Confession time: I haven’t watched Rookie Blue regularly since Season 2. Not because I didn’t like it, respect it or love all of the folks involved, but because I was writing for a magazine and website that covered both U.S. and Canadian series, I was assigned other stuff. Time passed … and here we are at Season 6.

So, as I did with Heartland fans, I’d ask veterans of Rookie Blue to be gentle with this relative newbie to the series. And though I didn’t tune in weekly, I did happen to check out a few instalments last season, including that explosive season finale. Picking up a month following the events of the cataclysmic event in the evidence lockup, the members of 15 Division were getting back on the job.

I’ve always enjoyed the relationships Rookie Blue features. Yes, it’s a cop drama with crimes and ongoing investigations, but nothing stands in the way of character growth … and the odd little roll in the hay like we were treated to via Swarek and Andy to kick off “Open Windows.” The pair have been on-again, off-again since those early days of Season 1 and I appreciate the fact RB‘s writers keep throwing up obstacles in their way without making it all seem like they’re pressing those diversions. And this year boasts one hell of a roadblock: Marlo being pregnant by Swarek. Four months into it, the next five or so promise to be rocky ones for everyone involved. Swarek will wrestle with how much he wants to be in the baby’s life, Marlo needs to figure out what she wants from him and Andy needs to fit in there somehow. It don’t know how it’s all going to shake out, but I’m definitely intrigued.

Traci being the target of a serial rapist was a curve ball I didn’t see coming. And while the Sex Crimes Unit is worried the guy has skipped town, I don’t think so. I suspect the criminal is the coffee shop guy who tried to pin the attacks on someone else. He fits the profile described—he lives with his mother, who served as his alibi during the attack on Andy at Traci’s—and knew all too much about 15’s detective.

Chloe is a character that I have quickly fallen for. Things may be over between she and Dov (He painted over their wall in white? Ouch indeed.), but I’ve got my fingers crossed she finds a new love soon. She’s quirky, kind and cute as a button. Speaking of Dov, I’m enjoying this tougher, more serious version of him. His work into the rapist storyline was impressive and it appears he and Marlo are going to make a formidable team in identifying how the bomb ended up on the evidence locker.

Meanwhile, newest member of the squad Juliet Ward (Erin Karpluk) came off like an innocent, precocious gal but clearly has an agenda of some kind. Is she a mole, sent to keep tabs on 15? Are she and Russ (Dayo Ade) members of Internal Affairs? It’s too soon to tell, but I’m looking forward to finding out the results of that, and more, this season.

Rookie Blue airs Thursdays at 9 p.m. ET/PT on Global.

OK, I admit it, I let a lot of time lapse between episodes of Rookie Blue that I sat down and watched. So when I tuned in to Wednesday’s season finale, a lot had changed. Swarek and Andy for instance, have grown from a schoolyard crush into something mature and real and the show itself has hit its stride. (The shot of the CN Tower with the Rookie Blue logo transposed over it made me smile.)

Swarek and Andy’s little back and forth over takeout coffee outside of Ted’s house was cute as all get-out. I’ve wanted them to be a couple since I saw them in the pilot episode, so to see them in the “honeymoon phase” was awesome. Of course, it couldn’t continue. This was, after all, the season finale of Rookie Blue, meaning something bad had to happen. And it did, thanks to car bomber Ted McDonald, played with aplomb by Shawn Doyle. (I’m still pissed off that Doyle’s last series, Endgame, was cancelled.) Doyle’s portrayal of Ted–a man who lost his young son in a diner bombing four years prior–was notable not just because he played a disturbed man with such conviction (“Put your hands in the air like you just don’t care!!”), but that he made me care about him because he’d lost his son on the boy’s birthday, the first unsupervised visit the pair had.

“Everlasting” wasn’t all about Ted, however. Gail and Nick discussed found some comedic moments while on a stakeout, and Chloe was still crushed over her breakup with Dov and tried desperately to win him back. (Who else caught Being Erica‘s Erin Karpluk as the cyclist that Nick doored?)

And while I was happy to see Shaw back out on the road with Andy, it was his insistence that he remain on the beat after dropping Ted off at the precinct that put her in mortal danger. Swarek’s interrogation of Ted revealed the disturbed man wasn’t done yet, and his query about whether his computers and hard drives were in the precinct made my heart sink. “There are bombs in the computers!” I immediately realized.  And so there were, at least one detonating while Andy was in the evidence locker retrieving them. The explosion occurred with over 10 minutes still left in the episode, enough time to spotlight the after effects of the blast: Andy was bent over, so she was spared with just a few scratches and blown-out eardrums. It was the perfect opportunity for Swarek to show just how he felt about Andy in his own special way (Quote of the night: “I got smoke in my eye!”).

As for McDonald, he cut his own wrists with a razor blade in the interrogation room, exiting Stage Right without offering any closure for Swarek. Problem was, it looked like Diaz had neglected to frisk McDonald well enough to discover it. Either that, or the police are as corrupt as the bomber inferred and someone murdered him.

Meanwhile, Gail and Holly dropped bombs on each other; the former wants to adopt while the latter is leaving for a job in San Francisco in two weeks, throwing their relationship into question. At the other end of the scale were Traci and Nick, respectively, seem destined for blossoming relationships for Season 6.

But the biggest explosion of the episode came in the closing seconds: while Swarek and Andy smooched in bed Dov was discovering that Marlo is pregnant … with Swarek’s baby?