If you’re not watching Rookie Blue, you’re wrong. First of all, it stars Missy Peregrym from Stick It, one of the best cheesy teen movies ever made.
It also features Gail Peck, played by Charlotte Sullivan, who you might recognize as the HBIC Marion Hawthorne from Harriet The Spy (which also featured Gregory Smith as Sport, who plays Dov Epstein on Rookie Blue).
Gail is consistently the best part of the show, in my humble opinion. Other characters have their ups and downs, the more interesting storylines and the really boring ones, but even when she doesn’t have a story of her own going on, you can always count on Gail to bring the snark. She’s tough and she’s honest, both to a fault. She’s also smart, stunning and hilarious, and no one in their right mind can fault her for that.
Officer Gail Peck is one of those people that has chemistry with anyone and everything around her. She has smoldering blue eyes and a sultry voice that is impossibly sexy, even though it’s usually being used to sling insults. If memory serves, they’ve never defined her sexuality, and since she seems to hate everyone equally, I wouldn’t be surprised if she would consider sleeping with someone regardless of gender. Gail always gets what she wants, no matter the cost, and it’s anyone’s guess what (or who) she’ll want next.In last week’s episode, Gail met a lady forensic pathologist, Holly, who was immediately met with high doses of bluntness and sarcasm. Since Gail’s flirting looks a lot like her fighting, and this new gal didn’t miss a beat, I was already shipping them by the time Gail called her a nerd.
I nearly fell off my bed at the end of the episode when Holly outright said she was a lesbian and proved I wasn’t imagining the intrigued looks and coy smiles she had been throwing at Gail since they met.
The problem is, Gail has been burned. She went against her nature and let fellow officer Nick in, let him take down some of her walls, let herself fall for him. And he fell in love with one of her best friends. He lied to her, he abandoned her, and it broke her. She usually hides her pain behind quirky-OK, batshit crazy-tendencies, but right now she’s still in the numb phase of the post-relationship fallout.
I don’t know if it was because Holly never flinched as Gail threw word darts at her all day, or that she was just in the right place at the right time, but by the end of their day in the morgue together, Gail opened up to Holly more than she has some of her friends she’s known since the start of the show. She confesses that she tends to self-destruct relationships, comparing herself to a cat in a tree. Holly says she used to do that too, before she realized she didn’t like men at all, to which Gail doesn’t bat an eye and says she just doesn’t like people, which brings the biggest smile to Holly’s face. She’s hooked.
And it looks like Gail might just be hooked right back. Previews and promo photos from this week’s episode lead me to believe that Gail will be taking Holly as her date to the big wedding event of the season.
While I imagine Gail wouldn’t be opposed to toying with this new lesbian friend just to make her ex-boyfriend/current colleague jealous, and it would be an easy trope for the show to fall into, I have to give these writers more credit than that. There was an episode earlier this season that featured a transgender teenager, and I think they handled it all extremely well-it was overall a really touching episode. So I, personally, think they could handle this storyline without falling into too many cliches. At the same time, they tore the “seasoned officer finds out old mentor was dirty” trope right out of the cop drama book last week, so I guess it’s anything goes.
All I know for sure is that this happens and I honestly can’t predict Gail’s reaction to it.
I don’t think it would be outside the believable realm of her character to be bisexual, because as I mentioned, Gail has chemistry with everyone, and she seems to have a fear of intimacy that going beyond the limits of gender and sexuality. (Also, spoiler alert, IMDb has Aliyah O’Brien listed as playing Holly for at least six episodes, so it looks like she might be around for the rest of the season.)
Bonus fact: Aliyah O’Brien is no stranger to sweet lady kisses. She played a bit part as Sam’s “bridge girl” in an episode of Exes & Ohs.
What do you think of Peck’s new fling? Do you think Gail could really fall for Holly or is this just another straight girl swearing off men and messing with a lesbian’s heart storyline?
Whether you’re all caught up or want to check it out for the first time, this lady-liplock will be happening on Thursday, so tune into ABC at 10 p.m. EST.
