Tag Archives: the rookie

Her Head So Proudly High: 2022 in Review

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A League Of Their Own

Source: NPR

“Each girl stands, her head so proudly high…”
— A League of Their Own

For 20 years, I’ve stood 61.75 inches tall. 5’1 and ¾ .

For 20 years, I’ve told everyone I’m 5’1.

For 20 years, I’ve rounded down. I ignored the rules I learned in elementary school math class to sell myself short (literally). To make myself smaller. To take up less space.

It’s what we as women are so often taught to do. Make yourself smaller to make other people more comfortable. Downplay your accomplishments or strengths so you don’t look conceited. Don’t ask for what you want—or even for what you need—because that’s asking too much of other people. Deny yourself pleasure, anger, and any other big feeling that makes you look “dramatic.” Shrink your body down to whatever size and shape society has deemed “trendy” for the moment.

All this to fit neatly into the tiny, pretty boxes that we are supposed to live our lives in.

The tiny, pretty boxes that make us easier to define, to label, and to control.

During the process of trying to cram yourself into those small, confined boxes, one of two things often happens: Parts of you—the best parts, the unique parts, the good stuff—start to break to ensure a perfect fit. Or the pressure the world puts on you—and you put on yourself—to push yourself down tighter and tighter until there’s barely any of you left becomes too much, and you push back with even greater force; you explode, destroying the box rather than destroying yourself to stay in it.

Or to put it another way: You either keep rounding down, or you start rounding up.

This was the year I started rounding up.

And the media I gravitated toward this year was full of examples of women doing the same thing.

One of my most-anticipated TV shows of 2022 was A League of Their Own. As someone who can quote the original film verbatim, I approached the Amazon series with excitement and a little trepidation. However, I shouldn’t have worried. I watched the whole series with my sister over the course of one weekend (and to know me is to know I very rarely love a show enough to binge-watch it that quickly). And it gave me so much more than what I was expecting.

It gave me living, breathing examples of what it means to sing those beloved lyrics:

Each girls stands, her head so proudly high.
Her motto “Do or die.”
She’s not the one to use or need an alibi…

It gave me so many female characters who unapologetically take up space as their true selves—at a time when it was difficult and downright dangerous to do so. Queer women who love and laugh and discover a little corner of the world where they can safely step outside of their boxes—if only for a moment. Women who we celebrate for what their bodies can do instead of what their bodies look like. Women who get to be unique, complex, brave, and utterly impossible to define in easy ways.

And it showed me that when you come out of your box and take up space, you’ll find your people. Your team. Standing with your head so proudly high allows people to see you—the real you. And the women of A League of Their Own taught me that letting people see you is the best way to find people who love you. And that’s what a team really is. It’s the people who love you, who have your back, who remind you that you don’t ever have to do hard things—from playing for a championship to taking up space as your fullest self—on your own.

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TV Time: The Rookie 3.06

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Welcome to the first of what I hope will be weekly episode discussion posts about The Rookie here at Nerdy Girl Notes! I’ve wanted to write about this show in this way for a long time, and this week’s episode convinced me that it was finally time for me to fully dive into the fabulous things the writers, actors, and all involved are doing this season. If you’re new to NGN, we love starting fun conversations about our favorite characters, moments, ships, theories, and more in the comments (as long as it’s done in a respectful way, of course!), so please don’t hesitate to join in!

harper 3.06

Source: TV Line

Title: Revelations

Episode M.V.P.: Eric Winter
This episode put Tim Bradford through the emotional wringer. He had to relive the most traumatic parts of his marriage, make impossible ethical choices that will only add to the mountain of guilt he already carries on his shoulders, and watch the only rookie he’s ever come to care for—a woman he sees as honest, optimistic, and genuinely good—be drawn to a life that he associates with lies, addiction, and pain. His eyes were the ones that showed us the other side of undercover work—not the adrenaline, success, and camaraderie found in Lucy’s storyline, but the lost souls and broken families that seem to be just as much a part of the job as big arrests and interesting aliases. And those eyes told one hell of a heartbreaking story.

