S05.E22: Under Siege

[WendyCR72]

Season finale! Airing May 2, 2023:

Quote

After one of their own is shot, the team suffers a series of close calls and realizes their division may be a target for a group of masked assailants.

 

[Jodithgrace]

Ugh..a season end cliffhanger? Two, actually, with Aaron on a code blue. Why do they do this? If they think I’m going to be waiting with baited breath for September, I hate to disappoint them. By next week I will have forgotten all about this show and in September, when it pops up on my DVR, I’ll watch it with only a dim memory of where they left off.

Still, until the ending, it was a pretty exciting episode. 

[EtheltoTillie]

Huh?  That was a little crazy. How could two officers fight off that gang of attackers?  

Edited May 3, 2023 by EtheltoTillie

[Msample]

WTF was that ? Did we just turn this show into THE FOLLOWING? 
 

After many episodes with minimal presence, we are back to having Super Bailey rammed down our throats. Is she an EMT or a firefighter? Show can’t seem to decide.

[zoey1996]

I agree; not a fan of the season-ending cliffhangers.

It was a gripping episode, weird masks, riddle, and all.

Happy the babies are OK. Nolan/Bailey will have quite the mess to clean up in their house!

Confusing how Aaron/Celina were targeted, since they were off duty, out of uniform, and just out for an evening. Had they and the rest of the crew been stalked for a while? It seems so, and I get how they could be targeted at their homes/apartments.

[Raja]

28 minutes ago, Msample said:

After many episodes with minimal presence, we are back to having Super Bailey rammed down our throats. Is she an EMT or a firefighter? Show can’t seem to decide.

This comes up on 9-1-1 too. In real life unlike the County of Los Angeles Fire Department as seen on Emergency back in the day where all paramedics are firefighters on the city's LAFD some of the paramedics are also firefighters with a bump up in pay for the paramedical training.   On most medical calls to 911 and the citizens will get a medic on a fire engine first  and from there they triage  and higher levels of rescue ambulances may show up then what was originally dispatched.

In the Super Bailey mode I was seeing that Nolan was not allowed to save her as she had to fight her way out first before the gunfire started. 

[HurricaneVal]

I did not know this was the season finale, so I was very surprised by the cliffhanger and the end bumper of basically "wait until September to find out what happens!"

And, uh, show?  Next time, can we not shoot the young, male, and black rookie?  Again?   We're two for two now.  Aaron better make it, I'm rather fond of that young man.  

Fight the labradoodle and win the staff of healing!

[Snazzy Daisy]

An intense & weird episode.

Do we really have to lose a rookie every time Angela gives birth??! I need Aaron more than I need Angela.

Of course Super Bailey doesn’t need Nolan to save her. She’s a Teflon.

Chenford fight is so silly. I keep yelling “shoot their legs, not their shields, duh!” 🙄

The new big bad has been seen lurking around at the hospital. Thank you show for making it so obvious. 😆
 

 

[LakeGal]

Celina is a poor psychic.  I would have preferred her getting shot over Aaron.  

This show was bordering on cartoon characters with the big fight scene.  

[Madding crowd]

This was an exciting episode for once. I’m not sure I really understood everything but it was creepy. And yes my cop husband was yelling shoot at their legs when the guys with shields were coming.

[Raja]

9 hours ago, EtheltoTillie said:

Huh?  That was a little crazy. How could two officers fight off that gang of attackers?  

🤷‍♂️ This is Sparta? 

When Officer Nolan and Detective Harper showed up to flank the attackers and snipe with the rifle at first I thought Smitty was driving her.  

[milkyaqua]

9 hours ago, SnazzyDaisy said:

Chenford fight is so silly. I keep yelling “shoot their legs, not their shields, duh!” 🙄

This!  I kept wondering unless these two can see body armor, then shoot their legs!  Gah!

