The Rookie isn’t afraid to tackle timely issues. In its first seven seasons, the series has broached everything from the dangers of drug cartels to the fallout from someone struggling with addiction. But there’s always been one issue that the ABC procedural tiptoed around that it finally addressed in Season 7. The Rookie allowed Nyla Harper (Mekia Cox) to stand up for what is right and take on the issues of police racial discrimination and corruption in a more concrete way. This storyline first started to gain prominence when she met James (Arjay Smith), a community organizer who continually found himself at odds with the police, but later went on to marry Nyla despite their different positions on the matter. Although James hopes for sweeping changes within the police force, Harper has to walk the line of sticking up for herself and her fellow officers while also admitting where progress could actually be made within the department. It’s a bold storyline to give to Nyla, who has always been a character of strong integrity, and it is by far one of The Rookie‘s best subplots that it needs to continue to explore in future seasons.
Season 3 of ‘The Rookie’ Only Touches on the Topic of Racist Cops
There are all sorts of serious problems existing within the world of law enforcement today. Issues such as police brutality and systemic racism were most notably broached by The Rookie in a Season 3 storyline with Jackson West (Titus Makin Jr.). When Jackson is assigned a new training officer named Doug Stanton (Brandon Routh) after Angela Lopez (Alyssa Diaz) gets promoted to detective, right away, something feels off to Jackson. The rookie notices that Doug tends to engage in racial profiling when he’s out on the streets. He stereotypes people merely because of the color of their skin, and often stops and interrogates people simply because they fit a profile Doug has constructed in his head.
In the “Lockdown” episode, Doug and Jackson follow a suspected stolen car into an apartment complex that is known for criminal activity. They split up, and Jackson is ambushed and receives a horrific beating from several men. Doug sees the beating taking place from afar, but instead of rescuing Jackson, he backs away and pretends that he hasn’t seen the assault at all. Turns out, Doug still had his body cam on, and it’s clearly revealed later that Doug was a witness to Jackson being in danger and did nothing to help him.
Collider Exclusive · TV Medicine Quiz Which Fictional Hospital Would You Work Best In? The Pitt · ER · Grey’s Anatomy · House · Scrubs
Five hospitals. Five completely different ways medicine goes sideways on television — brutal, chaotic, romantic, brilliant, and ridiculous. Only one of them is the ward your instincts were built for. Eight questions will figure out exactly where you belong.
🚨The Pitt
🏥ER
💉Grey’s
🔬House
🩺Scrubs
01
A critical patient comes through the door. What’s your first instinct? Medicine under pressure reveals who you actually are.
02
Why did you go into medicine in the first place? The honest answer says more about you than the one you’d give in an interview.
03
What do you actually want from the people you work with? Who you want beside you under pressure is who you are.
04
You lose a patient you fought hard to save. How do you carry it? Every doctor who’s worked a long shift has had to answer this question.
05
How would your colleagues describe the way you work? Your reputation on the floor is usually more accurate than your self-image.
06
How do you feel about hospital protocol and procedure? Every institution has rules. What you do with them is a choice.
07
What does this job cost you personally? Nobody works in medicine without paying a price. What’s yours?
08
At the end of a long shift, what keeps you coming back? The answer to this question is the most honest thing about you.
Your Assignment Has Been Made You Belong In…
Your answers have pointed to one fictional hospital above all others. This is the ward your instincts, your temperament, and your particular brand of dysfunction were built for.
Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center
The Pitt
You are built for the most unsparing version of emergency medicine television has ever shown — one that puts you inside a single fifteen-hour shift and doesn’t let you look away.
You need your work to be real, not romanticised — meaning over drama, honesty over aesthetics.
You find purpose inside the work itself, not in the chaos surrounding it.
You’ve made peace with the fact that this job takes from you constantly, and gives back in ways that are harder to name.
Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center demands exactly that kind of person — and you would not want to be anywhere else.
County General Hospital, Chicago
ER
You are the person who keeps the whole floor running — not the most brilliant in the room, but possibly the most essential.
You show up, do the work, absorb the losses, and come back the next day without needing the job to be anything other than what it is.