It’s all because the man playing him has one of the best pairs of eyes in the business. And I don’t mean because they’re dreamy (I mean—they are, but that’s beside the point). It’s because Eric Winter knows exactly how to show just enough truth—just enough pain and guilt and love—in those eyes to let the audience in without letting go of the fact that Tim guards his emotions carefully; he controls his feelings with the same iron fist he once used to control all his rookies (before Lucy, of course).

Winter’s performance in this episode was a masterclass of nuanced character building. Every facet of who Tim is was brought to light with the same level of attention and care, and what impressed me the most was the way Winter was able to believably convey the storm of emotions in this character with the most subtle shifts in his expressions and tone of voice. Those subtle shifts were evidenced right away—as he transitioned from the easy confidence that seemed to radiate from his pores when Mack first jumped out of the car to the tension that settled over his entire body when he confronted Mack moments later about him being high. They continued when he softened immediately after Mack came to following his overdose—the gentle, protective side of Tim Bradford rising to the surface in the tone of voice he used when assuring Mack that he and Beth were there. In that moment, you could see the ghosts of Isabel in every word he spoke and move he made—so much so that when he locked eyes with Lucy, nothing needed to be said to show that she got it too. And those subtle shifts in emotion allowed us to ride the tidal wave of repressed trauma along with him as he forced Mack to think about what he was doing to his family. Watching his eyes fill with tears as he almost certainly replayed a conversation he knew by heart like a bad sitcom rerun crushed me in a way that only a great actor—one who really understands the character he’s playing—can do.

This was an episode that could have seen Tim put his walls back up and shut down into a defensive posture—and in some ways, it did give us that. Winter’s entire body language after Tim learned Lucy was going undercover was closed off, rigid, and angry. But right under the surface was that humanity—that deep and frustrating ability to care—that he can’t shut down entirely. So when Nolan calls him out for being worried about Lucy, there’s the familiar bark, but it’s accompanied by a concerned expression that gives the game away. And when he “arrests” Lucy, there’s none of the frustration that marked their earlier scene in the briefing room when he told her she was being used. Instead, everything about him softens just a fraction—noticeable to the audience but believably subtle enough to not be noticed by the criminals. The way he leans in closer to gently ask if she’s ok, the way his hand never leaves her shoulder, the fact that this typically tough cop doesn’t drag Lucy to the car like Nolan with Harper—each physical action speaks to the way he can’t turn off caring about Lucy and wanting to keep her safe, which is going to be a big problem (in the best way for us as audience members) if this episode is setting up a future undercover career for her.

And then there’s the moment the dam finally breaks in the restrained but meaningful way Winter does best. When Tim looks back at Lucy and tells her, “You did good,” that same transition from hard to soft—fleeting but all the more impactful for its brevity—tells us all we need to know about the man Tim Bradford is. He knows Lucy needs to hear that from him. He knows that she values his opinion; she told him so herself. And he knows that she deserves his support and not to be the recipient of all his anger about undercover work. It’s not easy, and Winter lets us see that struggle. But he fights through his own pain to be there for Lucy because that’s what he does—that’s who he is.

Tim Bradford is a man who doesn’t want to care but cares deeply (as is shown even more painfully in that final scene with Beth), and it takes a strong actor who’s great at subtlety to make that kind of character work. Luckily, Winter is exactly that kind of actor. What he’s done with this character through 3 seasons has been nothing short of captivating, and I hope the drama and soul-searching set up in this episode continue, because I can’t wait to see more.

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The Best Thing I Saw on TV This Week: The Bravery of Jackson West on The Rookie

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“The honor and bravery you’ve shown is an example to all of us … I’m so damn proud of you.”

Praise is hard to come by in the world of The Rookie, so when it happens, it matters.

And it’s never mattered more than those words from Sergeant Wade Grey to Officer Jackson West at the end of last Sunday’ episode, “Lockdown.”

Jackson’s storyline throughout this third season has been nothing short of revelatory—for both the character and the actor playing him (Titus Makin Jr.). He’s the eyes through which The Rookie has taken its most direct look at police violence and systemic racism in policing, and it all led up to the moment in this episode when, after confronting his racist training officer, Doug Stanton, about his behavior, Doug leaves him at the mercy of a group of criminals.

Watching Jackson get viciously attacked while Doug hid on the sidelines was brutal to watch, but it wasn’t all for nothing—Jackson knew his training officer fed him to the wolves, and by exposing that on Doug’s body cam, he got a bad cop off the streets. (Although it’s almost certainly not forever.)

