Chicago P.D. 2×07 Review – “They’ll Have to Go Through Me”

New York SVU comes to Chi-town, Erin finds her brother, and one of the PD’s own is gunned down.

In case you missed it, this week was #CrossoverWeek on NBC with Chicago Fire, SVU, and Chicago PD and boy was it a treat. To catch you up to speed for our purposes here, Detectives Lindsay (Sophia Bush) and Halstead (Jesse Lee Soffer) traveled to New York to follow up on some child pornography photos found at the scene of a fire by the CFD. While in New York, a ring of pedophiles was uncovered and led the SVU and Linstead to Teddy Voight (another Voight boy?), Erin’s half brother. The ring is tracked back to Chicago, and the SVU joined the team at their home base to crack this disturbing case. The material was really heavy on CPD this week, including the ambush shooting of one of the CPD’s own, while protecting a witness (who also ends up murdered) in the hospital. Things got real REAL on Chicago PD this week; let’s get to breaking it down!

Can it be #CrossoverWeek every week?

That was the question heard round Twitter this week. Everyone loved the crossover between Chicago Fire, SVU and CPD! The twists and turns (and travelling) that was thrown at the team this week kept things exciting, and watching a multi-unit effort on tracking and solving this case was really interesting! First we had the pleasure of watching Detective Lindsay work with SVU’s Olivia Benson (Mariska Hargitay) and her team in NYC, and then Voight called in Benson to help him solve the case.

“So what do you need from me?” ~Benson

“Your help.” ~Voight

“I’ll be on the next plane out.” ~Benson

Watching these two strong leaders work together was exciting and entertaining. Mariska Hargitay is the ultimate bad ass as Benson, but she plays by the rules, something our Hank Voight doesn’t always do so well. We loved seeing Benson and Voight go toe to toe over their different interrogation styles! Benson gets her guy with wit, while Voight uses a little bit more strong arm than wit in his technique. Bringing the teams together and creating this #CrossoverWeek really fleshed both this storyline and the teams themselves out.

Erin’s ever expanding family tree

This week brought Erin (Sophia Bush) face to face with her long lost brother Teddy, who was a victim of the pedophilia ring and was featured in some of the video and audio files recovered. We continue to watch our girl Detective Lindsay struggle with her familial relations. The talented actor playing Teddy was Lou Taylor Pucci and wow, was he amazing. The highs and lows he played as Teddy can only be described as manic. At first he scared us when they found him in NY with the SVU team, but as #CrossoverWeek continued, we felt our heart softening to poor damaged Teddy.

“Do not twelve step me right now Mom, just find Teddy. Please.” ~Erin

Teddy had to re-live much of the past abuse that he suffered, and the talent that is Lou Taylor Pucci made the pain that Teddy was suffering from leap right off our screens. The heaviness of his demons wasn’t only apparent to us, but we could see it hitting Erin even more so. Upon finding a link between her brother and a foster family, she remarked that her mom “checked out on us for a couple years”. Only a few breaths later she was defending her brother’s involvement in the ring the unit is investigating stating that he’s “not a player in the ring… he’s a victim that’s all.” We could see Erin struggling to wrap her head around this case. We love seeing the layers to the character of Erin Lindsay and Sophia Bush could not be more perfect in this role. She can channel her tough cookie, bad ass attitude to take down a perp, and then soften to console a victim’s family with such genuine emotion. Of course we expected Erin to want to keep the little girl they rescued from the ring, we know from the past that she has a soft spot with kids in these situations. She is heartbreakingly beautiful and believable in every scene and we have to appreciate the presence of a strong female lead on television. If we may say, this is the kind of female role model who should “break the internet!”

Children in danger, and a fallen officer…Heavy material this week

The emotional hits came early on this episode, with Ruzek coming to the scene of the officer shot and finding his friend, who he just spoke to yesterday. The CPD writers NAMEHERE do a great job at pulling on our heart strings and reminding us that even though this is a show, this is real life stuff here. We enjoy seeing a softer side of the characters and the raw emotion that the actors emit during these tragic and sad scenes. The passion that Voight (Jason Beghe) for example, shows when they are at the team roundtable discussing leads gets us amped up for the episode. Right in the middle of the brainstorming however, is a blow to our hearts again, as Platt stops by to deliver the black bands for the officers badges, in memoriam of their fellow fallen officer.

“Ross was a husband and a father, and one of my patrolmen. I assigned him to that hospital protection detail. It was supposed to be his day off… he needed the overtime for his daughter’s tuition. So when you find the animal that killed him… you call me, I’ll dig the ditch.” ~Platt

We held back tears at this moment, and several other times throughout the episode as well. The heavily discussed pedophilia ring made this episode weigh on our hearts even more so. This show relates to real life happenings, and sometimes in our fast paced (and television obsessed world), it’s often times hard to remember that there are bigger battles out there being fought. It’s the men and women that are sworn to protect our communities that face these “stories” on the daily as their job. They can’t change the channel or shy away from it. And while other law enforcement genre shows may not want to address such harsh and scary storylines on their shows, we continue to be grateful for Chicago PD and its creator Derek Haas and his great team of writers. They don’t just create a show full of action and romances worth ‘shipping all over the Twitter-verse, they create stories based upon real life issues and cases, and they remind us to appreciate the hard work that the real life heroes do daily.

CONCLUSION/FINAL VERDICT

All in all, this was the best episode for us this season. The material may have been heavy, but the action was fast and the case moved along quickly. As always the team solves the case, but it’s not case resolution that continues to bring us back to Chicago PD every Wednesday night. It’s the characters, and the real life connection we develop to them over the weeks of watching them deal with emotions and issues that we as viewers may face within some capacity or another as well. The team works together and supports each other like a family does, and when they come into our living rooms every week we become a part of that family. Our anxiety runs high as we watch them chase a lead or track a killer, we weep on the outside while they weep on the inside at the loss of one of their own. It is that connection that keeps us coming back for more and holds Chicago PD at the top of our list.

QUESTION COMMENTS AND CONCERNS

• Whoa, that scene in the hospital of the victim in bed? How many pints of fake blood was that?
• And while we are counting, we should mention we DID lose count of both the body count and our used Kleenex count on tonight’s episode.
• The cauliflower ear lead was genius! Go ‘head Burgess!
• We would SO get behind a spinoff of Lindsay and Rollins (Kelli Giddish)!
• We like the Commander much more when he stays in his office… and when he wakes up on the right side of the bed! Although we can understand the conflict of interest with Erin working this case.
• Roman might be little, but he certainly won’t back down to any MMA fighters while tracking a lead. #TeamRogess hard work paid off and they got the cop killer ID’d.
• Speaking of the shooter, when he made that Evel Kenieval leap across rooftops? Well, we just knew he would go splat. Every lead in this case wound up dead, dead, deadski.
• Erin’s slumber party with the little girl? The awwwww-est scene of the night! “I met a cop, and he helped me. I’m here for you now.”
• Jennifer Miller, we beg for your fashionista expertise, who made those boots Erin is wearing in her last scene with Teddy?
• Too early to start a couple name for Benson and Voight? Venson? Beight?