‘Chicago Fire’ Recap: ‘Ride the Blade’

Written by John Edward Betancourt

CHICAGO FIRE -- "Ride the Blade" Episode 13002 -- Pictured: (l-r) Joe Miñoso as Joe Cruz, David Eigenberg as Christopher Herrmann, Taylor Kinney as Kelly Severide, Miranda Rae Mayo as Stella Kidd -- (Photo by: George Burns Jr/NBC)

Caution: This article contains spoilers for Episode 13002 of ‘Chicago Fire’. To revisit the Season Thirteen Premiere, click here.

In our minds, change is nothing more than a temporary obstacle in life. One that inconveniences and puts things out of sorts for a time as we gently move it out of the way, by embracing it and learning what it tries to tell us in that moment. All so we can move forward, and we only give it more thought when it steps into the middle of our road once again. Which is, a fair way to think and deal with change, since it simplifies it for us, but it is not the way to approach it mentally every time we encounter it. Because sometimes, change is less of a big boulder in our path and more of a delicate domino display, one that sets so much in motion when the first domino of change is tapped.

Which can lead to all kinds of surprises and uncomfortable and complex matters for us to face as cascading change arrives and well… this particular truth about change is top of mind today, because it showed up during last night’s episode of Chicago Fire on NBC. For ‘Ride the Blade’ was a story that saw Firehouse 51, try to get back to a sense of normalcy with a new chief in place. As though change was over with, and things could proceed as normal until something big came along, down the line. Which meant, Herrmann was back to just enjoying the day and doing his own thing in between saving lives, which ruffled some feathers but kept a status quo going and reinforced that belief that Chief Pasqual was just one big lump of change to overcome.

In fact, everyone was so comfortable, that Severide was willing to overlook a stupid mistake on Damon’s part. To just keep life in the firehouse loose and fun. But alas, none of them understood that Pasqual’s arrival, was the domino effect of change, and his arrival and his desire to look at the firehouse in a different light, prompted everyone to realize… that more change was on the horizon, and they had to be the ones to enact it. For Hermann, that meant, owning up to the fact he could no longer be an everyday guy, he was a selected leader and needed to get in line and make Boden proud, and he made a grand commitment to move into senior leadership to do right by his former mentor, and even Severide knew that he needed to make some change.

Because he truly let Damon do whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted, and that was starting to bring about conflict in the firehouse since Cruz brought up the favoritism Damon was enjoying and letting him get away with murder was undermining leadership. So, Severide realized that he needed to set up and right the wrong he committed here by favoring family over the job, over his duty. So, he let Damon know that accountability was on the horizon and that one of them was going to have to leave the firehouse. All because Pasqual’s arrival really did inspire more change, since he exposed some bad behaviors that had developed without a chief in place and that made for quite the unique episode for certain.
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Simply because in a way, this show took the time to serialize a concept and explore it over the course of the past two weeks, and that’s rare, and it hinted at the possibility that perhaps more change will be on the horizon. Since we also came to learn in this story that Dom Pascal is not the flawless man, we thought he could be. He’s someone with a temper, who struggles with the fact that he has little control over anything in life outside of work, and that temper, could bring about a shift at the firehouse. But while we wait to see what comes of that, we can celebrate one lively tale. One that really did expand upon last week’s ideas in a dynamic manner; by using it to enrich the characters we love and give us a compelling episode and truly, it will be interesting to see where all this conflict and change takes us as this season continues along. Until next time.

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