The first episode of The Rookie: Feds has arrived! The pilot episode, titled “Day One,” introduced us to some new characters and featured some familiar faces.
Simone’s First Day
When showing up at work in the Los Angeles office, Simone expects to be assigned to Garza’s team after working with him in the past. When Carter tells her that she’s actually with the background checks division, she confronts Garza on it who confirms that she’s not with his team. Resigned, she goes to the background checks area where she gets a less than warm welcome from her supervisor.
Simone finds Garza in a meeting and pushes him to talk to her about what’s going on. She points out that his unit exists because of a case she helped solve and he agrees. He tells her that he needs out-of-the-box thinkers for his team, but he needs them to also be able to lay low due to early criticism of his unit, which is why he didn’t ask for Simone.
After she finds out the name of their suspect and offered to help find his address, Simone begs Garza to let her work on his team. Garza caves, and, despite Carter’s protests, lets her stay with the team for the day.
After getting DNA from another suspect through scratching him, Garza reluctantly lets her join the team with Carter as her training officer. After the case is solved, Carter and Simone talk about the future of their mentor and mentee relationship. Carter gets her to agree to letting him teach her things like he’s supposed to by pointing out that she’s not going to know everything and that’s okay because she’s not supposed to. There’s a reason he’s there. She responds that he has to let her teach him some things like how to let loose a little as well. He grumbles about it but in a teasing manner.
The Team’s First Case
A man is killed in his home while his family is away on vacation. They came home to find him dead and called the police. When Garza learns that the man works on retrofits for all the federal buildings, he thinks there’s something more there. The team looks into it and get a lead for one of the guys that were his place when he was killed.
With the help of The Rookie‘s Angela Lopez, Simone finds out the identity of the man in question. She and Carter follow up with some of Simone’s former contacts to find an address tied to the suspect through people he knew when he went to school. They go to the location and while waiting to be able to go in, Simone texts John Nolan who shows up to help. They see people leaving which leads to Simone taking Carter’s car and following them. While she’s doing that, Nolan and Carter see the people who haven’t left yet loading their guns. They approach the situation leading to a shoot-out while Simone plays it cool with the other suspect and flirts with him to keep him in one place. He ends up taking off when the gunfire starts though, but she reaches out and manages to scratch him before he properly takes off. She rushes back to Nolan and Carter to tell them that she captured the guy’s DNA.
When they get inside the building and check it out, they learn that their suspect is dead because the people he was working for learned the cops knew about him. They swab the DNA from Simone’s nail and get a match on it. Facial recognition put the suspect that an El Paso airport that morning so the fly out to look further into it. While talking through what the suspect could be planning to do, Simone remembers an odd person she saw when doing background checks prior to working with Garza’s team. A janitor recently started working at the Federal Reserve in El Paso that she thought was suspicious and now believes was working with the suspect.
The suspect and his associates faked a 9-1-1 call and killed the firefighters that responded to take their truck and gear to pretend to be them after the janitor set a pretend fire at the Federal Reserve. The team shows up on the scene and tries to figure out where to go. Simone points out that the money in the vault is traceable, so it wouldn’t make sense for them to take that leading to Laura explaining that the cash processing room works on getting rid of old bills and taking serial numbers out of the system, so they probably want that money. They go in and after some fighting and a shoot out, they arrest the suspects.
Cutty’s Warm Welcome
Simone stays with her dad in LA while she looks for a place after moving there for work. Cutty is hesitant about having her there due to him not agreeing with her career choices and the possible impact on his work that her living there can have.
Later in the episode, Simone comes home after work and sees Cutty talking to a woman on the couch. They all joke around until the woman sees Simone’s badge and flees. Cutty explains that she came to him for legal advice and that this is exactly why he doesn’t want Simone to stay there.
At the end of the episode, Cutty and Simone talk and end on a good note. Cutty sets some ground rules including the badge and gun have to be taken off before she enters the house and she needs to bring dinner home from a local place once a week in an effort to give back to the community.
Vampire Cop Turned FBI Agent
After training at the Academy with Simone, actor-turned-FBI agent Brendon Acres joins Garza’s special unit. He will be trained by Laura Stensen, a former behavior analysis unit profiler who is struggling right now due to not realizing her boyfriend and her best friend were seeing each other behind her back. Laura has a more stern training style and she isn’t happy to be training the former actor.
She comments on his wardrobe and how the suits he’s wearing might work for a red carpet but won’t hold up well in the field. She’s proven right when his pants split while apprehending a suspect. Simone, who he’s been leaning on throughout the day, helps him look for replacement plants in evidence. They land on a pair of pants that read “Fierce” on the butt. He also struggles when they show bloody crime scene photos and the body of a victim at a crime scene. Laura presses him on it and he admits after being covered in fake blood on set all the time, he struggles with the sight of blood now.
While working the case, Laura and Garza talk about Brendon. Laura is confused by his choice and Garza explains that he’s a really good actor and it’ll come in handy for undercover work. After that, they approach Brendon about his high marks on the computer portions of his training. He explains that one of his acting roles was playing a hacker which let him get familiar with computers.
After having a video of Brendon arresting someone from the case goes viral, his old agent, Sophie, give him a call. He reminds her that he quit acting and she replies that she knows, but his dream director reached out to her after seeing the video and he wants Brendon to star in his next movie. His answer isn’t known yet.
At the end of the episode, he shows up in a more casual yet still professional look. He shows it to Laura whose only comment is a quip about if he’s looking for a best-dressed award.
Carter’s Marriage Issues
Tracy approaches Carter and asks him about how things are going with his marriage. He tells her that they’re seeing a marriage counselor so that’s helping. She tells him that she can help too. She offers a promotion that he’s been working towards for years but is always passed up for if he helps her get intel so she can take down Garza. The promotion would give him a chance to spend more time with his family and work on his marriage as well. He declines and she presses him to think about it.
Tracy runs into Carter again and tells him that she knows his wife is moving back to New Orleans and taking her son. She tells him that if he helps her, she’s able to get him a job there with the promotion but she needs an answer by tomorrow.
Garza’s Health
Laura picks up on Garza having to take medicine on the plane back from El Paso and confronts him about it. He tries playing it off like it was nothing, but Laura is aware of what’s going on because she saw the same thing with her father. Garza caves and admits that he has a stent in his heart from a clogged artery and the doctors want him to have a double bypass. He explains that making a team like this is a once in a career move and he can’t give up the opportunity. A surgery will put him out of work for too long and the team would be done. He asks Laura to help him by training Brendon properly despite the fact that she hasn’t been happy to have him assigned to her.
The Rookie: Feds will be back next Tuesday, October 4 at 10 p.m. ET on ABC. Until then, check out our other coverage of the show!