Jackson knew he was risking his career and even his life by working to call attention to the truth of who Doug was and the racism fueling his actions. But he also believed it was worth the risk. Even laying in his hospital bed—with broken ribs, loose teeth, eyes swollen shut, and a painful hoarseness in his voice (kudos to both the makeup department and Makin for painting an uncomfortably believable picture of a man in incredible pain)—he told Sergeant Grey as much.

And Grey’s response was one every decent human being watching most likely had:

“You shouldn’t have to risk your life to get a bad cop fired.”

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The Best Thing I Saw on TV This Week: Listening and Learning on The Rookie

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“I’m proud of you.”

When Lucy Chen said those four little words to her Training Officer, Tim Bradford, on the latest episode of The Rookie, it felt like something big—for these characters, for their relationship, and for this show as a whole. And it’s not just because Tim Bradford seems like the kind of guy who is more familiar with a dad who would “tune him up on the regular” than someone telling him they’re proud of him.

Big things are happening on The Rookie this season, and it’s time we talked about them.

The Rookie is a police procedural, and it’s a police procedural filmed with a lot of help from the LAPD. It’s often claimed that it’s different from other police procedurals because it’s committed to accurately and honestly depicting what life is really like for patrol officers. But for its first two seasons, those claims of accuracy and honesty never felt fully realized because the show never dared to take a long, hard look at police brutality and violence, racial profiling, abuses of power, the ways police departments close ranks, and the other ugly truths about the relationships between law enforcement and communities of color, especially Black communities.

This summer, though, it became clear that things needed to change. Between social media and traditional media outlets putting the focus on the problems inherent in “copaganda” movies and TV shows and reservations brought to the creator by at least one of its stars (Titus Makin Jr., who plays rookie officer Jackson West), The Rookie was at a crossroads: It could continue to press on as it had been—ignoring the harsh realities in favor of entertainment—or it could try to be more, to be better.

The powers that be chose the latter, and the show is much better for it.

With a partnership with advocacy group Color of Change and a writers room featuring more diverse voices (in addition to a cast that features all but two main characters played by people of color), The Rookie approached its third season with a clear focus and a new mission: to reflect real systemic problems and to show them in detail rather than in one “special episode.”

Most of the attention surrounding that focus and mission has been given to a storyline involving Makin’s Officer West and his new Training Officer, Doug Stanton. Stanton, with his racial profiling, excessive use of force, threats, and racist beliefs and actions, is an example of the kinds of police officers responsible for the deaths of George Floyd and so many others, as well as the over-policing of Black communities and other systemic issues in the criminal justice system.

But it would be easy to just write this new character off as a “bad guy” who gets taken down by all of our favorite police officers, the ones who’ve always been guided by strong moral compasses.

And taking the easy way out is not the m.o. for this show this season. Instead, it’s committed to showing how men like Doug Stanton can get into positions of power and stay there, even when so many people around them know exactly who they are—and how dangerous that can be.

Enter Tim Bradford.

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How TV Got Me Through 2020

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Happy Holidays, fellow nerds! This is the first in a series of posts wrapping up a different year in a different way. Between now and the start of 2021, I’ll be recapping my year in media not through traditional “Best of” lists but instead through snapshots of how my relationships with books, movies, and TV reflected my journey through 2020. If you’re looking for great “Best of 2020” content, I highly recommend heading over to Marvelous Geeks and TVexamined for their lists and listening to the 2-part podcast I recorded with the wonderful women behind those two sites, where we recapped our TV favorites from this year.

I watched a lot of reality TV this year.

A lot.

From fantastic making-of docuseries (Disney Gallery: The Mandalorian and Into the Unknown: Making Frozen 2) to intense competitions (Dancing with the Stars and The Bachelorette), my streaming queues and DVR were filled with the stories of real people.

And then there was Bravo.

bravo

In a year without a lot of stability, I always knew I could count on Bravo to keep me company. Whether it was the best season of Top Chef in the show’s storied history, the stunning scenery of Below Deck Mediterranean, or the delicious drama of Vanderpump Rules and the Real Housewives Cinematic Universe, there were very few nights—especially this summer—when my TV wasn’t tuned into Bravo.

