Season 1, Episode 9
It’s a bad day to be a woman in the Chicago PD
“Chicago is safer than it’s ever been.”
-Mayor McGinnis
The more I watch The Chicago Code, the more and more convinced I become that the show is trying – perhaps slowly – to turn the city itself into a character, to attempt to move this story outside of the criminal justice arena, a la The Wire. Maybe that comparison is too grand, and the show most likely won’t get the chance, given its ratings, but I still think it’s an important one to make for last night’s episode.
More than any other time before, we got to see how Chicago works, at least according to this show. We got to see how the superintendent interacts with the mayor, how both parties interact with the press, and how the police interact with one another as a whole. It was a bold step away from the show’s more traditional procedural roots, and it served as an excellent background for the rest of the elements at play tonight, most obviously with Teresa’s plot.
“Teresa Colvin is the best thing to happen to this department since the Wysockis.”
-Vonda
Perhaps my biggest problem with the Teresa plot this week was that it followed another fairly Teresa episode from last week, and even though this one was even better than last weeks, it still felt like two much of it was being crammed down our throats. I get that Teresa holds a job with a lot of stress, and I get that her gender and her quick rise to power would give her problems, and I can understand why the show would want to touch on these points every so often. But it seems to me that the show would be better off with a larger variety of stories to tell, as opposed to going back to the same well so frequently.
And yet, like I said, it was a fantastic story, most notably because of how the headaches kept piling on her, so that her tension – and her terse reactions to those around – made sense within the episode. Playing into this idea of Chicago as a character itself (as outlined above) and touching off on the episode main theme – the police and the department don’t get the respect they/it deserves for all their hard work – also made sure that the story felt rich and resonant with the overall series, and not just a story thrown into to fill time.
The other half of this equation was Wysocki’s actions, at least when he wasn’t being distracted by this week’s fairly rote standalone case, the forced connection of the case to the episode’s major theme notwithstanding. Connecting Wysocki’s reactions to the vote on No Confidence to Teresa’s own fears and priorities helped to create and even richer web, as the fears of the future of the police department seemed to engulf everyone’s actions. (By the way, do you think that Evers truly supports Teresa? Because given how severely Jarek was bullying everyone around him to vote for Teresa, I can’t be sure that he didn’t lie to save himself from riding the bus – or worse.)
The only outcome that I didn’t like – and I hope that I am wrong in this interpretation – was the implication that Jarek might in fact be in love with Teresa, even though he never slept with her, and that’s why they had to stop being partners. If that’s something that he got over, and it’s fully in the past, I could accept that. But if he’s still in love with her, and he has to balance that with his feelings for his fiancée and his ex-wife, that’s going to create a messy love quadrangle, and I’m not sure if this show is deft enough to navigate through that mess.
“We have a temper, do we Officer Joiner?”
-Anna Chase
Remember last week, when I said that I felt that the show was being too misogynistic towards Vonda? Well, that seems to have returned again in full force tonight with the disposition subplot. Through the magic of flashback, the show attempted to give us a fully formed story for both Isaac and Vonda, though to be honest, I would rather have had this disposition based on some event we saw from an earlier episode as opposed to some heretofore unseen incident. It wasn’t the most original story idea – very few rip-offs of Rashomon can be, at this point – but it did hold some interesting notes for two rarely explored characters.
Unfortunately for Vonda, it meant that her character got a lot of shit thrown her way. While I can understand how making Vonda the culpable party could create some interesting drama between her and Isaac, it feels a bit unnecessary for all of this to blame to be placed on her shoulders. She is the one to blame both for Chase discovering their secret relationship (as she is the one to reach and grab Isaac’s hand) and she is technically the one that is responsible for the department having to settle, as it is her testimony that went against the official report. Having never met any of the show’s writers, I can’t be positive, but I can’t shake the feeling that, consciously or unconsciously, they are placing all this blame on her because she happens to be a woman, and that’s the kind of lazy writing other shows have gotten away with in the past. Or perhaps I should say that it’s because she’s not a woman in power, a character meant to challenge the status quo of gender, and the show thinks they can let Vonda fall to the wayside, because hey, they have Teresa, so they can’t be misogynists, right? RIGHT?
Now, I don’t begrudge the subplot’s existence in and of itself, especially as it plays into the episode’s theme of how cops don’t get the respect that they deserve. I also like the idea that maybe – just maybe – Isaac does have an anger problem, and perhaps that this will end up screwing him (and Vonda, and maybe the department) over even more down the line. Isaac seems prone to be some sort of stealth anti-hero, whose fall from grace could make for an interesting story. I just wish the show would focus on this more than some tired “weak woman” clichés.
Agree or disagree?
Additional Thoughts:
So apparently it’s illegal for a convicted felon to wear body armor. Good to know. (Though accordingly to Dion, “it’s a fashion statement.”)
The standard Jarek Wyscoki Plan: Release a suspect, follow them, and see who they pitch a fit to.
“Feels to me like you’re a smug bitch.” “Officer…” “For the record, she’s half right.”
“How do like a battering charge?” “I’ll take that.”
“I should probably bust you down to beat cop, except you’d probably like it too much.”
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