THE ROOKIE Post-Mortem: Alexi Hawley on the Trouble in Nyla and James’ Relationship

[Warning: This post contains spoilers for the Tuesday, January 14 episode of THE ROOKIE.]

THE ROOKIE’s Nyla (Mekia Cox) and James (Arjay Smith) officially hit a speed bump in their marriage on the Tuesday, January 14 episode, “The Watcher.”

In the aftermath of the latest corruption scandal, community activist James set up a meeting with the captain…and told his wife a few of his fellow activists would be coming over to the house.

“People want answers,” James said. But while Nyla reiterated the department was motivated to get bad cops off the street, too, James was skeptical whether they’d care as much once the bad press went away.

At work, Nyla told Angela (Alyssa Diaz) that things were tense at home and she was tired of having the same conversation over and over again with James. And things escalated when Nyla got home and discovered the small gathering she was expecting was actually a couple of dozen activists who wanted answers. James tried to defend himself by saying things got bigger than he planned, but Nyla was (understandably) upset and said she needed to change out of her work clothes…and snuck out of the house via a window.

After spending some time at Angela’s home, Nyla finally returned home, where she and James both acknowledged they were pretty mad.

“Sometimes I worry that we got married too fast,” Nyla said. James tried to argue against that, but Nyla was firm. 

“I love you, James, but that does not change what I do for a living,” she said. “Something I also love is in direct conflict with your work.”

“Which is equally important to me,” he replied.

Though the duo agreed to find a pathway through their troubles together, it was also clear nothing was actually resolved yet.

“It’s a big part of our storytelling this season, on multiple fronts,” THE ROOKIE creator Alexi Hawley tells Give Me My Remote of the push-pull between Nyla and James. “It’s very important to us to keep conversations about injustice in the justice system alive as a cop show; we have a responsibility to tell the stories. I do feel like we’re uniquely set up as a patrol show; we can tell a lot of different stories.”

“And so [we’ll explore] the sort of inherent conflict of him being a community activist who sees the bad side of policing more often than not, and her as a cop who also sees the bad side of policing, but also feels passionately that she’s not that cop, and what she does is a necessary thing,” he continues. “But what do you do as a couple when you can’t keep having the same conversation over and over? Where’s [the] change come?”

As the show digs into the storyline, “we lean into the repercussions of that on their relationship,” Hawley previews. “But, also, does it push Harper to do something within the department as well?”

THE ROOKIE, Tuesdays, 10/9c, ABC

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