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rookieblueI've been thinking a lot about how the show started out amazing, and by the end I was a lot less happy with the way things had gone. I still absolutely love it, don't get me wrong, but I feel like the writers made some major mistakes, and decided to write up a bit of analysis on which mistakes those were.
First, I want to differentiate plot development that was good for watching (shows have to have a certain level of tension/drama/etc. to be interesting to watch) and good for the characters (A), from plot development that was good for watching but bad for the characters (B), to plot development that was bad for watching as it wasn't even realistic (C). I also want to point out that the writers planned to end with Sam/Andy from day one, and whether you ship them or not now (which I think nearly everyone did until the writers wrecked things so badly in S3/4), they were the intention all along - and as such, I'm critiquing the writers' choices with regards to how it affects that end result. (I'll be using the letter types below to distinguish the good or bad options.)
S1 was full of the first type - whether you backed McSwarek from day one or really loved Luke with Andy, there was a lot of great drama that developed the characters and showed the flaws and strengths in each person. Even with the season ending in a way that implied Andy was moving on with Luke, I was not worried that they would stay together because I could see the cracks in their relationship. It was only a matter of time before something would happen. Now, this doesn't mean I don't love AU fics that make McSwarek happen in S1 - I adore them, always have and always will. But I recognize that for the show they needed a much slower progression to that end result.
And S2 made that even clearer from the get-go. I thought bringing in Jo Rosati was a fantastic move by the writers, and found the progression of actions very realistic and good. I didn't care for Sam's inability to actually ask Andy for why she supported Luke in 2x07 (he should have learned from 1x08 to be there for her with case-related things, even when he was having a hard time emotionally!) but it was logical and still felt like type A plot (as defined above), to me. Where I feel like the plot development degraded to type B was in having Sam and Andy break the rules when he was undercover. Having that permanent mark on her record, and the contrived nature of having him go undercover minutes before she came over to tell him she didn't want to wait - it worked for the show, but was so obviously designed to create drama that I found it a bit cheap, and I didn't like what it did to Sam and Andy's drive to be good cops. It wasn't a deal-breaker as far as watching went, but it lessened my enjoyment of the whole show.
The other part of S2 that I was a little irritated at was blowing up the Chris/Gail with Dov - and then not doing a thing about it. The way the boys treated Gail was unfair and hurtful, I felt - and they wrote Dov as sometimes sensitive and sometimes callous, always at the wrong times. He should have recognized how much Gail was hurting from Chris' treatment of her - which wouldn't have happened had Dov not spilled the beans about how he felt - and took a stand of some kind to defend her. (I love the idea of Dov/Gail too, but there are precious few fics that deal with that. This is the only one that takes that particular event and transforms it into a happy Peckstein ending.) I saw that as type B again - good viewing, but it lessened some of the characters a bit in my eyes.
S3 threw in a lot more of that kind of plot element - starting with the suspension (which verged on type C - would they really say "three months off the job - and oh, you can't talk to each other too, even though one of you was just tortured and having your partner to help you recover emotionally would be a good thing"?). I still really don't like the no-contact part of the suspension and love the fics that assumed it was a lot shorter - or that they were able to spend it together. (Or even that they broke the rules, again.) I found the way they handled Sam and Andy's relationship was a little odd - very few couple-y scenes, no PDA, etc. But most of that felt like it was side effects from the suspension time.
And then they threw in Jerry dying (type A - as much as I hate it personally because I wanted to see him marry Traci, it was realistic, well-done, and completely in-character for everyone). And then the breakup (which I think I hated even more - but I did think it realistic enough and plausible for Sam, because their relationship had not had the hard work done to ground the foundation, despite how much they loved each other).
