Matthew Garza, had a heart attack. Narratively speaking, it would make sense if Garza eventually has another health crisis from which he can’t be revived.
Other agents also need to face real-life consequences, giving viewers an opportunity to see how Simone copes with the loss of a loved one. The deaths of characters like Simone’s best friend and rookie agent Brendan Acres, her trainer Special Agent Carter Hope, fellow female agent on the taskforce, Special Agent Laura Stensen, or her wise and endearing father, Christopher “Cutty” Clark, would make The Rookie: Feds a more realistic series for audiences to watch.
