Chicago Med, Chicago PD recap: Week 3

The One Chicago shows are always at their most intense whenever it’s one of their own who needs his or her team to be, as the P.D. title for the week dubs, firing on all cylinders. This time, the stakes are just as high as when Matt Casey’s “girl” (for lack of a better descriptor for their on-off-on-off thing) Hallie was taken down in the early days of Chicago Fire … which means someone’s gonna bite it in a bad way and yes, Voight’s involved. Well, sorta.

Who am I kidding? That last moment of digression was really just brought to you courtesy of my excitement over Fire‘s return next week. This fall is about to be even hotter, y’all. In the meantime, here’s a run-through of all the insanely good drama that went down on Chicago P.D. and the significantly less entertaining new installment of Chicago Med this week.

Chicago P.D. Season 4, Episode 3: “All Cylinders Firing”

After last week’s episode of Chicago P.D. showed Trudy Platt bearing her teeth at Commander Fogle, I thought for sure we were bound to see his threat against her come to fruition in an all-out department fracas, but alas, it’s another baddie that makes her suffer this week. The inevitable Fogle vs. Trudy bonanza will have to wait for another day. Even so, the Trudester doesn’t go down without a fight this time either because, well, that’s just not her style.

This week, Trudy pays a visit to her dad, Robert Platt, who’s got a young, new girlfriend named Natalie whom Trudy suspects of being a classic gold digger. Why else would a woman of her age shack up with a 72-year-old man who lives such a lavish little lifestyle? He’s not too concerned about her theory, but when he turns up dead after Trudy’s beaten bloody while entering her car, all eyes turn to Natalie as a possible suspect.

Sure, Natalie and her ex-but-not-really boyfriend Leonard admittedly took Robert “for a ride” by swindling some of his dwindling resources, but they both insist they had nothing to do with his untimely demise. Once Burgess inadvisably tells Trudy the make and model of the vehicle that sped away from the scene of her attack — thank goodness for neighbors who don’t take kindly to ruckus in the streets stepping in for the accidental assist — she goes missing from her hospital bed and makes a stop at her office to retrieve her back-up gun and a shovel from one of her late dad’s developments. Her issued arm was the only thing stolen from her on the scene, so the whole Intelligence team is out trying to put two and two together as to the five W’s (who, what, when, where, why) of the assailant, since it obviously wasn’t some street robbery-gone-south… which is probably the only reason no one seemed to notice her sneaking into P.D. in the first place.

Though she never shares the 411 with the detectives on her case, Trudy knows exactly who it is, and what’s better (or worse, depending on how you look at it) is that she knows exactly where he is, too. She rifles through her Rolodex to find her old card for Wade McGregor, a man who invested in one of Robert’s companies and nosed around a little too much for Trudy’s liking. Trudy may have only suffered a head wound and bleeding eye socket, but she’s still seen better days and required surgery from hunky Rhodes to prevent any permanent damage.

Despite her injuries, though, she rolls up to his place and, as luck would have it, her old gun is resting far out of his reach, so he’s an easy grab. She makes him put on his own cuffs like a boss and then ties him to a chair for a little homegrown interrogation. It doesn’t take long for her to summon up an admission from him, and she’s inches away from joining the department’s league of retaliatory murderers when Sergeant Voight catches up to her plan and stops the slaughter before it can begin. She rightly points out that he of all people should understand why she needs to do this (meaning, put this creep six feet under herself), but he reminds her that she’s not him and never should be. The perp will get justice on the official level, and she just needs to make peace with that. And, of course, it’s strictly between them that she almost did what she almost did — we’ll just have to pretend that the secret vault thing will work and that McGregor won’t himself spill those beans, I guess.

In the end, Trudy returns safely to her hospital bed at Med to finish the recovery process, and the man who put her there in the first place is now behind bars. Her husband, Mouch, tells her he flipped his lid when he heard she hit the trail to find the guy herself — as far as he knows, it was Intelligence who ultimately detained McGregor — and that he’s not so very keen on her doing street police work, no matter how good she was at it back in the day. It’s kind of rich, coming from a guy who runs into burning buildings every day for a living, but hey, they exchange a couple of feely “I love you”s and all is well between them again.

The moral of the story in all this is that while Trudy puts on a grunty front of behind-the-desk collectiveness, she’s got a wicked bone buried deep, and she flexed it a lot this week. Assuming she and Fogle are going to come to blows over Tay’s reassignment, he will most definitely be underestimating her, whatever he says or does.

Also? The Burgess and Nolan thing didn’t get much attention this week, but one thing that prove true (again) is that they’re super duper jivey on the job. Their hustle with Kevin Atwater at the liquor and appliance stores was full-tilt.

Episode grade: A

NEXT: A bunch of filler — literally …

Chicago Med: Season 2, Episode 3: “Natural History”

New rule: There can’t be more than three story lines going on at the same time on Chicago Med anymore. Agreed?

