and opinions some people might find offensive but for which I won’t apologise.
Don’t read any further unless you are open-minded.
Also, hard as I try not to give away too much, I can't guarantee there are no spoilers.
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The Chicago Franchise is the brainchild of Dick Wolf, who gave the world Law & Order. The titles in this franchise include Chicago Fire, Chicago PD, Chicago Med & Chicago Justice.
These are available on DVD and on various free to air and cable networks. I tested them on DVD (I first saw Fire as free crossover episodes included with Med seasons).
Chicago Fire TV Series - Season 1 commenced 2012 -
Chicago Fire is a very popular show for some reason that escapes me completely.
One of the Chicago Fire episodes I’ve seen shows what can only be a wooden beam (burning, of course) falling from the flaming ceiling of a steel and concrete tower.
I do not understand the fascination of fires, specifically, or the appeal of any TV show generally that doesn’t even pretend to assume some basic intelligence on the part of the viewers.
In 04x10 The Beating Heart young Freddie, verging on juvenile delinquency, is invited to hang around with firemen because they would be great role models for him. One of the firemen calls Freddie short and fat, so Freddie tells him to take it back. Herrmann, all palsy walsy, suggests when men bust each other’s balls it’s a sign of manliness and acceptance. As a role model Herrmann is such a fucking knob on so many levels I don’t know where to begin.
Spoiler alert – in case you plan to watch this series – Freddie doesn’t like having his balls broken so grabs a knife and stabs Herrmann in the gizzards. For the rest of the episode, Herrmann will be using up valuable ER resources at the Hospital, while other emergency workers scour the burbs looking for Freddie.
Chicago Fire’s main duties seem to be fighting fires, rescuing people trapped in burning buildings, rescuing people from motor vehicle crashes, and providing paramedic services, but most of each of the Chicago Fire episodes I have seen is nonetheless still devoted to watching people with breathing apparatus stumbling around blindly inside dark smoky buildings, or trying to get through a day with seriously defective personalities. The paramedic duties seem quite limited, which I find weird given how seriously stretched ambos are in Australia (where they are dedicated solely to providing emergency medical assistance) and which also seems like a weird fire-to-medical-emergency ratio. (It might not actually be an odd ratio, it just seems weird to me.)
Fire was the first of the Chicago titles, and crossover episodes are a logical promotional device – DVD sets often include episodes in which Chicago Fire, Police, Medical and Justice stories and casts overlap really well, sometimes for several episodes, and some even overlap with Law & Order SVU in New York.
MA 15+ - presumably the rating has to do with how gruesome it is to see people being shot, stabbed, burned or mutilated. Personally, I’d be more concerned about psychic damage from casual contact with knobs like Herrmann.
Bingeability – No. Spare me, please. Is euthanasia legal in Illinois? I have a DNR… will that help?
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Chicago Justice TV Series – Season 1 2017 -
Of all four Chicago titles, Justice is a bit of a dud.
It’s not that anyone has done a bad job of putting the show together (if I had to choose between this and Fire, I'd watch this) the problem is simply that it is really just Law & Order with a new cast and a new location.
Marketing theory tells us this simply won’t pay; there will only ever be one Coca Cola, and every other cola made between now and Armageddon is doomed to be Pepsi.
If Dick Wolf wants an appetising fourth franchise member to represent Justice, it needs to be a different flavour from cola.
Having said that, the cola that is/was Chicago Justice Series One – the only series made before it was canned – tasted not-too-bad. Try this delicious exchange between a smart-arsed crim and Investigator Laura Nagel.
MA 15+ Don’t watch it if you don’t want to see gooey stuff. It’s standard Law & Order level with bullets and dead body gizzards and autopsies and things.
Bingeability – If you can binge on Law & Order you can binge on this. Well, ask yourself, can you? And if so… why? Okay… TV shopping channels are probably more dangerous for your financial and mental health. Sadly, I get it.
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Chicago Med TV Series – Season 1 commenced 2015 -
This is just like Grey’s Anatomy, only completely different.
Yes, medical stuff plus the emotional drama of all the personal goings on of staff and patients, but without the great music and nowhere near as regularly hilarious – the storylines in this show are always serious. Medically they seem more specific, more correct and less vague, and so the moral ambiguity matters more and the social commentary packs a greater punch.
The elephant in this Chicago room is not race, it’s gender, though from episode one there are two male doctors whose egos pit them against each other and they are both white doctors, and that’s ouchy.
One is a po’ boy with a real chip on his shoulder about money, and the other is a rich boy with a real chip on his shoulder about money. As tedious as it is to live in a world where male pissing contests are so commonplace, voluntarily watching them struggle with their attitudes to class – while they are totally unaware they both can have and both do have a plantation mentality (like most males tend to have to some degree, said the lady reviewer) – is intriguing.
Just like on Grey’s, the ER Dr in Chicago who is the biggest wanker is also a ranga so I’m not just embarrassed to be white but terrified I might be outed as person once young enough to sport a touch of red. (BTW this actor wears the most ludicrous toupee I’ve ever seen on a screen – if it’s not a toupee then he needs a better barber.)
The women on this show sport eyelashes worthy of any drag show, but at least it seems there is no production rule forbidding natural curl in their hair.