Where I thought they really went wrong was at the very end - having Andy be accepted to an undercover position on the same day that she held a bomb in her hands. Type C, completely. Totally unrealistic! For one, even if they suddenly needed a last-minute "you're going under" scenario (and I read somewhere that that doesn't happen either, there's lots of planning and prep so no sudden moves), Andy would be a poor choice because she'd just been through a very traumatic day (that one would think would require clearance by a staff psychologist to go back to duty, even - holding a bomb is hardly less stressful than being shot, I'd think!). Furthermore, as I read here (great post, btw! check it out), the fact that she took the bomb from Katie is something that I'd think they'd be wanting to check her mental health over. The risk of it going off during the transfer was far too high, and putting a civilian through that was a very poor choice, even with the logic of getting Katie out of there (if it killed her, that wouldn't have helped!). Andy should've been thinking clearly enough to realize that she needed to just hold Katie's hands and help her calm down till the guy could get there to defuse it. And EVEN if Andy had to go under immediately, I think she'd have let Sam know somehow, if she'd been thinking clearly. (The fact that she wasn't - from the looks of everything - tells me that picking her to go undercover is not a good idea. You don't want someone undercover who's just trying to run from their problems!)
A side note on the other characters - I thought the introduction of Nick was a bit clumsy, and the backstory with Gail felt a bit contrived to me. Type B for sure - I didn't think it made sense for Gail, and it certainly didn't give Nick a good start with viewers. (Yeah, he was younger then, but that kind of abandonment is a little hard to forgive.)
S4 only got worse - Sam with Marlo was type B, I'll say, even verging on A - it made sense for his character in some ways, though I think he should have recognized that Andy's mental state was so overwhelmed and recovering from what his breakup had done to her that she couldn't have possibly been able to respond to his sudden declaration of love, and when he realized that she'd gone undercover - which was exactly what he did in S2, to get away from the problem of her not seeming to want to have a relationship with him - he should've been patient and waited for her. I think it a bit hypocritical of him to assume that her going undercover meant she didn't want to try again - when his going undercover clearly didn't mean that he didn't want a relationship with her! But then Sam is sometimes a bit obtuse emotionally, so I'll give him a little leeway there for trying to move on (albeit unsuccessfully)…
The part of S4 that really feels like type C is having Andy and Nick get together. For one, Andy knew it would hurt Gail, and up until that point, I couldn't see her being that kind of girl - wasn't that what she wanted, to not be "that girl"? That kind of betrayal really lessened who Andy was in my eyes, and I like to imagine that the Andy from the earlier seasons would never have done that (I also like to read/write AU fic set before that and imagine that that is not possible for her character, because it was such a character assassination). Also, Nick and Andy felt like brother/sister to me - and as much as Andy tried to run from it, she still loved Sam. Hooking up with your best guy friend to forget about the guy you love not only doesn't fix the problem (she can't forget about Sam), but it also ruins your friendship with that friend. (And then she ruined the friendship with Gail at the same time - ruining friendships right and left is not a great character trait.) So not only was it bad for Andy's character, I couldn't even see that as a possibility because she WASN'T THAT GIRL until she did it - and was left going "what on earth… did they REALLY do that to us?" Nice going, writers. (I also couldn't buy Gail's switching teams, but that felt more of a random "let's throw this in to create interest" than anything - I have more on that ship on my ship analysis post. I also think she could've gotten together with Luke - and asked Andy ahead of time, and Andy would've been fine with it because she was SO over Luke. No comparison with Nick there. Plus it would've been really interesting - those two are well-matched personality-wise.) Anyway, even if you liked the chemistry between Andy and Nick, the way it ruined their relationships with Gail was unforgivable. Just, no. Gail was not remotely over Nick, only cheated on him because she was jealous of Andy (and was clearly shocked that she was capable of that, if you saw the webisode) - the best response to that is the childhood admonition: two wrongs do NOT make a right.
