Rookie Blue — The Complete Second Season

Like Flashpoint before it, Canadian offering Rookie Blue has made a rather effortless transition onto American networks, thanks to it being completely inoffensive but very competently made. While that might not sound like a glowing endorsement, it's the type of show that's very easy to get sucked into because there's always plenty going on. While the focus might be on the police work, there are also many relationship shenanigans, making this a lot like Grey's Anatomy at a police station in Toronto. The lead character is Andy McNally (Missy Peregrym), a second-generation police officer trying to make up for her father's premature retirement after he burned out. At the start of the first season, she's green as grass and naive, but now she's much more in control and making less of those rookie mistakes that were weekly occurrences previously. Peregrym is incredibly likeable in her role, and is as good a reason as any to watch Rookie Blue. The rest of the characters are the typical mix of the usual suspects, all with their baggage, which inevitably comes back to haunt them – nobody else really stands out, but nobody stinks up the place either. It definitely isn't a challenging show, but it's a solid one that has gotten better in its second season. The writing doesn't feel as forced as it once was and while it hardly reinvents the wheel when it comes to ensemble cop shows, it never embarrasses itself, even if we've seen it all before. Of course, it might be a sad statement on network television that producing a slightly above-average show is a major achievement, but it is. Rookie Blue is a perfectly adequate show that entertains, but does little else. The extra features are stuck on the fourth Blu-Ray in the set and are very much in keeping with the show. There are seven short featurettes that clock in at just over 30 minutes in total, although most of them consist of quick interviews with the cast about things like drinking coffee and riding horses. There's no insight into the series at all, but maybe that's because if you scratch below the surface there's not much to see.