The most admirable thing about people who work in the health industry – what makes them so much more admirable than me – is a willingness to help people without judgment. It’s a job requirement I lack the character to meet. What is most conspicuous about some of the characters on this show, however, is how quickly they sometimes do judge patients, and the impact this has on the way the patients are treated. The gap between my real world experience of health workers and the willingness to judge on this show is ginormous, and while it is one means for generating drama it can make the storylines harder to buy into.
On the other hand, the moral questions are bigger and worthier than on Grey’s.
S. Epatha Merkerson, as Sharon Goodwin, most often stands as the moral compass of the show. In episode 01x15 there is a sticky question relating to a surrogacy contract, and her character cuts right through the crap to call it the way she sees it. I do love me a show with a champion in it.
There are occasional holes in the storylines, but no show is perfect. The arrogance/ignorance of some of the characters about patient wishes or about mental health infuriates me episode after episode, but that’s what makes this show great – it challenges common ideas that matter – i.e. the ones that get up my nose on a daily basis.
The theme of the show can be summarised with the classic idea that the best practice of medicine requires art, not just science.
Psychiatry adds an extra dimension to the series and prevents it becoming bogged down in med-surg clichés. When one doctor discovers his patient has a bipolar disorder, he gives himself a break about treatment decisions because he has been dealing with “more than a medical issue”. Dr Charles gently corrects him, pointing out bipolar disorder is very much a medical issue. Bonus points too, because the way the Aspergers of a major character on this show has been handled is commendable.
(Reviewer’s caveat – it’s not Chicago Med’s job to point this out but I shall: Asperger’s can manifest itself differently in males from the way it does in females because of blah, blah, and blah – be aware.)
This show is as intellectually stimulating as Chicago Fire is intellectually stultifying.
MA 15+ - Yep, there is a fair bit of slicing and dicing on this show, and occasionally it is extremely unappetising.
MA 15+ - Yep, there is a fair bit of slicing and dicing on this show, and occasionally it is extremely unappetising.
Bingeability – Can’t say I ever lost sleep wondering what would happen in the next episode, but it’s very easy to keep watching.
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Chicago PD TV Series – Season one commenced 2014
For a cop show with a vigilante style cop this is actually good
An important character in any good cop story is the city, and in the first episode of Chicago PD we are introduced to Sergeant Voight’s Chicago – the city limits are marked by disused silos where Voight takes some punk connected to bad dope that is killing people. Which tells us Voight is prepared to bend rules, but only because he has rules of his own that he doesn’t want anyone else to bend.
There is something shady about how Voight got to be in charge of an Intelligence Unit, and something shaky about his hold on his job. But it is his town, his unit, and the unit is his family. In fact, the show is his, and it surprises me that any producer would risk putting all their eggs in one character. Popular characters sometimes come and go on shows like this, but Voight is not a job description, he is the premise that drives the series – I would be curious to see how they could replace him if the need arose.
Among the many things that usually give me pause about cop shows, two things usually give me pause about US cop shows in particular; guns and vigilantes.
It’s hard for me to identify with the gun culture thing, not just because I’m Australian, but because even the Australians I’ve met who are gun nuts (notice I refer specifically to "nuts") have generally been reckless and dangerous knobs, and the last people I would want “protecting me” in a crisis. Bullets fly on this show with remarkably few consequences for the humans on screen.
It’s also hard to feel immediately comfortable about people bending rules, because people who do so often have shaky values. In real life, admittedly, even when we know the rules and agree with them, rules often seem to have little currency, so it is nice to escape into an alternate reality where stuff gets done, but only if the someone who has both the power and will to bend the rules and make stuff actually happen is someone who has values you can trust.
“I have rights” says the baddie, on Chicago PD. “You have me!” counters Voight. The turning point in many episodes occurs when the baddie realises that Voight is self-referencing, and legal or notional rights are just notions.
What I love about this show most, though, is how Chicago PD handles family dysfunction, which is to say, brilliantly. One of the key characters is Voight’s not-officially-adopted daughter; a wild-child he took in off the streets at 15 who not only straightened out but eventually became a detective within his Intelligence Unit.
Erin Lindsay’s mother is a complete dead loss. Markie Post, who plays the part of Lindsay’s mother, does an awesome job with the role, and it is all I can do not to destroy my screen when she appears because I desperately want to smack the character in the head.
This show does not shy away from the big question that dysfunctional families pretend they never have to ask a thousand times a day: Where is the line between protecting ourselves, or giving someone a second chance?
A theme never far from the centre of any episode on this show is that we all make mistakes and if we have no hope of redeeming ourselves the only alternative is despair.
Outside the themes of systemic inequities and human weakness, the other storylines on this show occasionally have holes in them but are rarely formulaic or predictable. Sometimes they are outstanding. Of all the titles in the Chicago Franchise, this is the best by miles.
MA 15+ Rating – Be warned; there are some sick units in the world, and that is before Voight enters the picture – not sick, but himself fearless and at times prepared to be brutal to extract information. Nothing gratuitous, though, but brutal enough to require a warning.
Bingeability – Very watchable. The PD series is the best of the Chicago franchise.