Skipping over a lot of the Marlo craziness (which I felt worked even if I didn't like it), the end of S4 only barely redeemed things with the ambulance talk. But just as it fixed that problem - you get another bad plot development, which is at least type B - Chloe being married and not having told anyone or done something about it. As a cop, even a rookie, she should've known full well that one's medical power of attorney or whatever they call it, is a serious thing, given the higher chance than a normal person of getting hurt in the line of duty - and that her husband would have first rights to that. If she didn't want to be with him, and didn't want him having that control, she should've had the guts to at least write up something legally saying he didn't (if that's possible), but more obviously, actually gone and gotten a divorce! At the VERY least, she should've told Dov that she was married. That kind of dishonesty really does not sit well with me, and it cheapened my respect for Chloe majorly, to the point that I still don't like her as much as I used to, and probably never will. She was an interesting character, personality-wise, but I'm quite happy to read fics where she doesn't exist.
S5 should've had more of them making up - but instead we get to see Duncan Moore. I thought his presence ended up a bit of type C just because I couldn't buy that they could get a guy through the police academy who was THAT bad for the job, even if he was well-connected. You'd think there would be some sort of test he'd have to pass, some sort of rubric, that they could point to and go "he has the wrong instincts and would be a danger - find another career path" or something! I also thought the writers shouldn't have brought up plot threads only to drop them - Sarah, for one. That's just bad writing. Plus, where was Andy's mom? (After having Andy listen to HER for relationship advice - which, REALLY? Was Andy that desperate for a relationship with her mother that she'd abandon all common sense?) S5 would have been a great time to bring back the family plot threads and focus on bringing Sam and Andy together. And a new rookie was a good idea - I just disliked Duncan immediately because of the way the character was portrayed (so unrealistic and so annoying), and nothing he did or said ever made me like him after that. Even saving Andy on her wedding day didn't make me actually like him…
I also felt the storyline with Chris and the drugs was definitely type B - I felt it ruined his character in some ways. (Something like Dov's obsession with Crystal in S3 - but that was a tiny bit more understandable.) I'm not even sure that it actually felt realistic, but I'll give the writers a little leeway there.
And then we come to S6 - all of the Ted McDonald hard drive stuff aside (you'd think if he accused top officials of being corrupt, that someone would've made sure that his evidence was secured somewhere that said top officials couldn't get to it), throwing in the Marlo baby thing was just the last straw. I give it type C because it wasn't even really good show watching. It was drama for the sake of drama, and the most soap opera-ish Rookie Blue had gotten. When we still haven't seen or heard of Sam's mother (is she alive or dead? "someplace warm" is NOT helpful), when his relationship with his sister still hasn't been touched since the beginning of the previous season, when we still haven't even met Andy's siblings (she said her mother had a "whole other family" or something like that, and yet we haven't seen ONE of them)… they wanted to bring Marlo back, with Sam's baby, just to throw a wrench in the happy McSwarek? Bad writing, imho. Plus we already had too many characters - adding in Juliet, and Inspector Jarvis, and the Commissioner… too big a cast and you don't have time to properly treat each character's storyline. For instance, Traci was sidelined a large amount in the last couple of seasons, I thought - and we never saw Leo again, which I think was a mistake. I'd like to have seen more of her life.
So yeah, if I could go back to one place and change the outcome of the show from there on, I would go back to the end of S2 and change the undercover (and fix things with Gail and the boys). Either Andy gets to tell him before he leaves, or they don't run into each other (because seriously, in a city that large, to run into the undercover guy? It makes me think that Boyd did that on purpose to get her back - they shouldn't have been anywhere near him!), or she doesn't try to proposition him, because that was really stupid…
There's obviously quite a few other places to fix things, and I love the fics I've seen that have done so.
