Chicago Fire returned last night with a strong, classic episode. Even though we are five seasons in, they still manage to catch me off guard and punch me in the gut when I’m least expecting it.
And that is exactly why I fell in love with this show in the first place, and binge watched it like a mad woman earlier this year.
“Carry Their Legacy” started out as a just alright episode. Dawson and Brett were in training, Severide was pining over Anna’s sudden disappearance and the Truck 81 team got a hilarious call from crazy dude who thought aliens were coming to get him.
Not to mention the fact that Connie returned and the team immediately started placing bets to see how long the new girl would last.
Up until twenty minutes in, I thought that was all there was going to be to it – you know, just an easy, filler episode. The calm before the storm and all that.
But then they hit us with a one-two punch to the gut that left my head spinning.
Squad 3’s truck had broken down during a call, so Squad 6 went to Fire House 51 in order to fill in for them.
It turns out that one of the firefighters in Squad 6 was Casey’s childhood friend Jason Kanell, so Matt introduces him to everyone and they get to catch up for a little while.
Apparently, Kanell was a floater and had just recently been placed in Squad 6 permanently and he loved it.
The two friends met up for a drink after shift and by the time they returned to duty on the next shift, everything was already back to normal, with Squad 3 back in action.
However, due to the Squad 3 truck malfunctioning earlier, Chief Boden decided to send all trucks in to get checked out, so that’s where Truck 81 was headed when they heard a call on the radio and informed Main that they were closer and could take care of it.
When they got there, it was Squad 6’s truck that was outside and the team was nowhere to be seen. There was a gas leak in an underground construction and they had gone in to rescue the workers.
And that was when the first punch took our breath away. Before Truck 81 could do anything, there was a major explosion in the tunnels.
Casey immediately prepares to go in, forbidding anyone to follow him down there. He tells Kidd to keep an eye on the gas levels and that, if it gets critical, they should all get the hell out.
Once down there, he quickly finds his friend Kanell trying to rescue his team, but they are all in bad shape. It’s a very tense rescue, but by the time the manage to get everyone out, it looks like only Kanell escaped unscathed.
The workers died immediately and one of the firefighters died on the scene, with the other two members of Squad 6 left in critical condition.
Kanell obviously has survivor’s guilt. He tells Casey that he was the one who screwed up and that he wasn’t watching the meter closely, so it’s his fault his team is gone.
The only reason he survived was because Doyle, the firefighter who died on the scene, jumped on him to protect him, taking the brunt of the explosion on himself. Casey tries to comfort his friend, but he’s not having any of it.
Something doesn’t sit right with Matt, though, so he and Chief Boden go back to the scene of the explosion to try and figure out what happened. And what they see there is that what Kanell said couldn’t possibly be true.
When one of the firefighters makes it through surgery, Matt goes over to his friend’s to tell him the good news and confront him about the story he told.
It turns out that Doyle was the one who made a bad decision and took a risk that did not go well. Kanell didn’t want to tarnish the memory of his friend, who had saved his life, so he took the blame.
And our hearts broke for him in the process, because not only is he going to live with the burden of being the only one who didn’t get hurt at all, but he also may have just destroyed his career when he came forward taking full responsibility for what happened.
Meanwhile – as if our hearts weren’t already broken enough – Severide is still trying to figure out what he did wrong that Anna up and left him.
When he goes by Chicago Med, he finds out that she also left her job, so his mind is reeling about what could have possibly caused her sudden disappearing act.
When he talks to Kidd about it, she tells him she can’t believe Anna would leave everything behind like this without a very good reason, and that something major must have happened.
That’s when it all clicks for him. He drives up to Springfield and tells her he knows. Her cancer is back.
She tells him it’s not good and that the doctors are talking management and not treatment, so her chances of beating this are pretty much zero.
He tries to talk to her, but she closes the door on his face and tells him to leave – she can’t handle this right now and just wants to be alone.
He goes back to Chicago devastated, but Anna’s dad follows him there and begs him to not let her push him away, and that she was at her happiest when she was with him. That he shouldn’t let her give up. And that’s exactly what he does.
He stops by the hospital and grabs a drawing from one of her little patients and takes it up to Springfield to her. Her dad is obviously on his side, so he lets Kelly in and he gives her the picture, telling her he’s not going anywhere.
Then she allows herself to break down and make us bawl like babies with her.
I can already feel this final stretch of episodes is going to tear my heart out of my chest and destroy it. Please don’t kill Anna. Severide will not survive this. Don’t make him go through another major loss like this. He barely made it out alive when Shay died. Don’t make him watch Anna die as well. Please, TPTB. Please. I am begging you here.
Chicago Fire: Other things of note
1. It wasn’t all drama. Dawson and Brett had to attend the retraining seminar and the way each of them tackled the event was hilarious.
Brett was a good girl and studied hard, while Dawson could not have cared less about those classes if she tried.
In the end, my girl Dawson, scored 100% on her test, but we all knew she was a badass paramedic that did not even need to go to training in the first place.
2. The fact that the boys are so scared of Connie is seriously funny and ridiculous. When she returns from her leave, they all think Marcy, the new girl, won’t last a week.
But Kidd defends her and says that the girl can definitely hold her own. In the end, of course Kidd was right, and Connie and Marcy got along just fine.
And Kidd took some sweet cash off those scared firefighters.
Chicago Fire airs every Tuesday at 10/9c on NBC.