How ‘Alert: Missing Persons Unit’ Handles Team’s Grief After Nikki’s Death

[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for Alert: Missing Persons Unit Season 3 Episode 3 “Lay.”]

Alert: Missing Persons Unit gave the team a bit of time to grieve their loss — their leader, Nikki (Dania Ramirez), was killed in the show’s most shocking episode yet — but not everyone took it. Jason (Scott Caan) returns to work a couple months after his ex-wife’s death to find that her husband Mike (Ryan Broussard) has not taken the time to process his loss.

Jason takes a moment upon getting to work to stand in Nikki’s empty office, and both he and Kemi (Adeola Role) agree it’s “surreal.” The time off for him was good. Mike, meanwhile, has been pushing through and picking up more slack until they get a new captain, Kemi reveals, and she’s worried that he hasn’t taken enough time to process it.

Jason and Nikki’s daughter Sydney is thinking of taking a semester off from school to get her head right, and Mike — who admits he needs to call her — says he gets it. The alternative, Jason notes, is to push through, keep moving, ignore the grief, and wait for a nervous breakdown to come. Mike knows he’s trying to make a point, and Jason sarcastically replies about the whole three days he took off and that he’s probably fine. Mike insists he is. Until he’s not, Jason adds. Mike wants to focus on the case.

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Jason does later check if Mike’s getting enough sleep, and Mike says everyone processes in their own way. “You’ve got to feel your feelings,” Jason says. Mike appreciates the concern, but every day he shows up to work, when he decides to feel sorry for himself, he meets someone having a worse day than him and helping them is his process.

After the team saves a muralist who fell through a roof and gets him to the hospital in time to donate bone marrow to his dying brother, Jason tells Mike that he can see where all his working is coming from. When he lost Keith, he didn’t want to go home — it didn’t feel like home — so he sees what he’s doing being the first one in and last one out. But Jason refuses to let him go through it alone. Mike takes a raincheck on grabbing a beer and watching a game (whichever game) but does thank him and admits he missed having him around. With that, Jason leaves Mike to sit there, alone, and start to feel his grief.

What did you think of how Alert: Missing Persons Unit handled the aftermath of Nikki’s death? Let us know in the comments section below.

Alert: Missing Persons Unit, Tuesdays, 9/8c, Fox