Now that you waded through my essay, lol, tell me - what plot developments did you think were terrible for the characters, even though they made good viewing/drama for the show? Which did you think were so terrible they weren't even realistic and should never have been written? (I'm doubting everyone agrees with all of my analysis - I'd love to hear if you do or don't.) If you could fix one thing, what would it be? Anything you think I should have addressed? (There was so much to talk about on the McSwarek front that I'm sure I probably forgot something about someone else's story…)
First, I want to differentiate plot development that was good for watching (shows have to have a certain level of tension/drama/etc. to be interesting to watch) and good for the characters (A), from plot development that was good for watching but bad for the characters (B), to plot development that was bad for watching as it wasn't even realistic (C). I also want to point out that the writers planned to end with Sam/Andy from day one, and whether you ship them or not now (which I think nearly everyone did until the writers wrecked things so badly in S3/4), they were the intention all along - and as such, I'm critiquing the writers' choices with regards to how it affects that end result. (I'll be using the letter types below to distinguish the good or bad options.)
S1 was full of the first type - whether you backed McSwarek from day one or really loved Luke with Andy, there was a lot of great drama that developed the characters and showed the flaws and strengths in each person. Even with the season ending in a way that implied Andy was moving on with Luke, I was not worried that they would stay together because I could see the cracks in their relationship. It was only a matter of time before something would happen. Now, this doesn't mean I don't love AU fics that make McSwarek happen in S1 - I adore them, always have and always will. But I recognize that for the show they needed a much slower progression to that end result.
And S2 made that even clearer from the get-go. I thought bringing in Jo Rosati was a fantastic move by the writers, and found the progression of actions very realistic and good. I didn't care for Sam's inability to actually ask Andy for why she supported Luke in 2x07 (he should have learned from 1x08 to be there for her with case-related things, even when he was having a hard time emotionally!) but it was logical and still felt like type A plot (as defined above), to me. Where I feel like the plot development degraded to type B was in having Sam and Andy break the rules when he was undercover. Having that permanent mark on her record, and the contrived nature of having him go undercover minutes before she came over to tell him she didn't want to wait - it worked for the show, but was so obviously designed to create drama that I found it a bit cheap, and I didn't like what it did to Sam and Andy's drive to be good cops. It wasn't a deal-breaker as far as watching went, but it lessened my enjoyment of the whole show.
The other part of S2 that I was a little irritated at was blowing up the Chris/Gail with Dov - and then not doing a thing about it. The way the boys treated Gail was unfair and hurtful, I felt - and they wrote Dov as sometimes sensitive and sometimes callous, always at the wrong times. He should have recognized how much Gail was hurting from Chris' treatment of her - which wouldn't have happened had Dov not spilled the beans about how he felt - and took a stand of some kind to defend her. (I love the idea of Dov/Gail too, but there are precious few fics that deal with that. This is the only one that takes that particular event and transforms it into a happy Peckstein ending.) I saw that as type B again - good viewing, but it lessened some of the characters a bit in my eyes.
S3 threw in a lot more of that kind of plot element - starting with the suspension (which verged on type C - would they really say "three months off the job - and oh, you can't talk to each other too, even though one of you was just tortured and having your partner to help you recover emotionally would be a good thing"?). I still really don't like the no-contact part of the suspension and love the fics that assumed it was a lot shorter - or that they were able to spend it together. (Or even that they broke the rules, again.) I found the way they handled Sam and Andy's relationship was a little odd - very few couple-y scenes, no PDA, etc. But most of that felt like it was side effects from the suspension time.
And then they threw in Jerry dying (type A - as much as I hate it personally because I wanted to see him marry Traci, it was realistic, well-done, and completely in-character for everyone). And then the breakup (which I think I hated even more - but I did think it realistic enough and plausible for Sam, because their relationship had not had the hard work done to ground the foundation, despite how much they loved each other).