12 hours ago, HurricaneVal said:

And, uh, show?  Next time, can we not shoot the young, male, and black rookie?  Again?   We're two for two now.  Aaron better make it, I'm rather fond of that young man.  

Agree.  I get that the other actor wanted out of the show but I like Aaron as well.  Still don't understand why he and Celina were in the alley.

Other questions:  Where was Smitty?  What the heck was the point of this all and what is the Big Bad up to?  Will they find the phone chip during the autopsy of the dead guy and will they be able to restore it or will his stomach acid have done a job on it?

For a moment at the end when the bad guys were driving I thought this would spillover into the FBI Feds but since the network hadn't been touting it, that thought lasted a second.  And of course Super Bailey helps to take down a supposedly professional hitman...  This show is really pushing it thinking people are going to be waiting in anticipation of it's next season.  I guess they think the network will rerun this before the next season premiere.

Edited May 3, 2023 by milkyaqua

[shapeshifter]

On 5/3/2023 at 1:31 AM, HurricaneVal said:

Aaron better make it, I'm rather fond of that young man.  Fight the labradoodle and win the staff of healing!

Yes!
 

In case anyone is wondering, Luke Moran, the Not-mastermind who opted for suicide by cop, was in 1.11 "Redwood." He was the perp in a B or C plot. He left his mother with dementia tied to a wheel chair while he went to a job interview.

 

Kristian Bruun, the actor who plays real Big Bad, was fantastic in Orphan Black. He is showing up in IMDb for episode 6.1m but it doesn't even have an episode title yet.

 

On 5/3/2023 at 7:28 AM, Madding crowd said:

And yes my cop husband was yelling shoot at their legs when the guys with shields were coming.

Agree with your husband and everyone upthread. With a lot of the viewers of network shows watching at the same time, I'm guessing The Show People heard us all yelling at the cops being attacked by a masked army with bullet proof sheilds:
Shoot the legs!

Edited May 8, 2023 by shapeshifter

[Zaffy]

WTH did I just watch?

This was absolutely ridiculous in every aspect..
So now we have a "James Bond" kind of villain that does the "Die Hard" manoeuvre..
And a mercenary can be hired just to try and kill cops in close combat, not even from afar with a sniper rifle..
I didn't know mercenaries can be that idiots, the whole "Roman Legion" attack with the shields made me laugh.
And when they started to hit the closed door like brainless zombies then I started giggling. 
And are we supposed to care about Aaron or Celina? And why they keep putting young black rookies in peril??
If the actor wants to leave the show, I hope they give his character some other option than death.

Good thing? at least it wasn't Elias or followers of the serial killer.

[Raja]

2 hours ago, Zaffy said:

WTH did I just watch?

This was absolutely ridiculous in every aspect..
So now we have a "James Bond" kind of villain that does the "Die Hard" manoeuvre..
And a mercenary can be hired just to try and kill cops in close combat, not even from afar with a sniper rifle..

Unfortunately more serious shows also fail on that account of finding mercenaries and even security guards willing to kill cops and agents because the boss said so.

Should I believe the shield legion didn't sign up to kill and were as surprised when Detective harper started putting bullets into their heads? As for the mercenary with a big kitchen knife going after Bailey instead of his gun, I just don't know.

[SilverLake0315]

3 hours ago, shapeshifter said:

Is this a spoiler???

@milkyaqua was talking about the actor who played Jackson wanting out of the show, not Aaron

[Zaffy]

18 hours ago, Raja said:

Should I believe the shield legion didn't sign up to kill and were as surprised when Detective harper started putting bullets into their heads? As for the mercenary with a big kitchen knife going after Bailey instead of his gun, I just don't know.

But in USA, where you get shot by a cop in the suspicion you might be holding a gun, what these people should expect from the police?
Especially when they are a part of a group been already involved in shooting a police officer in cold blood..
What kind of a mercenary signs up for a suicide job? I would believe better if  they gathered people who do not like cops instead of  mercenaries with suicidal issues..

