alright nobody asked for it and yet somehow I feel like this fandom needs it so let’s put our thinking caps on and talk about the women of the rookie, flawed female relationships, and where exactly the rookie falls short in terms of representation:
so I should start with the positives and affirm that the rookie does show very well the systematic barriers that a lot of women face in the workplace, from professional perception to workplace advances to insubordination due to sexist thinking in a largely male dominated field. and all of this makes for really great and sadly relatable content for us viewers, because almost any woman with a pulse has had an experience with a shitty workplace environment and discrimination. these barriers and prejudices are as old as time and it’s naive to think they don’t exist, so to see our experiences validated and recognized, especially with three women of colour at the centre of the show, is rewarding and is part of what makes the rookie sooooo good.
at the same time, how the rookie deals with those barriers narratively can be troubling. there doesn’t always seem to be a sense that the environment, the attitudes, or the system will or should change, but rather that these women will learn how to adapt to the circumstances around them and overcome the odds. instead of the hurdles being pushed to the side, the woman molds herself into someone able to jump over them, which then undermines the idea that the systems should change at all. and this feels good to watch on a surface level— watching a woman like nyla harper literally hold her breath underwater and then point a gun at a criminal after having just given birth, or angela prove she’s right on every case, lucy winning the shooting champ or being top of the class for UC school, bailey being flawlessly trained in practically every useful skill— but it becomes a problem when it doesn’t leave enough room for error.
and the only thing that truly bothers me about this show is how it writes its women into a standard of perfection that is simply unrealistic. nyla, angela, lucy, and bailey all have moments where they might seem a little fashion-obsessed, hypersensitive, sassy, or demanding, but these moments are mostly exaggerated for comedic effect (in a way that is stereotypical in and of itself). however, at no point are these women ever WRONG. save for celina making honest mistakes as a rookie which could easily be pinned on nolan too, the women of the rookie have seldom if ever had to genuinely apologize to their male counterparts. their reactions to events and circumstances they face have been nothing but proportioned and appropriate, they never leave a loose end hanging, they don’t crack under pressure or lash out. things often, to me, feel very contained when it comes to the women of the rookie, and I can’t help but feel like the rookie is subscribing to this more neoliberal, performative version of feminism that— where true feminism says women should be equal to men even when they’re imperfect or unlikeable or flawed or in the wrong or make mistakes— turns around and says feminism means women can be just as strong as men if not stronger and watch this impeccable girlboss make zero mistakes in heels and eyeliner prove our point.
this is where fandom reaction also plays a part in things. there is a tendency in this fandom to protect lucy at all costs, but because of the slightly one dimensional way the show writes women, this protective instinct often ends up protecting lucy from ever being wrong or flawed. and not flawed as in she has baggage or pain, but in that she makes a rash decision or lashes out or judges someone too quickly or gets too cocky, which are all normal things we’ve all done at one point or another. the storyline with tim kind of illuminates this well, because the one storyline which focused on lucy having to deal with a genuine mistake and learning to move on from it professionally was turned into a haranguing on tim for allegedly not being cool with her going into uc and letting her make the mistake when she asked for hardass TO tim instead of helping her. so the storyline which could have been about how an overthinker like lucy finds a way to let go of the guilt of a mistake and show growth from a previous flaw becomes a storyline about how she actually didn’t do anything wrong, and the system is against her. then the standard of perfection is maintained in fandom and in canon, because no one will admit where lucy has shortcomings… so she just never has them.
case in point also goes with nyla and angela!! because they are pretty much always in the right and are allowed to be as short as they want with people because of it. and they’re not necessarily good with people all the time (at the very least this isn’t shown to be a strength of theirs) but that could have been developed as character flaws in need of developing and instead it wasn’t. and now people in the fandom insist that nyla and angela are mean, vindictive, and hateful towards lucy because they looked at her wrong— which, again, leaves them no margin for error. but also I honestly believe the reason that fan reactions were so strong was because we never see this women be anything but supportive to each other, and we never see them be anything but badass!! lucy can’t be in the wrong and they need to be understanding, there just isn’t any flexibility in our perspective. they don’t have enough moments of humility or shame or recklessness or weakness. and real equality comes when women who are messy and imperfect can easily access that kind of power and respect, not just women who try to remain flawless.