Where I thought they really went wrong was at the very end - having Andy be accepted to an undercover position on the same day that she held a bomb in her hands. Type C, completely. Totally unrealistic! For one, even if they suddenly needed a last-minute "you're going under" scenario (and I read somewhere that that doesn't happen either, there's lots of planning and prep so no sudden moves), Andy would be a poor choice because she'd just been through a very traumatic day (that one would think would require clearance by a staff psychologist to go back to duty, even - holding a bomb is hardly less stressful than being shot, I'd think!). Furthermore, as I read here (great post, btw! check it out), the fact that she took the bomb from Katie is something that I'd think they'd be wanting to check her mental health over. The risk of it going off during the transfer was far too high, and putting a civilian through that was a very poor choice, even with the logic of getting Katie out of there (if it killed her, that wouldn't have helped!). Andy should've been thinking clearly enough to realize that she needed to just hold Katie's hands and help her calm down till the guy could get there to defuse it. And EVEN if Andy had to go under immediately, I think she'd have let Sam know somehow, if she'd been thinking clearly. (The fact that she wasn't - from the looks of everything - tells me that picking her to go undercover is not a good idea. You don't want someone undercover who's just trying to run from their problems!)
A side note on the other characters - I thought the introduction of Nick was a bit clumsy, and the backstory with Gail felt a bit contrived to me. Type B for sure - I didn't think it made sense for Gail, and it certainly didn't give Nick a good start with viewers. (Yeah, he was younger then, but that kind of abandonment is a little hard to forgive.)
S4 only got worse - Sam with Marlo was type B, I'll say, even verging on A - it made sense for his character in some ways, though I think he should have recognized that Andy's mental state was so overwhelmed and recovering from what his breakup had done to her that she couldn't have possibly been able to respond to his sudden declaration of love, and when he realized that she'd gone undercover - which was exactly what he did in S2, to get away from the problem of her not seeming to want to have a relationship with him - he should've been patient and waited for her. I think it a bit hypocritical of him to assume that her going undercover meant she didn't want to try again - when his going undercover clearly didn't mean that he didn't want a relationship with her! But then Sam is sometimes a bit obtuse emotionally, so I'll give him a little leeway there for trying to move on (albeit unsuccessfully)…
The part of S4 that really feels like type C is having Andy and Nick get together. For one, Andy knew it would hurt Gail, and up until that point, I couldn't see her being that kind of girl - wasn't that what she wanted, to not be "that girl"? That kind of betrayal really lessened who Andy was in my eyes, and I like to imagine that the Andy from the earlier seasons would never have done that (I also like to read/write AU fic set before that and imagine that that is not possible for her character, because it was such a character assassination). Also, Nick and Andy felt like brother/sister to me - and as much as Andy tried to run from it, she still loved Sam. Hooking up with your best guy friend to forget about the guy you love not only doesn't fix the problem (she can't forget about Sam), but it also ruins your friendship with that friend. (And then she ruined the friendship with Gail at the same time - ruining friendships right and left is not a great character trait.) So not only was it bad for Andy's character, I couldn't even see that as a possibility because she WASN'T THAT GIRL until she did it - and was left going "what on earth… did they REALLY do that to us?" Nice going, writers. (I also couldn't buy Gail's switching teams, but that felt more of a random "let's throw this in to create interest" than anything - I have more on that ship on my ship analysis post. I also think she could've gotten together with Luke - and asked Andy ahead of time, and Andy would've been fine with it because she was SO over Luke. No comparison with Nick there. Plus it would've been really interesting - those two are well-matched personality-wise.) Anyway, even if you liked the chemistry between Andy and Nick, the way it ruined their relationships with Gail was unforgivable. Just, no. Gail was not remotely over Nick, only cheated on him because she was jealous of Andy (and was clearly shocked that she was capable of that, if you saw the webisode) - the best response to that is the childhood admonition: two wrongs do NOT make a right.