[edhopper]

How much were these guys paid that they kept going after a. Umber of them were getting shot and killed. You'd think a few would say "F" this.

And keep shooting at the bullet proof shields. Top notch police work.

I can also think of half a dozen easier ways to get a lot of cops to one place.

[bros402]

Okay, this episode was definitely something. The guys trying to do a testudo formation were doing something - but I do not understand why they didn't shoot at the ground to at least try to get some debris to hit them in the legs.

I wonder what New Mysterious Big Bad as going to be doing, and will he be better or worse than Elijah?

With the shot at the end, I was so expecting a building to explode. I was sort of disappointed when it didn't.

[Clanstarling]

On 5/3/2023 at 4:28 AM, Madding crowd said:

This was an exciting episode for once. I’m not sure I really understood everything but it was creepy. And yes my cop husband was yelling shoot at their legs when the guys with shields were coming.

I was yelling that too - and I'm no cop.

As crazy as it was, I enjoyed it a ridiculous amount.  Except for the onset of a new big bad...sigh...

Notice that Bailey did not, in fact, get back to Nolan about who was shot?

I kind of enjoyed the salads exploding from the bullets - does whoever set up that shot have a thing against salads?

Edited May 8, 2023 by Clanstarling

[jabRI]

1 hour ago, Clanstarling said:

I kind of enjoyed the salads exploding from the bullets - does whoever set up that shot have a thing against salads?

A TV trope if ever I saw one. LIke you cannot have a car chase without at least one going through a market with exploding watermelons. Or if you are in a city being chased by bad guys, just go to the roof and hop from building to building.  I'm all supportive of striking workers, but with TV writers had more imagination some days.

[Clanstarling]

1 hour ago, jabRI said:

A TV trope if ever I saw one. LIke you cannot have a car chase without at least one going through a market with exploding watermelons. Or if you are in a city being chased by bad guys, just go to the roof and hop from building to building.  I'm all supportive of striking workers, but with TV writers had more imagination some days.

Trope or not, I just enjoyed this visual (markets with exploding stuff not so much). Of course, I used to like when David Letterman would drop stuff off of his building - so that's my level of maturity for this stuff.

[shapeshifter]

4 hours ago, Clanstarling said:

As crazy as it was, I enjoyed it a ridiculous amount.  Except for the onset of a new big bad...sigh...

I too loathe the Big Bad character in general, especially on these fluffy shows, but I have hopes that Kristian Bruun will be a good Big Bad whom we will love to loathe. 

Edited May 8, 2023 by shapeshifter
whom sounds better than who

[bros402]

I wish that, at most, they would have big bads with their own chunk of a season. Have it be a criminal who is hard to catch and the detectives spend a few episodes trying to catch. We don't need multi-season supervillains, please. Rosalind was fun (RIP Annie Wersching), but they developed her a bit too much.

[Netfoot]

On 5/8/2023 at 12:55 PM, jabRI said:

I'm all supportive of striking workers, but with TV writers had more imagination some days.

They are demanding a promise that AI will never be used to generate scripts. I'd fire their arses, every one, and get ChatGPT to generate every script from now on. It could hardly do worse!

[bros402]

5 hours ago, Netfoot said:

They are demanding a promise that AI will never be used to generate scripts. I'd fire their arses, every one, and get ChatGPT to generate every script from now on. It could hardly do worse!

Okay, I had ChatGPT write a cold open for an episode - I gave it the prompt "write a cold open for The Rookie with Chen and Bradford"


Here is what it wrote:
 

Quote

[The camera pans over the city of Los Angeles at night, showing various police cars and emergency vehicles racing through the streets. Cut to a close-up of Officer Lucy Chen (played by Melissa O'Neil) sitting in the driver's seat of a patrol car, her eyes fixed on the road ahead. The radio crackles to life.]

 

Dispatch: "Attention all units, we have a 10-11B in progress at 6th and Main. Officers requested to assist."