Cause this week was so jam-packed with random goings on that I was about to have to storm an ER myself for the nasty case of whiplash this episode was giving me.

First there’s Maggie’s sister Denise, who briefly lost her vision and had a one-car accident, which led to the revelation that she had cancer. The surprising thing, to Dr. Halstead at least, was that it was prostrate cancer — Denise was assigned male at birth and transitioned but didn’t remove her prostate. As if there wasn’t enough to emotionally unpack to treat that story line with the dignity and care that it deserves, then we’ve got Reese and Dr. Charles dealing with a woman who’s seven months along in a hysterical pregnancy, which arose as a result of her anxiety over a diminished identity. Again, heavy, heavy stuff here. And yet that still wasn’t the full menu of medical dishes on our plates this week. There was also a man with a language barrier who appears to have a contagious disease but can’t reveal a single word of his medical history to Dr. Manning and Jeff Clarke and a really, really rich guy (as evidenced by his sport of choice, polo, and Goodwin’s incessant brow-beating over not killing this one) who’s had a stroke and needs heart surgery right now, but Dr. Rhodes shouldn’t (read: can’t) do it alone, and Dr. Latham’s observing the Shabbat. Phew. What a plot wallop that all is.

Without exhaustively detailing every procedure, then, why don’t we just focus on the takeaways from each, hm?

With Denise, we learn something about Maggie’s life, and we have a teachable moment for Halstead as well. Maggie accepts Denise for who she is, but there’s also a small part of her that misses her brother. This illness has given Maggie and Denise time to work through those issues, which is something that hadn’t happened before because Denise moved to Dallas almost a decade ago and only visits family reunions for a few hours at a time. Halstead is, like many people, struggling with what is politically correct terminology about the transgender community, but he’s coming from a good place and is willing to learn. Things are good all around. Well, you know, except for the fact that Denise has a cancer battle ahead, but she’s going to stick around and beat this thing with her sister by her side in Chicago, so that‘s at least a very, very thin, but still real, silver lining to the dismal situation.

The non-pregnancy thing was merely a device to showcase Reese on her way to becoming less awkward when she has to tell people they’re not quite right in the head. She fumbles it up the first time but gets her redemption at the last minute, per usual. Next.

Mr. Thai (did we ever get an actual name for this guy, or was there too much already squeezed into this hour to bother?) was also just a showcase of Dr. Manning doing what Dr. Manning does and not giving up until she’s broken the code of the human body’s secrets — this time, by finding a clue that the guy had been to a roller coaster park where a measles outbreak had just happened. This gives Clarke reason to make gooey eyes at her supremely impressive intelligence, and once the guy finally does get a translator, his cousin, all he has to say about the whole ordeal is how cute of a couple they are and spark that awkward side smile between them. Sorry but YAWN to all of this.

Lastly, Dr. Rhodes gets in over his head again, but this time his sure-fire “I can do this” attitude isn’t good enough to make a miracle happen. Dr. Downey may have been his mentor and put a lot of stock in Rhodes achieving greatness, but Dr. Latham is like… meh, you’re okay and all, but you’re no Downey so get out of my way before you kill somebody. Egg meet face. Rhodes paints Latham into a corner, really, by starting on a procedure that he’s not prepared to handle himself, and as a result, Latham has to go against his entire value system to clean up the mistake. The only good thing to come out of this is that it produces the most awkward doctor elevator moment since Grey’s Anatomy circa season 4.

His ego might be bruised in a big way, but hey, at least he’s been ranked #11 on the city’s “Top 40 Under 40” list, with a feature that pays special mention to his staggering good looks! The whole doctor’s lounge shared a collective groan-slash-giggle over that one, guaranteed.

Episode grade: C+

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Crossover notes:

• Seeing Mouch in P.D. at Med with Trudy was a beautiful combination of all three worlds, and we really need more of that, please. Although, it was kind of weird having him break comedic relief poise this week … but it’s also kind of awesome when he gets all riled up like that (usually under different circumstances, of course).
• Sylvie looked swell when she brought in John Doe. Is Borrelli still her partner, or is he too busy blaming the Chief for his brother’s death to bother working the rig? Next week, all three at last!

Prizes:

Chicago MVP of the week: Props to Dr. Latham for stepping up to the plate, despite his religious observation, to save a guy from certain death. But the real hero of this week is, surprisingly enough, Sergeant Hank Voight, who manages to keep Trudy from breaking all the way bad and stepping into the dark side, which he’s proud to call his home domain. He and Trudy have a lot of history, and he knows her well enough to know what she can and cannot live with, so excellent talk-down technique, Hank.

Sauciest Chicago coupling: Man. They were all a little disappointing, weren’t they? Burgess + Roman = Crickets. Linstead … not much doing. Manning and Clarke? Meh. Let’s give it to Halstead and the pathology doc Nina Shore for at least sharing a smile, a beer, and some flirty vibes at the snack machine. Booooring. Hey, at least Dawson and Casey are back in action soon.