Skipping over a lot of the Marlo craziness (which I felt worked even if I didn't like it), the end of S4 only barely redeemed things with the ambulance talk. But just as it fixed that problem - you get another bad plot development, which is at least type B - Chloe being married and not having told anyone or done something about it. As a cop, even a rookie, she should've known full well that one's medical power of attorney or whatever they call it, is a serious thing, given the higher chance than a normal person of getting hurt in the line of duty - and that her husband would have first rights to that. If she didn't want to be with him, and didn't want him having that control, she should've had the guts to at least write up something legally saying he didn't (if that's possible), but more obviously, actually gone and gotten a divorce! At the VERY least, she should've told Dov that she was married. That kind of dishonesty really does not sit well with me, and it cheapened my respect for Chloe majorly, to the point that I still don't like her as much as I used to, and probably never will. She was an interesting character, personality-wise, but I'm quite happy to read fics where she doesn't exist.
S5 should've had more of them making up - but instead we get to see Duncan Moore. I thought his presence ended up a bit of type C just because I couldn't buy that they could get a guy through the police academy who was THAT bad for the job, even if he was well-connected. You'd think there would be some sort of test he'd have to pass, some sort of rubric, that they could point to and go "he has the wrong instincts and would be a danger - find another career path" or something! I also thought the writers shouldn't have brought up plot threads only to drop them - Sarah, for one. That's just bad writing. Plus, where was Andy's mom? (After having Andy listen to HER for relationship advice - which, REALLY? Was Andy that desperate for a relationship with her mother that she'd abandon all common sense?) S5 would have been a great time to bring back the family plot threads and focus on bringing Sam and Andy together. And a new rookie was a good idea - I just disliked Duncan immediately because of the way the character was portrayed (so unrealistic and so annoying), and nothing he did or said ever made me like him after that. Even saving Andy on her wedding day didn't make me actually like him…
I also felt the storyline with Chris and the drugs was definitely type B - I felt it ruined his character in some ways. (Something like Dov's obsession with Crystal in S3 - but that was a tiny bit more understandable.) I'm not even sure that it actually felt realistic, but I'll give the writers a little leeway there.
And then we come to S6 - all of the Ted McDonald hard drive stuff aside (you'd think if he accused top officials of being corrupt, that someone would've made sure that his evidence was secured somewhere that said top officials couldn't get to it), throwing in the Marlo baby thing was just the last straw. I give it type C because it wasn't even really good show watching. It was drama for the sake of drama, and the most soap opera-ish Rookie Blue had gotten. When we still haven't seen or heard of Sam's mother (is she alive or dead? "someplace warm" is NOT helpful), when his relationship with his sister still hasn't been touched since the beginning of the previous season, when we still haven't even met Andy's siblings (she said her mother had a "whole other family" or something like that, and yet we haven't seen ONE of them)… they wanted to bring Marlo back, with Sam's baby, just to throw a wrench in the happy McSwarek? Bad writing, imho. Plus we already had too many characters - adding in Juliet, and Inspector Jarvis, and the Commissioner… too big a cast and you don't have time to properly treat each character's storyline. For instance, Traci was sidelined a large amount in the last couple of seasons, I thought - and we never saw Leo again, which I think was a mistake. I'd like to have seen more of her life.
So yeah, if I could go back to one place and change the outcome of the show from there on, I would go back to the end of S2 and change the undercover (and fix things with Gail and the boys). Either Andy gets to tell him before he leaves, or they don't run into each other (because seriously, in a city that large, to run into the undercover guy? It makes me think that Boyd did that on purpose to get her back - they shouldn't have been anywhere near him!), or she doesn't try to proposition him, because that was really stupid…
There's obviously quite a few other places to fix things, and I love the fics I've seen that have done so.
Now that you waded through my essay, lol, tell me - what plot developments did you think were terrible for the characters, even though they made good viewing/drama for the show? Which did you think were so terrible they weren't even realistic and should never have been written? (I'm doubting everyone agrees with all of my analysis - I'd love to hear if you do or don't.) If you could fix one thing, what would it be? Anything you think I should have addressed? (There was so much to talk about on the McSwarek front that I'm sure I probably forgot something about someone else's story…)