The two-part season finale of Chicago PD is shaping up to be the most intense case of the season.
Darrell Miller (Branden Cook), Samantha Miller’s (Nicole Ari Parker) son, got himself into a bit of trouble selling cocaine. He lives in Atlanta with his father, but he’s in town checking out a college. Samantha invites him to join her and Hank Voight (Jason Beghe) for dinner.
After dinner, Darrell follows Hank, which was pretty funny. Hank did a lot of maneuvers and ended up playing chicken with him. He gets out of the car, points his gun at Darrell, and tells him to get out of the car. Voight had a suspicion something was up by the way Darrell was talking on the phone as he was walking into the restaurant. He did not know the kid was Samantha’s son at the time, though.
He goes straight to Samantha with the trouble her son had gotten into and offered to keep the case off the books to help her son, but Samantha being the “by the books cop” she is, said put in on the books and use him as a CI.
It appeared to be a small-time dealer. This was supposed to be quick, but when Darrell went in to pay back the $10k that he owed and pick up some more product, Adam Ruzek (Patrick John Flueger) and Kevin Atwater (LaRoyce Hawkins) see a lot more drugs than Darrell had informed them of. It officially became a big case.
The case quickly goes sideways. When Kent (Anthony Goes) didn’t take the bait of partnering with Ruzek and Atwater, Darrell took things into his own hands against Adam and Kevin’s instructions of falling back and laying low.
He calls Ruzek at four in the morning to let Adam hear what was happening. You can’t hear Darrell clearly, but Ruzek quickly jumps up and calls Trudy Platt (Amy Morton) to get the team to come in.
Intelligence pinpoints his phone’s location, but Darrell’s phone is smashed when they get there, and everyone is gone.
Kim Burgess (Marina Squerciati) gets video footage of Kent putting Darrell and a girl into an SUV, and another man gets in a different car to follow.
They got the other man’s vehicle plates and were ready to jump on his body shop, but Samantha said no, they didn’t have probable cause. Even though her son was missing, she still wanted everything to be done by the book.
Voight pleaded with her to let them go in to save her son, but she wouldn’t budge.
This was an intense scene. Voight saying, this is all they’ve got to work with, and her saying that it’s always someone’s son. You have to respect her for sticking to her principles, but she may live to regret that.
They later track down the girl from the footage and trace the footsteps of Kent and the other man, Roy (Michael Maize). They find Darrell’s body dumped by the water. If they had moved in when Voight wanted to, Samantha’s son might have been saved.
Kent and Roy started tying up loose ends by shooting the other girls they had captive. Not only were they drug dealers, but they were also running a sex ring of underaged girls.
This was a horrific episode, first with Darrell being killed while saving one of the girls, second, all of the girls being shot in the head.
Is this supposed to be just exciting television or telling a message? Chicago PD‘s message the rest of the season is how reforms are important. “The Right Thing” throws all of that on its head.
Maybe the point is to look at the reforms being made, but if Voight and his team were wrong about Roy since they didn’t have any clear evidence, they would have been raiding the wrong place. And as Last Week Tonight with John Oliver has shown, it has a horrible effect on the innocent bystanders.
Maybe also, the reforms and the racism are two different issues to attend to.
If things couldn’t get any worse, Kim is checking out the last location. Kent punches her, pulls her out of the car and stomps on her stomach.
The season eight finale will be about Intelligence trying to find and save Kim.
Even though “The Right Stuff” is not sticking to the message it’s been trying to convey all season. This is a thrilling way to end the season. It’s a great case, and the detective work on it is incredible.
Playing things by the book makes the cases more compelling because the characters have to track down leads.
It’s also emotional. We may not have attachments to Darrell or the girls, but that didn’t stop me from being upset that Darrell died, even though I knew that was coming, and I cried as the camera panned across the dead girls.
It was also a great shot of the entire team looking over the girls in total despair.
Chicago PD is a great show. I don’t mind if they bend the rules for exciting television, but I don’t want to see that in real life. This is entertainment, and real-life needs to play by the rules. But, TV is also an important tool to start conversations and make a change.
What do you think of Chicago PD‘s latest case? Tweet me @MandyTTCarr or comment below.