[Chen immediately reaches for the radio.]

Chen: "This is Unit 523, we're nearby. We'll respond."

[Chen's training officer, Officer John Bradford (played by Eric Winter), sitting in the passenger seat, looks over at her.]

Bradford: "You ready for this, Chen?"

Chen: "Absolutely, sir."

[The patrol car speeds down the road, its lights flashing and sirens blaring. As they approach the intersection, they see a group of people gathered around a car that has crashed into a light pole. Smoke is billowing out of the hood and the driver's side door is hanging open. Chen and Bradford jump out of the patrol car and run over to assess the situation.]

Bradford: "Clear the area! Make way for the medics!"

[Chen approaches the driver, a young man who is slumped over the steering wheel, blood trickling down his face. She reaches in and feels for a pulse.]

Chen: "He's alive, but we need to get him out of here."

[As Bradford directs traffic and secures the scene, Chen and a group of civilians work together to pull the driver out of the car and onto the sidewalk. Just as they do, a loud explosion rocks the area, sending debris flying in every direction. Chen and Bradford duck for cover, shielding the injured driver from harm. When the dust settles, they look up to see a nearby building engulfed in flames.]

Bradford: "We've got a second scene. Call it in and let's move!"

[Chen nods, her adrenaline pumping as she sprints back to the patrol car. As they speed towards the burning building, she can feel her heart pounding in her chest. This is why she became a cop, to help people in their time of need. And she knows that, with Bradford by her side, they can handle anything that comes their way.]

I prefer the stuff written by the writers

[Netfoot]

5 hours ago, bros402 said:

Okay, I had ChatGPT write a cold open for an episode - I gave it the prompt "write a cold open for The Rookie with Chen and Bradford"

Wasn't this already shown in Season 2?

[Clanstarling]

I think it's a pretty reasonable demand, myself.  As a consumer, I don't want to watch any human drama generated by a non-human source. 

[Netfoot]

On 5/10/2023 at 11:13 AM, Clanstarling said:

As a consumer, I don't want to watch any human drama generated by a non-human source. 

I think it's a Turing Test issue. It's reasonable to reject "human drama generated by a non-human source." But when the AIs get to the point where you can't tell the difference, our perspective must change.  Have we reached that point yet? Maybe not. But eventually, we will. And that point may take years to arrive, but it might only be months. So we don't know when. All we know for certain is that that point will eventually be reached.

However, the writers demand a promise that AI generated scripts will never, ever be used. At no time in the future. I'm sorry, but that is pure Luddism.

So my position is different to yours. I am fine with crappy, AI-written scripts starting today and going forward until the time when those scripts are good enough to meet and then exceed the standard currently met by the human writers. Let us stamp out the Luddites now, and send them the way of the slide-rule makers and the lamplighters and town criers and type writer makers, and so forth.

[juliet73]

On 5/2/2023 at 10:26 PM, zoey1996 said:

Confusing how Aaron/Celina were targeted, since they were off duty, out of uniform, and just out for an evening. Had they and the rest of the crew been stalked for a while? It seems so, and I get how they could be targeted at their homes/apartments.

I was wondering that too especially since THEY were the ones that went looking into the disturbance after hearing something in the alley.  I was bothered by the fact that neither one of them had their gun out while investigating!  Chen and Bradford did the same thing - Bradford finally put his hand on his holster when they heard a noise from the hallway.  I'm not a cop, but I would think having your weapon drawn would be Police 101 when you're looking for bad guys.

 

On 5/3/2023 at 2:35 AM, Snazzy Daisy said:

Chenford fight is so silly. I keep yelling “shoot their legs, not their shields, duh!” 🙄

YES!!!!  Or at least their feet!  

I don't know which fight was more ridiculous - Chen / Bradford against the bad guys on the fire escape or Nolan / Bailey getting their a$$es kicked, and Bailey doesn't have a scratch on her yet Nolan's face is cut up.  