You care about patients as individual human beings, not as cases to solve or dramas to live through.
You believe in the system even when it fails you — and you understand that emergency medicine is about holding the line just long enough.
ER is television about endurance. You have it.
Grey Sloan Memorial Hospital, Seattle
Grey’s Anatomy
You came to medicine with your whole self — your ambition, your emotions, your relationships, your history — and you have never quite managed to leave any of it at the door.
You feel things fully and form deep attachments to the people you work with.
Your personal and professional lives are permanently, chaotically entangled — and that entanglement drives both your greatest disasters and your most remarkable saves.
You understand that extraordinary medicine often happens at the intersection of clinical skill and profound human connection.
It’s messy at Grey Sloan. You would not have it any other way.
Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital, NJ
House
You are drawn to the problem above everything else — the symptom that doesn’t fit, the diagnosis hiding underneath the obvious one.
You’re not primarily motivated by the patient as a person — though you are capable of caring, even if you’d deny it.
You work best when the stakes are highest and the standard answer is wrong.
Princeton-Plainsboro exists to house one extraordinary, impossible mind — and everyone around that mind is there because they’re smart enough to keep up.
The only way forward here is to think harder than everyone else in the room. That is exactly what you do.
Sacred Heart Hospital, California
Scrubs
You understand that medicine is tragic and absurd in almost equal measure — and that the only sane response is to hold both of those things at the same time.
You are warm, self-aware, and funnier than most people in your field.
You use humour to get through terrible moments — and at Sacred Heart, that’s not a flaw, it’s a survival strategy.
You lean on the people around you and let them lean back. The laughter and the grief are genuinely inseparable here.
Scrubs is a show about learning to become someone worthy of the job. You are still very much in the middle of that process — which is exactly right.
At first, it seems like Doug will get his comeuppance. He is placed on administrative leave and has to go through an Internal Affairs investigation. However, in a future episode, Doug has appealed his termination and won. He is reinstated by the Los Angeles Police Department and just has to transfer to another division. Jackson and Sergeant Wade Grey (Richard T. Jones) are determined to out Doug’s racism, and they show the body-cam footage to his new sergeant, who ends up using the video as a training aid. Doug is knocked down a few pegs by this action and loses the respect of his fellow officers. But he’s still allowed to continue being a cop (with his racism likely impacting even more innocent civilians in the future).
But as upsetting and offensive as Doug’s actions are, there wasn’t a lot of in-depth exploration into how his behavior illustrates the very serious problems of racial profiling. Instead, the series makes it seem like it’s an isolated incident, one that is neatly tied up into a bow and concluded. But most people understand that these systemic problems go all the way to the roots of law enforcement organizations, and this isn’t necessarily a case of just one bad apple on the force.
Nyla Harper Is Taking a Stand Against Problematic Policing in ‘The Rookie’
In Season 7, Episode 7, Nyla finally reaches a point where she knows she needs to take action. She decides to initiate a program within the department to investigate the flaws within the system. She appoints her husband as a community liaison, which means he could help address the concerns of everyday civilians who are affected by the actions of the police. While this might not be taken well by her colleagues, as not every cop will want her looking into their policing, it’s a sign that this character (and the series itself) is committed to taking a closer look at these important topics.
The Rookie really shines when it’s examining storylines that are both relatable and authentic. Since the death of George Floyd in 2020, there has been even more of a focus in this country on police brutality and misconduct. For a series that is set in the present day, it has been a noticeable elephant in the room that The Rookie has sidestepped having their police characters deal with these types of matters. Showcasing these common and recurring abuses makes The Rookie stand out from the other police procedurals, which seem to not only ignore this topic but can often glorify corrupt behavior.
This storyline also helped to bridge the gap between Nyla and James, who had been on a rocky road due to their differing perspectives. Though it’s been a minute since we’ve heard about this program, it’s a positive sign that the series is willing to take a more comprehensive look at a major blind spot that’s existed since the beginning of the show. Instead of continuing to push racism and negative police practices under the rug, Nyla (and The Rookie itself) have finally stepped up and confronted this troubling element that has infiltrated our criminal justice system.