And that’s not even counting the weeks my sister and I spent binge-watching the entirety of Southern Charm and becoming far too attached to its bevy of South Carolina men-children.

I’ve never been shy about my consumption of reality television, but it reached new heights this year. And for a long time, I figured that was because I needed something mindless when it felt like my mind was going a mile a minute the rest of the day.

But as I found myself getting more and more invested in Tayshia Adams’s journey to find love, the crumbling friendship between Lisa Rinna and Denise Richards, Melissa King’s cooking, and whether or not Ramona Singer really has 50 close girlfriends, I realized that what most people would call “empty calories” in my TV diet was actually feeding me exactly what I was missing most in 2020.

People.

Real people.

I’m an extrovert. I love talking to people, being around huge groups of people, celebrating when people succeed, and comforting people when they struggle. I love people-watching at the mall, at happy hour, in airports, and walking out of hockey games, musicals, and movies.

I love people.

I miss people.

I’ve been incredibly lucky to have spent 2020 with my immediate family, but there’s still so much that I miss. I miss the energy of a Friday at the office, with everyone sharing their weekend plans. I miss long dinners with friends and unpacking all the silly drama in our lives over glasses of wine. I miss the excitement of sightseeing around big cities with my favorite people.

And reality TV gave me a little bit of that back.

I know the “real” part of reality TV can be debated, but these shows gave me a window into a social life I missed deeply this year. Watching the Real Housewives gossip over appetizers and watching Top Chef contestants support each other and watching the Dancing with the Stars cast form genuine friendships born of shared struggle and success allowed me to experience one of the things I was craving most acutely in an isolating, quiet, lonely year.

Human connection.

Every TV show that captured my attention this year had a strong element of human connection at the center of it. From the groups of people working together to make Frozen 2 possible to the Real Housewives of New York coming together to cheer on one of their own when she finally launched her clothing line to the former enemies burying the hatchet on Vanderpump Rules, I was drawn to shows with strong group dynamics—shows that demonstrated the fact that, for better or worse, humans are social animals who are always better together.

That extended into the fictional television that I loved this year too.

The year started with the core group of lovable disasters of The Good Place helping each other finally get to the titular heavenly realm—and eventually move beyond it. And it continued with the team at the 99th Precinct helping each other through fertility struggles, dognappings, and the birth of a new baby on Brooklyn 99. I was immediately charmed and moved by the realistic female friendships on The Baby-Sitters Club, which filled the hole in my heart that was left behind when I stopped teaching teenage girls at the dance studio where I used to work. And watching the women of Mrs. America talk about feminism, politics, and social change helped me at a time when I missed having serious discussions in person with my female friends.

My extroverted soul felt seen by Lucy Chen on The Rookie—a character who talks through her feelings, her problems, and pretty much everything else. Lucy’s belief in people and in the importance of relationships and communication anchors a show that could easily become lost in a swirling sea of procedurals. And her relationship with Tim Bradford is so much more than just the stereotypical “gruff mentor/sunshiney mentee” trope—or a budding slow-burn romance (depending on how you want to read it). It’s a beautiful representation of how human connection works—the little moments of sharing and learning and helping each other that build up over time to bond us to another person. Warmth is something a lot of us have been missing this year, and their dynamic gave me that in spades.

And that brings us to Schitt’s Creek, the warmest and most wonderful show I watched in 2020. To paraphrase another show I love deeply, no one in Schitt’s Creek achieves anything alone. This is a show about people needing people—to succeed, to lean on, to grow into the best versions of themselves. It’s a show about the healing power of relationships based on kindness, sincerity, and appreciating other people for who they truly are. It’s a show about what it means to love people—really love them—and how our relationships are the most valuable things we carry with us.

Schitt’s Creek is a show that believes in people—in the power we all have to help each other, to reach out to each other, and to give each other a safe place to land. And in a year that was defined by isolation, there was real comfort—and real catharsis—in watching a show about the beauty of togetherness, community, and connection.

From a fictional small town to a galaxy far, far away—and from a very real yacht on the Mediterranean to a mansion in Charleston—all the TV shows I watched this year reminded me that the connections we make with other people are all that really matters in the end.

I can’t think of anything more real than that.