In this week's episode, the officers of 15 Division are tasked with ensuring residents vacate a subsidized housing complex that is being torn down, and help them relocate to a neighboring building. The officers are also given body cameras to wear while on duty. (Dov later explains that each officer has a different camera number and clips are uploaded every two minutes). Gail is paired with Nick for the day, Chloe is paired with Andy, and Dov must help Oliver with the tech part of the camera project (monitoring the videos, etc).
After parade Andy tells Sam she likes moving day: "close one door, open another" but hates the camera situation: "I'm going to be second guessing myself all day," because she's traumatized from the Duncan incident. Sam's words of comfort don't work well, but soon talk turns to the dinner reservations he was caught discussing on Gail's camera test run. Andy happily says "talk about a brand new chapter." But, as she walks away, Sam calls to actually make the reservations and finds nothing available.
Shoot to Wes handing Chloe a folder containing divorce papers. An awkward, tense moment ensues until Wes leaves. Then Chloe tells Dov she has the papers and asks how Chris is doing "on vacation" (aka rehab). Either I missed the part where Dov told Chloe about Chris, or they just completely glossed over that whole issue. A little strange, if you ask me.
Next, as Chloe and Andy drive to the complex, Andy expresses distaste for the cameras while Chloe beams over the divorce papers. She debates cheerfully about when she wants to sign them, but there's a possible hint of reluctance in her tone and demeanor. OMG, should Dov be worried?
Meanwhile, Gail mumbles, then complains out loud to Nick about having to watch people move for hours and then going to a Peck family dinner. Nick says he does not miss those passive aggressive conversations, all smiles and insults. Gail explains she's particularly sad because it was going to be her first family dinner as a lesbian and she had wanted Holly to be with her. When Gail wishes she didn't have another family dinner, Nick somberly scolds her. Gail apologizes for forgetting he has no family, but when she invites him, he says he's a lone wolf. No he's not, he deserves someone special!
When they arrive at the building, the officers are confronted by a rude man complaining about a stolen bike that he eventually says is spray painted orange. He even gets a little physical with Andy and the officers cuff him but release him when he calms down.
Afterwards, everyone splits up. In the process of clearing the building, Gail and Nick meet teen siblings Josh and Brandy, who say their mother went to get a moving van.
Elsewhere, Chloe and Andy encounter a badly wounded man in an otherwise vacated apartment. As they examine him, another man shoves Chloe on his way out the door, hops a fence and takes off. Enter, the case of the beaten man.
After Traci and everyone is updated, Gail and Nick revisit Josh and Brandy to ask if they saw anything. While in their apartment, Gail notices multiple bikes, including one spray painted orange. At first Josh pretends he just repairs them for other people, but it's obvious they're stolen. Brandy says it's how they pay rent and Josh adds that their mom can't do it alone anymore. Nick doesn't want to bring the kids in but Gail reminds him of the camera so he reluctantly takes them to the station while Gail stays to wait for the mother. Enter, the case of the thieving teens.
The case of the beaten man
At the hospital, Traci learns the victim had a bottle of oxycodone on him, prescribed to a woman named Barbara Coleman, and that he has extensive and clear signs of having been beaten repeatedly in the past.
A few scenes later, at the hospital, as Traci is on the phone with Andy getting updated, the suspect walks right past Traci and approaches the victim, seemingly concerned.
When Chloe arrives at the station, she and Sam talk to the suspect—he speaks Portuguese so they need her to translate—and Chloe learns the man's name is Aldo Silva. The victim is his brother Gabriel. They and their younger brother Julio came to America from a small village in Northern Brazil a few weeks prior and are staying with a cousin. But Aldo won't name his cousin and doesn't say who hurt Gabriel. Traci believes Aldo is an undocumented worker afraid of deportation and Sam tells her to wait a little before calling immigration.
A couple of scenes later, Andy arrives at the address Dov found for Mrs. Coleman. Inside, she finds make shift beds set up all over the house. Later, when Dov and Andy review the footage at the station, Andy says she thinks about 15 people are living at the house and there is plaster or dry wall everywhere, and Dov reveals that the information on the apartment lease is fake.
While Andy was at the house, Dov had welcomed Rita Paiva, the doctor that prescribed the oxycodone, to the station. At first Rita plays dumb, admitting only that she had never met Mrs. Coleman but phoned in the prescription.
However, eventually, she admits she was knowingly helping Gabriel because she felt bad for him, since he had no other way of getting medicine. She didn't ask questions and she didn't want to turn him in to be deported back to a slum—a life worse than the one he's currently living. Rita says calling immigration will destroy the men's chances of a new beginning. Rita insists she doesn't know for whom the men work, and she is soon released. Sam wants to focus on the task at hand so they decide not to report her just then for health insurance fraud.