Since they all knew they were being targeted, I thought it was pretty stupid for all of them to be at the same hospital at the same time (for various reasons) along with one of the suspects.  

I really thought Lopez was going to fight off the bad guys while in labor just like Nyla did.  They were all pretty quick to decipher the riddle which basically told them nothing except it was dialogue from a play.  I totally lol'ed when Chen said they checked all the costume shops in S Cal and non of them sold the masks.  Does she or the dept not realize people can buy stuff off the internet?

Was the nurse who came in to change Aaron's IV bag one of the suspects?  I thought it was odd they specifically showed her looking at Celina.  I couldn't tell if she matched the woman from the white board photos.  If she was, I'm assuming that's why Aaron was coding.  

As the show continued, I was paying less and less attention.  How did they know it was the guy who served time for elder abuse? And who was the guy at the end in the limo boasting about distracting the LAPD (but only the Mid-Wilshire dept?) so he could carry out an even bigger crime?

I definitely don't want AI generating scripts, but the writers really need to step it up.  Lately, this show has been more misses than hits, IMO. 

[WendyCR72]

Because I am indeed THAT person, the spelling in the database for the title of this episode was gnawing at me, and my gut was right. So the title is adjusted to its proper spelling (siege). (Take THAT, database! 😋)

[bros402]

2 hours ago, juliet73 said:

I really thought Lopez was going to fight off the bad guys while in labor just like Nyla did.

Same. I was disappointed when we didn't get that - it would have been hilarious.

[shapeshifter]

8 hours ago, juliet73 said:

How did they know it was the guy who served time for elder abuse?

They didn't give enought information for us to know that, so I looked it up.
He was in a previous episode that aired January 22, 2019: 

On 5/3/2023 at 6:48 PM, shapeshifter said:

In case anyone is wondering, Luke Moran, the Not-mastermind who opted for suicide by cop, was in 1.11 "Redwood." He was the perp in a B or C plot. He left his mother with dementia tied to a wheel chair while he went to a job interview.

 

[Sake614]

All this talk about not remembering the episode in September? I dont even remember seeing it and it’s only been a month lol! Now I have to go to abc.com and watch just so I know I’m not losing my mind. 🤣

[Clanstarling]

22 minutes ago, Sake614 said:

All this talk about not remembering the episode in September? I dont even remember seeing it and it’s only been a month lol! Now I have to go to abc.com and watch just so I know I’m not losing my mind. 🤣

I just let it slide - I'm a big picture person and remember the general thrust and outcome of shows and books, but not the details. One of the reasons I like the forums, I can rely on someone else providing the details I might have missed.

Edited June 1, 2023 by Clanstarling

[Sake614]

I mean, I remember Aaron being shot and celina being beaten up. And I vaguely remember the fight I scene at Nolan’s house. The rest not so much.

[MSterling]

11 hours ago, Sake614 said:

I mean, I remember Aaron being shot and celina being beaten up. And I vaguely remember the fight I scene at Nolan’s house. The rest not so much.

All I remembered (before your comment) was that Chen and Bradford were dumb for not going for the legs. Well, I don't watch it for an intricate plot or well crafted characters, just take it as the mindless fluff it is.

[Avabelle]

I didn’t realise how much I liked Celina and especially Aaron until I thought one of them might die in the cold open. 
 

I was actually gearing up for a finale featuring Elijah. Not that I’m complaining but he really did just whimper off…

[Avabelle]

I won’t lie, as I’ve said before I’ve been binge watching this while on may leave and as I sit here cuddling my 7 week old my heart was in my mouth when I thought they’d taken Leah.

[Clanstarling]

22 hours ago, Avabelle said:

I won’t lie, as I’ve said before I’ve been binge watching this while on may leave and as I sit here cuddling my 7 week old my heart was in my mouth when I thought they’d taken Leah.

I couldn't watch anything with endangered children when mine were little, so I totally understand.