On her way out, Andy Rita talks to Aldo at Andy's request, but Rita claims Aldo won't tell her anything.
However, when Chloe returns to the station after dealing with personal matters and Andy asks Chloe to translate what Rita said, they learn that Rita is in on it; she had said to Aldo: "say one more word and they will kill Julio."
Sam and Traci find Rita at her clinic shredding papers of Julio, his brothers and other Brazilians. They arrest her and on her cell, they see she's made six calls to Lucas Souza in the last hour.
Dov tracks the phone number to a construction site and learns that Lucas Souza is Rita's husband and he does plastering for contractors, using mostly Brazilian workers. A white panel van drops the workers off every morning and picks them up at 8 p.m. Luckily Souza didn't get his wife's warning so they easily catch him at the site and arrest him. They also find Julio in the truck.
Back at the station, Chloe helps prepare Aldo for a meeting with an immigration officer. Chloe then informs Oliver that Souza moved the workers around every few weeks and during the last move, Aldo and Gabriel, whom Souza beat when he asked for his passport back, tried to run away. Aldo and Gabriel had also been separated from Julio since arriving in America. The brothers soon have a joyful reunion and Oliver dismisses everyone.
The case of the thieving teens
Whilst Andy, Chloe, Sam and Traci dealt with the Silva brothers situation, Nick and Gail dealt with Brandy and Josh.
When Nick arrives at the station with Brandy and Josh, Nick privately tells Oliver that he doesn't want to press charges against the kids because they have clean records and putting a mark on them is a slippery slope. Oliver gives him an out: since they're minors, they can't be charged without a guardian present, so Nick has time to see if the bikes were reported stolen and if so, convince the owners not to press charges.
However, when Nick calls Gail to ask about the mother, Gail says informs him no one has seen the mom in a year.
After she delivers the news to Nick, Gail calls the rude man over to her to retrieve his bike, which she said she found in an empty unit. She even lend him a hand. Gasp!
A few scenes later, Nick is talking to the kids at the station. They admit their mother took off a year ago with her boyfriend and they didn't tell anyone because they didn't want to get split up into different homes. Brandy insists her brother can take care of them, but Nick points out the money he's using to do so is from stolen bikes, and they shouldn't have to worry about things like paying rent. Josh blurts out that he's worried their mother won't be able to find them when she gets home, though Brandy remarks that she isn't coming home.
Eventually, with Oliver's permission, Nick decides to charge the children because it's the only way they can stay together; there are coed group homes for kids with records.
At the end of the episode, Nick brings them to a place he promises will be good: the group home he himself spent three years in. The three sit down to a home cooked meal with the group home mother and she tells Josh and Brandy, "sometimes when things are tough, we convince ourselves to shut everyone out...but that's baloney. You've got to keep an open heart."
Personal Stuff
Nick
After dinner, Nick has a flirtatious, sweet encounter with a woman while getting toothbrushes for Josh and Brandy. It's a sign he may be ready for love again after his failed relationship with Andy. I still think they glossed over that breakup, but if he's not going to get her back, I'm ready to have him meet someone new.
Chloe
Chloe met Wes during the middle of the day to sign the divorce papers together over hotdogs.
Earlier in the day, Chloe had expressed to Andy that she had mixed emotions about the whole thing since her relationship with Wes started so well but ended so poorly.
As they eat, Wes and Chloe share a friendly, nostalgic moment and then Wes asks what happened between them. Chloe says marriage and Wes responds by signing the papers. He then says he hopes Epstein is taking care of her and that he knows it was his fault things went sideways after they got married. Soon, Wes kisses her. She lets him but rushes away afterwards.
It's not until later, when Andy reminds her during an awkward but friendly conversation in the locker room, that she realizes the camera caught the kiss. (Side note: this and other 'bonding' moments Andy and Chloe had this episode make me hopeful it could be the start of a true friendship between the two women. Chloe needs/deserves a female friend.)
She rushes over to Dov at his desk. Luckily, he hasn't seen it yet. She tries to get him to take a break from examining the footage and eventually he agrees. She tells him she didn't hand in the divorce papers but will do so first thing in the morning, but she can't bring herself to confess to him about the kiss. Instead, when he leaves to get changed, she pulls up the recordings on his computer. Not another hurdle!
Traci and Steve
Traci is surprised to see Steve on her way out but disappointed when she realizes he's just there to pick up Gail. Will these two reconcile?
Andy and Sam
Andy and Sam mutually decide to just get pizza and beer instead of going out to dinner and when they're eating it in bed, they talk about how it marks that they have truly entered a new chapter in their relationship. It's a sweet moment but there's something about this new version of Andy and Sam that just seems...fake or forced or something. Or maybe I'm just waiting for the other shoe to drop? Who knows...
Catch the next episode of Rookie Blue on Thursday, August 21 at 9 p.m. ET on ABC.